Accreditation actions increased during financial downturn — from The Chronicle by Eric Kelderman

Excerpt:

“Not long ago, accreditation sanctions were rare. Now, in response to growing government criticism of poor disclosure about quality, pricing, and outcomes, as well as inefficient cost management, accreditors are taking more aggressive and quicker actions to bolster their role in demonstrating quality and performance standards in U.S. higher education,” the report says.

The main reasons for the actions are, not surprisingly, financial troubles for colleges struggling with endowment losses, cuts in state appropriations, and the growing institutional costs of student financial aid. But accreditors are also focusing more attention on outcomes, including assessing student learning and graduation rates, the report says.

From DSC:
If the public wants change in higher ed, I might suggest starting with changing who is on the accreditation teams.  Historically speaking, things don’t seem to have changed that much with all insiders on these teams. 

(I wondered when these agencies were going to start sensing some heat in their kitchens.  If I could make at least one prediction for 2013, it’s that the temperatures in those kitchens are going to go up in 2013. I’ll probably make more predictions, but I think that one is low-hanging fruit!)

 

If you build it, debt will come — a solid article from quickanded.com by Jeff Selingo

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

When we read or hear stories in the news media these days about debt in higher education, we typically assume they are about the trillion dollars in student loans held by college graduates and their families.

But last week The New York Times put the spotlight on an often ignored angle to questions of debt in higher education: the amount of money owed by colleges and universities themselves.

“The pile of debt — $205 billion outstanding in 2011 at the colleges rated by Moody’s — comes at a time of increasing uncertainty in academia,” Andrew Martin of The Times wrote in a front-page story.

Yet judging from the college officials quoted in The Times story, it seems they still don’t get that the financial model in higher education is forever changing. They still seem to believe that the model that has carried them for decades will continue.

The history of the United States is littered with industries that had similar hubris in the years or decade before they underwent massive change. Higher education is following that well-worn path.

 

Also see:

 

From DSC:
I must confess that I really appreciate the new or significantly enhanced buildings on our campus (which was done via a successful campaign).  However, I created the graphic below to encourage our  development group and other such departments across the country — as well as the donors of those institutions — to also:

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Daniel S. Christian - Think Virtual -- April 2012

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When I created that graphic, I had the words of Steve Jobs in mind.  Jobs specifically wanted Apple’s campaign from years ago to say, “Think different” (not think differently…as that changes the meaning, he asserted); along those lines, I’m suggesting, “Think virtual.”

An additional note for folks who are interested in the Bible:

  •  After reading John 4 (the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well), I could just hear the LORD saying…hmmm…nope…ultimately, you need to think spiritual.

 

 

Combine the trends listed in this graphic:

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Trends-ReportFromDeptOfEdu-2012

— from The Economics of Higher Education, Dec 2012 (pg 2)

 

…with the next several graphics…

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Surging college costs price out middle class -- from CNNMoney.com on June 13, 2011

 

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The middle class falls further behind

 

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Daniel S. Christian: My concerns with just maintaining the status quo (from 2009).

From 5/21/09

 

 

…and you can see that the Perfect Storm in Higher Ed has been amassed.  Massive change is in the air. People will find a way to achieve their goals/objectives — one way or another. College is still a good call — but what “college” and “university life” will look like in 5 years will likely be very different from what they look like today.

There is no returning to the “good ol’ days” — things are not going back to the way they were 5-10 years ago.  It’s time for massive — but controlled/intentional — experimentation within higher ed, to find out how best to use the Internet in order to promote learning (and, hopefully, to still make a living!).

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asdfsadf

 

 

 


Some examples that illustrate that change is in the air…and that the conversation continues to move outside traditional institutions of higher education (I mention these not to dog higher ed, but to get us to innovate, to reinvent ourselves, and to stay relevant!)


