Four Competing Definitions Of Good Education – And The Dilemma Of Value

By David Rapp, University of Mannheim, Class of 2021, Working Student, SAP SE

As we marked the International Day of Education in a year that has disrupted education like no other, I considered the value of education as we once defined it.

Higher Education in particular, has been left exposed, for if the education can be delivered online, and tutorials given over Zoom, then how can the high fees remain justified?

As a current student in higher education, I consider the thought that across higher education, there are numerous factors that drive the definition of what constitutes “good” education. Students weigh different factors than their parents, while scholars and the university’s operations staff have still different versions of success. But what is truly good education? Is there even a way to objectively and thoroughly answer this question?

How one reviews these questions depends heavily on their personal definition of value. Every individual will rank their preferences in a way that is rational in their own eyes. However, we can identify different groups, whose rankings all merit relative reviews.

Compared to commercial businesses, where organizations have unified focus on bringing forward their products or services to serve the end customers, universities may struggle to balance and unite all four competing definitions of success:

  1. Students strive for personal development
  2. Parents focus on affording tuition and returns
  3. Scholars would like to focus on research without caring about teaching and operations
  4. Operations staff would like to minimize costs

Of course, students try to get into the best universities. Academic rankings provide an indicator for good education that is mainly based on an institution’s academic reputation and/or citations per faculty. For students, good education does not only mean great research, but includes a superb environment, a beautiful campus, lovely people, delicious restaurants, and a vibrant nightlife.

Students need room to develop themselves beyond academic achievements. For most students, a campus life is the first time they are living away from their parents; cooking, cleaning, and doing their laundry on their own.

The comprehensive advanced education is not just about building the foundation for an adult life, it is also about celebrating youth, building lifelong friendships, and making new experiences.

What Students Need

Students certainly need world class teachers, but they also need a world class environment to become the best they can be. This cannot just be reduced to off-campus activities.

Students want to be engaged in their universities; they want to be part of student initiatives. Students want to listen to lectures about life; not dissertations limited to just business, engineering, or politics.

Students want to broaden their horizons to be as good as possible as a human, innovator, and leader. They want to reach beyond current borders and historical societal norms; Students want to reach for the Stars.

But as everyone knows, space travel is expensive. Only a privileged few can travel to the International Space Station, financed by NASA.

Parents, a student´s NASA, often need to pay for their children’s journey to become an astronaut, space engineer, or data scientist. While students like the idea of ​​going to the highest ranked universities, often being a highway to a successful career in the future, the decision path is most likely costly and is rather exclusively funded by only privileged families.

Good education for parents may simply mean an education that is affordable, an education that provides anyone with a fair opportunity to become an astronaut (of education).

The role of academic scholars and researchers is to provide students with the knowledge needed for success. The faculty provides a toolbox for identifying problems, creating a research project, and finally finding a solution that improves understanding, and hopefully a new perspective singularly and mutually.

To become the best scientist means acquiring as much detailed knowledge as possible in a specific area, or for a specific topic. Students have to read scientific papers, contribute to lab experiments, and attend many varied classes. For scientists, good education must be highly scientific and deliver a maximum of knowledge to students. Only the best prepared students can address the complex scientific equations and hypotheses.

All these factors come together under the administration of the institution staff who maintain control over all business activities including finance, enrollment, and recruiting. Managing all those workstreams and functions to ensure student success is costly and often time consuming.

While universities serve to provide and create knowledge, they rely on operations striving for minimum financial expenses and high efficiency to maximize investment in research, science and education.

Four Competing Arguments of What Good Education Could – or Should Be – Unified Under The Institution

Fortunately, or unfortunately, within higher education and research institutions, all four opinions may be weighed up as equally reasonable and true:

  • Students need to develop themselves personally, learn from the best instructors to be as knowledgeable as possible, and get to know diverse, open-minded people to become the thought leaders of our future.
  • Researchers are right in pursuing the goal of educating the best possible next generation, that can one day invent, found a new company, or even develop a life-saving vaccine that can potentially help fight a pandemic.
  • Parents need to be able to afford the education of their children. The more children are in the equal position to obtain great knowledge and great skills, the better our whole future words will be.
  • Faculty and staff must be as efficient as possible to protect funding for their primary real purpose: Providing the best possible knowledge – engaging students, and supporting scientific advancement.

When reviewing the value equation in today’s dynamic environment, all of the above need to be seen in a completely different context; educational value has shifted with the current pandemic.

Students can barely live the life they had originally imagined for themselves. They either have to study, eat, and sleep in the same small room, or live together with their parents back home. Both options limit overall personal development. There are extremely limited opportunities to meet new people, explore new environments, or celebrate student life.

But not only is life around the academic environment different, goals for both the professors and students are harder to achieve. Large lectures might be recorded and work remotely, but classes in smaller groups without active discussion or collaboration cannot replace in-person interaction.

Interpersonal interaction helps drive opinions, shapes ideas, molds individual personalities, and hopefully sharpens arguments and drives new scientific perspectives.

When personal development and academic progress are lacking, it is totally understandable that students and their parents question the value of “COVID-education.”

Good Education is the Education That Actually Happens

Higher education is often an enormous financial burden that families may/may no longer be willing to support. But investing in education is not only paying current classes, but also investing in the future of our careers and the future of our world. Higher education in any form is still the beginning of a lifelong journey of learning.

Imagine if students and their parents no longer chose to pay for higher education? Institutions in turn will struggle to invest in research, and scientific progress will suffer.

Translated, there is a very dynamic equation, leading to a singular means to define the value of (good) education. Good education drives advancements.

Good education develops ideas on how to restore society to normality.

Good education provides our future leaders with the knowledge to overcome future challenges.

All four conflicting groups have to work together to achieve the only thing that matters to education right now: Providing opportunity. Because good education is the education that actually happens.

Learn more about how SAP is helping Higher Education institutions prepare for a digital future.

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