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.

Other studies of persistence relating to adult students provide explanations and characteristics of transfer students.  Noting that my own research indicated that students who had transferred credits were  more likely to graduate than those who did not transfer credit, I reviewed some of the literature about transfer students and student attendance patterns.  Wright and de los Santos wrote about this phenomenon in “Maricopa’s Swirling Students: Earning One-Third of Arizona State’s Bachelor’s Degrees” in 1990.  Later, director of Indiana University’s National Survey of Student Engagement, Alex McCormick, wrote a research article titled “Swirling and Double-Dipping: New Patterns of Student Attendance and Their Implications for Higher Education,” outlining the various patterns of student attendance and their implications.  In his article, McCormick attributes the likelihood of students to attend multiple institutions to the standardization of credits and the ability to transfer credits from one institution to another rather easily.  McCormick outlines eight different patterns of attendance for swirling students.  These are: 
• Trial enrollment – Students experimenting with another institution before formally transferring
• Special program enrollment – Students completing most of their coursework at their home institution but completing a special program (e.g., semester abroad) elsewhere
• Supplemental enrollment – Students enrolling at another institution for one or more terms to supplement or accelerate their program (examples include summer programs or taking a course at another institution because it’s unavailable at the home institution)
• Rebounding enrollment – Students alternating enrollment at two or more institutions
• Concurrent enrollment – Students taking courses at two institutions simultaneously
• Consolidated enrollment – Students who satisfy their home institution’s residency requirements but a substantial number of their credits come from at least two other institutions
• Serial transfer – Students who make one or more intermediate transfers sequentially in order to complete a degree
• Independent enrollment – Students pursue work unrelated to their degree program and no credits are transferred

McCormick notes that several longitudinal studies exist and while they provide descriptions of attendance patterns, they fail to provide explanations for those patterns.  He cites Clifford Adelman’s 1999 study that examined the longitudinal data of the 1982 high school graduates’ cohort and identified that students who attended multiple institutions accounted for approximately 60 percent of all students who began at four year institutions.  Approximately 37 percent of all students from the 1982 cohort attended two institutions and 22 percent attended three institutions.  Confirming some of the classifications outlined by McCormick was Adelman’s finding that three in five of the 1982 graduates who attended two institutions returned to their first college, as did half of the 1982 graduates who attended three colleges.  It’s important to note that Adelman’s longitudinal study over 16 years examined college attendance data over a much longer period than the NCES data required to be reported by institutions participating in the Federal Student Aid program.

The studies mentioned by McCormick and Adelman are excellent starting points for discussions about why more research is necessary to determine the explanations of student swirling.  Is it possible that adult students might attend even more institutions today because the availability and popularity of online courses and programs has increased substantially over the past decade?  The Sloan Consortium’s most recent publication, Going the Distance:  Online Education in the United States 2011, has identified that nearly one third of all college students completed at least one online course in 2010-2011.  At the recent Council of College and Military Educators (CCME) Conference, the Department of Defense reported that 75 percent of all military tuition assistance payments were for students attending online programs.  While the military may be more mobile than most working professionals, the data otherwise supports the increasing trend of adult students enrolled in online courses/programs.  As noted earlier, the risk factors for college completion are compounded for working adult students and may lead to explanations of some institutions’ student transfers.

More and more, I am convinced that the United States needs a national database that tracks the progress of college students as they attend multiple institutions.  The Predictive Analytics Reporting (PAR) Framework funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and managed by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) Cooperative for Education Technologies has a database with 640,000 student records from students attending online programs at six different institutions.  That’s approximately 10 percent of the students who took online courses last year according to the Sloan survey mentioned earlier.  The National Student Clearinghouse provides data as it is contributed by participating institutions, but institutions are not required to belong to the consortium and only recently has the Clearinghouse been able to accept student data from institutions with non-traditional financial aid enrollment periods.  In addition, that data does not aggregate by institutional profile in a more granular format (adult serving, commuter college, online, etc.). 

