This will be a rather long post that will discuss two related topics: Governor Brown’s new budget for the UC system and the Regents coming discussion of online education. In terms of the state budget, Brown proposes the following: “The state’s General Fund contribution to UC, CSU, and Hastings will increase by 5 percent per year in 2013‑14 and 2014‑15 and by 4 percent in each of the subsequent two years.” Although it is a welcomed relief to see increased funding for the UC system, it is not close to the amount that UCOP says the university needs. According to Brown’s budget statement: “UC and CSU have proposed budgets that call for increases in state funding of about 12 percent and 18 percent, respectively, from the preceding year. By comparison, over the past three years, personal income growth in California has averaged slightly less than 4 percent per year. California taxpayers cannot sustain institutions whose cost growth greatly outpaces the state’s income growth. Furthermore, the rapidly growing numbers of college graduates who are unable to repay their student loans is an indication that these costs cannot be forever pushed onto students through tuition and fee increases.” In other words, the universities are asking for too much, and they need to live within their means. Moreover, it is unclear from the budget document if the Governor is basing his increased funding on a future tuition freeze.
What is clear is that Brown feels that the UC can do things in a much more efficient and cost-effective manner: “from 2007‑08 to 2012‑13, when other public agencies were retrenching, UC expenditures increased by 15 percent and CSU expenditures increased by 3 percent. These expenditure increases were funded by approximately $1.4 billion in tuition revenue increases at UC and $1 billion at CSU, a near doubling of tuition and fees from 2007‑08 to the present. Specifically, UC’s tuition and fees increased by $5,556 over that period. CSU’s tuition and fees increased by $2,700 over that same period (see Figure HED‑01). These rapid tuition increases have been a significant hardship for students and their families, particularly middle‑income families who do not qualify for Cal Grants.” Thus, while the governor realizes that tuition increases have been in part the result of state budget funding for higher ed, he also thinks the universities need to do a better job at reducing their expenses.
Brown believes that too many students are not graduating in a timely fashion, and so the UC system has to do several things: stop students from taking extra credits, reduce tuition increases, make more classes available, and make the delivery of instruction less costly. To fix many of these problems, he wants to turn to technology: “All institutions will be expected to use these increases to implement reforms that will make available the courses students need and help them progress through college efficiently, using technology to deliver quality education to greater numbers of students in high‑demand courses, improving course management and planning, using faculty more effectively, and increasing use of summer sessions. With savings achieved in this way, in combination with the General Fund increases and realizing the savings of current efficiency efforts (e.g. UC’s Working Smarter Initiative and CSU’s Systemwide Administrative Efficiencies), the Administration expects the colleges and universities to maintain current tuition and fee levels over the next four years.” Governor Brown is arguing here that due to the combination of increased state funding and the use of new technologies, the UC should not need to raise tuition. In fact, he wants to help fund the UC online program: “the Budget provides UC and CSU $10 million each to increase the number of courses available to matriculated undergraduates through the use of technology, specifically those courses that have the highest demand, fill quickly, and are prerequisites for many different degrees. Priority will be given to the development of courses that can serve greater numbers of students while providing equal or better learning experiences.” Since the UC is already planning to spend $7 million on its failing online pilot program, the governor may be actually bailing out a bad idea and doubling down on the online gamble.
The Governor also extends the online panacea to the community college system, where he envisions the following use of technology: “This initiative will include three key elements: (1) the creation of a “virtual campus” to increase statewide student access to 250 new courses delivered through technology, (2) the creation of a single, common, and centralized delivery and support infrastructure for all courses delivered through technology and for all colleges, and (3) the expansion of options for students to access instruction in other environments and earn college credit for demonstrated knowledge and skills through credit by exam.” This strategy brings together some of the worst ideas circulating in higher education: let’s create virtual campuses for the most disadvantaged students as we continue to replace traditional courses with a wide-range of substitutes.
Once again, I should stress that I am in favor of using new technologies to increase the effectiveness of university education, but there is no proof that this will save money, and it fails to deal with the real cost-drivers, which are administration, construction, sponsored-research and graduate and professional education. This failure to understand the real spending streams in higher ed is also evident in the UC Online project report that has been developed for the next UC Regents meeting. In a virtual copy of the Governor’s own discussion of how new technologies will save higher education, we find the following argument about the UC online program: “Anticipated benefits from for-credit online undergraduate courses include additional opportunities for high-quality instruction throughout the UC system, decreased time-to-degree, increased student success, and decreased costs of instruction. Future directions include streamlining cross-campus and systemwide processes, increasing enrollment in for-credit online undergraduate courses, using innovative learning technology, enrolling non-UC students, and establishing viable long-term financial models and short-term investments.” As we will read later on, the initial discussion of saving money through online education is centered on a call to increase funding for online initiatives: “It is clear now that both the campuses and UCOE would benefit from an infusion of funding on a temporary basis to facilitate continued development. The cross-campus hub needs to be developed, and there is currently no budgeted fund source. Additional instructional designers for UCOE and instructional designers at the campuses would greatly increase the rate of creation of new online courses, the improvement of existing online courses, and the movement of courses to approval for both academic-year and summer offering and then to systemwide approval. Current estimates are that an instructional designer can develop three to four courses per year, provide a major update for three to four courses already offered per year, and provide a minor update to several courses per year. Several campuses, if not all, and to a lesser extent UCOE would also benefit from additional equipment and facilities for the production of online, hybrid, and technology-assisted courses and from a fund for the short-term contracting out of particular development tasks. UC will continue to elaborate on resource needs as campus plans and systemwide goals become clearer.” Let’s see, we are going to save money by finding money to fund course developers, technological hubs, new equipment, new facilities, and outsourced development people. As I have previously written, once you start to take into account all of the expenses related to developing an effective online program, you quickly run up the tab.
