Higher education: Are we making the grade?
Department of Education moves to provide financial aid to pay for learning and not seat time
Competency based education
A new and growing segment in higher education: Minimally traditional students
This month, my institution (The College of St. Scholastica)
celebrated our centennial. In the middle of this celebration, we also had our
10-year re-authorization visit from the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) of
North Central. All of us worked hard to prepare for the HLC visit, and some of
our faculty and staff worked exceptionally hard. With all the celebrations and
the extra work happening around campus, it was hard to even notice an
uneventful, but momentous event that also occurred in October 2012. What was
this event?
It was the fact that after 100 years, our enrollment of non-traditional students surpassed the enrollment of our traditional students. I am very impressed with the foresight of our academic leaders and key faculty members to launch extended sites and online programs over the last decade to meet the growing needs of the non-traditional students.
In higher education, we often hear the terms traditional and non-traditional. Do we all have a common understanding of what this means? After all, if non-traditional students now represent the majority of students attending our college, we should know how they are defined. Right?
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES, 2002) defines the non-traditional student as anyone who satisfies at least one of the following characteristics:
1) Delays enrollment (does not enter post-secondary education
in the same calendar year that he or she finished high school);
2) Attends part-time for at least part of the academic year;
3) Works full-time (35 hours or more per week) while
enrolled;
4) Is considered financially independent for purposes of determining eligibility for financial aid;
5) Has dependents other than a
spouse (usually children, but sometimes others);
6) Is a single parent (either not married or married but
separated and has dependents); and
7) Does not have a high school diploma (completed high school with a GED or other high school completion certificate or did not finish high school).
The NCES study reveals that that 76% of all undergraduates
in 1999–2000 could be considered non-traditional. The study also segments this
large population based on the number of the characteristics present. Students
are considered “minimally non-traditional” if they have only one
non-traditional characteristic, “moderately non-traditional” if they have two
or three, and “highly non-traditional” if they have four or more.
Isn't this interesting! We now have minimally, moderately, and highly non-traditional students. If I look across our traditional students, however, I would even suggest that we could segment the traditional students into “pure traditional” and “minimally traditional.”
Using the NCES study as a framework, I would define “pure traditional” as a student with the following characteristics:
1) Enters post-secondary education in the same calendar year
that he or she finished high school.
2) Attends full-time for the entire academic year.
3) Does not work while enrolled.
4) Is not financially independent for purposes of
determining eligibility for financial aid.
5) Does not have any dependents.
6) Is not married.
I would then define a new category “minimally traditional” as a student with the following characteristics:
1) Enters post-secondary education in the same calendar year
that he or she finished high school, but may need to extend their academic
journey by reducing the number of classes taken.
2) Registers for the minimum credit load to maintain full
time status.
3) Works up to 34 hours per week while enrolled.
4) Is not financially independent for purposes of
determining eligibility for financial aid
5) Does not have any dependents.
6) Is not married.
Many of the students that I work with on campus are self-driven, career-focused, and debt-aware. I would classify these students in the “minimally traditional” segment. They are working between 10-20 hours/week, so that they don’t leave college with a huge debt.
So, in summary, we likely have the following five segments
in higher education:
1) Pure
traditional
2) Minimally
traditional
3) Minimally
non-traditional
4) Moderately
non-traditional
5) Highly
non-traditional
Based on
demographics, the economy, and educational costs, it is clear that the only
segment that appears to not be growing is “pure traditional.” I would even
suggest that the current and future growth in private not-for-profit 4-year institutions, like St.
Scholastica, will be in the “moderately” and “highly non-traditional” student
segment. This could be alarming for many institutions. Why? The NCES study
reveals that in 1999-2000, over 38% of the population of students at for-profit
schools were in the “moderately non-traditional” segment and 35% in “highly
non-traditional” segment. These are the segments with the lowest retention
trends, and likely the highest default rates in student loans. Is your
institution preparing for the unique educational needs of non-traditional and
minimally traditional students? Are your institutional strategies aligned to
meet the needs of these students? If not, it is time for your institution (and
our government representatives at the local, state, and national level) to
re-imagine the higher education student as a non-traditional or at least
minimally traditional student.
Thoughts?
Reference:
National Center for Education Statistics (2002).
"Special Analysis 2002 Nontraditional Undergraduates", Institute of
Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. NCES study on Non-traditional students.
