Predatory Colleges Find Friends in Congress (nytimes.com)
Assigning value to a college program based on its value in the economy is problematic for me in three ways: 1) it narrows the value of college down to economic value when in reality that value is much more complex and influenced by several other factors, 2) it takes a lot of the consumer-ish responsibility students need to have to make choices about where to go to college and what program to enroll in, and 3) colleges have very little control over how the economy values a set of skills. 

Articles for June 24, 2015

Adults, Computers and Problem Solving (OECD)
This report is especially interesting because it looked at how well adults accomplished "problem-solving tasks that require the use of computer applications, such as e-mail, spreadsheets, word-processing applications and websites..." Specifically, the report found that "...literacy proficiency and age have the strongest independent relationships to proficiency in problem solving in technology-rich environments..." (p. 54).  Of course, these skills apply to several career clusters, but the technical fields are especially susceptible to advances in technology and use a lot of specialized computer programs. Students who have trouble creating an e-mail or using Microsoft Word are not going to have an easy time working with image editing software, repair databases, or even just managing all the files that result from several drafts and separate pages typical of a technical field. This is not to mention those fields that need to create and/or repair technologies, like in a car, machine, or network, or the fact that many technical fields now conduct hiring processes electronically. 

Articles for June 22, 2015

Higher ed as a commodity? Colleges have only themselves to blame (washingtonpost.com)
This is a response to Hunter Rawling's post College is not a commodity, stop treating it like one (June 9), and it's pretty reflective of the other side of the balancing act colleges are facing. The hard reality is that colleges need tuition to operate, and not all would-be tuition-payers would be convinced by the message author Jeffrey Selingo feels higher education needs to promote. 

Selingo offers three reasons why the commoditization of higher education is its own fault: 

1. For decades, higher education has promoted the personal economic value of higher education. 
2. Students are not solely responsible for their success. The college does matter. 
3. Colleges have turned the four-year degree into an assembly line of getting in and getting out as quickly as possible. 

Articles for June 19, 2015

The Watchdogs of College Education Rarely Bite (The Wall Street Journal)
The Journal uses plenty of data to talk about a dimension of the college graduation/loan default rate conversation that has seemed to have been left alone until now: accreditation. Although it lays blame without really laying blame, the article offers several statistics on how many colleges accreditors have closed, and what the graduation and loan default rates are at those colleges they haven't. 

Articles for June 15, 2015

Lazy Rivers and Student Debt (insidehighered.com)
Although there are some political undertones--especially in the comments section--about the recent attention brought to this issue by Chris Christie and Elizabeth Warren, this article does offer some hard data about how much amenities like aquatic centers and climbing walls actually cost in relation to other causes for rising tuition costs. The argument is usually that large, expensive amenities like these attract students; the counter is that college affordability and repairs to academic facilities should be the priority. To me, though, this seems like the end of a long breadcrumb trail. 

Articles for June 10, 2015

College is not a commodity. Stop treating it like one. (washingtonpost.com)
This is a fabulous, fabulous post written by Hunter Rawlings, president of the Association of American Universities and former president of Cornell University and the University of Iowa. His main point is that the public forms all perception about higher education as if it is a commodity by focusing on the economic dimension of it; he uses the example of a car. However, "unlike a car, college requires the 'buyer' to do most of the work to obtain its value" (para. 4). He goes on: "...most public discussion of higher ed today pretends that students simply receive their education from colleges the way a person walks out of Best Buy with a television" (para. 5).    

Articles for June 4, 2015

Serving America's New Traditional Students (highereducationforall.com) [PDF]
The focus of this short report is on the changing demographics of post-secondary institutions, and that education policy needs to allow access to account for those demographic changes. A key point given is a projection from the U.S. Census Bureau: by 2050, half of the population in the United States will belong to a minority group. Tied with the focus on the need for educational attainment to achieve better income equality, this has strong implications for what colleges are then tasked to do.

While the education than an institution provides must be tailored to the needs of modern workforce, in terms of skills, it must also be tailored to the changing needs and demands of students. 