Like the expanding sponsored research mission, it is hard for online programs to pay for all of their related costs. It just seems like you never have enough administrators and staff as you push to downsize the faculty. If you think I am being paranoid here, let us look at one of the ideas for replacing current courses taught by regular UC Faculty: “some of the Extension XB, XD, etc. online courses might be considered for approval as courses to be offered during regular terms and systemwide if the course is appropriate and is not currently offered online to UC students.” In other terms, more students will be able to get UC course credit for extension courses that are often taught by non-UC faculty. In fact, the extension teachers do not have benefits, job security, academic freedom, fair compensation, or the same credentials as UC faculty who teach in the “regular” programs.
Moreover, the other way that the UC thinks it can save money is by using new technologies to simply expand the size of classes and eliminate the need for the faculty: “The increased enrollment capacity possible with online for-credit courses could result in a cost-savings to campus departments. An on-ground course that enrolls 100 students may require an instructor and two teaching assistants (TAs). To teach 500 students, the department would have to offer and cover the instructional costs of offering the course five times. An online course could enroll 500 students in one offering; it may still require the same number of TAs, ten in this example, but it will save the department in instructor expenses and time.” Not only might this model save the department money, but it may also eliminate the jobs of most of the faculty members.
The fantasy underlying most of these proposals is a high-tech university staffed with high-paying administrators and exploited graduate students. With large online courses and graduate student assistants, there is no need to hire more faculty members. Furthermore, as I have stressed elsewhere, undergraduate instruction is the most cost-effective part of the university, and so instead of turning their attention to the real causes for increased costs, the administration wants to standardized the curriculum and develop system-wide courses: “UC is developing a mechanism that will easily allow UC students to take courses at campuses other than the one in which they matriculated. This cross-campus enrollment process will allow UC students to take full advantage of one of the key benefits of online courses – the opportunity to learn from experts outside their own campus.” The problem with this notion is that once departments lose their cash cows--lower-division undergrad courses--there is no need to fund these programs.
UC argues that one area of potential savings could come by lowering the need to build more classrooms: “Online courses also allow the university to enroll students without the proportional need for new capital projects. It would cost the University approximately $1.8 billion to build the brick and mortar infrastructure needed to serve 11,000 new full-time equivalent students. The online infrastructure required to support the same number of students would cost approximately $20 million, a savings of over $1.7 billion. Because online courses will not require classroom space, greater adoption of online instruction can alleviate some classroom scheduling constraints and some need for new instructional space.” This seems to make sense, unless you know that during the recent surge in UC enrollments very few new classrooms have been added. Instead, the UC spends its money building medical facilities, research centers, and dorms.
In an apparent nod to the faculty, the report does offer a way for professors to make more money: “UC will undoubtedly continue to identify how it can leverage current and evolving trends in innovative learning technology to benefit UC students and faculty. One aspect of this might be to encourage UC faculty to develop MOOCs with the various for-profit or non-profit groups while simultaneously working to develop ways to provide UC credit for MOOC students either currently at UC or with intentions to enroll at UC. This might be accomplished by developing specific exams for current or future students to take that would certify a competency appropriate for UC credit or by adding additional learning activities and instructor involvement that rounds out the MOOC experience in ways that make the totality eligible for UC course credit.” I read this passage as saying the faculty can make some extra money by selling their courses to other content providers, while the UC saves money by giving course credits for online classes developed by outside providers. So let me get this vision right: UC faculty stop teaching UC courses as UC students start getting credit for courses developed outside of the UC system; meanwhile, the remaining UC faculty could increase their earnings by selling their courses to the highest external bidder as UC courses are outsourced to other providers.
But what about quality? Here is the best line from the whole report: “The Academic Senate has established procedures and criteria at all campuses that consider the unique aspects of online courses, and the Senate’s systemwide University Committee on Educational Policy (UCEP) has established guidelines for extending the approval process to make campus-approved courses available systemwide. Early information from the Senate’s requested UCOE evaluation are that courses are successful, valued, and “high quality curriculum.” Similar evaluations of campus-produced online courses would undoubtedly yield similar results.” According to this circular logic, since the past courses have been deemed high quality, the new classes will “undoubtedly” be high quality. This line of thinking does not increase my faith in the ability of the university to maintain educational quality.
