The Learning Cloud

Amending the future of higher education.

Secretary Spellings' Commission on the Future of Higher Education recently issued a second draft of its upcoming report. This "performance" blogger was pleased by the commission's position that, "To meet the challenges of the 21st century, higher education must change from a system based on reputation to one based on performance." If the commission would now place front and center the necessary, systemic role of technology in improving performance when per-student-FTE costs must simultaneously be reduced, then the path to higher performance would be clearer and the future of higher education would arrive sooner and more affordably. 

While honoring the reasonable request of its high ed commissioners to soften the tone of its critique of the present state of higher education, the commission left intact most of its ideas for how to improve the performance of higher education. The article excerpted below provides a nice analysis of the commission's second draft and amended direction. Those who subscribe to the Chronicle of Higher Education can also read a Chronicle article about the commission's second draft

For more on the commission's progress, see my recent post, Tough love from the Commission on the Future of Higher Education. Meanwhile, read:

Commission Report, Take 2
Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed, July 17, 2006

Gone are the statement that America’s colleges and universities face “grave” problems, an offhanded reference to grade inflation, and the controversial call for a “national” approach to higher education accreditation. In their place are descriptions to colleges as “treasured national assets” and to American higher education as “the very best system in the world.” The second draft of the report by the Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education, which was circulated to the panel’s members late Friday and could be released publicly as soon as today, differs significantly from the heavily criticized staff-written first draft that the commission’s chairman, Charles Miller, released two weeks ago. The latest report is far from a finished product — it includes neither a preamble (which contained the first draft’s most inflammatory language) or a conclusion, for instance — but the new document is much more cohesive and more fully represents the views of the 19 commissioners, whose written and verbal critiques of the rushed-into-print initial draft are incorporated on every page. Many panel members complained that the initial draft mainly reflected the thinking and work of the commission’s outside writer and stable of consultants, often seen through the prism of Miller himself. Commission members sent in written comments, and 12 of the commissioners gathered behind closed doors in Washington late last month to review and revise the first draft. Read more ...

NASULGC and AASCU put a stake in the ground

NASULGC, with support from AASCU, just released a draft report, Elements of Accountability for Public Universities and Colleges. From the report:

"Our goal is to suggest here a reasonable and helpful set of accountability measures for universities. It contains three elements of accountability data: consumer data, campus climate or student engagement data, and educational outcome measurements. The set certainly does not contain all of the accountability information one might imagine but it does contain key measurements that should help stakeholders assess undergraduate student learning and provide other useful information. Transparency in collecting and presenting this information is important if we hope to have an accountability system acceptable to the public. We urge that accountability data be used only to compare specific universities with their own past performance and with the performance of comparable universities. We of course know that public data is just that and will be used by others. Finally, we think that regional accreditors will want to consider using the set of accountability measures to help satisfy their standards."

I applaud NASULGC and AASCU for proactively responding to the need to improve and account for academic results. It is problematic to make claims about academic performance if it is not measured in a way that can be "benchmarked" among peer institutions.  Doug Lederman, writing on July 11 in Inside Higher Ed, offers a nice summary of the draft report's tentative recommendations for benchmarking.

Tough love from the Commission on the Future of Higher Education

The Commission on the future of Higher Education issued its first draft report on June 26, 2006. The draft was written by the commission's outside writer and was described by some members as too negative in tone. A meeting of the commission on June 28, however, apparently didn't focus on tone, but instead, and with some camaraderie, on substance.

A tough-minded draft was, in my opinion, to be expected. After all, in forming the commission in September of 2005, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings may have been reacting adversely to the final report issued in March of 2005 by the National Commission on Accountability in Higher Education (NCAHE). In submitting its report to its sponsoring organization, the State Higher Education Executive Officers, the NCAHE copped the plea that, "improved accountability for better results is imperative, but how to improve accountability in higher education is not so obvious."