Articles for June 1, 2015

Adult Course Offers Learning for the Sake of Learning (npr.org)
Imagine that: intrinsic motivation increases success and value in higher education. This kind of motivation makes going to college more meaningful than just getting a degree for the end goal of making more money at a better job--and I say "just" because it should be one reason, not the only reason. 

The students at the program in this article are those students that we, in the learning center, see the most often. These are the students who traditionally need the most help, and are most likely to drop out before completion. Why? Just a handful of lines down the page, we find an answer: 

"'I was so freaking nervous,' Mitchell says, 'because I felt so dumb. You know, I felt like I was too old.'" 

Articles for May 28, 2015

Deciding to Go to College (New America Foundation) [PDF]
The first brief in the series on results from the College Decisions Survey, this article covers why students choose to go to college, the factors they use to apply to a specific college, and how financial concerns play into those decisions. Unlike other similar coverage, these data will include traditional and non-traditional students.

What's interesting is that the first figure shows the top reported reasons to go to college, with the top three--"to improve my employment opportunities," "to make more money," and "to get a good job"--centered around expanding financial horizons. Put that beside the second figure that show the top reported factors in deciding a specific college, and you won't find "how many graduates find full-time employment in the field within six months" until #5 on the list; others centered around graduation and ROI are in the same chunk of the ranking. Instead, the highest percentages go to those questions related to more immediate concerns: "the majors/programs that are offered," "availability of financial aid," "how much it costs," and "where it is located."

Articles for May 27, 2015

Can we really prepare kids for both college and career? (hechingerreport.org)
This article might say more about the state of industry than the state of education. California's linked-learning curriculum includes college-prep academic courses and on-the-job training; in my opinion, this should be the norm, not the exception, for a high school experience. To balance this idealism, Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, makes a more realistic point: preparing students for both is unrealistic because the requirements of college and the requirements of a career are vastly different. Perhaps it is not only education that we need to consider reforming. 

Articles for May 26, 2015

A New College for Old Credits (insidehighered.com)

College Unbound, a degree-completion program turned private non-profit college in Rhode Island, will be allowed to award undergraduate degrees to students who fall into the "some college, no degree" category. The article reports that the program uses personalized curriculum, a form of competency-based education, and even a student's current job to form classes and earn credits. So, it appears, this single program includes just about everything that scares the current system of higher education. 

Hurry Up and Wait

As Randal Graves says in the classic Clerks: "This job would be great if it wasn't for the [bleeping] customers."

Higher education has done things a certain way for a long time, and that's been acceptable because most of the students could work with it. But the changes in student population, coupled with the lofty goals set for college graduation and ever-increasing requirements to enter the job fields that pay a living wage, require us to rethink some of the assumptions we've been able to make in the past.

This is an issue because, as we continue to figure out how to help students be more successful in college, the answer becomes more and more evident. We just have to hurry up and wait. 

In California, a 2-year degree takes more like 4 years. Why? Sometimes, students need some advising to make sure they take the right classes. Sometimes, colleges can't offer the classes that students need when students need it because of budget cuts.

Sometimes, students need to take care of business first. There are numerous articles about developmental education and how ineffective and detrimental the added time is for students. The most prominent is Complete College America's 2012 Time is the Enemy, which states:

Time is the enemy of college completion...The longer it takes, the more life
gets in the way of success.

That doggone life gets in the way of everything.

First Things First

One of my favorite parts of Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is "Habit 3: Put First Things First." I read this book for one of my introductory education classes, and my professor used the demonstration in which there is a large jar and several different sizes of rocks. She first put as many large rocks as could fit, and asked "Is there still room?" We said yes, so she put as many of the next-largest sized rocks as could fit, and asked again if there was still room. She did this all the way until we'd gotten to pouring sand and then water into the jar. 

The first lesson my writing students get is on subjects and verbs because once a writer can pick those out, most of those other pieces (commas, modifiers, verb usage, structure) fall into place. We practice "sentence sifting" - a challenge to students to "sift" a sentence down to the three most important words. 


In other words, take care of the most important things first and the rest will find its place. 
This is a lesson we seem to forget in higher education. If we break down higher education to the three most important words, the ideal sift is "Faculty teach students." 


