Crisis on Campus_ A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities - Mark C. Taylor [62]
This was already evident to me ten years ago. One of the most promising projects we developed at Global Education Network was the course on American history we created for the State University of New York system. As I noted earlier, in addition to presentations by four of the system’s best teachers, the course provided rich media for the students to use, which included copies of original documents, old photographs, film and video clips of major events, and an array of interactive features. When university officials reviewed the course, they agreed that it was superior to the courses most of the undergraduates took from adjuncts and professors, who did not want to teach required courses in which they had little or no interest. Using projected enrollment figures agreed upon by both SUNY and GEN, we calculated that offering the course in American history online would save the State of New York $180 million over a seven-year period. The executive committee of the board of directors of the state system also acknowledged the superior quality of GEN’s course but, much to our surprise, declined to enter into an agreement because they were afraid that the New York state legislature would reduce their budget by the amount the course saved. Other institutions will not repeat this mistake in the future.
Since online courses do not require the physical presence of students in a particular place at a specific time, they allow greater flexibility, which is better suited to the needs of the changing demographics of the college population. Though the fact is rarely noted, the traditional four-year college whose students are eighteen to twenty-two years old is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Only 16 percent of all students2 currently fall into this category; the majority of students are now over twenty-two. Moreover, 82 percent of college students work while going to college, and 32 percent of them work full-time. (In the early 1980s, only 12 percent of college students worked during the school year.) Flexibility is, therefore, vitally important to more and more students. Physical presence in a school with a professor in the classroom is quickly becoming a luxury that fewer and fewer students can afford, and more and more believe is unnecessary. From the fall of 20023 to the fall of 2007, online enrollment in degree-granting postsecondary institutions increased from 1,602,970 (9 percent of total enrollment) to 3,939,111 (21.9 percent). It is hard to see why this trend will not continue.
Traditional colleges and universities ignore the growth of the for-profit sector at their own peril. With costs continuing to rise and resources for financial aid decreasing, the number of young people attending four-year colleges will in all likelihood decline. Colleges and universities would therefore be well advised to form partnerships with for-profit providers that are mutually beneficial. Some individual professors and the institutions where they teach can enter into agreements with for-profit companies to provide courses that will generate income, and other schools no longer able to afford to cover some subjects can supplement their offerings by providing low-cost online courses. In this arrangement, the company gets high-quality courses, colleges and universities providing courses create another source of revenue, and schools under financial duress are able to offer students courses that would not otherwise be available. Since these courses would cost less than regular ones do, this arrangement would help reduce the expense of education.
A second way in which colleges and universities can partner with for-profit businesses is through corporate sponsorships. A successful partnership