Limited Marginal Utility and Other Handy Phrases

 

Ahhh, an extra hour...

It is a handy phrase to know if you are asked about why you didn’t complete everything on your to-do list: Limited Marginal Utility. 

• It means: “It wasn’t high enough on my priority list to override other more urgent matters.”
• Or in other words: Any benefit I would receive out of completing it was not worth the time it would cost me.
• It sounds a bit more professional than, “I won’t do endless paperwork/filing/data entry/meetings, when I could be spending critical time with my students, solving problems/answering questions/giving feedback/providing resources.”
• It is definitely more professional than “Bite me.”

I’m sure instructors deal with daily struggle of where to put your valuable time, just as advisors do.  It can be a constant battle between what is easier to grade/complete and what conforms to content/learning objectives/requirements on the one hand – which may be at odds with what will give the most meaningful experience to students in both f2f and online courses/appointments, and address all students’ learning styles, time constraints, digital literacy, motivation level...the list goes on.  Universal Instructional Design and Best Practices address some of this competition between our multiple goals in any course, assignment, assessment…but sometimes those best practice standards seem unattainable, especially given the time constraints we all face.

As if that weren’t a high enough mountain to climb, in this era of data-driven decisions, governmental mandates, the changing view of the purpose of higher education (and lack of funding), and shrinking enrollments – the general pressure on community colleges will assuredly trickle down to both the instructional and support services level in many ways.  Ideally, already embedded in our good teaching/advising, we are also helping students to be successful to boost our numbers of completers.  It’s easy to get lost in the swirling acronyms and trendy re-packaged best practices that really get down to doing a good job, for the benefit of all.

It helps me sometimes to get back to basics – how do I best reach the students that DO have the motivation to succeed?  That’s a question that has to be revisited periodically, because the students and the technology change, as do our goals.  Yes, it would be nice if we could reach even those that are not participating in course materials/assignments, not answering our e-mails or coming to class/appointments/signing on – but I guess that is a numbers game.  Where should you put your effort?  In the 80% who show up, do the work and are engaged, or in the 20% that aren’t?  Granted, numbers vary (widely) – but hidden in there is a fundamental question that community colleges have grappled with for years: Is it our job to make sure that everyone can get a college certificate or degree?  Is that even the student’s goal?  Those answers also vary widely.  

Some starry-eyed folks (like myself) have a fundamental belief that community colleges were created to level the playing field, to transform the social fabric of our country by providing quality education at affordable costs, and to uplift whole families out of poverty by giving students the skills and credentials to obtain highly paid jobs.  Many now believe that (1) higher education is outdated and over-rated, (2) not everyone deserves a chance at/or can benefit from higher education, or (3) it’s not worth the cost.  Does higher education have Limited Marginal Utility for today’s population?