In the name of efficiency ....

So, when we went to the conference in Phoenix, one of the panelists at a session that I went to was from the Dakotas. He talked about how there is state-wide coordination in order to promote efficient use of tax dollars.

I am a big fan of efficiency, and responsible use of tax dollars. But, there are limits to applying the concept of efficiency when it comes to knowledge and learning. While I have no empirical data to back me up, my hypothesis is that efficiency is not THE bottom line, and should not be THE bottom line.

(An aside: from an evolutionary perspective, our own individual bodies are far from any efficient design; instead, we are built with redundancies. While one kidney will work just fine, we have two, just in case! For all I know, we might be more efficient with three fingers and an opposable thumb, rather than the four-plus-thumb combination, and we would be using base-8 and not a base-10 system. All right, too much of a digression!)

Why all this you ask? Fair enough. Read for yourself this excerpt from Tom Brokaw's op-ed piece in the NY Times:

In my native Great Plains, North and South Dakota have a combined population of just under 1.5 million people, and in each state the rural areas are being depopulated at a rapid rate. Yet between them the two Dakotas support 17 colleges and universities. They are a carry-over from the early 20th century when travel was more difficult and farm families wanted their children close by during harvest season.

I know this is heresy, but couldn’t the two states get a bigger bang for their higher education buck if they consolidated their smaller institutions into, say, the Dakota Territory College System, with satellite campuses but a common administration and shared standards?

Brokaw's point in that op-ed is that "it’s time to reorganize our state and local government structures for today’s realities rather than cling to the sensibilities of the 20th century. If we demand this from General Motors, we should ask no less of ourselves."

I disagree with that, but let me restrict myself to this education argument of his. The connection to online? Hey, it will not take a rocket scientist, or a journalist, much time to figure out that they don't need even satellite campuses--instead, every home with a computer and high-speed connection becomes a personalized campus with its own cafeteria and student center! Ultimate decentralization of higher education. And then somebody else comes along and proposes that we should outsource it all to the University of Phoenix, or worse--to the University of Madras, from where I earned my undergraduate degree :-)

God is dead!