Environmental Scan 2012

EDUCATIONAL AND STUDENT TRENDS

• Pre-Dawn Classes. Miami Dade College and a few other institutions have started courses that meet at 6 a.m. or 6:30 a.m. For some students, this is the time that they have free.
• More Students Enrolled in College and on Financial Aid. According to this Department of Education report of data from 7,165 institutions that receive Title IV federal student aid, 1 million more students were enrolled in 2010 than in 2009. Among the 3.3. million full-time, first time undergraduate students, 82 percent received financial aid.
• Parental Involvement Not a Hindrance to College Students' Education. According to a study of 70 student-parent pairs, students who were closer to their parents during their years in college scored higher in survey categories such as autonomy, life purpose, and cultural participation than students who were not as close to their parents.
• Using Frequent Student Feedback as a Teaching Aide. Instructors can use course evaluations and learning assessments to constantly re-engineer their teaching. One instructor graphs the evaluation results the day he collects them, sends out an e-mail telling the class about any fine-tuning he plans in response to their comments, and starts the following class by discussing the feedback.
• Rules to Measure Quality of Teaching-Training Programs Slowly Take Shape. A pending agreement between the U.S. Education Department and teacher colleges would hold teacher-preparation programs accountable for their graduates' employment outcomes and performance as teachers in the classroom. Under the proposed rules, states would be required to evaluate programs based on their graduates' job-placement and retention rates, test scores of their future students, and customer satisfaction surveys.
• Recommendations for Successful Remediation. View this new report from Complete College America which says that nearly 4 in 10 remedial students in community colleges never complete their remedial courses, and offers recommendations for helping academically unprepared students succeed in college and in remedial classes.
• College Entrants May Be Overdiagnosed as Underprepared. A Columbia University Teachers College's assistant professor cites several studies to argue that too many students who do not need it are being assigned to remedial coursework, and that the placement tests commonly used to screen for college readiness are only weakly related to college outcomes.
• As Study Time Falls, Debate Rises over Difficulty of College. The amount of time college students read, write, and otherwise prepare for class has dwindled from 24 hours a week to about 15 in the past 50 years. This trend has generated some debate over whether students are learning enough in college.
• Reverse Transfer: Common Sense on Completion. Many students transfer away from community colleges before earning an associate degree, and count as failures toward institutional graduation rates. The growing acceptance of "reverse transfer" may change this pattern. The term applies to several approaches, including the granting of associate degrees by four-year institutions, sometimes retroactively, for previously earned credits, or as part of "pathways" where transfer students finish their associate degree at a four-year college.
• College Completion Agenda and the Quality of Learning. Community college leaders say "completion agenda" has been good for the sector, but they worry that the focus could have unintended consequences if it becomes a fixation.
• Experts Call for Revamping of Remedial College Classes. According to a study by College Complete America, the expense of remedial courses runs about $3 billion annually, but only one third of students in remedial courses graduate with a bachelor's degree in six years.
• Are Certificates the Future of Higher Education? According to the report Certificates: Gateway to Gainful Employment and College Degrees, certificates have grown from 6 percent to 22 percent of all postsecondary awards since 1980, making them the fastest-growing credential with 1 million awarded last year. Certificates especially benefit those with less academic preparation, and sometimes they can outperform degrees in terms of median salaries for recipients.
• Success Rates of 786 Community Colleges. College Measures, a joint venture of the American Institutes of Research and Matrix Knowledge Group, has created a chart for CNNMoney based on the percentage of community college students that graduated within three years or transferred to four-year colleges.
• Fixing College. Higher education leaders need to transform how colleges do business. Some of the urgent needs are the following: make better use of technology in the classroom, offer more online education, reclaim academics as a top priority, and reduce the number of wasted credits. 
• Bill Gates on the Future of Higher Education. Watch three video clips and read the full transcript. In this Chronicle of Higher Education interview with Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder gives his take on technology and change in higher education, MOOCs, certificates, and the work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, among other topics.
