By's Musings

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American Higher Education Has Lost Its Lodestar!

This post has been very difficult to write and has required multiple drafts. Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

American Higher Education (AHE) has lost its lodestar. This post has been a lot harder to write than I thought it would be. At first, I was extremely excited to write this post. However, as I began to compose it, I immediately hit a number of roadblocks.

The first roadblock related to the way I process thoughts and ideas. As many of you know, almost a decade ago two traumatic brain incidents drastically changed my life. After a burst aneurysm caused the implosion of a benign meningioma attached to my right temporal lobe, I started having trouble finding words. I found myself fighting a case of oral aphasia.

Nine months later, I experienced four tonic-clonic seizures within a thirty-minute timespan. When I awoke from a four-day coma, I found myself no longer thinking in terms of words. I was now processing thoughts and ideas in terms of pictures. Words became my second language. Visual images were now my first language. This meant that in order to communicate with people, I had to translate back and forth between pictures and words.  

My mind was overflowing with pictures that spoke to this issue of American higher education. However, translating those visuals into words was much more difficult and slower than usual. If I was able to compose other posts, why had this particular post become so problematic? 

During my struggles with this post, I had a eureka moment. In the deep recesses of my mind, I found a perfect word, LODESTAR, that covered four aspects of the topic I wanted to address.

First of all, a lodestar is a fixed point of reference, which can be used to describe the position or motion of one object relative to another object.

There have been dramatic changes in both American higher education and society during the past century. AHE needs a lodestar to position itself in relation to American society.      

Secondly, as a fixed point, a lodestar can be used as the foundation of a guidance system to help individuals get from one point to another, particularly when they are lost. AHE has lost its way. It needs a GPS. 

It is wandering aimlessly from one crisis to the next. Headline after headline decries its loss of effectiveness in serving the needs of American society, its declining support in public circles, and its strident and stubborn insularity. 

In article after article, questions are raised about the declining confidence of American society in higher education, and the seeming indifference of AHE to the external demands for change. The internal conflicts among the primary actors within AHE are laid bare to the public, exposing all to criticism and contempt.

Comparisons between education for life and career education are plentiful. The philosophical and theoretical bases for liberal and professional education are made public for everyone to pick a side.  

In analysis after analysis critics and proponents explore hypotheses about the rising cost of higher education, the short and long-term effects of the staggering debt load that students and institutions are accumulating, the commercialization of higher education, and the adjunctification of the faculty.

Thirdly, lodestars are models of propriety. They live by fixed values and principles, no matter what the cost to them or their institutions. Currently, it seems that every week brings another scandal to light in American higher education. No segment of AHE has escaped unscathed. 

Finally, a lodestar is an inspirational leader. I challenge you to name one individual in educational circles today who inspires others to follow him or her. 

Individual campuses may have local lodestars. However, where are the likes of Ernie Boyer, Lee Shulman, John Dewey, Mortimer Adler, Maria Montessori, Paulo Freire, Bertrand Russell, Maxine Greene, B. F. Skinner, James Conant, and Martin Buber? At this junction of time, the enterprise of American higher education has no one individual who stands out ahead of the rest of the field.

As I was pulling my thoughts together for this post, a political/media circus in America made the term lodestar a laughing matter and a joke. How could I seriously use it in this post about American higher education?  I decided that I could use it, and must use it because it is the right word to use.

Having settled on the inclusion of the word lodestar, there were still two major stumbling blocks with respect to this post. The first related to the format I have used in all my recent posts. After I translated the pictures in my head into words, I took another step. Since I am not an artist and can’t draw an intelligible sketch of anything, I went and found free pictures that would duplicate as closely as possible the visions in my head. I did this to help my readers understand my thought processes.

In this case, I drew a complete blank. I found nothing that came close to communicating my thoughts. Thus, I have no visual robes to wrap around my verbal thoughts. I decided to go ahead and present the unadorned thoughts to my readers. I do have one question for my readers: Which style do you prefer? The verbal thoughts augmented with pictures, or the naked thoughts by themselves? Please tell me in the comment in the box below. I will use this rough survey to help me determine how I will proceed with my future posts. The second stumbling block was the 1,000-word limit. This will require multiple posts on this topic which will follow in future weeks. 

