Today, APUS will be awarded the 2009 Ralph E. Gomory Award for Quality Online Education at the Sloan Consortium’s International Conference on Online Learning in Orlando, Florida.  The Sloan Consortium is a membership organization of approximately 1800 higher education institutions, dedicated to improving online learning.  The Gomory Award has been given annually since 2002 to “an institution that has demonstrated its commitment to assessing and improving the quality of its online education programs through quantitative application of the Sloan-C Quality Pillars.”  Prior to 2002, the award was given but not named in honor of Dr. Gomory.  Though schools could nominate a single degree program, a cluster of programs within a specific department or school, or the online degree offerings of the institution as a whole, APUS decided to nominate itself using the third criteria listed above.

The Ralph E. Gomory Award is named for Dr. Ralph E. Gomory, President Emeritus of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.  Dr. Gomory has had an illustrious career that includes Chairman of IBM Research’s Mathematical Sciences Department from 1965-67 and eventually IBM’s Senior Vice President for Science and Technology, the position from which he retired from IBM in 1989.  After his tenure at IBM, Dr. Gomory became President of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation where he became a pioneer in the field of online education.  Dr. Gomory has served as a Trustee of Hampshire College (1977-1986) and of Princeton University (1985-1989).  He served as a board member of the Washington Post Company.  He also served on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) from 1984 until 1992.  In 2007, after nearly two decades as President of the Sloan Foundation, Dr. Gomory became President Emeritus and continues to play an integral role in the development and improvement of online learning programs.

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Earlier in the month, one of my colleagues sent me a link to an article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, titled “The Ugly Secret Why Tuition Costs a Fortune.”  The article notes that in today’s somewhat unstable economy, the cost of most consumer goods are falling, yet higher education has somehow managed to insulate itself from this fundamental economic trend.  Examining why this has been the case, the article pulls from evidence found in Mark Bauerlein’s paper published by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, “Professors on the Production Line, Students On Their Own.”

Bauerlein, an English professor at Emory University, offers an eye-opening explanation of a starting trend in academia: the “publish or perish” dilemma facing young professors hoping to be hired or veteran faculty members on the path to tenure.  According to Bauerlein, between 1980 and 2006, William Faulkner garnered some “3,584 books, chapters, dissertations, articles, notes, reviews, and editions.”  In the same time period, Charles Dickens elicited 3,437 studies.  While there can be little question that scholarly critical works on these authors and others are worthwhile for full understanding of their works, one must begin to question how many works on any one author are required before the topic becomes “overdone.”  Bauerlein cites that the demand for a new book in the English literature area rarely exceeds 300 copies.

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The Sloan Consortium and Babson Survey Research Group (an organization based at Babson College in Massachusetts) released their sixth annual report on the state of online higher education last November and I recently revisited the report.  Titled, “Staying the Course: Online Education in the United States,” there are several elements contained therein that I feel are worth noting here.

Attempting to answer “the fundamental questions about the nature and extent of online education,” the report addresses several topics that provide evidence that the “nature and extent” of online education is growing rapidly in the United States.  The report begins by noting the significant increases in enrollments in online colleges and universities.  According to the authors, in the fall of 2007, some 3.9 million students were taking at least one online course, representing a twelve percent increase over the previous year.  The growth in enrollments for higher education as a whole grew at only 1.2 percent.  The report notes that in total, 20 percent of all US college and university students were taking at least one online course during the fall 2007 semester.

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The U.S. Department of Education released the findings of a meta-analysis conducted by its Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development on Friday that confirm what online educators have known for years: “on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.” 

Online education has gained tremendous momentum in the last several years.  A November 2008 report titled, “Staying the Course: Online Education in the United States, 2008” published by the Sloan Consortium notes that during the fall 2007 semester, some 3.9 million students were taking at least one course online, representing a twelve percent increase over the previous year.  During the same semester, twenty percent of all college students were taking at least one course online.  An Eduventures report from November 2006 predicted this growth; that report found that half of the 2,000 potential students surveyed indicated that they would be interested in completing a degree online.

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Bob Zemsky, co-author of Remaking the American University: Market-Smart and Mission-Centered led a session for Presidents and Trustees of colleges and universities at the 2007 Higher Learning Commission annual meeting in Chicago.  At the time, he was a member and participant on the Spellings Commission and he provided the audience with an update on the Commission’s findings from his perspective.  I was pleasantly surprised when he did not take the side of many in Higher Education who prefer that the government and corporations leave the accountability issue alone.

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Our programs and courses have been online since 1996.  There are several organizations that track the progress of online post-secondary enrollments including Eduventures and the Sloan Consortium.  There’s no doubt that the convenience of online post-secondary programs is a major reason that more and more adults are continuing or furthering their college education through online degree programs.

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