Chairman Charles Miller of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education may be determined not to allow the commission's eventual final report to meet the vapid fate of the NCAHE report. One way to do that is to start with an aggressive first draft and work toward consensus from there. The draft presents a number of recommendations for how to improve and account for performance in higher education. Some of those recommendations intersect the institutional performance themes and advice found in this blog.  At a high level, for example, the commission recommends:

• Require institutions to measure student learning using measures such as the National Survey of Student Engagement and the Community College Survey of Student Engagement, as well as the Collegiate Learning Assessment and the Measure of Academic Proficiency and Progress (states).
• Provide incentives for states, higher-education associations, systems, and institutions to develop outcomes-focused accountability systems.
• Develop new and better means to control costs and improve productivity, and demonstrate the "value added" they provide for student learning.
• Provide financial incentives to institutions to lower costs through technological advances.
• Do more to support and harness the power of distance learning.
• Create a "bottom line" for college performance that measures institutional costs and performance, and enables parents and policy makers to see institutional results in terms of academic quality, productivity, and efficiency.

I will report on the commission's work over the months ahead. Meanwhile, here are a few links to articles about the draft report and some additional links to earlier articles about the commission's deliberations.

• Members of Federal Panel on Higher Education Express Optimism After Closed-Door Discussions of Draft Report (requires login)
  Kelly Field, Chronicle of Higher Eduction, June 29,2006
• Prose and Politics
  Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed, June 28, 2006
• Draft Report From Federal Panel on Higher Education Takes Aim at Academe
  Kelly Field, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 27, 2006
• Panel's Draft Report Calls for an Overhaul of Higher Education Nationwide
  Karen Arenson, New York Times, June 27, 2006
• A Texas Millionaire Plots the Future of Higher Education: As chairman of a federal commission, Charles Miller challenges the 'change resistant' culture of colleges (requires a login)
  Kelly Field, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 2, 2006
• Prominent Member of Higher-Education Commission Will Form Research Center on College Costs (requires a login)
  Kelly Field, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 24, 2006
• Higher-Education Commission Ponders Turning 218 Ideas Into 6 Recommendations (requires a login)
  Kelly Field, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 22, 2006
• Future of Higher Education Is Divisive Topic for Panel (requires a login)
  Sam Dillon, New York Times, May 20, 2006

Is online learning for real?

Students apparently think so, according to the Washington Post and its sources:

"Online enrollment jumped from 1.98 million in 2003 to 2.35 million the following year, accounting for 7 percent of postsecondary education, according to Eduventures, a Boston firm that studies trends in education. Another study, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, reports that 65 percent of universities offering face-to-face graduate courses also offer courses online. By early 2008, Eduventures predicts, about one in 10 students will be enrolled in an online degree program."

Indeed, thoughtful higher education leaders should remind themselves from time to time of the growing importance of online learning.  The latest study from the Sloan Consortium, "Growing by Degrees: Online Education in the United States," gives us some key data points:

• The overall percentage of schools identifying online education as a critical long-term strategy grew from 49 percent in 2003 to 56 percent in 2005.
• 72 percent of associate degree institutions now agree that e-learning is part of their long-term strategy, up from 58 percent in 2003.
• 65 percent of higher-education institutions report that they are using primarily core faculty to teach their online courses, compared with 62 percent that report they are using primarily core faculty to teach their face-to-face courses.
• 74 percent of public colleges report that their online courses are taught by core faculty, as opposed to 61 percent for their face-to-face courses.
• 64 percent of chief academic officers believe that it takes more discipline for a student to succeed.
• Chief academic officers believe, in general, that it takes more effort to teach online.

"Convenience" is just another word for "opportunity and access" to a growing population of learners who require "flex" degree programs and certificates.  "Flex" means that a program is delivered dominantly online in a self-service (asynchronous) format to minimize the need for the scheduled "contact hour." Moreover, successful flex programs also provide for individualized access to expert academic support and other student support services, whether via phone, a 24x7 support center, or walk-in or scheduled office consultations. And it is the nature of the convenient asynchronous learning activities that make or break the learning effectiveness of a flex program's courses. Active learning is the key to success -- threaded discussions, interactive learningware, regular assessment activities, and so on. There are many such active learning strategies that can spell success without increasing an instructor's effort -- contrary to the belief captured in the last Sloan-C bullet above.

