e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: higher education

  • Re:Booting CA Higher Education – Transcript of Phil Hill Presentation

    The following is a rough transcript of my presentation at the 20 Million Minds conference on January 7th. 

    Thank you very much, and thanks to everybody for coming to the conference.

    We seem to be in a unique situation. I had someone remark to me in the hallway discussions leading up to the event that we have quite a unique group of people here, both in terms of the online educational programs and in terms of statewide system administration and faculty.

    Jeff Selingo pointed out very well some of the major forces affecting higher education and affecting where we’re going. A lot of people understand this current situation is not a temporary setback, not a temporary change where we can pull back to the normal once certain things change. We’re in a situation where an entire education ecosystem is changing and putting us into uncharted territory. How higher education changes will be up to a lot of the people in this room, as far as key choices go. How can we use the power of online education to transform traditional institutions and systems? I think this meeting is helping to set up a lot of the discussion on the potential changes.

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  • Re:Booting CA Higher Education – Transcript of Jeff Selingo Keynote

    The following is a rough transcript of Jeff Selingo’s keynote at the 20 Million Minds conference on January 7th. Any errors in transcription are mine, and sections that were garbled are marked by []. I’d like to thank Rovy Branon for his recordings of these sessions. I’ll post additional transcripts soon.

    We’re gathered here today at one of the great public university institutions, and this past summer, at another great public institution, on the other side of the country a drama played out that revealed the immense pressures affecting colleges and universities as they deal with the financial and historical foundation that is swiftly shifting [under us].

    Selingo

    Last June, as many of you know, on a late Sunday afternoon, the University of Virginia announced that its president Teresa Sullivan was stepping down after just two years on the job, citing philosophical differences of opinion with the board. The resignation of this popular leader shocked the campus community and over the next few weeks opposition to the board action mounted. Angry students, faculty and alumni took to Twitter and Facebook. The governor threatened to withhold financial support and said for the board to figure this out of he’d replace them all.

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  • New Post at WCET On Activist Role of State Government in Higher Education

    I have a new post up at WCET based on some observations from the recent 20 Million Minds conference.

    In past years the primary role of state government was to take the lead on funding while working with statewide systems on enrollment policies to serve workforce and general educational needs. Last week in California we witnessed the state government, both from the governor’s office and the legislature, become the driving force of change for determining the role of educational technology and online education to transform the public systems. State officials are no longer content with encouraging and hoping that postsecondary institutions will develop a strategy for systemic change on their own.

    Three interdependent events are emerging that clarify this trend.

    Read the whole article here.

  • Re:Booting California Higher Education – Transcript of Darrell Steinberg Introduction

    The following is a rough transcript of Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg’s talk at the 20 Million Minds conference on January 7th. Any errors in transcription are mine, and sections that were garbled are marked by []. I’d like to thank Rovy Branon for his recordings of these sessions. I’ll post additional transcripts soon.

    Thank you, Dean. Senator Florez, once you’re a senator, you’re always a senator. And thank you for your nice introduction and for inviting me to give a brief welcome, and I know we have a busy agenda today. And I want to thank you and 20 Million Minds, not only for organizing this forum, but for directing me towards these issues that we’re talking about here today.

    Steinberg

    I’m not really a tech guy that much [] – I think about traditional education, mental health, foster care … I balance budgets and that sort of thing. And this [online education] is a whole new world for me. But Senator Florez last year, after he left office, talked to me about this revolution and possibilities around using technology in ways that not only equal or enhance quality but also reduce the cost of higher education for struggling students and their families. And so after we did SB1052 and 1053, which are now being implemented after Governor Brown’s signature, with the help of the faculty associations across all three systems, that take the 50 most popular courses across the three systems, and develop instructional materials to an online or open source format. Offer them as a competitive alternative to the traditional textbook and ensure that that offering is free for the student online (and no more than $20 if they print it). Simple, but potentially revolutionary in terms of bringing down costs of instructional materials, where we know the cost of higher education is becoming prohibitive to too many people and so many families.

