Dear Editor:
David Wescott's article "Kentucky's tragic sinkhole: Low expectations" (Business Lexington, April 18, 2008) blasted the Kentucky legislature for not giving more to public universities and similarly criticized university presidents for being content with what they received. I finished one of my degrees at the University of Kentucky, was a visiting research professor/scholar there, and my wife is still an outstanding professor at UK. So, the topic of education is close to my heart, and I'd like to add a couple of thoughts.
First, a small correction: Mr. Wescott wrote that in the U.S. News rankings UK has "at least 55 public universities ahead of it." Actually, the Kentucky Kernel - UK student newspaper - reported last August that UK fell from No. 54 to No. 61 among public universities on that ranking. Overall, in the last six years UK dropped at least ten spots in these most established of national rankings, and it is puzzling that, amid so much cry over higher ed in the state, so few know it.
Still fewer know that even in prosperous years, UK's much-embellished "momentum" in national rankings has been trending downward, not upward. Clearly this is not due to a shortage of funds: after all, there are lesser-funded universities that trend better than ours. Something else is in play: perhaps the low morale that is palpable within UK's command-and-control system, which reminds me of the "kiss-up, kick-down" way of Soviet government bureaucracies. The low morale depresses research and teaching creativity and also leads to misallocation of already available resources. One nationally prominent UK professor who specializes in higher education blamed UK administration for this state of affairs, quipping to me: "They (the administrators) wouldn't know what 'excellence' was if they stared at it." I find it hard to disagree.
Second, educational establishments are to education like grand concert halls are to music: useful but not crucial.
From my perspective, Kentucky is sinking billions into new buildings, ever-multiplying executives, tenured mediocrity and "pro-education" PR faster than it grasps what education really is, how it can help and how it can be achieved cheaper and quicker.
So many people in the state - including very smart ones - confuse education with production of diplomas. Somehow they miss that education is a greater capability of mind while a diploma is merely a piece of paper. I have three university degrees but, because of his inquisitive mind, my degreeless father - a decorated white-collar crime detective and, in his retirement, a wildly successful commercial artist - was every bit as educated as I am.
Alas, decades of feeding the insatiable educational bureaucracies haven't produced for Kentucky what our state actually needs. And, to my mind, all it needs is a highly entrepreneurial economy driven by a highly enterprising population that, because of its immediate entrepreneurial needs, has a burning desire to learn every day of their lives, not just when tied to classroom desks.
Since, in their present form, most educational establishments in effect strip students of their concurrent entrepreneurial inklings, our attempt to bankrupt the state while feeding them seems counterproductive.
And, mind you, teaching entrepreneurship to young and old alike is infinitely cheaper at work and in a communal, hands-on setting rather than in college. Professor Muhammad Yunus received his 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for proving exactly that. What he did in turning seven million destitute Bangladeshi women into entrepreneurs is surely more achievable in Kentucky than hoping that we can buy ourselves a "Top 20" research institution that will miraculously lift the entire state from its sinkhole.
Those millions of unlikely Bangladeshi entrepreneurs, instead of "being lifted" by their poor state, now lift it themselves. What could be better for Kentucky?