Pew Studies Report Trends in Online Learning
A pair of spring 2011 studies just released from the Pew Research Center finds that college presidents are more likely than the public in general (51% to 29%) to believe that “online courses offer an equal value compared with courses taken in a classroom.” Other findings include:
- Twice as many people who graduated from college in the past decade have taken an online course compared to all college graduates (46% versus 23%).
- College presidents predicted that the number of students who take online courses will increase over the next decade, as will the prevalence of online textbooks.
- About a third of college presidents are on Facebook, and nearly half have used a tablet computer such as an iPad.
The information on the public came from a nationally representative sample of 2,142 adults ages 18 and older. The other study, which was conducted online, surveyed presidents of 1,055 two-year and four-year private, public, and for-profit colleges and universities. The second study was conducted in association with the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Recommended Reading on the Evolving Land-grant Mission
Land-Grant Universities Seek Ways of Reinforcing the Service Component of Their Mission, (June 26, The Chronicle of Higher Education) addressed the changing role of service in the three-pronged mission of teaching, research, and service for land-grand universities. As many universities decrease their agriculture outreach, service goals have been questioned at many land-grant universities. But universities engaged in their communities are more relevant than ever and can enjoy a higher level of local support.
As a result, university missions need to evolve. One option is for missions to become “more strategic and more collaborative” and to “better integrate service across the university and with other prime institutional purposes, teaching and research.”
The article recommends expanding topics for engagement in a way that is “valuable scholastically but also deeply relevant to the communities they serve.” In times when state support for higher education is decreasing, public support for universities increases when there are tangible and direct benefits to the community.
NMSU Library subscribes to The Chronicle, and the article will be available after August 1, 2011 at the NMSU Library website.
More on the Value of College
Harvard professor Louis Menand, in a recent article in the New Yorker, debates two views of higher education. Is college a sorting mechanism that allows society to identify the intellectually nimble, or is college a knowledge delivery system that enlightens and empowers our students?
Louis Menand is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University; he has also taught at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, Princeton, Columbia, and the University of Virginia School of Law.
Pew Research Center Survey: Is College Worth It?
Key findings from a report on two recent studies on the value of a college education:
- Although the general public understands the effect that a college degree has on earnings, a majority believe that college is too expensive for most Americans and not a good value for the money.
- Parents expect their children to attend college, but fewer than half attend a four-year college.
- The public is split on whether the primary purpose of college is related to work-place skills (47%) or intellectual growth (39%). The remainder believe these should be equally important.
- College presidents responded that higher education is headed in the right direction (57%) but that students start college less prepared that students were ten years ago (58%).
- Other findings of the report address student loans, President Obama’s goals for higher education, who should pay for college, grade inflation, and tenure.
Outside-of-the-box Thinking on Graduation Rates
As reported by Inside Higher Ed, a university in Washington State challenges colleagues to develop metrics that better describe graduation rates for non-traditional, first generation, at-risk students. The current counting method has no way to account for “transfer patterns, for differential rates of progress among low-income populations, for developmental needs of students, and for the wide array of kinds of institutions in American higher education.”
Dropping out Before School Even Starts
In a paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Education Research Association, in New Orleans, two Harvard doctoral students examine why low-income students accepted at college might not make it to the fall start date. (From an article on Inside Higher Ed.)
The Faculty Take on Student Learning – Inside Higher Ed
From Inside Higher Ed
“As national and campus debates about student learning outcomes and now college completion have intensified in the last several years, faculty groups and individual professors have largely weighed in from the sidelines, rarely stepping into the actual fray. Whether that’s because they have chosen not to participate, or because the policy makers and politicians leading the discussions have not sought to involve them, is a matter of debate — and both are probably true.” Read the complete article.