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  • Summary of Statements Before California Panel Discussion on Online Education

    As Michael mentioned, the two of us will be participating in a panel discussion next week – Rebooting CA Higher Education, sponsored by the 20 Million Minds Foundation, on January 8th. The event will be live streamed.

    I’ve been asked to give a short talk based on my recent EDUCAUSE Review article that described various online educational models, and I will also moderate several panels. Given my role, I’d like to collect links to several of the key posts and articles that frame the issues to be discussed next week. After the event I’ll share my thoughts on the discussions.

    Statements Prior to Formation of Online Symposium

    The panel discussion is based on governor Jerry Brown’s call for the three public higher education systems in California (University of California, California State University and California Community Colleges) to evaluate online education as one method to control or reduce student costs. In particular, much of the discussion started during Governor Brown’s meeting with the UC Regents on Nov 14, 2012.

  • The Rising Non-Instructional Cost of College Exemplified By University of Minnesota

    This past weekend the Wall Street Journal published an insightful article on administrative bloat at the University of Minnesota and how it typifies a major problem relating to rising tuition and student debt. The article is heavily based on the new president of the university, Eric Kaler, and his attempts to address rising costs. Unfortunately the article was posted over the weekend and is behind a paywall, but I’ll excerpt some relevant sections.

    When Eric Kaler became president of the University of Minnesota last year, he pledged to curb soaring tuition by cutting administrative overhead. But he hit a snag: No one could tell him exactly what it cost to manage the school.

    Like many public colleges, the University of Minnesota went on a spending spree over the past decade, paid for by a steady stream of state money and rising tuition. Officials didn’t keep close tabs on their payroll as it swelled beyond 19,000 employees, nearly one for every 3½ students. “The more questions I asked, the less happy I was,” Dr. Kaler said.

    Charles Lane at the Washington Post wrote a column today based on the WSJ story, which thankfully is available without a paywall. He summarized some of the key findings of the WSJ study.

    At the University of Minnesota, the number of employees with “human resources” or “personnel” in their job titles has grown from 180 to 272 since the 2004-05 academic year. Since 2006, the university has spent $10 million on consultants for a vast new housing development that is decades from completion. It employs 139 people for marketing, promotions and communications. Some 81 administrators make $200,000 per year or more.

    In the past decade, Minnesota’s administrative payroll has gone up three times as fast as the teaching payroll, and twice as fast as student enrollment.

    Oh, and tuition more than doubled in that same period, to more than $13,000 per year.

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  • MOOCs in 2012: Dismantling the Status Quo

    The dominant story in higher education for 2012 was clearly the rise of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), particularly the xMOOCs such as Coursera, Udacity, and edX. There has been a lot of debate on the merits of xMOOCs in terms of disruption, business model and academic quality. While I think these questions are interesting, the more important impact from xMOOCs can be seen in terms of forcing higher education as a system or culture to no longer ignore online education as a self-contained side issue and instead evaluate the role of online education for all of higher education.

    Ignoring the Impact of Online Education

    For decades, if not centuries, the higher education system in the US has been holding on to a relatively stable status quo. Demand for postsecondary degrees constantly rises, the economic value of these degrees rises, the reputation of institutions remains high. This status quo has held despite two very uncomfortable underlying issues. One is that tuition and total student costs at a faster rate than inflation or even health care. The second is that US higher education as a system has not leveraged the remarkable gains from technology that almost every other industry has achieved.

    It’s true that there have been many innovations in higher education based on technology usage such as online software, but the system at large has been remarkably resilient and avoided any structural change. Yes, the vast majority of institutions have a centrally-supported LMS, but the pedagogical design of most courses has remained unchanged. Yes, many individual faculty have designed rich learning experiences within their courses, but their departments and colleges have typically resisted the uncomfortable discussion of whether these new pedagogical models should diffuse to the broader set of courses and programs. Yes, there have been online education innovations from for-profits and even public colleges such as Rio Salado and SNHU, but these organizations have remained self-contained and not directly affected the mainline non-profit educational model.

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