When I completed my MBA from Tulane’s Freeman School of Business in 1978, I thought I had completed all of my formal academic studies.  After graduation from Tulane, I sat for and passed the CPA (Certified Public Accountant) exam, the CMA (Certified Management Accountant), and the Fellow exam for the Healthcare Financial Management Association.  Maintaining those certifications required annual continuing education hours, but not academic credits.  Usually, I could earn 40 hours of credit per year by attending a couple of two day seminars along with a single day seminar.

Enrolling in Penn’s doctoral program in Higher Education Management put me in a position not too dissimilar from many of the students we serve at the American Public University System (APUS).  I was working full-time, married, raising two children, and trying to balance those responsibilities with my class assignments.  I couldn’t put class first by any means, but I also couldn’t neglect it unless I wanted to fail or drop out.   I developed a system whereby I allocated time on weekends and evenings for completing assignments.  This worked great as long as I didn’t have to change my work schedule or my class assignments.  Whether it was a special project at work that caused me to work evenings and weekends to complete or a team assignment at school that couldn’t be completed during the times that I had open, those adjustments to my schedule created a temporary crisis in my patterns for completing my studies on time.  Generally, the professors in the program at Penn were accommodating and I was able to stay on track.  My wife was also understanding and allowed me to miss some of our family events in order to meet academic deadlines.

When I reflect on the circumstances that allowed me to complete my degree on time, I think of the wonderful support that I received from my professors, my wife, and my coworkers.  Not all adult students are that fortunate.  Some may be single parents and cannot ask a spouse to review the children’s homework while they’re in another room completing a paper or reading an assignment.  Others may have a boss who is not supportive of them leaving work early to attend class or finish a paper that must be submitted at midnight.  Students serving in the military may have to deploy or while deployed, leave on a several week mission that provides no down time for communicating with family much less working on college homework.  Completing a degree at any level while you are working full time and raising a family is a major accomplishment; unfortunately, many of our nation’s policy makers completed their degrees as full time students and can’t appreciate the difficulties and the sacrifices that working adults who are part-time students have to make in order to progress toward graduation.

President Obama has stated that America needs to increase its percentage of college graduates.  His initial focus has been to increase funding to community colleges.  Those efforts won’t be enough.  The federal student aid system has been designed primarily for full-time students.  Better funding mechanisms for part-time students should be provided as well.  The primary tracking system for federal student aid tracks the institutional graduation rates of first time, full-time students within a regular period of time (typically four years) and within 150 percent of that time and 200 percent of that time.  Transfer students are not tracked at all.  Part-time students carrying a course load of four courses per year will take 10 years to earn a baccalaureate degree if they never take a break from attending school.  Very few people can go through a decade of life without some major event occurring that could interrupt their studies.  Moreover, many people complete a couple years of college, drop out for various reasons, and then pick it back up again years later when they realize the importance of the degree for promotions and/or job opportunities.  As a country, we are not tracking the successes of our part time, working adult students nor are we finding ways to improve those successes.  Given the shrinking numbers of high school graduates who graduate from college in six years, I think it’s time that we examine ways in which we can enhance the educational success of our working adults.

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!

I don’t know if the omnipresent nature of the media has drawn more attention to ethical lapses of our political, corporate, governmental, and sports figures or if the frequency has, as I suspect, increased.  However, a recent article in the New York Times spurred me to write this piece.  Written by Leslie Wayne, the article mentions that nearly 20 percent of this year’s graduating MBA class at the Harvard Business School have signed a voluntary student oath that pledges to “serve the greater good” and to “act responsibly and ethically.”  MBA programs have not stopped teaching ethics.  In fact, Harvard, Wharton, and Columbia have several ethics classes and Wharton and Columbia have ethics centers.  I think it is good that these students created this pledge.   However, ethics is not just business ethics.  Ethics is ethics.   Good ethics is good for business.  Good ethics should be good for all of our leaders and followers, no matter what their chosen field.

I clicked on the link and found an interesting post where Dr. Strong shares his teaching philosophy.  He originally wrote the piece for his application for a tenure-track position at the university where he works as a full-time visiting professor.  You can read his post yourself or my synopsis below.  Either way, I think it is worth sharing.

Dr. Strong has a unique and varied teaching background.  His first teaching opportunities were with the Army where the teaching philosophy focused on the notion that only three teaching points could be absorbed and retained by students in an hour-long class.  From the Army, Dr. Strong went to INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France which uses a teaching style similar to that found at the Harvard Business School:  individual instructors are required to undertake extensive preparation, often in conjunction with other professors teaching the same or similar classes.  His time at Tulane, as he explains, brought a very different teaching experience.  Dr. Strong writes, “…I spent 34 years at Tulane, a school whose culture held that the instructor was – once the classroom doors were closed – answerable to no one for what went on in the classroom.”  From these experiences, Dr. Strong’s teaching philosophy has settled into a somewhat eclectic and, by his own admission, ever-evolving one.

