Economics for Academics?

Since my last post ended on the idea of dedication to work, I've been thinking about that idea that Daniel Pink brought up about taking money off the table and whether that would apply to the University system as well. Say we took the same approach and made education much more accessible financially. Does the science not show that productivity would be elevated? Or, is the education system the one system that doesn't fit the equation? Is it only with "job-related" work, not academic study? Is there some way that the business model that Atlassian, the software company Mr. Pink mentioned could be retrofitted to the University system? If we took tuition costs off the table would students who otherwise would not have been able to go to university perhaps produce innovative research that could improve the university system or society? And for students who supplement themselves with part time jobs, were they do stop working to pay for school and focus more on their studies, would they produce a higher quality of work? Or would we simply devote more time to Facebook and Twitter?

The optimist in me wants to say that we would be more productive, that we would produce writing that would make our universities proud, perhaps even bring acclaim to our schools. How many times have we seen calls for conference papers that appeal to us, but aren't possible because we have to pick up an extra shift at Second Cup in order to make rent? Atlassian gave their employees twenty four hours of autonomy with the goal of producing something innovative. What if we entered into university without with the mindset that the purpose of secondary education is to give us somewhere to hide away before we get our first adult job and instead see it as a time frame in which we produce something useful for society? As Mr. Pink says, university no longer guarantees us a job at the end of our degrees. What if university was treated like a job? Yes, we write theses and exams at the end of our four years but what if, instead, we had proposal presentations instead? At the end of our degrees we had possible projects to offer that would benefit your community? Then we would have something to show potential employers in our fields, something that depicted our interests and innovative capabilities? It wouldn't guarantee a job but it might be useful in procuring one.

However, I don't know how our fees and such would be paid for if it weren't for tuition and there are too many unanswerable variables for me to really figure it out effectively. It probably wouldn't work, but the optimist in me wishes it would.