Social Work in the 21st Century: Training Units of Practice for Technique Implementation

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Notes

¹ I want to note that these companies may have been the gun, so to speak, but it was academic institutions that sought the partnerships and designed the relationship parameters, including setting the profit margins, that constituted pulling the trigger. And in the act of pulling the trigger, we, as academic institutions, altered the very definition of education as an entity that exists to serve a larger good and to provide the best possible education to students. As Derek Bok (2003) suggests, “Commercialization threatens this educational principle, because the profit motive shifts the focus from providing the best learning experience that available resources allow toward raising prices and cutting costs as much as possible without losing customers” (p. 108). One critical question for the future is: Can we shift our focus back to educational quality and maintain academic integrity while creating solvent programs in financially stable institutions? Can we incorporate some of the positive student support and recruitment strategies that these companies have provided? This is a matter of swinging pendulums or models that we have yet to develop fully.

² Kevin Carey (2010) in the Chronicle of Higher Education points out that “for-profit higher education is [not] inherently bad. The reputable parts of the industry are at the forefront of much technological and organizational innovation. For-profits exist in large part to fix educational market failures left by traditional institutions, and they profit by serving students that public and private nonprofit institutions too often ignore.” I believe the question that remains is Can we potentially adopt the technological and organizational innovation developed in the for-profit sector and integrate it into what is best about non-mass-produced higher education? Paul LeBlanc’s model has worked, in part, by creating a completely separate college—one from which traditional faculty in the on-campus university have been excluded. In other words, it is “siloed” and reproduces with fidelity 20th century industry. What could happen if the vast expertise in content, pedagogy, and infinite variability in delivery married innovations in organization and technology? I’m not sure we know. But I would certainly love to try.