Linking Analytics to Lifting Out of Recession

Learning from Analytics Best Practices in Other Sectors

2010-09-29T10:00:00.001-04:00

Donald M. Norris

Higher education leaders are grappling with the challenges of using analytics in reimagining and reinventing their processes and practices, in response to changing conditions and “The New Normal.” In the process they are turning to many sources for insight and inspiration.

Some sources are obvious, such as institutions that are successful in using analytics to enhance student access, affordability and success and to focus on outcomes and value. Many for-profit institutions such as Capella University and American Public University System embed predictive analytics in most academic and administrative processes. They use them to manage and demonstrate individual performance and success in achieving targeted outcomes.

Other exemplary enterprises are similar in the nature of their challenges, such as health care organizations that are reinventing medicine around teams and working to improve and demonstrate the “value” of good health care, as reflected in effective results at reasonable costs. Kaiser Permanente, the Mayo Clinic, and the Cleveland Clinic are often cited and written about as delivering great outcomes, based on scrupulous analysis of most efficacious care and acute attention to managing costs. They deliver indisputable value.
And some best practices enterprises are dramatically different in context and organizational culture but still useful. These examples include commercial enterprises that use analytics to better and continuously understand their customer’s needs, measure satisfaction with their performance, and optimize enterprise performance, over time, in the face of changing conditions and withering competition. The best of these performers focus their attention on analytics relating to innovation that will enhance their long-term competitive standing.

Even if the circumstances are different, however, what these best practice applications from other sectors illustrate a stark fact: The prevailing analytics applications, practices, and culture in traditional higher education are positively primitive compared to best practices in for-profit education, leading health care entities, and top-performing commercial enterprises. The other sectors embed analytics in all processes and practices, use them more intensively, and are dedicated to enhancing performance.

Competing on Analytics

Despite the differences between higher education and business, many higher education leaders and practitioners have found Thomas Davenport and Jeanne Harris’s Competing on Analytics to be very useful in higher education, even though it was based primarily on examples from the business world. This book provides several very helpful typologies that address the full range of analytics starting with standard reports and ad hoc queries and ranging through predictive analytics and optimization, through which the enterprise identifies and strives to achieve an optimal strategy in the face of changing conditions and competition. Many institutional practitioners are using these tools to advance and leverage the use of analytics in their organizations.

The work of Thomas Davenport and Jeanne Harris is further showcased this month in their article in The Harvard Business Review on “Competing on Talent Analytics.” In this piece they reveal how top performing organizations are using analytics to get the most out of their people and empower them to become top performers. Building on the same typologies used in Competing on Analytics, Davenport and Harris describe how enterprises move beyond simple data on individual performance and demographics to applications that enable manager to optimize employee performance and satisfaction, manage the enterprise’s talent pool in a manner that maximizes retention and boost performance, and project how the workforce must change to deal with changes in the business environment. In the top-performing commercial enterprise of today, yesterday’s “human resource management” has evolved into “strategic talent management” that relies heavily on the continuous, embedded use of analytics to shape day-to-day and strategic decision making.

Insights from the New Intelligent Enterprise Survey

In an article in the September issue of the MIT Sloan Management Review, Michael S. Hopkins, Steve LaValle and Fred Balboni present the initial findings of a survey by “The New Intelligent Enterprise” Initiative. This survey addressed the question: How do you win with data? It surveyed global executives about turning the data deluge and analytics into competitive advantage. This report offers an early snapshot of how managers are answering the most important questions organizations face. Future reports and findings will be part of “The New Intelligent Enterprise” Initiative.

Through surveys of business leaders and experts the authors of this report by Sloan Management Review have come up with the top ten insights and questions facing organizations as they incorporate the use of analytics in order to make their businesses more efficient and competitive.

• Analytics and the ways they are used in an organization must be made new and innovative. Enterprises are focusing analytics on understanding and leveraging innovation that will position them for long-term success. Top performers place an even greater premium on focusing analytics on innovation than lower performing enterprises.

• There is a high correlation between the use of analytics and top performing enterprises. The survey showed that top performing organizations were three times as likely to be sophisticated users of analytics.

• For analytics to be of impact, business culture must also be modified. The use of sophisticated analytics requires changes both in practices and the culture of decision making behavior. The most successful practices involve centralized development of data and analytics infrastructures and decentralized decision making, innovation, and experimentation, measured and tuned through analytics.

• There is a gap in the opportunities presented by analytics and the number of talented, analytics-driven managers needed to implement them. There is a serious talent gap, created by the peculiar requirements of the ideal analytics-driven managers: a combination of expertise in statistics, experiment design and interpretation and analytics with fundamental business knowledge and acumen. These analysts need the ability to ask the right questions and pose the right hypotheses. They need to know how to get data to tell them the things that matter (and not the things that don’t).

• Where in an organization should analytics be used? While IT is important to the support of analytics, the real development of analytics applications starts at the front-line point of need. From there, needs float upward to stimulate business units and centralized analytics applications.

• How are leaders in analytics using them in their businesses? Leaders and top performers are highly motivated to learn even more and push the envelope of application.

• Leaders are striving to improve data visualization in analytics to make information real to their users. Data visualizations and simulations are being used extensively to make representations of data more real and engaging. This is critical if the use of analytics is to be embedded in all processes and activities involving front-line workers and managers,

• An experimental approach to analytics is more useful than setting a plan in stone. Analytics need to be expeditionary. Respondents to the survey used the terms “test and learn” and “sense and respond” to describe the sense of experimentation needed for analytics to succeed.

• Analytics can be beneficial to any and all industries, not just tech savvy, digitally driven businesses. The survey showed conclusively that enterprises in all industries were using analytics in a competitive manner.

• The best is yet to come. Even as many executives believe their organizations are doing fairly well at integrating analytics into their businesses, experts see great potential for improvement in the sophistication of how businesses utilize analytics.

Implications for Analytics in Higher Education

Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the MIT Center for Digital Business, has made the following observation:

“What we’re going to see in the coming decade are companies whose whole culture is based on continuous improvement and experimentation — not just of specific processes, but of the entire way the company runs. I think this revolution can be fairly compared to the scientific revolution that happened centuries ago. Great revolutions in science have almost always been preceded by great revolutions in measurement.”

If Brynjolfsson is correct the future belongs to analytics-savvy organizations that can create new levels of performance and value. Higher education enterprises that are not able to achieve to this level of performance will lose ground to those that do meet the rising expectations of consumers who will encounter the new standards of performance in their dealing with enterprises from other sectors and in analytics-savvy organizations in higher education. New providers that provide lower-cost, good-value learning options will likely thrive.

True, some medallion institutions may be shielded by their aura of “quality” and the networking-for-life value that they provide to their graduates. But that number is relatively small. Most institutions will find that the performance-outcomes-and-value mantra that is driving all other sectors of the economy will also become pervasive in higher education. Community colleges, comprehensive universities, and for-profit higher education will all feel this pressure. They can all learn a great deal from” The New Intelligent Enterprise” which will continue to provide fresh insight.

It’s Time to Reimagine Higher Education (4a) - A Portfolio of Responses for 2010-2013 – Academic and Learning Environments

2010-07-21T12:33:00.007-04:00

OK, so you have articulated the imperative to realign your institution to financial sustainability by 2020. You have focused attention on the need to change from “muddling through” to “strategic” in 2010-2013. And you have established the planning and budgeting principles, practices, and processes needed to proceed. What are a portfolio of possible responses that your institution can take on the path to discovering financial sustainability?

Each institution’s responses will be distinctive, but there are similarities in the issues that are on the table. Consider the following set of possibilities in four intersecting areas which can be launched in 2010-2013 and executed through to success by 2020.

• Academic and Learning Environments
• Administrative Environments
• Resources to Support Reinvention and Realignment
• Tools and Structures to Support Realignment

In this posting (Part 4a), we’ll deal with reimagining the Academic and Learning Environment.

Academic and Learning Environments

To switch from muddling through to strategic thinking, institutional leadership must deal with the academic and learning environment. Financial sustainability cannot be achieved without tackling the need to enhance productivity, raise student performance and success, reinvent approaches to online and blended learning, and discover fresh approaches that align with the world of ambient technologies, mobile learning, and new patterns of engagement. Your institution should follow authentic versions of the following that fit your distinctive circumstances.

Reimagine Academic Roles, Relationships, Partnerships, Workload, and Productivity. As discussed in earlier blogs, academic roles have been shifting for decades, with the numbers of adjunct and part-time faculty increasing, and tenure-track faculty declining as a percentage of total. As part of the reimagination process, institutions should explore and discover a sustainabile mix of different faculty roles and responsibilities, more productive practices, and reinvented course experiences.

• Redefine the Roles of Different Academic Professionals and the Mix for an Institution. Roles should be rethought in the face of ubiquitous technology and mobile learning, reinvented online and blended learning practices, and a fresh look at the power of community-based learning and use of peer learning mentors. And what is the role of research and faculty scholarship, at different types of institution sin the New Normal?

• Reimagine Academic Workload and Productivity. Institutions need to take a fresh look at productivity and workload. In the short-run, workloads may need to increase simply to deal wit resources cuts (institutions with a 2+2 course workload in fall and spring terms may need to raise that to 3+2 or even 3+3, plus raise summer assignment. In the long run, institutions may need to trim their course catalogs, change the mix of academic staff, and reinvent courses into team-based, broader learning experiences using communities of learning and practice.

• Build on Existing Reinvention Initiatives, Demonstrate New Behaviors. Carol Twigg and the National Center for Academic Transformation have demonstrated how course reinvention can reduce costs and improve performance. But the real payoff is not reinventing individual courses, but in scaling reinvention across whole departments and colleges, and using insights from reinvention to change learning experiences. Institutions should build on existing innovations, but look at taking them to scale.

Enhance Student Success, Reduce Total-Cost-of-Learning. Many institutions have demonstrated that attention paid to retention and student success has a dramatic return on investment. Initiatives like those supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Lumina Foundation, the Education Trust, and the National Association of System Heads are showing “what works” in improving retention in different settings. The increasing diversity of the student population suggests that many institutions will need to implement these measures just to maintain existing success statistics.

• Embed Analytics into Decision Making to Improve Student Success. Many institutions are using embedded analytics to monitor student engagement and performance in real time, and to intervene with students to keep them on course. Building organizational capacity to use and leverage analytics is a key element of realignment to the New Normal.

• Dramatically Reduce Remediation, Boost Retention and Student Success. In the long run, the best way to reduce remediation and improve student performance is to improve the performance of high school learning environments. Bridging, concurrent enrollment, and early college high school programs can help. K-16/K-20 improvement initiatives are ongoing in every state and can be shaped in this direction. The techniques, resources, and practices from OER/OEP can be useful as well.

• Reduce Time-to-Degree and Total Cost of Learning. Institutions need to aggressively address this issue. State institutions where students regularly take five years to complete a baccalaureate degree should use online learning and aggressive monitoring to enable students to complete degrees in four years. By reaching down in to high school, institutions can provide three-year and even two-year completion paths for able students. Some students will be interested in “no-frills options”.

• Create New Pathways to the Workforce. Community colleges and high schools are exploring ways to accelerate the development of vocational learning options and means of preparing such learners for rapid preparation for and employment in, the workforce. Partnerships with unions and trade associations are leading to apprenticeship programs. Many vocational programs are finding learners want to take a course or two - enough to achieve employment - then complete their associate degree or certificate while employed.

Reinvent Online and Blended Learning and Resources. Most institutions have created models of online and blended learning that are actually more expensive than traditional, face-to-face learning. Nor have they used the online environment to create “community of practice”-based settings that can better address learning” to address knowledge gapsTo realign to the New Normal, institutions should move to more advanced stages of online and blended learning that can be used to reinvent practices in K-20, reduce costs, and better link .

• Reinvent Online Learning so its Marginal Cost is Fully Covered by Tuition. Institutions like the Western Governors University, Lamar University, and Florida State College at Jacksonville have demonstrated that reinvented and unbundled online learning can be dramatically reduced in cost to the point where its marginal cost is less than tuition. This enables public institutions to meet demand, supported by tuition alone. Having this capability as a part of an institution’s “mix” will be critical to thriving in the New Normal when institutions are blending a portfolio of offerings, experiences, and price points.

• Advance the Use of OER/OEP and Reach into High School. MIT has advanced its Open Courseware (OCW) and Open Educational Resources (OER) initiatives in a new venture called “Greenfields” which adds “Open Educational Practices” – the course notes, research-based pedagogical insights, and guides to faculty practice that show how to optimize learning for particular types of learners in different contexts in different disciplines. If OER/OEP were embedded in reinvented online and blended learning, these practices could be used in high school as part of the effort to improve performance, accelerate effective transitions to college, and reduce times to degree.

• Use Blended Learning to Reduce the Need for Physical Facilities and Reduce Trips to Campus by Commuting Students. Commuter institutions and those serving adult learners are currently using online and blended learning to mitigate the need for physical facilities, reduce the times learners must come to campus, and reduce learner “opportunity costs.” These practices will be redoubled in the future and could dramatically reduce and change the nature of campus facility needs.

• Capitalize on the Advances in Open Learning Environments, Free-Range Learning, and Demand for Certification of Prior Learning. Anya Kamenetz’s book, DIY U dramatized the spectrum of choices facing Millennial learners who are finding traditional offerings too expensive, too constraining, too slow to adapt to changing needs, and largely unable to deal effectively with credit for prior learning. As open learning options emerge over the next ten years, institutions will be under increasing pressure to incorporate these practices into existing learning pathways. They will also face opportunities to create new types of learning experiences.

• Create Online Learning Communities Aligned with Professional Practice. In addition to the learning pathways that result in certificates and degrees, practicing professionals require perpetual refreshment of their skills and targeted learning to fill “knowledge gaps” that are caused by the rapid pace of change in the global economy. Filling these knowledge gaps requires stronger “feedback loops” than are provided by existing Advisory Committee Structures and more rapid response than can be provided by curriculum committees.

Successful colleges and universities in 2020 will have discovered how to partner with corporate enterprises, trade and professional societies, local governments and economic development agencies, and other partners in order to create and support the next generation of community-of-practice-based learning.

• Use Knowledge Gap Learning to Embed Skills in Innovation and Entrepreneurship. As institutions develop the capacity to focus on specific knowledge gaps, they will use this capacity to enable learners in certificate and degree programs to enrich their learning acquisition with insights on innovation and entrepreneurship. This will be a critical requirement of the realigned college nad university of 2020.

• Maximize International Educational Opportunities to Build Global Competencies. Tomorrow’s successful colleges and universities will prepare their graduates to be good global citizens and effective practitioners in global contacts. This will be facilitated by the new generation of online and blended learning capacities, community-of-practce-based conversations, and use of ambient technologies.

Align Learning Activities with the Realities of Technology-Rich Environments. Technology both extends the campus and creates nodes of intensive embedded technology on campus. In the evolving world of mobile learning, every place is a learning place.

As the cornucopia of personal devices evolve and the use of cloud computing matures, institutions will find that learners will demand that they be able to use their personal devices as part of the learning environment. Moreover, the use of virtual reality, augmented reality, 3-D techniques, and other advanced visualization tools embedded in physical locations on campus will create demand for fresh learning and application experiences.

Future blogs will complete this conversation on “A Portfolio of Responses for 2010-2013:

• Academic and Learning Environments (Done)
• Administrative Environments (To come)
• Resources to Support Reinvention and Realignment (To come)
• Tools and Structures to Support Realignment (To come)

These will be presented soon.

It’s Time to Reimagine Higher Education (Part 3) – Principles and Practices for Reimagining, Reallocating and Repositioning, 2010-2013 and Beyond

2010-07-17T22:20:00.002-04:00

So here we are in 2010, with the need to realign institutional vision, actions, and responses with the imperatives of the New Normal of 2020. The following set of Principles and Practices can be tailored to the needs of your particular institution. These principles have been developed in collaboration with Dr. Richard Byyny, Chancellor Emeritus of the University of Colorado.

Principle and Practices for Reimagining, Reallocating, and Repositioning

To develop a set of principles and practices, let’s apply the four verbs from Transforming Higher Education: realign, redefine, redesign, and reengineer.

Realign Your Institution’s Thinking to the New Normal of 2020. On most campuses, today, leadership understands the need to realign to a New Normal, but rank-and-file faculty and still hope and expect that we will lift out of this slump like past recessions. So the first challenge to leadership is to challenge status quo thinking reorient existing planning and budgeting processes to understand the realignment imperative. We suggest variations on the following actions:

• Establish and articulate the need for a sustainable vision for 2020, using the arguments and evidence presented in our July 15 blog on “It’s Time to Reimagine Higher Education – Making the Case;” make the campus sustainability plan embrace all aspects of oiperation;

• Establish a description for the New Normal in 2020 in language tailored to your institution, then plan from the future backward, to illustrate implications for today’s planning;

• Translate the topical categories described in our blog “It’s Time to Reimagine Higher Education – Planning from the Future Backward into language appropriate to your campus, covering the following elements of the New Normal

- Establish financial sustainability in an environment of diminished resources,

- Optimize value in an environment of resources scarcity,

- Embrace a profoundly networking world of ubiquitous technologies,

- Rethink the physical needs of the campus.

- Reinvent sustainable career models for academic professionals,

- Focus on increasing access, affordability, and success for increasing diverse and challenging populations,

- Establish a culture of performance measurement and improvement with inceased transparency and accountability,

- Provide mass customized, personalized offerings, and

- Discover systemic solutions that span K-20 and link the learningforce and the workforce – and back again.

• Engage key stakeholders in understanding the 2020 imperative, utilizing existing organizational planning and budgeting processes, and if necessary forming additional planning and working groups;

• New planning groups to deal with the 2020 imperatives must consist of respected faculty and administrative leaders and have the capacity to convey the need for genuine reinvention;

• Realign strategic, tactical, and operational planning structures and processes to the realignment imperative and to the special challenges of 2010-2013;

• Recognize the importance of building organizational capacity to deal with the New Normal; look to build capacity through actual change initiatives to demonstrate the new behaviors needed to thrive in the New Normal;

• Actively engage in state-level and national conversations about financial sustainability academic and administrative productivity, cross-institutional collaborations, K-20 reinvention, and similar conversations; introduce the results of these cross-sector into the conversation on your campus;

• Continually think about establishing financial sustainability and revise and refresh the institution’s vision in the face of new evidence.

This realignment of vision is a tremendous challenge, given the inertia and wishful thinking of many campus constituencies. But it is essential to shifting from a “muddling through” to a strategic mode of behavior during 2010-2013.

Redefine Program, Budgeting, and Reallocation Principles for the New Normal. To switch from a muddling through to a strategic mode of behavior, we suggest the following set of program, budgeting, and reallocation principles:

• Clearly articulate the imperatives and opportunities for the New Normal – short-term and long-term – drawing on the campus conversations and materials

- Crisis creates the need for the realignment and reallocation of funds to support the institutions mission; implementation of new strategies; and maintenance of quality and value of degrees.

- State clear principles for dealing with affordability and learner and family financial capacity; creatively and responsibly manage financial aid ;

- Realignment will require development of new organizational capacities and “unlearning” of past verities.

