Health of Educational Institutes is a Blind Alley

Possessing Health or not possessing it on the face of it looks to be a reasonably uncomplicated issue. As we scratch the surface – we realize something or someone can be apparently healthy, but it/she/he was a little under the weather not in the distant past. Clearly, the intuitive binary outlook of healthy or not healthy seems inadequate as soon as we get started. Take for example educational institutes. They have been around since man formed groups and communities. Legends relating to some famous universities have lived a few millennia too. But millions have been decimated and millions others have not lived up to their promise. Promise! In terms of what – life, academic achievements, social impact, size, enrichment of the stake-holders etc? The conundrum begins all over once again. No it is not a binary problem, but a multi-dimensional problem. What is acceptable health is a very difficult question? We don’t even know whether it depends upon the temporal context, social context, the stake-holder context, the context of the organizational mandate or we can have a universally acceptable framework. Then we also have the questions of the human analogy of organs, samples, indicators, tests, acceptable ranges etc. They complicate the question further. One can say with a little bit more confidence that the solution or the indicators are likely to have significant bearing on the context – in many cases at least. There are many successful institutes going by the reputation they carry. Some of them produce patents which change the face of the world, others give education that gives jobs, careers and lives to their wards, many other have a long line of aspirants and are financially viable for their promoters. Is the one-dimensional view of popular perception of health adequate. Do we need to examine in sustainability of performance against stated objectives? Again, like in business organizations do we need to weigh the achievements against resources used? Do we also look at social value created or destroyed and weigh it against other visible achievements? Similarly there are expected to many silent institutes creating enormous amount of sustainable social value but are not noticed and hence their models not scaled. This is as much as a social loss, as getting carried away by the hype of brand re-call. What I am trying to arrive at is that, the health of an education institute is a fairly complicated question. First we need to unravel what is health? Define it, identify the continuum or the space or at least define special cases where a continuum or a space can be isolated. Then comes the problem of continued improvement. Along which dimensions, to what extent and how? The reason that this topic has intrigued me is that, I expect many Enron’s, Arthur Andersons, Lehman Brothers in education institutes – who dress well but have cancerous cells within them and threaten go bust without due warning. Governments may not be able to bail out unsuspecting students and parents. True, such anomalies cannot be uncovered by casual analysis of publicly available material but can we identify trends – else we would already be unearthing of many such organizations regularly. A more optimism evoking reason being, stake-holders are always keen to arrest a slide, if they know it in advance. More importantly, they are privy to critical information and can have an honest assessment if they want Thus a holistic assessment of institutes – beyond buildings, placements, infrastructure, alumni – is the need of the hour. The question is not of student performance, research publication, placements and alumni as of now; but the expectations of the same in the future for at least for a reasonable time frame. That takes us back to What constitutes acceptable health? The next in the series – probably will make sense to understand what experts have told about it. Bhubaneshwar April 21, 2012