Higher Education in the Next Decade

1915 women graduates - University of Toronto - via Wikipedia

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a new report, "2026 The Decade Ahead," it has recently published.

I haven't read it and I probably won't read it. My involvement in higher education is less involved these days, but more so, I'm not going to spend $149 for the digital version ($199 for paper) of the report.

There are always predictions of where we are headed in technology, education and in general. Many are free and I don't know that the differences in accuracy between free and paid versions is significant.

People do pay for these reports, and there are companies built on the job of predicting. Today, predictive analytics is a whole field and industry that seems to do quite well crunching numbers. In this election year, that is certainly a popular game, though one I rarely find interesting or instructive.

Usually, I find these predictions to be wrong, but it is rare for people to go back and check on them. Idea for (someone else's) blog post in 2026: Check back on this report. Set a calendar reminder.

So, what changes are in store for higher education over the next 10 years? The Chronicle's teaser says that "evolutionary shifts in three critical areas will have significant consequences for students and institutions as a whole."

1. Tomorrow’s students will be significantly more diverse and demand lower tuition costs. 
2. Faculty tenure policies will be reexamined as deep-seated Boomers retire. 
3. How colleges are preparing students to succeed in an evolving global economy will be intensely scrutinized. 

My immediate observation is that all three of those shifts have been evolving for at least the past decade - if not for several decades and possibly for a century or two in some ways.

Of course, the answers are hopefully in the details that come in the full report.  Did you read it? How about a comment for those of us without an expense account or purchase order?

Cross-posted at Serendipity35.net

The ABD Club

ABD stands for “all but dissertation,” which is a description of a student who has finished coursework and perhaps also passed comprehensive exams, but has yet to complete and defend the doctoral thesis. It is a kind of club, though you don't really see people putting the ABD bumper sticker on their car.

Last weekend, I wrote about "The Art of Procrastination" and rethinking what is and isn't true procrastination. That led me to think about why so many doctoral students, myself included, give up on that degree.

I had read an article by Rebecca Schuman  about the Ph.D. Completion Project. It estimates the ten-year completion rate for the degree. For STEM disciplines, it is 55–64 percent. It's 56 percent in the social sciences, and 49 percent in the humanities.  So about half of those in these doctoral programs don't make it after a decade of working at it. Some of those people don't even make it all the way to the dissertation phase. I am in that particular club.

David D. Perlmutter wrote a series that focused on the "getting it done" aspects of the document accepts that there may be factors beyond your control but pushes the completion agenda.

The Ph.D. Completion Project graphs start leveling out around year 8 and since the dissertation begins in Year 3 or 4), we can assume a lot of these folks are into the dissertation phase before they bail out.

ABDs live in an odd parallel universe of academia. They clock up years of research and tuition bills, but come away with nothing to show but three scarlet letters they can wear.

Some of them can get teaching jobs at 2-year colleges, or with some impressive job experiences or big publications might get a position (non-tenure, probably) at a 4-year school.  It has been suggested that a new kind of degree between an M.A. and a doctorate might be offered — an "MFA" in other areas.

I attended a party for a friend last summer who has finally completed the dissertation and degree. He is in his late 50s. He started late and plowed ahead because he enjoyed learning. He is an adjunct professor at a nearby university and I doubt that he expects to pick up a full-time position at this stage of his life. That's a good place to be because the odds are against him.

I have written about procrastination on another blog of mine, and it's not that I don't get things done. Part of my problem has always been putting too many things on that never-ending "To Do" list.

The things undone on those lists are a constant cause of stress and a sense of failure. I lay a lot of guilt on myself about all the things I do to avoid doing the things I really need to do - like making and drinking a few cups of coffee while staring at the sky on the deck, taking the dirty laundry downstairs, writing a blog post, watering the plants, taking a walk.

But of late, I have been rethinking procrastination, and I'm not the only one doing that. Scientists who study procrastination find that most of us are lousy at weighing costs and benefits across time. For example, we might avoid doctor and dental appointments, exercising, dieting, or saving for retirement. We know they have benefits, but the rewards seem distant and we may even question those benefits. What if that money is not there when I retire? What if we don’t live long enough to retire?

