Business Leaders Integral to Education System
November 18, 2008 by Lela Davidson
Filed under Finance
In this video, top dog Barry Salzberg discusses how the U.S. education system would improve if businesses took a more active role. According to Salzberg:
“Our future will be shaped by the success of our education system. As business leaders, we have an important role to play. More of us should tap our own business resources to the benefit of schools and students. It’s an investment not just in education, but in our own ability to sustain a talented workforce and preserve our competitiveness in the global economy.”
The “Deloitte 2008 Business in Education” survey reveals that educators and executives have very different ideas about how this can happen. It’s interesting to note that the business world seems more eager to have a direct role in shaping curriculum of students than the university professors would have them assume! Salzberg points out the acknowledgment that education would benefit from increased involvement by business is a step in the right direction.
Cheat Notes
If you’d rather skip the video, here are the key points of the survey:
- 71% of respondents believe that businesses should increase involvement in the education system.
- 88% of executives say that the quality of the education system would improve if businesses were more involved, 74% percent of educators agree with the same statement-however, the same exact amount of educators also says that businesses would use their involvement in education for self-serving purposes.
- Interestingly, more business executives (52% ) than educators (45%) say that the independence of our education system would be compromised if business were involved in education.
- Similarly, 61% of executives think there would be less focus on liberal arts and other non-business oriented disciplines if businesses were involved in education, compared to 51% of educators.
- Educators would like businesses to get involved via financial contributions: funding and monetary donations, establishing scholarships, and donating equipment.
- Offering pro-bono services, volunteerism by business executives and volunteerism by other employees, however, are not as highly ranked by educators: 86, 83 and 81 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, these are all fairly highly ranked by business executives, 90, 89 and 86 percent, respectively.
- An overwhelming majority of educators (94%) are very enthusiastic about getting businesses to encourage their employees to get involved in education, and 76% percent of educators say that the best way to encourage employees to get involved is by offering better flexible time-off policies to volunteer.
The results seem a little contrary to me. How about you? The educators seem to want to have their cake and eat it too. It sort of reminds me of the elementary school my kids go to, where teachers have access to vast financial resources and an abundance of volunteer hours – just don’t dare voice an opinion!
What’s your take on the role of business in education?
Wow. I didn’t know there were any schools with “vast financial resources”:)
Education will continue traveling straight down in a hand basket as long as funding is tied to tests and numbers and not to actual learning/thinking.
According to polls, Americans are approximately as likely to believe in flying saucers as in evolution, and when one-fifth of Americans believe that the sun orbits the Earth… and Sarah Palin, who, according to Fox News, didn’t realize that Africa was a continent rather than a country.”
And then, of course, there is the minor problem of parents who complain any time their little darlings have too much homework or doesn’t get the grade to which the parents feel they are entitled.
If you want a real look at what’s happening in schools take a look at CandidProf, who guests on my blog and is an astronomy professor in a state college.
Sorry about the rant, this is a sore subject with me.
The vast resources come from the parents. Demographics + parental peer pressure = lots of money goes to school!
What do you think the role of business ought to be? Will they make things better or worse?
Obviously, it depends on what business wants. Im not against better math and science, but I also know no one in business who is satisfied with written/oral communications skills, so Liberal Arts shouldn’t get stomped.
Business wants employees who can think—creatively, innovatively and critically. You don’t get that by pushing a lot of standardized tests. So I think business might push for real education and for tying funding to something meaningful.
They also have the smarts to figure it out. Educators don’t. No one listens to the teachers in the trenchs—they are the ones who see the results of funding by the numbers. The politicians have proved they can’t solve it.
So we might as well give business a chance, they can’t screw it up worse than it is and they may even fix it—at least some of it.
That said, the parents raising these “special,” entitled kids need to change, too!
BTW, Is your school private?