For background on this collaborative chart and the over 70 years of work experience behind it, click here.

Examining Higher Education in Context – Presenters Elizabeth McLane and C.J. Bibus

The chart shows 4 of the 7 systems. The explanation of the callout numbers (such as �) are below the chart.

With color coding marked row by row to help you avoid “‘similarity matching,’[A] that is, a tendency to respond to similarities more than to differences.
For the larger chart which shows the color coding for all 7 systems, click here.

	Customers (Users, Clients, Stakeholders) and Issues	Attorney in Private Practice	…	Prod. Dev-Custom		Corporate Training	Higher Education
					Software
	1. Customer as user?	Varied clients			User/operator	Employee	Student
�	a. Commitment by the user?	a. Almost always			a. Almost always	a. Almost always	a. Varies
	b. Preparation of the user?	b. Occasionally			b. Almost always	b. Almost always	b. Varies
	c. User as part of product?	c. Always			c. Almost always	c. Almost always	c. Almost always
	2. Customer as who pays?	Client			Company	Corporation	Student, parents
	3. Customer who may help to pay the bill?	Taxpayers if type of case/relatives			Taxpayers if gov. contract	Rarely	Almost always taxpayers
	4. Customer as creator of the product/service	Rarely			Programmers- patents[B]	In-house or vendor	Almost always faculty[C]
‚	5. Customer as the field of knowledge behind the product/service?	For attorneys, the law—our first allegiance			Rarely	Rarely	For professors, almost always their disciplines
	6. Customer as the regulator (such as a certifier, accreditor, or standards organization)?	Texas Bar Association			Technical or industry standards	Never	Accreditors; some regulators/industry standards as well
	7. Customer as the region?
‚	a. Need for qualified workers?	a. Occasionally			a. Never	a. Never	a. Often^1 to Always^2
	b. Need for good jobs?	b. Occasionally			b. Never	b. Never	b. Often^1 to Always^2
	c. Need for safe communities?	c. Occasionally			c. Never	c. Never	c. Often^1 to Always^2
	d. Need for a solid tax base?	d. Occasionally			d. Never	d. Never	d. Always
‚	8. Customer as the nation’s economic competitiveness?	Occasionally			Never	Never	All customers above
‚	9. Customer as the nation’s decision-making in a republic?	Occasionally			Never	Never	All customers above
	10.The product/service is
	a. For short-term use?	a. Always			a. Rarely	a. Almost always	a. Occasionally
	b. For long-term use?	b. Always			b. Almost always	b. Rarely	b. Almost always
	c. On-going but changing?	c. On-going only			c. Almost always	c. Rarely	c. Almost always
ƒ	11. Measurement of the user as part of the product and of the product/service is?	Transparent, and it has public records			Intransparent, but it has metrics and an outage system	Intransparent, but the company got what it wanted	Intransparent and in transition
„	12. Rewards of success go to?	Both client and attorney			Client, but varies with the founder	Corporation	All customers above
	13. Risks from failure go to?	Attorney: 20% Client: 80%			Depends on contract, liability	Corporation	All customers above[D]

¹ With colleges and universities often serving this purpose ² With community colleges focusing on teaching, rather than research, and serving this purpose from their beginning

Explanations for the callouts:

�	How do we increase the commitment by the user?
‚	What do we want to “retain”? Why aren’t we measuring what we want to retain, not just the initial paying customer’s response?
ƒ	Software measures input to its process. Why not the stages of education?
„	How do we protect ALL customers? How do you keep rewards and risks together? (When one customer gets the reward and transfers the risk to the other customers, systems break.)

Cautions: Systems get what they measure. Systems get what they reward even when they don’t want it.

Definitions

Term	Use of the Term in The Logic of Failure
Intransparency	Planners and decision makers … must make decisions affecting a system whose momentary features they can see only partially, unclearly, in blurred and shadowy outline¾or possibly not at all. (p. 40)
Retain	How can we avoid this pitfall? Simply by keeping in mind, whenever we undertake the solution of a problem, the features of the current situation that we want to retain. Simple? Apparently not. As Brecht observed late in life, advocates of progress often have too low an opinion of what already exists. When we set out to change things, in other words, we do not pay enough attention to what we want to leave unchanged. But an analysis of what should be retained: § gives us our only opportunity to make implicit goals explicit § and to prevent the solution of each problem from generating new problems like heads of the Hydra.

For information or problems with this link, please email using the email address below.

WCJC Department:	History – Dr. Bibus
Contact Information:	281.239.1577 or bibusc@wcjc.edu
Last Updated:	2012 – 06/04
WCJC Home:	http://www.wcjc.edu/

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[A] The term “similarity matching” is James T. Reason’s. The quotation itself is from page 95 of Dietrich Dörner’s The Logic of Failure: Why Things Go Wrong and What We Can Do to Make Them Right.

[B] With some programmers and engineers retaining patents

[C] With faculty in universities expected to add to the discipline’s body of knowledge and faculty in community colleges expected to maintain knowledge in the discipline and to find or create ways to help diverse learners of their disciplines

[D] Although all customers above take the risk from a failed system of education, the 1st customers to feel the result of a failed system of K-12 education may be:

- Business seeking qualified workers

- Higher Education trying to fulfill its mission with students who are unprepared