At a time when most institutions need to reduce their per-student-FTE cost structures, the icing on the online cake is that online or flex programs, after a modest investment in their development, provide a lower unit-cost structure than traditional programs.

Issue papers from the Committion on the Future of Higher Education

The Commission on the Future of Higher Education has issued a number of "issue papers," many, if not all, on the themes found in this blog. The number of issue papers is now at 15. A link to the commission's website is in my "Related Links" section, or you may link directly to the issue papers.

SHEEO weighs in on weighty matters

The excerpt below summarizes a recent report from the State Higher Education Executive Officers, State Higher Education Finance FY 2005. An executive summary  of the report is available on the SHEEO website.

The report is the second of two national studies released this year documenting that even though state appropriations to higher education have recently increased in some states, per-student state contributions have sunk to historical lows in all states. The first of these reports projects that the situation will only be worse after eight years. 

The executive summary of the SHEEO report notes that:

"In 2005, state and local support per student was at its 25-year low, down from the 25-year high that occurred just four years earlier. Support per student decreased dramatically from 2001 to 2005, when enrollment and inflation grew by 11.9 percent and 10.5 percent, but state and local support was essentially flat.  In 2005 state and local support resumed growth, but the national increase of 3.6 percent was exceeded by the combination of enrollment and inflation increases."

The SHEEO executive summary concludes by observing that:

"In view of the fiscal challenges facing the nation, this problem has no easy solution. It is not likely to be solved by relying solely on additional financial contributions from taxpayers and students, nor is it realistic to expect public colleges and universities to educate increasing numbers of students to world class standards with continually decreasing resources. Increased productivity and increased public investment are required to meet the nations's need for higher education."

Increased academic productivity via the wise use of technology in higher education is the focus of this blog, a focus that should be, but is not, highly visible of higher education's internal radar screen.

Colleges educating more with less money
Associated Press, Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Just five years ago, public colleges and universities enjoyed their highest per-student levels of state and local government support in at least 25 years. By 2005, thanks to stagnant budgets and exploding demand, that figure had plummeted to a 25-year low. The rapid decline in real spending by states, per student, on higher education is documented in a report being released Wednesday by State Higher Education Executive Officers, a group of top state higher education officials. State and local support amounted to $5,833 per student nationwide in 2005, the new report says. That's down from the $7,121 -- in comparable 2005 dollars -- that was spent in fiscal 2001. The change is notable partly because, after several years of cutbacks, states' financial pictures are generally improving and higher education appropriations are picking up. Overall, higher education appropriations grew by 3.5 percent last year and, despite the cutbacks early in the decade, are up about 7 percent since 2001 to nearly $59 billion. Yet compared with 2001, public colleges are accommodating 14 percent more students. While it's good news more students are attending college, there is less to spend per student, and public colleges have raised tuition by nearly half over that period to try and make up the difference. Even so, they brought in 8.8 percent less, in inflation-adjusted dollars, in tuition and state support per student than in 2001. "Especially in the last four or five years, it's been very difficult for state governments to keep pace with that demand for higher education," said SHEEO President Paul Lingenfelter. "The implications of that have been seen in the increased reliance on students and their families to pay the costs." Lingenfelter said the tuition increases raise the danger of more students graduating with heavy debt loads, taking longer to finish school, choosing schools that aren't a good fit, or being unable to attend at all. Read more ...

Do you understand your institution's "business?"

Higher education has two primary channels of "business" revenue: enrollments (largely from credit courses that lead to a degree) and, for some institutions, from patent licensing and business equity revenues based on research discoveries that contribute to economic development. We also know that attracting students to online degree-granting programs requires a significant investment in marketing and recruiting.  We know, for example, that successful for-profit accredited institutions spend from 20-25% of their online enrollment revenues on marketing and recruiting.  So, some of the most notable forays into online markets circa 2000 were almost destined to fail. For example, some elite institutions entered the online convenience market by relying on their brands to attract customers. The excerpt below describes the failure of one such high profile venture built around the leverage of brand and non-credit "enrichment" courses. Should we be surprised that it had to fold its tent? 

