What happens when state universities prefer students from outside the state?
2010 Feb 2
This article in Inside Higher Ed describes how the Colorado State University Board of Governors considered, ever so briefly, privatizing part of the university system to assure survival. The idea of public institutions doing something like this has been around for decades. The idea usually picks up some steam when we are in a fiscal decline and public funds become scarce. In this case, the idea was quickly rejected and described as hypothetical.
I empathize with the blight of the public university. While federal stimulus funds may be saving the day for the 2009-2010 academic year, and maybe even into 2010-2011, the 2011-2012 year seems to portend disaster. These institutions must do something different and, likely, dramatic. Read the rest of this entry »
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State university told it can only offer online degree outside the state
2010 Jan 27
It is hard to believe, but the University of Maryland University College, a premier online university, has been barred by the Maryland Higher Education Commission from offering its online doctoral degree in community college administration because it might duplicate a face-to-face offering by Morgan State College, another state college in Maryland. It is hard to believe because it is based on an outdated geographic approach to oversight of higher education. It is hard to believe because there are adult students in Maryland who cannot attend on-campus at Morgan State, and who will not have access to a Maryland college for this degree. It is hard to believe because there is an impending shortage of community college administrators, according to the article. It is hard to believe because it will be impossible to protect Morgan State from other competitors. Read the rest of this entry »
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A more grounded look at nursing education
2010 Jan 20
This piece on Inside Higher Ed is a response to the proposal to require nurses to have a bachelor’s degree in order to be licenses for practice. This is a more rational approach. It recognizes the realities facing nurses, health care, and the other 85% students. The tone is super, as Beverly Malone uses terms like “opportunities,” “academic and professional progression for all nurses,” and “to propel” practitioners to seek further education. Finally, it urges that we seek new ways, including online programs, to expand the capacity of bachelor’s and master’s degree programs.
Please feel free to share your thoughts and comments.
Mike
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Apparently it is the silly season in nursing education
2010 Jan 12
Inside Higher Ed reports on a new study from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching that calls for the bachelor of science in nursing (BSN) to be required for entry into the field of nursing. The authors of the study are correct in stating that the demands on nurses are increasingly complex. In their report they state that “nurses and nursing students must function within the complicated, and many would say, chaotic and dysfunctional U.S. health care system.”
But what they propose is just plain silly; self-serving but still silly. They describe ongoing nursing shortages, saying that the growing shortages caused “93% of hospital-based registered nurses to report a lack of sufficient time and staff to maintain patient safety, detect complications early, and collaborate with other health care team members.” I am not at all sure how they conclude that this is a problem to be solved by education but the idea of increasing the barriers to practice nursing by requiring a bachelor’s degree seems counter-productive at best. This is further evidence that not only is health care dysfunctional but so are the politics of nursing and nursing licensure.
What really irritates me about this piece is that the authors attack (though they insist that is not really what they are doing) the associate degree in nursing (ADN) and the colleges that offer these programs, many of them community colleges. Patricia Benner, one of the authors, is quoted as saying such a change “would hold community college nursing programs more accountable.” That “the minimum amount of time a student has to spend in these ‘two-year programs’ is actually three years.”
Fortunately, Kim Tinsley of North Arkansas College and a member of the National Organization for Associate Degree Nursing pointed out that “I teach in a rural setting and the main advantage of offering a two-year RN degree is that it puts the nurse graduate to work in a shorter amount of time so they can support their family. They cannot afford four years of BSN classes and not work. The ADN student does sometimes have to take up to four years to complete their degree but it is due to the fact that they are working (sometimes full time) and have a family to support. The average age of our students is 27. The majority of our students are either married with a family or are a single parent. They cannot afford the time nor resources to attend a four-year program.”
Thanks to Ms. Tinsley. What her statement lays out clearly is that this is not just an attack on a type of degree but on the people who most often pursue that degree—the other 85%. The students in the ADN programs are older. Rather than being financially dependent on their parents, they more often have families of their own who depend on them. And, whether a family or not, they are often working.