During the last reauthorization of the Higher Education Opportunity Act in 2008, Congress inserted a provision prohibiting the Department of Education from creating such a database.  To quote McCormick, “if educators, policymakers, and researchers are to assess institutional impact, they will need better information about [an] institution’s attendance profile, if not detailed information about the source of credits at the student level.”  As Adelman and others have identified, there are multiple types of institutional profiles as well as profiles of students who attend those institutions.  Before a policymaker or pundit makes a disparaging remark about student persistence rates at a particular institution or group of institutions, they need to have data far beyond that related to first-time, full-time students that has been the baseline for institutional reporting to the Integrated Post-secondary Education Data System (IPEDS).  Institutions and researchers should collaborate to provide more insights to explanations for adult student drop out beyond “life happens.”  More research on adult student swirling needs to be conducted, particularly for those students attending online programs or institutions.

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.

APUS’ assessment mechanisms are among the most well-developed in the country.  Since 2004, we have publicly posted our outcome assessment results on our website.  Our Learning Outcomes Assessment process, for example, produces invaluable feedback to academic programs on the performance of educational processes so that each program may continue to improve the quality of the APUS experience for each of our more than 50,000 students.  Through the process, APUS is able to gauge what students are learning and continuously improve on the student learning environment through enhanced courses and academic programs.

APUS uses five questions outlined by the Higher Learning Commission in 2005 to guide the learning outcomes assessment process:
• How are your student learning outcomes appropriate to your mission, program, and degrees?
• What evidence do you have that students achieve your stated learning outcomes?
• In what ways do you analyze and use evidence of student learning?
• How do you ensure shared responsibility for assessment of student learning?
• How do you evaluate and improve the effectiveness of your efforts to assess and improve student learning?

APUS utilizes two tests that various students must take depending on their program level and field of study.  The Measure of Academic Proficiency and Progress (MAPP) test serves as an evaluation of overall academic knowledge and skill.  All undergraduate students at APUS must complete the MAPP test during their senior year.  APUS examines student scores on the Major Field Test (MFT) as the second component to its Learning Outcomes Assessment process.  The MFT is a subject-specific test that examines the student’s basic knowledge and understanding of the core curriculum in specific disciplines.  In addition to completing the MAPP test, undergraduate students in the fields of Business Administration, Criminal Justice, History, English, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology will complete the MFT.  Graduate students seeking the Master of Business Administration degree also complete the MFT. 

APUS has grown substantially in less than two decades because of its continuing goal of improving the quality and outcomes of the learning experience for its students.  APUS is dedicated to providing access to respected programs at an affordable price, tenants that many policymakers have recently embraced.    Through evaluative processes like our Learning Outcomes Assessment, we have been able to continually improve our programs.  I will be in Orlando today with several other APUS deans, faculty and staff to receive this distinguished award.  I am very proud of receiving this recognition and am even prouder of the countless hours spent by our faculty and staff in measuring, monitoring, evaluating, and implementing improvements in online learning for our students.

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.

Interestingly, as Bauerlein points out, during the most prolific decades for scholarly publications, there were no outside forces demanding that they be produced; few individuals outside of academia were asking for more such works.  In an interesting market twist, however, fewer institutions and individuals are purchasing the works that are being produced on such a vast scale.  Quoting remarks from the director of Yale University Press, Bauerlein notes, “’Yale and every other university press in America ha[ve] seen the sale of scholarly monographs…decline by two-thirds.’”  Even more eye-opening are findings that point to the fact that few college faculty are taking the time to review the vast number of works produced every year by their colleagues.  In the humanities disciplines, this may be the case because there is nothing new to glean from such works and there is no risk to the up-and-coming professor of falling behind in the field if he does not read them.

Bauerlein poses an intriguing question: has “the whole enterprise [of scholarly works produced by faculty] reached a saturation point?”  Based on the dwindling consumer interest in such works, it would seem that this is the case which begs the question, “Why are faculty members continuing to produce such works?”  In any other industry, if consumer interest dwindles, especially to the point that it has in the case of scholarly works in the humanities, most manufacturers would cease to continue to produce the product.  The answer, according to Bauerlein, is that “publication is a fact of survival, the foot in the door and the seat at the table.” 

