As you know, we have no physical classrooms at AMU and APU.  Our campus consists of 15 administrative buildings for our leadership and staff in Charles Town, West Virginia and Manassas, Virginia.  Over 90 percent of our students are not first time freshmen transitioning from high school to college.  Yet, for some reason, many of our adult students choose to come back to college in the fall.  Even though we accommodate the schedules of many working adults with 12 monthly semester starts, the fall is usually a busy time of the year for us.

Hosting a back-to-school picnic or cocktail party is more than a little difficult for a university with students in all 50 states and 100+ countries.  Virtually, I welcome you to our university and hope that you will find our continuing efforts at academic and social integration helpful.  As technology changes and improves, effectively shortening the distance between people, we hope that our abilities to integrate students academically and socially improve as well.

Welcome back and thanks for making us your choice for college.

Meanwhile, students, alumni, and friends who are members of the Coast Guard, please accept my apologies.  Please also accept my sincere thanks for the many efforts that you engage in daily to keep our nation’s ports and waterways safe for all.

Several years ago, I heard about a doctorate program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education that was designed for people who were employed full-time in higher education.  The doctorate was in higher education management.  With an ongoing interest in learning (what else is lifelong learning), I engaged in a dialogue with the Board of Trustees of the American Public University System (APUS) and the Board of Directors of American Public Education, Inc. (APEI) about the merits of enrolling in this program if I were accepted.  Both of the boards were supportive of my interest.  The primary question was related to timing.  I applied and was accepted.  There were several doctoral programs around the country designed for people working full-time, but the program at UPenn was the one that I wanted to attend.

I started the program in August 2008, a member of a cohort of 22.  Part of the uniqueness of the program is that we had to submit five suggestions for dissertation topics at the start of our program.  As the months progressed, we tackled courses with subjects like Qualitative Methods, Public Policy in Higher Education, Quantitative Methods, Institutional Governance in Higher Education, Strategic Management in Higher Education, History of Higher Education, Community Colleges, International Higher Education, Enrollment Management, and Small Colleges.  At the same time, we continued to progress toward our development of a topic and ultimately a proposal for our dissertations.

I successfully defended my dissertation proposal in May.  Courses have continued through the fall and will conclude in February.  Meanwhile, the chapters of my dissertation continue to take shape, along with data collection and analysis.  As those who have gone through this process know, the last few months are the most intense, requiring a lot of writing and rewriting.  Mixing a more casual style of writing into my more structured research writing has been more difficult than I had imagined.

I am not sure how often I will submit articles for the blog.  I may find a guest author or two.  I might even post a few videos of professors and students at APUS; a project that we have been developing over the past few months.

Meanwhile, I can relate to the challenges of going back to school for a degree when you have a full-time job and a family.  My family has been very supportive and I thank them.  I look forward to being able to spend more time with them, but the most important activity in my spare time will be finishing this dissertation and defending it successfully, sometime this spring.  The opportunity to do this has been wonderful.  I have enjoyed the program, the faculty, and my cohort classmates.  I think I know how an American Military University (AMU) or American Public University (APU) student feels when the finish line is in sight.

One of the tangible actions to which APUS committed when I signed the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) in September 2007 was a policy of building all new campus construction projects to LEED Silver standards.  The newest addition to the APUS Charles Town campus will meet or exceed those standards.  Environmentally friendly elements of the building will include solar panels on the roof which should provide some 30 percent of the building’s energy needs, bike racks to encourage employees to cut down on commuting by car, parking spaces for energy-efficient vehicles, highly efficient insulation and windows, a modern variable refrigerant HVAC system, and lighting controls to manage energy use, to name only a few.

As APUS has expanded its campus to house a growing staff tasked with accommodating the needs of our increasing student body, we have remained mindful of our responsibility to our Charles Town neighbors as well as our environment.  The new building will blend old and new, traditional and modern in an attempt to keep it similar in character to the historic nature of Charles Town’s other buildings, most of which were constructed in the 1800’s and early 1900’s. 

Joining me at Thursday’s groundbreaking ceremony in addition to APUS staff were various members of the local Charles Town community as well as several state representatives.  David Lloyd, Director of the EPA’s Office of Brownfields and Land Revitalization, was also in attendance and expressed his approval of the planned construction and use of the brownfields site for this purpose.

Please see below for a photo gallery of images from the ground breaking event.

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My time off from the blog occurred because my wife had knee replacement surgery, and I no longer had the luxury of writing a piece or two in the evenings after the evening rush hour in our house had settled down.  I gained an appreciation for the things that my wife did for us when I had to take those over too.

In thinking about the chores that I took over, it really wasn’t the work that I minded at all.  In fact, I never once said to myself that I shouldn’t be doing the additional work because I knew that my wife would have done the same thing for me.  But, I missed the time that I had previously dedicated to either writing pieces for this blog or reading.

