The Commercialization of Education

The Commercialization of Education
by Daniel Hong

In his 1993 movie "Indecent Proposal," Robert Redford, luring Demi Moore to spend one night with him for $1 million, showed the cultural zeitgeist by stating that "Yes, everything is for sale." Today, this includes college education.

Every year since 1983, U.S. News & World Report publishes "America's Best Colleges," showing merely the tip of iceberg on how much education has been commercialized as the weekly treats higher education as a thing to be measured and weighed. In those hands, college education becomes a commodity like cars or computers that have been rated by consumer magazines so that students and parents can buy accordingly.

In choosing a college, many students and their parents are swayed by the rankings without questioning the methodology behind the report. Here are several questionable formulas in their methodology.


The report assumes that the quality of education can be quantified in numbers. But, how do you translate the quality of discussions between professors and students into numbers?


They use the weighted formulas such as freshmen in top 10 percent of high school class, alumni giving rate (5 percent) and peer assessment score (20 percent). Do all high schools have their class ranking system? Do all students care about the alumni-giving rate? Do all so-called "top academics peers" really know other institutions inside and out well enough to evaluate their quality?


What's the difference between the schools ranked No. 1 and No. 10? Not much in the statistical sense from the report. However, by listing the ranks arbitrarily in hierarchical order, the report creates an illusion of a huge gap to the uninformed readers.


What about such invaluable criteria as access to faculty, social climate, financial resources, quality of academic resources (library, labs and computers), housing and food service quality, sports program, job placement, advance studies in graduate and professional schools, and fostering of students' lifelong intellectual and psychological development?

To acknowledge the shortcoming of the rankings, therefore, the news magazine needs to put a warning sign just like the surgeon general's caveat for cigarettes: "It has been determined that reading these rankings may cause quick and uninformed choices concerning the colleges you think are right for you. It contains misleading data which may not be helpful in identifying the real quality and character of a college in which you are interested."

Just as people still smoke by their choice in spite of the warning label, the report will shine through and be meritorious for some people who choose to believe it. It is the perfect fodder for the pliable with herd instincts who are obsessed with status and prestige, and for those who need a therapeutic session that soothes their egos.

The ranking report indeed is a sad commentary on our society, in which many are infatuated with lists and rankings. It shows we care too much about what is outside and too little about what is inside. Hence, we need to rethink about the real purpose of college education. Students and their parents shouldn't be swayed by the ephemeral rankings but rather listen to what John Dewey said: "Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself."

So, do you want to measure your life according to the indecent proposal filled with spurious formulas provided by the weekly?

Pastor Chang HJ replied

제 생각은 ‘대학교육’에 대한 환상은 이미 깨어진지 오래라는 것입니다. 그 말은 이제 더 이상 대학은 ‘상아탑’으로서의 기능을 갖지 못한다는 것이며 오직 ‘기술교육’의 장소일 뿐이라는 것입니다. 그러므로 보다 비싼 값을 낸 학교가 보다 좋은 기술을 가르치고 보다 좋은 취업의 길을 열어 주는 것이 당연한 수요 공급의 원리라고 생각합니다.

마치 빵을 만들기 위해 밀가루를 얼마나 넣어야하고 계란과 버터의 비율이 얼마이며 오븐의 온도를 얼마에 맞추어야 하는가 하는 것을 배우는 것이나 많은 열매를 맺게 하기 위해 가지치기를 하는 시기와 사용하는 비료와 약치기를 하는 방법을 배우는 것과 다를 것이 없다고 생각 합니다.

이는 어떻게 배심원들의 마음을 움직여 재판에서 이기는가를 배우는 것이나, 어떻게 멈추어 버린 심장을 다시 뛰게 하는가 또는 어떻게 학생들에게 플라톤과 모택동을 이해 시키는 가 하는 방법을 배우는 것과 비교 해 볼 때 이미 대학은 꿈에 그리는 ‘교육’의 장이 아니라 삶의 기술과 방법을 가르치는 곳일 뿐이라는 것입니다.