In my next post, scheduled for publication on Tuesday, October 23, I return to my roots as a mathematician and an institutional researcher. I will introduce a new Key Performance Indicator (KPI) that I developed. I call it the Admissions Multiplier Effect. I believe it provides important information that is not otherwise available and should be featured on the dashboard of every institution of higher education.     

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Repurpose or Build Anew

How should we improve or fix a broken structure? All images in this post are courtesy of Presenter Media.

This is the initial post in my Point versus Counterpoint thread. The proposal that I wish to address is the following: “When faced with the profound challenge of making significant changes to an existing program, facility or policy, what is the best approach for an institution to take?” Should the organization remodel the existing structure, or tear it down and completely rebuild a new structure from the ground up?

What happens when the pieces don’t fit together just right? You get a lot of pushing back and forth.

I have seen battles over this question severely divide more than one campus. Many times within education, these battles degenerate into classic clashes between traditionalists and disrupters, between evolutionists and innovators, or between the old guard and the young Turks.

In the quintessential debate approach of Point versus Counterpoint, it would be incumbent upon me to select a side on the “Repurpose or Build Anew” question. During my 50 years in the academy, I have been known as a traditionalist who studied and revered the best aspects of education’s rich history.

During 35+ years as a college administrator, I also had a reputation as being an approachable leader who listened carefully and made thoughtful decisions based upon all the evidence. These two characteristics might suggest that I should assume a role as a supporter of the “repurpose” side.

However, throughout my career, I have been acknowledged as an educational entrepreneur. I have been recognized for my ability to think outside the box while still accommodating those inside the box. Often I championed new and different approaches to problem-solving when the old methods were not working. I have been known for pushing for innovation and change when change is needed.

On the Rogers Adoption/Innovation Curve most of my former colleagues would place me in the Innovator or Early Adopter segments. I have always been known as someone who was eager to find new solutions to long-standing problems and pushed the limits on how the technology could help. These characteristics would suggest that I should assume the role of a supporter of the “build anew” side.

Even though I have had a 60+ year love affair with education, I am deeply concerned about its future. Given my recent work on the financial models of education and my research into the demise of more than 1600 American colleges or campuses since 1950, I see so much that is broken in American higher education that I often wondered where it is heading.

Since this is my blog, I will take an owner’s prerogative and assume the compromise position of favoring “Building Anew, Except in Very Limited Cases, When Repurposing Is Appropriate and the Most Feasible Approach.”

Why do I believe that “building anew” is the best choice for American higher education? Let me count the ways that I believe American higher education is in trouble.

  1. American higher education has lost its lodestar. Where is the inspirational, values-based, principled leadership that developed the most advanced, highest quality system of higher education in the world?

  2. The three segments of American higher education (public, non-profit private, and proprietary) treat each other as enemies and competitors rather than allies.

  3. The basic financial model of American higher education is broken. How can a system survive that relies on billions of dollars annually from endowment and donors, and complains when those donors ask for something in return? How can a system take billions of dollars from public coffers and then balk at questions of accountability? How can a principled-system saddle its consumers (students) with more than $1.3 Trillion in debt load?

  4. The internal structure of most institutions of higher education in American consists of isolated silos which have little to no communication with each other. Within most colleges, the right hand has no idea what the left hand is doing.

  5. American higher education has seemingly pushed the individuals who should be the most important persons in the system, the students, to the periphery. Investors are only interested in their Return on Investment (ROI). Administrators and faculty bicker constantly, bitterly accusing each other of sabotaging the enterprise and only looking out for their own self-interests. Students and parents complain incessantly that no one is listening to them.

  6. Many students, parents, and politicians act as if education is an entitlement rather than a labor-intensive, responsibility. Debates on whether students should be given the rewards of education without the expending the hard work to earn them are waged privately across campuses and publicly in the media.

  7. American education has fallen into the trap of the “Procrustean Bed” thinking one form of education fits all students and one measuring stick is sufficient for all institutions.

  8. Society rallies around the banner of American higher education raised as the clarion call for social mobility. Community leaders then throw their hands up in despair when the data show it is not working. They conveniently forget that history suggests and the data show that education institutions tend to be excellent reflections of our society and not particularly effective change agents. Yes, there are individual victories. However, there have been too few to change our society as a whole.

