COST BENEFIT TO A $300,000 HYPE EDUCATION -- A PROFESSOR RESPONDS!

COST BENEFIT TO A $300,000 HYPE VOCATIONAL EDUCATION – A PROFESSOR RESPONDS!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© August 23, 2010

REFERENCE:

A professor in management and organizational development (OD) contacted me in 1991. He wanted me to come to his university to address a graduate seminar of his students who were reading my book, WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS.

To his credit, he paid for my travel and lodging expenses out of his own pocket as there was no budget for my appearance. That was nearly twenty years ago.

The professor is a dedicated educator. He has consulted all over the world. Somehow, he has failed to become jaded by what I have described in my writings – as has William L. Livingston IV – as the dysfunctional nature of university education.

Dr. Deresiewicz article (“The Disadvantages of an Elite Education"), which I quote generously, recognizes how education has been reduced to vocational training. He says, “We have forgotten the reason universities exist. They exist to make minds, not careers.” Over the years, how often I have beaten that beast.

There is no degree that I abhor more than the MBA precisely because it is vocational training, and not liberating training of the mind. My professor teaches MBA students.

How far do we have to sink in the swamp of despair before this gets through? How soon before our fall from grace matches that of Great Britain?

Great Britain still has Oxford and Cambridge. Adam Sisman has an interesting take on this in his new biography of “Hugh Trevor-Roper” (2010), “Perhaps he (Trevor-Roper) should never have gone to Oxford. Perhaps it maimed him.”

My wonder is how many young people are being maimed today by elitist education.

My correspondent makes mention that a Harvard professor used the central theme (“six silent killers”) of two of my books in his Montreal seminar. It would have been nice if he had mentioned these books, too, or best case, had used them! But of course I am a pedestrian not a HYPE scholar. He can cherry pick my ideas without credit with impunity. I’d like to see him do that to a HYPE colleague.

If you sense that I am angry, you are wrong. I am disappointed; disappointed that some of the things Livingston and I write about are neither acknowledged nor used in academia, or certainly to any considerable extent.

To my correspondent’s credit, he has used one of my books, and freely acknowledged my authorship. He is an exception to the rule as well as an exceptional man. He is a nice person and I have never been so inclined.

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A PROFESSOR WRITES:

Jim-

I was just thinking of you while up in Montreal at a conference.

One of our speakers was Michael Beer at Harvard. He is a good man who once almost hired me at Corning Glass. His speech was loaded with references to the "six silent killers" working in organization.

Though this is the title of one of your books, I doubt if you have copyrighted the term. I was curious if you had ever worked with him or know his work.

Take care and I appreciate the note and image of PhD’s as the pinprick that most of us are. My hope is that we help to have a small impact to larger human consciousness.

I think I do this best with my better students who share a joy of learning.

A new book that you may be attracted to is "5 Roads to the Future" by Starobin. He discusses the famous short paper put together by Immanuel Kant in 1783. It speaks to why the age of enlightenment might be the opening salvo for humans to finally grow up and take full responsibility for the worlds we have created.

This reference to Kant excited me. If you want to see some options for how we might create our global future, this is worth reading. The author, like you, seems most dedicated to continual learning. When I told him by email that I was hoping to use his book in my "futures class,” he immediately responded. We share many of the same ideas about the world of tomorrow.

You may not recall that I teach a special course here. Here is a syllabus I have used in the past that I thought you might enjoy in terms of how I frame a class focused on both self and strategic thinking for managers.

My students are graduating seniors in our management program and this term I have almost 60 of then in two different classes. They each will read and take essay exams on four assigned books. The class is taught in teams so that they also must work together.

In addition this last summer I added the following to my list of expectations for how I can help them over their full career. Here is my opening contract with my students (“Key Concepts for How This Course Will Be Taught”).

We are still doing creative things here. In two years, I am taking a pension from the state and going back to exploring much of the world I love. Keep up the flow of good ideas and an occasional well-deserved critique.

K

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DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

K,

It has been a while since I’ve heard from you. Several like you haven’t commented on my stuff forever. A person once told me – it must be forty years ago now – when I was wondering why I was not hearing from my former colleagues. “Don’t you get it?” he said. “They don’t need you any more.”

He went on to say I wear people out. I guess I do. So, I must congratulate you for your perseverance.

Academia will be losing a good soul when they lose you, but I sense you will still stay connected.

You must know by now that I have my problem with globalization. I have with any idea that has the ring of a mantra. I read Tom Friedman (“The Earth is Flat”), who has ideas, but ideas that are like litmus tests. I often disagree with him but he makes me think.

I can say the same for Kant. I’ve written on Kant elsewhere, and not exactly in complementary terms. What I like best about Kant is his contrariness. My sense is that the Enlightenment and rationalism were necessary on the way to the irrationality of the nineteenth and twentieth century.

The whole war machine of the twentieth century was a product of the science revolution that jumped the tracks into irrationality. But I tarry.

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My BB says that if someone says it is black I will say it is white, and if they say the same thing is white I will say it is black. She tolerates my glutinous frustration and me. I hope I am subtler than that.

It is clear from Deresiewicz’s article that I am an intellectual, a free wheeling idea guy without borders. Jorge once said that of me. I don’t think of myself that way, only the idea aspect. I have the luxury of being a peripatetic philosopher below the radar. That is not by choice but by experience.

You are right. I am interested in young people finding their passions. That will be increasingly difficult as all passion is spent on nonsense today. No one in charge can see beyond the end of his or her advantage.

Take leaderless leadership. It is evident in Pakistan with 20 million people barely surviving because of the flooded plains. It is evident in the senseless war in Afghanistan. It is also evident in academia.

Nothing can liberate the spirit more from its prison than education, yet in that sense we have not yet left the nineteenth century.

You see my problem? It will not be answered by globalization, but by people like you in the trenches. By leaders who have a gut understanding of what goes on in those trenches. That is why everyone is a leader or no one is.
If I had my way, I would erase CEOs and managers, priests, professors and other authority figures and start all over.

Be always well,

Jim

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