- Communicate internally and externally: What, why, when, and how effects? Make communication and engagement a prime objective;

• For the 2010-2013 period: Plan for the worst budget cuts on the first go around and look beyond the short term (six months to one year).;

• Establish budget principles that you can honor over the long term; do not make commitments that you will be forced to abandon in two or three years;

• Doing business as usual won’t work; institutional and programmatic reorganization must be on the table;

• Consistently look for the longer-term implications of the New Normal; force partnerships and collaborations with other institutions to enable disciplinary collaborations and cost reduction;

• Communicate, communicate, and communicate some more; use multiple technologies to enhance communication;

• Be tough minded in knowing the truth about your institution and focus on centrality and value to know what programs to sustain;

- Understand centers of quality and excellence and protect them; at the same time, enhance value in all areas;

- Evaluate the quality and processes of programs requiring subsidization, to decide if the subsidy is justifiable or can you convert it to a cash-funded program or course, eliminate courses, or otherwise redesign the offering;

- Use and present data and analytics in the process of creating plans, budgets, and communications.

• Respond to impacts of state-level and federal initiatives to redefine and redesign programs, resources, and incentives; and

• Revisit and redefine capital budgeting and planning principles and fcus on a 2020 strate for facilities; clearly articulate how to utilize technology to leverage existing facilities

Redesign Programs, Roles, Responsibilities. Realigning to the New Normal will require redesigning programs, roles and responsibilities. This cannot be achieved overnight. But institutions can utilize the 2010-2013 period to initiate and accelerate the redesign process. The following actions are part of the redesign process.

• Constitute a visioning group to continuously review and articulate the impact of new learning practices on your institution: open learning – open educational resources (OER), open educational processes and practices (OEP -, free-range learning, community of practice-based learning, certification for prior learning; incorporate these insights into redesign of learning offerings;

• Engage university- and college-level advisory committees, professional groups, and other stakeholders in conversations about “What learners need to know” to thrive oin the post-recession economic environment;

• Utilize technology in teaching, elearning and administration and leverage that technology to discover financial sustainability for the New Normal;

• Build on and leverage existing initiatives in course redesign, enhancement of academic productivity, administrative process redesign, and other initiatives, building institutional capacity for redesign and reinvention;

• Pursue numerous means of reducing the total cost of completion for learners including credit for prior learning, bridging and concurrent learning with high school and similar programs that span K-20 education;

• Consider new sources of revenue including degree completion programs and professional master and certificates. Partner with other institutions: community colleges, other colleges or universities public or private and share costs and facilities; and

•
• Articulate sustainable career and professional development models for academic professions in the New Normal; this must be a essential element in the redesigned model;

- Describe academic workload and productivity expectations, and scholarly contributions for the New Normal – these will dramatically vary among different institutional types;

- Engage faculty in discussing the redesigns and reinventions necessary for the New Normal; and

- Sponsor scalable innovations using communities of practice and other mechanisms to improve productivity and success of learners and to demonstrate new patterns of behavior and engagement possible in technology-intensive 2020 environments. Focus on creating teachable moments for faculty.

Reengineer and Reinvent Policies, Processes, and Practices in a Transformative Context. In order to thrive in the 2020 environment, institutions are going to need to reinvent virtually all of their policies, processes and practices. These efforts should focus on the following principles and practices:

• Develop operational and management efficiencies in addition to reinventions;

• Redouble efforts on improving student access, affordability, and success, for increasingly disadvantaged and underprepared populations; focus on the ROI for such efforts;

• Emphasize the dynamic of “innovating your way out of the Recession;” support innovations that havce the capacity to succeed and scale; when then success, scale the lessons learned across entire departments and instituions;

• Take the opportunity to transform courses and the methods of teaching and learning; use undergraduate tutors and team-based learning in courses, and investigate all manners and means of scalably reinventing courses and programs;

• Reinvent online learning experiences so that the marginal cost of learning (and devwlopment) can be fully covered by the cost of tuition; this enable institutions to grow using these sorts of offerings, on tuition alone;

• Take one non-academic and one academic division and look to reorganize, down size (right size), and outsource as a real example of what can be accomplished. Consider using broadly participatory processes to develop the capacity of the community for redesign and reinvention;

• Select particular academic disciplines for pilot studies of collaborating with other institutions in sharing faculty and course offerings;

• Partner with virtual universities and market-driven institutions to license advanced analytics practices and processes and embed them in academic and administrative processes;

• Participate inpublic policy dialogues aboiur reinventing processes and formulas for funding higher education;

The final blog in this four-part series will be “It’s Time to Reimage (Part IV) – A Portfolio of Actions and Responses for 2010-2013.

It’s Time to Reimagine Higher Education (Part 2) – Planning from the Future Backward

2010-07-16T07:45:00.004-04:00

We begin with simple premises: higher education can be reimagined and to some degree reinvented, and that it is possible to attain a new plane of financial sustainability – a New Normal – by 2020. However, this can only be accomplished if aggressive action is taken, beginning in 2010-2013, to strategically realign higher education to the New Normal. Institutional leadership, and state and federal policy makers and leaders, must be persuaded of the imperative to realign strategy to the New Normal and to build institutional capacity to redefine, redesign, and reengineer academic and administrative processes.

Institutions should begin their visioning and strategic thinking processes by articulating the patterns and cadences of the world of 2020. Then they should plan from those conditions backward to the present, aligning their strategies to the conditions that will shape strategy setting in 2010-2013.

This is the basic approach that Michael Dolence and I utilized in 1995 when we wrote Transforming Higher Education: A Vision for Learning in the 21st Century, which envisioned cascading processes that would realign, redesign, redefine, and reengineer higher educaton.

At that time. we proposed realigning higher education to the needs of learners in the emerging Knowledge Age for fast, fluid, and flexible learning geared to the needs of the emerging global economy. This realignment would be necessary to meet clear, instrumental needs. But it was also needed due to the simple fact that American society could not afford mass/universal higher education using a bricks-and-mortar, factory model-based, bundled version of education. And with the coming boom in global mass higher education, the model would prove unsustainable, we claimed, for global education, as well.

Over the past 15 years, the truth of those prescriptions and predictions has been verified on three fronts.

First, the American model for mass higher education has become increasingly expensive and unaffordable, as reflected in the Delta Project’s latest report, Anya Kamenetz’s book, DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education, and the work of the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, to name a few. We have essentially demonstrated that spending an increasingly greater percentage of GDP on education, without using technology to innovate and transform processes and practices as other industries and enterprises have done, is unsustainable. Moreover, we have squandered the opportunity to undertake such changes over an extended period of time abd are confronted with the need for concerted action.

Second, innovative institutions have demonstrated that the higher education model can be unbundled and made available in a fast, fluid, flexible, and affordable manner. While this is not a solution for every learning need, the market-driven, for-profit sector in America currently serves roughly 1 million learners using variations on the unbundled approach. But other institutions such as Western Governors University, Lamar University, Florida State College at Jacksonville, and a host of others have deployed these techniques to drive down the cost and price of flexible learning. These practices will increase and are also being copied by new competitors around the world, some of whom have aspirations on the American market. Moreover, other permutations of the unbundling and reinvention ethic will be used to examine the other interwoven functions of the university.

Third, Web 2.0 and the social networking revolution has fueled the recent emergence of new forms of open, do-it-yourself, free-range learning. These innovations are making it possible for interested, motivated learners to learn on their own or in learning communities or even in bon fide communities of practice. Peer-to-Peer University, the University of the People, Project ROLE in Europe, the use of open educational resources (OER), and numerous examples cited by Kamenetz in DIY U describe the emerging ecology of free-range learning. In this environment, the capacity to effectively deal with certification of prior learning will become important differentiators for learning and certification providers aspiring to serve learners and attract their patronage. The “opening up” of the learning marketplace will be a critical condition by 2020.

Understanding the “New Normal” of 2020

So we offer the following set of parameters to describe the New Normal for 2020, which should serve as a guide for strategic realignment on institutional strategies, plans, and actions.

Establish Financial Sustainability in an Environment of Diminished Resources. It is clear that by 2020, traditional resources for higher education will be constrained in two major ways, and many minor ones. First, state and federal governments will likely be on a strict budget reduction diet, rebounding from the hangover left over from our recession/deficit crisis. Moreover, compelling demands from other sectors will compete with higher education for attention. Second, the financial condition of individuals and families will have deteriorated, as will their capacity and willingness to pay increasing tuition rates. The pattern of using-tuition-to-fill-the-resources-gap will need to cease.

So tuition and government resources will be increasingly scarce, leaving institutions to establish financial sustainability by a combination of turning to new, non-tuition revenue sources, and achieving reductions in cost through efficiencies, innovations, and reinventions in processes and practices.

Another possibility is that the perilous state of educational finance may become so dire that the basic funding model will be redesigned at state and/or federal levels. Brit Kirwin, Chancellor of the University System of Maryland, has suggested that public higher education be funded based on degrees completed, rather than SCH/enrollments, as a means of incentivizing attention on student success. Others are suggesting tightening the focus of research funding to a smaller group of institutions, and other mechanisms to stretch available resources and make smarter allocations. Other concepts are being bandied about, as well.

One aspect of the world of 2020 is that the balance of academic power will be shifting, although the extent of this shift will be affected by investments in education that will be affected by the natre of the recovery. Chinese and Indian institutions will be more prominent, and financial cutbacks will affect the standing of many American public universities and British universities, to name a few. Countries like Saudi Arabia are investing heavily in higher education, using an American model, but even there concers exists as to which aspects will be sustainable,

Optimize Value in an Environment of Resource Scarcity. In the recent past, the modus operandi for institutional leaders was “Raise all the money you can and spend all the money you raise.” Many popular measures of institutional quality are driven by the level of resources. In the 2020 environment of scarce resources, quality will be important, but value will even more essential. Shrewd and insightful leaders will be forced to figure out how to identify and sustain their real sources of value and quality. Institutions will have little choice but to redesign, outsource, and/or eliminate programs and functions that are non-critical or failing to achieve their value and quality potential.

In the past, individual universities have covered a full range of academic disciplines. By 2020, many universities and colleges may find it necessary to revise and focus their course offerings on centers of excellence, using partnerships and virtual collaborations with other universities to cover other disciplines.

Value can also be improved by improving performance and productivity and by reducing price. Between now and 2020, institutions will be under unremitting pressure to improve academic and administrative productivity. They will also be pressure to hold the line on tuition and to rediuce the “total cost of completing learning objectives.” By 2020, the pressures on both the productivity and price fronts will be substantial, and higher education’s publics will likely demand action.

Embrace a Profoundly Networked World of Ubiquitous Technologies. In Transforming e-Knowledge: A Revolution in Knowledge Sharing (2003) Jon Mason, Paul Lefrere.and I described the transformative impact of the Web on the manner in which we experience knowledge and its impact on every aspect of scholarship and learning. At an accelerating pace, personal communication devices and smart facilities are creating a world in which learning spaces are everywhere. Add in cloud computing and mobile learning (which is growing at a rapid pace across the globe) and one can envision a world in 2020 where every class room in K-20 – and other spaces as well – becomes a technology-rich learning space. While many high-priced visualization and virtual/augmented reality technologies will be limited to more affluent, selected settings, ubiquitous, mobile technologies will at some level empower every learner.

Strategic thinking for 2020 should consider how profoundly these new patterns of engagement and interactivity could change our models, practices, and costs for learning, when coupled with new competitors, open learning, and such.

Rethink the Physical Needs of the Campus. Ohio State University made headlines the other week by deciding that new facilities could be justified only if comparable square footage could be retired. For some time, institutions like the University of Central Florida have utilized on-line and blended learning as a means of “stretching” existing physical resources and growing to a size that could not be supported by the existing physical facilities. Institutions are increasingly using technology to create online and blended options that reduce the need to come to campus. New approaches are also changing the mix of classroom space required (adios to the need for a significant number of large. tiered lecture classrooms) in new facilities. As these practices grow, campuses will find they need less space than in the past.

The Great Recession has dramatically slowed the advancing of new facilities projects into the pipeline in American higher education. By 2020, the pressure to retrofit, repurpose, and retire facilities will be extreme. Sustainability will expand to include the financial sustainability of physical and virtual campuses in a profoundly networked world where the e-Lifestyle includes learning, research, innovation, entrepreneurship, and collaborations span physical and virtual worlds. Existing campus facilities will increasingly be used as “great, good public places” for convening events and collaborations in order to use existing space productively.

Reinvent Sustainable Career Models for Academic Professionals. Robin Wilson’s provocative article in the July 4 edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Tenure RIP: What the Vanishing Status Means for Higher Education” described the dramatic decline in tenure-track faculty from 56.3% of the total faculty corps in 1975 to 30.2% in 2007. While this pace of reduction does not hold for all institutional types, it does suggest what everyone already knew: provosts, deans, and department chairs have been turning to other, cheaper types of adjunct and part-time faculty to address teaching needs in the face of financial pressures and limitations. This trend will continue as long as the financial model is broken or unsustainable.

The question for institutions should be: In 2020, if we can achieve fundamental financial sustainability, what are sustainable career models for academic professions? This is perhaps the most difficult challenge facing higher education leaders.

Focus on Increasing Access, Affordability, and Success for Increasing Diverse and Challenging Populations. The Delta Project Report articulates well the challenge of raising attainment, for an increasingly diverse and challenges student population, in an environment of resource constraint. Dennis Jones’ presentation to SHEEO in 2009, “Heightened Expectation/Diminished Resources: What’s a SHEEO to DO?” dramatized the difficulty of achieving growth targets for degrees awarded in this environment.

On the other hand, the combined efforts of groups such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Lumina Foundation, the Education Trust, and others, are demonstrating that attention to the fundamentals of retention and student success can yield significant results for almost every institution. And the compounded impact of their innovations and research on “what works” will likely have a significant impact by 2020.

Establish a Culture of Performance Measurement and Improvement with Transparency and Accountability. Today, higher education is moving beyond a culture of reporting, moving toward a culture of evidence. In the future, the times and our publics will demand that we be operating in a culture of performance measurement and improvement, with transparency and accountability. Such a culture will require a new constellation of analytics processes and practices in which predictive analytics are embedded in academic and administrative processes to enable real-time interventions and adjustments to aid students at risk, processes deviating from the optimal, and faculty and staff needed development or assistance. We have developed the concept of “Action Analytics” to be a vehicle for advancing such a culture, which we expect to have pervaded higher education by 2020.

Provide Mass Customized, Customized Offerings. By 2020, many learners will expect institutions to tailor offerings to their needs, rather than offering “one size fits all.” There will be many more competitors for e-learning and blended learning experiences, at a wide range of price points. Moreover, many continuing learners will be focusing on a perpetual cycle of filling “knowledge gaps” through participating in free-range learning through communities of practice which provide immediate feedback loops on what is needed to succeed in particular industries.

Discover Systemic Solutions that Span K-20 and Link the Learningforce and the Workforce – and Back Again. Today, institutions of higher education have a poor track record in scaling successful innovations to the entire enterprise. Moreover, K-12 and postsecondary education have been “siloed” even though every state has some variation on a K-16 or preK-20 reinvention initiative. Moreover, the link between K-20 education and workforce has been inadequate.

In reality the achievement of financial sustainability would be considerably easier if we could develop systemic solutions that span K-20 and school-to-work transitions. While we spend more than any other developed nation on education as a percentage of GDP, we waste much of those resources through having to teach the same things two or three times (remediation and the burden of not meeting needs for credit-for-prior-learning), failure to get on and stay on career pathways, and failure to receive necessary attention and mentoring.

By 2020, the combination of K-20 and workforce initiatives, foundation-supported innovations in student access and success, and large-scale longitudinal studies on success should have yielded a constellation of systemic solutions that improve both student success and financial sustainability. Efforts to reduce time-to-degree and total-cost-of-learning will depend on these sorts of initiatives. Today’s strategic planning efforts should seek to advance and support such initiatives, which will be necessary to institutional efforts to achieve financial sustainability.

The next blog in this series will deal with the Principles for Realigning and Reallocating Higher Education (2010-2013). It will be followed by a multi-part blog on It’s Time to Reimagine Higher Education (Part 4) – A Portfolio of Actions for 2010-2013. It will describe four areas of change management focus: 1) Academic and Learning Environment, 2) Administrative Environment, 3) Resources to support Innovations and Realignment, 4) Tools and Structures to Ensure Innovation.

It’s Time to Reimagine Higher Education (Part 1) – Making the Case

2010-07-15T16:49:00.003-04:00

Over the past week, a number of research reports, responses, and presentations have reinforced several intersecting themes:

• America needs to reach its targets for raising educational attainment and economic competitiveness if we are to thrive as a nation and a civil society;

• These rising expectations collide with the reality of diminished resource capacity from state and federal governments, learners and their families, and many corporate and philanthropic sources;

• In order to achieve its attainment goals within the resources likely to be available, higher education will find it necessary not just to pursue efficiencies and new sources of revenues but to reimagine its offerings and to reinvent policies, processes, and practices..

• Enhancing learner access, affordability, and success, combined with reimagination and reinvention, can establish a new plane of financial sustainability for American higher education.

Reimagining higher education is an imperative. Moreover, the timeframe to begin strategic action is narrow – and the clock is ticking.

The Delta Projects: Troubling Trends in College Spending

The Delta Project released its latest report, “Trends in College Spending, 1998-2008, which answers the three questions: 1) Where does the money come from? 2) Where does it go? and 3) What does it buy? The report is a treasure trove for readers wishing to crawl over data addressing these issues. Throughout, interesting and troubling insights emerge. Several conclusions emerged from the report and are paraphrased below:

• Sharp increases in spending between 1998 and 2003 by a handful of colleges and universities, creating competitive pressures on spending everywhere.

• Regular cycles in funding for both public and private non-profit institutions: up in good times, down in bad. The one constant is growing dependence on tuition revenues, now the most stable and predictable source of revenues in higher education.

• The share of spending going to pay for instruction has consistently declined when revenues decline, relative to growth in spending in academic and student support and administration. This erosion persists even when revenues rebound, meaning that over time there has been a gradual shift of resources away from instruction and towards general administrative and academic infrastructure.

• Except for private research universities, tuitions are not increasing because spending is going up. They are going up because of cost-shifting—meaning that instead of cutting spending in the face of revenue declines, institutions consistently shift to higher tuitions.

• There are wide variations between states in the ways they invest in higher education. A few states have actually increased spending for higher education over this decade, although many did not. There has also been a slight shift in state subsidy patterns, away from public research universities and toward masters’ and community colleges.

Jane Wellman, Director of the Delta Project concludes, “The depth of the funding crisis is such that more than ever before in our history, there is widespread consensus that the “cost model” for higher education is broken.”

She goes on to say, “The current prolonged recession means that we can no longer expect new revenue to pay for increasing attainment in higher education. In the next decade, we are going to be lucky to hold onto the resources we have. That means that all institutions – from the Ivies to the community colleges –are going to have to develop investment strategies that support goals for attainment. That will require new habits: looking at spending, and promoting the values of efficiency and cost effectiveness as co-partners to the never-ending search for new revenues.”

Troubling Inequalities in Resource Distribution. Probing into the details of these findings is troubling to anyone concerned about the patterns of resource distribution among the different types of institutions in American higher education and the rising cost of education to learners and their families. The compounded impacts of the patterns described by the Delta Report suggest how difficult it is going to be to raise educational attainment, the responsibility for which will largely fall to institutions such as community colleges and public universities that are resource strapped.

The insights from the Project Delta Report reveal why thoughtful educational leaders feel a state of cognitive dissonance. At the very time when many elite private American universities place near the very top of the international league tables on reputation, public universities and community colleges find their resources constrained, dangerously.

Taking Actions a Step Farther – Richard Vedder

In a July 9 posting in The Chronicle of Higher Education titled “The Delta Cost Project Report and True Reform,” Richard Vedder, Director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, extends this argument a step farther. While he supports the basic foundation of the Delta Project Report, he believes their conclusions do not go far enough.

