complex campaigns that crossed the boundaries of social media, like Facebook, and our own channels, like university websites or institutional email.
Facebook celebrates its 18th birthday this year. Anxiety about its ethics has been around almost since its infancy, and privacy issues surfaced as early as 2007.
According to the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer survey of more than 36,000 people in 28 countries, only 37 percent of respondents state that they trust social media as a source for general news and information.
The implications of this for colleges and universities are twofold. We’ve aligned ourselves with a partner that is in direct opposition to the values higher education claims to hold dear: truth, curiosity, democracy, critical thinking and debate.
The public perception of higher ed has been eroding over the last two decades. Which organizations we align with—both at the institutional and industry level—matters. Would you choose an advertising or branding agency with Facebook’s track record?
Robot colleges have de-skilled instruction by paying teams of workers, some qualified and some not, to write content, while computer programs perform instructional and management tasks. Learning management systems with automated instruction programs
The assumption is that managing work this way significantly reduces costs, and it does, at least in the short and medium terms. However, instructional costs are frequently replaced by marketing and advertising expenses to pitch the schools to prospective students and their families.
The business model in higher education for reducing labor power and faculty costs is not reserved to for-profit colleges. Community colleges also rely on a small number of full-time faculty and armies of low-wage contingent labor.
In some cases, colleges and universities, including many brand name schools, utilize outside companies, online program managers (OPMs), to run their online programs, with OPMs like 2U taking up as much as 60 percent of the revenues.
David Kent Director VOLSHOP (official bookstore) U of Tennessee, Knoxville
Lisa Kiefer, Managing Director Wakefield ResearchCindy Clarke Vice President Marketing, Vital Source Technologies
students want formally taught life skills: interview for a job, balance checkbook and do taxes, how to take out and pay for student loans
Tennessee:
traditional 4 year school. cost is part of the program, not charged as a course fee. all materials avaiable first day of school and available in perpetuity. way below rental books prices. via LMS (BB). no printed textbooks. few books through websites, for books, which do not subscribe for the program. ebooks offered at the store. increasing titles selection. cost, learning outcomes. the outlook for digital in the future: already digital, but open for further development. expand courses offered, launching more programs with materials bundled and online course.
digital is easier to work with, deliver to customer,
business partnership (this is different now from https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2015/07/29/mn-esummit-2015/ David Wiley, MN Learning Commons). working closely with provost, cio, vital source. working with publishers to make sure that content is available>
business model: program bundle all the content and deliver to students and advertise periodically to students
the course fee model: charged to student account semester by semester bases. also student-paid method. all access model is better for everyone.
ebooks are important for the interactivity, collaboration
Q and As:
what was the students’ reaction moving to digital books. how traditional faculty are accepting the change. A: pilot group of several faculty and gradual roll out. early adopters influencing others.
does the content open on all devices? A: yes, device-agnostic. dedicated apps for iOS, Android, and Windows
disability? A: enhanced apps, migrate all PDF format to proprietory platform. epub and PDF content. user added epub content. Center for accessible material innovation, American Foundation for the blind, Tech for All etc
libraries do not provide course materials for students. clean division between campus store and library
BB admin is loading the codes in the LMS, but the idea is to load the information straight into BB. cio in charge. helpdesk support for vital provided by the cio department.
cost savings in percent for students digital to print. student pay model, ebooks can vary to new book price. ebooks even more expensive. with the course fee, 70% off rental. 3rd party operator may add 30%. all parties must be looking for reasonable margin. greater digital adoption results in lower costs for students.
digital alleviates dropout rate.
what course which don’t fit digital materials. life sciences and mathematics, science and engineering is landing itself well
how much interactive content and links to social media is incorporated.
Sean Gallagher is founder and executive director of Northeastern University’s Center for the Future of Higher Education and Talent Strategy, and executive professor of educational policy.
a new national survey of C-suite executives that we recently conducted, 70 percent said that U.S. workers should be worried about their skills becoming outdated over the next few years.
Online education services companies – or “OPMs” as many refer to them, have continued to play a major role in the scaling of online higher education, within, and now increasingly beyond the U.S.
