I feel like what the politicians don't understand is that 100%, or possibly 99%, of "for-profit college" educations are conducted online.
Really, online courses are no different than parking kids in a library with a book and telling them to complete all the exercises, and to ask a teacher if you get stuck.
Oh? There aren't forums and assignments that are given feedback and video lectures and live chats and so on?
Maybe there are. The live chats could be engaging. Video lectures seem terribly dull to me, though.
I basically believe that having someone pay attention to you is basically rejuventating. That it's energizing to have a parent come over and silently keep an eye on you while you play, or have a teacher make eye contact with you in conversation.
(Maybe this is just youngest-child desperate for attention Heebie talking, though.)
There was a horrible interlude with for-profits and the GAO recently: the GAO put out an investigative report on recruiting fraud, the schools all expressed regret and embarrassment before a Congressional committee because the results were so egregious, then the lobbyists started hammering, and in particular tried to make great hay from the GAO's later slightly tweaking its findings to be even more scrupulously accurate. And they've released a great cloud of ink, parroted by right-wing sites, that the DOE regulations are more big government squelching free enterprise (even though the issue is how much public student loans they can be given) and even have the gall to say that it's inequitable because black, Hispanic, etc. students use them more (even though they're objectively being ripped off).
I basically believe that having someone pay attention to you is basically rejuventating.
That's fair enough, although it doesn't quite seem to lead to online courses being "no different" than reading a book by yourself.
5: They went after the GAO's use of professional short-seller Steve Eisman as a source, because Steve Eisman will make money if the private colleges are forced to stop wasting Pell Grant money whereas the private college lobby's motivations are virgin pure.
Eh, the quality of online courses depends almost entirely on the eloquence and work ethic of the professor/TAs involved. Video lectures aren't that different from a professor who talks fast enough to forestall interruption; the qualitative difference is that online lectures are procrastinable.
7: The GAO report doesn't mention Eisman - I believe the committee just called him to testify.
I'm biased towards believing that for-profit colleges are exactly institutionalized theft of federal tuition aid, with the students just pawns in the fraud, and I've certainly heard plenty of anecdotal support for that.
OTOH, for-profit hospitals seem like a pretty good parallel, with the potential to be running a very similar scam, and yet they seem to be basically no different than non-profit hospitals.* If the profit-motive can be injected there without corroding everything, it seems like it ought to be able to be injected into higher education as well.
*It's possible I'm wrong about this, and I trust someone here will educate me if that's the case.
from a professor who talks fast enough to forestall interruption;
This would, of course, be an absolutely terrible high school teacher.
Good online education is more like learning a piece of software by playing around with it than it is like reading a book on your own and taking the test.
Having reviewed some online courses, though, I can tell you that many are very literally like "here's the book. Read it and take these online tests. Email me if you have any problems." The tests are then computer graded so the instructor basically doesn't have to do any work. These are courses run by PhD's paid the salary you expect for university professors.
If you want to guarantee that you will be replaced by a machine, you can always insist on doing your job completely mechanically.
It seems that part of the issue is that for-profit schools are trying to radically change the business model (to lower costs all around). This may or may not work out for the best, but it makes them easy to demonize (for providing an inferior "product", in terms of a lesser educational experience). (To return to my own analogy: for profit hospitals were less likely to create complaints, because they weren't radically changing the model--they were basically keeping it the same but just priviatizing the profits.)
If nonprofit colleges had pushed further into the online education space, it would be easier to distinguish "problems" inherent in the new model (that might be worth accepting due to lower costs and other offsetting advantages) vs. problems being created because of the profit motive.
10: Default rates are a pretty good objective indicator, no? 3-year default rate for 4-year public institutions, 5.3%; private institutions, 4.5%; "proprietary" (=for-profit), 13.7%.
I hope everyone has read this piece.
15: A good objective indicator of what? Fraud? That's not obvious to me. I agree that the default rates are a big problem (and yes I've read the linked piece).
These are courses run by PhD's paid the salary you expect for university professors.
