The Accelerating Rate of Change in Higher Education

A few years ago, I wrote a piece for this blog titled, “Rate of Change and Predicting Which Institutions Will Thrive in the Future.”  You can find it at http://branchcampus.blogspot.com/2010/05/rate-of-change-and-predicting-which.html.

The post was based on a quote from Jack Welch:  “I’ve always believed that when the rate of change inside an institution becomes slower than the rate of change outside, the end is in sight.”  Sobering words, but the logic is compelling.  Over and over again, we have seen that established organizations in a wide range of industries lose out to more innovative, nimble organizations with an idea that disrupted the status quo.

I am revisiting this topic, because the rate of change in higher education clearly accelerated in recent months.  The stories are stunning, as the availability of MOOCs and other online options are expanding.  The emergence of “free” courses has rapidly spawned remarkably low-cost options to turn those non-credit experiences into credit-bearing courses; we see more interest than ever in credit for prior learning; and we see a move toward awarding credit and degrees that are based on competencies, rather than on completed coursework.

I could go on, but I no longer have any doubt that higher education will forever be changed.  As I’ve written before, the problem for most institutions is that their traditional, residential programs inevitably lose money, in large part because of the nearly insane competition to expand amenities.  However, if you want to see real confusion about the challenge of serving traditional audiences, while encouraging innovation and attracting new audiences, look at state-level policy makers and boards of trustees.

Here’s the rub:  The institutional financial engine requires increased income from non-residential audiences.  I believe those audiences will be drawn to online or branch campus-based hybrid programs.  Unfortunately for the institution, those students will have excellent options to meet their needs that will be very low cost.  Established institutions will find it difficult to charge enough tuition to meet their broader financial needs, unless they have a very special brand.

We don’t know yet just which of the emerging options will be most attractive to students.  For myself, I wonder exactly how the psychology of going to school will interact with the efficiency and cost advantages of technology-driven choices.  How will students combine various modes of delivery and learning to create what may well become customized lifelong learning portfolios?

I anticipate that students will chose different delivery modes for different purposes and topics, depending on their strengths, interests, and life circumstances.  Degrees may actually become less important than building a portfolio of competencies, although adult learners may aggregate such competencies, add some missing pieces, and eventually claim their diploma.

More Attention From Institutional Leaders May Not Benefit Branch Campuses

Through most of my career, I both enjoyed and benefited from the fact that people at the main campus paid little attention to their branches.  For all the frustration and difficulty of getting programs or courses approved, the circumstances worked to our advantage.  In addition, because we were financially separate from the main campus, we developed a deeper understanding of higher education finance than most of the chairs, deans and vice presidents with whom we worked. 

(Not bragging; just sharing the facts.  My experience with finance or budget administrators really was no different, because they tend to focus so strongly on cost control and risk avoidance that we found negotiations usually worked to our advantage.  Keep in mind that I am a devotee of mutual gains bargaining, so our success was mostly a matter of careful listening and addressing the interests of others, but with a strong understanding of our own interests.  Thus, it was the lack of others’ understanding of our interests that gave us an advantage.)

I’m saying this, because I am concerned that “flying under the radar,” or being “out of sight and out of mind” have become liabilities.  Branch campuses, along with online learning programs and main campus programs for adult learners, can best serve their institutions if they aggressively pursue an entrepreneurial tack.  Being entrepreneurial and highly service oriented tend to be natural for people who have served for a long time on branch campuses.  Bluntly, however, although I meet a lot of institutional leaders who talk about entrepreneurship, I meet very few who really get it.

Given the growing importance of outreach types of initiatives, we can expect institutional leaders to take more interest in branch campuses.  However, to the extent that they do not understand the mission, the student populations, and other elements that make branch campuses a unique form of delivery, branch leaders can expect some unfortunate choices to be made at the main campus.  Put another way, if main campus administrators do not understand the interests of branch students and communities (i.e., do not understand what they value or how they make decisions), those administrators will make assumptions that are off the mark, leaving the branch all that more vulnerable to competitors.

All of this makes me believe that the need for good research and literature on branch campuses will only increase.  It also suggests to me that the main campus individuals with oversight responsibility of branch campuses need to have a legitimate background in the area, or at least to have strong support people who can deliver good advice on important decisions.  Institutions need their branches and online programs to thrive, but thriving can only occur when there is deep understanding of those adult or non-traditional audiences we hope to attract and retain.

Organizing Thoughts on Delivery and Assessment

There is no question that lots of things are happening in higher education.  New programs and new strategies show up at a rapid clip.  As you think about the future, you will necessarily make choices about course and program delivery, and those choices will have a major impact on how attractive you are to prospective students.