Do you have a piece of the puzzle that I have missed. Please let me know what it is.

Readers, it is now your turn to engage in this conversation. Are there problem areas that I have missed? Please let me know now. In future posts, I intend to individually address each of the above areas. Readers, if you have a different take on those areas, you will an opportunity to weigh in on those areas at that time.

My next post, scheduled for Tuesday, October 16, will begin to address the issue of the lost lodestar of American higher education. Thank you for joining this journey. Enjoy your coffee and the conversation.

 

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New Look for the HEBB Website

I’ve been rethinking my approach to, the purpose of, and design of this website. All images in this post are courtesy of Presenter Media.

With this post, I was originally intending to roll out the new format of the Higher Ed By Baylis website. The collapse of my old website at first looked like a disaster. It has actually turned out to be something of a blessing in disguise. It has given me time to rethink my approach to, the purpose of, and the design of the website.

I’m one sick puppy over this situation.

Unfortunately, the rollout is not ready and that makes me sick. I have no one to blame about this delay except myself. I am frustrated with myself for misunderstanding the set of instructions that my webmaster provided me related to the new process of adding and editing pages on my website.

So instead of celebrating a big reveal, I am reluctantly left with just giving you a rough sketch of what I have planned for the website. However, I hope that my enthusiasm for the new format will move you to stay in touch until the new site comes to fruition. Moreover, I trust these peeks behind the curtain will whet your appetite to visit and use the site when it is fully operational.

I want my posts to engender intense conversations about the topics presented. I have attempted to make it clear that I want those exchanges to become vigorous dialogues so that my readers and I may share our thoughts and beliefs on what we feel are very important topics.

I have also hinted that I intend to use the transformed Higher Ed By Baylis website in four ways. I hope to employ it as a research-sharing center, a distribution center, a publicity center, and finally a recruitment center.

More than 1600 American colleges or campuses have ceased operations since 1950.

First, as a research-sharing center, I will make available a database that I have assembled on more than 1600 American colleges or campuses that have ceased operations since 1950. Using the information derived from our investigations into the circumstances and reasons for their closures, Ron Burwell and I have written several articles summarizing our findings which will be available as downloads from the website.

For each of eight factors, we have a three-point sustainability scale.

Based on these results, we are suggesting that there are eight factors that contributed to the decline and fall of these institutions. For each of these eight factors, we are proposing a three-point organizational sustainability scale [Thriving=+1; Surviving=0; Dying=-1]. The website will include detailed descriptions of these scales.

Combining all eight scales generates a vitality/morbidity index (VMI) for an institution. Every closed institution in our database had a negative VMI. The question that immediately came to mind was: “Could this index serve as a dashboard “idiot light” to warn institutions that trouble lies ahead?”

In addition to my work on institutional sustainability, I am writing a number of manuscripts in the areas of education, preparation for career and college, faith development, and Christian discipleship. Until I can complete those manuscripts, I plan to use the HEBB website as a warehouse and distribution center for excerpts, previews, and chapters from manuscripts from these manuscripts.

As I noted in this blog more than three years ago, health concerns made me shut down the individual consulting and counseling portion of the work of Higher Ed By Baylis. Those health concerns still persist. Thus, I am forced to turn my attention to the production of in-person and webinars related to these topics.

The third use of the HEBB website will be as a publicity center for these programs and webinars. When I have videotapes and printed resources from these programs, the website will then be used as a distribution center for these materials.

The first version of The Watershed Collaborative was a big box consulting firm.

The fourth use of the HEBB website will be centered on a new version of one of my big dreams. Five years ago I started talking to a number of former colleagues about the possibility of forming a consulting firm named The Watershed Collaborative (TWC).

This firm was to be unique within the consulting world. The name “The Watershed Collaborative” was derived from the concept of a “watershed” as a tipping point. When an organization faces a watershed decision, its choice can make a huge difference in the future success or failure of that organization.

TWC was fashioned after the idea of a big box provider like Walmart or Amazon. By building an army of experts in all areas of operations of organizations working together, TWC could address any problem faced by our clients. I was so confident of the expertise and caliber of TWC’s members, that I was ready to guarantee that our clients would be satisfied with their results. Every time I found experts ready to join me, new health problems would intervene. Thus, I had to momentarily shelve the dream.