Institutions of higher education across the country continue to require evidence of publications for hiring and tenure decisions.  This in turn compels faculty and candidates to strive to produce scholarly works to pad their curriculum vitas.  This sequence of events creates a dilemma not just for the faculty wishing to be hired or tenured, but also for their students.  Because faculty members are busy producing scholarly works that few will purchase and review, many of their undergraduate courses are handed to graduate teaching assistants (TAs) to manage.  Interestingly, Bauerlein found many of the courses being sloughed off to TAs are those most fundamental to the success of undergraduate students, including freshman composition and sociology courses.  Undergraduates often find themselves crammed into a stadium seating classroom with 50 to 300 other students and will have little opportunity to interact with the faculty assigned to teach the course. 

Bauerlein also found that few students have any contact with their professors outside of the classroom.  He chastises faculty and the higher education industry as a whole for allowing the notion that learning can take place outside of the classroom to fall by the wayside.  According to the 2007 NSSE survey of freshman students, 37 percent indicated that they “never discussed ideas from readings or classes with faculty members outside of class” and only 41 percent indicated that they did this “sometimes.”  The lack of interaction between students and professors outside the classroom leads to a mentality in which students believe learning takes place only in the classroom, perhaps hindering their motivation to pursue external resources to enhance their own learning.  John Zmirak, the author of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution article, suggests that parents examine the ratio of graduate assistants teaching these introductory courses in the humanities versus full-time professors.

In an interesting contrast to the statistics offered above, however, on the 2007 Faculty Survey of Student Engagement, 79 percent of respondents indicated that they were very satisfied with their professors’ levels of interactions.  Even with their perceived satisfaction, however, Bauerlein suggests that undergraduate students are suffering from the “publish or perish” mentality at most colleges and universities.  Bauerlein states that “the absence of teachers inside the classroom has become normalized.  Student’s don’t even know they’re being shortchanged.”

One of the ironies of this article is the fact that Bauerlein did not make a comparison between contact classes and online classes.  There have been many studies in retention literature noting that the academic and social engagement of a student influences that student’s persistence (graduation) in college (Tinto, 1975).  Institutions with online programs have focused on professor/student interaction because of the fact that the face-to-face contact is unavailable.  While I would assume that the NSSE results for online students would not demonstrate a high level of involvement with professors outside the class, perhaps the interaction would be higher.  Approximately 14 colleges (including APUS) have implemented the Community of Inquiry student survey, a survey specifically designed to measure professor/student interactivity.  According to data from the Sloan Consortium and Eduventures, community colleges and for-profit colleges and universities teach approximately two-thirds of all online classes.  At many of those institutions, tenure is not offered.  But, going back to the title of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution article “The Ugly Secret Why Tuition Costs a Fortune,” these institutions are not our most expensive.  Zmirak suggests that teaching capabilities be taken into consideration for tenure decisions and that the research in the humanities be left to the 300 people who buy the books.   Bauerlein and Zmirak have a point; institutions dependent on tuition seem to understand what the student customer needs.  I wonder if the current funding crisis will instigate the other institutions to evaluate their practice(s).

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.

In considering the motivations for students to enroll in online education programs, the report cites the rising cost of fuel, the flexible nature of online learning, and the overall economic downturn as reasons stated by students.  While the cost of fuel has recently decreased, the situation caused many adult students to opt for online programs that do not require them to commute to classes regardless of the cost.  Online education offers students the flexibility of completing course work on a schedule that is often more suitable for adult students who are frequently juggling full-time jobs, families, and other obligations.  The economic downturn, according to the Sloan Consortium, impacts enrollments in online universities because as jobs become scarcer, potential employees realize that bulking up their academic credentials may help in their job searches.  People who already have jobs often go back to school in the midst of an economic downturn in an attempt to provide additional job security.

One of the most interesting aspects of the Sloan Consortium report is that it considers the motivations of online professors as well as students.  Online professors who responded to the survey indicated that they enjoyed the flexibility that online formats provide in meeting the needs of students.  Online professors are in a position to utilize new technologies to enhance the student’s learning experience in a way that traditional classrooms often do not.  Many faculty members cited the need or desire for additional income as another motivation for teaching online.  This again speaks to the impact of the economic downturn in the growing role of online higher education in America.