Consider this range of possibilities for delivery:

·      Face-to-face in a traditional classroom

·      Synchronous delivery with some students in the same classroom as the instructor and others participating through interactive video

·      Hybrid delivery, which may include asynchronous streaming videos, online elements, and occasional classroom meetings, which themselves can occur in a variety of forms; this might include use of the “flipped classroom,” which offers significant creative opportunities

·       What I’ll call “traditional” online, with an instructor teaching 15-25 students

·      Scalable online, enrolling, say, 75-300 students in each course, with one instructor and facilitators supporting smaller “sections” of students

·      What I used to call “massively scalable” courses, with a thousand or more students per section, but still supported by a team of facilitators, working under the supervision of a faculty member

·      Massive open online courses (MOOCs), sometimes with more than 100,000 students enrolled, usually for free, but typically not offered for credit

Now, consider how students might be credentialed for their work:

·      Traditional grades, leading to a degree

·      Traditional grades, leading to certificates that document specific skills and experiences

·      No grades, but the awarding of a badge (similar to a certificate) or a certificate of completion; students might receive traditional course credit through some additional process, probably for a fee

·      Recognition of prior learning and the awarding of academic credit for that work

And how might we assess student learning?  How about:

·      Traditional exams, projects and papers, perhaps with exams taken at a testing center

·      Portfolio assessment

·      Demonstrated competencies

Then, how will institutions generate revenue or otherwise cover their costs?

·      Through tuition, fees, state support, and endowments

·      Employers pay a fee to access resumes of top course/program completers

·      Content producers, such as Coursera and Udacity, license high quality course content to institutions, which then provide support and flipped classroom experiences to students; colleges and universities can create niche opportunities to do the same, including internationally

·      Industries/employers “sponsor” courses and programs, covering the cost of development and delivery

·      Students pay a fee to have competencies assessed and “certified”

Each of these lists can be expanded, and some of my bullet points may need further description to be clear.  My advice is to read newsletters, surf the Internet, and network with creative people.  I don’t think it is all that overwhelming, explored in a thoughtful way, but it does take time and energy.  Hence the concerns I expressed awhile back about making sure that you focus on the so-called “important but not urgent” items that will create your future. 

As you consider audience, cost, price, content, delivery and support services, you can work your way through the options.  You may well make different choices for different programs and audiences, and your competition will affect what makes sense.  It’s important to be nimble and engaged!

A Leadership Dilemma for Branch Campuses and Online Programs

When I suggest that most institutions of higher education are in trouble, I am in good company.  Many people say the same thing, and most point to the remarkably rapid emergence of very low cost alternatives for earning credits, especially in the lucrative area of general education, as well as alternative ways of certifying learning that tie to the needs of employers.

For example, at StraighterLine, one can earn a full year of general education credits for about $1000, and those credits will transfer to many institutions.  Companies, community colleges and a few universities are breaking new ground by providing free non-credit options that can be turned into transferable credits, through exams that may cost less than $100.  In short, the higher education financial model is breaking down.

Moreover, because leaders are convinced that spending on “amenities,” (athletics, additional buildings, etc.) is necessary in order to compete for residential students, they are increasing the cost of operation, at the same time their traditional revenue sources are under pressure.  With the eighteen-year-old demographic declining in many parts of the country, we are bound to see winners and losers, whether we look at the public or private sphere.

Just at the time that leaders need to reframe their thinking, they are, instead, trapped by the need to save their “brand.”  (And this trap is real.  I do believe that the main campus residential program creates the institutional brand for most universities.  Leaving aside political issues, alumni, donors, and everyone else, it would be foolish in almost all situations to close the main campus.  Thus, presidents and boards are locked into a “loss leader” as the activity on which they concentrate their time.  That’s a classic example of why established institutions struggle in a disruptive environment.)

I hear presidents say they want growth at their branch campuses and in their online learning programs.  Unfortunately, for the most part, they invest very little of their personal time or their political capital to get the point across to vice presidents, deans, chairs, alumni, or others.  Revenue sharing models either do not exist or are ineffectively designed, and few traditional educators understand the audience that chooses to enroll online or at branches.

Bottom line:  We have the perfect context for the emergence of new providers.  If institutions lose general education students, just as one example, it will be tough to replace that revenue, without pricing in a way that makes the competitive situation just that much worse.

Given the rapid engagement of elite institutions in the online market, it makes sense to aggressively identify niche opportunities and to empower innovation teams.  Unfortunately, I don’t see much evidence that is happening.  On the contrary, most efforts at “innovation” are kept on a very short leash, for political reasons, as much as from a lack of understanding.  What we see are linear improvements and incremental change, slowed by complex governance processes, when we need something much more creative.

Two Examples of Emerging Challenges to Traditional Institutions of Higher Education

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.