The Watershed Collaborative re-envisioned as a non-profit think tank focused on educational issues.

I am ready to look at a new variant of The Watershed Collaborative. This time, I am proposing the establishment of a non-profit think tank. TWC would address policy and operational issues associated with higher education. Its members would produce white papers and substantial reports on significant educational topics.

I will use the HEBB website as a venue to recruit experts as contributing members of the collaborative and the funding sources necessary to power this dream.

Please stay tuned to By’s Musings for the announcement of the exciting rollout. In the meantime, next Tuesday’s post, Repurpose or Build Anew, is the first post in the Point versus Counterpoint series. It addresses the big question: “What’s the best way to make big changes in educational programs?”

 

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By’s Musings New Foci

By’s Musings will focus on 3 areas: Education; Faith & Religion; Organizational Theory & Operations. All images in this post are courtesy of Presenter Media

As I noted in previous posts, I will be restricting my future posts to the three broad areas of education, faith and religion, and organizational theory and operations. These areas should open up many opportunities for engaging dialogue.

By’s Musings presents a focus on education.

Within the field of Education, I will begin by addressing a score of significant issues and dilemmas which have vexed contemporary society in general and the discipline of education in particular. Within these topics, there are numerous divergent and contrasting points of views. This diversity will hopefully engender much discussion. 

The list of potential topics is too long to include in this post. I will highlight some in future posts.

These topics include issues that relate to students, faculty, administration, curriculum, facilities, finances, policies, governance, and operations. Since they are too numerous to list in this post, I will include a preliminary list in a subsequent post.

I will be asking for your help in deciding what topics to include in the topics I cover in By’s Musings.

Along with the list, I will invite the audience to participate in a poll to help determine which issues I should address first. 

By’s Musings focuses on the areas of Faith & Religion.

Within the broad area of Faith and Religion, I plan to publish short posts that will be written in the form of testimonies, prayers, devotionals, and sermonettes.

A deep examination of scriptures in order to explicate Biblical principles and develop practical applications to everyday lives.

I hope to achieve two goals with these posts. The first is to explicate Biblical principles and develop practical applications to the everyday lives of modern Christians. I hope that this will help those who use Christ’s name will be able to integrate spiritual practices and disciplines into their daily lives.

Countering arguments that Christianity impedes intellectual curiosity and serious thought.

My second goal of this section is to counter the arguments of those who feel that any religious teaching, but particularly Christianity, impedes intellectual curiosity and hinders serious thinking.

One very active spokesperson for this group is David Silverman, a well-known atheist, who stated in his book, Fighting God: An Atheist Manifesto in a Theist World, “Atheists seek truth; theists ignore it.” 

I pray that God will help me to add something helpful and hopeful to the conversations.

My essays will attempt to show that there are Christians in the intellectual arena who do not ignore truth but sincerely seek it. Hopefully, and prayerfully, I will demonstrate that we can rationally say that faith and reason do not have to be at odds with one another. At the end of the day, it is possible to reconcile them.

Iron sharpens iron. Let’s hammer out the truth together.

However, this task is much too large for one person. I fervently desire and will solicit audience participation in this mission. We can come closer to the truth as a community. As the Lord, speaking through Solomon, admonished us in Proverbs 27:17, “Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.” (KJV)

By’s Musings focuses on Organizational Theory & Operations.

In the arena of Organizational Theory and Operations, I will be concentrating on how organizations come into being, how they maintain themselves, and how they expire. This work is based upon ongoing research into closed institutions within American higher education (IHEs). A colleague and I have been working on this project in one form or another for many years.

More than 1600 American IHEs have died since 1950. Why?

For the past ten years, we have concentrated our study on more than 1,600 colleges in the United States that closed, merged, were acquired by another institution, or otherwise disappeared. In the course of this study, we have identified eight factors that we believe were the major contributing elements in the demise of these IHEs.

The eight factors of Vitality/Morbidity.Sustainability. How do I connect the boxes?

These factors were

  • Market
  • Expertise
  • Passion
  • Leadership
  • Values
  • Resources
  • Internal Culture
  • External Environment

You may recognize the first three as the three factors that Jim Collins identified as the key components for organizations seeking to move from Good to Great.

As I looked more closely at the eight factors, I came to the conclusion that they were definitely descriptive of the cause of death of the IHEs.