If you are interested in reading more about the growing population of non-traditional students, see Dr. Michael Offerman's blog The Other 85%.
Egoless Teaching: Is this the Foundation for Improving Higher Education Outcomes?
During our annual Dean’s retreat last week, my colleagues and I were contemplating the new ideas swirling around in higher education to broaden access, decrease costs, improve educational outcomes, and ultimately improve our economy. These ideas have been around for some time, but they currently seem to be taking on heightened priority in higher education. These ideas include:
- Flipped classrooms
- Massively Open Online Courses (MOOC)
- Three-year undergraduate degrees
- Streamlining curricula and reducing credit requirements for undergraduate degrees
- Eliminating undergraduate majors with very small enrollments
- And other Web 2.0 technologies applied to learning...
For an instant, I thought of the concept of Egoless Programming proposed by Gerald Weinberg in the 1970’s. Weinberg’s premise was that in order for a computer programmer to become more effective and efficient in developing software for their organization, he or she needed to remain “egoless” with respect to their software code. They needed to accept that they could make mistakes and could benefit from having someone else review their work. They also needed to improve their productivity by looking for reusable code that they could simply use or slightly adapt. Weinberg also identified the need to be a good team player by being respectful and positive to colleagues. What does this have to do with improving higher education teaching? Maybe a lot!
I’ve adapted the Ten Commandments of Egoless Programming and applied them to higher education teaching. This is a draft, so feel free to comment and help me adapt my thinking. Here goes:
The Ten Commandments of Egoless Teaching
This set of guidelines is proposed to to help teachers keep themselves (their egos, actually) separate from student learning.
- Understand and accept that you will make mistakes. As a discipline-specific professor, you likely did not get specific training on pedagogy during your formal education. It’s ok to not have the perfect course, lecture, rubric, or exam. You want to quickly find mistakes and make the necessary adaptations to improve your student learning outcomes, right?
- You are not your course. Remember that the entire point is to improve learning outcomes, so seek opportunities to find things that are not working in your class. Don't take it personally when a colleague (or a student) identifies an improvement opportunity in your course.
- No matter how much you know, someone else will always know more. Such an individual can teach you some new things if you ask. This individual will likely be outside of your department or institution (or maybe a subject matter expert working in a professional setting), but that should not matter. Seek and accept input from others, even if you think it is not necessary.
- Don't reinvent a lesson plan or course content without researching available resources. With the extent of free courses or tutorials from experts in various disciplines, does it make sense to reinvent the lesson plan or course component?
- Treat people who know less than you with respect, deference, and patience. There are likely some faculty members in every college that are not collegial with other faculty members. Some of my dean colleagues at other institutions frequently use the terms prima donnas and crybabies. From my experience, this is a small percentage of faculty members, so please don't reinforce this stereotype with anger and impatience.
- The only constant in the world is change. Change is hard for everyone, including faculty members. Look at each change as a new challenge, not as some major inconvenience to be fought. Be open, flexible, and accept it with a positive attitude.
- The only true authority stems from knowledge, not from position. Higher education is moving from a local and very private environment to a global and increasingly transparent environment. Knowledge engenders authority, and authority engenders respect—so if you want respect in an egoless environment, cultivate knowledge in and outside of your academic institution.
- Fight for what you believe, but gracefully accept defeat. Understand that sometimes your ideas will be overruled within your department, school, or college. Even if you do turn out to be right, don't take revenge or say, “I told you so.” Move on. Do you know faculty members that still are holding grudges about having their “great idea” shot down 20 or more years ago?
- Don't be "the professor in the room." Don't be the professor sitting in the dark office emerging only to lecture his or her class. This person in the room is increasingly becoming out of touch with their students, with their field, with their colleagues, and may not have a place in an open, collaborative environment.
- Critique course instead of people—be kind to the teacher, not to the course. As much as possible, make all of your comments positive and oriented to improving the course, the instruction, the learning experience, and the learning outcomes. Relate comments to best practices in teaching, program outcomes, increased performance, etc.
Adapted from Lamont Adams “Commandments of Egoless Programming” at http://www.techrepublic.com/article/download-the-buildercom-ten-commandments-of-egoless-programming/1045782
What do you think about this concept? Will it improve higher education outcomes? I would like to hear your thoughts.
p.s. Jerry - if you come across this blog entry, I can see that you are still very active at age 78. We talked on the phone when I was doing my PhD research in the late 1990's. Thanks for spending some time chatting with me and helping me refine my dissertation topic. Also, I want to thank you for your thought leadership around software engineering, egoless programming, and systems thinking! - Kurt
Finding the perfect graduate program in Computer Science in the World!
