Changing Higher Education

2010-02-08T12:21:03-08:00

There is an interview with me in DrEducation: Indian Education Blog http://www.dreducation.com/ that covers a number of interesting areas.

Joint ventures at the for-profit/non-profit interface

2010-02-04T17:39:37-08:00

In these troubled financial times, should a non-profit higher education institution consider teaming up with a for-profit partner to create new sources of revenue? Inside Higher Education reported on an interesting presentation by Michael B Goldstein at the recent meeting of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities that suggested this might provide an important lifeline for institutions under financial pressure.

Goldstein noted that several smaller non-profit colleges with severe financial problems have had to sell themselves to for-profit entities. Although the institutions survived, they did so by relinquishing control to others. Examples of such institutions are Grand Canyon University, originally a Southern Baptist college, which was sold to Significant Education LLC (also behind the similar purchase of Chancellor Universit y, new home of the Jack Welch Management Institute) to become the first for-profit Christian college; Post University, which was bought by Generation Partners; and Ashford University, originally sponsored by the Sisters of St. Francis, now owned by Bridgeport Education. A somewhat related fate befell the College of Santa Fe, which is now owned by the city of Santa Fe, but leased by Laureate Education (Update on the College of Santa Fe- Laureate deal, July 30, 2009). Indications are that the for-profit sector continues to be quite interested in acquiring fully accredited non-profit institutions, and, unfortunately, there are an increasing number of accredited institutions whose financial situations make them prime targets for acquisition.

Goldstein suggests that there is a “middle track” possible to exploit the higher education interests of investors: forming joint ventures with a for-profit venture. Such a joint venture can enable the college to tap into the capital markets to build some new revenue producing academic programs without ceding control over the academic core of the programs. He suggests that the appropriate model for such a venture is to create a new, independent entity such as an online program or new institution. Within this entity, core academic functions would be handled by the college, while the new entity would handle non-academic services, such as student support, marketing and finance. The new entity itself should be controlled through majority ownership by the college so as to assure that all aspects are handled in ways that are appropriate to the brand of the college. An underlying goal of the approach, according to Goldstein is” This enables you to pick the best capabilities of the various partners, so you don’t have to build it or do it all yourself.”

Two models of this approach discussed were the recent (and much discussed) partnership between the National Labor College and the Princeton Review's Penn Foster Education Group, and the partnership between Tiffin University and Altius Education to form Ivy Bridge College. Ivy Bridge College enables students to earn associate’s degrees online. It is accredited by commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, and has transfer agreements with almost two dozen four year colleges.

A slightly different approach, but ultimately in the spirit of Goldstein’s quote above, has been used by Laureate Education in some of its dealings with non-profit higher education institutions(Interesting activity at the for-profit/non-profit interface: Laureate, Jan 14, 2008). In 2006, Laureate and some Turkish partners agreed to take over technology, student and human resource services, and financial management for Istanbul Bilgi University. The “win” from Bilgi’s perspective was that it joined Laureate’s global network of universities, thus opening up study abroad and exchange opportunities for its students. In addition, resources came to Bilgi to allow it to expand in Turkey and possibly beyond. Also in 2006, Laureate partnered with Liverpool University and Xi’an Jiatong Univesity to set up the Xi’an Jiatong-Liverpool University in Suzhou, China. Academic programs are under the control of the two university partners, and finance and management is provided by Laureate.

Kaplan also has a number of arrangements with non-profit higher education institutions that are not dissimilar in goal and philosophy to the approach suggested by Goldstein (Interesting activity at the for- profit/non- profit interface: Kaplan, Jan 7, 2008). In particular, in Asia, Kaplan has partnered with a number of primarily English institutions to enable them to offer degrees in Asia without the expense of setting up stand-alone programs with all of the costs of student recruitment, management at a distance, etc. Again, Kaplan is providing what it can do best (capital, management, infrastructure), while the universities provides what they can do best (academic content), and everyone is benefiting.

There is actually a fair amount of evidence that, under the right conditions, with the right partners, Goldstein’s advice is on target. Getting partners who have strengths that compliment yours is the key component of a win-win situation.

OECD Feasibility Study for the International Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO)

2010-01-28T15:16:53-08:00

The OECD Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO) is a ground-breaking initiative to assess learning outcomes on an international scale by creating measures that would be valid for all cultures and languages. Between ten and thirty-thousand higher education students in over ten different countries will take part in a feasibility study to determine the bounds of this ambitious project, with an eye to the possible creation of a full-scale AHELO upon its completion.

