Part VI of the Wonkblog Series is on the Bowen effect, which I have indicated rings true to my experience:
Bowen summarized the theory, also known as the “revenue theory of cost,” in five rules:
1. “The dominant goals of institutions are educational excellence, prestige, and influence.”
2. “There is virtually no limit to the amount of money an institution could spend for seemingly fruitful educational ends.”
3. “Each institution raises all the money it can.”
4. “Each institution spends all it raises.”
5. “The cumulative effect of the preceding four laws is toward ever increasing expenditure.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/02/the-tuition-is-too-damn-high-part-vi-why-theres-no-reason-for-big-universities-to-rein-in-spending/
Recently been thinking in terms of “big changes” still to come re how the economy is structured, how we define “jobs” and salary”, and the role of social structures in these future changes. Social structures enabled and enhanced and redone through social media…
Clearly two of the largest pieces of the economy that are ripe for restructuring are education and healthcare. It’s possible that the idea of family, the functioning of a “family unit”, will become central to these changes. A group of people that share costs, distribute work amongst the group, distribute capability amongst the group, and distribute “output” amongst the group, might be the best way to “do” education and healthcare.
“The family” has been an economic unit at certain times in the past…the extended family living together including young children and grandparents…and maybe the odd uncle or aunt… There’s certain efficiencies and capabilities of such a “unit” that might fit well to support new ways of doing education and healthcare.
The kicker is, as with all things in the digital world, there’s more connections and relationships involved than we can quite grasp by using old forms and terms. In a distributed world, a family might, or might not, be determined by “blood relations” living in the same dwelling.
It could potentially be a more “ad hoc” and “contingent” set of relationships using social media etc, that functions very much like a physically in one place, and blood related group. The point being to think of jobs, employment, education, healthcare…as being something done not as an individual alone…and not as a “nuclear family”…but in some efficacious group structure.
We need to think anew about all of this… and not see the future through the eyes of forms from the last 100 years…