What lousy public policy. What we have developing now is a whole myriad of systems that may or may not communicate with one another, and that frustrate any serious attempt to understand what happens to students who may start at one college and end up at others.  What types of students might do that? Well, the other 85% for starters.  

So, who opposed having the feds develop a single, unified federal system?  Let me quote Peter Ewell from the article:  “It is clear that this agenda is moving forward, despite opposition from the private colleges. The accountability push is such that these numbers are just simply going to be produced whether anyone likes it or not.”  But, doing it state by state is certainly not efficient.

Ewell goes on to say that “private colleges are all in favor of data. They just don’t want anybody but them to know.”

I have blogged many times about Transparency by Design and its Web site, College Choices for Adults, which is intended to provide useful information to adults seeking to enroll in a college. A national database that could track students who attend multiple schools would be very useful for our work. We would be able to indicate how many adults who end up attending multiple schools actually finish their desired degree.  Without this information, we simply don’t know. This is but one kind of information that could be gathered from such a database. And, those institutions in Transparency by Design not only want the data, but we want to share it, to make it transparent.

Why would any colleges oppose having data available?  Because in a world devoid of data, the reliance on reputation (whether deserved or not) rules.  There are many schools that rely on reputations that may or may not have been earned, but that drive their institutional revenues. Any change to rely on something that is based on data might threaten their reputations … and their revenues.

Mr. Ewell is correct when he says that numbers are going to be produced whether anyone likes it or not. Too bad that the numbers could not be produced in the most efficient way, and in a system that considers the entire country.  But, we have public policy to prevent that … because there are some who might lose.

Please feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Mike

What is really galling about this is that everyone wants to complain about the rankings, but few want to produce more important and objective information about quality.  Morphew and Taylor state that “higher education’s goals and outputs are notoriously difficult to quantify.” That is because we argue that education is so complex that it cannot or should not be measured and reported. The fact is that colleges and universities exist to educate. There are ways to measure whether and to what extent intended learning has occurred – and it can be reported.

I have written repeatedly about Transparency by Design. The schools in that initiative are doing their best to lay out what learning can be expected, how it’s measured, and how well graduates demonstrate what they’re expected to learn. Granted, it has not been easy, but we are doing it and we will get much better at it.  So should other schools.  Rather than using multiple mission statements, or dismissing the competition in peer assessments, I think all of higher education should work at this important goal and make learning outcomes transparent.

If you don’t like the way the rankings are done today, then the best way to change the rankings is to provide more relevant and important information.  That information is about learning outcomes, and I am confident that U.S. News would be more than thrilled to have substantive data on which to base their rankings.  Producing different mission statements is just one more silly example about how schools reject the rankings on one hand while trying to “win” on the other, and all the while avoid the production of meaningful data that would allow a consumer to make an informed choice.

What do you think? Please feel free to leave a comment.

Mike

One would be the removal of federal student financial aid as we know it. A new system would be put in place to give funds directly to students and/or rewards the saving of money for college. Zemsky thinks this would make students more demanding consumers, and colleges would rethink prices, services, and how they do business.

A second dislodging event would be the taxation of college endowments that currently operate like hedge funds. He envisions a possible “drastic consolidation” of the industry as a result.

A third dislodging event would be to make the senior year of high school more useful and productive by providing learning currently done in the freshman year of college, and the conversion of bachelor’s degrees from an assumed 4 years to 3. He thinks that this would force major questions about teaching and learning as faculty and administrators wrestle with “how to teach what.”

Essentially what Zemsky has laid out is that changes, in the way higher education is currently financed or structured, could force higher education reform. The disruptions he suggests would certainly have impacts and create change. The problem is that Zemsky offers no insight into how these disruptions and resulting changes would make higher education better or more affordable. He seems to assume that reform is important for its own sake, saying that “we must create conditions that foster change—even change for changes sake.”

What do you think? Is reform necessary? To what end? How might it be accomplished? Do these disruptions seem plausible? Desirable? Please feel free to leave a comment.

Mike

But, there was one exception. One university that had engaged in serious consideration of what they intended in a business administration bachelor’s degree, what learning outcomes should be produced, how they could create an experience for the student that was tolerable, and weave an instructional design that makes sense. That program has been a success at Southern New Hampshire University, and I was pleased to see it referenced in a Chronicle of Higher Education report.

This program is interesting because it uses
• cohorts
• individual and group learning
• active learning
• technology for virtual collaboration
• a master planning document (what I view as a curriculum map)
• integration of experiences to bring together competencies learned in modules offered that term

And it eliminated redundancies in courses. It is a real three-year bachelor’s degree that is well thought-out and designed to deliver on clearly articulated learning outcomes. It truly stands out from all the others I could find.

