Light a Candle: For-Profit Education, Online Learning
As everyone knows, state funding of higher education is notoriously unreliable. After a nationwide surge in direct spending to universities (the boom years), the bust has arrived. Big surprise.
While direct appropriations to state universities have foundered, the state and federal money spent on students increased. This follows public choice theory: politicians spend money to gain the greatest number of votes. There are far more students (and their parents) who vote than there are institutions who want government money.
This is good for those students who use the money wisely and it is good for “school choice”: unlike K-12, students can choose their state college or university. Universities with declining enrollments moan and groan when students head to their competitors. To wit: my own university consists of two campuses: one with skyrocketing enrollment, the other in perpetual decline.
No doubt the news for those wedded to the status quo is bad. Nevertheless, recent trends in nontraditional education have taken off during this crisis. Even before the fiscal bust, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and many others noted that colleges had gotten flabby–not with money but with their way of delivering education in the 21st century.
Campuses facing fiscal difficulty need to get aggressive with educational innovation. Online learning is up (again). Philanthropist Bill Gates is expressing interest in putting his money into improving online education. For the first time, I am using a free online textbook funded by the federal government and distinguished foundations.
Institutions with enrollment and/or funding shortfalls are turning to for-profit alliances. One of the biggest surprises: the National Labor College has formed a for-profit joint venture that retains faculty unionization (NLC is dedicated to promoting unionism). “Bread-and-butter” union faculty ought to take notice: Change or die.
Here’s to a new year hoping that my own institution (Southern Illinois University) starts lighting candles rather than cursing the darkness.
See also this article (http://chronicle.com/article/For-Profit-Colleges-Change/64012/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en) in the news today: “For-Profit Colleges Change Higher Education’s Landscape.”
Yes, check out the CHE article mentioned in the comment above for that publication’s usual pro-administration, self-servingly (the CHE lives from ads funded by higher ed administrations) positive view of for-profit higher ed. However, be sure to read the comment section for some of the lacunae of the article, the “impense’” downplayed in the final edit (since Robin Wilson’s articles are usually more “balanced” than this one).
For example, the link in the main posting here at nasblog concerning the National Labor College should be the complete version so that the comment section can be perused: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/01/18/labor Providing the link to the print version only does not well serve the cause of reasoned debate.
And then, while you’re at it, read about how the controversy surrounding the NLC’s for-profit foray likely resulted in Princeton Review’s ouster of the president of the National Labor College in a surprise “resignation” that makes no sense otherwise: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/01/25/labor And note that the Chronicle of Higher Education appears to have refused to carry the story — one week before putting out its special edition of for-profit coverage. (Yes, I know the CHE was informed of the IHE reporting.)
The sad truth is that the “answer” to the ills of higher ed lies not in a knee-jerk genuflection before the private sector for-profit model because competition to reduce costs is not the only “goal” for a higher education institution. That the non-profit sector often improperly exploits its privileges is undeniable but the advantages of a non-profit model should not be disparaged. Often, the same persons who sing the praises of, for example, faith-based non-profits, suddenly wax vitriolic when considering public sector education.
Truth, justice, and the true American way lies somewhere in the middle.
The NLC mention was meant mostly as a postscript to the main thrust of the story: Public colleges need to change (in whatever way) or those of us with declining enrollments (my own institution included) will surely wither (if not die).
Yes, the truth is in the middle but the bureaucracy at _public_ universities has taken its time in moving beyond the “curse the darkness.”
If not online ed, for-profit alliance, etc. then what? More cursing? That’s the point. I’ve done my own fair share of cursing but I was “hoping” (the word of 2008) for some signs that SOMEone is trying to light candles.
Light a candle for accountability.
If you think that the publics are unaccountable, with their open budgets and state freedom of information laws, we ain’t seen nothin’ yet with for-profit education.
Did y’all catch those blacked out sections of the DOEd’s Inspector General report on North Central’s Higher Learning Commission and American International University on the abuses of no or inadequate credit-hour definitions running rampant in accreditation bodies? (cf. http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oig/auditreports/AlertMemorandums/l13j0006.pdf) Well, that’s because AIU pulled a “proprietary information” stunt on its courses and content, tying the hands of the government. That’s in the accreditation game, the only accountability game in town for the for-profits.
So, if those blacked-out letters are what the for-profit sector calls “lighting a candle” then give me the penumbras of the publics and the non-profits any day. If what we want is what has been called elsewhere “the twilight of academic freedom” — and the death of the arts and sciences in the rush to “career education ueber alles” — then let’s all follow the Chronicle of Higher Education Administration’s lead in an uncritical praising of for-profit education.
Democracy takes work — and that’s what public education reflects: the state of democracy in each state. Citizens have the best hope for reform in public education, but it takes engaged citizens to demand it. Instead, the states have chipped away at public education and are planning to abandon even more of their right to accountability in state-by-state (semi-)privatization measures, as in New York State.
