A few years ago when there were calls for increased accountability coming from multiple places, including the U.S. Department of Education, one response was to point to the assessment of student engagement using the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). The NSSE results were cited as an example of accountability [...]
Working Learners: Educating Our Entire Workforce for Success in the 21st Century is a good read with an important message – and it addresses the needs of the other 85 percent. Louis Soares of the Center for American Progress writes in this paper that working students, those who combine [...]
As Inside Higher Ed reports, there has been yet another gathering of higher education leaders talking about how higher education needs to change. This time they talked about the need to serve diverse and non-traditional students, borrowing ideas from the for-profit colleges and creating flexibility for students. All sound [...]
I spend a lot of time with colleagues from traditional, face-to-face colleges and universities and often hear them dismiss schools that have been reported to have very low completion rates. It is obvious that these folks, despite working in higher education, do not understand the national problem we have with [...]
In this Chronicle of Higher Education article, Christopher C. Morphew and Barrett J. Taylor, a professor and a doctoral student in educational leadership, describe their finding that schools often use multiple mission statements, in part to influence their standing in the U.S. News and World Report rankings. As they [...]
Jane Wellman and Dennis Jones offer some important challenges to conventional wisdom about college costs in this Inside Higher Ed article. They see a developing national agenda for higher education driven by the goal put forward by President Obama to return the U.S. to world leadership in degree attainment [...]
Inside Higher Ed details how “skill training” is delivered at Kellogg Community College in Michigan. This is a story of breaking up the standard way that postsecondary education is packaged. That is, taking the standard 3-credit course and breaking it into its parts, taking concepts or competencies one at [...]
All higher education institutions are under pressure to produce more degrees within current resources. This pressure is particularly strong for publicly supported colleges. Inside Higher Ed considers a new report from the Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity and Accountability. Patrick Kelly of the National Center for Education [...]
In his commentary in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Robert Zemsky ponders just what it would take to create change in American higher education. He suggests that the kind of reform being seen in Europe could not happen here. He notes that various reform efforts in the United States [...]
I have written before about the problem of relying on reputation to judge a college or university’s quality, and I recommended that we need to measure outputs, especially learning outcomes. But I had not really thought about how that reliance on reputation as an indication of quality has impacted the [...]
This Inside Higher Ed article is interesting because it deals with graduation rates at colleges that serve students who are at risk of not completing their studies. It is about a study conducted for the Career College Association (CCA) that attempts to pull apart federal student data bases in [...]
Despite the comments that follow this article, the expectation that higher education is accountable to the people who fund it and to whom it serves is not going to go away. No matter how much some folks try to diminish those who call for accountability or those who [...]
Earlier this year, after reading several brief articles citing the surge in three-year bachelor’s degrees, I decided to take a look at what was going on in this area. To say the least, it was a disappointing undertaking since most of what is being done is to cram four years [...]
Congratulations to The Council for Higher Education and Accreditation (CHEA) for its joint statement with UNESCO about how to combat diploma mills. While reported to be short on details, this type of work is important for higher education in America and around the world.
The American Enterprise Institute recently released its study titled “Diplomas and Dropouts: Which Colleges Actually Graduate Their Students (and Which Don’t).” There are parts of the study that are good. There is an attempt to compare institutions with similar missions, and there is a strong emphasis on success, as in [...]
As reported on the Inside Higher Ed Web site, the American Federation of Teachers released analysis of ten-year’s worth of data on the decline of faculty who have earned and been awarded tenure. I think this quote from Barbara Bowen, president of the Professional Staff Congress that is [...]
After years of hard work and much deep thinking by myself and the leaders of several leading adult-serving colleges and universities, it is gratifying to see the media are recognizing Transparency by Design. U.S. News & World Report, Inside Higher Ed and the Chronicle of Higher Education have published articles [...]
In this Chronicle of Higher Education commentary, Margaret Brooks claims that online courses are better than free beer. Actually, she is responding to a colleague who does not like online courses who stated that it was wrong to offer online courses just because students demand them because “students demand [...]
This article from the Chronicle of Higher Education has been getting a good deal of attention at schools across the country. It certainly addresses the problem of increasing costs for higher education. The authors’ statement that “Consumers who have questioned whether it is worth spending $1,000 a square foot [...]
As stated by Inside Higher Ed, reporting on a newly released meta-analysis of research by the U. S. Department of Education, “online learning has definite advantages over face-to-face instruction when it comes to teaching and learning.” Wow—this is what those of us involved in online learning have been arguing [...]
The premise of this blog is that the prevailing view about who attends college, and how they engage, is way off the mark. The general assumption is that students go directly to college after high school, live on a campus, and study full time. That view drives public policy decisions [...]
Basically, Mark C. Taylor argues that the “dirty little secret” is that graduate students are underpaid for the work they do in helping teach and run [...]
This is a perfectly silly piece. To assert that a study by the Association of American Colleges and Universities demonstrates that assessment of learning outcomes is widespread but students don’t know about it is really more than silly. What is the purpose of assessment if students don’t know it [...]
Over the last few months, various public colleges and universities have announced that they are restricting enrollment due to financial reasons. One example is the University of California institutions. See this LA Times article for a story about how it is more difficult to get into the UC institutions [...]
A recent Washington Post article reviews the “ambitious” Obama administration plans to change the entire landscape for student financial aid. The article specifically cites the problem of students “amassing debt on a scale that approximates a home mortgage.” I recently posted about increasing concerns over student debt.
The article [...]