Giving up sleep to find more time in the day wasn’t an option.  Taking vacation wasn’t an option, particularly since I promised my wife we would take a family vacation once she had recovered from the surgery.  So, I gave up my writing, and my reading (mostly).  I have a gap in my postings, but I think I emerged much more refreshed.  I haven’t returned to my previous pace of three postings a week, but I hope to reach that milestone soon.

With the advance of technology allowing all of us to be connected through cell phones, blackberries, pda’s, or the internet, the pace has quickened and the separation between professional and personal time has narrowed.  In my case, I created a couple of hours every night to write and read and that kept the gap from narrowing further.  I’m glad to say that I’m working the gap back into my schedule.

My first suggestion is that, in the case of most classifications, the term “for-profit” be removed as a separate distinction. This term refers to corporate structure and institutional governance, neither of which is of particular relevance in describing contemporary American higher education. Also, and unfortunately, the pejorative innuendo and labeling associated with the term are not warranted or representative of the academic quality and educational impact associated with many for-profit institutions; moreover, the term does not provide a meaningful form of differentiation between institutional types.

“Private” refers to non-public institutions, and that term works for me. If someone is looking for a more distinct separation between the private, non-profit and the private, for-profit, I suggest that we use the terms “private, taxpayer subsidized” institution, as differentiated from “private, tax-paying” institution. It is noteworthy that tax-paying institutions increasingly appear more effective at responding to the educational needs of underserved and often overlooked populations than many taxpayer subsidized institutions, particularly when considering that the latter have a competitive edge in that they do not pay taxes on most or all of their operating income, or on income generated from investments in their endowment funds.

The other classification that I would like to propose is “adult-serving institution.” This classification would be applicable regardless of whether an institution is a two year college, a baccalaureate degree granting institution, masters degree granting institution, or a doctoral degree granting institution. The current, standard definition of college students was crafted with the traditional, 18 to 22-year-old individual in mind. As the numbers increase of adults returning to college seeking a first-time degree or additional credentials, the time available to them necessary to complete the degree exceeds traditional norms and expectations. An adult-serving institution should be measured on the percentage of its students who achieve their stated goals, be that certificate completion or degree attainment. How long it takes them to complete their goal is irrelevant compared with the typical expectations of and resources available to traditional, full-time students.

Lastly, open enrollment is an admissions policy that over half of all American colleges embrace. It usually pertains to institutions that accept everyone who meets a certain minimum standard, such as graduation from high school. SAT’s, ACT’s, and GPA’s are usually not considered for admission. Many, but not all, adult-serving institutions have open enrollment policies. There are many studies of student retention in higher education that demonstrate that the more selective a school is in its admissions standards, the higher its graduation rate. These studies also demonstrate the corollary – that is, the lower the selectivity, the lower the graduation rate. Studies typically rely on averages, and not all institutions are the same, just as not all students are the same. Our institution has had an open enrollment policy for all of our undergraduate programs since its founding. We maintain that policy, while at the same time embracing the objective of working with all of our students to achieve their individual goals, whether it be certificate, degree attainment, personal growth, or preparation for transfer to another institution.  Since many adult-serving institutions are open-enrollment, I propose that those with selective admissions policies be labeled as “selective,” thus making it possible to group adult-serving institutions according to their respective missions, and to measure their effectiveness against comparable institutions.

I make no claims to being a writer, professional or amateur.  I do not publish academic research at the present time.  However, I have enjoyed reading since the beginning (first grade for me), and the enjoyment of reading has given me an appreciation for the quality of writing.

During my elementary and secondary years, I benefited by having dedicated teachers who guided the development of my writing through the typical structural development prescribed in the 1960’s and 1970’s.  By the time I reached high school, we focused less on the structure of a sentence (no more sentence diagramming) and more on the prose itself.  As a precursor to college, my high school classmates and I were given a copy of The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White and were told that everything we ever wanted to know about good writing was contained in that book (William Strunk was a professor at Cornell University who began his guide for writing in 1918 and E.B. White was an editor at the New Yorker who studied under Strunk.  White revised Strunk’s guide in 1958).

As a freshman at Duke University in 1972, I suffered through the standard required English composition class in which little guidance was given about how to write other than analyzing the literary context of the novel and writing argumentatively.  The course was graded on a C curve and those of us who achieved an A or B were grateful that we did not receive a C and were perplexed given the limited opportunity to receive personal advice about our writing.  When I decided to be a liberal arts major, most of my subsequent courses required writing papers and making educated arguments about the assigned readings.  Education about writing had ceased with English composition.  It was expected that your writing would improve as you continued to progress (and write) in your upper level liberal arts classes.

When I attended graduate business school at Tulane, there was little room for the type and style of writing embraced in history, philosophy, and English classes.  Analysis was best when it was brief and to-the-point.  That same style of brevity was important for writing memos throughout much of my business career.

