VCU Inc.: A desperate call to higher education reform

Robert Showah

Opinion Editor

One of the best skills learned in college is the ability to balance academics, work, extracurriculars, internships, athletics, finances and relationships. As students are attempting to strike this balance, VCU does not seem to be doing much to make us a priority. Changing this requires a desperate and bold call to reform higher education and how colleges administer their services.
Yes, they are services. As much as VCU and all public universities masquerade as a institution of the commonwealth, they are de facto, for-profit, private corporations. Some, but not all, institutions that have profit as their top priority are vulnerable to become far less efficient.
I will clarify that profit is not the problem. There should be competition between colleges and universities, public and private, as to which can provide the “best education.” However, when efficiency of services and the quality of education does not reflect the value, it is difficult to not have a negative attitude about the university profiting from an inadequate student experience.
When it comes to inefficiency, there are the usual suspects: lack of straight-forwardness, the “run-around,” unexplained and unjustified course requirements and policy changes and the general bureaucratic machine within that employs thousands of people to do the work of hundreds.
There are plenty more problems within this system that have existed for so long that students and families have accepted them as the status quo: rising tuition costs, practical robbery in the textbook industry, the inability to hold even tenured professors accountable and others. All of these problems, however, revolve around one problem I have written about before and will repeat here due to its urgency.
VCU cannot be competitive and deliver a quality education to its students if it continues to annex midtown Richmond while admitting students at a rate that outpaces available resources. We ought not to brag about our size if we cannot maintain it, and we ought not to brag about our admittance rate if our standards equate to mediocrity.
Right now, as someone who is completing their last of three years at VCU, and who has had two siblings attend for a total of 11 years, the university needs to slow down and begin focusing on the customer service aspect of their business.
This means making it easy, accessible and clear for people who are spending, in some cases, their life savings to understand exactly what they are paying for each semester, and particularly why they are being required to take specific courses.
After all, the outcome following four years in college is not tangible, and it is not truly quantitative. This being the case, all people who invest in these institutions should receive the absolute best service, a precedent that should be the cornerstone of reforming public universities.
There are personal, political and financial interests at heart, however. It is difficult enough for state legislators to pass the most pragmatic legislation pertaining to regulating university policy without university presidents accusing them of violating their so-called sovereignty. It will take courage and bold ideas to take Virginia, and eventually the U.S., into a post-bureaucratic higher education system that seeks to truly educate and serve students.
It could be said that if VCU and other colleges alike were truly doing their jobs properly, rising high school seniors would not be so eager to move.