By this do you mean that a PhD teaching an online course is paid the same as a PhD teaching a regular course? I have a hard time believing that, and it doesn't match up with my (admittedly limited) experience of ads for such jobs.
11: But also a not atypical college professor.
10, 16: If the worst for-profit hospitals were as bad as the worst for-profit colleges, you'd be able to tell, because two-thirds of their patients wouldn't get well. (The scams marketed to dudes on the G.I. Bill are particularly gross, but I'm having trouble finding the link to the story I read.)
No, just outcomes for students. Granted credentialism can affect outcomes, and I don't think this scandal discredits online education either. But from what I read there are several large companies (and maybe a horde of little ones, I don't know) whose business model is effectively fraud, and they pull up the average for for-profits.
I think the difference with hospitals is that there are much stronger professional norms that mean to the extent the system is being taken advantage of, it's the same way whether for-profit or non-profit. But there's probably a lot more fraud going on than we think: see Midel and less recently Redding Medical Center.
19: right, but again: is that a problem that will be inherent with even the best intentioned online colleges, or is it just a problem with for profit colleges?
My instinct is that the worst offenders basically probably are running scams and should be ineligible for federal funds, and maybe using default rates is a good way to measure that. But the industry as a whole is probably trying to do something useful. Maybe.
My son takes a lot of classes online and I've taken two online myself and they are nothing like getting parked with a book. Just as in a school, some are good and some are bad, and some of the teachers are great and some are not so great. And not having to be physically present in a classroom and being able to do your work when you're in place (either mental or physical) where you're interested in learning is a major advantage. Although, even as I say this, I'm thinking that being parked with a book in a library and told to ask a teacher if I needed help would have been my fantasy high school education, much better than being trapped in classrooms with boring lectures and people asking stupid questions and having to spend ten minutes talking about what was and wasn't going to be covered on the test and so on...
The fantasy of the engaged and active educator and classroom is lovely, but it was an extremely small proportion of my high school experience, and my son's experience looks far more interesting. And it really is nothing like getting parked with a book -- his science experiences are continually cluttering up our (tiny) kitchen and his Spanish conversation hours sound like much fun, despite being over a network connection instead of in person, and some of the world history activities are great. You do have to be self-motivated to succeed with it, but I'm not seeing why forcing a teenager to learn how to manage his own time is a bad educational experience, (especially as say compared to forcing him to show up at a classroom at a set time and doze his way through his classes, as so many of my peers seemed to do back when I was having that experience.)
The thing is, it's not like most of the pieces to make online education work didn't exist pre-online. People made grandiose proclamations of what TV would accomplish for education, and it basically accomplished nothing. TV managed to completely supplant live play viewing, yet somehow video lectures have not managed to supplant live lectures, and that's because video lectures don't work.
TV managed to completely supplant live play viewing
It did?
This violates the analogy ban, but is topical and amusing.
You do have to be self-motivated to succeed with it, but I'm not seeing why forcing a teenager to learn how to manage his own time is a bad educational experience,
The problem is that the business model for your typical online college is "telling a teenager to learn how to manage his own time, collect tuition from him but mostly from the government, then watch him drop out".
23: Live lectures work? Have any studies been done to prove that?
21 - I pretty much agree with Minivet in 20. I think the problem is with for-profit education rather than online-only education, since it's not like, say, culinary schools are producing awesome outcomes. Online colleges certainly make it easier to ramp up your ripping-off activities, though.
Based on 23, maybe the difference is if the student is an introvert or extrovert? It sounds isolating to me, but then again I'm in the middle of the two.
FWIW, the UK has quite a successful national university which operates almost entirely through online and video course materials.
Possibly of interest: Aaron Swartz on standards versus autonomy in education; Tim Lee questions scalability.
I'm not very optimistic about large improvements here, because of the way that our society has hopelessly muddled together the ideas of schooling, learning, and credentialing.
Clearly the solution is to pay failed academics to tutor small groups of kids Emile-style. (And yes, I know that "small groups" rather than "one-on-one" is already a pretty drastic departure from "Emile-style," but I have faith that technology can help pick up the slack there.)