The OECD has just announced a projec t with the grand title that I took for this post, that has the potential to change much of the ongoing discussion in the US regarding assessment of learning outcomes (see, e.g. Learning outcomes information and the quality of higher education). The OECD is initiating a very interesting pilot project to see if it is possible to create measures of learning outcomes valid across countries and cultures. (A very useful earlier OECD report on learning outcomes can be found here.)

The OECD expresses concerns that the current ranking systems used in higher education almost ignore what should be the key point of such a ranking: the quality of the education that the students receive.

Rankings tend to give research, award-winning faculty, and older, pre-1920’s universities priority over teaching and learning.

As a consequence:

Current ranking systems threaten the diversity of higher education. Universities are under pressure to cut programmes and redefine missions in a fight for survival that depends on clambering into the top 10, 50 or 100 universities. They may throw their best assets overboard in the rash attempt to keep their university afloat. Such pressure breeds an unhealthy copycat behavior among HEIs, the result of which can only be a bland standardization.

This project, then, has as a major goal the development of instruments that individual institutions can use to measure their own effectiveness in the area of student learning. Change within universities can then be driven by the goal of producing greater student learning, rather than by the goal of making it into the upper echelons of an ultimately meaningless ranking.

The project actually has 4 strands that will ultimately be used to look at student learning. They are:

1. Generic – Analytic skills, critical thinking, written communication, etc

2. Discipline specific – looking at the “above content” part of learning: the capacity to use what has been learned, often in novel situations

3. Context – learning takes place in the context of the individual institution, which involves physical and organizational characteristics; education-related behaviors and practices; psyco-social and cultural aspects; and behavioral and attitudinal outcomes.

4. Value added- given the characteristics of the incoming students at a particular institution, what intellectual advances occur over the course of the degree?

For the first of these, the Collegiate Learning Assessment, appropriately modified for use across cultures, will be used to show proof of concept. For the second, two fields, economics and engineering, will be used to see if meaningful instruments can be developed. According to Inside Higher Education, the Australian Council for Educational Research will lead a consortium working on this aspect. For the third, existing data, such as persistence and graduation rates, surveys of student expectations, quality of student-faculty interactions, self-reported learning gains, will be gathered and analyzed. Ultimately, surveys of alumni and employers will join this mix. The fourth strand will not actually be included in this pilot project since the time required to create the instruments will exceed the period of the pilot. Instead, this will be a time of reflection on the types of methodologies that might be used in a larger project

Although the OECD document does not make it clear, Inside Higher Education reports that the US is participating in this study in two ways: providing some financial support and some students in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Missouri, and Pennsylvania will be part of the test cohort for the Generic strand. This is in stark contrast with the situation two years ago, when the Bush administration declined to participate in an earlier stage of this project. Thus it appears that the interest in outcomes assessment that was so prominent in the Bush administration has not disappeared with the coming of the Obama administration, as many in higher education had hoped.

Online learning continues as a higher education growth area

2010-01-27T17:11:57-08:00

In a post last year, Is online learning ready to become a disruptive technology? (June 29, 2009), I discussed the recent Department of Education study that compared learning outcomes in online classes to those in more traditional face-to-face classes. In general, the studies found that students in the online courses learned more. I suggested that these results indicated that online learning was finally growing up, and becoming a serious competitor for our more traditional modes of presentation.

The recently released report of the Sloan Consortium, Learning on Demand: Online Education in the United States, 2009, adds interesting data to this discussion. The study showed that the number of students in degree-granting postsecondary institutions taking at least one online course increased 17% from fall 2007 to fall 2008. From 2002 to 2008, there was an annual compound growth rate of 19% in the number of students taking at least one course online. In the fall of 2002, slightly fewer than 10% of students fit into this category; by fall of 2008, slightly over 25% of students did. Eighty two percent of these students are studying at the undergraduate level.