 

Big idea 2013: College becomes optional — from LinkedIn.com by Ben Smith

Jailbreaking the degree: The end of the 4 year diploma — from onlineuniversities.com by Justin Marquis

Excerpt:

What’s wrong with getting a college degree? According to the grassroots movement, “Jailbreaking the Degree,” being pushed by radical education startup Degreed.com, quite a bit. The organization has identified several fundamental flaws with the long standing college degree process. It aims to overcome them and dramatically change the nature of learning and credentialing in the process. In order to justify their initiative they present some dramatic numbers on their website…

Degreed wants to jailbreak the college degree — from techcrunch.com by Rip Empson

Saying no to college — NYT.com by Alex Williams

Do a Google search on uncollege.org and see what you get

The rise of college alternatives— from huffingtonpost.com by Dan Schawbel

educreations.com: Teach what you know. Learn what you don’t.

From DSC:
Some reflections on New platform lets professors set prices for their online courses — from InsideHigherEd.com by Jeffrey R. Young

Excerpt:

Professors typically don’t worry about what price point a course will sell at, or what amenities might attract a student to pick one course over another. But a new online platform, Professor Direct, lets instructors determine not only how much to charge for such courses, but also how much time they want to devote to services like office hours, online tutorials, and responding to students’ e-mails.

The new service is run by StraighterLine, a company that offers online, self-paced introductory courses. Unlike massive open online courses, or MOOC’s, StraighterLine’s courses aren’t free. But tuition is lower than what traditional colleges typically charge—the company calls its pricing “ultra-affordable.” A handful of colleges accept StraighterLine courses for transfer credit.
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StraighterLine-ProfsDirectlyToStudents-12-12-12

 

 

From DSC:
The power of online-based marketplaces. We’ve seen it in other industries.  Are we now going to see more of this within higher education as the unbundling of higher education seems to be a possibility?  Will there be an increased importance of professors’ individual brands? Could be.

The Power of Online Exchanges

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DanielChristian-The-unbundling-of-higher-education

 

From DSC:
Congrats Burck & Co. on your continued innovative thinking and business models! Way to help keep a college education accessible to many!

 

The Future of TV -- an infographic from Beesmart

 

From DSC:
The educational “store” part of this graphic could take several forms:

  • Online-based exchanges between buyers and sellers (teachers/professors and learners) — professors as their own brand
  • Institutional offerings/brands
  • Team-based content from newly-developed firms, organizations
  • Each of us puts up our own learning materials for others to take (for free or for a price)
  • Other

 

 

Excerpts from John Katzman’s Keynote:
Higher ed is made up of a series of smaller markets — niches [From DSC: What’s your niche?]

  • Elite level
  • Mid level
  • Entry level

Might have 2-3 high quality programs; and many smaller programs with lower production levels.

Fewer players of larger size

Consolidation is going to occur w/in higher ed. Besides consolidation, there will be collaboration/pooling of resources, and/or the hollowing out within higher ed.

 

From DSC:
Not that this is new…but looking at the above image, I wonder if more 100% online-based courses and schools will adopt this sort of “space”/interface as a sort of entryway into their institution’s materials.

 

 

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From DSC, some examples:

  • Unbundling and Unmooring: Technology and the Higher Ed Tsunami — from educause.org by Audrey Watters
  • Unbundling Higher Education | From the Bell Tower –– from lj.libraryjournal.com by Steven Bell
    Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
    Recent events in higher education suggest a new trend — earning degrees by the course from multiple providers. Are we looking at the iTunes model of unbundled higher ed? Call it alt-HE.
  • Napster, Udacity, and the Academy — from Clay Shirky
    Excerpt:
    Once you see this pattern—a new story rearranging people’s sense of the possible, with the incumbents the last to know—you see it everywhere. First, the people running the old system don’t notice the change. When they do, they assume it’s minor. Then that it’s a niche. Then a fad. And by the time they understand that the world has actually changed, they’ve squandered most of the time they had to adapt.
    .
    It’s been interesting watching this unfold in music, books, newspapers, TV, but nothing has ever been as interesting to me as watching it happen in my own backyard. Higher education is now being disrupted; our MP3 is the massive open online course (or MOOC), and our Napster is Udacity, the education startup.

    But who faces that choice? Are we to imagine an 18 year old who can set aside $250K and 4 years, but who would have a hard time choosing between a residential college and a series of MOOCs? Elite high school students will not be abandoning elite colleges any time soon; the issue isn’t what education of “the very best sort” looks like, but what the whole system looks like.