Not only are students and many faculty migrating to online formats, many in the higher education industry are beginning to see purely online institutions as potential competition for students.  Whereas once large brick and mortar universities felt little pinch from online institutions luring their students from enrollment, today they are beginning to express some concern over the loss of “traditional” students to online institutions.  Perhaps it is for this reason that many institutions are beginning to offer some online courses to students.  According to the Sloan Consortium’s report, “fully one in five institutions with online courses introduced their first offerings this past year.” 

Interestingly, however, the authors note that the number of institutions that state that they feel that online course offerings are a “critical” part of the long-term future of their institutions has reached a plateau this year.  Certainly, many institutions have managed to achieve such brand recognition that they worry little over significant changes in the higher education industry; they are nearly guaranteed significant volumes of applicants regardless of whether they offer online courses or other options that many others are finding as crucial to securing student enrollments.  For the rest of those in higher education, however, online courses have become another means by which schools can attract students.  When the 2009 installment of the report is issued at the end of this year, I will be interested to see how the trends described above are heading.

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.

Though the recently released Department of Education report focuses on online formats for K-12 education, the findings are relevant for online education in general.  The 2006 Eduventures report notes that online education was most popular among adult learners.  The Department of Education report, however, notes that “the number of K-12 public school students enrolling in a technology-based distance education course grew by 65 percent in the two years from 2002-03 to 2004-05.”  In total, the report states that more than a million K-12 students took online courses during the 2007-2008 school year.  Such statistics are promising for online colleges and universities like APUS.  If K-12 students excel in online education in their early education, it seems likely that they may continue with the online format for undergraduate, graduate, and even doctoral degrees.  In Disrupting Class, authors Clayton Christensen, Michael Horn, and Curtis Johnson predict that 25 percent of K-12 classes will be online by 2014 and 50 percent by 2019.  (For a review of Disrupting Class, see my August 2008 blog article.)

In considering the reasons why online courses are growing in popularity, the Department of Education report notes that the ability for students to use their time in a flexible manner boosted online education’s popularity.  According to the study, “learners in the online condition spent more time on tasks than students in the face-to-face condition” finding “a greater benefit for online learning.”  There are obvious cost-saving benefits to online formats and some that are not as obvious including the ability to attend class from one’s home and saving money on the gas a traditional student needs to commute to classes at a brick and mortar institution. 

Additionally, online education expands access to many who may otherwise lack educational opportunities.  Online education could provide significant benefits to those living in rural areas, for example.  The diverse student population found in online classrooms promotes a meaningful exchange of ideas and points of view that is often absent in more traditional classrooms which, especially in traditional K-12 schools are comprised of students from a particular geographic location.  Christensen and his co-authors argue that advances in technology will allow K-12 educators to meet the needs of their students more than ever before.  In the event of smaller school districts with limitations of special teachers, foreign languages like Arabic and Mandarin Chinese could be offered online.  Already, there are providers who offer online advanced placement courses for school districts unable to find qualified teachers.

The implications of the report’s findings for the online education industry are significant.  A recent article in Inside Higher Ed quotes Secretary of Education Arne Duncan as saying of the meta-analysis and its findings, “’This new report reinforces that effective teachers need to incorporate digital content into everyday classes and consider open-source learning management systems, which have proven cost effective in school districts and colleges nationwide.’” 

Today’s students are embracing technology in almost everything they do.  Cell phones, MP3 players, laptop computers, and portable gaming devices are the norm for anyone who can afford them and the cost of technology continues to decrease every day.  The online education market is a part of the technology revolution.  Institutions that embrace online degree programs are expanding access to education for many of America’s students.  Higher education is notorious for its perceived conservation of traditional pedagogies and unwillingness to utilize new technologies to transform the ways that students learn.  With the advent of online education, however, the world of higher education is breaking out of that mold and students are benefitting in the process. 