The report suggests that most institutions that are interested in offering online courses and programs are already doing so. In fact, the larger institutions dominate the field, in part because their size and established position has enabled them to scale up their online offerings in response to growing student demand:

Academic leaders at all types of institutions report increased demand for face-to-face and online courses, with those at public institutions seeing the greatest impact. …In all cases the proportion reporting an increase in demand for online offerings is larger than for the corresponding face-to-face offerings. Over three-quarters (76 percent) of public institutions report increased demand for existing face-to-face courses and programs, compared to only 32 percent of private nonprofit institutions. Likewise, nearly all public institutions (87 percent) say the economic downturn has increased demand for their existing online courses and programs. A smaller proportion, but still a majority (58 percent), of nonprofits see the economic downturn increasing demand for their existing online courses and programs.

Thus, students themselves have shown some preference for the online courses over face to face meetings.

Chief Academic Officers showed increasing belief that learning outcomes for online courses were equal or superior to those of in class courses. Over the period 2003-2008, the percentage of CAO’s expressing that belief rose from 57% to 68% (maybe some of them read the DoE report mentioned above!) However, at the same time, chief academic officers report a small decrease in faculty acceptance of online learning. As the report rightfully notes: Future studies will need to track these results paying particular attention to any possible relationship of perceived faculty acceptance to the rate of growth of online offerings at the institution.

The results, in general, paint a picture of increasing use of online courses as a sustaining, rather than disruptive, technology in Christensen’s terms (see Disruptive technologies: when great universities fail? March 3, 2006). Survey results for for-profit institutions generally were remarkably similar to results in the non-profit sector. Thus the survey gives no indication that, at this time, online learning is providing the for-profit sector with a disruptive edge. An issue to be followed!

Law Schools don’t like learning outcomes, either

2010-01-22T11:03:32-08:00

I earlier had marked an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education for comment, and then put it aside under the pressure of other events. However, it goes so well with yesterday’s post that I thought I should comment briefly on it now. The headline of the article of interest reads

Law Schools Resist Proposal to Assess Them Based on What Students Learn

It seems that the American Bar Association (ABA) is proposing to change some of its accreditation criteria:

Instead of judging law schools primarily on "input" measures, such as faculty size and library holdings, the proposed revisions would look more at "outcome" measures, such as what students are actually learning.

Horror! What follows in the article are a number of quite suspect arguments from deans regarding why the ABA should not make such a radical change, e.g.

“Given the fragility of the legal profession and the fragility of law-school finances, it's a tough time to think about taking on a major process of assessment," Lauren K. Robel, dean of Indiana University's Maurer School of Law, said during an interview here.

Another argued it would be a mistake to make changes at a time when the legal landscape is in such flux.

And of course, the usual favorite:

"It is worth pausing to ask how the proponents of outcome measures can be so very confident that the actual performance of tasks deemed essential for the practice of law can be identified, measured, and evaluated," said Robert C. Post, dean of Yale Law School.

I would suggest that in times of “fragility of legal profession”, and “legal landscape is in such flux”, it is critical to begin to understand what students are actually learning. Otherwise, there is no hope of making changes in curriculum that will reflect the evolution of the field. Now, when changes in the profession are occurring, is the time to start. There is little pressure for educational change when everything is going well.

Obviously, Dean Post is right at one level. There is no off-the-shelf listing of learning outcomes needed to practice law, nor are there likely to be obvious ways of measuring those outcomes when they are identified. Isn’t it fascinating that we know so little about the utility of what we charge so much to teach, and we use that very ignorance as an excuse not to learn about the utility of what we do? Nope, now is the time to start learning about the various outcomes needed to successfully practice the law, and developing the means to measure those outcomes – and who better to do that than the law schools themselves? Would they prefer that some outside agency do it instead??

Having fought the ABA for years on their use of input criteria, I find it amazing to find myself on the same side as the organization at last. Wonders will never cease! However, the origin of these fights may also say why many of the deans are so opposed. The old ABA accreditation, based on such inputs as faculty size and library holdings, has been one of the major levers used by law school deans against their administrations in their efforts to inflate their budgets.

