College’s physical plant condition can reveal a lot

One of the concerns atop the national consciousness these days is the rising cost of higher education. I do not intend to analyze most of the costs contributing to these rising costs. In fact, I will not mention most of them. Many of those I won’t mention suffer from snotty insider arguments and petty disputes over the proper direction of education, and while they are worth fighting over, they are not worth boring you with them today.

However, one of the costs of doing business these days centers on constructing and maintaining buildings, sidewalks, roads, and so on. Universities have a lot of these. This is where I say some awfully nice things about my former employer, the University of Southern Indiana (USI). My friends will wonder about me, concerned I might need to tweak my medication. I have plenty of beefs with USI, but it gives me a peculiar pleasure to compliment the university where it richly deserves it.

And that is how it handles its buildings, grounds, and pretty much anything inert and responding to gravity. As a university, USI cropped up in an unlikely place in Indiana, and thereafter its cheer existence irritated other state universities. So, in its defense, the university must consistently present itself as one of the best buys in higher education. USI also must impress stingy legislators as the best place to invest taxpayer dollars if they want voters to believe they are fiscally responsible. These are the same legislators, of course, who stumble over each other bequeathing millions to Indiana and Purdue universities.

 

USI designed new buildings as the best possible blend of good looks, efficient usage of space, and low maintenance. Professors helped determine the need and design of classrooms. When a new building opens, things work. Ceiling mounted projectors operate. Screens descend quietly. Light switches dim. Toilets flush. Thermostats work. Internet flows. Doors fit. If something failed to work, someone fixed it. Its entry to the flow of campus activity is nearly seamless. Even better, you can walk through the building 10 years later and still marvel at it.

The same attention to detail rules outside. If a sidewalk cracks, workmen replace a section. Door jammed or bent? It will not suffer long. Streets and parking lots get new pavement or sealant as needed. Security lights never seem to fail. Trees – the university, unlike too many places in the state, actually likes trees – get trimmed regularly and replaced if needed.

Overall, USI spent money on its physical plant as though it may never get another dime. We could only wish more public institutions approached spending in a similar manner.

While I saw most of this over the years, my students began to see it when we visited other universities. For example, as we stumbled along a sidewalk nearly destroyed by heaving tree roots, students began to wonder out loud how Western Kentucky University could brag. We had just left an assembly hall the university was damned proud of, though it was five years old. On the hall’s front floor were two dusty large speakers. They did not work. They had yet to be mounted on the wall and connected to wires poking grotesquely two feet into the room. I wonder if they still adorn the hall’s floor. The students wanted to “write this up” for our student newspaper, but I suggested kindness. WKU might not host the regional Society of Professional Journalists conference again if we offend them.

One more thing helps USI as it would any regional college. I was helping erect the outfield fence at a girls’ softball field a couple miles outside Evansville. I asked the other guy why it had been so difficult to schedule our work. Well, he’s an electrician, he reminded me, and his company was wiring the new Liberal Arts Center. He said they were taking considerable pride in their work because USI was our university, and they wanted the work to be the absolute best they could do. I had to smile.

The main point can get easily lost. Some colleges and universities spend wisely on their physical plants while others act as though everything is temporary. Taxpayers seeking a fiscally healthy institution for their children should examine parking lot care and the hallway floors in classroom buildings. An institution ignoring upkeep might use a similar approach for faculty recruitment and development.

Gadgets spying on you – is it benign? An invasion?

I am learning – with more irritation than surprise – that corporate America is keeping track of my life and yours, too, chiefly for the purpose of lifting money from my wallet.

A few months ago, for example, my daughter and ex were driving to Michigan from Kentucky, and for reasons I now forget, they had to leave late. In a peculiar moment of cooperation, I got on the computer and found the address, phone number, and rates of a Red Roof Inn about two-thirds in this direction. I sent this to my daughter in a text, offering to make a reservation.

My reward? I endured a month of web ads all devoted to Red Roof Inn. They appeared top right on many sites I frequent, such as Yahoo and Intellicast. They disappeared, a bit to my surprise, after I ordered a cordless drill from Harbor Freight Tools. I then suffered a couple weeks of advertisements for the very same product I ordered, which seems like idiocy on their part. I already had the damn drill. How many am I likely to buy?

The whole idea that my Internet usage triggered an annoying commotion of ads, however, bothered my sense of privacy. It still does, though I know the notion of privacy today is as outmoded as eight-track tapes. The aggravation with linking me to various products eventually morphs into something akin to apprehension when you come to understand that, given enough broad information, someone could put together an interesting profile. Add some clever and insightful work – read this “work” as software – and corporate America can generate something better than a sketch.

This is nothing new. Guesswork does not initiate those store-based coupons your grocery provides at checkout. The store’s computer keeps track of what you buy with your credit or debit card. The store might know your shopping habits better than you do. If you regularly buy cans of dog food, for instance, you might get a coupon for $2 off a specific brand of dry dog food. Enjoy donuts but only buy two? The store makes more money if it provides a $1 coupon for a dozen from the grocery’s bakery. This is not guesswork. It is judicious marketing expanding on the already existing thread of purchasing.

While it is nothing new, it is growing. Today we learned the smartphone you carry around records everything you type into the keyboard and the time, duration, and location of every phone call you make and receive. It sends the information nowhere, they say. Sure, the gadget’s makers say this information makes the phones work better and the system smarter because it can anticipate what you do and save time. They probably mean that. For the most part, these companies cannot use this information well enough yet to profit by it on a mass scale.

But that is now. What about the future? I am not talking about 20 years; I am talking about a year or two. All this pent up information in smart phones combined and mixed with all that pent up information in your laptop and web browser providers soon will be a minable commodity. You can bet your Tea Bag membership card someone has already figured out how to excavate that digital ore and fashion useful marketing tools – again, to rescue money from your wallet.

The problems are these: Today you have no choice in the matter. You cannot tell your phone to lose its memory. The digital tools available to most of us do not control what your Internet browser and site visits can tell potential marketers. Although much of what you do today cannot be held in strict privacy, you have every right to limit these encroachments on your life and maintain some sense of privacy. Corporate America, as it has for well over 100 years when the “mass market” first emerged, will tell us that its marketing procedures are benign and merely an innocent part of doing business, if not also a Constitutional right of free speech. These nice, sweet people – church deacons in their communities – just want to send us ads that interest us. Sure they do.

It is one thing for me to voluntarily leave clues about my buying preferences or to directly provide my inclinations. It is another for corporate America to use incidental or accidental information.

The last thing marketers want is to sell you something based chiefly on the product’s merits. That’s the old way of selling, and it is so yesterday. They would rather cheat, in a sense, and sell junk to you based on your inclinations, not the product’s value. That’s so tomorrow.