 

 

Excerpt:

With the public’s continued focus on value and affordability, higher education finds itself at a critical juncture. Cost pressures and increased global demand for access have given rise to innovations that have unleashed new delivery models into the education marketplace. Such innovation is required if universities are to thrive, compete, and bring new relevance and meaning to the value of college in the 21st century.

Also see:

  • Americans believe higher education must innovate — from Northeastern News
  • President: Witt must adapt to survive — from springfieldnewssun.com by Tom Stafford
    Excerpt:
    Liberal arts colleges that ignore market realities “absolutely won’t exist in the next decade,” Wittenberg University President Laurie M. Joyner told Springfield Rotarians on Monday.  But the practical or applied liberal arts education that she predicts can sustain Wittenberg will encourage deeper connections with Springfield, she said while speaking at the Hollenbeck-Bayley Conference Center, because “our students learn better when dealing with real-world problems.” A shrinking pool of price-sensitive high school graduates has combined with a bad economy to produce “the equivalent of a perfect storm for some of us,” said Joyner, who succeeded Mark Erickson on July 1.
  • Surviving disruption — from hbr.og by Maxwell Wessel and Clayton M. Christensen
    Excerpt:
    …to meet disrupters with disruption of their own, but also to guide their legacy businesses toward as healthy a future as possible.
  • Sanjay Sarma appointed as MIT’s first director of digital learning — from MIT by Steve Bradt
    Mechanical engineering professor will shepherd efforts to integrate elements of online education into traditional MIT courses.

From DSC:
Experimentation. Innovation. Experimentation. Innovation. Fail. Fail. Succeed. Fail. Succeed. Fail. 

 

Virtual U. -- College of future could be come one, come all

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From DSC:
I don’t think that what we know today as “MOOCs” are anywhere’s nearly fully-baked and ready for prime time.  They will be refined, altered , and new systems/software will be further developed for them.   But the idea of reducing costs, increasing access, and experimenting sounds good to me!  As illustrated above, the idea of “Rock Star Professor” or “Super Professor” is gaining traction.   Also, note the team-based approach here.

 

 

 

Current/Future State of Higher Education — from Educause Live by George Siemens, Andy Caulkins, Malcolm Brown

Change drivers

  • Globalization
  • Commercial/entrepreneurial activity
  • Funding cuts
  • Online learning
  • Unbundling of education systems
  • Technology advancement (mobiles)
  • Employment-oriented education
  • Big data and analytics

Net Pedagogies: New Models for Teaching & Learning

  • New pedagogies emerging from:
    • Concerns about how well institutions are meeting their mission, on behalf of students they serve
    • Pressures resulting from feeling constrained within the “Iron Triangle” of costs, access, and quality
    • New technologies
  • How to balance personalization with competency-based pathways
  • How to build community among students who are geographically distant and proceeding at different rates (a different cohort dynamic taking place here)
  • Personalized learning divisions/groups
  • Innovation labs <– From DSC: This lines up nicely with my posting here

Entrepreneurship

  • Deborah Quazzo, GSV Advisors
  • Velocity of change
  • e-books up
  • 200K education apps
  • 98% of students own some sort of device
  • Coursera — 33 partners, 1.7 million students
  • 13% of students now at for-profits
  • The Bear Story
    • Readiness — freshmen often needing remediation
    • Completion rates
    • Cost
    • Career
  • Venture capital and startups increasing
  • What’s driving investment
    • Funding issues
    • Accountability
    • Technology
    • Consumer choice
  • Waves of HE innovation
  • “Traditional institutions are not standing still”
  • Higher ed arms race — online program delivery (tuition-based) / MOOC (free)
  • Growth in MOOC students — .51 in Fall 2011, 2.79 in Fall 2012; 447% growth rate
  • Need to increase learning outcomes, access, capacity, and decrease costs

Big Data & Analytics

  • Erik Duval, Simon Buckingham Shum, Caroline Haythornthwaite
  • State of learning analytics
    • Open analytics
    • Standards
    • Methods and metrics
    • Impact on learner success
    • Early risk detection
    • Common language
    • Institutional use of analytics
    • Planning and deployment of LA
    • Move from concept to application
  • Participation wall seems to be occurring 30-40% of the time into the course
  • 762 tweets, 305 links, 172 RTs, 244 Unique Twitter accounts