At one point, the report does recognize that virtually all of its previous predictions concerning the pilot online program have failed: “When the original marketing study was done 16 months ago, there were relatively favorable indications of interest in enrolling in UC for-credit, for-fee online courses within California, and many of the online options available now were not in place or even envisioned. For a number of reasons, development of online courses in UCOE is approximately six months behind the original schedule, but the number of course offerings that could enroll non-matriculated students for 2013-14 exceeds the original budget planning assumptions. However, projections as to the market for these courses may turn out to have been overly optimistic.” This is an understatement since we now know that UC has spent $5 million to enroll 5 students and not the planned 3,000 non-UC students. And yet, it looks like the state will bail out the UC online pilot program so they can double down on their delusional bet. We all need to educate the governor and the regents about the realities of this online venture.
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
A Failure of Interaction: A Report from the UCLA Forum on High-Tech Higher Education
On January 8th, I participated in the forum on online education for California at UCLA. First a few ironies: the faculty presenters had to listen to four hours of non-interactive presentations before they could speak and ask questions. In other words, as the “providers” were lecturing us about how online technology allows for true interactive education to occur, they did not leave space for any interaction. Moreover, the high-tech promoters kept on having a hard time getting their PowerPoint slides to work as they criticized traditional institutions for not turning to new technologies to make education “Faster, Cheaper, and Better.” A final irony was that throughout the lectures, I noticed most of the audience, including myself, constantly checking their iPhones. Once again, as the providers were celebrating the role of new technologies in making us more focused and efficient, most of the audience was half-listening and multi-tasking.
For me the major underlying theme was that outside parties want to help make higher ed more efficient and cost-effective by taking apart these institutions. In what they call “debundling,” many of the providers discussed how one person would design a course, another person would present the course, another person would market the course, and none of these people would be involved in research, community service, or shared governance. Furthermore, the emerging business model appears to be centered on re-packaging Great courses from Great professors and selling them to other universities and colleges.
This deconstructing of the traditional institution of higher education helped to shape a possible conflict in my own interventions at the forum. On the one hand, I argued that all of this talk about MOOCs and other forms of online education is a major distraction in relation to the real cost issues facing higher education, like the reduction in state funding, and the increased costs of administration, athletics, amenities, sponsored research, and professional education. On the other hand, I added that the model of education being presented by the online providers destroys the connection between research and teaching, while it also removes universities and colleges from their central role in improving society.
The way to overcome this apparent contradiction is to affirm that we do need a holistic approach to education, but we also have to make the budgets as transparent as possible. For example, by showing how undergraduate courses in the Humanities and Social Sciences often bring in more money in tuition and state funds than they cost, we can help defend these important disciplines. Furthermore, by revealing that many research grants do not pay for the full cost of facilities, staff, and equipment, we can force grant funders to increase their support for overhead. However, if we do not do either of these things, a secret system of cross-subsidization will continue, and this will only hurt these institutions as a whole.
Another major point that I tried to stress when I talked to people at this event was that we should not compare online courses to the worst versions of our traditional courses; instead, we need to define and defend high-quality, in-person classes and hybrid forms of traditional education. In fact, what was so interesting about the forum was that many of the providers would stress that this is all about providing higher quality education, and it has to be faculty driven. When I finally got a chance to speak, I said that I have never been at a faculty meeting where a group of faculty stood up and said, let’s create a new online program and sell courses to other universities. When the providers said this is all about quality and the faculty, I heard, “this is all about reducing costs and making money.”
In a funny coincidence, the day before the forum, a series of articles was published about UC’s own online project. With titles like, “UC spends big to market its online courses — but reaches only one person,” the utter failure of the UC business model is becoming more apparent every day. What I have been told is just as UC started to market its costly online courses for non-UC students, the market was turned upside down by the explosion of free online courses. Now UC has spent $5 million on virtually one student, but we shouldn’t laugh because someone is going to have to pay for this failed experiment, and the bigger question is will UC be able to walk away from the table after it has gambled millions away on its high-tech wager?
For me the major underlying theme was that outside parties want to help make higher ed more efficient and cost-effective by taking apart these institutions. In what they call “debundling,” many of the providers discussed how one person would design a course, another person would present the course, another person would market the course, and none of these people would be involved in research, community service, or shared governance. Furthermore, the emerging business model appears to be centered on re-packaging Great courses from Great professors and selling them to other universities and colleges.
This deconstructing of the traditional institution of higher education helped to shape a possible conflict in my own interventions at the forum. On the one hand, I argued that all of this talk about MOOCs and other forms of online education is a major distraction in relation to the real cost issues facing higher education, like the reduction in state funding, and the increased costs of administration, athletics, amenities, sponsored research, and professional education. On the other hand, I added that the model of education being presented by the online providers destroys the connection between research and teaching, while it also removes universities and colleges from their central role in improving society.
The way to overcome this apparent contradiction is to affirm that we do need a holistic approach to education, but we also have to make the budgets as transparent as possible. For example, by showing how undergraduate courses in the Humanities and Social Sciences often bring in more money in tuition and state funds than they cost, we can help defend these important disciplines. Furthermore, by revealing that many research grants do not pay for the full cost of facilities, staff, and equipment, we can force grant funders to increase their support for overhead. However, if we do not do either of these things, a secret system of cross-subsidization will continue, and this will only hurt these institutions as a whole.