• Encouraging STEM Students Is in the National Interest. If the U.S. is to maintain its historic preeminence in the STEM fields and gain the social, economic, and national security benefits that come with such preeminence, then the country must produce 1 million more workers in those fields over the next decade than it is now on track to turn out. This goal is feasible and important.
• Global Education Trends. New, wide-ranging report from OECD includes statistics on the relationship of the recession to education, student mobility and degree attainment, among other topics. 
• Mature Market for Online Education. The market for online higher education aimed at adults may be reaching maturity, according to a new report from Eduventures. And without a better-defined product, online learning faces a risk of petering out and being little more than a back-up alternative to on-campus education for students. 
• Do College-Completion Rates Really Measure Quality? In this Chronicle of Higher Education article, various higher education leaders comment on the following topics: First, Figure Out Why We Are Failing; We Should Look to Other Indicators to Measure Worth and Value; Student Commitment Is a Major Determinant of Quality; We Have Yet to Use Them Where They Are Needed Most; There's a Serious Distortion for Community Colleges; Many Two-Year Students Are Counted as Failures (by Dr. Eric Reno); and Inputs Have Never Measured Quality.
• Experts Give 8 Ideas to Improve Higher Education. These ideas--which include partnerships, maintaining investments in research, and making college costs more transparent--are suggested by former university presidents and chancellors, presidents of higher education organizations, and politicians. 
• Report Urges Public Colleges to Focus on High-Poverty Schools. Public colleges and universities have an obligation to work on improving college readiness, and a special responsibility to focus on areas of concentrated poverty, a task force of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities says in the new report "Serving America’s Future: Increasing College Readiness." It argues that a more aggressive effort to strengthen not only academic preparation, but also personal and social readiness for college is in the institutions' self-interest as well as the national interest. The report calls on its member campuses to begin college readiness work as early as preschool.
• Supporting Immigrant Students at Community Colleges. This Community College Consortium for Immigrant Education report recommends ways for community colleges to increase college access, make college affordable through financial assistance, support college readiness and success, offer alternatives for adult learners, and improve college retention and completion for undocumented students. 
• Gaming as a Part of the Undergraduate Curricula. To capitalize on the ability of games to increase optimism, encourage stronger social ties, increase players' happiness, and add meaning and purpose to an assignment, UNC-Charlotte, Purdue University, Boise State University, and the University of Pennsylvania have introduced gaming at their institutions. There’s plenty of hard evidence to support gaming for K-12 and graduate classrooms. For instance, a 2008 UCF study showed markedly more improvement in algebra skills among high schoolers who played the popular “Math Evolver” game. A 2012 experiment from the Journal of Research in Science Teaching showed similar results for chemistry students who used digital molecular simulations. And, as a recent study from Greece has shown, even games intended for entertainment can be useful for education. 
• Does a Lack of Structure Inhibit Students’ Progress at Community Colleges? For many students at community colleges, finding a path to degree completion is the equivalent of navigating a shapeless river on a dark night. While academic preparation and financial supports are critical components of student success, subtle institutional features may also play an important role. This paper discusses how community college students are more likely to persist and succeed in programs that are tightly and consciously structured, with relatively little room for individuals to unintentionally deviate from paths toward completion, and with limited bureaucratic obstacles for students to circumnavigate.
• Community Colleges for the Students They Actually Have. In the U.S., we think of elementary and secondary education as fundamentally different from higher education. Before college, students generally are provided with schedules for prescribed classes. College students, by contrast, are expected to be far more independent, to figure out which classes to take and then do most of their course-related work outside the classroom. For most of the roughly seven million students seeking degrees at community colleges, though, this construct makes little sense. They have often not mastered the building blocks: Up to two-thirds of community-college students need remedial education. Even though they are often the first in their families to go to college, community-college students receive scant support or advice for navigating course choices. And most of them have jobs, leaving less time for homework. The result: Fewer than 40 percent of those who attend full time go on to graduate or transfer within three years. But what if community colleges were organized to achieve success for the students they have, not for students like those who attend four-year residential colleges? 
