This is brillant and here's the link, but I'm also going to re-post the entire blog post here because it's so good.

What if private companies were run like public schools? Posted by Mr. Franco on October 14, 2011

I asked myself this question a while ago, and here are a few thoughts I found worth mentioning…

What if companies ran more like public schools, with teachers as managers and students as employees?

-Every company in America would be forced to employ everyone in the immediate area who is between the ages of 18 and 65.

-No interviews would be allowed, and all employees must be accepted, regardless of qualifications, willingness, or ability to do the assigned job.

-All employees must be held to – AND MEET – the same standards for job performance and competence. Any office that fails to reach this standard loses corporate funding and may fire all managers (while moving all employees to another office). In addition, this job performance standard would be increased every year until ALL employees are performing at 100% of the government-mandated “standard.”

-A company’s manager would oversee 6 or 7 shifts of about 30 in excess of 35 employees, each for an hour a day (the shift number and length may differ slightly among offices). After each shift, all employees would move on to completely different – and generally unrelated – job functions.

-All employees would be promoted to a more difficult set of job functions every year (or two), regardless of past performance or readiness.

-Family members of the employee would be allowed – and many times encouraged – to come to the office and tell managers how to better do their jobs, while simultaneously claiming that the managers’ evaluations of the employee’s job performance is incorrect.

-No employee could be fired, even in light of poor work performance, absenteeism, insubordination, theft of company property, or physical violence toward coworkers or managers.

-Instead of being fired, if an employee’s behavior is deemed inappropriate, the supervisor of the office may give that employee up to 10 days’ worth of vacation. During the employee’s vacation, all managers who oversee the employee must put together all missed work in advance (after all, that under-performing, insubordinate, violent worker still needs to reach the same performance and competency standard as everyone else).

-The government would regulate not only the rules of every company, but also the products being produced, how the products are marketed, how the products are packaged, and how many of each product must be produced (and to what quality) in order for the company to stay in business – all without knowing what products the company even manufactures.

Anyone else have anything to add?

---

So, like I wrote, I think there's a lot to think about here. We in colleges and universities have been isolated somewhat from these issues and difficulties considering we have admission standards and all, but this is definitely changing in higher education too. There's a bigger and bigger push to accommodate (right or wrong) students who are not prepared to be in college. Professors are under many of the same pressures that K-12 teachers face (though definitely not at the same intense level!) And we do have some consequences that are more profound - mainly in the wallet - but that increases the belief among students that we are somehow beholden to their tuition dollars (we are) and are here to tell them what's on the test and then pass them. How can we create transformative educational moments where students move from external motivators to internal motivators?