<p>the president of drexel runs the university like a business. its kinda refreshing to see someone be honest about how their university is a business and not some sort of charitable learning community. </p>
<p>PHILADELPHIA – At a Drexel University campus forum last May, professors complained about funding cuts at the library. Rather than apologize for the belt-tightening, President Constantine Papadakis told them he’d prefer to have an all-digital library with no books at all.</p>
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<p>Does Drexel intentionally accept a huge freshman class (and greedily take in their money) knowing that 43% will not return (the next year or soon after)? </p>
<p>That’s a big number of decent, bright kids, to carry a drop-out failure -disappointment baggage through their lives. They’re not just paying custormers - It’s a big dis-service to some decent young people - to lose so many.</p>
<p>Must be a couple thousand. Can’t damage that many bright people without it eventually coming back to bite you, Taki.</p>
<p>The 57% majority probably felt supported at Drexel. Not me.</p>
<p>From the other side of market street, it seems as though taki has done an admirable job. When he got there in the mid 90s, Drexel was discussed by Penn trustees as a potential takeover target for campus expansion in the then-likely event of Drexel insolvency.</p>
<p>Now it has money not only to survive, but grow and invest in campus beautification projects that definitely make university city a nicer place to live, work, and study.</p>
<p>Judith Rodin did the same stuff at Penn in the 1990s: crushing unions, building new retail space, outsourcing dining to aramark…running it like a business. And with good results.</p>
<p>All colleges are businesses. They have always been run like businesses.</p>
<p>Sounds like Drexel is being run like a business that is in trouble and trying to turn things around.</p>
<p>A successful college creates an environment that is fertile for learning and growing. In a successful college, students should experience an environment that is lush and rich. Students should not feel the pinch of business decisions. The business side of the administration should be as invisible as possible.</p>
<p>A lot of second-tier tech schools have low retention and graduation rates because there are just so many smart math students to go around. Their business is similar to life insurance companies that utilize actuarial science to predict mortality (attrition) while still making a profit.</p>
<p>Working in the medical field, I tend to view things from the medical model.</p>
<p>No one wants to lose a patient, a life, or a student, but a certain small percentage of failure is inevitable. My distain arises when the tolerance level for failure & loss is manipulated as ‘one piece’ of the business model.</p>
<p>I would be uncomfortable if a surgeon did surgery on high-risk patients, if there is a high percentage loss and failure, knowing he will get paid for each procedure. It may be good way to get the hospital out of the red, but the losses are not ink on an budget.</p>
<p>My point is I worry that educational institutions may disregard any obligation towards student retention, if/when it’s cheaper to recruit or create and market new programs and expensive to invest in improving the success rate of their ‘paying customers’. </p>
<p>Students, similar to patients aren’t expendable - they don’t instantly recover. Their ‘purchasing power’ is damaged by the failure of the product/service they’ve invested in – there might even be some moral issues if the routine tolerance of a high degree of loss is built into the business plan.</p>