Ithaka S+R recently published a report funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and titled, “Barriers to Adoption of Online Learning Systems in U.S. Higher Education.”  I have written extensively on this blog about the economic constraints facing institutions of higher education, issues of student persistence and retention, and the litany of other issues daunting the American higher education system today.  In their report, the authors explore many of these same topics explaining why they believe online education could be a boon for higher education in general and students, faculty, and individual institutions specifically. 

Though the authors state in the Introduction that, “We believe such [online] systems have the potential to improve faculty productivity and lower instructional costs without sacrificing educational quality,” online education continues to face staunch critics.  Fundamentally, the report notes that the onslaught of online education in the higher education landscape has the potential to completely transform our concept of and basic approach to educating the nation’s college students.  The concept of online education is so foreign to many that there is some resistance based solely on it being “different.”  The authors conducted interviews with a variety of institutions utilizing online education in a variety of ways.  Not surprisingly, considering the relatively recent arrival of online education on the higher educational scene, institutions are still working to figure out how best to utilize new technologies to reduce instructional costs, improve student learning outcomes, and maximize faculty effectiveness.

Online education is becoming such a disruptive force (to use Clayton Christensen’s terminology) in education that the authors state, “Online learning is taking place at just about every college and university in the nation.”  In their interviews with administrators and faculty at institutions implementing online education in some way, there were some common themes uncovered discussing the rationale for the introduction of online education.  Many institutions, for example, see online offerings as a revenue generator.  Online education has the ability to reach non-traditional students (adult learners who are not able to attend class in a physical, more traditional setting) as well as students who would otherwise not enroll with the university due to geographic location.  While there are significant startup costs associated with implementing an online environment, many schools anticipate eventually recouping that initial investment through decreased use of facility space, increased enrollments thanks to the online offerings, and more effective use of faculty time.  Interestingly, some universities have seen cost savings as well as increased revenue yet the authors point out, “Very few institutions are using either the savings from online education or the net incremental revenue to reduce the price of education to students.”

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The October 2011 issue of American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research’s (AEI) Education Outlook included an interesting analysis of the total cost of a bachelor’s degree titled, “Cheap for Whom?:   How Much Higher Education Costs Taxpayers.”  The authors, Mark Schneider and Jorge Klor de Alva, go beyond a surface analysis of tuition rates, student fees, and books.  Their analysis delves deeper into the overall financial cost model to consider and analyze taxpayer subsidies as part of the cost of a bachelor’s degree. 

Schneider and de Alva note that consumers are largely oblivious to the cost of an item, focusing almost solely on the price instead.  As long as the price seems reasonable (or, at least comparable to other similar products), the consumer is not likely to consider what the actual cost of the product is.  As the authors point out, nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in higher education.  Since the downturn of the economy in 2008, a deluge of articles have been published exploring the price of a college education (see the “Impact of the Economy on Higher Education” section of this blog) but little has been written for the American public about the true cost of a degree (that data is typically buried in academic policy and research reports that typically do not receive broad media coverage).  Schneider and de Alva have undertaken the daunting task of publishing the total cost of a bachelor’s degree for the American taxpayer.  Their findings are notable, assuming that those in a position to influence public policy and a broader national discussion read their paper.

The authors divided their sample into the following categories: public, private not-for-profit, and private for-profit institutions.  Beyond that,  they used a variation of the well-known rankings reported in Barron’s Profiles in American Colleges which provides six categories for schools ranging from “noncompetitive” (open admissions schools) to “most competitive” (highly selective, elite institutions).  Interestingly, American taxpayers subsidize the least competitive schools far less than they do the most competitive.  The irony is that the largest and fastest growing sector of the college population includes low-income and non-traditional students who are attending the lesser competitive schools.  These schools tend to offer greater flexibility for part-time students, working adults, and other “nontraditional” student populations.  To provide perspective on the dramatic differences in taxpayer subsidies, consider that “among not-for-profit institutions, the amount of taxpayer subsidies hovers between $1,000 and $2,000 per student per year…”  Among the most selective institutions in the nation, “the taxpayer subsidy jumps substantially to more than $13,000 per student per year.”

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Today is Earth Day and as the urgency of the climate change problem looms heavily over the entire world, it is a day that should not go without notice.  This year’s Earth Day represents the beginning of a two-year initiative called the Green Generation Campaign.  The campaign was established in the same spirit as the “Greatest Generation” that met the challenges facing the world in the years during and following the conclusion of World War II; individuals working together to create meaningful change in the fight to slow and halt climate change.  Through individual and collective efforts, supporters of the Green Generation Campaign will take measures to reduce their impact on the environment (for a list of ways you can make changes to reduce your own carbon footprint, see the Earth Day 2009 website).   APUS was an early participant in the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) and believes that its online form of instruction is ideally suited to assist in the reduction of its carbon footprint (see my blog article about APUS’ involvement in the ACUPCC).

The first Earth Day was celebrated on this day in 1970; since then, Earth Day has come to be celebrated around the world.  In the years following the celebration of the first Earth Day, the United States took an active role in the discussion on climate change.  In 1970, Congress established the Clean Air Act to set national air quality, auto emission and anti-pollution standards.  In 1980, Congress established the Superfund, designated with the task of cleaning up hazardous waste sites.  In 1990, President George H.W. Bush signed the Pollution Prevention Act which emphasized the importance of preventing, not just correcting, environmental damage. 

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