Higher Ed.'s societal obligations in a globalizing economy

2010-01-21T17:14:36-08:00

The American Association and Colleges and Universities (AACU) just released a survey of employers that looks at the characteristics employers want to see in the graduates they hire, and a related paper from the AACU Board called The Quality Imperative. The survey (which does not in any way contradict others that I have seen previously) reports that only one in four employers feel that higher education is doing a good job in preparing students for success in the global economy. Not surprisingly, employers would like to have graduates who have both in-depth and broad range knowledge and skills Highest on their wish-lists for learning outcomes are several intellectual skills, e.g. critical thinking, that, as emphasized by Derek Bok in Our Underachieving Colleges, we don’t teach very well. The learning outcomes that 70% or more of the employers felt should get increased emphasis from higher ed are:

The ability to effectively communicate orally and in writing (89%)

Critical thinking and analytical reasoning skills (81%)

The ability to apply knowledge and skills to real-world settings through

internships or other hands-on experiences (79%)

The ability to analyze and solve complex problems (75%)

The ability to connect choices and actions to ethical decisions ( 75%)

Teamwork skills and the ability to collaborate with others in diverse group settings (71%)

The ability to innovate and be creative (70%)

Concepts and new developments in science and technology ( 70%)

The Quality Imperative jumps off from this survey and the recent national emphasis on access, to make the very pertinent opening point:

The current focus on college-going, while important, short-circuits the core issue of educational quality. Yet both employers and educators know that the quality shortfall is just as urgent as the attainment shortfall.

What needs to happen in education can be described in a nutshell as:

To prosper in today’s knowledge economy, in sum, all Americans will need a contemporary blend of liberal and applied learning.

To describe what this might mean, the AACU paper makes a number of recommendations of needed change, focusing on a very useful set of “Essential learning outcomes” to help meet the challenges. In addition they make a recommendation that I consider to be of paramount importance:

Ensure that all fields of study help students achieve demonstrable competence in the essential learning outcomes, including the ability to apply their learning to new settings and unscripted problems.

In other word, we actually need to measure what we are doing, so that we – and everyone else - can see if we are being successful in doing what we say we are doing. It will be interesting to see what the AACU does, other than publish these two pieces, to encourage its members to step up to the plate on these vital issues.

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Reading these two reports made me think of a lovely article by Michael Hiltzik that appeared in the business section of the Dec. 31, 2009 LA Times.

Hiltzik’s article was occasioned by the centenary of the birth of Peter Drucker, one of the most interesting business thinkers of recent times. Drucker considered the role of the corporation in society, not just as a creator of wealth, but as a partner in achieving the goals of society. Quoting Hlitzik, quoting Drucker:

The business enterprise is a creature of a society and an economy, and society or economy can put any business out of existence overnight… The enterprise exists on sufferance and exists only as long as the society and the economy believe that it does a necessary, useful, and productive job.

And quoting Hiltzik again

He also warned that an enterprise that fails to “think through its impacts and its responsibilities” exposes itself to justified attack from social forces…. He held that the purpose of a business is to serve the customer by providing a good or service useful in both personal and social terms.

Thus, a corporation that focuses solely on the chase of profits, to the exclusion of satisfying its social role, will not over time be successful. And, in doing so, it may stimulate reactive political measures that ultimately will be good neither for the corporation, nor for society. Sound like what is happening today?

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So what possible rational relationship could exist between these two items? Possibly none, but let me give it a shot.

Essentially everyone in higher education would say – and brag- that we provide a social good. We are, however, also quite fond of telling society that we know what it needs better than it does –society will think short term, we think long term, ergo, etc. And we then say that we already are doing what needs to be done quite effectively, and that everyone should just trust us.

The report described above actually shows an area in which society – or at least employers – wants the same thing as the academy. Eighty one percent of employers want us to do more to teach critical thinking and analytic reasoning skills. By comparison, according to Bok:” With all the controversy over the college curriculum, it is impressive to find faculty members agreeing almost unanimously that teaching students to think critically is the principal aim of undergraduate education.” However, even with this pretty complete overlap of goals, it turns out, according to the results quoted by Bok, that we actually do a terrible job in teaching these critical skills. Bok argues that our failure results from our unwillingness to acknowledge and face the changes in our learning approaches that would be required in order to improve critical thinking amongst our students. So our support of this societal goal actually is rhetorical rather than real.

If one goes down the lists of learning outcomes given by the AACU, one finds numerous areas where many would argue that “we already do that, and well.” In general, however, there is little actual data to show how well we achieve the desired learning outcomes. Where data exists, more often than not they seriously call into question the effectiveness of our approaches.

I imagine that if Drucker were to look at this situation, he would warn us that unless we can demonstrate that we are in fact doing things that society needs as we move into globalization, we risk suffering some of those political and financial outcomes that he had envisaged only for aberrant corporations. So we should pay very close attention to the AACU's call for "demonstrable competence" in areas that will be essential for the future health of our society.

