The College Colloquium

Online Courses?: How serious should the college’s commitment to online courses be? What role should they play and where? I think we all agreed that one of their major benefits was the increase in flexibility that they provide, both for the students and the professors. And it is important for the college to capitalize on this, focusing on providing online courses that meet the needs of non-traditional students (e.g., the BPS program), students seeking certificates in certain skill areas (as opposed to full degrees), and summer classes (which provide our students with the ability to take classes from home and other areas). We might also market our online classes to non-CofC markets, to try to attract a wider range of students – but this only makes sense if we are willing to allow for larger enrollment caps.  Although, members of the discussion related that their experiences suggested that even online-only courses can struggle to meet enrollment caps.

One area of disagreement may be the place of online courses in the current traditional campus environment.

• Some of the group felt online courses would be less appropriate is as replacements for normal semester courses. Online courses are not suitable replacements for the in-class experiences that are a part of being a college student. They don’t allow for the modeling of good intellectual practices provided both by the professor and by peers. They isolate students from being active participants in the liberal arts community of scholarship.
•  Others partially disagreed with this as a general statement. The College of Charleston’s approach to distance education (DE) is ensuring that anybody teaching DE courses goes through a rigorous training to learn how to develop DE courses that reflect best practices that allow for the creation of distance ed classes that mirror (using various technologies) the kinds of interaction you have in the face to face class. One participant felt that they got to know all students better than in a face to face class, not just those who are extroverts.

Meeting the needs of the local community: One of the things we keep hearing is that the college needs to grow/change in order to better meet the needs of the local community – in particular, the business community. Yet, we’ve only heard this 2^nd hand. We faculty have not been actively involved in discussions with the local community to get a better sense of what they value about a liberal arts education (assuming they do) and what sorts of skills/training they’d like to see their employees receive. This sort of dialogue would help us to better understand the needs of the community and to develop creative ways to meet those needs – ways that would be more consistent with our commitment to a high-quality undergraduate liberal arts education than those currently being offered to us (e.g., a merger with MUSC or other moves to become a research university). We need to be more actively involved in developing creative, productive partnerships with our local community.

How to better communicate what it is we are and we do: Universities and colleges are institutions of scholarship – not degree production machines. We felt that this message often got lost in the book and in other discussions going on about the problems faced by higher education. States and parents are not just paying for their sons’ and daughters’ educations – they are paying for benefits that come from supporting institutions dedicated to creative, innovative thinking and exploration[H2] .  It may be that one of the problems facing higher education today is that the larger culture does not generally value innovative thinking and exploration. The emphasis has shifted toward practical professional training and “what you can do” with a degree. While we in higher education value these things, we are losing the battle of convincing our publics that these things still matter.

And they are paying for the benefits of having our youth participate in scholarship – in the creative and evaluative process – precisely at the point where they are coming into their adult lives, trying to decide where they are going and what they want to do.  One implication is that university/college educations may not be for everyone –perhaps we need to renew an emphasis on the value of technical institutions and other alternative forms of education designed to train for specific skill-sets and transmit specific bodies of information. Perhaps we need to stop thinking that universities/colleges are a catch-all for everything, perhaps our focus should be narrower, allowing for other kinds of institutions to fill in the gaps where employment-specific training is required. It would also be nice if it became more of a cultural norm for HS students to take a gap year before enrolling in college. Too many middle and upper class kids may simply go from HS to college because it’s what they are expected to do by their parents and because that’s what our culture says our kids are supposed to do.

It also suggests that if we feel parents are bearing too much of the financial burden of educating their youth, we need to shift the burden to where it is more appropriate – the public as a whole benefits from institutions of scholarship, as does the business industry. And it also suggests that the business model of education – the evaluation of its effectiveness in terms of its generation of a product for a fee – is flawed.

Creating a program that combines employment, service learning, practical application, education, community involvement: It would be interesting to investigate whether any of pressure due to under staffing that the college is experiencing could be relieved using a student work-force. This would be something more significant than our current work-study program – it would be a program that creates a culture of community, students being actively involved in the day-to-day running of the college. This could be offered as a form of straightforward employment or a part of their tuition package. The goal would be to also incorporate whatever college duties students had into their education – either being connected to specific classes or being treated like an Internship or Independent Study that required intellectual reflection on those duties as practical applications of their education and their effect on the student’s college experience and relationship to the college itself. This could be extended into service learning/community involvement program where the college partners with certain organizations/businesses to provide employment or volunteering internship opportunities for students – perhaps students would work on campus for one year and then off-campus in the community for another, or perhaps they would choose between the two alternatives.

Discussion Blogger: Jen Wright (Psychology); Group Members: Heath Hoffman (Sociology), Jim Newhard (Classics), Brian Scholtens (Biology)

When our group met to discuss Jeffrey Selingo’s book College (Un) Bound our discussion touched on many of the same topics and points Jessica Smith presents in her thoughtful blog entry entitled “A college adrift or unbound?”  Like Jessica’s group, our group members expressed concern about the escalating cost of higher education and the current and proposed alternatives to 4-year colleges and universities, especially traditional liberal arts and sciences colleges and universities.

With competition for students willing to pay the high tuition, colleges and universities are becoming a member of the service industry; constructing apartment and condominium type dormatories, elaborate student recreational centers complete with lazy rivers, climbing wall, and juice bars, and other resort-like amenities.  Colleges are marketing to potential students as consumers, showing them the lifestyle available to them and hoping it will be the factor upon which they select that university or college.  While Selingo acknowledges this trend, in a somewhat mocking tone, he encourages potential students to seek data on the university’s graduation rates, graduate employment rates (particularly in their fields of study), starting salaries of graduates, and other markers of an institution’s success in educating and preparing students for their futures and to consider this information when selecting an institution of higher education.