I'm not sure this is the case if we take a look at the hot topics in higher ed. 

Who ARE you, online student?

If, as many surveys indicate:

• industry says college students aren't graduating with the skills they need
• most students are not prepared for college-level work
• students say they aren't prepared for college
• we know that the key to a college student's success is the personal connections he/she can make... 

why is our solution to make education quicker, less structured, and more removed?


Meanwhile: 

A Times Union/Siena Research Institute poll conducted earlier this month turned up a wide variety of opinions about education in upstate New York. Some were contradictory and some were nuanced, but there was near-unanimity on one point: Our schools need to do a better job of giving students the job skills to survive in the modern economy. [emphasis mine]

This article from Times Union is suggesting that the results of this poll indicate that respondents value skills more than a college degree, specifically the kind of skills you might acquire at a technical college. The article goes on to say:

...there will always be jobs that require skill and training but not necessarily a college degree. 

Others in the education field say that some high schools simply want to be able to say they send their students off to four-year-colleges. That's the kind of thing that looks good on rankings of schools.

But now students are taking note of programs offered by BOCES offices, or career-focused schools that can serve as pipelines to the job market; others provide actual workplace experiences.

Hmm. So is the real problem that we aren't graduating students with degrees? Or that we aren't putting a quality education behind that degree?  It seems that we place the responsibility for the quality - the "what" and "how" - of an education on the instructor and the curriculum. That would leave technology's job to help out the graduation rate - the "how," "when," and "where."  

There's one question we often ignore: WHO?

Elephants in the Coffee Shop

The announcement today that Starbucks Will Pay For Employees To Complete College (Minnesota Public Radio News) has gotten plenty of coverage, and for good reason. The rising costs of college, the shrinking number of college students who finish or who start and stop, and the "is college worth it?" question needed a fresh, positive component. But is this the answer? 

It's a very nice start. But no. 

However wonderful it is to see a company willing to substantially invest in the education of its employees, especially without any obligation to those employees, this still won't address all the elephants in the coffee shop. 

An Odd Agreement

Usually, an opinion written by the owner of a for-profit education business would completely turn me off. But this public comment from former Washington Post CEO Don Graham to Education Secretary Arne Duncan prompted a few thoughtful nods. Although I don't agree with everything Graham writes, the predicted effect of regulation on colleges is worth talking about. 

Accountability Can Be Good

My work style pegs me as one who uses feedback and recognition to find meaning in my work. Some, like author Lauren Stiller Rikleen, might attribute that more to the fact that I'm a Millenial. Whatever the root cause of it is, that feedback and recognition holds me accountable to what I do. If I were a college, I'd be a horrible employee.

Faculty: The Missing Voice

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The power of questions is one that is severely underutilized in higher education, if only because of who we're asking those questions.

As a review, it's the people - specifically, the instructors - who ultimately make a student's college experience successful or not. After all, they're the ones teaching the class, evaluating labs, submitting the grades, bringing in industry, and carefully guiding students through their academic plan. We know that improved academic performance ultimately leads to improved student retention and graduation. Who better to know how to improve the classroom?

It turns out the faculty aren't even being asked.

Ms. Angelou Knows the Answer

Yesterday, we learned of the passing of one of our time's greatest wordsmiths, Maya Angelou. The quote here is one of my favorites from her. How curious that I also came across an intriguing new approach to higher education that uses the same principle.

An Equitable Investment

Why do students attend college? It's worth posing this question to both students and colleges. Colleges and students might answer similarly: to learn more about what the student is interested in so he/she can use that knowledge to get a better job. Rephrase the question - what do you expect to gain from this education? - and there may be a difference. 

And where does this fit in the midst of what seems to be an unending debate about if college is worth the rising price of tuition, how to handle growing student debt when graduates are still struggling to find jobs, and what to do about low completion rate and the job skills gap? 

This is a worthwhile discussion to have since we instructors are now, more than ever, obligated to hold up our end of the deal. If college is now spoken of and treated as an economic investment in which the skills we're teaching are expected to have a market value, then faculty are responsible for redefining what "learning" means in a college classroom.