Beyond the course: Reducing higher education’s overall cost — from The National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT)
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
In the October 2012 issue of The Learning MarketSpace, NCAT announced that this newsletter would undergo a substantial change in its content and format to reflect NCAT’s new direction. NCAT is making a transition from a focus on conducting redesign programs and public events to concentrating on analysis and change strategies based on the data we have collected and the experiences we have had over the past 13 years. The following article came to fruition following a solicitation from the White House asking NCAT for ideas in addition to course redesign about how higher education productivity could be increased. Among the options: redesign the department, redesign the curriculum, redesign academic support and student services, and redesign the administration.
Sixteen years ago, I wrote, “A major problem that continues to confront higher education is that of rising costs. With the average cost of attendance consuming a substantial portion of the median family income, for many Americans what is at stake is nothing less than the continued viability of the American dream. The stakes are high for higher education as well. Caught in a closing vise between new demands for enrollment and declining rates of revenue growth, colleges and universities must figure out a way to do more with less.
Recognizing that tuition increases can no longer be used as a safety valve to avoid dealing with the underlying issues of why costs increase so much, campuses have begun the hard work of cost containment. But after sharpening priorities, sometimes making tough choices in light of those priorities, and asking everyone—administrators and faculty alike—to work harder, campuses are still groping for ways to wrestle costs under control.
At the same time, colleges and universities are discovering exciting new ways of using technology. For most institutions, however, new technologies represent a black hole of additional expense as students, parents, and faculty alike demand access to each new generation of equipment and software. Most campuses have bolted on new technologies to a fixed plant, a fixed faculty, and a fixed notion of classroom instruction. Under these circumstances, technology becomes part of the problem rather than part of the solution of cost containment. By and large, colleges and universities have not yet begun to grab hold of technology’s promise to reduce costs.
Containing costs—and making use of new technologies to help contain costs—requires a fundamental shift in thinking. It requires one to challenge the fundamental assumption of the current instructional model: that faculty members meeting with groups of students at regularly scheduled times and places is the only way to achieve effective student learning.”
These words are more true today than they were 16 years ago.