“All the talk about increased access, greater affordability and enhanced accountability is just that: talk. The three "A's make for good rhetorical flourishes, but what is needed for real transformation and rising productivity is attention to the three "I"s—information, incentives, and innovation…..In short, part of the problem is that colleges fail to collect or disclose key information needed in assessing programmatic performance—you cannot solve a problem if you don't know what it is. Are students learning much? How do they fare after graduation relative to those attending other schools? Do anthropology majors fare better than those in physics? etc. etc. Who knows? For a sector that worships research, the amount of money devoted to R and D towards improving higher education performance is pathetic……Paying attention to the first two "I"s will lead to the third I—innovation—new uses of cheap capital (e.g. computers) as substitutes for expensive capital (e.g., faculty), etc.”

Vedder has long been on record in support of technology in education, Open Educational Resources (OER), less expensive educational options, leveraging innovation, and challenging existing practices. In order to achieve the enhancements that are the mission of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, higher education will need to embrace action-oriented analytics and leverage those analytics to achieve reimagination and reinvention.

SCUP Highlights the Reimagination of Higher Education, Post Recession

The reimagination imperative was taken to an even higher plane at this week’s annual conference of Society for College and University Planning (SCUP). At SCUP 45, a number of speakers at plenary sessions and workshops discussed the need for higher education to leverage technology as an instrument of transformation.

Linda Baer, Program Officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Donald Norris of Strategic Initiatives staged a workshop specifically on the topic of “Reimaging Higher Education, Post Recession.” Baer and Norris stated the following basic premise:
“In order to lift out of recession, higher education needs to leverage its use of technology-enabled process reinvention and analytics, focusing on performance and value. Institutions must discover, demonstrate, and deploy operational efficiencies, innovations, reimagined processes and practices, and fresh sources of revenue – all at once.”

A Narrow Window of Opportunity. This message captures the spirit of both the Project Delta Report and the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. But there is another element to this message: time. American Higher Education is in the midst of recession-driven budget adjustments, which in the past have predominantly resulted in cost shifting to tuition revenue rather than the preferred package of: 1) strategic budget cuts, 2) innovation-led transformation, and 3) reinvention of processes and practices. .We are already two to three years into such adjustments and are facing at least three more years of recessionary-based woe. Unless institutions react quickly to “put a strategic face” on their reactions, we will miss a signal opportunity. So far, we have ignored the admonition that “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.”

Smart Leadership to Shift from “Muddling Through” to Strategic Innovation and Tranformation. Linda Baer, Anne Hill Duin of the University of Minnesota, and Judith Ramaley of Winona State University presented a paper at SCUP 45 on “Smart Change: Tools for Strategic Planning and Adaptive Change.” This presentation continues a string of papers and publications on smart change from these authors. In their work, they suggest the parameters of the kinds of leadership and processes needed to promote institutional smart change that engages the future strategically, not incrementally – or decrementally.

The following timeframe emerges when we apply the principles of smart leadership to the imperative reimagination of higher education.

2008-2010 Campus leaders have been “staunching the flow” and muddling through, leveraging stimulus money, raising tuition revenue, and making short-term adjustments, and hoping for the best.

2010-2013 Cutbacks will continue, especially as the impact of the stimulus wears out. Most institutions will continue to muddle through. They will lose the chance to act strategically. Five or six years of muddling through will consume all remaining organizational slack and capacity to scale innovations.

On the other hand, smart leadership at particular institutions will use this period to craft new strategies and reimagine practices to enhance performance and value for “the New Normal” of diminished resources and enhanced new demands for greater student access, affordability, and success.

2013-2020 State revenues and funding will not rebound as they have after past recessions. Even when revenues do recover, there will be other demands on the public purse and Federal Budget Reduction Initiatives. At the same time, the capacity of learners and their families to pay for education will continue to erode and they will seek greater “value” from learning providers. They will be more discriminating and imaginative in seeking solutions. to their learning needs (See July 10 blog “The Changing Meaning of Value for Tomorrow’s College Students)

Smart leadership will use this period to strategically realign institutional practices to the New Normal,” reinventing processes and developing organizational capacity in tandem, responding to changing learner value propositions, improving student success, and rediscovering financial sustainability..

2020 By 2020. strategically realigned institutions will have achieved a new plane of financial sustainability, with significant changes in capacity, policies, and practices. Their vision and offerings will be responsive to the changing value propositions desired by students in 2020.

Reimagining Higher Education and Planning from the Future Backward. So how should institutions engage in two concurrent tasks:

1) Reimagine themselves in a condition of financial sustainability for 2020? and

2) Identify and launch a combinations of actions to achieve financial sustainability – efficiencies,; scalable innovations; reinventions in policies, processes, practices, and partnerships; and new revenues (with raising tuition increasingly difficult) – starting immediately.

These topics shall be the focus of the next blog in this series: “It’s Time to Reimagine Higher Education (II) – Planning from the Future Backward. .

The Changing Meaning of “Value” for Tomorrow’s College Students

2010-07-15T07:28:00.002-04:00

American higher education serves a wide range of learners at many stages of their lives and careers. Everyone from the traditional 18 year-old, first-time-in-college student at a residential college or university to the 34 year-old mother returning to complete the degree she started before kids to the 54 year-old manager retooling after being laid off. And all permutations and every variation in between: part-time to full-time, learning in formal institutions to “free-range learning, and face-to-face to blended to virtual.

Given this complexity of needs and means, each learner has a different and distinctive value proposition. Value has particular and personal meanings. Perceived value is shaped by the perspectives and needs of the learner, not the provider.

Many traditionally-aged college students are seeking educational experiences that develop them as individuals and prepare them to live a meaningful life and make a comfortable living. For such students, the values and value of their educational institution are important factors in their selection. Many value-centric institutions depend on this as a differentiator in appealing to such students. Developmental experiences are important to such learners.

For the 85% of students in higher education that are older and non-traditional, however, the value they are deriving from their learning experience is pre-eminent. Perceptions of value consist of rich and personalized combinations of three factors: 1) the outcomes desired by the learner and the outcomes they actually achieve, 2) the desirability and convenience of experiences through which the outcomes are achieved, and 3) the price of the entire process.

The Great Recession, the affordability crisis, publicity about crushing student debt burdens, and the declining state of family wealth have made learners and parents much less certain about the future. The capacity and willingness of individuals and families to invest in learning have taken a shock. Learners are becoming more rigorous in questioning the “value” they derive from their learning. Families are rethinking their value propositions. They are becoming more aggressive about askingt he question “Are we getting our money’s worth?” Assumptions about outcomes, quality, and value are being reframed.

Continuing the Economic Slide

This situation will only get worse over the next few years. Institutional finances will be weak and tuition at many institutions will continue to increase at 5-10% per year to close budget gaps. On the employment side, many graduates will continue to be underemployed and unemployed. Many graduates are being driven to seek new, entrepreneurial and “free agent” opportunities. This will erode confidence in the return on investment on higher education from traditional providers.

Anya Kamenetz’s book, DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education described two facets of this problem. First, that he Millenial Generation are the “canaries in the coal mine” demonstrating that college education by the old model s unaffordable. Metaphorically, the Millennial canaries have expired.. Second, the Millennial generation is much more open to new ways of achieving learning – the “Do-It-Yourself-University (DIY U) approach – and are confronted with a wide range of new, open learning options and new competitors that will challenge the hegemony of traditional, institution-based higher education and possibly establish new price points for learning.

Between now and 2013, the economy’s recovery will likely be weak. whether there is a “double dip” recession, an “L-shaped”, Japanese style recovery and lost decade, or some other visual descriptions of a bad situation, the prospects are not rosy. In turn, this means that the financial condition of the states will continue to worsen. Figures from the State Higher education Executive Officers (SHEEO) suggest that state budget health will reach its nadir in 2012-2013. The “New Normal” is that we will not bounce back like after past recessions. While most institutional leaders understand these conditions, many of the rank-and-file faculty and staff expect a normal bounce-back and conditions returning to the old normal.

Smart institutional leadership will use the period between 2010-2013 to articulate the challenge of the New Normal and to recraft strategies and reimagine their institutions, post recession, building capacity and reinventing policies, processes, and practices.

This will continue from 2013 through 2020, by which time reimagined and strategically realigned institutions may have achieved a new plane of financial sustainability.

Achieving financial sustainability will only be possible, however, if institutions are mindful of what “value” means to the learners of 2013-2020 and act accordingly.

Focusing on Value from 2013-2020

So in this environment of an emerging “New Normal,” what will value means to students who will be engaged in higher learning from 2013-2020? From the viewpoint of anxious and perceptive learners and their families, we suggest the following elements of a learner-centric set of value propositions:

• Provide me with flexibility of learning and developmental experiences, so I can complete my learning objectives conveniently and on time.

• Do not require me to repeat learning for competences I can already demonstrate.

• Reduce my total cost of education and my debt burden.

• Prepare me for the global workforce so I will be employable and competitive for jobs from the start.

• Provide me with the habits of mind, body, and spirit to be able to continuously learn and develop throughout my careers.

• Provide a network and community of lifelong support to know what I will need to know to continue to be competitive.

• Provide continuing learning and development options that are fast, fluid, flexible, and affordable.

This should be a manifesto for learners and for institutions keen on serving their needs.

A New Amenities Arms Race: Student Success

2010-05-08T15:59:00.003-04:00

Donald M. Norris
President, Strategic Initiatives, Inc.

For the past two decades, American higher education has been engaged in a sort of “amenities arms race” of epic proportions. As institutions vied for the attention and favor of ever-more sophisticated student consumers, they have acquired a generation of shiny new academic and research facilities; plush athletic stadiums, practice fields, and wellness facilities; commodious residence halls, condominium-like student apartments, and student unions with every feature from rock climbing walls to bistros to juice and coffee bars.

The aftermath of the Great Recession has slowed the pipeline of campus construction projects and dimished future prospects. But it has given fresh impetus to the race to offer an amenity of enhanced importance: improved student success. Students are demanding better feedback on what they need to do to succeed and fulfill their learning objectives on time and within their budget. Shrewd and purposeful institutions have developed a range of analytics-based tools, practices, alerts, and interventions than enable them to develop policies that improve student performance and better advise and inform students. They are also acting decisively and in real time to alert and assist students whose performance deviates from the patterns that have characterized cohorts of previously successful students.

Consider the following examples of action analytics in practice in support of student success in courses:

Purdue University has been one of the pioneers in applying predictive modeling, longitudinal data and large-scale data sets to student success. They have mined data from systems that support teaching and learning to provide customization, tutoring, or intervention within the learning environment – this is what they call “Actionable Intelligence.”

One of their most successful efforts has been the Signals program, featured in an MSNBC news clip. Using historical data, Purdue deployed predictive modeling to identify patterns of behavior and performance in introductory gateway courses that led to success and compared them to current student efforts. Students receive a red, yellow, or green indicator to show them where they stand. Starting as a pilot, this effort has scaled to 500 gateway course sections enrolling 11,000 students at a cost of $47 a student. John Campell demonstrated this application at the First Symposium on Action Analytics.

While technology is the enabler, the Purdue Team feels strongly that it is the capacity of the organization - people, skills, and processes - that makes the difference in a successful intervention system. This system has made tradeoffs between predictive perfection and scalability; it focuses on actions that are made possible by the analytics. Purdue has partnered with SunGard to develop a commercial version of Signals that is available to other institutions.

Capella University embeds analytics in every aspect – academic and administrative – of the student experience. Capella is a market-drive (for-profit) university that uses predictive modeling to increase application rates, enrollment, and course attendance; to improve academic performance and the learning experience; and to increase persistence. Capella’s leadership and faculty are dedicated reflective practitioners. They have studied student behavior and success and understand both the characteristics of online learners and the elements of successful online learning experiences for their students. Five factors differentiate the online learning experience as a platform for predictive modeling:

• Online learning generates a huge amount of data
• The data arrive in a cyclical manner,
• Capella has a long-term engagement with learners
• They can monitor learner behavior on different time scales
• Learners have more freedom in managing their time

For Capella’s online learners, the first week is everything; students who get off to a bad start seldom catch up. So Capella perpetually monitors students, uses predictive modeling to match them to past patterns, and sends tailored messages to students to get them on track and keep them there. Predictive modeling and artificial intelligence are key elements of the management of every student’s learning experience. Alex Ushveridze of Capella University demonstrated these modeling techniques at the First National Symposium on Action Analytics.

These analytic mindsets and approaches also affect learning outcomes. Capella’s offerings are based on competence. They utilize embedded templates, rubrics, and analytics to enable students to acquire competences and demonstrate them in ways that are understandable to employers. Jeff Grann and Kim Pearce demonstrated Capella’s approaches atCapella is sharing its ideas and practices through the Action Analytics in Education Partnership and the Action Analytics Community of Practice, seeking to advance transparency and accountability in higher education.

Many institutions have developed “home-grown” predictive modeling tools for recruitment, keeping students on track, and improving student success. Most leading-edge community colleges have similar versions of these tools to manage and improve student success. Last year, Ken Moore from Sinclair Community College described his institution’s retention and student success practices and at this year’s National Symposium, Vernon Smith from Rio Salado Community College described his institution’s efforts to develop open source solutions to student classroom progress and success. There are many models to emulate and improve upon - and these approaches have a high return on investment, when done well.

Powerpoint presentations of the Purdue University and Capella capabilities can be found at the Public Forum for Action Analytics website. They will be featured in an upcoming Webinar, along with other cases, in a Webinar announced by John Hammang of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU). The time and date for which will appear on the Public Forum for Action Analytics.

These developments were discussed on May 5-7 at the Second National Symposium on Action Analytics in St. Paul Minnesota. At this meeting, institutional leaders and practitioners, policy makers, and foundation representatives discussed how to deploy and leverage analytics that will provoke action to improve student access, affordability, and success and enable the rediscovery of financial sustainability.

The sense that emerged from this meeting was that the imperative for concerted, aggressive action to improve student success has grown dramatically given the current state of the economy and family finances. Students are demanding better feedback and support in improving their odds of success. Their demands are destined to grow and they are likely to vote with their feet – and their clicks – if they are unsatisfied. Learners can be counted on to ratchet up their demand that the current generation of intervention and advisement tools be enhanced and extended.

Launching the Action Analytics Community of Practice

2010-05-05T23:01:00.002-04:00

Donald M. Norris

I’m on my way the Second National Symposium on Action Analytics, hosted in St. Paul Minnesota. This Symposium is part of a coordinated effort to support a national agenda on action analytics, undertaken by the Action Analytics in Education Partnership (AAEP). It has been my honor to have been involved with the AAEP from its conception in brainstorming sessions more that a year ago with Dr. Linda Baer, Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs at the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities and Dr. Michael Offerman, currently Interim President of Capella University.

The Action Analytics in Education Partnership (AAEP) includes the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) system, a the nation’s fifth largest system of two-year colleges and state universities; Capella University, a 17-year-old proprietary university; The Shank Institute for Innovative Learning, a nonprofit think tank focusing on future technology and learning organization; and Strategic Initiatives, Inc., a for-profit developmental consulting firm that is known for its ground-breaking work in leveraging technology to transform practices and outcomes in higher education. Other partners are being sought to provide other perspectives.

The Partnership’s mission is to capture, share and implement best practices in analytics and predictive modeling and to encourage the breadth and depth of use of action analytics across higher education institutions as a tool to ultimately improve institutional performance and student success in postsecondary education within the context of financial sustainability at the institutional, state, and federal levels.

Intermediate success will be achieved when we have a viable Action Analytics Community of Practice with 1) well-defined issue domain, 2) vibrant community and subcommunities, an 3) clearly articulated practice principles and tools that attract a critical mass of practitioners, thought leaders, and policy makers and have achieved financial sustainability for the community. Longer-term success will be achieved as we influence the effective practice of action analytics and support the development of the capacities of individuals, institutions, policy makers, foundations, accreditors, and educational agencies to measure qand improve performance and reimagine learning to meet the needs of the post-Recession global economy.

AAEP has launched and seeks to sustain a national agenda on the use of action analytics and predictive modeling to improve performance of the postsecondary education system and support the successful completion of postsecondary degrees by U.S. students. The predictive modeling emphasis will support better data decision making among students and faculty. While data are important, the expanded capacity to determine best interventions for students given the data is the critical element in making a significant difference in student success. The goals of the initiative include: establishing a repository of best practices in improving student readiness, retention, and success and achieving financial sustainability; instituting a dynamic observatory of new competencies and skills needed to be proficient and effective professional in advancing student success through analytics; establishing a community of practice (CoP) among analytic practitioners and policy makers; and hosting the second and third annual National Action Analytics Symposium.

The First National Symposium identified a range of desired actions, including securing sustaining funding, launching the community of practice, and articulating a National Agenda. These have all been accomplished. The AAEP has been funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and we are launching the Action Analytics Community of Practice tomorrow at the National Symposium. The National Agenda is posted on the Public Forum for Action Analytics, a public community that serves as the “front porch” for ideas and materials developed by the Community of Practice.

DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education

2010-04-22T11:40:00.001-04:00

Anya Kamenetz's new book is stimulating lots of conversation - and not a small amount of controversy. I have written a book review for Planning for Higher Education which provides a critical assessment of this book - www.scup.org/socmed/PHE-DIYU. Check it out.

This is a book worth reading by anyone interested in confronting the perfect storm currently beseiging us: the increasing cost of higher education, diminished family finances, Great-Recession-based declines in opportunities for new graduates and long-term returns on education, limited capacity of higher education organizations to transform, and revolutionary approaches to do-it-yourself (DIY) learning. Paul Lefrere and I have called these new approaches "free-range learning" and they are presenting viable alternatives that likely will gain traction as the perfect storm roils and churns its way across the educationspace.

The Real Story About Online Learning - Revisited III

2009-11-24T07:02:00.002-05:00

Donald M. Norris, President and Chief Scientist, Stratgeic Inititaives, Inc.
Paul Lefrere, Partner, Strategic Inititaives, Inc.

This is the third of four blog posts on this subject.

III. Evolution of Learning Settings from Institutional to Open

The learning settings described in the first vector of evolution are institutional: Traditional colleges and universities (including their extension and continuing education divisions), for-profit universities, and learning enterprises in corporations. These so-called “institutional” settings will continue to be the primary players in traditional learning. But they will see their dominance shrink in the face of open learning environments that are the property of the student, not the institution. The challenge institutions face is to keep pace with both the changing nature of knowledge and competence, as well as the inexorable move toward greater value in learning and competence building experiences. Over time, open learning with the student at the center of a personal learning environment (such as a free-range learner) will be the predominant mode for the next generation of learners over the course of their lives.

Clear “stages” of open learning have not yet revealed themselves. They may emerge over time – or not. Several prototypes and expeditionary experiments have been described in earlier blogs. Some of the new forms of open learning environments and experiences are described below.

Peer-to-Peer Voluntary Associations. A recent article in Fast Company, “How Web-Savvy Edupunks are Transforming American Higher Education,” described the growing movement toward high-tech, do-it-yourself education. Some of these experiments reside within existing institutional settings, such as classes structured like role-playing, serious games that are being tested out in universities across the globe. Others are occurring in start-up organizations, like Peer2Peer University and the University of the People, attempting to bridge the gap between free online materials and low-cost education.

Neeru Paharia and Jan Phillip Schmidt have hacked together Peer2Peer University, which uses a Web site to enable would-be-students to convene and schedule courses, meet online, tutor one another, all facilitated by a volunteer. This is very much a demonstration of concept. Shai Reshef founded University of the People and has enrolled the first class of 300 students from nearly 100 countries. His goal is to offer bachelor’s degrees in business and computer science using open courseware and volunteer faculty for a price of about $4,000 for a four-year degree.

