As Colleges Focus on Quality in Online Learning, Advocates Ask: What About In-Person Courses? — from chronicle.com by Taylor Swaak

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

As colleges’ online catalogs grow, so too has the push to develop standards of quality for those courses. But are in-person classes getting the same attention?

If you ask many online-education advocates, the answer is “no.” And the solution, many say, is for colleges to adopt standards and policies that set consistent expectations for quality across all courses, whether they’re remote or in a classroom.

While decades of research and the pandemic-spurred expansion of online learning have helped demystify it, and build confidence in its efficacy, these advocates say the misconception lingers that remote education is inherently lower in quality than instruction in the classroom. And that stigma, they say, puts a magnifying glass to online ed, while largely leaving in-person classes to business as usual.

The focus instead, Simunich said, should be on a big-picture question: Is this a high-quality learning experience for students?

From DSC:
These are great points. I find them to have been very true.

Reflections of a College Adjunct After 31 Years — from insidehighered.com by Stephen Werner
We’ve proven over and over that there’s enough work to give many of us full-time positions, writes Stephen Werner, but things are moving in the opposite direction.

Four Pieces of Advice (emphasis DSC)
In closing, I offer the following recommendations:

  • See the big picture. We adjuncts are workers in the gig economy. We are part of the new normal where so many jobs are on-demand, temporary work, with few or no benefits and no long-term security. Even with our M.A.s and Ph.D.s, we have much in common with workers at all levels, including the lowest-skilled workers.
  • Make a serious effort to meet and talk to other adjuncts.
  • Unionize! Organize with your fellow adjuncts! 
  • Start saving for retirement.

The fact is that college and universities are totally dependent on us. They know it. We adjuncts need to act like we know it, too. We need to overcome our isolation and work together to have a voice.

How Mega-Universities Manage to Teach Hundreds of Thousands of Students — from edsurge.com by Robert Ubell (Columnist)

Excerpt:

One key difference at SNHU is how it hires faculty, relying on an academic army of about 8,000 adjuncts who earn $2,000 per semester for teaching an undergrad course and $2,500 for a grad course. Reliance on adjuncts, especially in online instruction, is a national trend. Today, gig faculty occupy about three-quarters of all U.S. college instructors. But Southern New Hampshire and other online operations depend even more on contingent labor than most of their traditional peers.

For colleges to depend entirely on an Uber-style instructional workforce may be financially prudent, but I argue it’s academically risky, with little continuity and no permanent faculty. It’s also exploitative, with instructors ending up in precarious work arrangements without living wages and benefits.

First Person: Why college matters for people serving extreme sentences — from opencampusmedia.org by Rahsaan “New York” Thomas

Excerpt:

For incarcerated people, the quality or success of a college program is often measured by recidivism rates. By that standard, Mount Tamalpais, formerly the Prison University Project, is a success. Its students had a recidivism rate of 17 percent compared to the 65 percent recidivism rate for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation as a whole, according to a 2011 program evaluation.

Personally, I see education as the key to my success from behind bars. After getting sentenced to a term beyond my life expectancy I needed a path to redemption in the eyes of my mother, my sons, and society that didn’t involve going home. I came up with becoming a writer because my voice was the one part of me that was still free.

 

Are High Schools Preparing Students for the Future? — from xqsuperschool.org; with thanks to Marisa Sergnese out on LinkedIn for this resource

Excerpt:

High school is the last stop before students enter the real world of college, career, and adult life. It’s where adolescents are supposed to develop both academically and socially, so they’ll graduate prepared for all the future has to offer. But does it?

Along with students, educators, families, and employers across the country, we at XQ believe it’s time to rethink high school to ensure that it does. We invited our readers to weigh in and here is what they told us:

Out of more than 300 participants polled, the vast majority—93 percent—said they didn’t think high schools are fully preparing students to succeed in the future.

That’s a dramatically high percentage—and it lines up with current research. A study from the Hechinger Report reveals that the vast majority of the nation’s two- and four-year colleges report enrolling students who are unprepared for college-level work. Furthermore, the National Center for Education Statistics reports that up to 65 percent of community college students take at least one remedial course.

 

The Broken Higher Education System: Addressing Stakeholder Needs for a More Adaptive Model — from educationoneducation.substack.com

Excerpt:

Higher education Chief Academic Officers (CAOs) must shift their perspective and strive to increase customer satisfaction to ensure the highest quality of educational products. A recent survey by Higher Education found that only 25% of customers were satisfied with the results higher education provided, contradicting the satisfaction differences of 99% of CAOs. Clearly, a disconnect exists between what higher education leaders deliver and what students, employers, and the changing labor market requirements are. To bridge this gap, higher education must develop products focusing on stakeholder feedback in product design, job requirements, and practical skills development.

From DSC:
So in terms of Design Thinking for reinventing lifelong learning, it seems to me that we need much more collaboration between the existing siloes. That is, we need students, educators, administrators, employers, and other stakeholders at the (re)design table. More experiments and what I call TrimTab Groups are needed.

But I think that the culture of many institutions of traditional higher education will prevent this from occurring. Many in academia shy away from (to put it politely) the world of business (even though they themselves ARE a business). I know, it’s not fair nor does it make sense. But many faculty members lean towards much more noble purposes, while never seeing the mounting gorillas of debt that they’ve heaped upon their students’/graduates’ backs. Those in academia shouldn’t be so quick to see themselves as being so incredibly different from those working in the corporate/business world.

The following quote seems appropriate to place here:


Along the lines of other items in the higher education space, see:

New Data Shows Emergency Pandemic Aid Helped Keep 18 Million Students Enrolled — from forbes.com by Edward Conroy

Excerpt:

The Department of Education (ED) has released new data showing that 18 million students were helped by emergency aid for colleges and universities throughout the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than half of which was used to provide emergency grants to students. These funds were provided through three rounds of Higher Education Emergency Relief Funds (HEERF) In total, $76.2 billion was provided, with half of those funds going to support students directly. Unusually for funding in higher education, the money was not heavily means-tested, and was distributed very quickly.

The report indicates that the funds were used for several essential purposes, including student basic needs, keeping staff employed, and helping keep students enrolled. For example, students used funds to cover things like food and housing at a time when employment was drying up for many students, ensuring that the Pandemic did not plunge students who already had limited funds deeper into basic needs insecurity.

Flagships prosper, while regionals suffer — from chronicle.com by Lee Gardner
Competition is getting fierce, and the gap is widening

Excerpts:

Some key numbers are moving in the right direction at the University of Oregon. The flagship institution enrolled 5,338 freshmen in the fall of 2022, its largest entering class ever. First-year enrollment increased 16 percent over 2021, which was also a record year. Meanwhile, Western Oregon University, a regional public institution an hour’s drive north, just outside Salem, lost nearly 7 percent of its enrollment over the same period.

In 28 states, flagships have seen enrollment rise between 2010 to 2021, while regionals have trended down, according to a Chronicle analysis of U.S. Education Department data. Across all states, enrollment at 78 public flagships rose 12.3 percent from 2010 to 2021, the most recent year for which data is available. Enrollment at 396 public regional universities slumped more than 4 percent during the same period.

Chronicle analysis of federal data showed, for example, that in Michigan, a state being hit hard by demographic shifts and with no central higher-ed authority, the flagship University of Michigan at Ann Arbor saw undergraduate enrollment rise 16 percent between 2010 and 2020. Over the same period, it fell at 11 of the state’s 12 other four-year public campuses.

 
© 2022 | Daniel Christian