Corporate Management Is An Unfit Model for Education

Among all the social forces that are intervening in the development of the education systems is the productive sector of the economy, which has a direct impact on the labor market. However, this sector has failed to forecast the type of jobs and professions that it will need in the medium and long-term (and many times even in the very short-term). Also, a growing influence of the corporate style is becoming an unfit model for education – schools and colleges.

What are the bases of culture and society? What is the cultural and social context of education? How can the social forces that influence teaching and learning be adapted to enhance the educational process? What are the cultural and social foundations of education in America? What are the purposes of education in a global society? What higher education for what type of society? How can we make more efficient our schools and universities? These and many other questions are under debate today and always.

Teachers and other professional educators encounter social/cultural forces as primary influences upon education. The social and cultural factors are not only those influences that emanate from the context in which education takes place, but also those that are inherent to the social process and system called education. To a significant extent, the social/cultural forces that impact education determine the success or failure of educational enterprise for both individuals and groups. Furthermore, their influence is increasing habitual. For example, ethnic, racial, and economic diversity is escalating in schools and colleges throughout the world. The world is becoming interdependent and intercultural.

The influence of this interactive diversity is more and more one of the greatest concerns for administrators and educators. For many, it is the most critical and demanding reality in the classroom, the school, the college and the whole educational system. Among all the social forces that are intervening in the development of the education systems is the productive sector of the economy, which has a direct impact on the labor market. However, this sector has failed to forecast the type of jobs and professions that it will need in the medium and long-term (and many times even in the very short-term). Also, a growing influence of the corporate style is becoming an unfit model for education – schools and colleges. Three main reasons:

1. An important part of the corporate world demonstrated in the 2008 financial crisis how not to run a business enterprise. They are greatly responsible for the collapse of the world economy and now they want to solve educational problems with the same recipes.
2. While the corporate world and educational systems should have some common elements, as innovation and creativity, most corporations are guided by short-term strategies and results. On the other hand, educational systems are part of a long-term process and their strategy is based on sustainable life-long learning and uncertainty. It is a continuous, endless knowledge management process.
3. A major part of the 2008 financial crisis was due to a very deep corporate ethical crisis in terms of the goals and process to achieve personal objectives. The corporation must be rooted in change and innovation with a strong sense of ethics and of citizenship.

But we should not blame the problems facing all levels of education only on social, economical and cultural forces. The educational system should change its own institutional culture. In terms of higher education, a university’s administration system should make significant modifications to its behavior as an organization to be in tune with the demands of an institution that is constantly undergoing change. In all of its functions, university administration should be subject to at least the following criteria: appropriateness, efficiency, effectiveness and opportunity. But above all, education needs to be seen as a continuum that evolves towards a society for learning based on the idea that all members are constantly learning, each being helped by the other.

Today’s education is overly centered on the “teaching person” rather than on the “learning person”. Centering education on the learner modifies the teacher’s role to one, which is going to be demanded by the future: a learner, a facilitator of learning, and a helper to develop a person’s affective domains. More stress should be placed on such domains, which intrinsically relate education to psychology, sociology, anthropology, and philosophy. Human beings should learn tolerance, compassion, self-responsibility, courage, learning to carry out on learning, ethical behavior, and aesthetic sensitivity, among many other affective behaviors that go hand in hand with cognitive needs, uncertainties, domains and complex scenarios. These goals require an education system from early childhood to adult education that transforms their own organization as a result of contrasting organizational and institutional research and not by spasmodic and thalamic initiatives of politicians, corporations or legislators.

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©2021 Miguel Angel Escotet. Based on my previous article on Can we transfer the corporate model in education? Also, it is the first part on this issue and it will be a second part for the beginning of 2022 on ‘Sharing University Governance’. All rights reserved.  Permission to reprint with appropriate citing.