Other pundits, such as Richard Vedder, have mused about US associate degrees for as little as $2,000 (low by US standards, but not globally).

Formal Communities of Practice. Informal and formal communities of practice are common in the world of business and professional practice. These sorts of communities will become the focal points for open learning experiences in the future. Earlier blogs described the efforts of Oregon State University to create an Open Campus dedicated to community-based learning. Extension Divisions in land grant universities across the U.S. have offerings that could become the basis for community-based learning. Another example is the Food Safety Knowledge Network.

In their partnership with the Global Food Safety Initiative, Michigan State is developing the Food Safety Knowledge Network (FSKN), a program of food safety resources to efficiently and effectively reach competency at all levels of food safety. The FSKN will use open resource techniques (social networking, dynamic knowledge sharing and evaluation tools) to harmonize standards, practices, and training criteria. The FSKN pilot platform will be in place in late 2009 and will be rolled out globally in 2010. The FSKN will create a curriculum for food safety competency through partnerships with industry, government, academia, local/regional authorities, and other stakeholders. Coupled with a unique learning environment using face-to-face sessions, seminars, formal courses and on-line learning, it will present a low cost, fast and efficient way for professionals to achieve competence across all sectors of the food safety industry.

Community-of-practice learning is likely to thrive in the Web 2.0 environment. Its permutations are virtually limitless. One of the advantages of learning based on real communities of practices will be the capacity to receive early warning of the emerging competences that are essential in particular fields of endeavor. Communities of practices will be able to identify, promote, and develop fresh competences at warp speed among large bodies of participating practitioners.

Free-Range Open Learning. Over time, individual learners will have access to a vast constellation of open-learning experiences and resources. These will range from formal communities of practice and competence building networks, to easily configured, temporary learning cohorts. Using these tools and experiences, individuals will be able to develop, maintain, and extend their competence in a variety of ways and at very reasonable prices, or even at no cost. Even when “mature”, this array of alternatives will be perpetually changing, adapting, and improving.

This environment will constitute a “free range” option for learners who appreciate alternatives to traditional or even transformed institutional learning. These options will enable most adult learners to more easily advance and maintain their competences by acquiring new and emerging skills at a pace that institutional learning cannot match – at least not today (just as there is no “I” in team, there is no “academic senate” or “curriculum committee” in open learning).

Open learning environments and experiences will interact with institutional learning, assessment, and certification experiences. Institutions that do an excellent job of competence-based learning may become certifying entities that charge a fee for authenticating competences acquired through open learning, and awarding credit, certificates and degrees for a fee. This is one way in which the two evolutional paths of learning and competence with link together. Mash-ups to encourage, facilitate these linkages are under development in Europe, in partnerships between business/industry (a primary source of information on the skills that graduates need to be employable) and universities. By way of an example, read through the description and materials on Project Role, co-funded by the European Union (http://www.role-project.eu).

Many more examples exist across the globe, in a virtual archipelago of open learning experiments, prototypes, and expeditions. Recently, some pundits have questioned whether open learning endeavors can survive when they lose the seed funding from foundations, the European Commission, and other parties that have sustained ‘first gen’ open resource initiatives. A more apt set of questions may be: Which government(s) or corporate entities from across the globe will step into the breach to invest in open resources in the future? Will they do so in a manner that will disrupt traditional offerings and create opportunities for continuing reinvention of learning and competence building? How will this foment a change in the balance of competence power and the competition for talent across the globe?

Many Models, Competing for Learners. These two evolutionary paths do not suggest that any single model will become dominant for all learners, at all stages of their development. But they do mean that institutions will need to sort out their competitive position and determine how to provide a range of options that will be optimally attractive to their learners. Merely digitizing the traditional and hoping for the best will not be a winning strategy.

It will be possible for institutions to learn from emerging best practices and skip stages of evolution. In particular, institutions that aggressively practitice online, blended, and e-learning at Stage I can raise their sights and transform their practices to make a jump shift to Stages III and IV, with further evolution to Stage V. Such leaps could become feasible with strong campus-level leadership, recognizing the strategic potential ob online learning.

The Real Story About Online Learning - Revisited II

2009-11-23T17:52:00.003-05:00

Donald M. Norris, President and Chief Scientist, Strategic Initiatives, Inc.
Paul Lefrere, Partner, Strategic Initiatives, Inc.

This is the second of four blog posts on this subject.

II. Two Evolutionary Transformations in the Models of Learning and Competence Building

In studying the strategies and actions of the market leaders, one should examine two evolutionary transformations that are ongoing and interconnected. These involve both the business models and learning settings of online learning. In our view, these dimensions are undergoing transformations that will shake higher education’s world.

First, there is the evolution of the business models for institutions and formal learning enterprises from today’s traditional premium price model (bundled learning, assessment, and certification; a focus on what constitutes a quality education/institution; and traditional roles for faculty) to a transformed model (unbundled and reimagined teaching, learning, assessment, and certification; value-based in times of scarce resources; reinvented roles for faculty, mentors, instructional designers, and peer-to-peer learning; and changing the financial model to achieve financial sustainability and lower prices to the consumer).

Second, there is the evolution of the learning setting from the traditional institutional setting to a transformed, open setting in which “open” includes but is not limited to Open Educational Resources (OER). Open also means that users have far more choice today about what they learn, how they learn it, what if anything they pay for it, and who they learn it with/from (e.g. peer-to-peer learning and community of practice-based learning). Some of these transformations are being incorporated in traditional institutional settings. Others are occurring outside the realm of accredited institutions and formal learning enterprises.

So let’s begin by discussing five stages in the transformation of the business model for online. These are presented in the graphic “Evolving Models of Learning and Competence Building” attached at the end of the white paper. The horizontal axis represents progressive transformation of business models toward greater value and financial sustainability. The vertical axis represents progressive expansion of open learning practices, both within traditional institutions (represented by the expansion of the “institutional arrow” in each successive stage) and in emerging peer-to-peer environments, communities of practice, and “free range learning.”

This diagram presents these stages as logical, sequential stages of evolution for describing the current state of development of online practices. The reality is substantially more complex. First, individual institutions may demonstrate characteristics of several stages at any point in time. Second, individual institutions may experience a jump shift and make a leap from Stage I to Stages III or IV if they achieve strong leadership, learn from the best practices of others, and develop or acquire infrastructures, processes and competences. And third, the boundaries between institutional and open learning experiences will blur as institutional practice evolves into States Iv and V.

Stage I: Online/Blended Learning Innovations, Traditional Financial Model. The first stage is one in which traditional institutions enable their faculty to put courses online and progressively create various forms of online, blended, and e-learning offerings under the institutional brand. These offerings are often more expensive to develop and launch than the traditional institutional offerings. They do not achieve any breakthrough economies, may use traditional or adjunct faculty, and replicate many existing practices. They do not use technology to truly transform faculty roles and patterns of interactivity. In the long run, this digitize-the-traditional and incrementally-improve the approach to online learning is a transitional state. This model will not be sustainable in the face of national and global competition.

Online/blended/e-learning innovations can work to reduce the overall cost to students and the institution, even if the tuition charged to students is the same or greater than the tuition for face-to-face instruction. Online students not only save on transportation costs, they reduce the opportunity costs of travel time, lost income, and such. This can be a significant savings. Blended learning can save institutions the cost of new facilities by reducing classroom demand and allowing institutions to reduce the impact of commuter student traffic and use of on-campus facilities and services. Campuses in hyper-growth metropolitan areas like the University of Central Florida use combinations of online, blended, and e-learning to “sculpt” enrollments at their multiple physical campuses and in virtual learning spaces.

Moreover, the market leaders in online learning have shown that technology can be used to unbundle and transform the existing classroom-centric model for individual courses. The course reinvention efforts of Carol Twigg at the National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT) have improved performance and student success and reduced costs in virtually every physical or virtual course they have redesigned. Some institutions are scaling these processes to departmental, institution, or even system level. But the greatest challenge to scaling these approaches across the institutions has proven to be getting faculty and institutional leadership seriously interested in reducing costs, which some associate with diminishing quality. In times of constrained resources, institutional leaders need to focus on value, as well as quality. A genuine commitment to performance measurement and improvement requires a dedication to cost reduction in ways that does not diminish outcomes

These efforts at course reinvention can be a good start, but they are not sufficient to meet the challenges of establishing financial sustainability, post-recession. Sustainable online learning requires pervasive adoption of unbundling, reinvention, and a value focus to the entire online learning enterprise.

Many institutions remain stuck in the digitize-the-traditional-but-don’t-reinvent stage of development. In the WCET survey, most institutions were still searching for satisfactory, sustainable models for organizing and delivering online learning. They will continue to search fruitlessly unless they apply the following principle: The key to evolving new, sustainable models for online learning is to utilize technology to:

• unbundle and reinvent teaching, learning, assessment, and certification;

• focus on value, not just quality;

• change the use and roles of faculty, mentors, and peer-to-peer learning; and

• transform business models by: 1) continuously seeking new income streams that can mitigate the need to continuously increase tuition to fill revenue gaps 2) reducing operational overhead (i.e. new buildings, parking lots, dorms) and other costs; 3) seeking lower price points and enabling more rapid completion of learning objectives; and 4) reducing the total cost of achieving learning goals.

We remain hopeful that online, blended, and e-learning innovators will seize the opportunity to move on to transformation when they understand the potentials provided by Stages II-V, the challenges provided by the open learning movement, and the imperative of the Great Recession. The following stages illustrate how this evolution is being followed by market leaders.

Stage II: Unbundled Offerings, Reinvented Practices and Business Models, Premium Price. This stage developed at the same time as Stage I, but in different organizational cultures: for-profit institutions (and a small group of not-for-profit universities that deploy these techniques).

The for-profits such as the University of Phoenix, Capella University and others have utilized technology-supported learning to:

• reinvent their production function (using team-developed resources in all instances of creating courses ),

• engage mentors (who are not content experts) rather than traditional, tenure-track faculty, and

• deploy world-class (high-quality, high-value) online support services.

These providers also vet their offerings with employers more extensively, continuously and effectively than traditional universities.

This is neither black magic nor rocket science. The UK Open University pioneered many of these practices over 30 years ago as a not-for-profit, although recently it seems to be working hard to reinvent its mix of practices to fit today’s circumstances and to move to Stages III-V. Other non-profits like Regis University have emulated these methods. There may be as many as 1 million learners involved in these kinds of learning experiences.

These institutions focus on consistent, demonstrable outcomes and learning experiences especially attuned to the needs of working adult learners. The for-profits have achieved substantially lower production/delivery costs per student than traditional universities. This means paying close attention to class size: bigger means more opportunity to achieve economies of scale, without sacrificing quality of engagement and outcomes. Course materials are created by teams and used in all instances of the course. They utilize a core, standardized curricula to ensure consistency and quality of learning outcomes that, in turn allows for continuous improvements, refinements and ability to quickly incorporate new industry competencies. This practice affords economies of scope. At the same time, these institutions are able to charge a premium price for their offerings because of the recognized value they provide learners (courses taken sequentially, accelerated time to degree, lack of family/work barriers, and premium online services). The higher resulting margin/profit (difference between price and actual cost) is invested in extending institutional brand, business/industry market research, and instructional technology/systems development costs.

In future stages of development, many of today’s for-profit providers may not be able to maintain their current premium price levels, in the face of competition now emerging at the low end (from no-fee systems) and at the high end (from innovators such as Capella University who have migrated to a more competence-based approach that achieves a high perceived value with learners). Moreover, Capella-type innovators will be able to compete on lowering the total cost of achieving learning and competence objectives and eventually become certifying enterprises. More discussion about that in the description of Stages IV and V.

Stage III: Unbundled and Reinvented Offerings, Drive Down Marginal Costs, Offer a Market Competitive Price. Institutions like the Western Governors University, Florida State College at Jacksonville’s Open College, and Lamar University have reinvented the production function and faculty roles to achieve many of the financial advantages realized by the for-profits. They have used technology to unbundle and reinvent teaching, learning, assessment, and accreditation. While their methods vary, the basic principles are fundamentally the same.

These institutions pass the savings on to learners in the form of more competitive tuition – a strong value proposition. They charge a market-competitive rate that covers the marginal costs of learning. These institutions can grow based on tuition alone, rather than appropriations from their respective states. This is critical during times of financial recession, when student demand spikes and state resources decline.

Achieving this stage is essential for public institutions attempting to attain financial sustainability. It is a strong value position – but even this value position must be improved over time in the face of the withering competition that is emerging globally.

Stage IV: Continued Reinvention, Reduce Market Price and Total Cost of Competence, Respond to Competition. Inexorably, the affordability crisis will force learners and their families to search for better value/options. And the presence of new, lower-price alternatives will enable potential learners to shop around and consider different options.

Online providers will be driven to continue to reinvent their offerings, enhancing their value proposition through a variety of practices:

• create better, more amenable, and more effective, engaging learning and support experiences;

• demonstrate that their programs are linked to highly valued, demonstrable competences and employability success;

• decrease tuition and fees;

• reduce total cost of competence by reducing time to achieve competence objectives, certificates and degrees; and

• provide graduates with social-networking-based mechanisms for refreshing and maintaining their competences on an ongoing basis. Think of alumni associations as communities of practice, -- in particular disciplines, rather than as general purpose institutional associations. This could be especially attractive for online graduate programs that could be a ‘competency observatory” for their alumni, identifying emerging competences even before they are standard industry practice/requirements?.

These conditions will affect the for-profits as well as traditional institutions. The reduction in time to degree will be achieved in at least three ways:

• giving credit for prior learning more effectively and extensively,

• achieving competency-based approaches that unbundle and give credit for already acquired, demonstrated competences, and

• improving K-12 preparation for college-level work through P-20 improvement initiatives and partnerships. These efforts can substantially reduce the total cost of learning, over time.

A key factor in the price competition will be international competition. India- and China-based providers have entered the online tutoring business for K-12 and postsecondary education. They will soon be a force in online learning, as well, through acquisitions and repurposing of institutional providers in the US. Also, social networking-based learning offerings from commercial providers, perhaps using Second Life-like virtual and augmented reality environments, may soon enter the scene at very competitive price points.

Stage IV will be a time of withering competition and feverish efforts by institutional providers to demonstrate their adaptiveness and nimbleness in order to attract learners and offer distinctive, superior value propositions. Increasingly, open learning practices will be incorporated into institutional offerings and accepted for credit if they involve “recognized” providers (accredited with established articulation agreements). Fast, fluid, flexible, and affordable will be the watchwords of the day. Institutions will focus on developing infrastructure, support services, processes, and reward systems necessary to support these efforts.

Stage V: Continued Reinvention of Practices, Institutions Certify Both Institutional and Free-Range Learning. The graphic illustrates that with each successive stage of evolution, institutional learning also expands upward, embracing more open learning techniques within institutional learning practices. During Stage V, institutions will have incorporated open learning practices into their offerings and will accept and certify high-value outcomes provided by other institutions. In addition, selected leaders will have developed or acquired the capacity to certify free-range learning and competence building pursued by individuals independent of formal institutions.

This is a natural extension of the credit-for-prior-learning and competence-based learning movements. Not all institutions will have the core competences to become certification agencies for learning. Such institutions would likely charge a certification fee for conferring a degree for learning achieved elsewhere, in order to award valued certificates or degrees. This will prove attractive as peer-to-peer and “free range” learning opportunities develop. It is precisely the growth of non-institutional learning opportunities that is the second vector of evolution in e-learning methods, models, and practices.

It could take yearsfor this system of free-range learning and certification of competence to develop and be recognized and accepted by US employers. Decades, if the traditional pace of transformation persists. Or, it could happen more quickly than we think (it is already starting to happen elsewhere in the world). When it does, a learner who is home-schooled, self-taught or educated outside of the United States in a non-accredited institution, could take competency test/s and be granted a learning certificate or even a degree.

Leading institutions that develop the infrastructures, practices, processes, and core competences to demonstrate or certify competence will become certifying entities and/or license their practices to other institutions. This could be a lucrative business for forerunners like Capella University or Western Governors University who have led the way in competence-based learning and performance.

The Real Story About Online Learning - Revisited (Part I)

2009-11-20T10:02:00.004-05:00

Donald M. Norris, President and Chief Scientist, Strategic Initiatives, Inc.
Paul Lefrere, Partner, Strategic Initiatives and Professor, University of Tampere, Finland

Based on comments on our earlier blog on this topic, we have expanded it, added a graphic, and divided it into four parts:

I. Following the Example of Strategic Market Leaders
II. Two Evolutionary Transformations in the Models of Learning and Competence Building
III. Evolution in Learning Settings from Institutional to Open
IV. Getting Strategic About Online Learning

We shall post these over the next few days.

I. Following the Example of Strategic Market Leaders

Over the past several weeks, online learning has been in the news. Two points of reference are especially worth noting.

First, The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Education both reported on the recent report on online learning by Kenneth C. Green, Director of the Campus Computing Project. While there is a clear global trend towards lower-cost (even no-cost) online learning, this survey of senior officials at 182 public and private nonprofit colleges, conducted in conjunction with the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications (WCET), found that many US institutions actually charge a premium for their online offerings through higher tuition, fees, and special charges.

This survey also found that many US institutional leaders were uncertain about the profitability of their online operations or how they compared, performance-wise, with traditional offerings. Many institutions were still searching for effective organizational models and structures for online learning. Dr. Green also found that many institutions were reticent to provide their data in ways that would reveal their practices.

Second, last week the 15th Annual Meeting of the Sloan Consortium explored the state of best practice in online, blended, and e-learning. The progressive growth of online learning has been chronicled by Sloan’s Annual Survey. By extrapolating 2008 figures, Dr. Frank D. Mayadas, founder of the Sloan Consortium, projected that in 2009 well over 4 million students may be enrolled in at least one online course in the United States. Even this figure underestimates the penetration of online practices.. Many students are concurrently enrolled in blended and e-learning offerings at colleges and universities that that are enthusiastically rolling out new elearning offerings from coast to coast and beyond.

Yet Sloan’s emphasis has been on the mainstreaming of online learning, rather than on the transformational potential of online practices to deconstruct and reinvent educational practices and change the financial business model for higher education. It is our contention that transformational potential is the real story about online learning. Selected market leaders are demonstrating these practices, today.

Understand the Leaders, Not Just the Entire Population

None of this is truly surprising to anyone familiar with the development of online and blended learning in US higher education. Online and blended learning are broadly practiced, but true breakthrough practices are very limited to a set of market leaders, many of them for-profit institutions.

Online, Blended, and e-Learning, Broadly Practiced. Initially, most institutions use online learning to replicate their courses and curriculum practices in an online mode, making adjustments for the differences between the nature of online and face-to-face experiences. From this initial development phase, they progressively improve and enhance the online experience and discover the power that blended learning offers, combining online and physical elements to create more engaging student experiences. Blended learning has become the preferred mode for many practitioners, enabling institutions to reduce the need for classroom space and change pedagogical practices. Finally, institutional leaders incorporate the lessons learned from online and blended offerings to further enhance all face-to-face instruction with technology resources and techniques that work. As a result, face-to-face instruction morphs into ”e-learning.” Institutional leaders leverage this range of technology-supported learning offerings to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their offerings and to provide learners with a portfolio of choices. Offering a range of instructional choices is especially attractive to adult learners and students who are working (the most recent data suggests that 70% or more of full-time enrolled students are working at least part-time.)

