Technical Overview

What's Good for Business & Higher

Education is Good for America

There exists a symbiotic relationship between the two sectors. Indeed, our Center for Business & Industry at Northampton provides deliverables to “business & industry” to such an extent that it is part of our name. Yet both sectors have qualities unique unto themselves, or do they? See if you agree with these observations:

Organizations in both sectors need to survive and grow by serving their customers, e.g., students, employers or stockholders and consumers. Colleges are generally regarded as having greater sustainability, as institutions. Businesses have higher risk due to rapid environmental changes and market forces, where they risk bankruptcy. The Steel and WorldCom are examples. During my job-seeking NCC interview, I offered one of the reasons for seeking an education position was that two of the last three plants where I worked in industry were closed due to mergers and acquisitions. So what happens two months after I begin here? Antioch College goes belly up. I checked a couple of Antioch blogs and the reasons given ranged from, “ Yes, it's sad, but it's not surprising. Just a bunch of leftover hippies who could never admit that the 60s were over” to “ The faculty has repeatedly blamed the board for this demise for not obtaining more endowments.” Regardless, more than a few top management coasted into oblivion just as their business counterparts at The Steel did. Both business and educational sectors must first manage for survival; both adaptability and growth are needed to survive.

Higher Ed does take a longer, more generous view of the results, i.e., the fruits of its efforts. More patient and deliberate, colleges and universities make changes and improvements with more solid conviction. We should be patient. We are enabling the shaping of lives, philosophies and careers. Business managers' long view, as documented in a couple of studies, is two years or less. Warren Buffett is an exception and maybe there is life lesson in this dichotomy: The odds favor a long view of your goals and results whether you are a Buffett-quality manager or not.

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Business satisfies consumer needs for a fee, sometimes through taxpayer incentives, to provide economic reward to its owners. Both strive for excellence by providing goods and services to their customers. Colleges provide mainly students (“goods” of the highest value) with direct education (services). Business provides goods and outsourcing and consulting (services) that are economically valuable. Overall though, Higher Ed views its mission as providing educational services for fees (from tuition, donations, taxes), with the intention to develop individuals for knowledge, for economic gain, for personal satisfaction and general enlightenment. This, I believe, is as it should be. Students are educators' primary customers and they choose their institutions and courses of study according to typical buying behavior.

Speaking of tax incentives, Pennsylvania seems to regard floor level manufacturing employment as more beneficial, while accordingly limiting most training assistance to this segment of the labor force. Even my friends in equity management acknowledge that prosperity, including their own, requires someone making something. Nevertheless, it is critical that middle management, which has been decimated by downsizing, be trained to be extremely efficient and technically competitive. This uncertainty begs for objective cost/benefit analysis on which workforce segments and training programs will provide the most bang for the buck.

The technology arm of Center for Business and Industry is focused on educating and training work forces to adapt and grow progressive workplaces with state-of-the-art workforces. Many of the skills CBI teaches are portable, allowing employees to migrate to growth companies and for those companies to tap into an educated workforce, enabling a win-win for both. Both corporate and education sectors have much more in common than perceived and much of that common ground is for the common good of our society.

Let's hear from you. Just email lthielmann@northampton.edu . Thanks.

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