Let’s be honest here. Schools like those that the authors of this report work at are not willing or able to serve the audiences that attend the ADN programs. The authors say that these BSN schools would need to “increase capacity by approximately 90 percent.” Is that likely to happen during a recession? Absolutely not and it would not happen during the best of economic times. That is because BSN programs at research universities use the undergraduate programs as feeders for their graduate programs. They want traditional students who compete for entry into elite programs. They don’t want to serve the folks in the ADN programs because the students in these programs don’t fit the mold and some, if not many, of these students might require remedial assistance. The fact is that there is a racial and class overlay here that is just below the surface. Community colleges and other ADN providers are serving a far more racially diverse audience than the BSN schools as well as many low-income students.
The authors claim that they are not opposed to the community colleges and their suggested change might lead to better articulation agreements. Yes, when hell freezes over. All we need to do is to look at the current state of such articulation agreements nationally to have one more proof point that schools like the ones the authors are defending remain elitist and are not interested in seriously getting at the fact that it is the diverse and low income students who are earning ADN degrees and becoming registered nurses. These nurses are holding our health care system together and there is no way that a group of BSN nurses admitted under current admissions standards that are intended to limit access will ever replace them.
The truth is that this call is about getting more funding for the BSN programs. Any call for continued elitism and raising barriers to entry in a profession that is suffering serious shortages is just plain silly.
I encourage you to share your thoughts.
Mike
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Attitudes about controlling higher education costs
2010 Jan 7
An Inside Higher Ed article reports on the results of the work of Carol Twigg and the National Center for Academic Transformations after ten years of working with schools to both improve learning and reduce costs. The point of the article is that Ms. Twigg had two purposes for her important and widely renowned work. That is to not only improve learning but to reduce costs while making the improvements. In a nutshell, learning has been improved but, despite initial cost reductions, there has been a failure to continue to pay attention to cost reductions.
The fact that learning has been improved is wonderful. That alone makes this effort worthwhile. But there is no denying that Ms. Twigg is disappointed. She makes that abundantly clear when she says “you’re dealing with a culture that does not care about reducing costs.”
The article cites several schools that just stopped tracking costs. Twigg is quoted again, “if administrators do not continue to be involved and simply let it devolve to a faculty project, most faculty don’t care about costs.” The problem is stated as one where there are disincentives for saving money because the provost merely takes it away.
This is truly scary. There are faculty quoted as saying they think higher education should receive more funding and therefore they are not invested in trying to reduce costs. But, those outside of higher education are fed up and much of their anger is about the constantly increasing price of attending college. This is no small disconnect. The academic culture appears to be one of supposed entitlement because the work of higher education is assumed to be so important. But there are limits and we are either dangerously close to hitting those limits or may even have surpassed them. Twigg is quoted as saying “people in higher education believe in what we’re doing, as long as they don’t have to do it.”
Any ideas on how to change this culture?
Mike
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Expectations for accountability in higher education are still out there
2009 Dec 30
This Inside Higher Ed article is a reminder to the higher education world that “the clock is ticking” in terms of accountability expectations. I have repeatedly written about the expectations that higher education become more accountable for its actions and its outcomes. David C. Paris correctly predicts that higher education will be challenged again and called to account. He notes that the Democrats will begin to pose the same questions that the Republicans did when they were in control. Those questions are about affordability and access, working with the K-12 schools, degree completion, evidence of educational effectiveness and learning outcomes. He warns that if we do not step up, we are likely to face greater regulation. He says that we should step up to serving our students and our country, and he is absolutely correct.
Your thoughts? Please feel free to leave a comment.
Mike
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Treating – and protecting – college students as consumers
2009 Dec 15
This Inside Higher Ed article describes a white paper by Louis Soares of the Center for American Progress. Soares calls for the creation of an Office of Consumer Protection in Higher Education. The office would encourage colleges to produce better data on how effectively they serve students, and set up a way for disgruntled students to seek solutions to problems they have with colleges. This idea of being accountable by providing better information to prospective students (consumers) is in line with Transparency by Design and http://www.collegechoicesforadults.org. I think that Soares’ proposal is a very good idea and hope that it becomes a reality.