So, it was no surprise to see the comments of the Southern New Hampshire University president at a recent meeting sponsored by Jobs for the Future, Education Sector and the Lumina Foundation on “Thinking Big in a Crisis”. Paul J. LeBlanc is quoted as saying that “in coming years, colleges will move away from using credit hours as a measure of achievement and instead rely on demonstrations of competency” and “I think it’s appalling how little innovation has gone on in higher ed.”

I think Mr. LeBlanc is right. I think the comments posted to the article reveal, though, one of the reasons that there is so little innovation: there is real resistance to change and there is a persistent attitude that the United States has the best education system in the world so leave it alone. That position is increasingly difficult to defend or even to understand.

Your thoughts? Please feel free to leave a comment.

Mike

http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/2009/08/04/how-much-do-colleges-really-teach-students.html

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/08/04/transparency

http://chronicle.com/article/New-Web-Site-Compares-Student/47924/

Capella also just launched our own learning outcomes and accountability Web site, which provides even more in-depth information about the programs we offer and what Capella learners will actually take away from their education. You can view it at CapellaResults.com.

Mike

What Brooks actually does is to lay out some excellent reasons why online courses should be offered by colleges.  Among those reasons are getting students more engaged in their courses, allowing for different learning styles, making college more accessible and more affordable, and more.

She wrote an interesting commentary.  And, she just may be right that online courses might be preferred over free beer.  I had just never thought about it quite like that before.

Your thoughts? Please feel free to leave a comment.

Mike

I think the more interesting aspects of the article have to do with Pat Callan’s worry that “low-income students will find college unaffordable.” There are really three “e” phrases that jump from the article:  economic downturn, equity of access, and efficiency.  Certainly the convergence of increasing costs and economic downturn could cause some unexpected outcomes.  The idea that higher education would only be available to the economically privileged would be a major setback for a nation that is only beginning to achieve equity in access. And, it is obvious that colleges and universities need to become more efficient in order to maintain current costs, if not reduce them.

Perhaps the bubble may burst—what do you think? Please feel free to leave a comment.

Mike

Having spent many years at public and land-grant universities, and having developed a different version of a “global campus” at a different public university system, I certainly appreciate the competing viewpoints and the complexity of starting a venture such as the University of Illinois is pursuing.  But, I was particularly struck by the comments of Chester S. Gardner, the chief executive of the Global Campus at the U of I.  He commented on the fact that “many of the school’s professors are focused on scholarship and teaching traditional students.”  He went on to say that “reaching out to the adult learner who can’t come to campus is not a priority for them, and probably shouldn’t be.”   Perhaps this should not have come as a surprise because I recently heard an administrator from another state’s public and land-grant university say the same thing: it is not our mission to serve these adults.

I have two reactions to that.  The first is that, perhaps I misunderstood the very purpose for which the land grant colleges were established and to which the universities dedicated themselves, but I thought that a major part of that commitment was to work with adults no matter where they lived or worked within a state.  It is sad, indeed, if these institutions have walked away from that mission to exclusively focus on younger students who attend full-time on-campus.  The second reaction is that this is one more indication of the importance and critical role that adult-serving colleges and universities play in this country.  These institutions are dedicated to serving adult students.  They are passionate about that service.  They have and will remain true to that important mission.  They recognize that increasing adult degree attainment is critical for our nation to remain competitive internationally, and stand ready to serve in helping more adults to succeed in higher education.

The truth is that our nation needs to increase its capacity to better serve adult and part-time students.  I hope that the public and land-grant universities still embrace this audience.  And that the public and land-grant universities and the specialized, adult-serving institutions can work effectively together to assure that adults have access to and success in higher education.  That is for the good of the country, every state, and our society.

Your thoughts or comments?   I look forward to reading your responses.

Mike

Jones notes that voluntary systems are creating more openness and helping institutions identify improvements but is concerned that the data sets don’t provide many states with complete information.  Transparency by Design is one of these voluntary efforts.  It is being lead by Capella but involves a number of adult-serving, cross-border, online programs and universities.  We have a deep interest in working with the states because we have much to offer and would like to see the states recognize the work we are doing and the opportunities we offer.  And, Transparency by Design is working with NCHEMS to help assure that the data and information we provide to prospective adult students is the right data. 

The work that the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education (the Measuring Up folks) and NCHEMS are doing is important.  The Transparency by Design institutions stand ready to help make that work even better because we are dedicated to adult students, transparency, and improved understanding of the complex contemporary world of higher education.

I think that is important. What do you think? I look forward to reading your comments.

Mike

Many of the young people who will benefit from these grants fit in the other 85 percent: part-time and financially independent students.  I am particularly pleased to note that Hilary Pennington who leads the foundation’s postsecondary programs is quoted as stating that “the foundation’s long-term aspiration is to help all students move quickly toward whatever degree they choose to pursue,” and she suggested that four-year institutions would be a bigger part of the foundation’s focus in future years.  That is wonderful news to the full array of students who make up the other 85%, including adult students over the age of 26.

So, there are multiple sources of good news from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation!

Mike