Breakthroughs by Market Leaders. Unlike emerging practice elsewhere in the world, the majority of US practitioners have not attempted systematically and systemically to unbundle learning, assessment, and certification and reinvent faculty roles. Nor have they attempted to fundamentally change the business model or price points for learning. For these reasons, looking at the herd is less instructive than understanding the global leaders and extrapolating their innovations into the future.

By examining the breakthroughs achieved in online learning by today’s current or emerging market leaders, both in the United States and abroad, we can better understand the real story about the potential future of technology-supported learning in all its settings and permutations. In this paper, we use the behavior of market leaders and trend setters to sketch the likely evolutionary path of online learning. We also describe how the vast number of mainstream practitioners can position themselves to take advantage of this evolution and position themselves for success while others, less well-prepared, face the withering competition to come.

Why Has Online Learning Become Even More Strategic?

Up to this point in its development, online learning has been waging a battle of acceptance with faculty, institutional leaders, and even some students. Research has shown that online learning has progressively come to be regarded as equivalent or even superior in some ways to traditional, face-to-face learning, especially among 18-24 year old and working adult learners and faculty who were early adopters..

But the Great Recession and the American Higher Education Affordability Crisis have raised the stakes for online learning not just in the U.S., but globally. Transformed versions of online, blended and e-learning hold the potential to be essential elements of the reimagining of American higher education, post recession, to make it sustainable worldwide. Four factors make this so:

• Addressing the American Affordability Crisis. Learners and parents are facing an affordability crisis of unprecedented propositions. In America, the cumulative effect of year-after-year escalating costs of tuition has outstripped the rate of inflation for 30 years running. Gradually American higher education a pricey if not unattainable proposition, for many potential learners. The current recession, rising unemployment, and collapse of the housing market have reduced the net worth of families and changed the educational plans of many learners.

Community colleges and for-profit educational providers have experienced explosive growth in demand this year as learners turn to more convenient, local, high-value, alternatives to mid-ranking public four-year institutions and private colleges. Some community colleges in especially strapped states like California have turned away legions of students this year. Truly transformed learning, using combinations of online, blended, and e-learning, has the potential to both reduce the total cost of achieving competence objectives and improve the success of learners by providing a range and mix of options that meet their personal and financial needs.

The pages of The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Education are peppered with stories of community colleges, in particular, whose leaders are experimenting with increasingly transformative mixtures of solutions to these challenges.

• Achieving Financial Sustainability Requires Transformation. The model for funding public institutions is broken, as has been reflected in the diminishing relative level of public support for education in general over the past three decades. During recessionary times, community colleges and other public four-year institutions typically experience their greatest enrollment demand at a time when state and local resources decline. Transformed learning can change the business model so that the marginal cost of learning is consistently reduced to less than the price of tuition, allowing growth to meet demand, even during recession. Market leaders have already achieved this goal. Post recession, the rest of American higher education needs to adopt and scale these practices.

• Transformed Online Learning is a Part of Broader Institutional Strategies. Institutional leaders have spent 2008 “staunching the flow” of the resource impact of the Great Recession. They recognize that they must use 2009-2012 to aggressively leverage stimulus funding and discover not just efficiencies, but innovations and transformations that will enable them to achieve financial sustainability when the stimulus money is gone. Transformed online, blended, and e-learning is one of a set of even broader institutional strategies to achieve financial sustainability that we mention in our white paper, “Linking Analytics to Lifting out of Recession.”

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. The link between learning and employability is tenuous and must be strengthened if America’s to regain its competitive position in the global economy. Learning experiences must be more closely linked to active, immersive application and to the workplace. The capacity to perpetually enhance competences to maintain or raise competitiveness is enhanced with online learning and Web 2.0 tools and patterns of interactivity.

As we look at the future potential of online learning and competence building, we should learn from market leaders how to leverage transformation in business models and learning settings, as described in the next series of blogs..

The Real Story about Online Learning

2009-10-24T08:20:00.002-04:00

This week, online learning has been in the news. Both The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Education reported on the recent report by Kenneth C. Green, Director of the Campus Computing Project. While there is a clear global trend towards lower-cost (even no-cost) online learning, this survey of senior officials at 182 public and private nonprofit colleges, conducted in conjunction with the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications (WCET), found that many US institutions actually charge a premium for their online offerings through higher tuition, fees, and special charges.

This survey also found that many US institutional leaders were uncertain about the profitability of their online operations or how they compared, performance-wise, with traditional offerings. Dr. Green also found that many institutions were None of this is truly surprising to anyone familiar with the dereticent to provide their data or to illuminate their offerings.

Understand the Leaders, Not the Herd. None of this is surprising to anyone familiar with the development of online learning in US higher education. Most institutions use online and hybrid learning to replicate their existing classroom practices, online. Unlike emerging practice elsewhere in the world, they do not attempt to unbundle learning, assessment, and certification. Nor do they attempt to change the business model or price points for learning. For these reasons, looking at the herd is less instructive than understanding the global leaders and extrapolating their innovations into the future.

By examining the breakthroughs achieved by true market leaders, both in the US and abroad, in online learning, we can understand the real story about the future of technology-supporting learning in all its settings.

Two Evolutionary Transformations in the Models of Learning and Competence Building. In understanding the leaders, one should examine two evolutionary transformations that are ongoing and interconnected.

First, the evolution of the business models for institutions and formal learning enterprises from the traditional higher education model (bundled learning, assessment, and certification; quality-focused; traditional business model with premium price) to a transformed model (unbundled and reimagined learning; value-based, changingthe financial model with lower price to the consumer).

Second, the evolution of the learning setting from the traditional institutional setting to the transformed, open setting of peer-to-peer and community of practice-based learning.

So let’s begin with five stages in the transformation of the business model for online learning toward a focus on value.

First Stage in Business Model Evolution for Learning Institutions: Replicating Practices Online. The first stage is one in which traditional institutions enable their faculty to put courses online and create various forms of online offerings under the institutional brand. These offerings are often more expensive to develop and offer than the traditional institutional offerings because they do not achieve any breakthrough economies, they use traditional faculty, and replicate many existing practices. They do not use technology to transform faculty roles and patterns of interactivity. In the long run, this digitize-the-traditional approach to online learning will not be sustainable in the face of national and global competition.

The market leaders in online learning and the course reinvention efforts of Carol Twigg at the National Center for Academic Transformation have shown that technology can be used to improve performance/success and reduce costs in virtually every physical or virtual course. Sustainable online learning requires the pervasive application of these principles to the entire online learning enterprise

Many institutions remain stuck in the digitize-the-traditional-but-don’t-reinvent stage of development. In the WCET survey, most institutions were still searching for satisfactory, sustainable models for organizing and delivering online learning. They will continue to search fruitlessly unless they apply the following principle. The keys to evolving new, sustainable models for online learning is to utilize technology to:

• unbundle and reinvent teaching, learning, assessment, and certification;

• focus on value, not just quality;

• change the use and roles of faculty, mentors, and peer-to-peer learning; and

• transform business models by continuously seeking new income streams that can reduce the need to charge users, reducing costs, seeking lower price points and enabling more rapid completion of learning objectives, reducing total cost of achieving learning goals..

The following stages illustrate how this evolution is being followed by market leaders.

Second Stage in Business Model Evolution: For-Profit Universities and non-Profits that Emulate Them. This stage developed at the same time as Stage 1, but in different organizational cultures: for-profit institutions (and a small group of not-for-profit universities that deploy these techniques).

The for-profits such as the University of Phoenix, Capella University and the rest have utilized online learning to reinvent their production function (using team-developed resources in all instances of a course), engage mentors (not content experts rather than faculty, and deploy world-class (high-quality, high-value) online support services. These providers also vet their offerings with employers more extensively and effectively than traditional universities. This is not black magic or rocket science: the UK Open University pioneered many of these practices over 30 years ago as a not-for-profit, although like everyone it is reinventing its practices to fit today’s circumstances and trying to move fast to stages 3-5. Other non-profits like Regis University have emulated these methods.

These institutions focus on getting substantially lower production/delivery costs per student than traditional universities. This means paying close attention to class size: bigger means more opportunity to achieve economies of scale. Course materials are created by teams and used in all instances of the course. They utilize a core, standardized curricula that ensures quality and allows for continuous improvements, refinements and ability to quickly include new industry competencies. This can give economies of scope. At the same time, these institutions are able to charge a premium price for their offerings because of the recognized value they provide learners (who value shortened courses, accelerated learning for adults, lack of barriers, and premium online services). The higher resulting margin (difference between price and actual cost) is spent on marketing, profits, business/industry market research. and instructional technology/systems development costs.

In future stages of development, today’s for-profit providers may not be able to maintain their current premium price levels, in the face of competition now emerging at the low end (from no-fee systems) and at the high end (from innovators such as Capella University that have migrated to a competence-based approach that is more valued). Moreover, Capella-type innovators will be able to compete on lowering the total cost of achieving learning objectives and eventually become certifying enterprises. More discussion about that in the description of stages 4 and 5.

Third Stage in Business Model Evolution: Marginal Costs Driven Down to Less Than the Cost of Tuition at a Market Competitive Price. Institutions like the Western Governors University, Florida State College at Jacksonville’s Open College, and Lamar University have reinvented the production function and faculty roles to achieve many of the financial advantages realized by the for-profits. They have used technology to unbundle and reinvent teaching, learning, assessment, and accreditation.

But these institutions pass the savings on to learners in the form of more competitive tuition – a strong value proposition. They charge a market-competitive tuition which covers the marginal costs of learning. These institutions can grow based on tuition, alone, rather than appropriations from the state. This is critical during times of financial recession, when student demand spikes and state resources decline.

Achieving this stage is essential for public institutions attempting to attain financial sustainability. It is a strong value position – but even this value position will be improved over time and in the face of the withering competition that is emerging globally.

Fourth Stage in Business Model Reinvention: Reduction in Market Price and Total Cost of Degrees. Inexorably, the affordability crisis will force learners and their families to search for better value/options. Online providers will be driven to enhance their value proposition in four ways: 1) create better, more amenable, and more effective learning experiences; 2) demonstrate that their programs are linked to employability success; 3) decrease tuition and fees; and 4) reduce total cost of education by reducing time to degrees. This will affect the for-profits as well as traditional institution.

The reduction in time to degree will be achieved in three ways: 1) giving credit for prior learning more effectively and extensively, 2) competency-based approaches that unbundle and give credit for already acquired, demonstrated competences, 3) improved K-12 preparation through P-20 improvement initiatives. These efforts can substantially reduce the total cost of learning, over time.

A key factor in the price competition will be international competition. India- and China-based providers are entering the equation. Also, social networking-based learning offerings from commercial providers, perhaps using Second Life-like virtual and augmented reality, may soon enter the competitive scene at very competitive price points.

Fifth Stage: Some Institutions Become Certification Agencies. A natural extension of the credit-for-prior-learning and competence-based learning movements is for some institutions to become certification agencies for learning. Such institutions would charge a certification fee for conferring a degree for learning achieved elsewhere This will prove attractive as peer-to-peer and “free range” learning opportunities develop. It is precisely the growth of non-institutional learning opportunities that is the second vector of evolution in elearning methods, models, and practices.

It could take years for this system of free-range learning and certification of competence to develop and be recognized and accepted by US employers. Or it could happen more quickly than we think (it is already starting to happen elsewhere in the world). When it does, a learner who is home-schooled, self-taught or educated-outside-of-the-US in a non-accredited institution, could take competency test/s and be granted a learning certificate or even a degree.

Evolution of Learning Settings from Institutional to Open. The learning settings described in the first vector of evolution are institutional: Traditional colleges and universities (including their extension and continuing education divisions), for-profit universities, and learning enterprises in corporations. These so-called “institutional” settings will continue to be the primary players in traditional learning. But they will see their dominance shrink in the face of open learning environments that are the property of the student, not the institution. The challenge institutions face is to keep pace with both the changing nature of knowledge and competence and the inexorable move toward greater value in learning and competence building experiences. Over time, open learning with the student at the center of a personal learning environment (as a free-range learner) will be the predominant mode for learners over the course of their lives.

Clear “stages” of open learning have not yet revealed themselves. They may emerge over time – or not. But there are several prototypes and expeditionary experiments that have been described in earlier blogs. Some of the forms of open learning environments and experiences are described below.

Peer-to-Peer Voluntary Associations. A recent article in Fast Company, “How Web-Savvy Edupunks are Transforming American Higher Education,” described the growing movement toward high-tech, do-it-yourself education. Some of these experiments reside within existing institutional settings, such as classes structured like role-playing, serious games that are being tested out in universities across the globe. Others are occurring in start-up organizations, like Peer2Peer University and the University of the People, attempting to bridge the gap between free online materials and cheap education.

Neeru Paharia and Jan Phillip Schmidt have hacked together Peer2Peer University, which uses a Web site to enable would-be-students to convene and schedule courses, meet online, tutor one another, all facilitated by a volunteer. This is very much a demonstration of concept. Shai Reshef founded University of the People and has his first class of 300 students from nearly 100 countries. His aim is to offer bachelor’s degrees in business and computer science using open courseware and volunteer faculty for a price of about $4,000 for a four-year degree.

Other pundits, such as Richard Vedder have mused about associate degrees for as little as $2,000.

Formal Communities of Practice. Informal and formal communities of practice are common in the world of business and professional practice. These sorts of communities will become the focal points for open learning experiences in the future. Earlier blogs described the efforts of Oregon State University to create an Open Campus dedicated to community-based learning. Another example is the Food Safety Knowledge Network.

In their partnership with the Global Food Safety Initiative, Michigan State is developing the Food Safety Knowledge Network (FSKN), a program of food safety resources to efficiently and effectively reach competency at all levels of food safety. The FSKN will use open resource techniques (social networking, dynamic knowledge sharing and evaluation tools) to harmonize standards, practices, qualifications, and training criteria. The FSKN pilot platform will be in place in late 2009 and will be rolled out globally in 2010. The FSKN will create a curriculum for food safety competency through partnerships with industry, government, academia, local/regional authorities, and other stakeholders. Coupled with a unique learning environment using face-to-face sessions, seminars, formal courses and on-line learning, it will present a low cost, fast and efficient way for professionals to achieve competence qualifications across all sectors of the food safety industry.

Community-of-practice learning is likely to thrive in the Web 2.0 environment. Its permutations are virtually limitless. One of the advantages of learning based on real communities of practices will be the capacity to receive early warning of the emerging competences that are essential in particular fields of endeavor. Communities of practices will be able to identify, promote, and develop fresh competences among large bodies of participating practitioners at warp speed. And without involving anything remotely esembling a campus curriculum committee.

Free-Range Open Learning. Over time, individual learners will have access to a vast constellation of open learning experiences. These will range from formal communities of practice and competence building networks, to easily configured, temporary learning cohorts. Using these tools and experiences, individuals will be able to develop, maintain, and extend their competence in a variety of ways and at very reasonable prices, or even at no cost. Even when “mature”, this constellation of alternatives will be perpetually changing, adapting, and improving.

This environment will constitute a “free range” option for learners who appreciate alternatives to traditional or even transformed institutional learning. These options will enable most adult learners to more easily advance and maintain their competences and acquire new and emerging skills at a pace that institutional learning cannot match – at least not today (just as there is no “I” in team, there is no “curriculum committee” in open learning).

Open learning environments and experiences will interact with institutional learning, assessment, and certification experiences. Institutions that do an excellent job of competence-based learning may become certifying entities that charge a fee for authenticating competences acquired through open learning and awarding credit, certificates and degrees for a fee. This is one way in which the two evolutional paths of learning and competence with link together. Mash-ups to offer that link are under development in Europe, in partnerships between business/industry (a primary source of information on the skills that graduates need to be employable) and universities. As an example the description and materials on Project Role, an EU-funded initiative ( http://www.role-project.eu)

Many Models, Competing for Learners. These two evolutionary paths do not suggest that any single model will become dominant for all learners, at all stages of their development. But they do mean that institutions will need to sort out their competitive position and determine how to provide the constellation of options that will be optimally attractive to their learners. Merely digitizing the traditional and hoping for the best will not be a winning strategy.

This will be the subject of future blogs: How institutions can capitalize on the dual evolutionary paths of learning and competence building. This is critical to reimagining higher education to establish finance sustainability.

Action Analytics: Setting a National Agenda

2009-09-25T09:35:00.003-04:00

I have just returned from three days at the first National Symposium on Action Analytics. In a short time, great strides were made in framing, shaping, and advancing this critical topic.

The event was co-sponsored by the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities and Capella University. This is the first time a major public university system and a for-profit university have collaborated on a venture such as this, seeking to attract thought leaders, practitioners, policy makers, and visionaries to frame a national agenda for advancing action analytics as an instrument and inititaive to support the nation's education, training, and workforce development imperatives.

The core planning and facilitaton team for the Symposium consisted of Dr. Linda Baer, Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs, Minnesota State Colleges and universities; Dr, Michael Offerman, Vice Chairman of Capella Educational Company; Dr. Mark Milliron, Founder aqnd CEO of Catalyze Learning International; and Donald M. Norris, President of Strategic Initiatives, Inc.

The symposium was supported by two white papers, "Why Action Analytics for Higher Education?" and "Linking Analytics to Lifting out of Recession." The sessions consisted of a series of panels, presentations, and conversations about current best practices in analytics; what information, reports, and dashboards are needed; building analytics to support institutional and public policy; and building the next generation of educational technology tools to support action analytics. The final half day was spent discussing the issues relating to a national agenda for action analytics. This provided input to the core team who will prepare a draft white paper summarizing the need for and elements of a national agenda.

Future blogs will present the elements of the national agenda as they are framed, funded, and advanced.

Why Higher Education Must Transform, Post Recession

2009-09-16T07:36:00.003-04:00

I just returned from the 2009 Governor’s Conference on Postsecondary Education Trusteeship in Kentucky, whose theme was “Raising the Bar: Access, Quality, and Success”. This Conference was hosted by the Kentucky Council for Postsecondary Education (CPE).

I had the privilege and pleasure of addressing the new trustees on the topic of “Re-imagining Higher Education, Post-Recession.” In the conversations with the trustees, we explored many of the topics, perspectives, and initiatives that have been featured on this blog over the past few months.

Many of the trustees are seasoned business persons and/or community leaders whose enterprises and local communities are undergoing their own reimagining processes. From their own experiences, many trustees appreciated that the one-two-three punch we have discussed in previous blogs could be applied to lifting out of recession:

• Aggressively harvesting productivity gains to improve efficiency and effectiveness;

• Leveraging innovation and transformation to change the nature of products, services, and experiences offered by enterprises and how they align with emerging marketplace realities and the changing value preferences of customers and stakeholders; and

• Seeking new revenue sources and fresh variations on existing revenue streams.

Yet several questions kept recurring. Why hasn’t transformation succeeded more broadly in higher education before now and what new tools and practices will make this possible? What is it about today’s external and internal conditions that can be leveraged to motivate colleges and universities to re-imagine themselves for the post-recession world? How can inertia be overcome?

To answer these questions, I took a brisk walk through recent history, describing the evolution of the tools of re-imagination and transformation. As benchmarks, I used three books published over the past 13 years by the Society for College and University Planning, which captured the evolution of the tools of transformation.

Transforming Higher Education: A Vision for Learning in the 21st Century - The Vision and the Voice. In 1995, Michael Dolence and I wrote Transforming Higher Education: A Vision for Learning in the 21st Century. In this book, we projected the substantial growth in post-secondary learning that was likely to occur by the year 2000 to meet the needs of the workforce. We projected the robust growth in the number of new learners both in the USA and internationally that would be required to meet the needs of the Information Age.