Most of us prefer to do things with short-term and small rewards. The benefits of that coffee break, watering the plants or writing a blog post may be small or even dubious, but we see an immediate result. I like the coffee and it might give me some energy. The plants need me to survive, and I enjoy looking at them, I like completing things, even if it’s a post that take me only an hour to finish. It is finished. Checking things off the To Do list. gives me a wonderful feeling

Friends tell me I am very productive. And some articles I have read say that productive people sometimes are very poor at distinguishing between reasonable delay and true procrastination.
Reasonable delay can be useful. I will respond to the request for information from my colleague tomorrow after I talk to someone about it and gather more information. But true procrastination – not responding to the colleague for no reason, or watering the plants and making coffee just to avoid the inevitable – is self-defeating.

It is a way to rethink blaming yourself. I don’t mean that you’re off the hook. I’m not giving myself a free pass on procrastinating in all cases. I’m rethinking the why of the delay.

Do I regret not finishing that doctorate? the time when it would have benefited me is now past, so I don't regret it now. I found alternate paths to what I wanted to do and I really did not enjoy the work required to get the degree.

Now if I can just find out when the next meeting of the ABD Club occurs. I have a lot to talk about with that crew.

Will Higher Education Be the Next Industry to Get Unbundled

An article on forbes.com talks about about "the next assault on the Ivory Tower." What does it see that assault as being? The unbundling of the college degree.

It looks to other industries as earlier examples of unbundling: music CDs by iTunes, airline tickets and the recent unbundling of cable TV packages. The article contends that "employers don’t appear to be searching for degree alternatives" but rather at ways to unbundle the components (courses) into the "discrete skills and competencies most predictive of success in the workplace."  For one thing, this would mean an end to the general education requirements required for a degree.

It was only three years ago when all the talk was that Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) were going to disrupt degrees and colleges. That didn't happen, although the MOOC movement certainly set a number of things into motion that may ultimately lead to degrees being unbundled.

The article's author is Ryan Craig, managing director at University Ventures, which is described as a private equity fund focused on innovation from within higher education. He is the author of College Disrupted: The Great Unbundling of Higher Education. One of his premises is that the "unprecedented data sharing and transparency between higher ed and labor markets" will lead the way.

I am not so sure that there is this sharing occurring. It may be that it is happening, but it's not in my purview. If universities and employers are sharing this data and they are doing so in order to determine what courses lead to the employer outcomes that they are looking for, then unbundling would occur.

I can see benefits for students - lower tuition costs, shorter periods of study leading to jobs - and benefits for some employers - customized programs for their industry. But what are the advantages for the colleges?

Ryan Craig refers to LinkedIn as a “competency management platform.” That's a new term to me. Apparently, linking uploaded resumes, transcripts and competencies and mapping those competencies to specific jobs or careers will allow matches for employers and job applicants.

Is this the end of the university? Craig says, no. He still sees it as the locus of educational content and talent and the places that will produce the coursework. The university survives; the degree does not.

Will higher education refocus on the bottom line returns that probably matter most to a majority of students - employment and wages? Just as it was predicted that MOOCs wouldn't impact the elite universities as much as it would the smaller schools. Those elites are the ones whose reputation still relies heavily on the "four Rs" - rankings, research, real estate, and rah! (i.e. sports and other aspects of campus life). Don't those elite students also want jobs and great wages? Of course, but their path has been and will continue to be a different one from the majority of college students.

Makerspaces

Makerspaces (AKA hackerspaces, hackspaces, and fablabs) are creative, do-it-yourself (DIY) spaces where people can gather to create, invent, and learn. A large number of them have been opened in libraries and more recently in public spaces and on campuses.
The makerspace may contain 3D printers, software, electronics, craft and hardware supplies and tools that most individuals can't afford to own but want to learn to use.

I read an EDUCAUSE "7 Things" sheet back in 2013 on makerspaces that had predicted that "As makerspaces have become more common on campuses and have found their place in public libraries and community centers, their influence has spread to other disciplines and may one day be embraced across the curriculum. Eventually makerspaces may become linked from campus to campus, encouraging joint project collaboration." They even went as far as to say that the work done there "may one day be accepted and reviewed for college credit in lieu of more conventional coursework."

From my observation, they seem to have made more inroads in K-12 than in colleges. This month, there will be a Makers Day here in New Jersey (March 21 - see http://njmakersday.org) which I will unfortunately miss as I will be at another conference. I'd like to see what people are doing in NJ because I am working on a presentation that involves makerspaces for another conference in May.