A study conducted by WECT before the pandemic found that only about 20 percent of colleges they surveyed charged less tuition and lower fees than they do to those who study in person. Counterintuitively, the study also revealed—to my surprise—that more than half of the colleges charged more tuition and higher fees to their remote students than to those studying on campus. The survey also uncovered another revelation: online fees added to tuition can be so large that they are greater than tuition alone.
A recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that colleges with a greater-than-average share of remote students largely charge lower tuition than their on-campus counterparts. As prices rose at most post-secondary institutions over the last decades, tuition at these colleges fell.
Since then, MOOC degrees have mushroomed, now with more than 70 others available in partnership with about 30 first-class universities worldwide. Coursera, the biggest provider, offers nearly 30 virtual degrees in business, data science and public health, among other fields, most discounted at less than half of comparable on-campus programs
While enrollment in higher education overall fell 2.5 percent in the fall, or by more than 461,000 students compared to the fall of 2019, the decline among men was more than seven times as steepas the decline among women, according to an analysis of figures from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
Despite the allure of a paycheck versus going into debt and spending years pursuing a degree, the reality is that “a lot of these young men at 17 or 18 years old end up working 12-hour shifts, getting married, buy a truck, get a mortgage, and by the time they’re 30, their bodies are broken,” Ponjuan said. “And now they have a mortgage, three kids to feed and that truck, and no idea what to do next.”
Not everyone has to go to college. Faster and less costly career and technical education can lead to in-demand, well-paying jobs in skilled trades, automation and other fields.
Graduates with bachelor’s degrees still generally make more than people with lesser credentials, however.
“For those who advocate for OER and reduced costs for course materials (and I consider myself in this group), this information presents a double-edged sword. It should be far more difficult to use the previous tactic of college textbook pricing is skyrocketing to justify a new program as even a cursory review of the College Board budgets will refute the $1,200+ numbers. Likewise, this information should cause people to ask for more transparency in savings estimates for OER or inclusive access programs.”
A growing body of evidence has found strong consumer interest in recent months in skills-based, online credentials that are clearly tied to careers, particularly among adult learners from diverse and lower-income backgrounds, whom four-year colleges often have struggled to attract and graduate.
For years the demographics of higher education have been shifting away from traditional-age, full-paying college students while online education has become more sophisticated and accepted.
That has amplified interest in recent months among employers, students, workers and policy makers in online certificates, industry certifications, apprenticeships, microcredentials, boot camps and even lower-cost online master’s degrees.
Moody’s, the credit ratings firm, on Wednesday said online and nondegree programs are growing at a rapid pace.
Google will fund 100,000 need-based scholarships for the certificates, and said it will consider them the “equivalent of a four-year degree” for related roles.
Google isn’t alone in this push. IBM, Facebook, Salesforce and Microsoft are creating their own short-term, skills-based credentials. Several tech companies also are dropping degree requirements for some jobs, as is the federal government, while the White House, employers and some higher education groups have collaborated on an Ad Council campaign to tout alternatives to the college degree.
One of the most consistent findings in a nationally representative poll conducted by the Strada Education Network’s Center for Consumer Insights over the last five months has been a preference for nondegree and skills training options.
Despite growing skepticism about the value of a college degree, it remains the best ticket to a well-paying job and career. And data have shown that college degrees have been a cushion amid the pandemic and recession.
Experts had long speculated that employer interest in alternative credential pathways would wither when low employment rates went away,…. Yet some big employers, including Amazon, are paying to retrain workers for jobs outside the company as it restructures.
Most students do not want an online education, and many are calling for reductions in tuition fees to compensate for what they perceive might be a lower-quality education and experience. Some might choose to wait for a return to on-campus delivery.
Most professors do not want to teach in an online environment because they value engaging with students in discussions, debates, and laboratory demonstrations. There are many good pedagogical reasons why most post-secondary education continues to take place in a face-to-face, on-campus delivery mode despite the longstanding availability of technology to support online teaching.
Professor and student preferences aside, there is a more pressing problem looming.
There is precious little time for professors to change all of their courses to an online mode of delivery.
Nova Scotia Universities and Colleges need a significant and urgent infusion of funding from the provincial government to cover the increased costs of converting post-secondary education into an entirely different mode of operation over the next three months. Universities cannot be expected to cover those costs alone, and neither should students.
