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"May 2, 2011 Balance Your Budget by Cleaning House By Michael J. Bugeja As we approach the end of another academic term, some institutions are still living off of stimulus money that did little to inspire solutions to mammoth budget cuts looming for the 2012 academic year, which promises to be one of the most difficult in memory for higher education. I direct the journalism school at Iowa State University, a land-grant institution that strives to make education affordable in good or bad economic times. We've experienced layoffs, firings, and furloughs, and are still in the process of reorganizing within my college of liberal arts and sciences. My school is the largest academic program in the largest college at ISU, and our budget has been slashed by more than 20 percent in the past four years. Nevertheless, in the next academic year, we'll balance our budget without increasing workload for most professors, while graduating students sooner-thanks to streamlined curricula, enhanced by advising. To accomplish those goals, the journalism school and other units at the university have adopted or are in the process of adopting several of the methods below: 1. Curtail curricular expansion. Nothing is more responsible for the increasing cost of higher education than ever-expanding pedagogies. Too many professors want their course loads to harmonize with their research interests, and many create courses based on the latest technology. Others are unwilling to teach basic introductory courses, preferring to farm those out to underpaid adjuncts. Worse yet, administrators typically reward professors for new course creation. Expanding pedagogies are a part of our academic culture, but they must be curtailed. Early adopters should introduce new technology into existing classes, and hires should be made not on the promise of creating new curricula but on teaching within the existing ones. Promotion-and-tenure documents should be revised to reward innovation within the present c

"January 23, 2012 Invisible Gorillas Are Everywhere By William Pannapacker By now most everyone has heard about an experiment that goes something like this: Students dressed in black or white bounce a ball back and forth, and observers are asked to keep track of the bounces to team members in white shirts. While that's happening, another student dressed in a gorilla suit wanders into their midst, looks around, thumps his chest, then walks off, apparently unseen by most observers because they were so focused on the bouncing ball. Voilà: attention blindness. The invisible-gorilla experiment is featured in Cathy Davidson's new book, Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn (Viking, 2011). Davidson is a founder of a nearly 7,000-member organization called Hastac, or the Humanities, Arts, Sciences, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory, that was started in 2002 to promote the use of digital technology in academe. It is closely affiliated with the digital humanities and reflects that movement's emphasis on collaboration among academics, technologists, publishers, and librarians. Last month I attended Hastac's fifth conference, held at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Davidson's keynote lecture emphasized that many of our educational practices are not supported by what we know about human cognition. At one point, she asked members of the audience to answer a question: "What three things do students need to know in this century?" Without further prompting, everyone started writing down answers, as if taking a test. While we listed familiar concepts such as "information literacy" and "creativity," no one questioned the process of working silently and alone. And noticing that invisible gorilla was the real point of the exercise. Most of us are, presumably, the products of compulsory educational practices that were developed during the Industrial Revolution. And the way most of us teach is a relic of the s

"December 31, 2011 Let's Improve Learning. OK, but How? By W. Robert Connor Does American higher education have a systematic way of thinking about how to improve student learning? It would certainly be useful, especially at a time when budgets are tight and the pressure is on to demonstrate better results. Oh, there's plenty of discussion-bright ideas, old certainties, and new approaches-and a rich discourse about innovation, reinvention, and transformation. But the most powerful ideas about improving learning are often unspoken. Amid all the talk about change, old assumptions exert their continuing grasp. For example, most of us assume that expanding the number of fields and specialties in the curriculum (and of faculty to teach them), providing more small classes, and lowering teaching loads (and, hence, lowering student-faculty ratios) are inherently good things. But while many of those ideas are plausible, few have been rigorously evaluated. So maybe it's time to stop relying on assumptions about improving learning and start finding out what really works best. A genuine theory of change, as such a systematic evaluation of effectiveness is sometimes called, would be grounded in knowledge about how students learn, and in the best way to put that knowledge to work. The theory should also be educationally robust; that is, it should not just help colleges expose students to certain subject matter, but also challenge institutions to help students develop the long-lasting survival skills needed in a time of radical and often unpredictable change. And it must also have its feet on the ground, with a sure footing in financial realities. Above all, those who would develop a truly systematic way of thinking about and creating change must be able to articulate their purpose. Given the great diversity of institutional types, student demographics, history, and mission among American colleges and universities, it's hard to discern a shared sense of purpose. But when f