The benefits of having a makerspace in an academic setting or available to students offers many opportunities. Providing the space and materials for physical learning works because it can be cross-disciplinary, provide technical help for work they are undertaking. It seems more STEM, STEAM or suited to engineering and technology but if you look at the projects in some of the links below there is a lot that id outside those areas. If you see students work in these spaces, you have to be impressed how students take control of their own learning with projects they define, design and create.

Although I work in higher education, anyone who teaches at any grade level knows that students love hands-on projects. I think that these spaces are a very fertile ground for work that bridges ages - a great place for K-20 work and a way to connect parents and the community to schools.

FIND OUT MORE

http://makerspace.com is probably the world's largest community of Makers, from Maker Faire and Make: Magazine

Watch Makerspaces in Libraries youtube.com/watch?v=hOqTcQedDrw and an example from the Westport Library  youtube.com/watch?v=nurj3zBlfIg

A list of makerspaces in libraries   http://library-maker-culture.weebly.com/makerspaces-in-libraries.html

Make it at your library   makeitatyourlibrary.org http://oedb.org/ilibrarian/a-librarians-guide-to-makerspaces/
Makerspaces in K-12 schools   edutopia.org/blog/creating-makerspaces-in-schools

Some of the tech tools and resources used are very sophisticated, such as a 3D Printer http://cucfablab.org/book/3d-printers or an electronic cutter http://cucfablab.org/book/electronic-vinyl-cutters, but they might be much more familiar, such as the Xbox Kinect 3D scanner http://cucfablab.org/book/3d-scan-and-print-yourself-3d or a computerized sewing machine http://www.brother-usa.com/Homesewing

Finding Standards for Education

Two years ago I was writing about how educational assessment was moving more and more online as one way to standardize how students are assessed.

Last fall, I noticed that an ASCD poll on the "Most Attention-Getting Topics for the Year in K-12 Education" had at the top of its list the Common Core Standards and their orientation, implementation and assessment, which received 77% of the votes from participants.

Although I spend my time these days in higher education, I taught English in public secondary schools for 25 years too. My current work with the NCTE has had me paying increasing attention to the Common Core State Standards.

In general, I would say that I like standards. Even in education, I think most people would agree that there should be some kind of standards for what a student learns in any American school system. And there are standards that have evolved without any governmental agencies participating.

Consider mathematics - it would be difficult to find any American elementary school that did not teach addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions and decimals. Perhaps not all schools would agree about when each part should be taught or the best method for teaching each concept. That's unfortunate because they will have a real impact on the kind of students we see in the years to come.

The Common Core Standards are an effort to provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them.

The standards were designed to be robust and relevant to the real world and hopefully reflect the knowledge and skills that young people need for success in college and careers. Since this is a national effort, there is much talk about American students being prepared for the future and being able to "compete successfully in the global economy."

The Common Core standards were designed in 2009 and adopted in the next two years by 45 states and the District of Columbia. The Standards have support from the Obama administration but Governors Fallin (R - Oklahoma) and Haley (R - South Carolina) recently signed laws ending adoption of the reforms in their states and Indiana’s Board of Education formally abandoned the benchmarks in late April.

If all this Common Core sounds more political than educational, then you are thinking along the same lines as many educators. Much of the Common Core conversations that get media coverage come from meetings like that of the National Association of System Heads, the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities - places where discussion on the Higher Ed for Higher Standards was also conceived.

Common Core opponents point out that the new coalition is a project of the Collaborative for Student Success, which receives funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which has been a promoter of the Common Core and is a big fan of big data.

It's hard to totally disagree with those intentions. But the Standards have been met with lots of resistance from teachers, schools and even from states. I think that is to be expected with any federal program that tries to set English and math standards and is pushed not only by the current administration in Washington, D.C. but also by education trade organizations and non-profits providing funding.

Some states have put on hold or even de-funded implementation of the standards. Some have pulled out of the consortia developing tests tied to them.

Federal programs like Race to the Top grants and No Child Left Behind waivers are often tied to the adoption of Common Core standards and assessments. But the Race to the Top money is now spent and so states are taking a different view at Common Core.

It is dangerous for anyone to make an overly-simple explanation of the standards in just a few sentences. For example, a lot of press early on was that Common Core requirements reduces the amount of classic literature, poetry and drama taught in English classes by 60 percent in favor of reading non-fiction and the "prose of work."  The Standards do place more emphasis on non-fiction, but there is a good argument that the balance of fiction to non-fiction was an imbalance on the fiction side. (This admission coming from a literature major and someone who taught more literature than non-fiction to students for 25 years.)

