Covering the business of education

By Richard Lee Colvin

At most news organizations it is rare for business reporters to look for stories in local schools and colleges or for education reporters to consider the growing presence of for-profit companies or business leaders in classrooms.

But these days that rigid separation between the coverage of education and business makes less sense.

Some business journalists know this well. David Wessel, (right) the Wall Street Journal economics correspondent, often writes about education, from preschool to college, in his Capital column. Tim Simmons at The (Raleigh) News and Observer recently started a new beat on the business of higher education. Joel Dresang, a business reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, co-authored a series on the long-term effects of early investments in pre-kindergarten.

The best recent example of how business and education overlap is the still-unfolding story of the private, for profit companies that loan money for college. That story could have been told earlier had business reporters scrutinized the proliferation of such for-profit companies and their practices. Or, had education writers looked into the source of rising debt levels and college costs.

For-profit companies run technical institutes and colleges; offer publicly funded tutoring; manage charter schools financed by public dollars; create tests and other assessments, some using computers; and offer a wide array of digital products to help schools respond to the pressure of the No Child Left Behind act. Whether national or local, such companies often receive little scrutiny as to the effectiveness of their products.

Business leaders have long been critical of U.S. education for failing to send them well-trained workers. But those concerns have been fueled recently by localized shortages in skilled workers, the technical demands of today’s jobs, the relative fall in high school and college completion rates, demographic trends, and worries about the U.S. lead in advanced technologies.

So, what are business leaders doing? A sampling would include: former IBM Chairman Louis V. Gerstner, who headed a commission on teaching that in 2005 called for “merit pay” and $30 billion to raise salaries; Edward B. Rust, the State Farm chief, is a longtime backer of higher academic standards and has been involved in shaping the reauthorization of the federal No Child Left Behind act; Craig Barrett, the former chairman and CEO of Intel, has said "the biggest ticking time bomb in the U.S. is the sorry state of our education system."

The Business Roundtable is campaigning to double the number of bachelor’s degrees in math, science, technology and engineering by 2013. Several dozen technology, medical, and manufacturers are participating. (See details at http://www.tap2015.org/about/business_comm.html) The Committee for Economic Development, based in New York, is pushing various education initiatives including greater public investment in early education. (Web site at www.ced.org has numerous reports.)

That’s an area where business leaders have been particularly active of late. PNC Bank of Pittsburgh is putting up $100 million over 10 years for its Grow up Great preschool program and financing research on the issue.

Other business leaders who are on the more public preschool bandwagon include hedge fund managers, the Federal Reserve Bank, Tulsa oil man George Kaiser, New York hedge fund manager Robert Dugger, New York real estate developer Daniel Rose and others. The reason, Rose says simply, is that, as Nobel Prize winning economist James Heckman has found, early investments in preschool more than pay for themselves.

Locally, chambers of commerce and business groups back local school board candidates or superintendents. This often is controversial, as educators lash back at what they say are efforts to look at schools like factories.

Another area worth examination is community colleges. Many colleges seek to increase revenues by designing customized training courses for local industries—for a fee.

But that training may only be of value to the students if they stick with the company that paid for the courses. The flip side is that jobs for skilled workers such as nurses, chemical process engineers, computer technicians, and even crane operators often go unfilled because of a lack of training.

Business reporters may find good stories about opportunities lost by seeking out local personnel offices and asking about their work force needs. The only question, then, would be which section would run the story—metro or business. The answer could well be that it shows up on the front page.

Colvin is director of the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media, Teachers College, Columbia University and a former education writer for the Los Angeles Times.

Posted Sept. 18, 2007