Predictably, the higher education establishment dismissed the idea. Frank Balz of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU) is quoted as saying that there is not a lack of information, but a glut that is hard to wade through and that “its hard to see how adding a layer of bureaucracy will improve anything.” This represents a viewpoint held by many that any new requirements or expectations for accountability should be resisted. I do not share that view. Anything that empowers the prospective student to make good choices is of great value. And, while there may be lots of data out there, very little has been converted into meaningful, actionable information. That is especially true when it comes to assessing learning outcomes. The proposal by Soares is probably not perfect, but it certainly is a step in the right direction. And a step forward in an inevitable march toward greater assessment of, and transparency about, whether learning actually occurs in our schools.
I am pleased to see this call for action. Your thoughts? Please feel free to leave a comment.
Mike
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National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) – Good or bad?
2009 Dec 9
A few years ago when there were calls for increased accountability coming from multiple places, including the U.S. Department of Education, one response was to point to the assessment of student engagement using the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). The NSSE results were cited as an example of accountability for outcomes. It always seemed to me that we had lots of proxies for outcomes: completion rates, assessments of writing and critical thinking, student satisfaction and then engagement. But, we have almost no examples of measuring learning at the program or major level. That is why our work with Transparency by Design and the Web site http://www.collegechoicesforadults.org places such emphasis on articulating intended program-level learning outcomes, measuring whether those outcomes are achieved, and reporting this to prospective students. We also report on NSSE data, alumni satisfaction, current student satisfaction and more because we think that the intended user of our site – the prospective adult student – should have access to a range of information. If the Web site is to be useful, it should offer various types of information, and the student can decide which information is most important and useful to them. Read the rest of this entry »
Share ThisWorking learners — the ‘Other 85 Percent’ of college students
2009 Dec 2
Working Learners: Educating Our Entire Workforce for Success in the 21st Century is a good read with an important message – and it addresses the needs of the other 85 percent. Louis Soares of the Center for American Progress writes in this paper that working students, those who combine work and postsecondary education, “have little scheduling flexibility because of work and family obligations and thus pursue postsecondary credentials at a slower pace.” He goes on to say that “most postsecondary institutions, however, ask working learners to get their education the same way that traditional students do. Programs are typically available over 16-week semesters, with each course usually requiring multiple campus visits each week—very often during the day.” Read the rest of this entry »
Share ThisHas the time FINALLY come for higher education change?
2009 Nov 25
As Inside Higher Ed reports, there has been yet another gathering of higher education leaders talking about how higher education needs to change. This time they talked about the need to serve diverse and non-traditional students, borrowing ideas from the for-profit colleges and creating flexibility for students. All sound good until you hear that one element of the conversation was that these leaders acknowledge that they have been having this conversation for decades without meaningful change.
There is no question that trouble is brewing. The worst economic downturn in decades should be enough to stimulate action. At least one would hope that to be the case. And Jane Wellman of the Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity and Accountability offered what is described as a “blunt” assessment that no new money is going to come to higher education. Unfortunately, the article reports that this group demonstrated a long-honored tradition of talking about the predominant institutional model at the exclusion of community colleges and, perhaps, other alternative models.
It is good to see that leaders of the institutions that attended this gathering are talking about change – even if they have talked rather than acted for many years. Maybe this time will be different … though I would not want to place any bets on that. The real question is not whether change will occur, there are simply too many external pressures for that not to happen, but whether the change can or will come from within mainstream higher education. Time will tell.
Please feel free to leave a comment.
Mike
Share ThisWelcome to The Other 85 Percent. So what does "the other 85 percent" refer to? Research has shown that only about 15 percent of higher education students still fit the traditional definition of young adults age 18 to 22 who live on campus and go to school full time. more
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