Another advance in learning outcomes - in the for-profit sector

2010-01-12T10:50:46-08:00

Well, it had to happen! The Yahoo! Finance page from January 11 carried an article that begins:

The Council for Higher Education Accreditation, a national advocate and institutional voice for self-regulation of academic quality through accreditation, has awarded the 2010 CHEA Award for Outstanding Institutional Practice in Student Learning Outcomes to Capella University (MN), one of four institutions that will receive the award in 2010. Capella University is the first online university to receive the award….

“Capella University is a leader in accountability in higher education. Their work in student learning outcomes exemplifies the progress that institutions are making through the implementation of comprehensive, relevant and effective initiatives,” said CHEA President Judith Eaton. “We are pleased to recognize this institution with the CHEA Award.”

Capella University is not only the first online university to receive the award, it is, I believe, the first for-profit. Capella University is owned by the publicly traded Capella Education Company. The Capella Learning and Careers website, which describes their learning outcomes, is quite impressive and well worth a look. Capella is regionally accredited by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.

I have noted before the emphasis many for-profit higher ed providers are placing on developing learning outcomes. It is a natural, credibility-building stage in their trajectory as disruptive innovators in higher education (see, e.g post of Aug.5, 2008). CHEA is the accreditor of the accrediting groups, and thus a major force in maintaining quality in American higher education. Recognition by CHEA as a leader in accountability is therefore a significant step in this process. It is worth noting that Capella University is both for-profit, and on-line, thus representing two main forces of disruptive innovation in higher education.

By the way, Dr Michael Offerman, vice chairman of external university initiatives at Capella, has a very nice blog that presents an often different and useful perspective on issues in higher education.

Two market-state visions of the future of higher education

2010-01-11T10:13:19-08:00

Joseph Aoun, the president of Northeastern University, recently published a very insightful article entitled Two different leaders, two different visions in the Huffington Post. His two leaders are Nicholas Sarkozy, the president of France, and Luke Ravenstahl, the mayor of Pittsburgh. Their visions allow us to consider how education may be viewed in different versions of the developing market-state as described by Philip Bobbitt (Welcome to the market state, Feb 2006).

Sarkozy recently announced that he wants to invest more than $29B in France’s universities and research, with a clear rationale and goal:

France is giving herself unprecedented resources in order to have world’s best universities because with the world’s best universities we are preparing ourselves to win the competitiveness battle.

Ravenstahl, on the other hand, announced that he wants to tax college and university tuitions. His rationale and goal are also clear:

It’s time for everybody to pay their fair share, especially if we are to complete our financial recovery. We can no longer afford to provide city services to those who are not paying their fair share.

The money is needed to help cover $15 million in higher pension costs, plus contribute $1 million to Carnegie Libraries to keep neighborhood branches from closing.

As Aoun points out, these two leaders provide a very different conception of the role of higher education in the world. Both fit the view of the Bobbitt’s market state, which I have discussed often before, but with very different perspectives. Sarkozy believes that higher education is a critical resource to be used by the state in its global economic battles, and so serves as a public good requiring state support. Ravenstahl’s proposal reflects a belief that higher education is a private good which should be expected to pay its way, and not depend on special breaks from the state. The role of the market is clear in both proposals, and neither is proposing to treat higher education in the traditional nation state role as being worthy of state support because it provides a general, unspecified public good such as producing better citizens.

Bobbitt suggested that each market state will be some combination of three possible forms: (1) a mercantile state-i.e. one that endeavors to improve its relative position vis-à-vis all other states by competitive means, or (2) and entrepreneurial state, one that attempts to improve its absolute position while mitigating the competitive values of the market through cooperative means, or (3) a managerial market-state, one that tries to maximize its position both absolutely and relatively by regional, formal means (trading blocks, etc.). As I point out below, the Sarkozy approach is consistent with some of the characteristics Bobbitt describes for the managerial state, while that of Ravenstahl fits characteristics of the entrepreneurial state.

