A Trojan course
Beware of Dukes bearing gifts
JMU wants to do Harrisonburg a favor.
Specifically, the university wants to provide enhanced educational opportunities to 150 Harrisonburg City Public School students.
The goal is “To become a national model for providing students with authentic and deeper learning experiences through design-based problem solving and a focus on pre-professional career pathways.”
Well.
The goals are laudable, the jargon not. Design-based problem-solving is similar to Gen. Creighton Adams’ quip, “When eating an elephant, take one bite at a time.”
A JMU administrator once restated that as “We’re going to bite off the elephant one piece at a time.” Maybe his absorption of the quote was the result of an inauthentic or shallow learning experience.
The cost for the city schools for JMU’s “national model” would be $1.7 million. The cost to JMU would be $1.5 million. Rockingham County would get the same deal as the city.
That’s a cost per student of $11,333, meals and transportation not included.
That same amount would buy each student 63 credit hours at Blue Ridge Community College. Including fees. That’s roughly an associate degree.
JMU wants to begin a program which, like many of its efforts, the school claims will be ground-breaking. That’s like Garrison Keillor’s claim that all the children in Lake Woebegone are above average. Maybe they are.
JMU wants the localities to pay for the program. After years of jacking up student fees to build sports facilities and parking fees to build decks, James Madison University now reaches out to the surrounding community to fund its experiments.
The cost to the localities could pay for the associate degree cited, a valuable and useful educational credential. But that’s only one way $1.7 million could be better spent.
It could also fund teacher raises, construction and renovation needs, or any of the myriad necessities that have gone unmet in local school districts based on outdated and shortsighted state formulas.
Some portion of the university's share of the costs would be "in-kind" costs. That's another way of saying they’re spending the money anyway but want credit regardless.
Harrisonburg may be increasingly a company town, but I hope the local school systems aren't ready to load their 16 tons yet. (With apologies to Tennessee Ernie Ford.)
If JMU gets the $1.7 million somewhere, the school can always use the money to buy a gigantic wooden horse with a purple saddle and gold bridle.
Beware of Dukes bearing gifts.
A version of this appeared in the Harrisonburg Daily News-Record.