I have fantastic news to report. Capella University has won a platinum Learning Impact Award from the IMS Global Learning Consortium for outstanding use of technology. This prestigious award recognizes the most impactful use of technology worldwide in support of learning. Congratulations are deserved by everyone at Capella who has [...]
I have repeatedly posted on the failings of the 21st Century GI Bill and its negative impact on veterans. The VA is insisting on pressing forward with implementation when the evidence keeps piling on that the bill is seriously flawed and unfair. The article below from the April 29, 2009, [...]
Having spent many years at public and land-grant universities, and having developed a different version of a “global campus” at [...]
EduVentures has released a timely survey of the attitudes of adults about the value of higher education. It reveals the same level of complexity and uncertainty that consumers in general are feeling as they try to make sense of how the recession is impacting their lives.
While it is often [...]
The Midwestern Higher Education Compact (MHEC) recently released its report on a summit of what it describes as “200 higher education stakeholders” who addressed the topic “Difficult Dialogues, Rewarding Solutions: The Imperative to Expand Postsecondary Opportunities While Controlling Costs.” The report tells how the summit participants developed an [...]
In a recent post, I cited how National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data documented a need for higher education institutions in the U.S. to produce a million new degrees every year for the next sixteen years in order to remain globally competitive. Along this same line, an article on [...]
Capella University will host a panel discussion titled “Moving Beyond Reputation: Evaluating Quality in Higher Education” on April 7 at 1 p.m. EST in Crystal City, VA, and will also be webcast live. The event will be moderated by Ray Suarez, Senior Correspondent, The NewsHour, PBS. Please watch the video [...]
There has been considerable discussion and concern about how well the United States is ranked internationally on the proportion of our population that has a college degree. College degree attainment is seen as critical for our ability to compete globally and maintain a healthy economy. The National Center for Education [...]
There has recently been a lot of activity to create new institutes, alliances, and proposals about the assessment of learning outcomes and accreditation. See
[www.insidehighered.com]
and
[www.insidehighered.com]
Note that some of the same folks were involved in both the accreditation and the learning assessment efforts. And these are individuals [...]
As reported in Inside Higher Ed, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has given funds to an effort to stimulate the potential development of linked databases that might someday allow us to track individual students through their education pathway even if they move from state to state. Currently, this [...]
On Jan. 29, Inside Higher Ed carried the following story:
Under the new GI Bill, which will cover tuition up to the rate for the most expensive public institution in the state, costlier private colleges can opt to enter into a matching program with the federal government to waive the balance. [...]
I have written for months that the 21st Century GI Bill was unfair because it denied veterans who attend a higher education program online access to the housing allowance that would be paid to those attending a face-to-face program.
http://www.theother85percent.com/2008/07/what-is-wrong-with-the-21st-century-gi-bill
The latest explanation for why policy-makers went this route [...]
Recently the National Center for Educational Statistics released data about distance education at degree-granting postsecondary institutions. This data is worth reviewing because we know that distance education, particularly online, is heavily utilized by adult and other part-time students - the other 85 percent.
While some still question the viability [...]
I have made several posts referencing the work of Peter Ewell. Mr. Ewell wrote an article in the November-December 2008 publication of Change, titled “No Correlation: Musings on Some Myths About Quality.
Mr. Ewell leads off with “For an enterprise dedicated to truth, American higher education harbors a lot of [...]
I first wrote about the problems in the 21st Century GI Bill last July. Well, the problems are finally getting some media attention.
When asked by the reporter for Inside Higher Ed who wrote this recent article why I thought that the bill included the disincentive for distance education, [...]
A recent article claims that the current report of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) “challenges online learning assumptions.” But this is not the first time that NSSE has documented that students in online programs report that they are very engaged in their learning, more so than their [...]
Obviously the extreme economic downturn is having an effect on higher education, and there are many articles in the press about immediate and future impacts. The Wall Street Journal captured the general issues that have recently been in the press, and concludes that the combination of current and planned enrollment [...]
Recently the annual survey of online learning was released by the Sloan Consortium. The report shows continued growth in demand for online offerings despite the expectation of many, including the report’s authors, that demand would slow.
Institutions responding to the survey indicated that they believe current economic challenges will [...]
An article posted to Inside Higher Ed reporting on this year’s results from the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) indicates that many community college students are part of the other 85 percent of college students: the article correctly reports that “many more (students) at community colleges work, [...]
I have posted several times about Transparency by Design, a consumer information and accountability initiative. Well, I have great news. This program was recently recognized by the Lumina Foundation for Education with a $629,000 grant.
This will allow the institutions involved in Transparency by Design the opportunity to expand [...]
It is rewarding to see this article on Inside Higher Ed that students are “flocking online.” Having spent many years in various forms of distance learning and over a decade in online learning, it is interesting that many universities are just now dealing with the issues that flow from [...]
In a previous post, I questioned what Measuring Up actually measures and whether the message to state policymakers was off-base because it fails to acknowledge the contributions of cross-border online institutions, particularly in providing higher education opportunities to adults. Clearly, those involved in Measuring Up understand that there [...]
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced the award of $69-million in grants to help low-income young people complete a college degree or certificate by age 26. These grants will particularly help community college students, and will make a difference and start the effort to double the number [...]
On Dec. 3, the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education released “Measuring Up 2008: The National Report Card on Higher Education” that has received a predictable amount of media attention. I compliment Pat Callan and his colleagues for calling for more data, transparency, and understanding of the [...]