As a bonus, the New Men and Women so brought up will be so virtuous and wise in comparison to their elders that they will intuitively grasp the superiority of selection-by-lot as a political mechanism, and swiftly move to implement it.
Oh, and ponies.
31: I was actually curious about this--does anyone here have much experience, whether as teacher or student, with Open University?
By this do you mean that a PhD teaching an online course is paid the same as a PhD teaching a regular course? I have a hard time believing that, and it doesn't match up with my (admittedly limited) experience of ads for such jobs.
If you are tenured, tenure track or emeritus, you can request to teach your courses online, or in the classroom, or as hybrid courses, and your pay is the same, although this is subject to ongoing negotiation.
33. Not personally, but I know a ton of people who have studied with the OU, either for degrees or shorter courses. Mrs y did one module (research methods) of a social services course as part of her in service training at work. She reckoned it was very good. But...
To get to a degree takes a long time. 6 years if you don't have any transferable credits, 8 years for honours. It demands a LOT of commitment. Most successful students tend to be mature people with experience of work discipline studying part time, not your standard undergrad.
See also: Liberty University receiving a ton of money via Pell grants for online learning.
The one online course I took a couple of years ago through a university extension program* was pretty much literally like being parked in front of a book. I was ok with that, thought, because it was on stats and I could teach myself that without having to sit through lectures. It wasn't great, but didn't seem worse than the equivalent in-person version (that is, I'm sure there are better stats classes, but not from the same program).
There does seem to be a significant distinction between synchronous and asynchronous courses, but I have no idea if studies back that up.
*Incidentally, I'm pretty sure Wisconsin's public university system was one of the pioneers in this area.
Well, Open University opened in 1971, and so may have developed institutional strengths before the Internet, right?
re: 33
My wife is about half way through an OU degree, and several friends have OU degrees. The teaching material is really good. I'm not convinced it's a complete analogue of in-the-flesh university study; because it's at a distance it's much more controlled and spoon-fed. You get given the readings, rather than being expected to track down stuff in libraries yourself, but other than that, it's pretty good.
33, 35, 39. I've taught -- course tutor -- for the OU. Done properly it's very hard work for not much money. That aside:
when I taught, all students had (admittedly infrequent) seminars -- or tele-tutorials where attendance was impossible; they could 'phone their course tutor and personal tutor; they had summer schools too. Essays are supposed to be given masses of feedback.
Otoh it's really rewarding, often.
But yes it's all pretty controlled and spoonfed. It is not the same as a conventional degree. Some students, though, do get a massive amount from it.
I got my Masters degree online from a well regarded state university. Can't say I learned a lot, but I got the credential I wanted without having to drive anywhere.
I was pissed that the university charged the same amount per credit that they charged for real students in an actual classroom. I think the program must have been a huge cash cow for them, because online students must take up a fraction of the resources that real students do.
The worst part of the experience was having to do group work with a bunch of people you never met except for seeing their names on the class web forum. Inevitably, there would be massive coordination problems and one person (usually me) would end up doing the bulk of the work.
I worked at a college for a while that was developing 50% online courses, which meet one day a week and the rest of the work is done through online writing assignments and video chats with professors. I thought it seemed that the instructors themselves were taking it very seriously and developing some interesting content, and the research they gave us showed that 50% online courses have the potential to produce very good results, since it combines a lot of one-on-one writing and discussion with the prof as well as the responsibilities of classroom discussion environments. But admin loves them because it frees up class space so the courses cost less to run, and they seem willing to implement it whether the instructor is dedicated and tech-savvy or not. When done well, I think online instruction (or preferably partly-online) can be really excellent. But most instructors asked to do it are profoundly ignorant of how to make the online content anything other than, like, Blackboard multiple-choice tests and gimmicky shit.
I dunno. Having seen some really amazing course content developed, I'm less skeptical than I used to be about the quality, but I am very skeptical about the administrative motivations for taking advantage of it.
When done well, I think online instruction (or preferably partly-online) can be really excellent.
Also true of classroom instruction. And pretty much everything else humans do.
