If Princeton Operated Like Health Care
In his NYT blog column today, Economics Professor Uwe E. Reinhardt described what would happen if Princeton were run more like the current health care system. Reinhardt said that unlike the piece rate payment model of health care, which pays physicians for each unit of service provide, universities operate with prepaid packaged deals, where one annual tuition fee covers “all the pedagogic services going into the education of the student.” Here are some of the changes Princeton would undergo were it to operate less like prepaid H.M.O. plans and more like piece rate compensation plans of the our health care system:
- Rented Office Space: Unlike our current inegalitarian system of delegating office space—which sticks assistant professors with offices in the bowels of McCosh, while proving tenured professors with pristine, wood-engraved fireplaces and windows overlooking the chapel—this system would allow all professors an equal opportunity for renting space from the university. They would use their spaces as the “their own profit centers,” finding ways to charge students for visits.
- Senior Thesis Consultation Fee: That’s right. Under this new system, all those advisor meetings you’ve been delaying would cost between $150-300 (fee varies by student). Those office-hour visits you use to score points with preceptors would take on a different tone, as each visit sends home a bill to mom and dad.
- Grammar Rehabilitation. Reinhardt writes, “The English department would operate the for-profit University Rehab Inc. for remedial English, to purge students of their untoward use of words such as “like,” “you know” and “Oh my God!” – albeit it not of the equally untoward “as it were.
If only we could have a rehabilitation center that administers an electric shock every time someone in precept says, “I’m just playing devil’s advocate, but…”And here's the video that partially inspired Reinhardt's column:image source: http://thevinylvillage.wordpress.com/2009/03/