Another major point that I tried to stress when I talked to people at this event was that we should not compare online courses to the worst versions of our traditional courses; instead, we need to define and defend high-quality, in-person classes and hybrid forms of traditional education. In fact, what was so interesting about the forum was that many of the providers would stress that this is all about providing higher quality education, and it has to be faculty driven. When I finally got a chance to speak, I said that I have never been at a faculty meeting where a group of faculty stood up and said, let’s create a new online program and sell courses to other universities. When the providers said this is all about quality and the faculty, I heard, “this is all about reducing costs and making money.”
In a funny coincidence, the day before the forum, a series of articles was published about UC’s own online project. With titles like, “UC spends big to market its online courses — but reaches only one person,” the utter failure of the UC business model is becoming more apparent every day. What I have been told is just as UC started to market its costly online courses for non-UC students, the market was turned upside down by the explosion of free online courses. Now UC has spent $5 million on virtually one student, but we shouldn’t laugh because someone is going to have to pay for this failed experiment, and the bigger question is will UC be able to walk away from the table after it has gambled millions away on its high-tech wager?
Monday, December 31, 2012
Online for Higher Ed in California Event
A forum on online education will be held on January 8th at UCLA (Kerckhoff Grand Salon, 9-3). The ambitious title is the following: “Rebooting CA Higher Education: Leveraging innovations in online education to improve cost effectiveness and increase quality.” Here is the schedule of speakers:
January 8, 2013 9:00am to 3:00pm UCLA Kerckhoff Hall, Grand Salon
● Darrell Steinberg, California Senate Pro Tem Setting the Stage / Keynote 9:10-9:25
● Jeff Selingo, Editor at Large, Chronicle of Higher Education Online Educational Delivery Models 9:25- 9:35
● Phil Hill, Educational Tech Consultant & Analyst Scaling Education, Maintaining Quality 9:35-10:05
● Candace Thille, OLI Carnegie Mellon; Mo Qayoumi and Ping Hsu, San Jose State University; Michael Feldstein, Educational Tech Consultant & Analyst
Moderated Online Provider Panel 10:05-11:45
● Sebastian Thrun (Udacity); Burck Smith (Straighterline); Daphne Koller (Coursera); Phillip Regier (ASU Online); Andreea M Serban (Coast Community College); Chari Leader Kelley (Learning Counts); Don Kilburn (Pearson); Ray Cross (University of Wisconsin Colleges/ UW Extension), Steve Klingler (Western Governor's University)
Student Experience 11:45-12:00
● Student Representatives: Andrew Litt, UCLA; Martha Harding, College of the Canyons CA University/Policymakers Perspective 12:00-12:30
● Keith Williams, Interim Director UC Online; Barry Russell, Community College Vice Chancellor, Academic Affairs; Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, UC Regent, CSU Trustee; John Welty, Chair CSU Online
Moderated Faculty Panel with Questions to Providers 12:30-1:30
● Michelle Pilati, President, Community College Academic Senate; Diana Wright Guerin, President, CSU Academic Senate; Robert Powell, Chair, UC Academic Senate; Bob Samuels, President of University Council AFT; Lillian Taiz, President, California Faculty Association
In the advertisement for the event, it states the following: “The purpose of the panel discussion is to raise the awareness and discuss key issues regarding the potential for online education to lower the costs for higher education in California. We face a crisis in California in our ability to fully support public higher education. As a first approximation, the state should focus its attention on arresting the growth of the cost of education while maintaining or even increasing access and quality, not by simply urging educators to “do more with less,” but by enlisting their active participation in and contribution to innovative approaches. In accomplishing this goal, California could foster a working coalition that would be capable of attacking even more ambitious targets.” Although it is clear here that the frame for the conference is the idea that online education can make higher education more cost effective, I plan to use my time to show how the move to distance education will most likely only increase the cost of instruction.
What is interesting about this event is that it brings together groups that don’t normally talk to each other, and while I think that many of these stakeholders are well intentioned, I also believe that good intentions can lead to some very bad collective results. This event is free and open to the public so please come if you are able.
