Efficiency

I’ve had an earworm for several days. I looked it up, thinking that knowing the title would make it go away. I found that it’s from the march, “King Cotton,” by John Philip Sousa. Once upon a time, I played this march. Contrary to my expectations, the earworm did not go away. It strikes me it might have some hidden meaning.

There once was a belief that “King Cotton,” an economy based on cotton exports (built on the backs of enslaved workers), would give the southern states power over other nations who would as a result assist them during the Civil War. Unfortunately, King Cotton did not prevail because the global economy did not cooperate. In the parlance of the corporate world, former trading partners decided to “go another direction.”

Perhaps the powers that be in Washington should take note. US trade is woven into a global tapestry, and we should beware of pulling at its threads. And like the King Cotton assumption, we can’t simply expect other nations to bow down to our economic might, especially when we decide to raise tariffs, alienate allies, and antagonize our neighbors. In this interconnected world, even the mighty USA can’t go it alone.

One of the justifications for our lone wolf behavior, other than the belief that we are so exceptional the rules don’t apply to us, is that we are seeking “efficiency.” Our government “costs too much,” some say. Other nations must “pay their fair share,” and so on. We now have a fourth branch of government charged with improving “government efficiency.” However, we have not yet seen a clear definition of the word, “efficiency,” using any metric other than “cost.”

In the world of higher education, cost is one of four traditional measures of an academic program. The others are quality, demand, and centrality (to the mission of the institution). For example, a religion program might be considered central to a school with a seminary. If a program has high quality, strong demand, and is central to the mission, its cost is much less of a concern than it would be for a program with low quality or low enrollment. Of course there are limits to these metrics, but they illustrate that cost is only one factor. Clearly, it matters how a program is evaluated.

To be sure, universities are eliminating programs with insufficient enrollment or poor job prospects for graduates. And some of these programs have been struggling for years. Beyond these immediate concerns is the long-term problem of how to make college affordable. Let’s face it, we all need to cut unnecessary expenses.

Sometimes a program is worth its cost, though. Sometimes a few lower cost programs will make a higher profile program possible. And sometimes higher cost programs promote the quality of the enterprise. The route to success does not mean cutting programs without stopping to think about how the whole institution might be affected. If cost is the only measure, budget decisions tend to foster mediocrity. There is an old sales proposition: “You get what you pay for.” In other words, quality isn’t cheap.

There was an old pro who offered golf lessons at the club. Outside his office he hung a sign that read, “Six one-hour lessons: $100. One lesson: $1000. If you expect a miracle, you should be prepared to pay for one.” Sometimes we forget that improvement takes time and effort. We become impatient. So, we do things without thinking.

Lately, it seems to me we are focused on “efficiency” in terms of pure cost. We all want to cut “waste, fraud, and abuse.” But what if efficiency in terms of cost is only part of the equation? We also need to ask about the relationship between cost and benefit. We need to ask about the effectiveness of the programs we propose to cut. While all decisions have a budgetary component, perhaps we should try to improve the effectiveness of a program before cutting it. If a program has had poor quality for some time, maybe we should ask why before eliminating it. There are many possibilities. Under resourced? Understaffed? Poorly marketed? Poorly organized? Internal conflicts? Administrative neglect?

“A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ And he answered him, ‘Sir, leave it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’” (Luke 13:6-9)

The vinedresser wanted to provide proper care for a season before making a final decision. It seems to me many areas of our lives are like this. We can’t expect to be effective, much less efficient, if we don’t take proper care of ourselves. Likewise, we can’t expect programs, private or public, to be effective if we deny them the attention they need to bear fruit. In either case, we need to ask the right questions before wielding the axe.