Schuman on Online Education - Slate article

[polly_mer]

She-who-annoys-many has weighed in on fall classes: https://slate.com/technology/2020/05/online-college-fall-2020.html

[marshwiggle]

She-who-annoys-many has weighed in on fall classes: https://slate.com/technology/2020/05/online-college-fall-2020.html

I don't agree with everything she says, but she makes a few really solid points. For instance:

While it's appropriate to mourn the campus experience lost, it's also time to think about online college along a different binary: Not online vs. in-person, but a good use of your pandemic time vs. a bad use of it. The traditional college experience as we know it is currently floating untouched in the same metaphorical cryogenic freezer as the other artifacts of the Before Times: dinner parties, Tinder dates, and, I don't know, not crying yourself to sleep every night. In its place is a different experience that many are, understandably, calling diminished, but is still better than the alternatives. You're stuck at home anyway. Why not check off your requirements?

Making the most of an unavoidable situation is the productive way to look at all of this, rather than to lament what cannot be at present.

[polly_mer]

Some people have much better options than poor online classes as a way to spend their time.  Using one's lifetime financial aid on some classes 'to get requirements checked off' may be a much worse situation than spending time helping the family and using the financial aid for a good experience in a couple years.

I continue to be amazed at the number of academics for whom knowledge and skills acquired in college are lower priority than checking off arbitrary requirements to save money.


A different take for fall is https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/a-twenty-year-professor-on-starting-college-this-fall-dont-df3ea4024f70

[marshwiggle]

Some people have much better options than poor online classes as a way to spend their time.  Using one's lifetime financial aid on some classes 'to get requirements checked off' may be a much worse situation than spending time helping the family and using the financial aid for a good experience in a couple years.

FWIW, I don't necessarily take "get requirements checked off" as just getting through pointless stuff. Acouple of points to consider:

• Many introductory courses will spend a lot of time reviewing what students from decent high schools will already know, so they're not missing much by having them sub-optimal.
• Many face-to-face courses, especially introductory ones without labs, actually don't make a lot of use of the "face-to-face" setup, so they won't be much worse online, and the benefits of things like asynchrony may make them better.(i.e. A boring, poorly-delivered in-person class is not hard to match (or beat) online.)

A different take for fall is https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/a-twenty-year-professor-on-starting-college-this-fall-dont-df3ea4024f70

As has been mentioned before, if great numbers of students elect to defer until next year, the stiffer competition then will leave many of them out in the cold.

[Caracal]

You're stuck at home anyway. Why not check off your requirements?[/b][/i]

[/quote]

I think this is illustrative of the way a lot of people seem to be having a hard time with the idea that the virus is going to be around, but life is not going to look like it has for the last two months. Things will be changed, perhaps dramatically, but everything won't just be paused. I suspect a lot of students will actually struggle more in online classes in the Fall than they did in the Spring. There will be more of the distractions of day to day life, but they'll also still be dealing with all the anxiety and uncertainty of this moment in time. That's before you add in all the financial and family stressers.

[polly_mer]

• Many introductory courses will spend a lot of time reviewing what students from decent high schools will already know, so they're not missing much by having them sub-optimal.

That's an argument for going to elite enough places that don't start with significant review, not an argument for subpar classes for most.  In addition, the people who really need the review need an excellent review, not sub-optimal assumptions that the material doesn't matter because the "good" students don't need it and the "other" students should be weeded early anyway.

• Many face-to-face courses, especially introductory ones without labs, actually don't make a lot of use of the "face-to-face" setup, so they won't be much worse online, and the benefits of things like asynchrony may make them better.(i.e. A boring, poorly-delivered in-person class is not hard to match (or beat) online.)

That's an argument for better introductory classes that don't waste people's time and energy as part of an overall reform of higher ed.  "It's only a slightly worse rip-off than usual" is not a strong selling point.

A different take for fall is https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/a-twenty-year-professor-on-starting-college-this-fall-dont-df3ea4024f70

As has been mentioned before, if great numbers of students elect to defer until next year, the stiffer competition then will leave many of them out in the cold.

No, that's only true for people who were marginal applicants at the elite institutions where every year many qualified students are turned away. 

Many solid institutions had empty seats last fall and were projecting fewer 18-year-old for the next several years.  Struggling institutions will close this year through lack of enrollment, but some institutions will be OK with dealing with a larger-than-projected-in-2019 entering class in 2021 or later, especially if students do it via an official deferment so the institution has a year or more to plan.

[Katrina Gulliver]

No, that's only true for people who were marginal applicants at the elite institutions where every year many qualified students are turned away. 

I'm teaching at an institution that is selective, and the talk is of not allowing deferrals. Accept your place for 2020 or don't.

[polly_mer]

No, that's only true for people who were marginal applicants at the elite institutions where every year many qualified students are turned away. 

I'm teaching at an institution that is selective, and the talk is of not allowing deferrals. Accept your place for 2020 or don't.

Elite enough institutions can do whatever they like (possibly up to literally kicking people in the shin every day) and still have cohorts full of qualified students.

The Pepperdine's dean of enrollment management had some interesting perspectives on the changed admissions landscape this year in the CHE.