January 8, 2013 9:00am to 3:00pm UCLA Kerckhoff Hall, Grand Salon
● Darrell Steinberg, California Senate Pro Tem Setting the Stage / Keynote 9:10-9:25
● Jeff Selingo, Editor at Large, Chronicle of Higher Education Online Educational Delivery Models 9:25- 9:35
● Phil Hill, Educational Tech Consultant & Analyst Scaling Education, Maintaining Quality 9:35-10:05
● Candace Thille, OLI Carnegie Mellon; Mo Qayoumi and Ping Hsu, San Jose State University; Michael Feldstein, Educational Tech Consultant & Analyst
Moderated Online Provider Panel 10:05-11:45
● Sebastian Thrun (Udacity); Burck Smith (Straighterline); Daphne Koller (Coursera); Phillip Regier (ASU Online); Andreea M Serban (Coast Community College); Chari Leader Kelley (Learning Counts); Don Kilburn (Pearson); Ray Cross (University of Wisconsin Colleges/ UW Extension), Steve Klingler (Western Governor's University)
Student Experience 11:45-12:00
● Student Representatives: Andrew Litt, UCLA; Martha Harding, College of the Canyons CA University/Policymakers Perspective 12:00-12:30
● Keith Williams, Interim Director UC Online; Barry Russell, Community College Vice Chancellor, Academic Affairs; Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, UC Regent, CSU Trustee; John Welty, Chair CSU Online
Moderated Faculty Panel with Questions to Providers 12:30-1:30
● Michelle Pilati, President, Community College Academic Senate; Diana Wright Guerin, President, CSU Academic Senate; Robert Powell, Chair, UC Academic Senate; Bob Samuels, President of University Council AFT; Lillian Taiz, President, California Faculty Association
In the advertisement for the event, it states the following: “The purpose of the panel discussion is to raise the awareness and discuss key issues regarding the potential for online education to lower the costs for higher education in California. We face a crisis in California in our ability to fully support public higher education. As a first approximation, the state should focus its attention on arresting the growth of the cost of education while maintaining or even increasing access and quality, not by simply urging educators to “do more with less,” but by enlisting their active participation in and contribution to innovative approaches. In accomplishing this goal, California could foster a working coalition that would be capable of attacking even more ambitious targets.” Although it is clear here that the frame for the conference is the idea that online education can make higher education more cost effective, I plan to use my time to show how the move to distance education will most likely only increase the cost of instruction.
What is interesting about this event is that it brings together groups that don’t normally talk to each other, and while I think that many of these stakeholders are well intentioned, I also believe that good intentions can lead to some very bad collective results. This event is free and open to the public so please come if you are able.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
The One-Dimensional University: The Destructive Marriage of Technology and Administration
Close to fifty years ago, Herbert Marcuse wrote One-Dimensional Man, a radical criticism of contemporary society that has much to say about the current world around us. Marcuse’s central claim was that technological automation extends science’s domination over nature to a social domination over individuals. This domination occurs through a “total administration,” where managers oversee the rationalization of the social status quo through the elimination of all criticism and the provision of desired social goods. Perhaps, what we are seeing at the University of California is only the logical extension of Marcuse’s insightful analysis.
Not only does it appear that administrators have taken over the university, but they are promoting a form of education that transforms students into passive memorizers of standardized information. With the push to move students through the university system in an efficient and cost-effective manner, education is reimagined as an automated human assembly line. Meanwhile, students in large classes are socialized to internalize fragmented information without any possibility of interacting with knowledge in a critical or creative manner. All of these tendencies open up the door for an online education program that envisions mass producing standardized courses to an anonymous student body.
While this degradation of education increases, the university becomes a place of tax-exempt capital accumulation and a research wing of the military-industrial complex and the pharmaceutical-medical complex. As biology is turned into genetic code and culture becomes digital code, we find Marcuse’s warning that every aspect of society is being re-interpreted through the language of functionality and instrumentality. After all, the academic evolutionary psychologists and neuroscientists now tell us that we are nothing but biological computers programmed by nature. Here, we have become things (computers) as things are given the power of people. For Marcuse, this confusion between subjects and objects is the end result of total technological rationality.
The lasting image of this transformation of education into administered functionality may be the representation of a campus police officer pepper spraying prone students with an attitude of total indifference. In the alienated world of planning, management, and calculation, there is no space for tension, dissent, or difference. Or maybe, the new logo for the university is an even better representation of the truth of how the administration sees the students: here the management replaces pepper spray with urine as it reimagines the university to be the giant Urinal of California. I say it is better to be pissed off than pissed on, and we need to do everything in our power to retake the university from the hands of administered technological rationality.
Not only does it appear that administrators have taken over the university, but they are promoting a form of education that transforms students into passive memorizers of standardized information. With the push to move students through the university system in an efficient and cost-effective manner, education is reimagined as an automated human assembly line. Meanwhile, students in large classes are socialized to internalize fragmented information without any possibility of interacting with knowledge in a critical or creative manner. All of these tendencies open up the door for an online education program that envisions mass producing standardized courses to an anonymous student body.
While this degradation of education increases, the university becomes a place of tax-exempt capital accumulation and a research wing of the military-industrial complex and the pharmaceutical-medical complex. As biology is turned into genetic code and culture becomes digital code, we find Marcuse’s warning that every aspect of society is being re-interpreted through the language of functionality and instrumentality. After all, the academic evolutionary psychologists and neuroscientists now tell us that we are nothing but biological computers programmed by nature. Here, we have become things (computers) as things are given the power of people. For Marcuse, this confusion between subjects and objects is the end result of total technological rationality.
The lasting image of this transformation of education into administered functionality may be the representation of a campus police officer pepper spraying prone students with an attitude of total indifference. In the alienated world of planning, management, and calculation, there is no space for tension, dissent, or difference. Or maybe, the new logo for the university is an even better representation of the truth of how the administration sees the students: here the management replaces pepper spray with urine as it reimagines the university to be the giant Urinal of California. I say it is better to be pissed off than pissed on, and we need to do everything in our power to retake the university from the hands of administered technological rationality.