In contrast, a number of non-elite institutions have stuck to their for-credit knitting in entering and succeeding in online niche markets. Exemplars and the factors that enabled their success are described in an A-HEC study.

Elite Universities End Venture to Provide Noncredit Online Courses
Andrea L. Foster, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 16, 2006

A nonprofit venture by the University of Oxford, and Stanford and Yale Universities to provide online noncredit courses to the public has closed, citing financial woes. The enterprise, known as the Alliance for Lifelong Learning Inc., or AllLearn, posted a message on its Web site this month saying it had folded because "the cost of offering top-quality enrichment courses at affordable prices was not sustainable over time." S. Kristin Kim, who had served as president of AllLearn since November 2002, reiterated that message in an interview. "We know what it takes to offer top-quality online education and how much it costs to do that," she said, explaining that AllLearn officials had determined that the organization's costs were becoming unwieldy. AllLearn's federal tax form for the year ending June 30, 2005, shows it incurred a deficit of $783,410, with revenue of $2.5-million and expenses of $3.28-million. The venture was formed in September 2000, during the dot-com boom. Its courses -- primarily in the humanities and social sciences -- were first offered to alumni of the three universities, but two years later the group expanded its clientele to include the general public. Ms. Kim said AllLearn had attracted 11,000 students from more than 70 countries. The students ranged from recent graduates to retirees, and their median age was in the late 40s. The organization, based in New York City, struggled to boost enrollment and established affiliations with other universities to market courses to their alumni. But professors who taught courses through AllLearn said it became clear to them that attracting students was a persistent problem. "It didn't seem to me to be a really vibrantly successful enterprise," said David M. Kennedy, a Stanford history professor. He and a colleague had taught an AllLearn course on World War II, but it was eventually dropped from the curriculum for lack of interest. "You would think that would be the kind of subject -- given all the buffs out there that are interested in the topic -- that would have had an even larger and more sustained audience, and it didn't," Mr. Kennedy said. Nora M. Sweeny, a former production director at AllLearn, who is a fund raiser at the University of California at Santa Cruz, said the venture failed to meet alumni's high expectations: Most who signed up for courses wanted to watch television-quality broadcasts online from professors whose talks were delivered just for them. "We didn't get the faculty members to go into a studio and give a 40-minute lecture in a sound room," Ms. Sweeny said. "We went and audiotaped them in the classroom. It's very expensive to edit that stuff down to a sound bite." Still, Ms. Kim and Charles L. Junkerman, dean of continuing studies and associate provost at Stanford, who was a faculty liaison for AllLearn, said the organization's writing courses were popular. Chronicle subscribers can read more ...

Shift Happens!

Shift happens, and it's usually best to get over it and get on with it.  The shift in the percentage of revenues flowing directly or indirectly to higher education from the states and the federal government has been decreasing for some time and appears destined to continue. At least, that's a plausible inference to draw from a recent policy report projecting that all 50 states will experience shortfalls in their revenues after eight years.  Such shortfalls would mean that the states will experience structural deficits and, thus, almost surely will not be able to meet the revenue requests of higher education.

If higher education is to improve its performance -- including making the price paid by the student more affordable (affordability of access) -- it likely will have to do so while receiving a decreasing percentage of its revenues from public sources. In the absence of massive infusions of revenues from other sources, that almost certainly means that higher education will have to reduce its unit expenses (per-FTE expenses, for example) systemically over the years ahead. Increasing productivity systemically has required the wise use of technology to redesign services and manufacturing processes in all other sectors of the economy. Higher education needs to understand the national and global productivity phenomenon, and learn to become more productive through the two technology-enabled redesign strategies described elsewhere in this blog -- the flex program and service redesign strategy and the common course redesign strategy.

