College students should have complete freedom to choose their own Essay

College students should have complete freedom to choose their own courses and create their own curriculums - Essay Example (Robertson & Smith, 1999, p.69) As the system functions today, college students are forced to conform to an educational model that was not designed in their interests. In other words, the existing educational system serves to indoctrinate young minds into obedient servants of the established social order. At the top of the social pyramid are the business and political elites, whose interests are reflected in the design of curricula. Hence, though it might lead to radical social upheavals, allowing greater freedom of choice within college campuses is the right way to go. Let us look at the rationale offered by those against freedom of choice in curricula and identify flaws in their arguments. A prominent advocate for less academic freedom was the sociologist Mortimer Adler, who stated that, left to their own choices, some students â€Å"will ‘downgrade’ their own education; therefore, adults should control these crucial choices so that such downgrading does not occur.† (Noddings, 2006, p.285) This fear is overstated, for college authorities can devise ways of ensuring that certain basic standards are met. Moreover, by what criteria are courses judged good and bad? In other words, the notion of ‘downgrading’ is very subjective. As John Dewey noted in his lectures, â€Å"a course in cooking, well planned and well executed, can induce critical thinking, increase cultural literacy, and provide valuable skills - it can be a "good" course. In contrast, a course in algebra may discourage critical thinking, add nothing to cultural literacy, and lead students to despair of acquiring useful skills - it can be a "bad" course.† (Noddings, 2006, p.285) Considering that John Dewey was the most influential educationist of last century, his views have to be heeded to. The essence of Dewey’s argument is that by there is more merit than what is apparent in courses such as

Performance Management at Vitality Health Enterprises, Inc Case Study

Performance Management at Vitality Health Enterprises, Inc - Case Study Example Vitality Health Enterprises, Inc was founded by Hikaru Fred Kikuchi in Ames, Iowa in 1987. Within the first three months, Kikuchi’s achieved sales revenue of more than $15,000 from the business. In late 1989, the firm established its own manufacturing facility in order to minimize the firm’s dependency on Japanese products. By 1991, Vitality’s revenues grew to $3 million per year and the company stopped depending upon Japanese finished-goods suppliers. Over the next few years, Vitality strived to spread its business across United States and Canada and moved its head quarters to Des Moines with intent to take advantages of better expansion opportunities. By 1995, the company gained a strong global presence by launching its products in countries like China, Japan, and Taiwan. In 1997, Vitality increased the size of its business notably with the acquisition of HerbaPure Nutraceuticals, and a decade later the company grew to nearly 7,000 employees. In order to address the stagnation caused by the 2008 global financial crisis and to deal with rising material costs, the Vitality recruited a new CEO, Beth Williams. As part of implementing the new business strategy developed, Williams organized the Performance Management Evaluation Team (PMET) to evaluate whether performance management goals were met. The PMET discovered that the many of the employees had not been satisfied with the current performance management system because it often failed to appreciate top performers adequately. Williams identified that rewarding top performers adequately and retaining them with the company for a long time were essential to accelerate the company growth. She also observed that a well planned restructuring of Vitality’s compensation practices would be inevitable to bring the change identified and to attract new top talent. As a result, Williams implemented the new performance management system in June 2009. To be specific, the problem wi th the firm was that the new performance management system characterized with a forced distribution model of performance rankings, ‘moving from an absolute ranking system to a relative one’ (Bingham & Beer, 2012). The company continued this system for the next two years. James Hoffman, the newly appointed vice president of human resources at Vitality, found that the new performance management system was not really helpful to motivate top performers despite six straight quarters of strong revenue growth. Evidently, the new system also underappreciated the efficiency of top performers and assisted poor performers to survive, because many of the managers had not been effectively abiding by this system. Some shortcomings of the new system also contributed to this problem. Section 2 2. Effectiveness of Vitality’s Performance Management System While analyzing the corporate history of Vitality Health Enterprises, it seems that the firm’s performance management sy stem has not been effective. The firm’s previous performance management system posed numerous problems to its professional staff including scientists, engineers, and product