Dr. Strong notes that “students are the raw material that we work with and making sure that the ‘student can learn’ means understanding the capabilities and the backgrounds of the students in a course.”  He blames the cliché of dwindling student attention spans for convincing students over the last 15 years that they do in fact have shorter attention spans; according to Dr. Strong, this cliché has provided a convenient excuse for students who perhaps really only lack motivation or direction in their academic pursuits.  This point was of particular interest to me considering the online nature of APUS degrees. 

I would argue that online courses require an added level of motivation and dedication from the student.  Since there are no physical classrooms or face-to-face interactions with professors and other students, APUS students must be that much more mindful of their time management and information retention.  Perhaps online courses even provide an advantage for those who feel that they do in fact have a dwindling attention span: if an APUS student finds that they are losing focus on a reading assignment or online lecture, for example, he or she can simply put down the assignment, refocus and continue at his or her own pace.  I recently viewed a news report about Blackberry users and the issue regarding attention span interruptions.  The reporter interviewed researchers who stated that the interruptions caused by messages being received to the Blackberry are disruptive and distracting.  At the same time, the reporter quoted the researchers as stating that eventually, the Blackberry user becomes acclimated to the disruptions and learns to work through them.  Based on this research, I am not sure that I agree with Ed Strong that student attention rates are dwindling as much as I believe that there are many more things to keep them distracted inside the classroom.  However, I believe that the combination of a motivated student with a motivated instructor will lead to a satisfactory outcome every time.

Dr. Strong also discusses his approach to identifying the most relevant and worthwhile course information, a point I also found quite interesting.  According to his post, over the past couple of decades, textbooks have taken on an all-inclusive nature that often leaves them overflowing with information, much of which is not directly relevant to a particular professor’s course content or objective.  With this in mind, Dr. Strong has developed his own supplemental course materials that focus on the topics he finds most relevant.  This obviously puts an additional burden on the professor who must glean the most worthwhile pieces of content while being mindful of the (actual or perceived) shortened attention spans of today’s students.  Given that the world’s intellectual and printed material is doubling every year to year and a half, this seems like a better practice than relying on a textbook that may be outdated shortly after it has been published.

The section of Dr. Strong’s statement on his teaching philosophy that is most interesting to me is his discussion of grading systems and why he feels that they are largely irrelevant. Dr. Strong explains that in 1971 while at INSEAD, he took part in a comprehensive review of the school’s grading rubric.  Dr. Strong writes, “As a result of that experience, I became and remain an advocate of classifying people into three groups: The upper sixth [who will become candidates for honors], the middle two-thirds [who are in no danger of failing], and the lower sixth [who become candidates for probation or termination].”  Based on such a rubric, specific grades (A, B, etc.) do seem largely irrelevant.  He does concede, however, that grades and graded exercises are significant motivators for students.  Perhaps for this reason alone, it is worthwhile to maintain a traditional grading system.  When one considers the issues of dwindling (whether truly or simply perceived) attention span and overwhelming levels of information available in textbooks and various other sources, a traditional grading system seems to be somewhat necessary.

The final section of Dr. Strong’s statement discusses the evolution of his teaching philosophy vis-à-vis the rapidly accelerating development of new technologies which can be utilized in (and, often instead of) the classroom.  He notes that he has been integrating the use of technologies in his classrooms for some time now and expresses some disappointment that he will likely miss the exciting opportunities that technological advances are sure to bring to education in the coming decades.  Technology in the classroom is the cornerstone of the APUS model and I applaud Dr. Strong for his use of such technologies in his brick and mortar classroom.  There can be little doubt that he is correct that for all the advances we’ve seen in recent decades, technological advances will continue at an accelerating pace.  I believe that students and the higher education community as a whole will surely benefit from such advances even if they do require us to tweak our teaching philosophies a bit.  That said, if Ed wants to tape a few of his lectures, I would be glad to post them on iTunes University.  Technology may enable better learning for distance learning programs as well as traditional programs, but I would rather combine those technologies with a proven professor like Ed anytime.  Thanks for the memories and the lesson, Ed!

The press reports that since Katrina the levees haven’t been secured in New Orleans to survive a Category 3 Hurricane.  Fortunately, Gustav’s landfall was west of New Orleans with winds down to the levels of a  Category 2/Category 1 by the time of landing.  Regardless of the levee situation, which I hope the Army Corps of Engineers is able to resolve, it appears that there have been some lessons learned from Katrina and communication and evacuation plans at the municipal, state, federal, and university levels worked well this time.

Graphic from Measuring Up 2006, a publication of The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, showing the increasing costs of various consumer goods and services in relation to the Consumer Price Index.