• Challenge and Change. In the past twenty years, innovation caused by disruptive technology has occurred in various industries: newspapers, book publishing, the photography business, and many more. Higher education too faces unprecedented challenges primarily driven by rapid changes in technology. To meet these challenges and adapt to changes, we need new models. Six challenges lie at the core of the innovative disruption facing higher education: 1. University Model, 2. Structural Model, 3. Funding Model, 4. Cost Model, 5. Business Model, and 6. Success Model. These challenges are driven by seven areas of rapid change, primarily technological change: 1. The Players, 2. The College Models, 3. The Course Models, 4. Data and Learning Analytics, 5. The Cost: Reduced and Free, 6. Measuring Success, and 7. Threats to the Credential.
• Prior-Learning Assessment. More states and public college systems are looking to prior-learning assessment to boost degree completion, thanks in part to nudges from state lawmakers and foundations. 
• State of Higher Education in Texas 2012. This is the address delivered by the Texas Commissioner of Higher Education in October 2012. We are getting better, but we are not getting better fast enough. The commissioner shares achievements on Closing the Gaps and suggests three opportunities for change: (1) It is time for Texas to adopt outcomes-based funding for higher education; (2) Two of the areas in which we need ingenuity and innovation are developmental education and adult basic education; (3) An issue ripe for rethinking is higher education’s role in workforce development. Or you can see a video produced by collegeproductivity.org where participation and success statistics in the nation and Texas are compared. 
• Online Educational Delivery Models: A Descriptive View. Although there has been a long history of distance education, the creation of online education occurred just over a decade and a half ago—a relatively short time in academic terms. Early course delivery via the web had started by 1994, soon followed by a more structured approach using the new category of course management systems. See this Educause Review with a descriptive view of the growing number of approaches enabled by educational technology including educational delivery models. They are categorized not just in terms of modality—ranging from face-to-face to fully online—but also in terms of the method of course design. These two dimensions allow a richer understanding of the new landscape of educational delivery models such as ad hoc online courses and programs, fully online programs, School-as-a-Service, educational partnerships, competency-based education, blended/hybrid courses and the flipped classroom, and MOOCs. 
• Higher Education Must Innovate. According to a recent national poll, a majority of Americans say the U.S. higher education system needs to change in order to remain competitive. Younger Americans strongly prefer innovations—such as a "no frills" option or a cooperative learning model integrating academic study with employment—that help defray the cost of higher education. The poll also found that most Americans believe in the growing value of online degrees. Among respondents between the ages of 18 and 30, 68 percent said an online degree will be just as recognized and accepted among employers as a traditional degree will be in the next five to seven years. 
• School Counselors Want More Training, Survey Finds. A survey by the College Board has found that most school counselors do not feel that they have been sufficiently trained in competencies that would allow them to provide the best guidance to students on the college admissions process. Further, a majority of counselors believe that they could do better (in some cases with better training) at such key functions as helping students complete college preparatory courses, increasing college application rates and improving high school graduation rates. 
• Cracks in the Traditional Credit Hour. The foundation that created the credit hour in 1906 now wants to rethink it, with a shift that might help competency-based higher education. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching on Tuesday announced that it would study the Carnegie Unit, which forms the basis of a time-based measurement of student learning. The credit hour calls for one credit per hour of faculty instruction and two hours of homework, on a weekly basis, over a 15-week semester. A virtual gold standard in higher education, the credit hour is deeply ingrained as a measuring stick for academic quality, accreditation and access to federal financial aid. But it is viewed by many as outdated and inadequate as a measure for student learning. Critics say the focus on “seat time” has stymied progress on promising approaches like online programs that are self-paced and competency-based -- where students earn credits for proving what they know, not for how long they spent on course material. 
