Changing Higher Education

Another sign that the business model for higher education is broken

The National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU) put out a report yesterday that bravely tries to put a good spin on the tuition news:

Private College Tuition Rises at Lowest Rate in 37 Years
NAICU Washington Update

June 29, 2009

With families facing one of the worst economic crises in the nation's history, private, nonprofit colleges and universities have responded with the smallest average increase in tuition and fees in 37 years, according to the final results of a membership survey conducted by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.

It is great to know that higher education has responded well to this crisis! So what is the result of this wonderful restraint?

The 4.3 percent increase for 2009-10 is the smallest since 1972-73, when average tuition and fees at private institutions rose by the same rate. The increase is slightly higher than the 2008 Consumer Price Index of 3.8 percent.

Oops!It is, of course, customary to compare next year’s academic year tuition increase to last year’s calendar year CPI increase, and by that standard the tuition increase that is only .5% above inflation shows some restraint.   However, these have not been ordinary times in the CPI world. While the first half of last year was reasonably well-behaved, the second half was much less so as jobs and equity vanished at a rapid rate - a trend that has continued to this date.   Another comparison that might well be made is next academic year’s tuition increase compared to the CPI increase over the past 12 months. Not only would that better describe today’s economic realities by including  the recent tumultuous times for the economy, it has the benefit of being almost an academic year CPI increase that we can compare with an academic year tuition increase. .

If we use this CPI increase for the most recent 12 months available (through May) for our comparison, we see a vastly different picture. According to the June 17 report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics the (unadjusted) CPI has actually decreased by 1.3% over the past 12 months.  Plus 4.3% for tuition no longer sounds restrained - or responsible - when compared to minus 1.3% in CPI! 

Whatever CPI one wants to compare the 4.3% increase to, it obviously is a very significant increase at a time when unemployment at all income levels is at a very high level, and uncertainty about economic security is on the minds of most families.  Unfortunately, for all of the NAICU  rhetoric about new “innovative affordability”ideas, this result demonstrates clearly that the higher education business model still demands price increases that are well above CPI increases.

As Stein’s Law assures us, “If something can’t go on forever, it will stop.”   A model that demands that prices always rise significantly faster than CPI clearly will break down at some point.  It is time to work harder imagining a new, more sustainable model, and to spend less time trying to defend what in the end will not be defensible .

Is online learning ready to become a disruptive technology?

In 2000, I wrote an article in Change discussing major disruptive impacts on higher education that distance learning might produce (see, How about distance learning, March 3, 2006).  In it, I brashly postulated that:

The experience will certainly be different from that found in the classroom of a great teacher, but in the end DL may well provide a competitive or even superior way to learn.

A recent analysis by the Department of Education of learning outcomes achieved by various on-line learning courses compared to those of traditional courses finds that my “in the end” may actually be now!

The DoE identified over a thousand empirical studies of online learning between 1996 and 2007. From these studies, they chose a set to subject to meta- analysis with the goal of answering 4 research questions:

1. How does the effectiveness of online learning compare with that of face-to-face instruction?
2. Does supplementing face-to-face instruction with online instruction enhance learning?
3.. What practices are associated with more effective online learning?
4. What conditions influence the effectiveness of online learning?

The analysis selected from all of the empirical studies using three stringent conditions:

Limit the search to studies of Web-based instruction (i.e., eliminating studies of video- and audio-based telecourses or stand-alone, computer-based instruction);
Include only studies with random-assignment or controlled quasi-experimental designs; and Examine effects only for objective measures of student learning (e.g., discarding effects for student or teacher perceptions of learning or course quality, student affect, etc.).

The results of the meta analysis are both impressive and thought provoking :

•    Students who took all or part of their class online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction.
•    Instruction combining online and face-to-face elements had a larger advantage relative to purely face-to-face instruction than did purely online instruction.
•    Studies in which learners in the online condition spent more time on task than students in the face-to-face condition found a greater benefit for online learning
•    Most of the variations in the way in which different studies implemented online learning did not affect student learning outcomes significantly
•    The effectiveness of online learning approaches appears quite broad across different content and learner types
•    Effect sizes were larger for studies in which the online and face-to-face conditions varied in terms of curriculum materials and aspects of instructional approach in addition to the medium of instruction