Could our factors help diagnosis the health of an organization prior to its demise.

Moreover, in most circumstances, problems in these factors did not appear overnight. Thus, it seemed reasonable that they could be the basis of a model that would serve as a predictor of future difficulties.

I was very excited at this point. Questions came fast and furiously. Firstly, could we develop a sustainability scale or a vitality/morbidity index, using these eight factors to determine whether an IHE was thriving, surviving or dying? Secondly, if this process worked for IHEs, could it work for other organizations? 

We need a consistent language to research and talk about colleges and their disappearances.

One of the biggest difficulties in this research was the lack of a consistent language to talk about colleges and their demise. The first posts in this arena will start the process of developing a consistent language to describe what we mean by a college and what happened to them.

The next set of posts will more fully define my eight factors and all of their subfactors. When we have completed this foundation, we will begin a series of posts that describe our sustainability scale and our vitality/morbidity index. We will save the details of our research for the website and later publication.

Watch for my October 2 post describing the changes coming to the Higher Ed By Baylis website.

 

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Broken Business Model of American Higher Education, Part VII: Exponential Growth Will Require Disruptive Action

from Presenter Media

In the most recent post of this series, Broken Model of American Higher Education, Part VI: Incremental Growth Will Not Be Enough, I left American Higher Education (AHE) hanging on the edge of a cliff by its fingernails. In that post, I claimed that American higher education will need exponential growth to meet the demands and expectations of those in the economic, political and higher education arenas, as well as the American general public.

from Presenter Media

I also implied that historically, exponential growth has only occurred in American higher education as a result of disruptive actions, either on the national or international stage. In other words, exponential growth hasn’t occurred naturally. It has required a little help from our friends (or enemies).

from Presenter Media

As I continue to fight off the remnants of a battle with mild aphasia, I was using the word disruption in a positive way. My initial reaction was that the word disruption wasn’t necessarily a negative term. Thus, in my mind, I was having a full-fledged battle over the idea that disruptive innovations were automatically bad. I was envisioning a number of positive results from the numerous discontinuities that I saw coming. From what I could remember, I thought disruption was a term that just meant a break in a continuum. However, as I researched the word I found that it has a much darker and more violent past. The word is derived from the compound Latin word, disrumpere, which comes from the Latin prefix dis- which means “apart” and the Latin verb rumpere which means “to forcefully break.” Thus, the word disruption implies an emphatic, hostile action on the part of someone or something. Therefore, I will admit that labeling something as a disruptive innovation is tantamount to throwing it under a bus or on a trash pile of junk.

from Presenter Media

With that background, I am beginning to see why the word disruption has recently engendered as much negative press in higher education and political circles as it has. In higher education and political circles, disruptions are seen as major threats to the status quo. When you are part of the status quo, disruptions are particularly annoying and bothersome. Throughout history, disruptive individuals have been compared to gadflies, those persistent, irritating insects that rove around biting humans and farm animals, stinging sharply, sucking blood and transmitting diseases to their victims.

Drawing by Pearson Scott Foresman, placed in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

One of the earliest written reference to gadfly may be the prophet Jeremiah. In Jeremiah 46:20 in the King James Version, we read “Egypt is like a very fair heifer, but destruction cometh; it cometh out of the north.” Where is the gadfly in this verse? In the New International Version (NIV), this verse reads “Egypt is a beautiful heifer, but a gadfly is coming against her from the north.” The Hebrew word : קֶ֫רֶץ , transliterated as qarats,  which is translated as destruction in the KJV, occurs only this one time in the Bible. Somewhat surprisingly, the KJV does use the verb gad one time. It is in Jeremiah 2:36, as part of the word of rebuke that the Lord had given Jeremiah for the people of Israel. Jeremiah asks the Israelites, “Why gaddest thou about so much to change thy way? thou also shalt be ashamed of Egypt, as thou wast ashamed of Assyria.“ However, the English translation “gaddest about so much to change thy way” is really לְשַׁנּ֣וֹת מְאֹ֖ד תֵּזְלִ֥י in Hebrew. The transliteration lə·šan·nō·wṯ mə·’ōḏ tê·zə·lî literally means “you go about so much changing your ways.” Thus, this reference is is not directed at the gadfly, whose sole purpose is to cause problems. It refers to an individual who roams from place to place in an irresponsible manner, without a fixed physical or ethical mooring. 

