Covid-19 Response: Evidence of How Higher Ed Can Be Completely Restructured?

[spork]

Fascinating:

The start-up was founded by three recent Princeton University alumni who believe that higher education's future lies in its unbundling. While COVID-19 was the catalyst for their business model, they think academe's mass "tacit endorsement" of online education will outlive the pandemic, and that students and their families will start to think about college as three separate entities: an education, a credential and an experience.

I think they're right on the money there. I'm intrigued by the distinction between the education and the credential.

Believing in this new reality requires many assumptions. Among them: professors will willingly give up their intellectual property in terms of course design and recorded lectures, so that universities can and will repackage them as courses at scale, at a lower cost.

I'd be glad to be paid for course design, and leave delivery to someone else. That would be a great job since it could be remote, asynchronous, etc.; perfect for semi-retirement.

I guess someone needs to tell these supposed business wizards from Princeton that this particular Elvis has already left the building. Anyone can access content from professors at MIT, Berkeley, etc. for free via edX or Coursera. Publishers regularly contract with "subject matter experts" to write textbook copy. Georgia Tech has been offering online M.S. computer science degrees at scale for, what, close to a decade now?

Recorded lectures, syllabi, and other instructional materials created by professors generally have a market price of zero. Professors who insist on maintaining ownership over course content because they think it has monetary value are delusional.

[dr_codex]

Fascinating:

The start-up was founded by three recent Princeton University alumni who believe that higher education's future lies in its unbundling. While COVID-19 was the catalyst for their business model, they think academe's mass "tacit endorsement" of online education will outlive the pandemic, and that students and their families will start to think about college as three separate entities: an education, a credential and an experience.

I think they're right on the money there. I'm intrigued by the distinction between the education and the credential.

Believing in this new reality requires many assumptions. Among them: professors will willingly give up their intellectual property in terms of course design and recorded lectures, so that universities can and will repackage them as courses at scale, at a lower cost.

I'd be glad to be paid for course design, and leave delivery to someone else. That would be a great job since it could be remote, asynchronous, etc.; perfect for semi-retirement.

Execpt, of course, that this already exists. They're called "textbooks" (which are filled with lectures) and "the internet" (which is stuffed with syllabi, and as many TED Talks as you'd every want to watch).

What's new here?

[On edit: What Spork wrote.]

[spork]

There is no need to get into the business of creating curricular content. Just focus on connecting resorts with students.

I want to do a semester of study abroad at Cabo while taking courses from my home institution. If you want my tuition money then you're going to have to forego dorm and meal plan fees.

[marshwiggle]

I guess someone needs to tell these supposed business wizards from Princeton that this particular Elvis has already left the building. Anyone can access content from professors at MIT, Berkeley, etc. for free via edX or Coursera. Publishers regularly contract with "subject matter experts" to write textbook copy. Georgia Tech has been offering online M.S. computer science degrees at scale for, what, close to a decade now?

We're still in the infancy of these things. The one thing covid has done is remove the "experimental" feel of it. ALL KINDS of institutions have had to offer courses in MANY disciplines and assigning ACTUAL course credit for them. The previous offerings (Coursera, edX, etc. ) have had mostly novelty value. I stand to be corrected, but I haven't heard of their widespread adoption for credit towards recognized degrees. I would imagine that within the next decade at least, and more likely within the next 5 years, there will be more bricks-and-mortar schools offering significant numbers of core courses for existing programs online, with online versions of exisitng programs not too far behind.

Recorded lectures, syllabi, and other instructional materials created by professors generally have a market price of zero. Professors who insist on maintaining ownership over course content because they think it has monetary value are delusional.

The value isn't in the lectures; it's in the assignments and evaluation procedures (tests, etc.) That's been the big challenge with the move online. Every department meeting we've had during covid has been about exams. As processes and procedures develop which are reliable enough, (and with efforts literally around the world to develop them, it's going to happen),  completely online programs are going to emerge in lots of different disciplines, and which will be verified to be comparable in results to their in-person counterparts.

Developing the automated infrastructure for those is where the money is. And that will require content experts who understand the challenges of online pedagogy.
Videotaping in-person lecture delivery doesn't even come close.

[spork]

The above already exists. The potentially successful business is in putting students into resort accommodations.

[dismalist]

Yes, the virus forced everyone to learn about on-line and will mightily help on the road to unbundling.

That is for students, and it is good.

What affect will this have on faculty?