Monday, December 10, 2012
The Seductive Mechanical Reproduction of the University
UC has released a new advertisement for new online program, and it is quite revealing. In fact, if you Google UC Online, you will most likely see the ad appear at the top of the page (I wonder how much this cost the UC). The sales pitch begins with the following: “Sign up today to learn more about the new, exciting, and fully online experience now being offered by University of California. Taught by the same instructors that have provided a top-tier education to some of the world’s best and brightest, these online courses immerse you in the world of high academic standards that, previously, could only be found on a UC campus.” Yes, it is new and exciting and just like the real UC experience. However, it is unclear still who will teach the courses or what academic standards will be applied.
The ad continues by putting down the real UC education: “Because our courses are online, they offer a level of flexibility that doesn’t exist in a more traditional college setting. Where and when you learn is up to you. What you learn makes this opportunity unique.” In other words, unlike those traditional universities (like the University of California), education in the online courses will be flexible, personalized, and unique.
The ad next shifts to a more threatening and dubious claim: “Many of our courses are great for fulfilling prerequisite or transfer credit requirements, such as the following; “Pre-Calculus 1A, Pre-Calculus 1B, General Psychology, General Chemistry, Introduction to Writing & Rhetoric,Intro to Probability & Statistics for Business.” So for people who are not yet matriculated into the UC system, they can start to earn credits and fulfill perquisites. This sounds like a good deal, but is it really? (On a separate page, you find the following disclaimer: “Please note that registering for any of the UC Online classes does not admit you to a University of California campus. Also, participating in this educational program does not in itself provide preference in admission to the University of California.”)
If you click on the Pricing link, you discover that the courses come at a steep price: Intro to Fresh Water: Processes and Policies $1,750 Pre-Calculus 1A $1,400 Pre-Calculus 1B $1,400 Beauty & Joy of Computing $2,100 Principles of Internet Citizenship $2,100 Intro to Writing & Rhetoric $1,400 General Psychology $1,575 General Chemistry $1,575 Intro to Probability & Stats for Business $2,100 Global Climate Change $1,050. The cost for 10 courses would be $15,050, and I do not see any mention of financial aid here.
So the way the university is going to expand access is to charge students more to get less and offer them less support for the hope that they can maybe use the credits in the future. This ad for a pricey possible education also contains a picture of an attractive blond female student wearing glasses as she holds her laptop near a fuzzy whiteboard. Welcome to the brave new world of the UC commercial!
The ad continues by putting down the real UC education: “Because our courses are online, they offer a level of flexibility that doesn’t exist in a more traditional college setting. Where and when you learn is up to you. What you learn makes this opportunity unique.” In other words, unlike those traditional universities (like the University of California), education in the online courses will be flexible, personalized, and unique.
The ad next shifts to a more threatening and dubious claim: “Many of our courses are great for fulfilling prerequisite or transfer credit requirements, such as the following; “Pre-Calculus 1A, Pre-Calculus 1B, General Psychology, General Chemistry, Introduction to Writing & Rhetoric,Intro to Probability & Statistics for Business.” So for people who are not yet matriculated into the UC system, they can start to earn credits and fulfill perquisites. This sounds like a good deal, but is it really? (On a separate page, you find the following disclaimer: “Please note that registering for any of the UC Online classes does not admit you to a University of California campus. Also, participating in this educational program does not in itself provide preference in admission to the University of California.”)
If you click on the Pricing link, you discover that the courses come at a steep price: Intro to Fresh Water: Processes and Policies $1,750 Pre-Calculus 1A $1,400 Pre-Calculus 1B $1,400 Beauty & Joy of Computing $2,100 Principles of Internet Citizenship $2,100 Intro to Writing & Rhetoric $1,400 General Psychology $1,575 General Chemistry $1,575 Intro to Probability & Stats for Business $2,100 Global Climate Change $1,050. The cost for 10 courses would be $15,050, and I do not see any mention of financial aid here.
So the way the university is going to expand access is to charge students more to get less and offer them less support for the hope that they can maybe use the credits in the future. This ad for a pricey possible education also contains a picture of an attractive blond female student wearing glasses as she holds her laptop near a fuzzy whiteboard. Welcome to the brave new world of the UC commercial!
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Doing Online Right
Several of my recent posts have dealt with the negative aspects of the UC move to place courses online, but I want to clarify that many faculty members are currently using digital technologies in an effective manner. For example, many uc teachers are having their students produce web sites and analyze a wide range of web-based contents. There is also a growing use of digital courseware and class management systems, and many faculty employ online class discussions. Moreover, we are witnessing efforts to use digital and multimedia textbooks as we teach our students how to access and assess digital media. Finally, we already have thousands of classes that are either totally or partially online.
One reason the Regents may not know about the high level of digital activity in the UC system is because the Regents are not educators, and they have little knowledge of what really goes on in university classrooms. Unfortunately, the latest Regents meeting revealed that many of the UC administrators also do not know about the use of digital technologies in the UC system: we have online extension programs, we have networked classrooms, we have digital labs, and we have digital libraries – in fact, we may be one of the world leaders in high-tech education, but what we do not have is a replication of the University of Phoenix.