Leadership in Education

  • James Hilton
    • Characterizing change
    • Not a linear system often times; instead, an emergent change; not always orderly and linear
    • Unknown end point
    • Adjust as you go
    • Adjust fundamental conditions
      • 2 fundamental forces in HE
      • Commoditization
      • Unbundling
    • “Find your North Star”
  • George Mehaffy
    • Challenge and change article
    • Massive change and great uncertainty
    • Technology changes everything
    • Traditional institutions loss of control
    • Students abilities to interact and learn without mediating
    • “Outsiders” becoming players
    • Venture capital
    • Models of college changing
    • Course models
    • Data analytics
    • Cost discrepancies
    • Measuring success
    • Loss of credentialing monopoly
    • Leadership vacuum
    • Change is rapid, profound, emergent
    • We need to rethink HE leadership model
    • We need to rethink HE in many fundamental dimensions
    • Now is the time for bold, imaginative, entrepreneurial leadership

Distributed Research

  • Traditional methods of sharing research, established centuries ago
  • Need to re-imagine those methods and generate higher, faster, better outcomes from research
  • Challenges: pace, dissemination, incentive to collaborate
  • Opportunities: immediacy, openness, new/richer tools and indicators, unprecedented progress

Still some challenges in offering a MOOC-based course:

  • Skillset development
  • Getting participants orientated to the course
  • Technological glitches

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Other resources/links:


 

From DSC:
Mr. Rob Bobeldyk and I were brainstorming last week about the
need to create A Center for Innovation — a smaller organization within our overall organization — that can be far more nimble and responsive.  Such a Center could be:

  • Constantly pulse-checking the relevant landscapes (technological, pedagogical, business models, other)
  • Researching potential approaches
  • Experimenting
  • Innovating
  • Failing
  • Succeeding some of the time — and handing off/transitioning the projects that gain traction to others in the larger organization (which may require building some new groups and/or departments at that point)

As I discovered HBR’s interview with John Kotter today, I felt our idea/direction/brainstorming is heading in the right direction!

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A revolutionary approach to strategic change -- John Kotter -- November 2012

 

That is, we are trying to keep the plane in flight while making some significant changes. Put another way, we are trying to keep the bread and butter in tact while experimenting with new business models and/or new products and services.

Kotter’s “Dual Operating System” affirms that a new/smaller/more nimble organization is appropriate.  Here are some graphics of Kotter’s “dual operating system”:

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 .

 

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The work of Christensen, Horn, and Johnson is highly-relevant here as well:

  • Disrupting Class
  • Disrupting College
  • The Innovator’s Dilemna


 

Addendums on 11/20/12:

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From DSC:
I wonder how MOOCs focused on language will go…?  It could be great to practice a language from folks all around the world — or will it be chaotic?  Different accents. Real-world speaking and listening. Real world conflict, perhaps, as well.  But it seems like there could be some effective learning going on — at least “on paper”.   I wonder, too, if 1/2 of the time folks could speak one language — and would be the students during that part of the class — while the other 1/2 of the time they speak another language — and would be the “teachers.”

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http://spanishmooc.com/

 

 

And for yet another item on innovation within higher ed! Whew!

  • Excelsior College and three California Community Colleges offer credit for professor-less MOOC — from online colleges.com by Alex Wukman
    Excerpt:
    Excelsior College has partnered with San Diego City College, San Diego Miramar College, and Santa Rosa Junior College to offer credit for a professor-less, or mechanical, massive open online course (MOOC). The course, an introduction to statistics class, is being developed by the 20 Million Minds Foundation and the online learning community OpenStudy.

New consortium of leading universities will move forward with transformative, for-credit online education program — from 2U.com
Semester Online™ will be first of its kind featuring rigorous, innovative, live courses

Excerpt (emphasis DSC)

LANDOVER, Md. — Nov. 15, 2012 — Today, a group of the nation’s leading universities announced plans to launch a new, innovative program that transforms the model of online education. Consortium members include Brandeis University, Duke University, Emory University, Northwestern University, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Notre Dame, University of Rochester, Vanderbilt University, Wake Forest University and Washington University in St. Louis. The new online education program, Semester Online,will be the first of its kind to offer undergraduate students the opportunity to take rigorous, online courses for credit from a consortium of universities. The program is delivered through a virtual classroom environment and interactive platform developed by 2U, formerly known as 2tor.

