Today (February 4, 2013), there are several stories in Inside Higher Education that illustrate
the point of my last post, and I want to use two of them to express a
relatively strong statement of concern.
I simply do not believe that many leaders in higher education understand
the train that is bearing down on them.
The first piece is titled, “Free Course, Inexpensive Exam” (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/04/free-online-course-providers-pair-credit-bearing-exams). The story describes the decision of a student
to take a free online course, and then receive three credits at his home institution
by taking a CLEP exam, for just $99.
The piece then discusses some of the many options that more and more
students undoubtedly will choose over paying much higher tuition at a
university, or even at a community college.
The course was a general education course in psychology, and
the student makes a perfectly understandable point that it made no sense to him
to pay tuition to attend a large lecture class, in which personal attention or
interaction would be limited. However, my
own observation is that general psychology is an enormously profitable course
at most institutions, as are many other general education courses. Indeed, a full cost accounting view of most
upper level courses at universities would reveal that nearly all are offered at
a deficit. Take away the lucrative
general education courses, and it may become impossible to balance a
traditional residential institution’s budget.
The
second piece is titled, “If a School Adds an Amenity and No One
Knows, Does it Really Exist? ( http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/stratedgy/if-school-adds-amenity-and-no-one-knows-does-it-really-exist#ixzz2JwPL6XBs). It caught my attention, because it is a blog
post, commenting on a recent study that argues it may make economic sense for
institutions to spend more on amenities than on improving academic quality. (A story on the original research can be
found at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/01/29/many-students-opt-colleges-spend-more-nonacademic-functions-study-finds)
Leaving aside all sorts of
things one might say about the implications of this study, my take is that it
illustrates another reason that most institutions are in trouble: They have bought into a war of competition,
to fill first-year classes by building the “next new thing” that will draw
students. Regardless of whether the
strategy works to attract students, it certainly increases the cost of
operations and contributes to escalating tuition.
These pieces illustrate the dilemma faced at most
institutions. In effect, people are
working harder and harder to fill their first-year class, with what may well be
negative financial implications in the long run. Some will succeed; some will fail.
The potentially good news is that many presidents and boards
now understand the need to create new sources of revenue, and that could be
helpful to branch campuses and providers of online courses. Unfortunately, however, most leaders are
trapped by their frame of reference, and outside of those of us with a branch
campus or continuing education background, most leaders at traditional
institutions do not understand how to build innovation teams and release the
power of entrepreneurship.
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