The University of Wherever, aka WGU?
Bill Keller’s oped in the NY Times sounds like an effort to address Western Governors University, WGU.
“Digital utopians have envisioned a world of virtual campuses and “distributed” learning. They imagine a business model in which online courses are consumer-rated like products on Amazon, tuition is set by auction services like eBay, and students are judged not by grades but by skills they have mastered, like levels of a videogame. Presumably, for the Friday kegger you go to the Genius Bar. “
Despite Keller’s snarky comments, the focus of his piece is not on the bottom of the higher education feeding layers, as with WGU’s marketing but the top of the chain .. Stanford. Keller focusses on the imapct of a recent introduction from Stanford. Professors Sebastian Thrun is offering “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” course online and free of charge.
Online students taking Thrum’s course get the same lectures as students paying Stanford tuition, though they can nto get “credit” for a diploma. 130,000 students have registered!
Doing away with the lecture hall and using online tools to communicate, Thrun claims,will cut costs. “Literally, we can probably get the same quality of education I teach in class for about 1 to 2 percent of the cost.” Keller and Thrun focus on this cost reduction, saying ” Many (colleges)could go the way of local newspapers. There would be huge audiences and paychecks for superstar teachers, but dimmer prospects for those who are less charismatic. ”
Thrun’s model sounds eerily like the WGU model, with two huge differences. Testing, peer interaction and grading happen online.
The first huge difference between this Stanford experiment and WGU’s business model is Thrun’s need for teachers. Professor Thrun understands that wherever a student sits down to learn a difficult subject… at home with a PC or in a huge lecture hall … , the student needs to interact with real peple who know more than the student. Thrun proposes to do this by a cadre of teaching assistants, TAs. Presumably, unlike WGU’s “advisors” , these TAs would be knowledgeable about the subject matter and overseen by a Professor.
The second difference from WGU, is the value of the Stanford faculty. WGU proudly touts itself as replacing qualified faculty with packaged self teaching modules and a system of low paid coaches who encourage WGU students to use the modules, Thrun sees the internet as a way to make better us of outstanding professors rather than replacinf professors with modules pubished by the textbook industry.
Thrun’s approach recognizes the marketing value of the Stanford name and the real value of great teachers like himself. Thrun’s approach spreads Stanford’s resources to thse who can not afford to pay Stanford tuition or who simply could not get accepted.
Imagine if WGU could add his course to their modules. The draw would be enormous for a WGU-like enterprise with highly marketable faculty as the talking heads on the screen. In fact, as Keller relates, the NY Times has started a business markleting just such courseware. However, I see a bit of hubris in Thrun’s thinking. Harvard, Stanford, MIT … these all offer wonderful opportunities to learn, but the success of Harvard students may just also reflect the great selectivity of the admissions process. These Ivies exert a huge effort to find the best students and then benefit from their alumni’s success.
It is dangerous to imagine that simply enlarging Thrun’s audience beyond the lecture halls of Stanford will spread that success. I also wonder how many teaching assistants one professor can actually supervise. The failing in Thrun’s logic is the need ofr teaching assistants and for faculty able to supervise those TAs.
The lesson of Keller’s article is certainly correct. Stanford understands how to make better use of its great faculty by finding a more efficient way to market Dr. Thrun’s lectures. Why shouldn’t the UW, and other great public universities, do the same? The difference between UW and Stanford is not the quality of the faculty, but the selection of students. Our much less selective admissions policy admits students with the talent and drive to utilize our resources along with a range of students who may have less ability but benefit from the breadth and diversity of our student body.
I suggest that the UW can solve the weakness in the Thrun’s model. Washington’s existing system of regional colleges and community colleges can provide the teachers that Stanford’s model lacks. Imagine a student at Eastern Washington taking a class based on lectures provided by a world class economist at the UW. The lectures would certainlybe a s valuable as they are in Meany Hall. Bute, at EWU Ec 101 would be “taught”locally by a qualified faculty member working with TAs. These TA might be at the UW or on the local campus. The Professor at Eastern would be responsible for a manageable number of students. These student might be online or in person. Students taking the course at Eastern would be able to compete with students in Seattle at the level for exams.
