Whatever it Takes: A better kind of outsourcing

Posted By Damjan DeNoble

I received an article from, Paul Steele, a good friend who has been an Asia based professional educator for seven years, in a variety of environments, both corporate and scholastic.

“One of your recent blogs talked about combining private schools and health care, which from the perspective of a hierarchy of needs makes a ton of sense to me. Most of this article is about alternative forms of education being tried within difficult urban environments, but I though of you because it seems that at least one of these programs indeed does tie itself to health care as part of providing an environment conducive to learning.”

The Wilson Center Quarterly article, which can be found here, describes the stark state of urban school systems in America, and focuses on several non-for profit initiatives aimed at reversing the decline, and that are, so far, showing tremendous results.

If you have any experience in the urban school environment, then you know that everyday is a battle, just look at the picture on the left of a looted public school in Detroit. (My experience comes mostly second hand from a large number of college classmates who joined Teach For America.)

So the paycheck to paycheck reality of successful non-profit initiatives is troubling.  Despite the proven results, the American government is doing little to help, and good, innovative people, are left struggling to fill in gaps that American taxes fail to cover.

“…it’s clear that behind the flattering headlines, KIPP schools and others like them are fragile institutions, built on relentless work and no small amount of luck. Feinberg, Levin, and their colleagues labor more or less 24/7—knocking on doors in search of new students, battling attrition and reluctant school officials, scavenging space, tracking down donors, finding teachers. The pace often seems unsustainable, the schools never far from the edge of collapse.”

As Paul says, a synergistic partnership between health  and education sectors  is pretty high up on the hierarchy of [human society] needs.  With the public education sector in the USA struggling the way it is, the need for private innovation is greater than ever, because non-profit institutions can afford to innovate only so much before economic constraints force them to settle on a model.

Today, businesses in developed countries are moving factory jobs and research facilities for industrial products like rubber and car parts overseas to their less developed neighbors.  This has brought a lot of benefits to consumers, but it has done little for the pillars of society, health and education.  Perhaps it is time for developed  countries to start exporting a different kind of research facility overseas.

The low cost structure in a lot of Asian countries lends itself to developing innovative education and health care models that can then be taken back home and replicated once all of the kinks are worked out.  The benefits for both the developed countries and its developing neighbor would be the same: new and improved systems of health and education.

Further reading:

The most hard hitting commentary I have recently seen on the subject of urban public education is an article, “It Will Rise From the Ashes”, which documents Detroit’s crumbling school infrastructure and is replete with pictures that make you think Detroit’s entire school system was the target of a fire bombing.