‘교육이 곧 삶’이라는 말은 교육자들의 자기 과대 평가일 뿐 과연 진정으로 누가 누구를 참 ‘교육’ 시킬 수 있겠습니까?

오늘의 대학 교육은 그저 상업화된 삶의 기술을 가르치는 곳이라 생각 합니다. 마치 어떤 이는 새를 잡기위해 돌을 던지고 그런가 하면 어떤 이는 고무줄이 달린 새총을 사용하고 그보다 더 많은 것을 투자 한 이는 엽총을 사용하는 것 정도의 차이 뿐이라고 생각 합니다.

‘진정한 교육’, ‘삶으로서의 교육’ 그것은 학교에서 가르치는 것이 아니라 세상에서 자신이 자신에게 할 수 있는 것 뿐이라고 생각 합니다.

해서 저는 교육의 상업화에 별 염려하지 않습니다. 물론 기대하지도 않지만 그보다도 하나님은 사람에게 스스로 자신을 ‘교육’시킬 수있는 능력을 주셨다고 믿기 때문입니다.


Yes, Everything is for Sale”
September 2, 2006

Frankly speaking, I was initially amazed, secondly dismayed, and lastly disheartened by your remark on the “commercialization of education” that you are less concerned and worried about the our college education system being run commercialized like the free market system of the supply and demand principle, and you would like to leave the matter in the invisible hand of God.

For the worse proposition, you’d like to take the commercialized education for granted a fait accompli, as you get more in return if you pay or invest more, and you disparaged educator’s buzzword, “education is not preparation for life; education is life itself”, as a tall catchphrase, adding that “a real life” begins at the society where we are becoming the self-made man.

It is true, I admit, that we live in a society that fathoms life in terms of numbers, like polls, statistics, ranks, percentage, dollars, Dow john’s averages, etc., and our education institution manufactures years after years a massive number of robotic technocrats who value a thing only in terms of numbers not in terms of humanity.

When you wander along the bustling street of the Fifth Avenue in the New York City, you’d find that a majority of pedestrians, drivers, deliverymen, and messenger boys on a bike, talks incessantly on a cellular phone with someone invisible on the other end of line…they are inattentive to or not interacting with their physical proximity.

Among the whole enchilada of diverse groups, you don’t have difficulty finding a gaggle of school age youngsters attached to iPod, CD cassettes, Cell-phones, or other gadgets in their own world…It’s a universe of “my space” where gadgets that are made to enhance greater communication only serve to separate us from humanity.

It is no wonder why we do not care about Others, those not in “my space”…we could not fathom how someone lives with one dollar a day at the opposite side of the “my space”, because we live in the world where one dollar does not bring much or many things to us.
As long as they do not infringe on “my space”, they are irrelevant and not being counted as numbers.

When we reflect on the purpose of education, one may say that it trains youngster’s mind in the facts, rules, formulas, numbers, and precepts in curriculum.
Other may say that it stretches the mind of students giving them skills to inquire and discuss ideas and beliefs that they can participate with their neighbors.
The bottom line is how we can balance above-mentioned reflections in its implementation…

And I find that we tilted our system too much toward the former case that weighs more on numbers and formulas: and the latter case is more harder to be implemented, because it is a process, not a formula that can be compressed into a book or reflected with numbers.

In which term do you wish your sons and daughters after the school year being portrayed by your neighbors in the community?
A robotic technocrat with a prestigious diploma who lives only in his space? Or a man of intelligence whose ideas and beliefs encompass for the betterment in the entire world of humanity?

Probably, I gather that you appear to reflect the money-grubbing characteristics on behalf of the ugly Korean immigrant community, in which a majority wishes to see their kids to be a dumb family doctor, an ambulance-chasing lawyer, an ever-squabbling stock, insurance, and mortgage broker, a spurious financier, an egotistic and Hispanic-bashing “deli-CEO”, a swaggering and unconscionable Church elder, etc., whose training had more to do with numbers and less to do with humanities.

Inshallah!!