An Open Letter to All UF Students

If you're anything like me, you may have changed your major at one point during your college career. I have seldom met a fellow student who graduated with the same major in which they registered for classes as a freshman.

My own journey through the university took me from Philosophy to Journalism to Telecommunications to Film Studies to Economics (liberal arts) to Economics (business) to Information Systems & Operations Management to where I am today: stuck at an obvious divergence of paths.

Being stuck at this fork in the road has caused me to reflect upon the path I have taken through the University of Florida up to this point. I thought back to previous times when I was faced with similar decisions. At this I came up with two questions that I wish somebody had asked me at each decisive juncture in the past. I would now like to share with you these questions and attempt to answer them both for you and for myself.

1. What do you plan to do with this information?

When I changed my major, my motivations were usually unclear to even myself, and if anybody asked my reasons for changing, the answer was probably unconvincing. When you change your major here, after you run around the various administration buildings and get the requisite signatures and file the paperwork, nobody says anything to you afterwards. This was a big event in your life! This is serious! You made a decision that could affect the future of your entire professional career! Nothing but awkward silence.

I wish that the advising office of the college that had just recieved me as a student had sent me a welcome email. The email would look something like this:

Welcome to the College of XXX,

We are happy to have you as a student, and we hope to make 
your stay here an enlightening one.

We would like to ask you a quick question:

1. What do you know about your new major?
  
  If you answered, "not much, I just chose this because 
  it sounded cool and my mom told me that she read 
  somewhere that if you graduate with this major, you can 
  make a ton of money right out of college," then we 
  encourage you to follow the links below that will tell 
  you more about your new major and the types of careers 
  you can have. The advising office hours are X-X and you 
  are always welcome to drop by. Below you will also find 
  a list of students who you can contact to ask questions 
  about this major.

For example, I switched from the college of Journalism and Communications (a very well-organized college), into the college of Liberal Arts & Sciences (not so well-organized) as an economics major.

The first question (that nobody asked): why did I do this? The answer: I had just taken Principles of Microeconomics with Dr. Rush and the subject seemed to align with my way of thinking.

The second question (that my mother asked): Why are you not switching into the Business College? The answer: somebody told me this was much easier.

And it was in a sense "easier." When I looked at the critical tracking for this new path, it showed that I could graduate a whole year early!

Much later I learned that the only valid reason to specialize in economics as a liberal arts major is so that you can also study mathematics and maybe statistics and eventually get your PhD in Economics.

But i learned that much too late. At this point in time, I had absolutely no idea about what I would do once I graduated with this degree. And you should know that this fact is of no consequence to the college's administrators. The goal of the administrator is to maximize the throughput of the students for which he or she is responsible, which brings me to my second question.

2. What will this cost?

This question is possibly the hardest question for most college students today to answer correctly. If the question was "what will this cost you? it would be much easier for most students to answer, and they would most likely say "nothing."

Usually changing majors was accompanied by dropping a class I was currently taking that was not required by my future major. I was fortunate enough to recieve a 100% bright futures scholarship. If you had similar fortune during any semester prior to this one, then you would not have incurred a cost to take or drop a course, and no immediate cost would be incurred for a change of majors. Even if you did not have a full scholarship and were recieving interest-free student loans, the immediate cost to you of these decisions would likely seem to be nil.

Now, if you asked the question "what will this decision cost?" to a senior business student, he might hopefully have a more detailed answer for you. He might say:

Well, you have to measure the cost of the dropped course and all the courses that have already been taken which are now considered unneccessary or not critical to the student's track. You also have to measure the amount of living expenses that will be incurred due to the student's increased tenure at the university. Finally, you have to calculate the opportunity cost of staying in school for one or two more years instead of entering the workforce.

The first component of this equation is usually costless to the student, but not to the state. The second component could seem costless to the student if his living expenses are heavily subsidized by either parents or loans (the cost of which are deferred until the future). The third consideration could benefit the student if he will be better off upon graduation because of the switch, but all too often, the decision is made in order to ease the student's workload until graduation.

Now, I would like to draw some conclusions from my personal history.

First, there is a SEVERE lack of true advising available to students. I think that ultimately, it is the student's responsibility to seek out his own advising from professors and older students, but the advising personnel fail to mention this.

Second, there is a SEVERE lack of incentives for a student to research and find out what he ultimately wants to study so that he may focus his energy on learning material that will be both engaging and useful. In other words, the student has no incentive to minimize his costs and maximize his benefits.

Third, the student is not the customer of the university. If the student was really the customer, then the university would have no reason to pressure the student towards graduation as long as they were receiving the required tuition in full. For the University of Florida, the state is the customer at large, and the state is running out of scholarship money.

As a result, the state has issued a clear directive to the University administration: produce results as quickly and efficiently as possible. This means increase the graduation rate (or decrease the dropout rate), and decrease the average time to graduation. 

The response of the Warrington College of Business Administration to this directive has been to tweak the undergraduate curriculum.

This year, the college increased the principles of Microeconomics and Macroeconomics from three credits to four. This has two effects: increase tuition payments from students throughout the university and decrease the number of total classes needed to graduate. For example, if 1200 students are enrolled in each of these classes during one semester, and if each of these students was a Florida resident, then this would be about a $317,000 influx per semester (although the real number is higher because of out-of-state tuition). It would also result in 2400 credits or roughly 800 fewer classes that UF students would need to graduate. 

The next proposed change to the curriculum is to replace Managerial Economics with International Business in the core business curriculum. Every one of my fellow students who have taken Managerial Economics will tell you that it is the only class that requires you to critically think.

It teaches you how to efficiently manage a business, something that no other class in the core curriculum does. 

It is one of only two core classes that you cannot pass simply by reading notes. 

And the university is getting rid of it.

Why? Those who take responsibility for this decision will tell you that this change is to align our curriculum with those of universities in our peer group and to conform to accreditation standards. 

The only reason I can see for this change is that the college wants to maximize the throughput of its students. If a class is challenging, then why is our answer to replace it with something easier?

Perhaps we are measuring the success of our school by the wrong metrics. Perhaps the right metrics don't even exist. 

How can we fix the problem of bad incentives?

You will have to read my next blog post to find out.