Service Sector Productivity

Speaking as a community college adjunct professor and as a student, I believe the higher education field has a huge amount of untapped potential for usage of information technology. My best example is a university telecourse in which I am enrolled. One excellent and dedicated professor televises his single classroom section to around 1000 distance-learning students. Not only is the experience easy on my schedule, as I can watch any class session at leisure on my own or through the library, but the teaching assistant fills in the gaps during my scheduled class time and makes my experience nearly the same as that of an in-class student (perhaps better, as they emphasize the 'student perspective.) Furthermore, the course is televised to the public and provides all sorts of "excess value" (for lack of knowledge of the economic term) to anyone who cares to learn the subject on their own. I believe that ultimately this format could spread to a great many academic fields and help the very best teachers communicate with far more students, without the need for one teacher for every one classroomfull. This could greatly improve productivity in a field which I think struggles under its dependence on public funds and high operating costs.

Thanks for reading, and I hope to hear some other interesting perspectives.

When the string quartet cuts a Dolby Digital 5.1 DVD-Audio track, which gets played gazillions of times around the world, why doesn't THAT get counted towards the quartet's productivity?

I was thinking on posting a comment on the Varian article on my Blog on another site. The Productivity gains are the major factor for the loss of Jobs, since before the last Recession. The Jobs are not likely to return very soon, and then only in other economic areas of endeavor. This is a problem in the immediacy, but a long-term benefit.

There is much untapped potential for Productivity gains, but not from information technology. The next big step will be in industrial line supervision, where even Maintenance will be done by machine, guided off Computer screen. This technology will eventually expand to the Services industries. lgl

Wow! I agreee with LGL.

There are untapped productivity gains, and cost reductions that can be made. It would be cheaper and faster for my doctor to email a pharmacy RX than writing it, and having me mail to Medco or driving to CVS. Not a great example, but a convinient one.

Cheers.

Eric has an important point. While it still takes 4 people for a string quartet, it no longer takes 1 string quartet per performance. And the quality of recorded performances keeps increasing.

>>And the quality of recorded performances keeps increasing.

Well, except for the whole MP3 phenomenon. They sound like crap!

To some audio snobs the CD was a step down, acoustically speaking.

DVD Audio is very nice. Way better than a CD.

Organization design can impact productivity as much as technology. I think a major issue in health care is the extremely stratified class system--doctors as demigods and nurses in a very subordinate position, with no one in between. I can't think of any other industry in which such a situation exists; it's like "Blondie" in which Mr Dithers owns the company and Dagwood appears to be some kind of clerk.

Too obvious, why are there lecture courses? Why does my doctor keep hand written notes in a binder that keeps getting lost?