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Sarkozy consistently has made reform of research and higher education a key element of his government’s programs. For whatever value rankings have, the 2009 ARWU rankings of world universities shows 11 top 100 institutions in Great Britain, 5 in Germany, and only 3 in France – a result that cannot find favor in the Elysee Palace! An article in the Economist described the situation in French higher education in the following way:

There are no tuition fees, nor is selection of students on entry allowed, apart from the required baccalauréat. Lecture halls are swamped; first-year medical students camp out early for scarce places. Campus libraries close at weekends. As many as 52% of undergraduates fail after their first year; and 90,000 students quit university each year without a degree. France's brightest students compete for places at the elite, fee-paying universities, known as the grandes écoles, instead. And the best researchers snap up well-financed jobs abroad.

Even softening this statement a bit by taking into account the usual British/French competitive spirit, one can imagine why Sarkozy has made higher education reform a high priority.

A major goal of the proposed reforms has been to make changes that will lead to improved economic results for France. To that end, many of the reforms seek to bring about closer links between universities and business. That view, plus some reforms that potentially might lead to inequalities between institutions and students, have resulted in massive opposition from faculty, students, and administration. This opposition led to a 4 month higher education strike by those groups last spring. Most of the participants seem to actively decry some aspect of the current system, but nevertheless are dead set against change.

Reactions by these groups to Sarkozy’s recent promise of increased investment (in them) have been decidedly mixed. In part, this is because one goal of his proposal flies in the face of egalite:

create around ten campuses where we excel, with the resources, critical size and links with industry allowing them to rival the world’s best universities.

Thus, Sarkozy must not only find the financial resources to improve the system, but must face major political obstacles to bring about needed organizational change. It is not easy to build a robust world-class educational system, even when you start with all of the strengths of the present French system! Nevertheless, this top-down approach to educational reform in support of competitive economic position reflects well what Bobbitt described as:

an omnicompetent government characteristic of managerial market states.

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On the other hand, Pittsburgh already is in the enviable position of having 2 universities in that ARWU top 100 ranking (U. of Pittsburg and Carnegie Mellon). Almost as good as all of France! Taxing the tuitions of those and other higher education institutions will not destroy them, of course. It will make it harder for them to maintain – and increase - the levels of excellence that they currently have. So why would the city take that approach to filling in a hole in an underfunded pension fund? There are certainly local conditions that explain part of it, such as Pittsburgh’s declining population and serious, multi-year budget problems.

But Pittsburgh is going to need its higher education complex to be even more robust if the city is to find increased traction in an increasingly complex world. Wikipedia (recently - changes often of course) described Pittsburgh’s economy as “largely based on healthcare, education, technology, robotics, and financial services.” With the possible exception of financial services, those areas sound like the core strengths of Pitt and Carnegie-Mellon. It is hard to imagine that these areas would have become the drivers of the Pittsburgh economy in the absence of those two universities – and it is highly unlikely that these areas of the economy will be able to increase in vitality if Pitt and Carnegie-Mellon are not thriving themselves. Pittsburgh already has what France is striving to create – a thriving, creative higher education system. That system will be very hard to rebuild if it is damaged to solve an unrelated problem.

Nevertheless, in the emerging market state, higher education must expect that it will be required to supplement its current indirect role in the economic health of its region and its nation with a more explicitly direct role. Paying taxes might be one such direct role, but is unlikely to be the most effective, for reasons stated above. Fortunately, in late December, Mayor Ravenstahl announced that he was dropping plans for the tax in order to pursue an undefined partnership of the city with higher education and the business community that will address the financial health of the city. This type of collaborative partnership, if pursued actively and effectively, could become one model for the type of direct market-state role that best fits the strengths of higher education. That is a much better way to use American higher education to help balance budgets than taxing their resources!

Bobbitt described the entrepreneurial state as being characterized by, among others, decentralization, economic evaluation of all policy, and encouragement of the locality as laboratory. In a laboratory, of course, some experiments will be badly designed, and this looks like one of them. The economic evaluation was short sighted and would most likely have led to larger future deficits for the city. On the other hand, the experiment still will be a success if some new and more effective coupling of higher education to government and business emerges. Certainly this local experiment would not have been tolerated in the more centralized managerial state – a tuition tax would be national, nor not at all. But it will probably be through such local clashes that models of effective partnerships that serve the demands of the market state will be developed.