"Special Report A Curricular Innovation, Examined (Part 2) December 16, 2010 Advising and Tutoring There are two basic ways that students can seek outside assistance. For administrative or customer service questions, they can contact their course adviser; for questions related to the actual course material, they have the allotted 10 hours of SmarThinking tutoring (minus five minutes per session for "processing"). I found that my course adviser -- who (along with Burck Smith and StraighterLine generally) had no knowledge of this article until after I finished the class -- was available and willing to assist me; I e-mailed him at least a half dozen times as I went through the course, and in each case he wrote back within a day, and often sooner (his replies tended to be very brief but -- more often than not -- helpful). The tutoring arrangement is less convenient. For those unfamiliar with the service, SmarThinking tutoring takes place in a sort of chat session; the interface is a large white browser window into which students can type questions and their tutors can type responses. My questions showed up in large red letters, while my tutor's replies were in large blue ones. This was helpful for distinguishing between my words and those of my tutor, although the format of the chat session is such that our words often overlapped and became illegible. When one "page" of type is filled up, the chat session opens a new, blank page, and my tutor and I frustrated one another - and wasted time - by inadvertently moving back and forth between pages. Special Report Inside Higher Ed's Serena Golden took StraighterLine's Economics 101 course this year. This article recounts her experiences and what they reveal about the much-discussed curricular experiment. Tutors have no access to the course materials or any of the work that students have done, so each question must be explained in the absence of any context - and unlike at a university tutoring center, where this m

Most colleges want to do more with less. The University of Southern Maine had to. The institution has been facing dual crises: a deficit and a six-year graduation rate of 34 percent for first-time, full-time students, compared with 56 percent nationally. "We're hemorrhaging students each year," said Selma Botman, president of Southern Maine. So the university took a hard look at support for its almost 8,000 undergraduates. "We found that we had lots of stuff, but not much of it was coordinated in any way," said Susan M. Campbell, associate vice president for academic affairs. She led a major reorganization. On its three campuses, the university eliminated offices of academic advising, career services, and early student success, and laid off 21 employees. At the same time, it created a student-success center on each campus, in Gorham, Lewiston, and Portland, rehiring 11 people to run the one-stop shops. "The question was, Can we achieve savings through an integrated model?" Ms. Campbell said. The short answer: yes. The university has saved almost $370,000 in base salaries over all. But that move had another price: six age-discrimination complaints, still pending, from former employees who were not rehired.

A new project, unveiled at the Educause conference here today, plans to provide college students a similar experience on academic Web sites. It's called Sherpa, like the guides who lead climbers up Mount Everest. The goal of the software, developed by the South Orange County Community College District, is to mine data about students to guide them to courses, information, and services.

"A Bottom-Line Approach That Looks Beyond the Bottom Line For several years, a cadre of some of the savviest executives in higher education have been practically begging university administrators and trustees for the chance to advise them on a "strategic finance" approach to restructuring and planning. Until recently, they had a tough time getting college leaders even to set aside the time for a presentation on the topic-a free one at that. When you're preoccupied with the immediate demands for budget slashing, or perhaps still hoping that the state cutbacks and declines in donations are just another cyclical bump in the road, it is certainly understandable that you might duck a major reconsideration of the university's very financing model and mission. But with stimulus money drying up and signs of a full recovery still distant, the case for thoughtful reinvention becomes more compelling. Ellen Earle Chaffee, a former college president who heads up a Lumina Foundation for Education-backed project on strategic finance for the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, says she is seeing more colleges "facing the monster" of their financial challenges. "People understand that we all need to get a grip here and figure out what we're going to do," Ms. Chaffee says. She spoke from her home in North Dakota last week, fresh from a meeting of college trustees where several more boards had signed up for the workshop. Simply put, strategic finance is an approach to planning and budgeting that involves rigorously identifying the full expenses of programs to gain a complete picture of their costs-including indirect costs (like utilities and marketing) that are rarely quantified to that scale. With that information, an institution or system can better identify where costs might be out of line and where to invest to take advantage of new opportunities, untapped demand, and, in the best tradition of the academic mission, societal need. Large public i

"July 1, 2011 As Costs of New Rule Are Felt, Colleges Rethink Online Course Offerings in Other States By Kelly Field Bismarck State College, a two-year institution located in the capital of North Dakota, offers something few colleges do: online degrees in power-plant technology. Utilities across the country send workers to the community college for specialized training in electric power, nuclear power, and other fields. "We're pretty darn unique," said Larry C. Skogen, the college's president. "I don't think we have any competition out there." Though other colleges offer similar programs on campus, "we deliver nationwide online," he said, with students in all 50 states. That could change soon. Under federal rules that take effect on July 1, Bismarck State will have to seek approval to operate in every state where it enrolls students, or forgo those students' federal aid. With some states charging thousands of dollars per application, the college is weighing whether it can afford to remain in states where the cost of doing business outweighs the benefits, in tuition terms. Though the college hasn't made any decisions yet, "the reality is that if we run into a state where we have few students and it's expensive [to get approval], it's probably not going to be cost-effective to continue," Mr. Skogen said. Such cost-benefit calculations are being conducted on campuses across the country, as college leaders struggle to make sense of a patchwork of state rules that were written in an era when "college" was synonymous with "campus" and online learning was in its infancy. Gregory Ferenbach, a lawyer who advises colleges on regulatory compliance, said he has heard from a "couple dozen" colleges, most of them nonprofits, that are considering withdrawing from some states because of the cost or burden of obtaining approval. Their decisions could have a significant effect on college access. If enough colleges steer clear of states with expensive approval processes, or s