By our reckoning, it would be practically and financially infeasible to meet these needs through building traditional campuses and proceeding with the traditional “factory” model of higher education, which was based on the familiar processes and practices where teaching, learning, assessment, and certification are bundled together in classrooms directed by traditional faculty.

The Transforming Higher Education model suggested realigning higher education to meet the needs of the workforce and the changing perspectives of learners. This would involve redefining, redesigning, and reengineering processes and practices to create fast, fluid, and flexible educational options for learners. These options would have to range from the traditional to the transformed. We suggested that new technologies were evolving that would enable the deconstruction and reengineering of higher education, elements key to re-imagination. Our model arrived on the scene just as the tools were developing that would eventually sustain the World Wide Web – the Web browser, high-speed Internet access from/to homes and businesses, the consistency of Internet standards such as HTTP and HTML, and the wonderful facility of search and interactivity. The Web and its associated capabilities would become a fundamental enabler of deconstruction and reinvention of educational processes and practices.

Transforming Higher Education appeared in the same year that William J. Baumol and Sue Anne Batey Blackman wrote “How to Think About Rising College Costs” in Planning for Higher Education. In this seminal article, they observed that higher education and health care were “handicraft” professions which had not been transformed by the application of technology-enabled productivity gains. Products, services and experiences in other industries were being reinvented to reduce cost and enhance value, unlike health care and education. As a result, healthcare and education became and continued to become increasingly more expensive compared to everything else in the market basket of services.

If past trends were to continue, Baumol and Bateman extrapolated that the combination of education and health care could rise from 20% of GDP in 1990 to over 50% by 2040. Clearly, these escalating costs would be difficult to sustain, a point that has been affirmed by the current health care debate and by progressive cuts in the relative support of public higher education over the past 20 years.

Put simply, for fifteen years we have recognized the appeal of transforming higher education and the increasingly unsustainable nature of financing for handicraft approaches to health care and education. But we lacked the tools and practices to transform and the collective will to challenge practices that had made us successful. After all American higher education reigned as the global leader in quality rankings and in the educational attainments of our population. Absent an immediate crisis or a clear external threat to mobilize our energies and diminish our over-confidence, American higher education proceeded on its time-honored path.

Transforming e-Knowledge: A Revolution in Knowledge Sharing – The Web-based Tools of Knowledge Sharing and Communities of Practice. In 2001, Jon Mason and Paul Lefrere and I wrote Transforming e-Knowledge: A Revolution in the Sharing of Knowledge. This book described the emergence of the Internet culture and “Web 1.0,” the first generation of highly facilitated knowledge sharing in combination with easy and continuous interactivity, all based on the World Wide Web.

This book suggested that the combination of knowledge sharing services and pervasive social interactivity were gestating a new generation of online “communities of practice.” These communities would enable enterprises, professional disciplines, industries, and even regions or nations to provide perpetual learning experiences that fused with work, learning, knowledge building, and practice. Such communities of practice could prove to be fast, fluid, flexible, and affordable in ways that traditional higher education could not.

Our view was that Web-based engagement and interactivity were powerful instruments for transformation and re-imagination of perpetual, lifelong learning. We predicted that learning enterprises would experience cascading cycles of reinvention in their best practices for e-learning, knowledge management, and shareable educational resources. This would result in reinvented strategies and business models for e-learning, as well.

Transforming e-Knowledge anticipated the further evolution of Web 1.0 into Web 2.0, which enabled both the spontaneous and purposeful creation of social networks and open educational resources. Web 2.0 has also provided the means to provide rapid competence development for enterprises or other groups facing major dislocations and the need for speedy adaptation of new perspectives and practices. The open educational resources (OER) movement is most recognizably demonstrated by the OpenCourseWare Initiative, through which leading institutions like MIT and Carnegie Mellon University are making their entire body of course knowledge and tradecraft available to the world, for free.

These movements associated with Web 2.0 are key ingredients in the ultimate transformation of elements of higher education. They are creating the capacity to deconstruct educational delivery and interactivity and to create dramatically less expensive and more flexible options than the traditional higher education model. The availability of re-imagined options will percolate through higher education, resulting in a multitude of combinations and permutations of learning, demonstration of accomplishment, and certification. Operating within this marketplace of choices, learners, employers, policy makers and other stakeholders will decide which customized options meet their particular needs.

A Guide to Planning for Change – Combining Analytics and Alignment in Leading and Navigating Change. Web 2.0 provided the means for transforming learning and fusing work, learning and practice in ways that have never been possible. In addition, Web 2.0 has enabled the emergence of a new generation of analytics that allow leaders to focus on performance and value to shape the re-imagination of higher education.

In 2008 Nick Poulton and I published A Guide to Planning for Change, which prepared educational planners for crafting and executing strategy and building organizational capacity in the context of today’s changing environment for learning and work.

The major contribution of this book to the toolkit of transformation is its recognition that institutional leaders will need to enhance their use of analytics substantially in order to lead and navigate institutions into a sustainable future. This will require developing a strong culture of performance measurement and improvement. It will also require the careful combination of the tools of analytics with tools of alignment so measurement against targets can be aligned with institutional strategies and refined as the strategies are executed.

Put simply, these books illustrate three underlying forces or developments driving or enabling transformation of higher education:

• The fact that traditional approaches to teaching and learning are financially not sustainable as the means for addressing the boundless requirements of global, perpetual learning, cradle through career;

• Web-enabled revolutions in knowledge sharing and interactivity enable the deconstruction of traditional learning models and the creation new community-based modes of learning; and

• The capacity of Web-enabled analytics to illuminate performance and value are key factors in making the case for transformation and redefining financial sustainability.

The importance of these factors has been multiplied by the stunning events of 2008-2009, when we were hit both with financial disaster and the realization that we have squandered our lead as the global leader in mass education.

The Perfect Storm Arrives – the Great Recession, the Affordability Crisis, and Declining American Competitiveness. The collapse of the financial markets in 2008 and the resulting “Great Recession” hit higher education hard: reductions in state appropriations for public institutions, dramatic cuts in investment income that have most dramatically impacted private institutions, and traumatic declines in the capacity of parents and students to pay for higher education, today and continuing into the future. This affordability crisis will likely continue and perhaps worsen even after economic conditions improve.

The third element of this “Perfect Storm” has been the realization that the United States has lost competitive bragging rights to being the most highly educated nation. A fundamental ingredient in America’s economic strength, post-WW II, has been our investment in higher education, especially mass public higher education. We led the world in the percentage of young people going college and graduating. But over the past two decades, industrialized nations in Europe and Asia have invested heavily in education and some have surpassed us by some measures. We are now 14th in college attendance rates and our current generation of young people promises to the first that is less well-educated than their parents.

We are all familiar with the short-term adjustments pummeling campuses today: financial rescissions, travel freezes, short-term fixes, competing for and leveraging stimulus money, lay-offs, furloughs, pay cuts, creative approaches to financial aid, continuing to increase tuition to fill the gaps, compressing the time for an undergraduate degree from four (or more) to three years, and enrollment shifts to less-expensive institutions. In the short-run, financial exigency and expediency seem to be trumping innovation on many campuses. But campus financial officers anticipate worse budgetary challenges in two to three years, when stimulus money is gone. Moreover, demands for transparency and accountability are growing. .

To reclaim financial sustainability in the future, institutions will need to pursue aggressive, mixed strategies of operational efficiency, innovation, transformed and re-imagined processes and practices, and fresh revenues. Our current Perfect Storm of financial and competitive bad news opens the door to opportunities to overcome persistent resistance to change in higher education and to establish the financial sustainability that has eluded us for the past 15 years.

Transformation and Reimagination, Post-Recession. The call to transform higher education has attracted more and more supporters over the past 15 years. . Some innovations have scaled to entire institutions and flourished. Yet many other innovative and transformative projects in higher education have been “one-off” successes that have failed to be replicated by others. The following green shoots of transformation have appeared and spread around the higher education landscape,[you’ve already alluded to ‘green’] heralding future, enterprise-wide efforts:

• For-profit universities (e.g., University of Phoenix, Capella University, Strayer University, and a host of others) and public/private institutions that act like for-profits (e.g., Western University of Maryland University College, Regis University) have deconstructed and reinvented the traditional university model, deploying different best practices, strategies, and business models; many of these have been able to charge premium prices for their offerings; the for-profit higher education sector has been the fastest growing sector in higher education and its de facto skunk works;

• Some of these online institutions have taken a strong competence-based approach (e.g., Capella University, Western Governors University), leading to consistency of outcomes, demonstrable competences, and template/rubric-based grading and assessment;

• Disruptive innovators like Lamar University, on-line tutoring providers from India, and other on-line providers have offered re-imagined, online offerings at dramatically lower price points from traditional providers and even existing on-line providers; these are the harbingers of a coming generation of lower-price, “good enough” providers;

• Innovations in e-learning and blended learning have exposed most institutions and faculty to new approaches to digital scholarship and learning; some universities have formed unsuccessful online universities (e.g., University of Illinois Global Campus) while others have been successful (e.g. UMass Online);

• Carol Twigg and the National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT) have established a solid, decade-long record of utilizing technology and faculty engagement to reinvent courses, dramatically changing patterns of interactivity and in the process reducing costs and improving student performance; these individual-course-based reinventions have been expanded in some cases to entire institutions (University of Hawaii) and even systems of institutions (University of North Carolina System);

• Many institutions (e.g., University of Wisconsin System, Minnesota State Colleges and Universities) have established successful collaborative degree programs and programmatic networks in high demand areas such as nursing; such collaborations set the stage for serious consideration of consolidating learning resources between institutions, and reducing the span of disciplines covered by faculty in particular institutions (e.g., Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education);

• The open educational resources movement (OER) has grown dramatically, providing open courseware and resources that are being embedded in course experiences across the world; President Obama plans to fund $500 M to expand the use of open educational resources to increase the reach and richness of open education resources; the extension of open resources into social networking-based learning experiences are being prototyped by Peer2Peer University and other fledgling organizations that seek to enable learners to mash-up courses of their own, demonstrate mastery, and achieve certification for learning, outside of a traditional university framework; and

• New approaches to green careers networks and communities are germinating across education and the workplace, breaking down normal institutional and employer boundaries; these include social networking-based communities.

Across the country, the institutional leaders with whom I have spoken have used the past year to cut, stabilize and respond to their institution’s Perfect Storm. This fall they seem poised to embark on serious efforts to re-imagine how their institutions need to function in 2020 to be successful and financially sustainable. They are poised to aggressively undertake actions over the next several years to put them on that path.

What Value-Based Questions Would Prospective Students Ask?

2009-09-07T08:17:00.002-04:00

If students and their parents were evaluating institutions on value, what questions would they expect to have answered by institutions? Consider the following:

• What percentage of students like me (based on my high school GPA and test scores) graduate with a bachelors degree in dour years? What are the average, cumulative student loan burdens for students like me at graduation (given my average family income)?

• How satisfied are students like me with their experience at your institution? How do you know? Are the results posted on your Website?

• What percentages of your students work while attending colleges? What work study programs and other programs do you offer to enable students to pay for part of their education?

• What percentage of your graduates are employed six months after graduation? How satisfied are they? How did you find out?

• How do you assure that academic offerings in the programs I am interested in are aligned with the needs of employers and the marketplace? How do you know you are succeeding?

• Can students achieve a baccalaureate in three years at your institution (or even less)? How about a 3+2 or 2+2 masters degree (and in what disciplines)? Do you have pathways, bridging, concurrent enrollment and articulation programs with local K-12 schools, community colleges, and other institutions? How about cooperative education programs (and I what disciplines)?

• What mechanism and support services are provided to monitor and support student success – in real time? What are your career planning and placements services like? How highly do they rank in comparison with other schools?

• Does your institution offer “no frills” options? Do you offer a menu of optional learning and experiential electives (e.g., internships, study-abroad, collaborative networks and joint enrollment with international institutions)for extra fees?

• Will your institution allow mw to take online courses from other providers if you are not able to schedule an adequate offering of the courses I need to stay on track with my degree plan? How does this work? Do you utilize relationships with other institutions to provide specialty courses that are not in your catalogue or not available when I will need them?

• What does your institution do to hold down the cost of books, course materials, and “fees”? Do you provide online resources rather than expensive textbooks? Do you provide students with a range of cost options?

• Can I utilize online and/or hybrid courses, coupled with creative scheduling, so that I only need to come to campus one day a week? Why not?

Once enrolled, value-drive institutions are keen on maximizing their opportunities for success. They would expect their institution to provide support services and retention-building analytics and be able to answer the following questions:

• How am I succeeding in this class compared to my classmates? How does my performance compare with students who have taken this course in the past?

• What patterns of engagement have characterized students who have been successful in the past? How does this compare with my record? (e.g., participation in institutional activities, engagement in and use of online resources and materials, other factors)

• In my degree program, what levels of engagement, academic performance, and other factors have led to graduates who were successful in graduating and achieving employment (e.g., results derived from data mining and meta-analysis)

• What importance have co-curricular activities played in the academic and employment success of past graduates? Do you have evidence?

• What competences (e.g., disciplinary knowledge, communication, teamwork, leadership, and others) have employers specified as important for graduates in my major? How can I demonstrate my proficiency and accomplishments in these competences?

Not all students will be strongly value-driven. Some will seek educational and developmental experiences that are highly traditional. But more and more, learners and their parents will select institutions based on their capacity to delivery not just quality – but value.

Reimagining Higher Education Based on Value (3)

2009-09-04T09:23:00.002-04:00

This is the third and final blog on this topic – at least for now. We will revisit this topic again, soon.

I’ll begin by referencing a provocative article, “the good enuf rvlutn” in this month’s Wired magazine by Senior Editor, Robert Capps.

Good Enough is Preferable for Many Products and Experiences. The basic premise of the article is that ubiquitous Web tools are succeeding by providing experiences that are “Good Enough.” Web-based disruptive technologies furnish consumers with a variety of product and service options and consumers are consistently choosing the ones that are not the highest quality, in the traditional sense of the term. Rather, they are choosing the options that provide accessibility, the new killer app. Accessibility is reflected in ease of use, continuous availability, and low price. The Web makes it easier to achieve all of these.

So MP3 tunes replace higher fidelity CD music; Hulu provides access to lower definition TV on your computer, whenever you want it; Kindle provides a reading experience without complex graphics and art but with instant portability for hundreds of titles; netbooks offer puny computing capabilities, but appeal due to accessibility and price; and virtual trade shows powered by solicitous sales avatars are expected to grow 500% this year, fueled by economic concerns and the desire to do business at bargain basement prices.

The same reasoning applies to physical products, such as Single Use Digital Cameras and stripped-down camcorders (Pure Digital’s Flip Ultra). Light and nimble products are highly popular in the afterglow of the worst economic downturn in 70 years.

The Good Enough effect is also reflected in more serious minded concerns, like healthcare. For example, consider a new initiative by Kaiser Permanente, the largest not-for profit medical organization in the country. For years, Kaiser Permanente has relied on building complete, self-sustaining hospitals, employing 50 doctors or more, offering one-stop shopping for a region. But since Kaiser has digitized all patient records, prescriptions, and supporting information, it could consider a distributed model of linking regional hospitals to smaller community-based clinics. So it has started to establish two-person micro-clinics in strip malls. These clinics can perform 80% of the functions. No pharmacy, no radiology, no receptionist – just a full-service kiosk. To receive services not provided by the local clinic, Kaiser members can go to a full-service Kaiser regional facility if they need one. The prototype has worked well and functions at roughly half the per-member cost of a regular Kaiser facility. Adapting this model will enable Kaiser to attract and serve many additional members – all at a reduced overall cost. It's building the first prototype in Hawaii.

So “Good Enough” is right for the times. Web 2.0-based technologies reinvent physical products and Web-based experiences, and redefine “value” for customers that value accessibility, convenience, and a lower price. Given options, people choose the alternative that best fits their personal value proposition. Good enough is not just satisfactory; it is often preferable. Unneeded "quality" is both wasteful and unnecessary in many situations.

Starting Off the Radar Screen. The Good Enough effect is the heart of Clayton Christensen’s message about disruptive innovations. Such innovations often start by offering existing customers greater convenience and amenity, making up for what they lack in “quality” by the traditional meaning of the term in that setting. Or they reach potential customers that have not been able to achieve or afford access to the existing offerings. Often these solutions develop off the radar screen of the market leaders. But they don’t stay there for long.

Good Enough in Higher Education – One-Stop Shopping. Higher education has seen Good Enough in operation for some time. In the late 1980’’s the University of Delaware used the occasion of implementing a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to re-imagine its approach to student services. It reconsidered the conditions under which students needed to talk to student services and policy specialists. Using the capacity of the new IT systems to manage and share knowledge more effectively, the University restored and converted an historic school house near campus to serve as a “one-stop-shop center” for student services. Rather than talking to specialized student affairs professionals, students were to meet with cross-trained customer service professionals who used the ERP systems to address every student need from parking tickets to pre-registration advice. Students needing real policy expertise were referred to policy specialists, over in the administration building. Students loved the convenience and didn’t mind talking to non-experts to solve most problems, then accepting a referral when necessary. Good Enough was, sure enough, good enough.

Over time, students began to access the university's on-line systems while waiting in line for a customer service agent, using the terminals lkining the walls in the one-stop center. Progressively, more and more forms, processes and procedures were moved on-line, and students made another “good enough” choice: they migrated from assisted service to self-service. Today, the University seeks to achieve the “90-8-2” standard: 90% of student problems can be solved in a full self-service mode, 8 % require some minimal assistance by staff, and 2% require a serious support effort by an expert staff person. The one-stop shop has been again transformed by “good enough.”

Good Enough in Learning. For the past two decades, many colleges and universities have been progressively increasing their use of adjunct faculty and shifting the balance of their faculty and teaching staff rosters. Driven inexorably by the need to control costs, adjuncts have proven “good enough” as part of the faculty mix.

The “good enough” concept has also been deployed in reinventing academic courses. The National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT) has utilized technology-enabled redesign to shift responsibilities from full-time faculty in traditional lectures to teaching assistants, mentors, and other staff or to avatars, intelligent agents, bodies of knowledge, and other means of accessing knowledge, answering questions, and building competence. The roles of faculty have been deconstructued and reconstruicted in a multitude of combinations. All of these reinventions have been engineered by faculty working with the NCAT team. The “studio model for teaching mathematics has been particularly successful, producing better results (faster learning, higher proficiency) at lower costs. Sometimes “good enough” has proven actually to be better.

The academic model followed by the Western Governors’ University, University of Phoenix, and British Open University have all deconstructed and reinvented the role of faculty. The traditional model held that top quality was assured by having full-time faculty, content experts responsible for course design, instruction, testing, mentoring, and certification of competence. The deconstructed model used a single body of knowledge and standards of learning for all instances of a course, and used faculty as mentors to guide learners along their path. The result has been greater student satisfaction, consistency, and lower cost. All around, a better value.

There are still some faculty skeptics who believe that the only way to assure a “quality” result in learning is to have a full-time faculty content expert standing in front of a class of 25 students. But the truth is that technology enables other options that are not just “good enough” but often a much better value.

The Opportunity: Deconstructing and Experimenting with New Value Options. In earlier blogs we discussed the opportunity provided by President Obama’s plans to invest $500 M in developing open course materials, building on the open courseware materials developed by MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, and other institutions.