Next time:  The leadership dilemma

Staying on Top of Developments in Higher Education

I start most days by checking email and reading/scanning various newsletters.  I work from what I like to think is a holistic, almost intuitive sense of direction, and that seems to require immersion in information.  I wish I did a better job of retaining specific sources and details, but at this point in my life I’m going to roll with my strengths and not worry too much about my deficits.  (That’s a shout-out to all my strengths-based leadership friends!)

I realize that most people lack the time to invest that I do in exploring ideas, whether through reading online newsletters, networking, or otherwise pursuing new developments.  I hope to provide a brief series of posts, here, to capture a few key elements, as I think they might relate to administrators at branch campuses or other small public and private institutions.

I recommend that anyone interested in emerging change subscribe to at least two online resources that I check out every day.  The first is Inside Higher Ed, which I find more valuable to administrators than The Chronicle of Higher Education, although I do subscribe to it, as well. 

You can check out Inside Higher Ed at www.insidehighered.com, and subscriptions to the Daily Update are free.  Inside Higher Ed also supports some useful groups on LinkedIn, and the Update includes a number of interesting bloggers.  My favorite blog is called “Confessions of a Community College Dean.”

Just today, the Update had an interesting story on MOOCs and one that covers a recent study suggesting that there is very little connection between what an institution spends on students and the quality of the education they receive.  There also is an interview with Randy Best, CEO of Academic Partnerships, which just announced a new initiative, called MOOC2Degree.  It is an interesting new idea for awarding credit and attracting students to enroll in online degree programs.

Academic Partnerships is a company that works with public universities to create and market relatively large online programs.  I worked with them, when I was at Ohio University, and, although the partnership was challenging to manage, it also was instructive and successful in attractive several thousand students to our online RN to BSN program.  Randy is innovative, entertaining, and frequently controversial.  The Q and A definitely helps explain the MOOC2Degree initiative.

The second resource is the “Professional, Continuing and Online Education Update by UPCEA,” which is at http://continuingedupdate.blogspot.com/.  It typically provides links to three articles, usually related to online learning.  Some of them can be quite thought-provoking, such as one today, titled, “The End of the University as We Know It,” by Nathan Harden, for the American Interest.  It is long, but makes an interesting argument.  (The particular piece is at http://the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=1352.)

Anyone who hopes to understand and compete effectively in the emerging new world of higher education needs to invest at least a little time in studying trends.  I hope this blog is of help to those in the branch campus world, which can be part of a thoughtful institutional strategy, but also will be challenged to adapt to the educational and potential financial advantages of online options.

Revisiting "Characteristics of Branch Campuses"

By far the most read post on this blog is titled Characteristics of Branch Campuses, and it was posted July 11, 2007.  If you want to read it, you can find it at http://branchcampus.blogspot.com/2007/07/characteristics-of-branch-campus.html.  Be warned:  When I first started posting, I wrote some relatively long entries.

One of the challenges in writing about branch campuses, never mind building a base of research on branches, is the lack of clear definitions or a shared understanding of what makes something a branch.  My piece on “characteristics” was an attempt to describe what I called an “idealized” branch, but there are many, many variations across the country.

A few days ago, I saw a list of “10 Satellite Campuses With Impressive Reputations All Their Own” on a site called thebestcolleges.org.  (http://www.thebestcolleges.org/?s=satellite)  I’m familiar with nearly all of these campuses, and there are interesting stories all around.  But calling some of them “branches” seems a stretch.

For example, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis is on the list, and I would insist that it is not a branch campus, by any reasonable definition.  It enrolls 30,000 students, in more than 200 programs, through 21 schools and academic units, according to its web site.  Similarly, they list the University of Michigan-Flint as a branch; they list another “campus” that is fully digital (hardly distinctive today), and still another that is a summer abroad study center, located in Europe.

I also have a complaint about all the attention recently to elite universities opening overseas branches.  Well, it isn’t the attention so much as the impression some articles leave that “international branch” and “branch” are synonyms.  I’m definitely interested in the trend, as well as the challenges and opportunities they create, but I’ve found many of the stories misleading about the branch world.

My bottom line on this is that the need for good research and shared vocabulary about branch campuses grows stronger all the time.  Fortunately, NABCA has been encouraging more research, and that work has progressed well from year to year.  Once we can agree on the defining characteristics of branches and begin to get a handle on best practices, maybe the critical contributions they make to higher education can be better appreciated. 

I maintain that branches are a unique delivery form of higher education, with some specific advantages for important populations.  Yet, the lack of connection and awareness of just how pervasive “satellite” operations really are is not helpful to encouraging branch development and growth.  I’m not worried about thebestcolleges.org, but I am concerned about helping branch campuses do well.