A Sense of Scale

The ups and downs of scaling in schooling with Gardner Campbell

We have all heard discussions of “scaling up” faculty and college programs and applications. However these are normally examinations of how one can get essentially the most bang for the buck by way of the widespread replication of high-profile programs.

Right here, Gardner Campbell, an affiliate professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth College explores the notion of scale in schooling — scaling up and/or cutting down — and shares a few of his personal expertise “taking part in with scale” in an English course at VCU.

Mary Grush: What’s scale within the context of schooling? What are among the keys to understanding it?

Gardner Campbell: Usually, scaling and sustainability are the 2 sister “S” phrases that get tossed round when curriculum and different education schemes are mentioned.

If a program is taken into account sustainable, which means you’ve gotten the assets to run it; you’ve gotten sufficient college to employees the courses for the foreseeable enrollment demand; if it is a course required for the most important you’ll be able to supply it typically sufficient for a cohort to have the ability to take it; and so forth. Definitely, sustainability is necessary — however so are pilot applications and experiments!

Scaling, in contrast, is a query not solely of assets but additionally of mission and priorities. So I’ve all the time been struck by the best way discussions about scaling habitually veer towards how one can replicate regardless of the expertise or program or course is for as many college students as attainable and at as low a value to the establishment as attainable — normally calculated by way of college labor. In different phrases, the query of scaling comes up within the context of mass manufacturing, which inevitably entails standardization and one thing like an meeting line.

The query of scaling comes up within the context of mass manufacturing, which inevitably entails standardization and one thing like an meeting line.

That has all the time appeared to me to be a one-way understanding of scaling that has some actually extreme unintended penalties. One is that you simply start to take a look at each concept about studying, each design of each schooling program solely by way of minimizing labor price and maximizing revenue by large-scale replication involving fewer college whereas conserving the schooling pricing roughly on the identical degree. Why? As a result of in any other case, universities do not make the cash on these applications they need to make.

After I obtained into senior management — this was within the mid-2000s, working by way of roughly the mid-teens — I observed I used to be listening to a whole lot of speak about how universities are companies. Definitely, it is true. To be sustainable, universities want to have the ability to meet their budgets, have the cash they should maintain the lights on and the bodily plant in good restore, pay personnel… all the sensible issues of enterprise.

Nonetheless, stating that “universities are companies,” coupled with the time period “scaling” in its present, commonplace utilization, appears to depart us with a really flatly outlined assertion.

Sure, universities can’t run at a deficit. They should earn cash to stay open. However a second’s reflection will recall to mind many alternative sorts of companies — public libraries, mortuaries, veterinarians, church buildings. These establishments all have monetary wants, however they’re all very completely different in mission and social/cultural operate. A nonprofit company goes to have a really completely different method to price range, fundraising, and serving its mission than a Wall Road brokerage agency. And but, the phrases we use appear to get narrowed; rendered unidimensional.

Consequently, scaling, as a subject of dialog, is nearly all the time about scaling up. And the scaling up we speak about has, simply as I’ve mentioned, to do with presenting the academic expertise to as many college students as attainable at as low a value to the establishment as attainable — whereas, notably, normally not passing on any of these financial savings to the coed, as a result of in any other case the college will not be going to make the cash it needs to make.