From non Biblical sources, in addition to the connotation of extermination or utter destruction, qarats may also be translated as nipping or biting, hence the translation “gadfly.” Another ancient reference to the gadfly occurs in Plato’s Apology where Socrates describes himself as a social gadfly that flies around and stings the lazy horse that is Athens. Socrates was trying to speed up the stalled change that he thought was absolutely necessary if Athens was to maintain its place as a world leader. Where is the modern day Socrates, prodding the seemingly intractable American higher education into action so that it can maintain its place as a world leader? Does the above make those of us who are saying that American higher education must change if it is to maintain its place as a world leader and the agent of social improvement into gadflies? If so, I am ready to accept that mantle.

In some circles within American higher education the concept of disruptive innovation has almost become synonymous with the picture of the heinous, atrocious, and monstrous and despicable leper who must be banished from the clean society of tradition-bound higher education. In Ancient Israel, lepers were required to warn “clean citizens” of their presence and the danger that they represented. Lepers were isolated from clean society so as not to infect the general population with this insidious condition. In the 17th Century woodcut below depicting the cleansing of the ten lepers by Christ, the lepers are shown with warning clappers, letting everyone know that they were unclean. Were these clappers the precursors to today’s trigger warnings, which many in educational circles find aggravating and totally unnecessary?

Woodcut of ten lepers with clappers approaching Christ and His disciples; image in public domain and is made available from the historical holdings of the world-renowned Wellcome Library, the images are being released under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence.

In a number of recent conversations I have complained bitterly to friends that society and culture are pulling words “right out from under my feet.” I thought that disruption was going to be an excellent example. However, I was mistaken and I must apologize to those friends with whom I argued. It wasn’t society that was changing or evolving the definition of words. My mind was playing tricks on me. If I can’t use the word disruption, what term can I use? My search for a replacement has been arduous and without much success. The best alternative that I have so far is discontinuity. So instead of disruptive innovations, going forward I will talk and write about discontinuous innovations. However, I am not completely satisfied with this choice. It almost sound superfluous and doesn’t have the ring of disruptive innovations. Readers, do you have any suggestions?

In looking at the history of American higher education, what were the innovations or events that created discontinuities in the fabric of American higher education? When the United States federal government instituted land grant colleges in the last half of the 19th century, that created a huge discontinuity in traditional, liberal arts education. When the unemployment rate in the United States shot up from less than 5% in 1928 to more than 20% in the early 1930s, that was another discontinuity. When the United States entered World War II, that caused another tear in the continuum of American higher education.  When more than 10 million soldiers returned to civilian life after World War II, looking for jobs, that was a discontinuity. The G.I. Bill providing them the wherewithal to go to college was an innovation that created a huge discontinuity that had lasting effects for years.

Are there pedological changes and technological advances that will challenge the stubborn fabric of American higher education? The rise of the for-profit educational sector, online education, and andragogy have opened the eyes of a large segment of Americans, seemingly forgotten by traditional American higher education, the non-traditional students which are in dire need of education. It has created a pented up demand for educational opportunities previously unavailable and seemingly withheld from these individuals. This has opened the door for another possible huge discontinuity in American higher education.

The Barnes & Noble College report Achieving Success for Non-Traditional Students: Exploring the Changing Face of Today’s Student Population  predicts that between 2016 and 2022, there will be an 8.7% growth in traditional students, but a 21.7% growth in non-traditional students. The report goes on to suggest that non-traditional students are two times more likely to prefer on-line courses over the face-to-face courses preferred by traditional students. 

The Barnes & Noble (B&N) study defined at risk students as students who met at least one of three conditions. The conditions were: 1) a low sense of connection to the school; 2) low confidence of completing the program; and 3) negative feelings about current situations at school. The B&N study found that 29% of current (2015) non-traditional students were at risk while only 17% of traditional students were at risk. This difference was statistically significant. 

The B&N Study also suggested that schools could maximize their effectiveness in helping all students complete programs if they would address six key challenges. These challenges were: 1) know your “at-risk” students;” 2) increase access to affordable materials/learning solutions; 3) offer expanded career counseling support; 4) offer services that will help students deal with their stresses; 5) act as their support system and help engage more deeply; and 6) provide clear, proactive communication and information about the support services offered. All of these challenges make eminent sense. Schools that best mitigate the challenges of at risk students will help more of them complete programs.

