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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In the early days of online education, a commonly discussed phenomenon was the low completion rates of students.  Some chose to explain the departure of students using characteristics such as lack of social integration and academic integration for students matriculating in online programs as identified by Vincent Tinto and others.  As technologies utilized in the classroom improved and subsequently, online teaching techniques, student persistence improved as well, but not close to the levels sustained by some of the best face-to-face programs. 

In research that I conducted initially for my doctoral dissertation and then later in a paper with my colleagues Phil Ice and Angela Gibson, I identified several factors as significant variables leading to student disenrollment from an online program.  These variables include no transfer credit received, student’s last grade of F, student’s last grade of W, and low number of courses completed by the student in a 12-month period.

Over the past year and a half, my colleagues and I have continued to examine the student disenrollment patterns at the American Public University System (APUS) and have discussed those patterns with colleagues at a number of other institutions offering online programs.  More and more, I have come to believe that the persistence of students who complete three or more undergraduate courses at APUS and the tendency of students who complete fewer than three courses at APUS to eventually disenroll are much more correlated to adult student behaviors previously identified by researchers using data from traditional institutions.

During the past decade, a major increase in enrollments has occurred  with the number of adults attending online programs versus face-to-face programs.  The reasons are obvious:  working adults are able to attend online programs from any location at any time.  Those with jobs that frequently take them out of town no longer have to juggle schedules to meet the requirement of taking a face-to-face class, but can log in from another city or country; the only requirement is a computer and an internet connection.  Additionally, adult students with a family can come home from work and log in to their classroom after dinner and after the children go to bed.  Those adults whose jobs require them to work non-traditional evening or night shifts can log in during times that suit them and not worry about losing sleep to attend face-to-face courses at a local college or university.

One of the earlier studies regarding persistence rates of adult students was published by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).  In this study, researchers Laura Horn and Mark Premo identified seven risk factors that were associated with the likelihood that a student would not graduate from college.  These risk factors were:  being independent, attending college part-time, working full-time while enrolled, having dependents, being a single parent, delaying entry to college, and not having a traditional high school diploma.  Working adults attempting to complete an associates’ or bachelor’s degree are likely to have at least three of these risk factors and those with children may have five or six.

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Universal education in the United States is no longer a novel idea; in fact, K-12 education has become something most Americans take for granted.  Even with issues of access and affordability in the world of American higher education, the possibility of obtaining a college degree is not out of the question for most Americans.  For many in the world, however, education is far from a “given;” millions of children in developing nations never see the inside of an elementary school classroom and the concept of achieving any level of postsecondary education seems as likely as sprouting wings and flying to the moon. 

One UNESCO report estimates that “only about 3 percent of young people in sub-Saharan Africa and 7 percent in Asia attend some form of postsecondary education.”  Compare these statistics to postsecondary education statistics in industrialized nations (approximately 58 percent of the population in industrialized nations pursue some form of postsecondary education)  and for the United States alone (60 percent) and it becomes clear that a large sector of the world’s population is not able to access the valuable skills gained through higher education.  In the United States, we have had 150-200+ years to develop our three tiered system embracing community colleges, four year colleges, and research universities.  The fixed costs of opening physical campuses, particularly in areas of large geographic expanse, often exceed the limited budgets of developing countries.  Even China’s successful and rapidly expanding economy cannot keep up with the infrastructure involved in building college campuses.

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It’s almost impossible to pick up a newspaper or magazine these days without reading an article about the affordability crisis in higher education. For the past twenty years, tuitions have increased at a rate about twice that of the consumer price index. Many institutions cite the national statistics on the value of a college degree as the justification for charging increasingly higher tuition.

During the same twenty year period, the grants provided under federal student aid programs (FSA) did not increase at the same average rate as tuitions. Therefore, an increasingly higher percentage of college costs were paid through loans and not grants. Last academic year, loans constituted some fifty-six percent of total student aid while grants accounted for only thirty-eight percent.

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When I was contacted about joining the Presidents Climate Commitment, I thought it was a great idea. For a number of years, we have offered a B.S. degree in Environmental Science and an M.S. degree in Environmental Policy and Management. Putting some of the theory that we teach into practice would be an interesting endeavor. I wasn’t sure that an online university would be able to generate the same impact on global warming that a land-based institution could, so I asked our Director of Facilities to review the Commitment document to determine if we would be able to comply with the guidelines.

The first commitment is to take the steps necessary to develop a plan to achieve climate neutrality as soon as possible. There are three parts to plan development which include: (1) “create institutional structures to guide the development and implementation of the plan,” (2) “within a year of signing, complete a comprehensive inventory of all greenhouse gas emissions and update the inventory every other year thereafter,” and (3) “within two years of signing, develop an institutional action plan for becoming climate neutral.”

In addition to plan development, the Commitment asks the participants to “initiate two or more tangible actions to reduce greenhouse gases while the more comprehensive plan is being developed.” A list is provided in the Commitment and we were able to comply with the first two which are “establish a policy that all new campus construction will be built to at least the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Silver standard or equivalent” and “adopt an energy-efficient appliance purchasing policy requiring purchase of ENERGY STAR certified products in all areas for which such ratings exist.” We continue to review our ability to comply with the remaining five recommended actions.

The Commitment requires that we make our “action plan, inventory, and periodic progress reports publicly available by providing them to the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) for posting and dissemination.”

We have no current plans for constructing a new building, but we have contracted for three renovation projects since the commitment was signed and in each case, we have worked with the contractor and architect to design Green Building standards in the projects wherever possible. While the estimated costs of such standards range from 4-10% higher than non-green standards, we are pleased that we were able to call attention to our desire to build to Green Building standards. We have held discussions with several developers and contractors about our long-term campus needs and in every discussion we’ve indicated that we have committed to Green Building standards. We’ve also adopted and implemented a policy of purchasing ENERGY STAR certified products whenever possible.

In some ways, operating an online university is a very effective way of reducing greenhouse gases. Our 31,000+ students study from their homes or workplaces and we do not need to maintain the physical plant that would be necessary to house that number of students and support staff. Our students and faculty do not generate additional automobile fuel emissions by commuting to campus and buildings like dormitories, dining halls, and classrooms are unnecessary. That said, we believe that we can comply with the terms of the Commitment and are proud to be part of the greater Higher Education community calling attention to a long-neglected problem: sustainability.