34: This might be better asked off unfogged, but is your college unionized and do you think that recent state governmental shenanigans are likely to change the nature of this particular negotiation? What will be affected is a big topic of conversation down here.
42: I helped Lee develop a 50-50 hybrid class at the CC where she teaches that I do think was basically effective. My input was mostly that the students had to have a reliable schedule where they read the chapter by Monday, did a quiz on it after Wednesday's class, took a test every other Friday, or whatever it actually was. She doesn't want to teach online classes because she enjoys the in-person interaction to much and because she's not technologically savvy and it requires too much help from me. I don't see online education working for the students she's had who are living in their cars, either, and I think many of her students had to come to campus anyway to use the computer labs there.
I've seen some very dull undergraduate-level classes, where there isn't that much actual benefit from the in-person interaction. I can imagine that a partially-online course could do better, if it frees up resources to hire more TA's or have more lab hours. Also, there's stuff like MIT open course ware, that has pretty good content. If you wanted to teach yourself computer science, you could get pretty far like that -- only you wouldn't have the official accreditation from the university.
Off-topic, I'm fascinated by these international partnerships like Singapore-MIT or my favorite, NYU-Abu Dhabi. My impression is that they don't work that well, and the exchange is basically money flowing one way and (polite) mockery flowing the other way. But, maybe it will work in the long run.
We've got crazy amounts of online courses at the moment, because we still can't safely enter a majority of buildings on campus, including the Registry and the Library*. Which, yeah. It's all part of the change from teaching to learning apparently.
I am unsure about it. It's good for bright students doing first year papers, I think. But after that it's crap.
* most lectures are being delivered in tents.
yeah, a recorded lecture seems worth the reduction in (i dunno, how much the kid pays attention?) and frees up teachers to focus more tutoring than lecturing. I would think computer based testing to focus study time on weak areas would be useful too.
You would want to do it right though. at least for non-college level you'd probably just want to do it once (or five times or whatever) on a national level instead of every teacher making on.
frees up teachers to focus more tutoring than lecturing
Yeah, but who wants to do that?
The classes that most lawyers take in anticipation of the Bar are done entirely by video, which has the advantage of having really dynamic teachers cover the (boring) material, instead of boring teachers cover boring material. I'd think that the ability to give more kids access to really good lecturers would be the main advantage of doing things online; it's a little mysterious to me why that hasn't happened more already. Obviously that would make some teachers redundant.
I mean, a lot of professors are terrible lecturers, and some are great at it. It's totally mysterious to me why we think the best model is live interaction with a poor to mediocre lecturer is more desirable than giving thousands of kids access to a great lecturer by video or internet or whatever.
This applies mostly to lectures, of course; things are obviously different w/r/t seminars.
Apologies for the off topic post, but I continue to marvel at Yggles's remarkable habit of not just making a lot of typos, but making a lot of amusingly a propos typos:
That means defund Planned Parenthood, defund NPR, defund the Affordable Care Act, defend financial regulation, defund the EPA.
He always seems to find the best/worst word to misspell. It's quite a talent.
49 is right. Tutoring is boring. Actually mostly in consists of gazing at the student t enable them to concentrate for longer stretches than they can on their own. After a while you get to say, "Okay, explain to me why you're doing what you're doing."
Wasn't it here that someone mentioned an explicit switch to recorded lectures at home, and homework time with tutor present in class time? Profs were hopeful that it would be easier for students who had a hard time with the language, as they could rewind, look words up, etc.
I wonder if it's a significant problem in online lecturing that the professor can't see the student's reaction and adapt. I bet it's increasingly feasible, though, for students to video-call in, and maybe for the professor to see them cycled through randomly, or when they want their reaction seen.
I'm thinking of Ralph 124C, a very early science fiction novel, which extrapolated from telephones to videophones, then clumsily circumscribed the idea of television by having thousands of people calling into the same place at once when something important was going on.
For what it's worth, up until a few months ago, I thought that computers in the classroom was something of a joke and didn't think much of the idea of "virtual learning." Then I got a job as a substitute teacher and have changed my tune, somewhat, to wonder "How and when can we best utilize this?"