If these enhanced materials were made available as a utility to institutions all over the United States (and the world), they could create a pool of reimagined online courses that could become a critical part of the offerings in high schools, colleges and universities, corporate learning settings, and competence building in other settings. Some institutions could agree to use this body of knowledge and practice in all instances of its courses on particular subjects, and reinvent the roles of faculties and mentors, driving down the tuition that would be needed to be charged for such courses. Consider the following virtuous possibilities made possible by such a network of reimagined practices:

• Institutions could rethink and simplify their course offerings, especially in the core curriculum, and increase their flexibility; hybrid courses could become standard practice;

• Institutions could build greater flexibility into their ability to grow enrollments in particular courses, given the relative ease of rolling out additional online sections, themselves, or relying on other online providers;

• Participating institutions could provide their online resources and faculty mentors to be part of an “electricity grid for elearning” where demand greater than can be met by local resources in institutions could be furnished by surplus supply from other institutions or by institutions that consciously build surplus capacity;

• Institutions could reduce their own course offerings in disciplines where they were weak and provide the stronger offerings from other institutions; and

• Institutions could guarantee the ability of students to enroll in the courses they need, when they need then and even enable registering in advance to secure a full year’s schedule.

To provide optimal value, these offerings would need to be made available at reduced price points.

A Bonus for Public Institutions: The Ability to Grow on Tuition Alone. One of the banes of public colleges and universities has been the roller coaster ride of state funding: up in economic good times, down in recessions, requiring mid-year cuts, rescissions, and freezes. Such institutions often end up trimming course offerings at the very time that enrollment demand is rising.

If an electricity grid for learning infrastructure were in place it could utilize cadres of adjunct faculty, mentors and practitioners under the supervision of seasoned faculty, and reduce the marginal cost/price of rolling out an additional section to the point where it was less that the tuition price. In this circumstance, enrollments could grow even in economic downtimes.

Some variation on this theme must be part of a sustainable financial solution for public colleges and universities, moving forward. Institutions need to have the flex and access to surplus supply to be able to accommodate learner needs. Suppose an institution has 10 additional interested students for a section of Econ 101, on top of the 10 sections already filled with 30 students in each. Using the electricity grid, it could either attract 10 students from other surplus demand institutions or allow its 10 students to enroll in the online course at another participating institution.

When Michael Dolence and I wrote Transforming Higher Education: A Vision for Learning in the 21st Century, deconstructing and reimagining the roles of content-expert faculty was one of our primary points of focus. Web 2.0 tools are making that promise a reality.

Reimagining Higher Education Based on Value (2) – New Perspectives Are Needed

2009-08-26T15:20:00.003-04:00

Let’s start again where we left off in the last blog. Reimagining higher education requires taking a fresh look at what the future might be, post-recession. This will be a world in which most industries – healthcare, agriculture, financial services, real estate, manufacturing, energy, and even education - will be under tremendous pressure to be more productive. Most will have realigned their processes and practices to more competitive, cost-and-price-sensitive environments.

For K-20 education to thrive, it must realign its perspective in the following ways, which are reflected in the figure at the end of the blog:

• Utilize Resources in New Ways. William Bowen characterized universities as “like a chamber music orchestra, a complex, interacting mechanism of many interconnecting parts,” which is one reason why it is difficult for them to save money. He also famously noted that “Universities raise all the money they can and spend all the money they raise.” For the past several decades, in the face of declining public support, university presidents have been pushing themselves to the point of exhaustion in raising external resources. While they must continue to assure adequate resources, an additional perspective is needed.

To thrive post-recession, leaders will need to focus on “optimizing value in an environment of resource scarcity.” Figuring out how to stretch existing resources through new approaches will be the new zeitgeist of the times.

• Evolve a Culture of Performance Measurement and Improvement. Most academic institutions are in the midst of evolving from a culture of reporting to a culture of evidence. Other professions, such as medicine, are already practicing “evidence-based medicine” and are evolving toward a culture of performance measurement and improvement, where the emphasis is on achieving successful outcomes through the most economical and effective means, carefully measured and demonstrated. This approach has yet to penetrate many practices, but it is regarded as the way of the future.

Higher education is heading down this path as well. But we lag behind medicine. Savvy leaders are positioning their institutions to focus on improving performance, changing practices to do so.

• Focus on Value. Most institutional leaders are committed to “quality,” but not to “performance.” For many institutions, success is measured in traditional ways: 1) benchmarking against a group of peer institutions, 2) copying successful programs and practices; 3) targeting comparative levels of resources, faculty salaries, and other traditional measures of quality and success. The driving force is quality, often equated with resource inputs and success on various ranking schemes.

On the other hand, value consists of a combination of: 1) the nature and quality of outcomes, 2) the essence of the experiences through which these outcomes are achieved, and 3) the cost/price associated with them. Quality is a monologue between peer reviewers and their perception of the institution. Value is a dialogue between each stakeholder and the institution. Our goal should be to optimize value delivered in continuing environments of resource scarcity.

• Differentiate Offerings. Traditionally, institutions create courses, certificates, and degrees and offer them to learners, who select what is on offer. This is mass education. Learners do have some capacity to tailor these offerings to meet individual needs, but not much. Over time, learners have achieved the capacity to receive credit for prior learning or courses from other institutions, to customize parts of their learning experiences, to select fresh certificate programs designed to meet emerging market needs, and other variations within the existing course/degree model.

The post-recession environment will likely require providers to furnish the capacity to customize their learning experiences. This will include the topics and contents covered, but also the learning experiences. Does your institution enable me to come to campus just one day a week? Can I test out of specific competences I’ve already achieved? Can I receive credit for high school concurrent enrollments and accelerate my progress to graduate with my baccalaureate in three years? Can I take courses online from another university if I cannot register for the offerings I need to maintain my progress? Can I lock in a schedule a year in advance if I pay earnest money for the privilege? This is mass customization and will differentiate institutions from one another.

• Use Partnerships with Other Providers, Online Learning, and Open Educational Resources. Today, many institutions cover a full range of disciplines, including those in which they are not distinguished. This is not sustainable. Post-recession, the most successful institutions will figure out how to focus faculty and research positions in areas in which they are distinguished, and rely on other institutions for offerings in other areas. Many of these will be provided through technology and some may be at significantly lower price points.

For example, a university would achieve competitive advantage if it decided to focus on those disciplines in which it demonstrated real strength, and offered courses in other disciplines in partnership with institutions that were distinguished in that area. Or the institution might choose to provide on-line courses from a for-profit provider. Or it could enable students enrolled at the university to participate in an online community of practice-based learning experience from another institution. The availability on a national utility of online open resources would help in building such capabilities across a range of academic disciplines.

• Become Transparent and Accountable. A key part of a achieving a culture of measurement and performance is providing access to information that really demonstrates value. Most institutions are awash in data, but make it difficult for learners, their families, outside policy makers, and public stakeholders to compare value at different institutions.

In the post-recession environment, learners, their families, and other stakeholders will demand greater transparency. The early signs of this are demonstrated by the Transparency by Design initiative currently being supported by the Presidents Forum group. http://presidentsforum.excelsior.edu/projects/transparency.html). In future, learners will require a much more detailed comparison of the capacity of institutions to meet their disciplinary and mass customization needs.

• Fast, Fluid, Flexible, and Affordable. Most institutions are currently based on a “take what we offer on our terms” model. When Michael Dolence and I wrote Transforming Higher Education: A Vision for Learning in the 21st Century, we suggested that higher education needs to become “fast, fluid, and flexible.” This battle cry was taken up by educators who applied our principles to their institutions . These included many of the for-profit learning providers. Post-recession, institutions need to become “fast, fluid, flexible, and (a)ffordable” if they are to appeal to learners.

This is not beyond our reach. Many of the for-profit institutions have established more flexible learner services, tailored offerings, and convenience customized for the working learner. If we deploy these tools and techniques, we could dramatically enhance the service capacities of institutions. The next generation of Web 2.0-based technologies will make it even easier to mashup learner services in ways that have proven impossible for tightly integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

• Systematically Seek Systemic Solutions. Traditionally, institutions have taken a decentralized, siloed approach to solutions. Even successful innovations were seldom scaled to the entire institution. Colleges and universities dealt with the remediation problems that were passed to them by K-12, rather than systemically addressing the issues in the K-20 system.

In order to thrive in lifting out of recession, we are going to have to address both institutional solutions and systemic, cross-institutional solutions. We even will need to address cross-sectoral issues that span K-20 and deal with learning and workforce issues. Virtually every state in the United States has significant K-20 and workforce initiatives underway. These efforts need to be enhanced, redirected, and made part of every institution’s overarching strategy if we are to succeed in repositioning American higher education to thrive in the post-recession global economy.

The next blog will revisit the issue of Reimagining Higher Education Based on Value. We will focus on the different ways of transforming academic productivity and content to reduce costs and elevate value.

Reimagining Higher Education Based on Value

2009-08-24T09:58:00.003-04:00

Necessity is the mother of invention. Today’s recession is stoking the fires of innovation across American higher education. It is also rekindling fires around ideas and models that have been on the table for years.

Institutions are rethinking how to create “no-frills,” or “value-designed” options that could appeal to some of their current student populations, to some students that currently choose other institutions, or to potential learners who at present cannot attend higher attention at all. Other leaders are attempting new “open campus” models that address value propositions that are not being addressed by any institutions, and faculty models that differ from the norm. Western Governors University has followed a competency-based, value-focused model to reinvent faculty and roles and relationships. Many community colleges and neighboring four-year public universities are closely collaborating to create more affordable, flexible options for their learners. Institutions like the University of Central Florida are parlaying multiple campus sites, online and hybrid learning, and creative scheduling into greater capacity for learners to reduce their need to come to campus.

These are just first steps. How long before institutions or groups of institutions can string together a variety of these value-enhancing solutions? Can institutions really reimagine a constellation of value propositions, differentiated for different publics, and priced differentially as well?

“No Frills” Offerings for Arizona State University. At the WACUBO Business Management Institute, I engaged in a conversation Dr. Mernoy Harrison, Vice President and Executive Vice Provost at Arizona State University. He reports that he is working on planning efforts to flesh out “The Colleges at ASU,” a so-called no-frills alternative.

The Arizona Board of Regents is hearing proposals from the three current state universities (Arizona State University, University of Arizona, and Northern Arizona University) to open low-cost college campuses across the state. These smaller, cheaper, “no frills” colleges will be yet another option for Arizona high school graduates.

Dr. Harrison says they are exploring the components of “The Colleges” and how to assemble them in a fashion that will appeal to potential learners and be financially viable. The facilities would need to be provided by the local communities, and the campuses would offer a limited range of undergraduate degrees taught by instructional faculty. The Colleges would be designed to provide the highest probability of success, charging tuition of around $5,800 a year, the most students can receive from the Federal Pell Grant Program. Around 15,000 Arizonans graduate from high school every year who are capable of going on to college, but do not do so for various reasons. The Colleges could appeal to these students.

As the conceptual and programmatic designs for The Colleges emerge, it will be interesting to compare them with other “no-frills,” “value-design,” and on-line programs. Will they appeal to the targeted learners? Will they compete with or complement community college offerings? How will the ASU model compare with approaches followed by the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University?

Value-Designed Models of Higher Education - From the Drawing Board to Reality?. The Center for College Affordability and Productivity has been promoting the need for reinvention of higher education since its creation by Dr. Richard Vedder, a consistent critic of higher education’s costliness.

One of the Center’s white papers is noteworthy in this regard. Dr. Vance H. Fried wore “The $7,376 “Ivies”: Value-Designed Models of Undergraduate Education. Dr. Fried explores how to build a value-based college, which he calls the College of Entrepreneurial Leadership and Society (CELS), which would be designed for traditional undergraduate students and be moderately to highly selective in its academic standing.

CELS would offer a broad curriculum that would provide student with appropriate technical skills in entry-level jobs, potential to be general manager of a small organization early in their career, an understanding of “the big picture,” and foundational skills and knowledge for life outside of work. CELS would also include on-campus developmental experiences, but would be carefully constructed to offer its designed value proposition. Costing out this offering, for a campus/college of 3,200 students, Dr. Fried estimates an operating cost of $6,705 per student (not including room and board), including a laptop computer for every student. His model is dramatically less expensive than liberal arts colleges ($21,000-$46,600) and public regional colleges ($12,000). Dr. Fried provides detailed descriptions of the program and cost elements and assumptions behind his figures.

Dr. Fried makes it clear that other value-add models are possible. Some students may wish “no frills” options that exclude socialization and developmental experiences (which CELS includes) or focus on other disciplinary offerings.

Of course, these are hypothetical models, and the difficulties lie in the details. It would be unacceptable to many learners to have their choices limited to a particular programmatic focus. But there will likely be cohorts of students that would find variations on this model to be very attractive – and affordable.

Could existing or new institutions learn from and adapt this model? Could existing institutions create such a model as a separate college within its institutional structure without altering the current institutional “brand?” Would such an alternative be seen as lower quality? Could institutions faced with such brand dilution use direct certification of competence to trump such concerns? Could they then use such tools in their mainstream offerings?

Western Governors University: Competence-Based and Deconstructucting the Academic Model. Another example is Western Governors University, described in an earlier blog. WGU has deconstructed and reconstructed the higher education model. First and foremost, it is based on a competence model; learners must demonstrate competence through mastery of topics before advancing. And credit can be given for competences learned in other settings and demonstrated to WGU's satisfaction. Second, it creates a new model for faculty reoles and responsibilities. Every 80 students have a Ph.D. faculty mentor whose full-time job is to guide, direct, counsel, coach, encourage, motivate, and keep students on track. Engaging course materials, interaction with other learners, assessment of competences, and other features are handled by technology-based resources. Learners can also achieve credit for competences acquired through prior learning and demonstrable. WGU’s per semester tuition, which covers its total costs, is slightly less than $3,000.

Similar models are being utilized by Lamar University and by other for-profit providers, cited in previous blogs. Could existing institutions offer variations on the WGU approach to extend their offerings into a lower-price, on-line format? Could they license WGU content, competence-assessment tools, and other procedures to create online learning to offer to current students who cannot get the courses they need to graduate on time or who wish to accelerate their graduation? Would direct demonstration of competence trump issues of “quality?” Could institutions successfully introduce multi-tier pricing?

Oregon Open Campus: An Interesting Constellation of PArtners. In 2009 Oregon Open Campus was created as a partnership among Oregon State University (including its Extension Division), the Association of Oregon Counties, and many of Oregon’s community colleges, K-12 education systems, and local businesses. The Open Campus is looking to expand its circle of participation to include hospitals, libraries, community action programs and other entities that had something to offer this extended community. Each new community place will became another node for Oregonians to experience elements of the Oregon Open Campus and make their own contributions.

Oregon Open Campus’ founding principle and goal is to provide local access to learning and developmental experiences that meet the needs of individuals, families, businesses, and communities. Workforce training, professional certification, personal enrichment, and academic credit are only a few of the possibilities. Community problem solving, applied research and commercialization, and leveraging learning and knowledge sharing for economic development purposes are several of the other possibilities.

The operational details and programs of Open Campus are under development. But the planners are dedicated to discovering a model that is a dramatic departure from existing practices. Will this be possible? How will it affect the existing models at participating institutions? What new features will be needed to make it work in a financially sustainable way.

Partnerships Between Public Universities and Community Colleges. Another strategic approach to control costs is utilized by public universities like George Mason University, which collaborates closely with Northern Virginia Community College. In planning for Mason’s new Loudoun County campus, on which NVCC would be co-located, the assumption was that all lower division offerings would be provided by NVCC, because of its affordable cost/price structure. Moreover, planners assumed that the square footage of the facilities would probably be half of what was today considered normal for a particular level of enrollment, say 10,000 students, due to the use of online and hybrid learning options. In addition, Mason’s leadership are evaluating other ways in which offerings can be reinvented to deal with student affordability and convenience issues.

Several questions remain. As Mason and NVCC plan to serve the burgeoning needs of Northern Virginia, how can they leverage their different price points and service models to create attractive value propositions that will serve a tidal wave of new students? How can bridging and pathways programs into the K-12 schools be used to create even better value propositions? And ramped up to scale?

On-Campus, On-Line, and Hybrid: What Is Your Personal Learning Mixture? The University of Central Florida is an excellent example of an institution that offers its students a wide range of course-taking options. To start, UCF offers a range of learning locations: its original flagship campus, adjacent to its 1,200-acre research park, 11 regional campuses, many of which are located on the campuses of local community colleges, plus substantial online learning and hybrid/blended learning options. The upshot is that individual students can sculpt a learning schedule that combines modes and reduces/shapes the need to come to campus. Some students combine all of these options. What is the value of reduced gridlock to a busy working student who can come to campus just once a week? And what is the value to UCF of being able to leverage the use of its physical facilities on its traffic-challenged main campus, extending enrollments far beyond what could be served if students were coming to main campus three days a week – or more?

Metropolitan and suburban universities are the epicenter of inventiveness for new value propositions for several reasons: 1) they are "where the learners are," expecially in hypergrowth metropolitan areas; 2) public colleges and universities in these settings are being expected to absorb the tidal waves of new learners; 3) they represent a wide range of learner cohorts from highly traditional learners to millenial experimenters to working adults; and 4) the time and financial cost of commuting is such a factor that innovations such as those implemented by UCF, and GMU, and ASU can povide tremendous value that is seized upon by learners.

UCF has an impressive analytics and data mining operation to support its combination of learning modes. Its leaders know what works in different modes and how satisfied students are with different modes and combinations. How could this capability be turned to even more sophisticated assessments of its value propositions and “sculpting” of the value propositions to meet the diversity of learner needs?

Elevating Community College to Grant Four-Year Degrees. Yet another option is being followed in a number of states across the nation, where community colleges are being elevated to four-year status. This is also a clear indicator of how seriously state policy makers are concerned by the need to reimagine value propositions in higher education.

In Florida, for example, many community colleges are electing this option, dropping “Community” from their titles. So Miami Dade Community College has become Miami Dade College. With eight campuses and over 167,000 students from across the world, the College offers over 300 programs of study and several degree options, including vocational, associate, and baccalaureate degrees. MDC features numerous community education classes, credit classes through the Virtual College, the New World School of the Arts, and Dual Enrollment.

Whether the elevation of community colleges to baccalaureate-producing institutions will dramatically affect value propositions and cost options remains to be seen.

Remembering Transforming Higher Education. In 1995, Michael G. Dolence and I wrote Transforming Higher Education: A Vision for Learning in the 21st Century, in which we suggested that higher education would need to “realign, redesign, redefine, and reengineer” to meet the learning needs and differing value propositions of 21st century global society. We observed that the tidal wave of new students in the United States and globally could not be met by traditional means and methods, “…to meet the full potential demand by the year 2010, a campus would need to be opened every 8 days. Even if this demand were served by a mixture of higher education and other learning intermediaries, the cost under existing approaches to education finance would be exhorbitant.”

In large measure this prediction has come true. Our financial model for addressing learning needs is inadequate, and rather than having the luxury of time to solve this problem, we must address it in real time and with limited resources – the coffers of public and private finance are drained.

Transforming Institutions in a Differenting and Selective Manner. How can existing institutions – especially public universities – reimagine their delivery mechanisms and experiences to offer learners a variety of experiences, with different value expectations – and different price points? What incentive, support, guidance and prodding do they need from state higher education organizations and national government and associations?

Stay tuned for continuing discussion on this topic.

Disruptive and Dislodging Events in Higher Education – Today and Tomorrow (2)

2009-08-17T06:40:00.001-04:00

The last blog discussed how disruptive and dislodging events could trigger change across clusters of institutions in higher education. This entry takes the conversation a step further by exploring how current disruptive forces in education, the economy, and the governmental response could dislodge the status quo and unleash transformative change.