In the math area, it delays the progression to Algebra I (seen as the gateway course to all higher math) by two years.

Media coverage, like this NPR report, like to point out the extremes and inconsistencies.

The man-on-the-street can easily see that if a fourth-grader in Arkansas gets a “proficient” on his state test but would have been given a "failing" score on that test if he lived in Massachusetts, means something is wrong.

I am not enough of an expert to praise or condemn the Standards, and I no longer toil in the fields (a nicer image than "being in the trenches") of K-12 education on a daily basis. I do think that all educators, especially those who are at the colleges, need to become better informed.

And those assessments...

Assessment movements usually start in K-12 by state or federal mandates and sometimes trickle up to higher education later. In the past 2014-15 academic year, more than forty states implemented online testing programs. Thirty states already do their summative assessments online.

New assessments will require more than just changes in instruction. Unfunded requirements for  different tech devices and high-speed bandwidth are part of the needs list. Online assessments generally include not only the traditional multiple-choice questions, but also simulations, computer-based items, short answers, and more writing.

These new assessments are being created by two major consortia of states, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC). They are based on (not part of) the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and will try to assess address higher-order thinking skills and problem solving.

The overall objective seems to be to cover all the standards, some of which are difficult to measure, especially online.

Why online? Online testing is appealing because you can obtain results quickly and get a lot of additional data. For example, which problems did students spend the most time pondering; which answers were changed; at what point did last minute guessing seem to occur.  Hopefully, teachers can use the rapid results to change instruction for classes or specific students.

I have mentioned before that I don't see very much interest in higher education for the Common Core State Standards system that is impacting K-12 education. I did come across an article from The Chronicle titled "College Leaders Sign On to Support Common Core Educational Standards" that discusses how 200+ higher-education leaders have created an organization to voice support for Common Core. Thirty states are represented by mostly administrators at public colleges and universities.

An earlier version of this article appeared at Serendipity35

Faculty Learning, NJIT and Rubrics

It's the season for professional development (though I am told the preferred term now is professional learning) in higher education. Grades submitted, graduation over, but early enough that faculty have not escaped to vacation or research projects.

I started these institutes at NJIT with my Instructional Technology group back in 2001 and they have continued ever since. The 14th Institute is this week.

Sessions are always about educational technology - new features in Moodle, Camtasia Relay and editing, WebEx, network security, Khan Academy, convergence models, clicker, Adobe Acrobat X, BYOD and more.

I'll be doing attending sessions in my faculty role and doing one session on rubrics.

A rubric started out as a word or section of text traditionally written or printed in red ink to highlight it. The word derives from the Latin: rubrica, meaning red ochre or red chalk. It originates in Medieval illuminated manuscripts where red letters were used to highlight initial capitals. It later became notes at the edges or margins and probably led to the practice of teachers making notes to students - often in red - in the margins.

I find rubrics to be a great tool for grading and assessment that can make the grading process more efficient and more objective. I actually use them as much as formative assessment and for students to use while working on projects as I use them for "grading."

In this session, I will go through many rubric types, discuss rubric creation, best practices for students and faculty use and talk about using the Moodle rubric tool.

I have collected some information and links on rubric use on my NJIT website.

NJEDge.Net 14th Annual Faculty Best Practices Showcase

Royal Geographical Society lecture, Brisbane, November 1946 - Flickr Commons

The 14th Annual NJ Faculty Best Practices Showcase will be held at Georgian Court University in Lakewood, New Jersey, on Friday, March 15th, 2013.  The Academic Technology Group (ATG) of NJEDge.Net sponsors the event.

The showcase features presentations and poster sessions on technology-mediated instruction by faculty, researchers and professional staff on the newest applications and the latest ideas about learning activities for on-ground, blended and online courses.

I will be the luncheon speaker this year and I will be speaking about “Academia and the MOOC.”

The New York Times said that 2012 was “the year of the MOOC” and EDUCAUSE said that they have “the potential to alter the relationship between learner and instructor and between academe and the wider community.” Many of the elite universities are offering these Massive Open Online Courses, but most colleges and educators are still unsure about what MOOCs are and if they are worthwhile.

Can a course where the participants and the course materials are distributed across the web and the courses are "open" and offered at no cost to a very large number of participants who do not receive institutional credit be a worthwhile venture for a college?

In this presentation, I will briefly cover some history of the development of  MOOCs, and talk about the possible benefits and problems for schools and students.