If you listen to the end of the discussion about online learning from the last Regents meeting, you will hear the exasperated Berkeley Chancellor Birgenou exclaim, “I have no idea what you people are talking about.” From my perspective, this was the new former Chancellor’s best moment. Yes, the Regents actually have no idea what is going on in the very institution they are supposed to be directing.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Online Instruction, Budget Transparency, and the Cost of Education
For the last ten years, UC-AFT has been fighting a battle with the University of California over budget transparency. One of our main concerns has been how much it actually costs to educate each individual undergraduate student and how much funding does each student generate in state and tuition dollars. So far the Office of the President has refused to make these calculations because they do not think you can or should separate teaching from research and administration, and even though the new rebenching funding model does try to account for the different costs structures related to undergraduate vs, graduate vs. professional education, the university still insists that it would be too costly and time-consuming to really determine the cost of educating different types of students. However, the push for online education should motivate UCOP to change its strategy because the Regents and the state are under the false impression that distance education can solve the university’s fiscal problems.
The main reason why the Regents and the governor are misguided is because they do not know that the highly-impacted, lower-division courses that UC wants to move online may be the only thing that really generates a profit for the university. For example, in looking at my first- and second-year students’ transcripts at UCLA, I calculated the average, yearly direct instructional cost for a typical lower-division undergraduate student. I found that since students in their first two years at UCLA tend to take 8 large courses (averaging 200 students) and 2 small classes (averaging 25 students) each year, and half of these courses are taught by lecturers, the total direct instructional cost per year is $1,950 (an if we add 20% for benefits, it costs $2,340). (UC brings in $16,000 per undergrad student in combined tuition and state funds).
Here is how I made this calculation: since the average full-time lecturer salary is currently $60,000 and the full load is 8 courses, each of the courses cost $7,500. If a lower-division student takes four large lecture classes (averaging 200 students) with a lecturer, the cost per student for each course is $37.50. In the case of senate faculty teaching lower-division lecture classes making $100,000 for four courses a year, the cost for the four large lecture classes is $500 per student. If we then do the same calculation for small classes of 25 students, the cost for a course taught by a lecturer is $300 and the course taught by a senate faculty member is $1,000.
One can argue with this methodology, but what should be absolutely clear is that it is virtually impossible for the online program to deliver education for less money. Although the Regents and the Governor bemoan the fact that universities have failed to follow other “industries” by reducing costs through technology, what they do not see is that costs have been reduced by the use of large classes and non-tenured faculty. However, UCOP does not want to make this argument because its entire budgetary structure is based on half-truths and abstract calculations.
Making matters worse is the fact that the UC has already spent a lot of money on the online pilot program, and studies have shown that universities constantly under-estimate the real costs of distance education. For example, in his article “The Costs and Costing of Online Learning,”, Greville Rumble looks at the actual costs of using online courses at research universities. His main finding is that previous research on this topic failed to take into account all of the related expenses: “One of the problems with many of the studies now available is that they report the broad results, not the detail. It is therefore difficult to know what has been included and what excluded, and so whether the costings undertaken are comprehensive. Experience suggests, however, that all figures need to be treated with care. What does seem clear is that the costs of developing a course are being pushed up—and significantly so whenever media are used in a sophisticated way. If so, and if cost efficiency is an important consideration, then savings may need to be looked for in delivery.” Rumble here argues that one of the main cost drivers in online courses is the development of the class material.
In fact, his research shows that if universities want to produce a high-quality educational experience, they have to spend a great deal of money: “The high costs of developing internet courses are confirmed by Saba, who suggests that commercial software companies developing courses for online instruction or publishers are spending at least $500,000 to fully develop a multimedia course.” It is important to note that when universities present the cost of new online programs, they usually do not account for the initial costs of course development.
Rumble also believes that although these new programs are often used to save labor costs and faculty time, the opposite often happens: “A high proportion of the costs of developing materials is labor costs. All the research shows that it takes more academic time to develop media that will occupy a student for one hour, than it takes to develop a one-hour lecture—although how much more time is difficult to quantify. Sparkes reckoned that it took from 2 to 10 hours to prepare a lecture, from 1 to 10 hours to prepare a small group session, and from 3 to 10 hours to prepare a video-tape lecture; however, it took at least 50 to 100 academic hours to prepare a teaching text, 100 hours to prepare a television broadcast, 200 hours to develop computer-aided learning, and 300 hours to develop interactive materials—to which in all cases one needed to add the time of technical support staff.” There are thus a lot of hidden costs involved in developing online courses, and these expenses rarely show up in presentations on the cost-effectiveness of computer-mediated education.
Universities also sometimes underestimate the expenses related to delivering online courses: “In general none of the studies undertaken to date adequately factor in the costs of overheads. Although, the costs of putting in equipment directly associated with the projects (e.g., servers) are usually taken into account, as are the costs of software licenses, college operating budgets do not usually reflect the full costs of maintaining networked services.” It turns out that it is very hard to calculate the total cost of software licenses, network maintenance, and equipment for online programs, so universities simply make a guess and present it as a fact.