I am experienced in many facets of information technology and have been a business consultant and technology trainer for business process systems, like SAP, Epicor, Baan, JD Edwards. I have also worked on creating films. I've been successful because I love to learn and I work hard. I now want to find a graduate school that will help me become a better programmer, as well as, building a solid science background. I am willing to go anywhere in the world, but would like to avoid congested big cities. I have developed skills (like calculus 3 and 4), learning Python, and taking microbiology classes. I am interested in smart grids, climate change, modeling molecules in 3D, and so on, BUT I don't know where to turn to learn more about appropriate schools for my interests. Can you tell me if this information is available?
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My response:
You have asked a very interesting question. A question that I have never received before! If I'm correct, you are asking about ways of finding the best place in the world for you to learn advanced computer science skills that will help you make a difference in the world. You have such an excellent background with enterprise level software applications, like SAP, JD Edwards, etc. You also have interest in research areas that ultimately will be critical for our world, like grid computing, climate change (like alternative energy or carbon footprint management), molecular modeling (like advanced modeling that could lead to the elimination of childhood leukemia). You also want to study in a city that has the perfect blend of campus and city life (but not too much traffic).
Wow! Well, I don't know if you are going to find a single source of information to help you make a selection. I do have a couple of suggestions:
1) Determine your career passion in terms of domain or application areas. For example: do you want to apply your CS knowledge in molecular modeling to eliminate childhood leukemia?
2) Find innovative companies that are working in some of the areas (e.g. molecular modeling) and follow up with the top technology officers. Ask these top innovators about the educational requirements for their technology positions. If they mention graduate degrees, then ask them which schools they would recommend. You might find, however, that they might not even require a graduate degree!
3) When you find these innovative companies, you may also find "clusters" of similar companies around a central hub of colleges/universities. I would suggest that you actually visit these central hubs and see if the college and community is a good fit. Keep an open mind about the "prestige" factor. MIT, Stanford, Lund, may be great schools, but are they a part of the "hub" that is aligned with your career passion?
Hope this helps. I wish you the best.
Kurt
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What do you think? Would you have given different advice? Do you know of any information source that compares graduate programs based on the passion/interest of students?
Thanks for reading this blog. I very much appreciate the visitors and especially those readers that ask great questions! -- Kurt
International trips for our students
We continue to expand access to international trips for our students at the undergraduate and graduate level in the School of Business and Technology. Three years ago, when I arrived at the College of St. Scholastica, we provided student trips to Petrozavodsk, Russian; Ireland, and also had our first trip to China. Now, I'm happy to see that we have broadened our access to other locations and more students. Some of our undergraduate students have now traveled to India, as well as, Morrocco. We have also taken MBA students to Russia, China, and now India. In fact, we have a current group in India this week. See their blog:
India capstone
I have also suggested to faculty members that we provide our students some experience in Brazil or Argentina. I am delighted to see that we are sending a group of MBA students to Argentina this Fall.
All these trips provide a great learning experience for our students and they likely will remember their experience for a lifetime.
Thanks for letting me share an accomplishment.
Regards,
Kurt
Excellence in Strategic Management: What can we learn from for-profit universities?
If you are interested, here is a link to my paper Strategic initiatives in higher education. Although I thought the audience of traditional faculty members and administrators would have reacted more negatively to linking "excellence" with "for-profit", I was amazed at how well the paper was received.
Let me know what you think of the paper!
Regards,
Kurt
Public, Private, or Proprietary Colleges: Should Students Care?
As a student, I’ve completed educational programs offered from public, private, and proprietary (also called for-profit) universities. I have to tell you that as a student, it didn’t cross my mind to consider the legal business status of the university. When I was a traditional college student, I attended the University of Wisconsin-Stout. It was close to home so that I could commute and save money. The Applied Math program offered an excellent foundation for someone (like me) that really didn’t know what I wanted to do when I graduated. I also was impressed with the program’s 98% placement rate and among the highest paying starting salaries for their graduates across the UW System. Although my undergraduate experience happened many years ago, I most valued the faculty members that challenged me during the 4 year journey towards a bachelor’s degree. The experience helped me get my first job at McDonald Douglas Aircraft (now Boeing).
