Over at the College Affordability and Productivity blog Richard Vedder writes about the “open source” university.  Read the whole thing.  He also gets into the Baylor “gaming” of the U.S. News ratings.  I am more forgiving because gaming is the unfortunate and predictable result of the game college rating has become.

The game itself must end.  I would go along with Vedder’s idea of letting employers judge the quality of education, although it would be anathema to the academy.  Since we are in the “icky” profession of workforce or technical education (’vocational’ having become a bad word), we spend a great deal of our time trying to meet the needs of employers.  As a result, we do meet their expectations and consistently receive high marks from them.  Interestingly, as we strive to meet the needs of industry, our graduates seem to attract more interest from universities seeking to articulate them into four-year degrees.  Perhaps our interests do not diverge as much as some believe.

An open-source university is an interesting idea.  I hear more employers than ever say, “I don’t care what degree they have - I only care about what they can do.”  Their practice and profession do not always match, though, and HR departments can be frightfully conservative regarding paper qualifications.  If the change does come about, it will be driven by sheer desperation for capable employees.  Some companies have already reached that stage.