Why are some states making it difficult for adults to finish their college degrees?
Here is yet another article that details the need to help more adults complete a college degree, the importance of having a better educated citizenry, and some of the challenges facing states in promoting this agenda.
However, the situation is complicated by the fact that states, including those seeking to get more adults to graduate, are facing very real budget reductions. It will be doubly challenging to overcome some of the barriers to serving adults if budgets are being reduced. Here is an Inside Higher Ed article that provides an example.
Institutions that serve adults at a distance stand prepared to help in efforts to help adults finish a degree – and can do this without the investment of state resources. However, some states make it difficult, and in some cases impossible, for out-of-state institutions to deliver online higher education degrees to people in their state. Fortunately, Kentucky is an example of a state that has reasonable processes and is open to the approval of online institutions that can demonstrate that they offer high quality education.
It is the hope of the Presidents’ Forum and the institutions involved in Transparency by Design that our commitment to transparency about our learning outcomes and to quality may be used by states to assist in making the approval processes more consistent and reasonable. Then our institutions can more readily help address the growing need to assist the current workforce, working adults to pursue a dream of higher education.
What do you think? Should more states be following Kentucky’s lead? Why are some states reluctant?
Mike
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Grace Hagood Says:
The thing I find perturbing about many states’ reluctance to accept distance education is that many online degrees are offered by regionally accredited institutions. Capella University, for example, is accredited by The Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, the same body that accredits traditional schools such as Oberlin College. Most professional licenses require that students have graduated from a regionally-accredited school, yet degrees from online schools are often viewed as “less valid” than comparable degrees from schools with in-seat delivery.
While states should rightly be wary of the diploma mills that are too often seen advertised online, they should afford regionally-accredited online schools such as Capella the same respect as traditional schools.
February 28th, 2008 at 12:45 pm