Distance (on-line) education, a growing alternative to 4-year and traditional colleges, appears to meet the needs of a certain group of learners and be appropriate for particular courses and degree programs.  On-line courses provide students with flexibility in their educational timeline and their day-to-day schedules. Today’s students want to use on-line classes to learn content available in books, articles, videos, and other sources.  They want to learn from experts in their field but they don’t want face-to-face time with these experts to be limited to content delivery through lecture and formal presentations on content they could have learned on-line without attend a single class meeting.   In addition to catering to student schedules, on-line courses can be economical, typically costing students less per credit hour and degree earned.  Perhaps more importantly, on-line courses can provide faculty members with numerous ways to design courses and to even rethink the structure and content of degree programs, beyond the eight-semester model filled with face-to-face classes.

The last aspect of our group’s discussion of this book lead us to consider the “mobile” student, meaning students with an intentional plan for attending multiple universities or colleges to complete of degree requirements.  These students seem to “shop” for courses, professors, and educational settings at multiple universities with the goal of gaining the best education for their tuition dollars.  While there is much concern expressed by college and university administrators over the retention of students, it seems that our student population is dynamic, with students transferring in while other students are transferring out of the College. A student’s reasons for transferring out of one university and into another vary (ie: financial, ability to live at or closer to home, spouse’s employment) and may not indicate the student’s dissatisfaction with the institution he is leaving. The changing makeup of a college’s student body may enhance the educational environment for student and professors alike.  Additionally, an institution’s goal of educating may be more important than the goal of keeping a student at one institution for four years.

Discussion Blogger: Susan Rozzi (HEHP); Group Members: Jim Posey (Institutional Research), Chris Korey (Biology), Martin Jones (Math)

In his critical evaluation of higher education, Jeffrey Selingo predicts what the future holds for institutions like the College of Charleston:  increasing enrollments, increasing competition, and increasing debt.  With these increases, come decreases in returns on investment and overall rigor.  Students, parents, and politicians have begun asking “is a college degree worth pursuing at any cost?”  Responding to the demand for a college degree and the prohibitive cost of many 4-year residential schools, numerous alternatives have emerged, including for-profit institutions, MOOCs, distance education, and accelerated programs.  It seems like the credential is more important to many students, families, and employers, than how that credential was earned.  Therefore, traditional 4-year colleges and universities have to either defend their original mission or adapt.  What makes a 4-year residential college experience worth it?  Why should students, families, and legislatures invest in campuses like these when the credential can be earned for less online?

Liberal arts institutions frequently must defend their existence and prove their worth to people most concerned with returns on investment.  To effectively argue our worth, liberal arts colleges must have a concrete, agreed upon mission that can be communicated to the public.  During our discussion, we expressed concern about the mission of the College of Charleston and the changes in our future (e.g. the potential merger with MUSC, a new president, a greater emphasis on research and grants, etc.).  We feel the College of Charleston may be suffering an identity crisis, causing many faculty and administrators to feel “adrift” or even “unbound.”  We don’t feel like there is agreement about our future and this makes it difficult to defend our value and articulate our position in the future of higher education.  If we don’t know what we stand for or what we envision for our future, how can we prove our worth?

We discussed potential arguments that can be made to defend our value, and decided that we may need to move away from the conceptualization of a “traditional liberal arts institution.”  Instead, perhaps we should think of ourselves as a “modern liberal arts institution.”  Selingo acknowledges that the liberal arts are still valued by employers—they want employees who can solve problems, communicate effectively, and think innovatively.  Many of the jobs of the future do not exist yet, and so training students in specialized skill sets is not likely valuable as those skills will change.  So the liberal arts focus on educating the whole student is still needed.  However, we must also adapt to outside forces, particularly technology.  Having online classes simply because they’re “hot” right now isn’t a good enough reason to invest in their development.  But it is also naïve to believe online education is just a passing fad that traditional four-year institutions can resist.  Selingo presents data about the particular success of mixed-mode courses, emphasizing the importance of both greater flexibility and face-to-face interaction.  Perhaps these mixed-mode classes are the future of higher education?

Ultimately, we need to find new ways to “sell” the liberal arts and 4-year institutions.  A first important step in this process is agreeing upon our identity.  So, College of Charleston, what is our mission?  And what is our vision for the future?

Discussion Blogger: Jessica Smith (Communications); Group Members: Burton Callicott (Library), Laetitia Sobiesuo (Registrar), Bob Podolsky (Biology), Alana Lewis (Library), Kevin Keenan (Political Science/Urban Studies)

Four books have been chosen for the semester, with a potential fifth book over winter break to be determined by the fall reading groups. Each will have their own tab where discussion group reactions will be posted for the greater community to read.  The reading series will end in March/April with two campus-wide events. The first will be a campus visit and talk by Scott Jaschik, the Editor and one of the founders of Insider Higher Ed, who will talk broadly about the challenges and opportunities in higher education drawing on the themes raised in the five books. His talk is scheduled for Monday, March 31 at 7pm. The second will be an open campus forum scheduled for Friday April 11. Although the format hasn’t been finalized, we imagine using this session to talk about the College within the context of these national/international trends in higher education.