After a long respite from being a student, I entered a doctoral program at the University of Pennsylvania.  One of our professors recommended that we read a book entitled Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott.  Lamott’s lessons are less about the techniques of writing and more about the importance of writing often, in essence practicing and perfecting the art of writing.  The title of her book stems from an incident in her childhood when her brother complained that he did not know where and how to start a paper about birds.  Her father, a writer, instructed her brother to write about the birds, “bird by bird.”

I shared my thoughts about Bird by Bird with a friend of mine who teaches English composition in high school.  He recommended Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.  Roughly two-thirds of the book is autobiographical, but the middle section provides some good tips on writing.

While Bird by Bird and On Writing provide coaching tips and ideas, they are not as instructional as The Elements of Style.  I agree with King’s and Lamott’s advice that the more you write, the easier it will be to write.  That does not necessarily mean that the writing will be better.  Few writers are gifted enough to write a flawless novel or article at one sitting.  I review and edit until I am comfortable with the flow of the document.  In some cases, I ask someone to review it and provide me with edits or comments.

Alex Reid, the author of The Two Virtuals: New Media and Composition, recently commented on his blog, Digital Digs, that “The more we write and the greater variety of genres in which we write, the better prepared we will be to write in a variety of genres in the future.”  Reid’s post is a response to an article by Josh Keller in The Chronicle of Higher Education in which Keller reports about longitudinal studies at Stanford and Michigan State that explore whether the internet makes students better writers.  Reid bills himself as an academic writer, and his conclusion is similar to the tips from Lamott and King who are professional writers.  Reid not only comments about the importance of writing frequently, but also about the importance of writing frequently in multiple genres.

Whether writing at work, at school, or on the internet, I agree that the frequency of writing should improve the quality of your written output.  Constructive criticism from bosses, professors, or friends is helpful as well.  If you feel uninspired during your next effort at writing, read Bird by Bird or On Writing.  Good luck and good writing!

With more than a little trepidation, I ventured into the unknown and launched it last year.  For the most part, writing pieces for the blog has been fun.  When I get busy or suffer from writer’s block, I find it difficult to publish at a consistent pace.  Recently, I thought about what I could do to make the blog more relevant and more current.  I decided that I would try to write more often but with less verbiage.   Hopefully, that provides more people with a perspective about what I am thinking about and talking about.  If you have any thoughts or ideas on topics, feel free to send them my way.  After the end of July, let me know what you think about my new style.  Thanks.

The introduction of this report provides the standard background data about (1) the influx of 20.4 million new students by 2016 (NCES data), including many minority and immigrant populations who have had inconsistent academic preparation for college; (2) the rapidly rising cost of a college degree which has more than doubled as a percentage of family income over the past two decades (data from the Losing Ground 2004 report which I believe is also in the Measuring Up 2008 report); (3) competition from other countries who are educating their younger workers at a faster rate than the U.S. (Measuring Up 2006 and Measuring Up 2008); and, (4) growing demands for accountability, transparency and assessment in higher education (e.g., the Spellings Commission).  The authors of the report mention that in over a decade of researching how different groups view large-scale public issues, the only way to work toward a resolution is to have all of the constituents agree on a common definition of the problem.  Based on their interviews of the 30 college and university presidents AND their public opinion research studies related to higher education over the past decade, the authors believe that most of the college presidents hold a different opinion about the issues than the general public.

The authors state that the college and university presidents believe that the three iron triangle factors of cost, quality, and access are “linked in an unbreakable reciprocal relationship, such that any change in one will inevitably impact the others.”  The authors cite previous research where (1) 56% of the public believes that colleges could spend less and still maintain high quality, (2) 52% of the public believes that colleges and universities are a business “with an eye on the bottom line,” (3) 40% of the public believes that “waste and mismanagement is a factor in driving up the cost of college,” and (4) more than 6 out of 10 government and business leaders believe that higher education is “too bureaucratic and resistant to change.”

The interviews and quotes in the report are anonymous.  They are organized around five parts:  (1) overview, (2) cost, (3) access, (4) quality and accountability, and (5) the way forward.  If you only have the time to read part of the report, read the introduction, Part V, The Way Forward, and the Afterward.  The consensus of the presidents as portrayed by the researchers is that government needs to pay more money if they expect increased access, quality and affordability.  The individual quotes are telling.  It is interesting to me that none of the presidents interviewed suggested utilization of technology to expand access and improve affordability as some distance education institutions have managed to do.

After reading the report, I can only predict the issues and the debate regarding higher education to continue at the legislative and executive branch level despite the sighs of relief from some now that we have “a professor in the White House.”  There are institutions that focus on the issues of access, affordability and quality.  Fourteen of us joined together to form Transparency by Design, about which I intend to write in the future.  I think the public is responding to institutions that focus on the three corners of the triangle by applying to and attending institutions who believe in their ability to improve the 3 without government intervention.  Read the report and let me know whether you agree with my assessment or not.