Now, if we prefer to have the decisions about higher education made by for-profit boardrooms bossing part-time untenured faculty who sell their labor piecemeal by the course, well we certainly will get what we’ve paid for.
Lighting a candle, indeed….
Here we go again:
This was not a pitch for for-profit education (although I know a lot more about online ed and will defend that as a useful adjunct to brick-and-mortar public education).
Again, I haven’t heard any alternatives: we are back to cursing, whining and wishing this were the 1960s when college was free, blah, blah.
I knew it was wrong for me to break my cynical stance on things.
Please re-read my comments. They were triggered primarily by the Chronicle’s coverage of for-profits and the quasi-benediction given to the National Labor College venture (after all, it took some deliberate clicking to get a version of that article without the highly-critical comments).
If I borrowed the title of the posting and extended its metaphor, is that not simply an exercise in poetic license?
As for “alternatives,” I mentioned the obvious: democracy. Involvement in the state governance process to ensure accountability in public higher education. But democracy is messy, democracy is demanding, democracy is work; on the other hand, it is easy to have a “cynical stance on things.”
Instead of “democracy in action,” what is happening now in public education is that those self-same bloated and arrogant higher education bureaucracies are not only getting a “free pass” (“a Hail Mary pass”?) from their legislatures but are having their autocratic powers strengthened by these privatization efforts.
When NAS member Candace de Russy was a trustee of SUNY she fought valiantly for accountability and achieved the institution of some system-wide measures, but not nearly all she and we desire. I would propose that to support democracy through public education is not to throw money at its problems through partnerships with for-profits and semi-privatization legislation, but to enforce transparency and accountability at all levels.
This is neither a “curse” nor a “whine” nor a “wish” — it is a call for “democracy in action!” It is a warning not to surrender public education at all levels to the closed and impenetrable for-profit boardroom and the enrichment of stockholders. It is an exhortation to become involved in one’s state education processes, to practice “articulation” pre-K to 16+ in one’s own work and career (how many college/university faculty ever set foot in a school unless in the wake of their own children’s attendance?), to write not only tracts for one’s resume but demands of one’s state senators, et al.
For if we surrender education to the for-profit sector, as a substitute for rather than a supplement to the non-profit/public sector, then civic education will be as one practices on Wall Street and not as one preaches in the Constitution. Indeed, “free speech” is clearly for sale and for censure in the for-profit sector, because all speech is bought and sold in a for-profit institution.
In conclusion, firstly and lastly, let us never allow ourselves to forget that enforceable First Amendment rights belong only to those in public education.
“This is neither a “curse” nor a “whine” nor a “wish” — it is a call for “democracy in action!” It is a warning not to surrender public education at all levels to the closed and impenetrable for-profit boardroom and the enrichment of stockholders.”
I have no idea what this means (other than the “knee-jerk” reaction against stockholders, etc.). Does it mean more government spending on public education? What does it mean?? To quote Jerry Maguire: “Show me the money.”
The problem seems to be the union-backed Democrats in my state, the Education Establishment, and the education school — stockholders of for-profit enterprises were Johnny come latelys compared to this bunch of parasites.
It is simple: If one values academic freedom and free speech (hallmarks of the NAS, nicht wahr?), then one must be wary of for-profit ventures as the “new light” of (public) education. It is simply a matter of law: for-profit boards are kings in their castles and all speech within them is for-hire and at-will — and that includes the content of the classroom on both sides of the podium.
We are all citizens of at least one state and each of our states has a public university system in crisis. Seize the moment and the day — and call for legislative action to impose accountability, call for trustee action to enforce transparency, etc. Hold the feet of the Education Establishment to the fire of citizen involvement and legislative oversight. Get into the schools by partnering with school faculty on projects, etc. and help craft the legislation that will break the strangle-hold of the “parasites” and force true transparency and accountability.
Recognize that public pre-K to 16+ education is the province of the states and become involved, even if you are a faculty member at a private non-profit. The faculty of the “disciplines” far out-number the faculty of the education school in any institution — if the discipline faculty actually were involved in education “articulation pre-K to 16+” as part of their view of their professional and civic obligation, their influence would dwarf that of all the education schools in the nation.
I have walked the walk of the talk I talk — and it’s lonely out here, for it is the “parasite” faculty who enable the “parasite” administrations of the Education Establishment to continue business as usual. Scratch most tenured faculty and you’ll find a “parasite” as “not on my time” is a watchword of their day. And yes, “parasite” faculty are attracted to the for-profit sector like a moth to a flame — for all they see is the shimmer of gold.
Yes, unions have been as problematic as higher education administrations, but they are no more and no less problematic than the regional accreditation agencies. Both define and enforce some version of the “credit hour,” the backbone “unit of measurement” of student learning and of faculty work — a crisis is impending.
We are at a watershed moment — either the First Amendment is a priority for our lives and for our understanding of education as a life-long exercise of public freedom, or it isn’t. As higher education faculty, we are either “engaged” in this moment or we are “parasites.” For, this is a race, all right — and Johnny-come-latelys should never be underestimated.