• Rethinking Grants and Loans. A white paper, part of the Gates Foundation's project on financial aid, calls for overhauling the student aid system to focus on underrepresented students. It calls for an overhaul of the federal financial aid system, including ending subsidized loans, enrolling students in income-based repayment, and directing the savings from the changes to the Pell Grant. 
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• Report: Reclaiming the American Dream. The overall goal of the 21st-Century Initiative by the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) is to educate an additional 5 million students with degrees, certificates, or other credentials by 2020. In Phase 1, AACC staff gathered information from across the nation on student access, institutional accountability, budget constraints, big ideas for the future, and what AACC can do for its members. The 21st-Century Commission on the Future of Community Colleges represents Phase 2 of the AACC effort. Recognizing that emerging challenges require unprecedented vision, ingenuity, courage, and focus from community colleges, the Commission was asked both to safeguard the fundamental mission of the community college—ensuring that millions of diverse and often underserved students attain a high-quality college education—and to challenge community colleges to imagine a new future for themselves, to ensure the success of our students, our institutions, and our nation. In this investigation, everything was to be put on the table, including the issues of the nation’s prosperity and its global competitiveness, community college student success and completion rates, equity of access and outcomes across student groups, public accountability for institutional performance and student success, and effectiveness and efficiency in preparing students for real jobs paying family-supporting wages. This report is the culmination of that effort.
• How Might a Next Generation Higher Education Work? This Getting Smart post describes the three traits that the next generation of higher education will need to survive:
     1. Affordability: Cost-effective learning experiences that provide a superior ROI.
     2. Employability: Graduates leave with a high level of knowledge and skills and experience applying them in work settings.
     3. Flexibility: The ability to secure tailored supports, adapt to complex schedules/lives, and accelerate particularly for adults that have knowledge and skills and are looking for credentially. 
• The Future of Community Colleges. Many residential university campuses will basically cease to exist over the next few decades replaced by MOOCs and other technology-driven forms of mass learning. Community colleges, too, could outsource many of their courses via MOOCs, but five areas in which they will excel, and which make it unlikely that they will be disappearing anytime soon, are the following: 
     1. Work-force development and training.
     2. Remedial education.
     3. Online education.
     4. Classroom teaching.
     5. Economic value. 
• Nursing Schools Reinventing Recruitment. Nursing schools devise alternate ways to attract faculty amidst the nation’s nursing shortage. Schools are rethinking and redesigning their traditional recruiting and retention strategies. Their solutions are quite varied, ranging from creating e-jobs and dual appointments to sharing existing faculty. 
• Predicting Student Success: Beyond the Traditional Approach. By transitioning from a risk-based model for predicting student enrollment and retention to a success-based model, you can look across the student life cycle to identify not only the factors that impede desired outcomes such as yield and student retention, but also the factors that contribute to those outcomes. Here are articles and a complimentary recorded webcast to help unpack this approach. 
• Learning Spaces: Meeting Expectations for Classroom Teaching and Collaboration. Gone are the days when a basic classroom with a podium and desks was considered an acceptable learning space. Key trends identified in the 2012 Horizon Report, a collaboration between the New Media Consortium and the Educause Learning Initiative, include the shift in education paradigms to include online learning, hybrid learning, and the collaborative model; a new emphasis in the classroom on more challenge-based and active learning; and a change in the way student projects are structured, driven by the increasingly collaborative work world. Here are examples of how institutions are adapting to shifting trends by creating learning spaces that foster innovative thinking and collaboration—and prepare students for the future. 
• Liberal Arts Losing to 'High-demand' Degrees. San Antonio area universities have moved to prioritize programs emphasizing science and technology, along with professional degrees such as business administration. Students increasingly take humanities courses only to meet general education requirements in pursuit of professional or “high-demand” degrees.