The future according to a new commission on higher ed

Doug Lederman's report, An Agenda Begins to Emerge, in Inside Higher Ed (February 3, 2006) is well worth reading if you're interested in the progress of the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education. Lederman reports on the first day of a recent meeting in San Diego.  Front and center in the commission's consideration -- in the terminology of this blog -- were the affordability of access, the capacity for access, the convenience of access, program accountability, expense accountability, and, especially, learning accountability. Or, as Chairman Charles Miller put it, "We must do a better job of measuring institutional performance of colleges and universities.”

Lederman also captures the proceedings of the Commission's second day in San Diego in In Search of ‘Big Ideas’ (a February 6 report in Inside Higher Ed). The highlight of that day's session was the advice to focus on a few big ideas for change -- from Charlie Reed, Chancellor of The California State University (system). Needless to say, I believe that this blog has captured the biggest idea of all: use proven technology-enabled strategies to redesign courses, programs, and services to improve:

• student learning (measurably),
• program and service flexibility, and
• per-credit internal expense structures.

Doing so will improve institutional performance and, through performance reporting technologies, achieve Chairman Miller's goal of doing "a better job of measuring institutional performance of colleges and universities." Meanwhile, Miller is taking a stand on how to account for that most central indicator of performance: learning outcomes. For example, another article (Panel Explores Standard Tests for Colleges, Karen W, Arenson, New York Times, February 9, 2006) reports that Miller wrote to his colleagues on the Commission noting that, "What is clearly lacking is a nationwide system for comparative performance purposes, using standard formats."

Many in higher education are vocal opponents of "standardized" testing on the grounds that it implies a standardized curriculum. That's not the case. The primary idea is to benchmark student learning around basic fluencies (quantitative, cultural, written, oral, and so on) and professional/workforce standards.  But benchmarking need not be done nationally. Indeed, it makes more sense to benchmark student learning among institutions having similar missions and similar student bodies as determined by a number of socio-economic institutional profiles. These observations translate into advocacy for peer benchmarking using common (not necessarily national) examinations to test content and fluencies taught at almost all institutions and, for certain degree and certificate programs, also using exams developed by the gatekeeper organizations representing the various professions and vocations that are important to our economy, our society, our health, and our security. For a more complete and more subtle account of these ideas and the Commission's thoughts about them, see Lederman's article No College Left Behind? (Inside Higher Education, February 15, 2006).

What's your institution's grade?

The excerpt below reinforces a key theme of this blog -- that the states and federal government are likely to mandate various accountability mechanisms, unless higher education moves more quickly and proactively to account for and improve learning outcomes, program and service flexibility, and credit-hour costs (thereby also positioning itself to hold the line on tuition increases). Indiana apparently is planning to develop a report card on higher education as a "big stick" for better managing the outcomes of its public investment in higher education.

Proposal would make colleges more accountable
Charles Wilson (Associated Press), Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, February 1, 2006

A plan aimed at sending more Indiana high school graduates to college and ensuring more of them finish with a degree is being considered by education officials. The plan before the Indiana Education Roundtable would hold colleges responsible for students' success, just as officials try to hold elementary and high schools accountable. For every 100 high school freshmen in Indiana, less than half enroll in college when they graduate, according to the report received Tuesday by the panel of lawmakers, politicians and education officials. Only 32 of that 100 remain in college past their freshman year and 22 earn a degree. "We're sending more kids off to college than we ever have before ... it's one of our biggest success stories," Jonathan Plucker, director of Indiana University's Center for Evaluation and Education Policy, said in a Wednesday phone interview. "But look how many of them never get past their freshman year. They're just not ready for it." Indiana has taken steps to better prepare high school graduates for college - like the Core 40 curriculum now required for college admission. Now, the state is turning its attention to postsecondary education. "We have focused hard on the high school side. Colleges have a big part to play, too, and we want to see more accountability," Cheryl Orr, a spokeswoman for the Indiana Commission on Higher Education, said Wednesday. The first step would be a proposed public report card for the state's universities, similar to that required of school districts. Read more ...