The one startling fact that I found missing from the B&N report was any reporting of the current rates of success of students completing programs. From studies by the American Council on Education (ACE) and the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), we know that the national average of traditional students completing programs is about 55%; while the average completion percentage for non-traditional students is about 33%. If B&N found 17% of traditional students and 29% of non-traditional students were at risk, but we know that at least 45% and 67%, respectively, are not completing programs, why weren’t there 28% more traditional students and 38% more non-traditional students at risk? I would suggest that there are at least this many more current traditional and non-traditional students who are at risk. The difficulty is that we don’t know how to identify them. If we can’t identify them, we certainly can’t help them.

However, identifying these obvious candidates for improving the educational picture in America will not necessarily be the panacea to solving all of our problems. The University of California system of higher education is a prime example of more of the problems within American higher education. The California system says that it is overloaded. With current facilities and staffing, the system claims that it can’t adequately serve the students that it now has. If we have more students completing programs, where will we “teach” these students and who will teach them? If the system doesn’t have the funds to hire more teachers or build more classrooms, where will the state or institutions get that money? I have already offered my take on the idea of how acceptable raising tuition will be with prospective students and those responsible for the tuition bills of these students.

If you are within higher education, be prepared for the coming discontinuities. You may even have to be prepared for disruptions. Without changes, we can’t and will not meet the coming demands and expectations.

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Broken Business Model of American Higher Education, Part VI: Incremental Growth Will Not Be Enough

courtesy of Presenter Media

I am finally returning to my series on the broken business model of American higher education. In previous installments of this series, I have indicated that I believe the sprawling educational multiplex on which the United States relies and to which much of the world admiringly looks for leadership is sputtering and struggling to catch its breath, I think  American higher education is caught between a rock and a hard place. I am convinced that it has reached an important fork in its road. Which way should we go? The future prosperity of American higher education is potentially at stake.

I suspect many of you are cringing at my use of the word prosperity with respect to higher education. I intentially used the business term “prosperity” in this context. I can hear people screaming at their computer screens: “Higher education is not a business.” Folks, other than in the form of a vigorous denial, you won’t hear that expression from me. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: “Higher education is a business.” See my previous post, According to the Duck Test, Higher Education is a Business. If you see an animal in the barnyard that has feathers like a duck, flies like a duck, waddles like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck, and looks like a duck, then it is a very safe bet that it is a duck.

courtesy of Presenter Media

I believe that much of the difficulty and confusion comes from the fact that education is more than a business. In addition to being required to operate as a business, it is a ministry, an agency of  service to individuals, communities, our country and the world. It provides a public and private good. It offers aid, assistance, help and utility. I put it in the same pigeon hole as the fields of medicine, and charitable service enterprises. All of these enterprises offer indispensable assistance and benefits to their clients, communities and the human race. I have heard many call for these initiatives to be held to higher standards of accountability than we demand of the companies from which we obtain our meals and groceries. We seem to have far fewer problems with businesses offering inferior services to customers or clients, than requiring service organizations to maintain their obligations to operate according to the legal requirements that all businesses are suppose to meet.

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The past several postings in this series have been about growing enrollment. I believe that American higher education has reached a point of decision at which it must pick between two very different paths. This choice will define unique and important historical options that will have far reaching consequences. If you are completely turned off by the idea that higher education should be described in business and economic terms, will you allow me to use the medical analogy of the health of American higher education?  Have we reached a point where the future health of American higher education may conceivably be at stake? Is it time to check its temperature, heart rhythm,  AIC, cholesterol levels, BMI and the electrical activity of the brain?

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Most educational pundits, critics and commentators, friendly or otherwise, readily admit that American higher education has come through some very trying times and will definitely face some more problems, and possibly even crises in its immediate future. The decisions that American higher education must make can be formulated in a number of different terms. The problems facing American higher education are complex and multifaceted. This means that we must be prepared to wade through knee-deep, involved puddles of mud to get close to understanding the problem before we can formulate and begin to implement a remedy that will alleviate the current difficulties.