Would not have to be concentrated geographically for teaching purposes, perhaps not even for research purposes. There would be national markets for adjuncts, not just local markets. Institutions have market power locally, but not nationally. TT faculty already compete in a national market, but adjuncts do not. Probably a good time for adjunct faculty coming up.

[marshwiggle]

The above already exists. The potentially successful business is in putting students into resort accommodations.

Think of all of the discussions here about places going into debt to build stadiums, climbing walls, etc. If an institution managed to do a good job adapting to remote instruction, and didn't have those kinds of resources, they could focus on the actual education they offer, and let students live where there is a climbing wall, or sucba diving, or.......

[Hibush]

The above already exists. The potentially successful business is in putting students into resort accommodations.

Think of all of the discussions here about places going into debt to build stadiums, climbing walls, etc. If an institution managed to do a good job adapting to remote instruction, and didn't have those kinds of resources, they could focus on the actual education they offer, and let students live where there is a climbing wall, or sucba diving, or.......

Adapting to remote instruction included welcoming the freshmen who were unable to leave various Asian countries. That required creating some sort of remote facility where they could find class cohesion as well as the technical infrastructure for instruction.

That small foray into overseas satellites could be expanded. While the initial sites were colleges, why not resorts? It would not take that much retrofitting. Some resorts may even be for sale right now at a very reasonable price.

[apl68]

Maybe some campuses will end up being repurposed as resorts.

[dr_codex]

Maybe some campuses will end up being repurposed as resorts.

My campus is very seriously considering using one of those cruise line islands this summer. Unless something changes almost immediately, those places are shuttered, and they have lots of facilities already in place.

I'd say there's about a 75% chance that we will be doing this.

[spork]

In the current system, Williams College students are worth 15 times more than community college students:

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/quick-bit-math.

[marshwiggle]

In the current system, Williams College students are worth 15 times more than community college students:

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/quick-bit-math.

It's not clear what the expected remedy is:

The provost makes the point that at an annual tuition of $70,000, Williams charges about $45,000 less than the cost of production, even for full-pay students.  We also charge less than the cost of production.  Tuition and fees add up to slightly over half of our operating budget.  Both institutions are nonprofit.

At a basic level, we've decided as a society that some students are fifteen times more worthy of support than others.  (And that's without even counting the value of the tax exemption of the endowment!)  They're not.  Williams students are lovely people, but are they fifteen times lovelier than students here? 

So is a cost of $115000 per year per student reasonable? And is it reasonable to expect governments to finance the lion's share of that for everyone who chooses it? For a half million over 4 years, I think there could be lots more effective investments in young peoples' futures.

[spork]

Opposing views of college:

New campus residence requirement a money grab by Michigan State.

The inside-out semester.

[marshwiggle]

Opposing views of college:

New campus residence requirement a money grab by Michigan State.

How not to do "research":

Largent said the new requirement [to require all first and second year students to live on campus] is largely based on university research that clearly suggests students are more likely to graduate from Michigan State if they live on campus their sophomore year. The university currently enforces a first-year on-campus living requirement, but university research on graduation rates found that undergraduates who continued to live on campus a second year had a 2.5-percentage-point higher graduation rate than those who did not, according to a press release about the new living requirement.

Unless the graduation rates are normally in the single digits, the selection bias effects here probably vastly outweigh anything else.

The inside-out semester.

How to put things in perspective:

Here we are, collectively adrift on an ocean of chaos, transformation and trauma -- and in a vessel that was never equipped to navigate it. We are holding on tightly to a set of academic expectations designed for dry land: expectations that have their origins in the capitalist, white supremacist, patriarchal, settler-colonialist, ableist structures that are (finally, necessarily) beginning to collapse around us.

And here we thought we were trying to educate people to give them more opportunities in life........

[apl68]

Opposing views of college:

New campus residence requirement a money grab by Michigan State.

I'd like to think that some of those involved in the decision honestly felt that this requirement is for the best.  But it's awfully hard not to suspect other motives.  Underfunded institutions are often driven to desperate measures.  This is a world where public libraries (Not us, but I know them) that have previously not charged overdue fines have started doing so out of desperation over their budgets. 

What a horror story from that alumna whose roommate moved her boyfriend in with them!  Sounds like some of their dorms have not been run at all well in recent years.  If they don't do a better job of running things than that, they're sure going to make people cynical about their motives for forcing more students to live in the dorms.