Diplomas, unlike those offered by WGU, would reflect the high standards of the faculty responsible for how the courses are taught and graded.
You assume a bit when you say that the strength of Stanford’s model is that it recognizes that there still has to be someon smarter than the student teaching the class.
Why?
Many of the men that founded this country, just as a few examples, were self educated. No one has ever (to my knowledge) considered them to be educational slouches. Why must the content in the curriculum be biased by someone that ‘knows’ more than my? I’m a first or second source kind of guy. I don’t need a professor only assigning the books that he or she thinks I should read about a subject, or what lectures I should or should not listen to, tainting it with their bias-intended or inadvertent.
You assume a bit when you say that the strength of Stanford’s model is that it recognizes that there still has to be someone smarter than the student teaching the class.
Why?
Many of the men that founded this country, just as a few examples, were self educated. No one has ever (to my knowledge) considered them to be educational slouches. Why must the content in the curriculum be biased by someone that ‘knows’ more than me? I’m a first or second source kind of guy. I don’t need a professor only assigning the books that he or she thinks I should read about a subject, or what lectures I should or should not listen to, tainting it with their bias-intended or inadvertent.
“The lectures would certainly be as valuable as they are in Meany Hall. But, at EWU Econ 101 would be ‘taught’ locally by a qualified faculty member working with TAs. These TAs might be at the UW or on the local campus.”
This proposal seems feasible for well-prepared and well-motivated students. But would UW lectures actually be as valuable to less prepared students as they are to the more prepared students the UW and the state’s other baccalaureate institutions admit?
The lecture/exam model of teaching works well for students who already know how to learn, who can understand material presented in lecture format, who can take meaningful notes when hearing or watching lectures, who have a basic grasp of how to synthesize information that is fed to them in lecture format.
My experience as a community college professor (in history rather than economics), suggests that the percentage of community college students who would benefit from hearing “lectures provided by a world class economist at the UW” is, alas, rather small.
Instead, they benefit from instruction provided by economics professors who can address the wide range of preparation and abilities to learn that are present in a classroom full of open-admission students. In short, they need the economics professors who currently teach in the very institutions (community and technical colleges) that are facing the immediate prospect of tremendous cuts to their state funding.
Perhaps Eastern Washington has selective enough admission standards that its students can gain from listening to UW lectures and working with local TAs (and if the community and technical colleges lay off hundreds of faculty, finding such TAs will certainly be possible).
But who do we need to educate in Washington who is not served by the current higher education system? The students in the state of Washington who are not currently attending college and who are not earning degrees and certificates beyond the high school level are the people the higher educational system needs to bring into the system, not the students who are already enrolled at EWU and CWU and WWU, much less at WSU and the UW.
A lecture/exam model of instruction is poorly suited to reaching and teaching the under-prepared, under-represented, under-motivated, and under-served students who must be brought into Washington’s higher education system if the percentage of college graduates among the younger people in Washington who will be prepared to work at the jobs of the future is not to continue to decline.
Amy,
I am afraid you are letting the WGU folks set the standards.
Your answer sidesteps the key issue fo how far can the UW and WASTATE downgrade educational qulaity before it all falls apart?
First, the threat is at all levels. The UW is being downgraded at the top and WGU is pulling the plug at the bottom. That deep msuckign sound is frightening me.
Second, I do think there are many ways that the WA state education system can be made more effective for all pof our students. For example, we would all benefit from a siongels tate wide library system, esp. as research is rapidly moving away form the old papers and shelf model. Similarly, using wonderful teachers ot create resurces can not hurt unless you really beieve that Carl Sagan was a failure. We do far too little to take advantage of what we already have.
Third,I worry that WGU dgress are ebign given not as token of readiness for the labor market but as tokens for filling out job applications. The contrast between what I read froim WGU students …mostly about how it helped them, apply for jobs and what I have seen with many CC kids is startling. You guys actually TEACH kids stuff they can use!