In addition to affording students some flexibility in their schedules, opportunities for learning are dramatically increased in the online format.  Because students are not tied to classrooms and able to complete work on a more flexible schedule, they are also able to dedicate time to even more non-traditional educational opportunities including volunteer work, memberships in clubs and organizations, and other extracurricular activities that certainly provide invaluable experience.  Working individuals often find that earning a degree online allows them the ability to continue with their careers while working toward attaining their degrees.  In general, I believe that such opportunities help encourage the development of a more well-rounded student and individual.

The meta-analysis released Friday by the Department of Education is not the first study that recognized the advance of online education for students’ learning outcomes.  Coming from the arm of the federal government, its recognized stature makes this report more significant.  As the nation struggles to develop citizens who can effectively compete in our globalizing world, online education is becoming an appealing alternative to traditional brick and mortar classrooms.  With the current economic crisis unfolding as it is, many more individuals will find the economic benefits of online education (ie: lower tuitions, no commuting costs, etc.) worthwhile, allowing online program providers the opportunity to enhance the technologies offered in their classrooms.

After purchasing the book, I realized that Zemsky and his co-authors, Gregory Wegner and William Massy, have been writing about the changes in American universities for over twenty years.   They catalog the birth of the modern era in Higher Education to coincide with the launching of two events by the federal government:  passage of the GI Bill which increased the participation of America’s middle class in higher education and the Vannevar Bush (Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development) report recommending that the federal government fund scientific research through colleges and universities.  Since those two noteworthy events, the authors maintain that a college degree has become perceived as “an economic necessity pursued by the many, rather than a privilege reserved for the few.”

Zemsky, Wegner and Massy provide the reader with discussions of the market for education, the “arms race” for new students, and the influence of the U.S. News ranking systems.  They discuss consequences of some of these actions with chapters on college athletics, tenure’s “publish or perish” culture, and technology through e-learning.  Since our focus at APUS is on e-learning, I would take issue with the authors’ comment that “e-learning has become principally a way of distributing correspondence courses on the Web under the label of distance learning.”  I agree that there are institutions where their “online classes” are really an electronic assignment sheet and little else.  However, best practices developed and promulgated by organizations like the Sloan Consortium, are continuing to enhance the level of activity, learning, and learning outcomes through the serious providers of online distance education.

In the final chapters, the authors state firmly that there’s “no answer for those who want to put the genie back in the lamp.”  They maintain that quality has to be the focus of every institution and that access to higher education has to be expanded, particularly among minorities.  Teaching should be “a central criterion in review for all hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions.”  Learning assessments should be implemented.  Institutions need to talk more with their constituencies:  students, faculty, politicians and neighbors.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the primary issues of the accountability debate, the historical actions that led to today’s status quo, and the authors’ opinion on what can and should be done to more actively engage institutions of higher education in participating in the national dialogues.

In the K-12 market, online schools have been gaining popularity too.  K-12 may be the most famous of the online programs, having gone public in December of 2007 after beginning its online programs in 1999.   K-12 offers online charter schools in 26 states (including the District of Columbia) as well as private programs.  Connections Academy is another educational company that runs online charter school programs in 15 states.   K-12 and Connections Academy aren’t the oldest K-12 distance education programs, but have the advantage of being started after the advent of the internet.

There are several ways that online K-12 programs and classes provide advantages to students, educators, and parents.  Homeschooling has become more popular over the past 20 years.  Not every parent is talented enough to provide supervision and direction to their child through kits from correspondence schools or publishing houses.  Online courses can provide qualified instructors for subjects where the parent feels uncomfortable explaining the content.  In states where there are shortages of qualified teachers, particularly in the areas of science and mathematics, online courses can provide an avenue of instruction for schools unable to find qualified teachers locally.  In thinly populated areas, online instruction could provide a source of education for areas unable to afford or to attract specialists such as advanced placement teachers.   In the event of a natural disaster, school fire, or other disruption, online schools could provide a continuation of education even if the students and faculty were located in separate states.  In such situations, it is unlikely that traditional brick and mortar schools could do the same. Rules and regulations governing K-12 education may block online opportunities in many school districts around the country and have convinced our management team to continue to focus on the opportunities in post-secondary education.