Some of the local schools I am teaching at are doing a really amazing job. Right now it's supplemental, but I wonder if for a lot of kids, it couldn't stand on its own. Kids that are impossible to get in order and paying attention in the classroom* go through the computer tutorials as quickly as they can. Since the tutorials are interactive and make them repeat sections if they can't answer questions, they have incentive to read what they need to read and pay attention to what they need to pay attention to. Otherwise, they don't get to play the learning games at the end** or build up "school bucks" by going through extra lessons.
The fact that it's interactive and it's individualized unloads a world of possibility. I know that when I was young, the fact that the class couldn't go any faster than the slowest student in the room was a distraction. It only takes a few kids in a class to disrupt the entire process. Computer lab time allows me to focus more on those kids while the others continue to learn.
I am more enthusiastic about the Heebie scenario of kids in a library with a teacher hovering over, but I'm open to exploring virtual-ed in at least some circumstances (kids that are easily distracted by other kids, kids that distract other kids, parents who want to opt out of a crappy school, etc.).
* - Yeah, some of it is attributable to the fact that I am probably a less-than-stellar lecturer given that I have next to no formal training or experience, but even so.
** - Don't laugh. I learned more about European geography by playing Spies in Europe than I did in any class.
Some of the comments seem to think online (or computer) courses are always for profit. While they may currently be mostly pushed by for profit companies this doesn't have to be the case. You could have organizations like the open source software organizations develop and freely distribute online courses.
Really, online courses are no different than parking kids in a library with a book and telling them to complete all the exercises ...
Like some of the earlier commenters, I disagree with this. To start with books don't have hyperlinks. A good computer course would have hyperlinks to all sorts of additional material that the student could access as necessary (for example to review prerequisites) or desired (more advanced material). The course could adapt to the student with numerous worked through exercises presented for problem areas. The student could choose between reading the material or listening to one of several teachers (with different styles) presenting the material in lecture form. And so on.
... So I basically believe the accusations that school districts are trending towards online ed to save money, and that it's terrible.
Nothing wrong with saving money. I think the current model of lecturing to 25 students at a time is very inefficient.
23
... yet somehow video lectures have not managed to supplant live lectures, and that's because video lectures don't work.
They work fine for me. My new employer videotapes all lectures and seminars and I find watching the videos just about the same as attending in person. I think it would great if some place like Harvard videotaped all their courses and seminars and made the tapes freely available on the web.
Or the problem is the rest of the social system, eh go figure.
Trying to think of how Now could be different than any previous time, w.r.t. the link; the loss of independent small farms and then middle-class semiskilled jobs might be enough.
Three dumb errors in two posts! Still digging! I was trying to link to the Chron of Higher Ed.
43
Also true of classroom instruction. And pretty much everything else humans do.
Give a really great classroom lecture and perhaps 25 students benefit. Develop a really great online course and millions of students can benefit.
why do we get bitchy stalkery malposts instead of regular, money-driven spam like everyhwere else?
65: Here's a video tutorial on adding links to blog posts and comments.
A lot of the benefit of in-class classes comes from being in class with other students. Sometimes the lecturer is actually the smallest part of the class experience.
Like when Robert Reich lectured.
Ch/ris W/illiams, who I think has dropped in here before, is an actual historian doing original research at the Open University. It's very far from an online degree-mill - I mean, it's a university in the sense of having the unity of teaching and research. (Founder: Michael Young. Yes, the guy who drafted the 1945 Labour manifesto and wrote The Rise of the Meritocracy and started the Consumers' Association and whose son turned out to be Toby Young, in a spectacular refutation of genetic determinism.)
Someone mentioned Blackboard upthread. My partner's department uses it for their external degrees and a worse piece of shit I've rarely seen. I think the original sin is that it's a Web application that pretends to be a desktop environment and therefore all the UI elements that look like links behave like buttons and the ones that behave like desktop elements are restricted by browser limitations and therefore don't work the way they look like they do. And there's an awful, pointless pseudo-filesystem. You have to read the manual to work out how to add a web link.
Fortunately, she's managed to murder it and replace it with the free and open source alternative, Moodle.