"July 2, 2009 Online-Education Study Reaffirms Value of Good Teaching, Experts Say By David Glenn In a much-debated 1983 essay on distance learning, Richard E. Clark, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Southern California, argued that it was beside the point to ask whether distance education is better or worse than the traditional classroom. The medium isn't the crucial variable, Mr. Clark wrote. What is important is to look at the effectiveness of specific instructional strategies, regardless of how those strategies are delivered. Last week, more than 25 years after Mr. Clark's provocation, the U.S. Department of Education released a report that, at least at first glance, carries a strong message about the medium: Students learn more effectively in online settings. Most powerful of all appear to be "blended" courses that offer both face-to-face and online elements. Previous research has generally found that online and offline courses are equally effective. But even though the report, which synthesized data from several dozen high-quality studies, was framed and publicized as a circuit board-versus-chalkboard showdown, its authors do not view themselves as having flouted Mr. Clark's principles. On the contrary: Mr. Clark served as a technical adviser to the project, and the report's lead author says that Mr. Clark's basic insights are correct. "This report should not be interpreted as saying that one medium is better than another," says Barbara Means, a director of the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International, a California research firm that conducted the project under contract with the Education Department. "This should not be interpreted as saying that computers are better than professors." Instead, Ms. Means says, the study offers evidence that particular kinds of online instructional techniques are effective-and some of those techniques, she suggests, could theoretically be imported into old-fas

September / October 2009 College for $99 a Month The next generation of online education could be great for students-and catastrophic for universities. by Kevin Carey Like millions of other Americans, Barbara Solvig lost her job this year. A fifty-year-old mother of three, Solvig had taken college courses at Northeastern Illinois University years ago, but never earned a degree. Ever since, she had been forced to settle for less money than coworkers with similar jobs who had bachelor's degrees. So when she was laid off from a human resources position at a Chicago-area hospital in January, she knew the time had come to finally get her own credential. Doing that wasn't going to be easy, because four-year degrees typically require two luxuries Solvig didn't have: years of time out of the workforce, and a great deal of money. Luckily for Solvig, there were new options available. She went online looking for something that fit her wallet and her time horizon, and an ad caught her eye: a company called StraighterLine was offering online courses in subjects like accounting, statistics, and math. This was hardly unusual-hundreds of institutions are online hawking degrees. But one thing about StraighterLine stood out: it offered as many courses as she wanted for a flat rate of $99 a month. "It sounds like a scam," Solvig thought-she'd run into a lot of shady companies and hard-sell tactics on the Internet. But for $99, why not take a risk? Solvig threw herself into the work, studying up to eighteen hours a day. And contrary to expectations, the courses turned out to be just what she was looking for. Every morning she would sit down at her kitchen table and log on to a Web site where she could access course materials, read text, watch videos, listen to podcasts, work through problem sets, and take exams. Online study groups were available where she could collaborate with other students via listserv and instant messaging. StraighterLine courses were designed

Can You Hear Me Now? August 19, 2010 That is the logic Georgia Gwinnett College employed when it decided to offer its more than 300 full- and part-time faculty members cell phones and encouraged them to respond to any calls or texts from students within 24 hours. Under the program, professors are offered a state-of-the-art smartphone and a Sprint data plan that includes the most sophisticated wireless Internet coverage. It is part of a several-tier effort by Georgia Gwinnett - a public, four-year, noncompetitive-admissions college founded in 2005 - to defy the historically low retention rates typical of colleges that set such a modest bar for admission (Georgia Gwinnett admits any Georgia high school graduate). And so far, they say, it is working. The retention rate for returning sophomores at Georgia Gwinnett stands at 75 percent. That is about double the average rate for noncompetitive-admissions colleges in Georgia, according to Tom Mundie, dean of the school of science and technology at Georgia Gwinnett, and on par with many public institutions that have competitive admissions. In engagement surveys, Mundie says, students have reported "feeling that faculty care about and are accessible to them." These plaudits and retention numbers are not driven solely by invitations to call or text professors and expect a reasonably swift response, Mundie says. Other aspects of the college's retention effort probably contribute as well, including small class sizes and a mentoring program that arranges for professors to advise students on academic, career, and personal matters. But professors and administrators at the college seem to believe there is a substantial correlation between the cell phone program and the young institution's impressive retention numbers -- enough that the college, which has grown its student body and faculty by leaps and bounds since its founding five years ago, is preparing to spend $350,000 on faculty cell phones and data

"Bridgepoint has skyrocketed in revenue from $8 million in 2004 to $454.3 million last year. Using online technology for part-time students, it offers 60 degree programs and 125 specializations, ranging from bachelor's degrees in biology and homeland security to a master's in business administration and doctorate in sports psychology. The company owns two tiny colleges - Ashford University in Iowa and University of the Rockies in Colorado - but 99 percent of its 54,000 students take all their courses online and communicate by phone and e-mail with academic, enrollment and financial advisers in San Diego and other locations. Roughly 2,430 adjunct professors teach 1,150 five-week courses, using chat sessions and online taped lectures and reading and writing assignments. As an example of its aggressive marketing approach, Bridgepoint this week announced discounted programs in a partnership with Blockbuster to benefit its 38,000 employees seeking college degrees"