From previous posts in this series, I have tried to present the argument that American higher education is facing financial problems and pressures. The enterprise doesn’t have enough money to do what it’s currently doing. It is also far short of having the funds to do what it and seemingly most of the American public wants it to do. In this series I have proposed that American higher education has five sources of revenue. In the first post of the series, The Business Model of All of Higher Education is Broken, I listed five possible sources of revenue for American higher education:

  1. Tuition and fees;
  2. Fundraising, advancement or development efforts;
  3. Endowment income, appreciation, interest or dividends;
  4. Auxiliary enterprises; and
  5. Government appropriations (Reserved for public institutions).

Previously in this series, I have concentrated on revenues from tuition and fees. The two easiest ways to enlarge this revenue pot are either by increasing the tuition and fees charged each student, or by growing enrollment, i.e., increasing the number of students paying the tuition and fees. I have attempted to show that institutions would be fighting a losing battle if they attempted to increase the tuition and fee charges sufficiently to cover their current needs or future desires. Student, families, politicians and the general public already believe that tuition and fees are too high. In the most recent post in this series, The Business Model of All of Higher Education is Broken, Part V: Increasing Enrollments is Not Enough, I began to consider the difficulties in increasing enrollments to gain more revenue. I continue that line of reasoning in this post.

Business strategists, economists and mathematicians typically talk about two types of growth: incremental and exponential. Incremental growth is normally represented on a graph by a straight line. With this type of  growth, the number grows by approximately the same amount in each period of time. Its graph is best approximated by a linear function. On the other hand, exponential growth is an upward-opening, concave curved line.  In exponential growth, the number grows at a rate that is proportional to the number’s current value, resulting in its growth with time being an exponential function. Its graph is best approximated by an exponential function, with a leading exponent of the independent variable equal to 2 or greater. To illustrate the difference, consider the following fabricated example of college enrollments in a fictitious country.

Enrollment in fictitious country to illustrate the problems with incremental growth. Chart created by author using Google Sheets

The graph begins at a point in the history of our fictitious country where the current enrollment is 20 million students. If our country does nothing different year after year, the enrollment would tend to stay constant (bright green line on the graph). The incremental growth graph (red line) is approximated by a straight line with a slope of positive 1. This means that for each year, the enrollment grows by 1 million students.. The exponential growth graph (blue line) is approximated by a quadratic function.  The quadratic growth model represents a disruptive change, such as switching to online degree programs,  which at first causes a slight decline in enrollment before the exponential growth kicks in. Our Combination Model  (the purple line) represents a combination of adding the online program plus the incremental growth from adding students to the traditional programs.

The enrollment numbers for this fictitious country are not completely unimaginable. The current enrollment in the United States is approximately 20 million. According to the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the National Center of Education Statistics (NCES), it is expected to growth by almost 5 million students in the next 5 years. For the first 200 years of American higher education, enrollment did double approximately every 10 to 15 years. If you dig into those statistics you will find that those staggering enrollment increases followed disruptive changes in American society and higher education. There were earth shaking events and government reforms that contributed mightily to  the enrollment growths. The slow down and eventual leveling off enrollment growths of the past half century would require new earth shaking events or changes to American higher education to put it back on the path to doubling enrollment every 10 to 15 years. However, this growth is exactly what political and educational pundits desire and suggest that American society must have. We have both presidential candidates of the major political parties suggesting that the economic recovery of the United States must be built on the backs of high tech jobs and increased educational opportunities. Both have suggested that we must double the number of college graduates in the next decade. I only see two ways to double the number of graduates in the next decade. FIrstly, we must either improve our college completion rate from approximately 50% to essentially 100%. We haven’t really come close to that goal with high school education and look at all the flak that secondary education is receiving over graduating unprepared students. The second approach is to essentially double the number of students entering college. For my response to this, see my first point.

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However, it is not just Americans crying for these increases in higher education enrollments. You have Education Dive’s headline of August 12 blaring out College enrollments to double in next decade. I invite you read this article for yourself and follow the leads in the article to their sources. It is not a pretty picture the author, Jarrett Carter, is painting concerning American higher education. What’s American higher education to do? As with any work of suspense, I break off my story with our hero hanging by his fingers from the edge of the cliff and leave the resolution for another installment. Please stay tuned.