As a recipient of financial aid in the 1970′s when I attended Duke and Tulane, I can relate to the continual and ongoing debate about the affordability of college.  I was fortunate to have parents who believed in the benefits of higher education and who told me to “go to the best school that you can get into and we’ll figure out how to pay whatever the financial aid office says that we have to pay.”  Thanks, Mom and Dad.

Fast forward a few decades and it’s difficult to pick up a newspaper or magazine without reading about the issues surrounding the affordability of higher education.  The subject is complex, solutions are complex, and many people have opinions on the issue.  Robert Bliwise writes an article in the July-August issue of Duke Magazine that articulates the view from his vantage point as a professor of public policy.  There are a few highlights that I’ll mention and will certainly resurface in a few ongoing pieces about the financial aid debate.

Bliwise begins with a description of a book published twenty years ago by Charles Clotfelter (Duke ’69) called Buying the Best.  Clotfelter, a public policy professor at Duke, examined the way selective colleges and universities competed for the best students and awarded aid.  Students weren’t price sensitive about an elite education in those days and financial aid was growing faster than any other area of campus spending.  In the article, Clotfelter discusses the issues between need-based aid and merit aid.  Clotfelter defends need-based aid as “a guarantor of the brand,” and states that the value of the institution would be diminished if only the affluent could attend.  I agree, personally and professionally.  Bliwise quotes Duke’s undergraduate admissions director, Christoph Guttentag, as stating that there’s now a competition between the “haves and the have-mores” in demonstrating the social contract balancing the affluent and the needy.  Bliwise provides a list of thirty-six “elite” schools that have created more generous financial-aid packages for families with incomes ranging from $40,000-$100,000 per year.

While the efforts of the “have-mores” are laudable, they don’t go far enough.  One of the biggest reasons we have a problem is that colleges increased their tuitions at a rate much higher than the increase in the average family’s income over the past twenty-five years.  I believe that my tuition and room and board at Duke was approximately $4,000 in 1972-1973.  $4,000 was thirty-two percent of the average family income in America that year which, according to the U.S. Census Bureau was $12,625.  Duke’s tuition, room and board in 2006-2007 was $43,155 which was fifty-five percent of the average family income of $77,315 according to the U.S. Census Bureau.  Using more recent data from the Spellings Commission’s final report, families making a combined income of less than $34,000 could expect to pay forty-one percent of their total family income for a public four-year institution after grant aid in 1992; by 2003, that same group could expect to pay forty-seven percent of their family income after grant aid for the same school.  Had tuitions increased at the same inflation rate as family incomes, perhaps more families would consider higher education or higher education options beyond community colleges as affordable.  I wonder if my parents would provide the same encouragement to me today that they did three decades ago.

Federal aid programs have not kept up with the increases in tuition and increasingly, student aid packages have higher percentages of loans versus grants.  Debt loads of undergraduate students influence their choice of post-baccalaureate careers and also determine whether or not they decide to attend graduate schools.  Bliwise cites a study from the Project on Student Debt, an offshoot of the Institute for College Access and Success, which shows that “debt levels for graduating seniors from private universities increased from $11,356 to $22,125 over the past decade.”  It’s not unusual to hear of students who exit professional graduate schools with debt exceeding $100,000.  Prospective students from lower income families are not considering the higher cost institutions because the tuitions are so high compared to their income levels.  Minorities, particularly Hispanics, are reluctant to borrow to fund their education and their numbers continue to increase as a percentage of the students graduating from our high schools today and into the future.
 
No wonder then that Richard Kahlenberg, editor of America’s Untapped Resource: Low-Income Students in Higher Education, is cited in the article as “not[ing] that a visitor is 25-times more likely to run into a rich student than a poor student on the nation’s elite campuses.”  Bliwise ends his article with an interview with Tom Mortenson, a senior scholar with the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education (and a speaker at the ACE Annual Meeting in 2008).  Mortenson says that “families will be looking for strong signals that they can absorb college costs” and “they’re not likely to feel assured until higher education forges a fuller and more forceful social contract.”

The discussion that Robert Bliwise provides is oriented toward the manner in which Duke and other elite institutions have handled some of the biggest issues in financial aid.  However, there are more than 3,000 colleges and universities that are not considered elite.  Some have patterned their tuition increases to run parallel (as a percent) with the elites.  They cannot afford to provide the “free college” guarantee for certain income levels.  Public institutions are under pressure from increasing costs and reduced funding from their legislatures.  Regardless of the pressures, it’s clear that continued increases in tuition beyond the Consumer Price Index leads to reduced access at a time when America’s competitive place in the world depends on increasing numbers of college graduates.  I don’t think that the federal government can be counted on to fund the difference between affordable tuition and today’s average tuition at a private college or university given the projected budget deficit that our next President and administration will inherit.  We’ll see how the marketplace of higher education adjusts over the next few years.