To The Ave Editor:
Yes to everything you say, especially about the need for a statewide library system for all of higher education in Washington. (Oregon and Ohio are two states with such systems. Why on earth does each Washington campus negotiate and pay for separate contracts with online database vendors?)
Lack of adequate state support for higher education is the problem everyone in the state system faces. The major issue currently confronting the state’s public higher education system is how to fund it if the people through the legislature refuse to do so.
Which problem is solved by capturing one professor’s lectures in any part of the state’s higher education system and sharing these lectures across the system? If the lectures don’t teach themselves and students still need local or online instruction, lecture-sharing doesn’t make education more “productive” to use business-speak. If sharing lectures does not reduce the number of subject-specialized faculty required to teach students, then what problem is sharing lectures solving?
Economics is not such an esoteric field at the undergraduate level that only award winners can lecture on it successfully. The economics professors at my college know their subject and are fully capable of teaching it without relying on another professor’s lectures, award-winning or not. Are students who do not attend the UW willing to pay a tuition premium to watch a UW professor’s lectures on tape? This seems unlikely.
From my perspective, students do not need to hear lectures on economics from an award-winning economist in order to master the subject. What they need is an economics professor who can, as you put it, “TEACH kids stuff they can use.” In many cases, the professor at a non-selective institution must build a relationship with his or her students, convince those students that they are capable of learning the material, and show them how they will benefit from doing so.
The award-winning economist may build relationships with his or her students but not worry especially about the last two pieces, and for good reason. Students sitting in lecture halls at the UW have presumably been selected for their aptitude for and willingness to learn a subject like economics. Students in the rest of the state’s baccalaureate system may or may not share that aptitude and willingness; students in less-selective and non-selective institutions frequently require the intervention and encouragement of a skilled teacher to succeed in college.
In de-funding public higher education, the state of Washington is bound to reduce access and quality at all levels. But these reductions do not affect all students equally. My point is not that all students are not hurt by de-funding, but that the students who need the most state support in every sense of the word are hurt the most.
I think we differ on how one protects the education system. If we give in to the urge to just save it, we will fail because what we save will not be worth much. That is kinda sort what WGU does .. strip things down to the minimum that can be called a degree. It is also, in my opinion, what has destroyed the American K-12 system.
I do not see my idea as being related to the issue of employing and paying CC well. If anything the idea leads to greater needs for better CC faculty. I certainly am not suggesting that the prof on a tube is a way of replacing faculty at the CC. Rather I see it as a way of increasing the breadth and quality of what a smaller, more local faculty can offer.
As I see it a lot of the effort at a campus like UW is wasted. Many classes have class sizes that are so large now, that the idea of hands on teaching is not realistic. If my mythic economist is lecturing to 200 or 500 UW students, there is no reason .. if the lectures are good … that they can not be made available to more students.
Broadening the distribution of lectures, however, is a lot more complex than what WGU offers. Ec is hard stuff .. whether we mean at a CC or at full fledged university. As I see it, the great advantage of the smaller sites is that small class sizes, with qualified faculty, are very important. In part this vision may define the mythic prof differently than you suggest. This person may or may not be a nobelist, she should, however, have something of great value that can be delivered in a lecture … why else market her?
We may differ in the role the CC faculty would play in such courses. I see them spending much less time in prep and more time working directly with students in Q and A and in exams. That is, at least in those places where the mythic great prof can actually do her job over the innertubes.
I think we may also differ in regard to how we see the CC student. I If the high schools do not do their job, society is wasting money by ought not to be fixing things later. However, I am very enthusiastic about CC as places where quite good students can get things that high schools and colleges can not offer … re-education for older people, practical course work beyond the HS level, etc. I also know a lot of kids who see the CC as a better and less expensive place to take entry level classes. In my experience these kids are often a cut above many of the regular UW kids. I can not see how some kid like this can not benefit from the best of all worlds by having the mythic great prof AND a great local teacher.,