[the_geneticist]

A lot of our students had financial difficulties before the pandemic.  I think we'll see a lot of them deciding to take classes at the local community college and work or just work rather than pay as much in tuition for online classes as for in person.  The university has said that they will NOT be reducing tuition or fees, even though students will have 0 access to many services (gym, computer labs, student union, etc.).  The "take a gap year" is not financially possible for most of our students, unless you count working in an Amazon warehouse as a "gap year".

[apl68]

No, that's only true for people who were marginal applicants at the elite institutions where every year many qualified students are turned away. 

I'm teaching at an institution that is selective, and the talk is of not allowing deferrals. Accept your place for 2020 or don't.

Elite enough institutions can do whatever they like (possibly up to literally kicking people in the shin every day) and still have cohorts full of qualified students.

The Pepperdine's dean of enrollment management had some interesting perspectives on the changed admissions landscape this year in the CHE.

Well...you can't say that nobody's trying to innovate.  Spending the rainy-day fund to give ALL students free tuition in the fall?  Advertising a "first 100 applicants get in free!" deal?  There's a fine line between innovative genius and desperation.

It's going to be hard to top Pepperdine's traditional "show prospective students our campus view of the Malibu coast" approach.

[spork]

No, that's only true for people who were marginal applicants at the elite institutions where every year many qualified students are turned away. 

I'm teaching at an institution that is selective, and the talk is of not allowing deferrals. Accept your place for 2020 or don't.

Elite enough institutions can do whatever they like (possibly up to literally kicking people in the shin every day) and still have cohorts full of qualified students.

The Pepperdine's dean of enrollment management had some interesting perspectives on the changed admissions landscape this year in the CHE.

"The University of Maine system decided in 2015 to respond to declining demographics in the state by offering out-of-state students who were admitted to its flagship campus in Orono tuition equal to the in-state rate at their home state's flagship — and it advertised the offer on highway billboards around the Northeast. "The world of higher ed looked down its nose at this idea," says David Strauss, a principal of the Art & Science Group. "You just don't do that."

But what seemed controversial at the time is now starting to seem prescient"

As Maine goes, so goes the nation.

[marshwiggle]

"The University of Maine system decided in 2015 to respond to declining demographics in the state by offering out-of-state students who were admitted to its flagship campus in Orono tuition equal to the in-state rate at their home state's flagship — and it advertised the offer on highway billboards around the Northeast. "The world of higher ed looked down its nose at this idea," says David Strauss, a principal of the Art & Science Group. "You just don't do that."

I wasn't quite sure about why that was bad; is it unfair to students from Maine who don't get a cheaper rate, or is it unfair to institutions outside Maine that have more competition?

I stand to be corrected, but I don't think that's a big deal in *Canada; tuition is higher for foreign students, but not (as far as I know) out-of-province students.

(*As with many things, Quebec may be an outlier.)

[dismalist]

"The University of Maine system decided in 2015 to respond to declining demographics in the state by offering out-of-state students who were admitted to its flagship campus in Orono tuition equal to the in-state rate at their home state's flagship — and it advertised the offer on highway billboards around the Northeast. "The world of higher ed looked down its nose at this idea," says David Strauss, a principal of the Art & Science Group. "You just don't do that."

I wasn't quite sure about why that was bad; is it unfair to students from Maine who don't get a cheaper rate, or is it unfair to institutions outside Maine that have more competition?

I stand to be corrected, but I don't think that's a big deal in *Canada; tuition is higher for foreign students, but not (as far as I know) out-of-province students.

(*As with many things, Quebec may be an outlier.)

No producer likes competition among their own kind.

[polly_mer]

"The University of Maine system decided in 2015 to respond to declining demographics in the state by offering out-of-state students who were admitted to its flagship campus in Orono tuition equal to the in-state rate at their home state's flagship — and it advertised the offer on highway billboards around the Northeast. "The world of higher ed looked down its nose at this idea," says David Strauss, a principal of the Art & Science Group. "You just don't do that."

I wasn't quite sure about why that was bad; is it unfair to students from Maine who don't get a cheaper rate, or is it unfair to institutions outside Maine that have more competition?

Multiple problems exist:

1) Brain drain is a big problem in some regions of the US.  Having "all" the bright students from, say, Vermont go to Maine for college and then never return to Vermont means Vermont loses the very people it most needs to have a good shot at survival.  New England in particular has a big problem in forecast high school graduates for the next 10 years.  However, many states in the Midwest (with all those tiny colleges) are only slightly better in terms of predicted HS graduates.

2) Residents in many states are not at all happy about out-of-staters who definitely didn't pay into the system and may not stay when Boston/New York/Chicago/LA beckon. 

3) When the state flagship enrolls a large fraction of out-of-state students, then those seats are not available to in-state students.  It's a double whammy to not get the seat and not get a ton of extra money to subsidize the smaller number of in-state students.  California has been in the news intermittently for years for having a ton of out-of-state/international students who do pay a premium, but are displacing Californians.

[apl68]

In other words, Maine's public colleges seem to be acting with an eye primarily for their own good, not for the good of the state community that they ostensibly serve.  Although one could argue that that's only to be expected when the community doesn't provide its public colleges with adequate resources to fund that mission.