My next educational experience was at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. This is a private college that offered a unique graduate program in software engineering that was one of a few across the country. At this stage in my life, the goal was no longer to get a broad educational foundation. Rather, I needed to establish even more credibility with the technical people working with me in the Research and Development area at Medtronic. I also needed to work full time, so having classes in the evening worked well. As in my earlier education, I most valued the faculty members that challenged me during this journey. Looking back at the experience, I believe the Master of Science degree in Software Engineering allowed me to refine my technical skills, gain recognition within Medtronic, and ultimately helped me get promoted into a management role.
As a manager of various software projects at Medtronic, I realized quickly that what I had learned as a technologist wasn’t helping me. In fact, the technology part of projects was often MUCH EASIER than the human and organizational aspects of the projects. I did the best job that I could, and my teams had many successful software releases, but I realized that there must be some knowledge that I needed to do a better job. I was fortunate to find a PhD in Applied Management program at Walden University (a proprietary school that is now owned by Laureate Education, Inc.). At this stage in my life, it was about developing a deep understanding of how to better manage technical people. I most valued the faculty members from around the country that challenged me to learn about human development, organizational theory, systems theory, etc. and apply this learning in my dissertation research. Looking back at this experience, I realized that it prepared me to enter higher education and help build the business and technology programs at Capella University in the early 2000’s.
As a student, did it matter to me if I attended a public, private, or proprietary college? I would say, no! It was really all about the quality of the faculty! However, things are more complicated today.
Public schools or state colleges are faced with funding challenges as states continue to reduce their financial contributions. It wasn’t too many year ago that state colleges would get 70% of their operating expenses covered by their states. Some state colleges are seeing this contribution go to 30% or less! What happens if this goes to zero? Today, students are likely seeing much larger class sizes. They are also seeing as much as 10% annual tuition increases. I was able to pay my tuition for my undergraduate education within the University of Wisconsin system by working at a gas station and being a statistics tutor (as I recall, both jobs paid $4/hour). Today, I would need to get a sizable student loan to complete my four year degree and it would likely take me more than four years!
Private schools are also faced with funding challenges, but to a lesser degree. Expenses, both faculty related and operational, continue to increase and it’s hard not passing these increases to the student. Endowments at the private schools are likely still down from poor financial performance in the market, as well as, reduction in the cash gifts because of the hard economic times. I’m seeing tuition increases in the 3-4% range for 2012. During my time at the University of St. Thomas, my employer paid for my entire graduate program. Today, I would likely need to pay out of pocket $10,000 to $20,000 because of the employer caps tied to IRS limits for tuition reimbursement. I still feel that this would be a good investment.
Proprietary or for-profit schools, have different challenges. Their enrollments are off because of economic, political, and regulatory issues. Expenses are up because many of the leading for-profits are pumping more funding into increasing the quality of their academic programs. Lower enrollments and increased expenses are tough on for-profits. On the positive side, many of the leading for-profits, like University of Phoenix, Capella, Strayer, DeVry, and even Walden (Laureate) are likely sitting on a large amount of cash to weather the storm. I’m seeing some tuition increases across the for-profits, but most in the 3-4% range. During my Walden experience, my employer paid for a portion of my doctorate program. I still ended up with a student loan of approximately $25,000. Today, I would likely have a much, MUCH larger loan. Would it be worth it? Yes, the doctorate opened up so many doors for me and ushered me into a new career in higher education.
New considerations for future students:
As a future student to a public, private, or proprietary college, I would suggest that you do some research to determine how financially sound these institutions are BEFORE jumping into your academic journey. I don’t think anyone wants to spend the time and money getting a diploma from a college that doesn’t exist a decade from now, right?
Public schools – I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these schools do not survive an ongoing tough economy with deep reduction in state funding. If you are interested in attending a state school, see if you can determine how financially secure they are for the future.
Private schools – What is the annual operation budget? What is annual revenue? How large is their endowment? Similar to our personal cash reserve, does the college have cash reserves to cover 6 months to a year of their annual operating budget?
Proprietary – An advantage of proprietary universities is that many are publically traded giving easy access to financial reports. Pull the latest quarterly report. Are enrollments meeting the forecasts? Are expenses being managed per expectations?