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Aoun steps back from the focus on these two leaders to look at the wider scale of the world, and finds much of the rest of the world on one side, and the US on the other. As noted before in these posts, many other countries (think much of Europe and Asia) have articulated policies outlining the role of higher education in their economies, and even in their foreign policies. As a consequence, they are creating strategies to strengthen their systems of higher education so that they can play their desired roles. The US, on the other hand, seems to assume that its higher education system will always be globally pre-eminent and that the enormous role it has played in both the economic vigor of the US, and the shaping the external perception of the US will continue unabated without attention. At the same time, there are ample signals that the pre-eminence of American higher education is rapidly eroding. Some of this erosion is to be expected – higher education is a growth area around the world as living standards increase. However, other aspects of the erosion can be attributed to the fact that we as a nation are simply not paying attention to the long term.

Bobbitt warns of a danger associated with an entrepreneurial state:

The entrepreneurial state may become so intoxicated with its own absolute position that it fails to prepare itself – by not deferring consumption in order to invest in infrastructure – for relative challenges from states whose competitive drive is masked by the improved wealth positions of all major players.

Sounds like a fair warning in this case!

Learning outcomes information and the quality of higher education

2010-01-05T09:02:04-08:00

But the biggest problem with American higher education isn=t that too many students can=t afford to enroll. It=s that too many of the students who do enroll aren=t learning very much and aren=t earning degrees. For the average student, college isn=t nearly as good a deal as colleges would have us believe. Kevin Carey

Kevin Carey, one of the most articulate critics of American higher education, has a powerful new article entitled A That Old College Lie@ in the Winter 2010 issue of Democracy. (Some of my previous posts about Carey=s work are: Sept.1, 2006; Oct.11, 2006; April 13, 2009). Richard Vedderer also has an excellent recent post talking about Carey=s article.

Carey begins by writing about Pell grants, and the plans of the Obama administration to increase them. He points out that Pell grants have become less important over time as college costs have increased much more rapidly than CPI. As a consequence, student borrowing is increasing, as are loan default rates. With this, he segues into his main theme, which is given by the quote that begins this post. He argues that students at all levels of colleges and universities are not learning all that they could be, and that Aquality@ of American higher education is not what we imagine or claim it to be. He rightly points out that what we (and much of the world) think of as the Ahigh quality@ of the American system is Adriven by the top 10 percent of institutions and the students who attend themBHarvard, Stanford, MIT, and the like.@

Carey argues, however, that we actually know very little about how good our institutions are at helping their students to learn. Publicly available data on that subject is almost nonexistent. As a consequence, Aquality@ is actually primarily Aprestige@, and prestige is defined through combinations of Awealth, admissions selectivity, price, and a generalized sense of fame that is highly influenced by who=s been around the longest and who produces the most research.@ Learning is just simply left out of the mix that defines quality in higher education. However, if comparable information on teaching and learning were readily available, a number of problems would be addressed. For example, this information would enable newer institutions to compete more effectively with the old guard, thus increasing competition and leading to greater cost controls. A resulting customer focus on teaching and learning would lead colleges to allocate their more of their resources to that end, rather than, e.g. high priced professors who don=t teach.

Carey point out that some groups have recently begun to collect information on learning outcomes that would greatly aid parents and students in making informed choices when picking a college - and would help us to give a new and important redefinition of quality. However, he argues that this information in being held captive by the colleges themselves, and by educational lobbies that represent the colleges. One has only to review some of the submissions made by such organizations as ACE and AAU against the outcomes focus of the Spellings report to see the merit in Carey=s argument.

Finally, Carey tells us what needs to be done:

The Obama Administration has proposed huge new increases in Pell Grants and other higher education programs, amounting to more than $70 billion over the next decade. It should require institutions receiving these funds to provide more information to the public in exchange. It should invest in R&D to develop new methods of gauging student success. And it should be prepared to fight a scorched‑earth political battle against the entrenched special interests that will, if history is any guide, surely rise in opposition.

None of these points will surprise readers of this blog. However, Carey says it all very well, and covers a lot of important points I have not mentioned in this post. The one issue he did not cover that I think is missing is the Bologna process, which focuses on learning outcomes in higher education (see The Bologna Process- a significant step in the modularization of higher education Sept 12, 2008). The Bologna process now involves 46 European nations, and dozens of institutions in South America. Our refusal to seriously consider learning outcomes risks leaving us outside the next big global movement in higher education. This could result in the US losing its leadership role higher education, and becoming a follower with lots of catch-up to do.

