Over on FACEBOOK Reuven Carlyle says:
“The lack of meaningful accountability and progress in higher education to raise on-time, 4-year graduation rates is a national scandal. If a student has done their part and still can’t access core courses, colleges should pay for the extra time–not be financially rewarded. My sincere hope is that new state House Higher Education Committee Chair Rep. Drew Hansen will tackle this serious problem.”
I respect and value Reuven. He is an outstanding legislator. If he were in my district I would vote for hm. Reuven’s background as an entrepreneur provides a perspective few other WASTATE politicians have.
However, what I see here is an unintended attack on the QUALITY of higher education. Already a third of UW students get their first two years at community colleges. Doesn’t “accountability” logically mean that we should make the UW a two year finishing school? Or does this mean that the quality of instruction, opportunities for freshman and sophomores at the Udub to interact with faculty, is now so limited as to be worthless?
Or perhaps Reuven wants all students to be counseled like student athletes into easy majors?
I have another example of the idea of accountability. Reuven voted for state recognition of Western Governor’s University. WGU sells itself as way to get a college degree on the cheap. On the cheap means WGU employs no faculty. Instead students take pass-fail exams and are provided with on-line coaches in how to pass the exams. I wonder if Reuven considers WGU as an “accountable” institution? Would he be pleased if the UW offered WGU approaches to a degree?
If Reuven needs an even worse example of accountability, he can read about the University of Texas. Accountability there meant an onerous accounting system, an effort to measure faculty productivity both in terms of classroom teaching and research. This business like approach to academics, coming from the paragon of academic accountability Governor Rick Perry, led to Governor Perry’s trying to fire the President.
Let me continue with the WGU example. Reuven and I are both strong believers in online education. I am sure Reuven believes that the UW could do a lot better job of online education than WGU. However, the sad truth is that the UW lacks the funds and faculty to create the sort of rigorous oversight and develop the sort of course ware that would allow it to compete not with WGU but with its peers .. MIT, Stanford, Berkeley … even the University of Arizona!
Asking the UW to account for its efforts in online education will not help.
We have another issue of “accountability” facing Reuven. How is he going to vote on the proposal to create a second WASTATE medical school at WSU? The boosters of this effort to create Cougar Medical School are outspoken in dismissing the need to maintain the high quality of the UW School of Medicine … a school rated #1 in the world for the kind of care Cougar U would offer! Would “accountability” require WSU to assure that its MDs meet up to the standards the UW now offers?
I do not want to let the UW admins off the hook. I am as critical as anyone of UW administration. It is ponderous in the fullest sense of that word. I am certain, however, that adding layers of accountability is not going to decrease the fat that envelopes an administration already weighed down with hundreds of lawyers who deal with “compliance” and a school too often run by non academics appointed by Regents more interested in fund raisers than academic quality.
I remain Reuven’s friend and admirer.
This coming from the same guy who in a higher ed forum at UW said to my face in a question I asked that he was willing to cut higher ed funding b/c universities could make up the loss w/ tuition hikes.
from FACEBOOK Ana Mari Cauce Reuven Carlyle- At UW for freshmen entering in 2007 the 6 year graduation rate was 82%, 5 year graduation rate 78% and average time to graduation was 4.1 years – the extra time done in summer not requiring an additional year on campus. We got there by working hard on “bottleneck” classes and availability. But I expect we’ll see these numbers go down for entering classes of 2008-2010 -11. The draconian budget cuts of 08-09 renewed the problem of bottlenecks. We’ve got it pretty much back under control, but under threat of more cuts, not sure how long this might last. That’s why a single-focus on tuition, in isolation of all else is not only short sighted, but can actually costs students and their parents more. Yes, we can keep tuition flat and graduation rates high – but not without adequate state funding. We already way out perform our peers given our funding levels (tuition plus state funds) and we WILL continue to work in efficiencies, but we can only do so much.
One other thing to take into account is that graduation rates (and time) partly depends on the preparedness of students coming in. We’re proud of the fact we outperform the predictions for our graduation rate given demographics of our students, but important to keep this in mind. For example, MIT slightly under performs predictions for it’s graduation rate –nothing to worry about, predicted rate is 100%, they are at about 99%, but you get my drift. We don’t want to punish schools for taking at risk students, at the same time when you look at graduation rates below 40% in 6 years you do have to wonder whether you are doing the right thing.
Reuven has many good ideas and I think would be well served by spending some time meeting with UW faculty.
I would also like to learn more about how our faculty are affected by the measures the UW is already taking. Are they rational/ Do they do good things for the students?
I am especially concerned that one of Reuven’s other passions, online education, may DECREASE the quality of the Uw degree. Recently I was told that the UW is considering replacing night school with online classes. Is this true?
Too many legislators think the admin IS the UW.
Susan Goding from FB
Last year the legislature made Academic Acceleration in K-12 permissive for school districts to adopt. Make it a requirement for schools to make dual credit courses opt out, instead of allowing school districts to continue the opt in policy. Also, figure out how to encourage high school teachers to become adjunct professors in order to offer more dual credit courses. Zilla High School is a good example of what schools can do if they have leadership on this. Also, help students pay for the college in high school courses. A lot of students are capable of getting an associate degree or vocational degree in high school and more are capable of taking dual credit if it were offered. TN has good models for making sure students are prepared in math with their SAILS and ECHO programs.
Kate Martin from FB
There are also a lot of improvements we could make in the K-12 system to improve the outcomes at our colleges. One important thing we could do is make sure our elementary school teachers can do 8th grade math. Across the board, we need higher qualifications to teach elementary school.
Susan Goding from FACEBOOK
The National Center for Academic Transformation funded grants that enabled colleges to pilot ways to teach large introductory courses better for less money. Eastern WA University received one of these grants and reduced the cost of their introductory psychology course by 60%. 30 courses were redesigned with these grants across the country, with an average savings of 37%, with 87% of the courses showing increased learning and the rest equivalent learning. Students were generally happier with the redesigned course than with the traditional courses. There is room for innovation in how students learn in those big courses that could free up money for other courses or for expanding more sections to teach more students. http://thencat.org/Program_Outcomes_Summary.html
The National Center for Academic Transformation grants funded several pilots to redesign developmental math that were patterned after Virginia Tech’s Math Emporium. These pilots were successful in reducing costs and improving outcomes. Michael Young, President of UW, in an interview on KUOW said about emporium math, “We are seeing kids who, you may get 40% of the kids passing a gateway course in the basic math classes, take it two or three times, but if you look at some of this blended technology, they are doing it in seven weeks, as opposed to fourteen weeks, they are passing at 85% to 90% rates, rather than 30 and 40% rates. That has not only enormous efficiency, if you do that you really are increasing your output four times, but it also has dramatic effectiveness increases, kids are learning more, retaining more, (and) retaining that longer.
“There is almost a moral obligation to look in that area as much as a financial obligation. And so I think we will see technology play a role. I don’t think what we see in the simple broad based on line stuff is likely to be the wave of the future. But I do think there a ways in which technology will increase our efficiency as well as our effectiveness.”
There are many Youtube videos of students extolling the benefit of learning math this way. One guy made a rap video “Rapping about how I accomplished math” by eknolege. Some local community colleges are doing a great job of improving developmental math outcomes with emporium math, Big Bend Community College, for instance. But there are still lots of students who could be saved, who would not drop out, if math instruction changed.
I transcribed his comments here http://susangoding.blogspot.com/2011/07/uw-president-talks-about-blended.html