Furthermore, universities have a hard time predicting the number of staff and administrators they will need for a new online program: “Much depends on the context—the time spent agreeing that a group of enthusiasts can develop a project will be very different to that required to change an institution’s direction. Indeed, developing an IT [information technology] strategy is likely to be expensive.” One thing that we can be sure of is that the use of online courses drives up the cost of administration and staff while further squeezing instructional budgets. I hope to make this argument to the Regents and Governor Brown to show them the folly of the online fiscal panacea.
The main reason why the Regents and the governor are misguided is because they do not know that the highly-impacted, lower-division courses that UC wants to move online may be the only thing that really generates a profit for the university. For example, in looking at my first- and second-year students’ transcripts at UCLA, I calculated the average, yearly direct instructional cost for a typical lower-division undergraduate student. I found that since students in their first two years at UCLA tend to take 8 large courses (averaging 200 students) and 2 small classes (averaging 25 students) each year, and half of these courses are taught by lecturers, the total direct instructional cost per year is $1,950 (an if we add 20% for benefits, it costs $2,340). (UC brings in $16,000 per undergrad student in combined tuition and state funds).
Here is how I made this calculation: since the average full-time lecturer salary is currently $60,000 and the full load is 8 courses, each of the courses cost $7,500. If a lower-division student takes four large lecture classes (averaging 200 students) with a lecturer, the cost per student for each course is $37.50. In the case of senate faculty teaching lower-division lecture classes making $100,000 for four courses a year, the cost for the four large lecture classes is $500 per student. If we then do the same calculation for small classes of 25 students, the cost for a course taught by a lecturer is $300 and the course taught by a senate faculty member is $1,000.
One can argue with this methodology, but what should be absolutely clear is that it is virtually impossible for the online program to deliver education for less money. Although the Regents and the Governor bemoan the fact that universities have failed to follow other “industries” by reducing costs through technology, what they do not see is that costs have been reduced by the use of large classes and non-tenured faculty. However, UCOP does not want to make this argument because its entire budgetary structure is based on half-truths and abstract calculations.
Making matters worse is the fact that the UC has already spent a lot of money on the online pilot program, and studies have shown that universities constantly under-estimate the real costs of distance education. For example, in his article “The Costs and Costing of Online Learning,”, Greville Rumble looks at the actual costs of using online courses at research universities. His main finding is that previous research on this topic failed to take into account all of the related expenses: “One of the problems with many of the studies now available is that they report the broad results, not the detail. It is therefore difficult to know what has been included and what excluded, and so whether the costings undertaken are comprehensive. Experience suggests, however, that all figures need to be treated with care. What does seem clear is that the costs of developing a course are being pushed up—and significantly so whenever media are used in a sophisticated way. If so, and if cost efficiency is an important consideration, then savings may need to be looked for in delivery.” Rumble here argues that one of the main cost drivers in online courses is the development of the class material.
In fact, his research shows that if universities want to produce a high-quality educational experience, they have to spend a great deal of money: “The high costs of developing internet courses are confirmed by Saba, who suggests that commercial software companies developing courses for online instruction or publishers are spending at least $500,000 to fully develop a multimedia course.” It is important to note that when universities present the cost of new online programs, they usually do not account for the initial costs of course development.
Rumble also believes that although these new programs are often used to save labor costs and faculty time, the opposite often happens: “A high proportion of the costs of developing materials is labor costs. All the research shows that it takes more academic time to develop media that will occupy a student for one hour, than it takes to develop a one-hour lecture—although how much more time is difficult to quantify. Sparkes reckoned that it took from 2 to 10 hours to prepare a lecture, from 1 to 10 hours to prepare a small group session, and from 3 to 10 hours to prepare a video-tape lecture; however, it took at least 50 to 100 academic hours to prepare a teaching text, 100 hours to prepare a television broadcast, 200 hours to develop computer-aided learning, and 300 hours to develop interactive materials—to which in all cases one needed to add the time of technical support staff.” There are thus a lot of hidden costs involved in developing online courses, and these expenses rarely show up in presentations on the cost-effectiveness of computer-mediated education.
Universities also sometimes underestimate the expenses related to delivering online courses: “In general none of the studies undertaken to date adequately factor in the costs of overheads. Although, the costs of putting in equipment directly associated with the projects (e.g., servers) are usually taken into account, as are the costs of software licenses, college operating budgets do not usually reflect the full costs of maintaining networked services.” It turns out that it is very hard to calculate the total cost of software licenses, network maintenance, and equipment for online programs, so universities simply make a guess and present it as a fact.
Furthermore, universities have a hard time predicting the number of staff and administrators they will need for a new online program: “Much depends on the context—the time spent agreeing that a group of enthusiasts can develop a project will be very different to that required to change an institution’s direction. Indeed, developing an IT [information technology] strategy is likely to be expensive.” One thing that we can be sure of is that the use of online courses drives up the cost of administration and staff while further squeezing instructional budgets. I hope to make this argument to the Regents and Governor Brown to show them the folly of the online fiscal panacea.
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