Carey=s solution is one that the Obama administration really should consider- this is an unusual opportunity to move American higher education to a more effective plane, increasing our ability to cope with the changes going on in the wider world.

For-profit higher education moves to fill gaps left by state budget shortfalls

2010-01-03T11:04:39-08:00

UB Daily for December 23, 2009 pointed me in the direction of a very interesting article in the Times-Herald, which covers the Sonoma and Napa regions in northern California. The article is entitled “Private Universities Covering the Gaps in Higher Education.” The gaps of the title are those resulting from the crippling state budgetary cuts to public higher education in California, and the “private universities” that are rushing in to alleviate the problems are all in the for-profit sector. Although several for-profits are mentioned, The University of Phoenix is the focus of this article.

According to the Times-Herald, a northern California official of The University of Phoenix reports that they are seeing increased enrollments due to two cut-related effects: inability of students to get needed courses in community colleges, and inability of students to transfer between different state institutions. The Times-Herald reports that In order to meet these needs:

University of Phoenix officials are working on a strategic plan with nearby Solano Community College to assure its students have good access to the school, said Jo Hoffmeier, University of Phoenix vice president of community relations and product safety....The local University of Phoenix campus is also working to improve its alliances with California State University campuses nand University of California at Berkeley to assure access to as many students as possible, Hoffmeier said.

Thus, the University of Phoenix is working proactively with the public sector to maximize opportunities for students under changing conditions in higher education. I believe that this type of public-private cooperation is going to be increasingly important in meeting the learning needs of future students. Strong support for this belief can be found in a recent USC doctoral dissertation by Lauren Cooper.

Cooper’s USC dissertation is entitled Market-state-based planning for nation-state style prosperity: Reinventing the higher education “promise” to create a “win/win/win” for California. In it, she argues that higher education capacity discussions need to shift from a demand-driven model to a workforce-driven model. Using primarily projections made by the Public Policy Institute of California for the number of college degree-holding workers required to satisfy industry needs in California in 2025, Cooper shows that there is likely to be a massive shortfall of such workers by 2025 if long-standing growth rates in the UC and CSU systems are maintained. (In fact, the current budgetary mess in the state has led to shrinkage of both systems, so Cooper’s analyses can be considered “best case”.) Cooper’s projections show that to fill in the CSU portion of the 2025 shortfall, the system will need to open 12 new campuses prior to 2025 - an unimaginable outcome given the finances and political situation in the state. Cooper concludes, therefore, that the public sector alone cannot meet future workforce needs:

As components of the higher education system, the UC, the CSU, community colleges, and private and for-profit universities will each need to play a significant role in the future success of the state....Reorienting the state’s current trajectory will require nontraditional thinking and innovative solutions to change the current course.

As Cooper notes, in much of the world, for-profit higher education is stepping in to meet capacity problems that cannot be met within government's budgets. It is neither surprising - nor unreasonable - that we increasingly see a similar movement in the United States as the state is progressively less able to meet educational needs.

In the situation described by the Times-Herald, it seems that the negative effects of state budget cuts have lead to the positive result that the for-profit University of Phoenix is working collaboratively with various components of the California public higher education system to help meet student needs. The differing viewpoints held by the partners in these collaborations suggest that the interactions have the potential to be positive for all sides, especially if they lead to discussions of some of the critical questions for higher education. Among these questions might be: what should be the goals of higher education in this changing world?; how can the cost of providing higher education be contained?; and, what are the most effective approaches to student learning?

However, in order for these various players to produce a real “system” of higher education that meets the needs of the students and the workforce needs of the state, as suggested by Cooper, a number of things must happen. Most important, and perhaps most difficult: transferability of course credits must be assured amongst the various institutions. This is not unlike the problem being faced in Europe with the Bologna process. Successful broad transferability requires a focus on learning outcome measures, rather than on inputs or student hours in the classroom. As Europe is showing, it is possible for a very diverse set of institutions to agree on desired learning outcomes for various educational steps. The focus now is on the difficult task of creating outcomes measures that are recognized by all parties. The Bologna process, although primarily involving public institutions, does include a number of for-profit institutions. Thus, there is no reason that a similar process involving Cooper’s players could not succeed here in California (or other states). This would enable the coupling the strengths and resources of the different sectors in order to meet the challenges of providing high quality education in times of constrained resources.