 

From DSC:
Interesting to see the impact of competition…

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Addendum on 11/16/12:

Elite Online Courses for Cash and Credit— from insidehigheredy.com by Steve Kolowich

Excerpt:

A consortium of 10 top-tier universities will soon offer fully online, credit-bearing undergraduate courses through a partnership with 2U, a company that facilitates online learning.

Any students enrolled at an “undergraduate experience anywhere in the world” will be eligible to take the courses, according to Chip Paucek, the CEO of 2U, which until recently was called 2tor. The first courses are slated to make their debut in the fall.

After a year in which the top universities in the world have clambered to offer massive open online courses (MOOCs) for no credit, this new project marks yet another turning point in online education. It is the first known example of top universities offering fully online, credit-bearing courses to undergraduates who are not actually enrolled at the institutions that are offering them.

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From DSC:
It’s not a stretch to think that we’ll soon be able to take part in this type of thing from our living rooms…

The Living [Class] Room -- by Daniel Christian -- July 2012 -- a second device used in conjunction with a Smart/Connected TV

 

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Also relevant here/see:
Attend the Global Education Conference
from your living room

Addendum on 11/19/12:
.

College crackup and the online future — from bloomberg.com by Mark C. Taylor

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College Crackup

Illustration by Keith Shore

Excerpt:

In the coming decade, emerging technologies will thoroughly transform higher education. Although distance learning and computer-assisted education have been around since the 1960s, financial pressures are forcing institutions to develop aggressive online programs.

These practical considerations shouldn’t overshadow one of the most promising innovations that online education will bring: The very structure of knowledge will change.

As students mix and match courses online, pressure will increase for professors to develop classes that integrate different approaches and disciplines.

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asdfsadf

 

 

Also see:

 

From DSC:
Creating “Innovation Labs” within each institution of higher education sounds like a good idea to me…we can experiment with things at smaller scales and see what works and what doesn’t.

Also see:
Take a lesson from Apple: A strategy to keep customers in your ecosystem — from forbes.com by Alonzo Canada

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

1.     Set focused, strategic targets.
2.     Create a portfolio of experiments. Like Apple or Mercedes Benz, once you have focused, strategic targets set, create a series of experiments.  A general rule of thumb is the 7-2-1 rule:  one experiment should be big and relatively safe.  Two experiments should be slightly more risky and moderately sized.  Then seven experiments should be highly risky and low cost. These experiments can be scaled accordingly across teams, business units, and the entire company. 3M is one of the first companies to mandate that its employees spend 20% of their time thinking up blue sky ideas beyond its current lines of business and this is how Post-It Notes were born.  Art Fry, an engineer at 3M wanted to find a better way to manage notes in his hymnal on Sundays at church.
3.    Leverage learnings to inform new experiments.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Digital Revolution’s Winners And Losers — from Information Week by John Foley
Workers with in-demand digital skills benefit most as computers increasingly take over
everyday tasks. In this InformationWeek 500 video, MIT’s Erik Brynjolfsson discusses
how this trend could affect your enterprise.

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.
From DSC:
I agree with Erik that a large swath of people are being left behind, mainly because of technological changes and the pace of those changes. Again I ask, can you hear the engines roar?  How can we re-train folks to take advantage of the 3+million open jobs out there? How can we reinvent ourselves as quickly as possible?
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The pace has changed -- don't come onto the track in a Model T
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Addendums:
  • Andrew McAfee: Are droids taking our jobs?
    Robots and algorithms are getting good at jobs like building cars, writing articles, translating — jobs that once required a human. So what will we humans do for work? Andrew McAfee walks through recent labor data to say: We ain’t seen nothing yet. But then he steps back to look at big history, and comes up with a surprising and even thrilling view of what comes next.
  • America’s jobs gap: 9 million — from cnn.com by Tami Luhby
© 2024 | Daniel Christian