Looking at the financial health of a college is only one of many new criteria to evaluate. For more information on selecting a school, check out my slideshare presentation at:
http://www.slideshare.net/klinberg/so-you-want-to-go-back-to-school
Clifford and Shireman Transcript
http://significantfederation.com/eblast/2012.02/landing/Coffee-with-Robert-Shireman.pdf
If you don't know these guys, Robert Shireman was the deputy undersecretary of education in the Obama Administration in 2009 and 2010 (Robert is now leading the nonprofit California Competes, an independent project aimed at ensuring a talent pool will exist in the future). Michael Clifford is the Founder and Chairman of SignificantFederation.com. Michael views himself as a "creative business/finance/ethics strategist that is a catalyst for creating high-quality education companies serving high demand, underserved, niche communities with robust campus as well as special online expertise."
The entire debate brings out interesting perspectives from both Clifford and Shireman. One interesting comment was from Michael Clifford, when he states:
"We need to see a merger of the four years of high school and the four-year bachelor’s degree. High school needs to become a two and a half year experience, and the four-year bachelor’s degree needs to become a three-year or less experience. Programming needs to be fully integrated based on an Individualized Learning Plan with a heavy integration of personality testing, skills evaluation, passion meters, and exploratory internships over a full six-year period based on new internships every semester. This simple concept, executed at the local level, would jump-start our high school and bachelor programs immediately."
Michael also states: "I believe that we will soon see an 'all-you-can-eat' online
regionally accredited model based on a monthly subscription fee of perhaps $99.00 per month to serve as a self-paced, self-motivated accredited degree program."
Robert and Michael both brought up the importance of measuring learning outcomes, but Robert stressed the difficulty in doing this! Robert states "Which colleges are good at stimulating boundless ingenuity? The difficulty in measuring something like that explains why reputation – a brand that can be trusted – is so dominant in the higher education market. As an alternative or a supplement to some of the current efforts to produce better assessments, I am intrigued by the idea of digitally capturing the actual coursework that thousands of students do at various colleges. Examining the actual evidence of student achievement – the material that faculty judge as worthy of conferring a degree -- would value the variety that is a part of higher education’s strength, and might allow some of the less measurable goals of higher education to show through."
Very interesting debate and worth the time reading it! What do you think? Are there any examples that you can share where students are earning a High School diploma +Undergraduate degree in 5.5 years vs 8+ years? What about Michael's suggestion about a monthly subscription fee to earn a regionally-accredited bachelor degree? Does anyone know if a school is working on a pricing model like this? What about Robert's idea of capturing coursework from 1000's of students and having quality assessed by a panel of faculty? Could faculty members even agree on a rubric?
I'd like to hear your thoughts!
Kurt
Drexel Online: A for-profit spin-off that's gaining momentum
Most for-profit universities that I study (e.g., American Public, Capella, DeVry, Strayer, and Phoenix) needed to create their own "brand" as high quality, accessible, career-oriented educational providers for busy, working adults, etc. One for-profit entity has executed a corporate strategy that I find noteworthy for this blog. In 2002, non-profit, private Drexel University spun-off a for-profit venture called Drexel e-Learning.This venture is now called Drexel Online. In 2010, a reporter for the Sacramento Business Journal documented that Drexel Online had enrolled 8,000 students in nearly 90 certificates, undergraduate, and graduate degrees. It is difficult, however, to verify Drexel Online’s success because the balances and activities are consolidated in the Drexel University financial statements. I compared the 2009 and 2011 financial statements from Drexel University with the assumption that the “auxiliary enterprises” entries on the financial statements were equivalent to the Drexel Online contribution to the university. If this is correct, then the revenue of Drexel Online increased from $65.7M to $73.9M from 2009 to 2011 (12% increase during a significantly challenging economic time) with corresponding expenses of $34M for 2009 and $39M for 2011. Again, if this assumption in reporting is correct, Drexel University benefited from a net gain of nearly $35M in 2011 due to their online strategy. Drexel Online reports that their programs follow the same policies and academic standards as those taught on the campus at Drexel University. Drexel Online was also in the news in 2010 as they received the Sloan-C award for institution-wide excellence in online education indicating that the program had exceptional programs of demonstrably high quality at the regional and national levels and across disciplines.
Can anyone give me more insight into Drexel Online? For example, are my assumptions of revenue and expenses correct? Do you know other non-profit schools that have executed similar strategies of spinning off for-profit ventures? Also, If you are a faculty member or student at Drexel Online I'd like to hear from you. How would you rate your experience?