Dislodging Event #1: A multi-faceted injection of federal assistance in the community colleges, contingent on innovation and changing practices. President Obama’s proposal to raise community college enrollments by 5 million is key to his overall plan to restore America to global leadership in college degree completion by 2020. Policy proposals that directly or indirectly support community colleges include increases in Pell Grant funding, a new proposed “American Opportunity Tax Credit,” the Community College Partnership Program, the DREAM Act, Workforce Education Legislation, and a proposed “Make College a Reality” initiative that will increase by 50% the number of high-school students taking college-level credit.

President Obama’s proposal to spend $9B in grants to community colleges will come with strings attached. Applicants would have to set goals tied to program completion, work force preparation, and job placement, much in the fashion of Achieving the Dream. The previously mentioned recommendation to invest $500 M in open educational resources (“Obama’s Course Giveaway”) would spur innovative applications in the community colleges and their bridging/pathways/concurrent enrollment programs with high school. These could result in improved retention, decreasing time to degree, and reduction in the total cost of education. They are critical to reducing remediation needs of entering community college students.

The community colleges are currently facing a tidal wave of new students due to the impact of the recession and students unable to afford four-year colleges or seeing the community college as a high-value alternative. Rufus Glasper, Chancellor of Maricopa Community College, says they are confronting enrollment leaps of 40% at the same time that tax revenue supporting their operation is in jeopardy. Many of the new federal resources will go to students or will be insufficient to counter increases in student enrollments and declines in public tax support. As a result, community college leadership will need to deploy new, even more flexible, technology-supported approaches that reduce or control costs and create even better value propositions. In an environment of dramatically increasing enrollment and public attention, community college faculty can be engaged to refine work rules and bargaining agreements and achieve financial sustainability.

Put simply, community colleges will become increasing important in lifting out of recession. They should be a focal point for disrupting and dislodging actions.

Dislodging Event #2: Federal K-12 transformation initiatives spark innovation and change practices, in ways that span K-20. In a similar view, investment of federal dollars in K-12, tied to innovation as a condition for funding, can dislodge current behaviors and barriers to change. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has announced a $4.3 B “Race to the Top” Fund that will apply rigorous standards for states applying for these grants, including a fine-grained evaluation process under which the states get points for reforms they have made and changes they promise to make – and conditional funding that will be revoked if they don’t achieve them. The system also requires states to craft systems that better evaluate teacher performance, taking student achievement into account. States must also assure that poor and minority students get their share of high-quality teachers.

An important part of this process is replacing the crazy quilt of state-owned performance standards by a coherent national standard, so whatever the state’s chosen practices are, they can be measured against a single, globally competitive standard. States that have committed to actions – such as joining the standards commission established by the National Governors Association - will be favored in the competition as will states that develop plans for internationally benchmarked K-12 standards that build toward college and career readiness.

Interventions like Race to the Top, fresh funding, and public pressure are likely to spur states to innovate in standards and methods and to redirect existing initiatives in fresh ways. Most states have K-16 or K-20 initiatives to improve transitions and increase performance of the entire K-20 spectrum and these can be redirected. Some states will lead and others will be followers, but the harsh light of scrutiny can be used to move America forward in reinventing K-12 and K-20, clusters of states at a time.

Dislodging Event #3: Declining affordability and disruptive shifts in college attendance patterns, plus continued weakness in state funding for higher education and growing awareness that the current model for public funding of four-year public universities is broken. The Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance released a report in 2008 that contained a troubling statistic: “Between 1992 and 2004, a major shift in enrollment away from public 4-year colleges occurred among college-qualified high school students from low- and moderate-income families…inability to start at a 4-year college decreases considerably the likelihood of earning a bachelor’s degree.” Bear in mind the troubling fact that this decline occurred BEFORE the recent economic events that have truly hammered family finances.

Another fact point: over the past 20 years, public universities have experienced a roller coaster of rising and falling state appropriations (per student). Good economic times enabled gains when state treasuries were full, but recessions and declining state resources brought mid-year rescissions and the need to make rapid cut-backs and adjustments. The recent recession is the latest and worst in a series of such adjustments. This is no way strategically to position public institutions for success. This model is broken.

In a speech entitled “Higher Expectations and Fewer Resources: What’s a SHEEO to Do?” at the recent Annual meeting of the State Higher Education Executive Officers, Dennis Jones of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems laid out the collision of high expectations and the limited financial resources available to state higher education leaders. He suggested there was no way to deliver on President Obama’s aspirations to increase the number of college graduates without making significant changes in institutional processes and practices. The money is simply not there – and our levels of per capita expenditures far exceed comparable figures for other nations. Dr. Jones recommended investing stimulus funding to develop more cost effective ways of doing business and paying for the transition. His portfolio of short term actions: Reallocate faculty time to undergraduate courses, collaborate with other institutions and share, and make sure students are getting all aid for which they are eligible. In the longer term, he recommends investing in more efficient administration and plant operations and investing in reengineering curricula and delivery methods – restructure general education, invest in course redesign, and tackle developmental education on a statewide basis.

It’s time to engage university leaders in making these changes. In a speech at the Annual Meeting of the Society for College and University Planning, “Are We Wasting a Perfectly Good Crisis,” George Pernsteiner, Chancellor of the Oregon University System, called for institutional leaders to engage faculty, staff, students, community partners, and business leaders to reinvent themselves and how they do business in order to improve student learning, increase degree production, re-focus research and innovation, and reduce costs. In Oregon, per capita state funding has declined in real terms in 18 of the past 20 years. In this environment, Dr. Pernsteiner thinks faculty may be ready to engage and seriously consider the measures necessary to lift out of the recession. It’s time to engage seriously – and dislodge.

Dislodging Event #4: Open educational resources couple with Web 2.0 tools and practices to create alternatives to traditional higher education and job creation. In the blog “Who Needs Traditional Higher Education and Traditional Job Training?” we already discussed the potential disruptive impact of open resources and web 2.0 tools and practices. If institutions do not change their practices by incorporating these approaches in courses and traditional certificate degree programs, many learners will seek other options. These disruptive and dislodging conversations are already occurring.

The most transformative impact of Learning and Competence 2.0 will be to create “Community of Practice” alternatives to traditional learning. These will enable participants (teaching students, their faculty, and mentors in the schools) to seamlessly blend work and learning, perpetually. For example, one alternative CoP approach to teacher education would engage potential teachers (not just teacher college graduates) in the CoP while they are enrolled in their academic bachelor’s program. They would participate in the CoP during student teaching, continue with heavy mentoring during their first year of teaching, and receive learning on reflective practice during their first five years, resulting in the equivalent of a master’s degree in reflective practice. From then on, they would sustain and refresh the CoP by serving as mentors, reflective practitioners, and reviewers.

Currently, innovators are planning/deploying CoP approaches to continuing professional education in engineering, medicine, and other professions; industry-wide CoPs in areas such as global food safety; and regional open education experiences linking universities, community colleges, businesses, and other community participants. Such examples will further disrupt existing models.

Dislodging event #5: Stimulus money in weatherization catalyzes the evolution of a new, flexible network of green careers pathways and competence building opportunities, which generalizes to other career pathways. The Obama administration is spending billions of stimulus dollars on weatherization programs that are being delivered through community action organizations and their partner organizations - utilities, contractors, and training organizations. President Obama’s intent is for these entry-level jobs to be the beginnings of genuine green careers. But many of the people hired for these positions will be unemployed after the first round of weatherization jobs are done.

The green jobs career ladder is not well defined for these entry-level workers. Nor are high school vocational programs adequate to the task. Even the option of these entry-level workers going to community colleges to receive associate degrees in green career fields is not the best immediate answer for these workers now. These workers need to receive additional, incremental training, while employed, and gradually move up the green career ladder to installation auditor, manager, and supervisors roles. This could include at some point, certificate and associate degree programs from the community college. Then more rigorous technical training in fields like HVAC or wind/solar installation and maintenance, and eventually a bachelor of applied sciences degrees focusing on communication, leadership, team building, and management skills. Or even other combinations. And continuing learning, while working, in a seamless progression. This is a pattern that can be replicated outside its creation point in green careers.

Across the country, a variety of companies, community action agencies, and other enterprises are prototyping new, community-of-practice-based work and learning environments that will support the development of fresh approaches to green career ladders for entry-level workers, while they are employed. They will have the capacity to mash-up learning offerings from wide ranges of providers. These are the equivalent of apprenticeship programs, but apprenticeships that are appropriate to the Web 2.0 age. We will discuss these in future blogs.

Leveraging Disruptions and Dislocations. These disruptive events are all at play, today, and they are intertwined. Over the next few months, their impact will escalate as the impact of stimulus funds affects every one of these five disrupters. Institutional leaders need to “connect the dots”, redirecting existing initiatives, engaging their stakeholders, and getting serious about moving beyond quick fixes to aggressive portfolios of action to harvest efficiencies, innovations, and transformations in the way we do business, K-20 and in learning to work and back again…and again.

Disruptive and Dislodging Events in Higher Education (1)

2009-08-14T07:56:00.002-04:00

Yesterday's blog discussed three linked issues:

• A step change in availability, awareness and use of free courses,

• Open Educational Resources become the new mainstream, and

• Major talent meltdown ahead, affecting job-creating sectors most.

The end result: building pressure for new approaches to higher education and job training, using open resources and Web 2.o practices, among other things.

These issues provide background to better appreciate recent observations by Dr. Robert Zemsky, who on August 7 posted a Commentary in The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Will Higher Education Ever Change as it Should?” This is taken from his new book, Making Reform Work: The Case for Transforming Higher Education.

Dr. Zemsky looks favorably on Europe's Bologna Process, which resulted in greater coordination and cooperation and commonality and interchangeability among Europe’s competing systems of higher education. This impressive endeavor succeeded for several reasons, in Zemsky’s view: 1) it was a multi-year undertaking, 2) which linked the insights and perspectives from the key actors (ministers of education, university administrators, student leaders, heads of international organizations, European Union bureaucrats, and policy wonks), and 3) focused on a limited set of goals and clear benchmarks.

Would such an approach work in the United States? Dr. Zemsky thinks the 50 states would have great difficulty working together to create a Bologna-like solution. And private education would argue that the higher education marketplace should be allowed to sort things out – even though the marketplace is distorted in many ways. Looking at past reform, he posits that previous reform efforts have taught us that:

• Strong rhetoric changes nothing;

• Demand for reform must be internal – faculty must at least see the reform as a means to a desired end;

• Like outside reformers, state agencies cannot prescribe change unless they are prepared for long exhausting battles, but must create the conditions that makes change possible; and

• It’s best to focus on systemic change – the nature of the academy makes it possible to suck the air out of piecemeal reforms.

Zemsky makes the point that for true reform we need events that will change institutions, simultaneously. What is needed is what he calls “dislodging events” – powerful disruptions that catalyze change because our institutions are linked together, even if they have the capacity to act independently (for example, to resist change if coerced, but to imitate others if they see a practice they like – and copy). He asked friends and colleague to envision several such dislodging events, and they suggested three:

• Dislodging Event #1: Congress could dramatically change today’s federal student aid program, turning the experts loose to create a system that supports participation, invests in motivation, and rewards institutions that use money effectively. Such a system would link K-20 more effectively and get students and parents involved in college saving, earlier. Jonathon Grayer, former CEO of Kaplan Inc has suggested giving every sixth grader a $10,000 stake in a 529 plan, to provoke early and sustained interest in saving and preparing for a college education.

• Dislodging Event #2: Congress could require college endowments to pay the same taxes on their endowments as other hedge funds – unless the proceeds are used for education and research. This would encourage wealthy institutions to spend far more on educational and research endeavors, which would certainly favor those institutions, but could indirectly disadvantage other parts of higher education.

• Dislodging Event #3: What would happen if a Bologna-like process concluded that the standard undergraduate degree should be three years in the United States, as in Europe. This would require devoting the senior year, much of which is now a waste, to developing college-ready skills. The new three-year option would require all teaching and learning issues to be on the table and would engage all faculty in reconstructing practices to fit the new model. Performance measures would be needed to assure that the three-year degree was delivering the goods, and technology would be an instrument of change rather than an add-on cost.

An interesting list, this. Makes one anticipate Dr. Zemsky’s book, in full.

But rather than suggest these hypotheticals, what if we examine a portfolio of some of the actual disruptive forces of today, which may have the potential to dislodge current practices across clusters of institutions and learning providers?

In my next blog, I will describe five other dislodging events, relating to analytics and lifting out of recession that are disrupting education today and will potentially dislodge resistance to change, in the future. Many of these disruptors are interconnected and mutually reinforcing.

• Dislodging Event #1: A multi-faceted injection of federal assistance in the community colleges, contingent on innovation and changing practices;

• Dislodging event #2: Federal K-12 investment and transformation initiatives spark innovation and change practices, in ways that span K-20;

• Dislodging Event #3: Declining affordability and disruptive shifts in college attendance patterns, plus continued weakness in state funding for higher education and growing awareness that the current model for public funding of four-year public universities is broken;

• Dislodging Event #4: Open educational resources couple with Web 2.0 tools and practices to create alternatives to traditional approaches to higher education and job creation;

• Dislodging event #5: Stimulus money in weatherization and energy projects catalyzes the evolution of a new, flexible network of green careers pathways and competence building opportunities.

Watch for descriptions of these disruptive dislodgers in the next blog.

Who Needs Traditional Higher Education or Traditional Job Training?

2009-08-13T07:51:00.004-04:00

This week three meteors of illuminating insight flashed across my virtual sky. They suggest how transformative alternatives to traditional higher education and traditional job training are gathering pace, in ways that we can all build upon and certainly all need to recognize.

Meteor #1. A step change in availability, awareness and use of free courses

The Chronicle of Higher Education came out with an article on “Obama’s Great Course Give Away”. It described the possibility of the Obama administration directing $500 million of its community college initiative funding toward supporting a free library of online course materials, and resources, ready to deploy and available free to colleges nationwide. These materials would come from the trove of Open Educational Resources (OERs) that have been funded by the Hewlett Foundation and developed by others, such as MIT’s OpenCourseWare Initiative and Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative.

Such materials could be used to address a variety of needs:

• Serving people of high school and college age who are not able to pay for college courses but would like to learn in their own time, and others who can experiment with learning and build competence independent of institutions;

• Upgrading the quality and value of offerings for international and emerging institutions through sharing and development;

• Providing lower cost and more flexible versions of existing course offerings in many institutions – especially community colleges, four-year public institutions, and some proprietary schools, and even in private schools wishing to control costs – an outcome especially attractive to skeptics like Richard Vedder, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, who sees this as a rare example of using technology in education to reduce costs rather than raise them; and

• Furnishing the protoplasm for the gestation and evolution of free-range, Web 2.0 approaches to learning, using social networks, wikis, and other 2.0 media to create sustainable learning environments. Such alternatives may compete with traditional institutions for learners at some point in the not-too-distant future.

This is not just about reinventing content. It’s also about reinventing patterns of engagement and interaction. And means of assessment. And means of demonstrating competence, directly. It’s that open processes lead to viable alternatives to existing academic patterns and practices, deconstructing the traditional roles of individual faculty as content expert, instructor, evaluator, and certifier, all in one. Moreover, it’s that technology can be used to reinvent educational practices in ways that can dramatically less expensive and more flexible and open than traditional education.

Meteor #2. Open Educational Resources become the new mainstream

Fast Company published a gem of an article by Anya Kamenentz, “Who NEEDS Harvard?” that outdid Meteor #1. Ms Kamenentz describes in even greater detail the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement and its capacity to begin the creation of alternative, Web 2.0 paths to education and competence building.

She refers to the innovators in the metaphorical garage workshops of open education as “edupunks” and describes how the pieces of alternative learning and competence building environments are coming together. She introduces us to innovators such as David Wiley at Brigham Young University, Neeru Paharia, CEO of Peer2Peer University, Jose Feireira, CEO and founder of education startup Knewton Education, and Thomas Mendenhall of Western Governors University. All are part of the new mainstream (the next big thing) in education: Web 2.0-based structures and practices that deconstruct and reconstruct the elements of content, social networking and engagement, and assessment and certification to suit the patterns and cadences of the 21st century economy and the need to use technology to improve the value and reduce the cost of learning and competence.

The point of this article is that over time, innovators will “hack together” and “mash up” combinations of open content, social networking platforms, open and community assessment, and other tools that will form the basis for tomorrow’s perpetual learning environments will come together to create viable alternative to traditional colleges and universities. These combinations will evolve in an expeditionary manner, creating flexible structures, processes, and practices. Three to five years from now, models will have evolved, mutated, and mutated again in ways that cannot be accurately described today.

“If universities can’t find the will to innovate and adapt to changes in the world around them, universities will be irrelevant by 2020,” says professor David Wiley of Brigham Young University. More than ten years ago, the late Peter Drucker anticipated the rise of corporate and online alternatives, when he made similar comments about the need for universities to rethink their face-to-face model and to stop building classrooms, which he felt were not appropriate for the 21st century.

Western Governors University is mentioned favorably in this article for its contributions in assessment and accreditation, in which it is today’s gold standard. WGU offers online learning to 12,000 students in 50 states running entirely on tuition of $2,890 for a six-month term. WGU uses technology to disaggregate the traditional faculty functions - convey information, mentor, evaluate. WGU faculty fulfill the mentor role; they are there to guide, direct, coach, counsel, encourage, motivate, and keep on track. Content and evaluation/assessment are handled automatically.

Robert Mendenhall, President of WGU, is impatient with those who argue that what he’s doing with technology is unworkable. “Technology has changed the productivity equation of every industry except education,” he says. “We’re simply trying to demonstrate that it can do it in education – if you change the way you do education as opposed to just adding technology on top.”

Keep an eye on the companies and edupunks cited in this article.

Meteor #3: Major talent meltdown ahead, affecting job-creating sectors most

In an article in The Futurist, “The Global Talent Crisis” Edward Gordon contends that even in the midst of the global recession, there is a global talent shortage, especially in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) specialties. When growth resumes, this situation will worsen, exacerbated by the demographic declines in many nations.

Gordon contends, “Without drastic talent creation changes between 2010 and 2020, the United States will experience a major talent meltdown with 12 to 14 million vacant jobs stretching across the U.S. economy. Businesses will leave the U.S. searching for scarce talent wherever they can find it. The U.S. Economy will stagnate or shrink. For example in the late 1990s, Advanced Micro Devices wanted to build a new high-tech plant. They looked in Texas and California, but company officials felt the communities they investigated could not produce enough entry-level technicians for their needs. The company went to Germany.”

As that example shows, signs of talent shortages were apparent years ago but were largely ignored. There is still time to avoid the 2010-20 talent shortage, for example colleges can use the stimulus funding to begin to fill the gaps and if we all take account of key factors:

• Global demographics. The workforces in many developed countries will decline in coming years.

• The skills gap. American education has been under fire since publication of A Nation at Risk. As has been demonstrated in earlier blogs, America is suffering a skills gap in comparison with our competitors.

• A cultural bias. Gordon contends that the bias seems to be not against technology itself, but the training needed for science and technology jobs.

Gordon asserts that “Advancing technologies are transforming the nature of occupations, including the skilled trades. The number of new technologies introduced over the next decade will likely be equal to those invented over the past 50 years. Yet the current breakdown in the global talent-creation systems does not bode well for the future.” Across America, the education-to-employment system needs to be retooled. Gordon reports that community based organizations (CBOs) and non-government organizations (NGOs) have been working to expand business-education partnerships to address the talent gap and rebuild talent pipelines in their communities.

These three meteors come together for me. Rebuilding America’s talent pipelines will require flexible, organic networks that enable individuals to engage in active, learning experiences early in their learning careers. Traditional approaches to learning and training and workforce development too easily become misaligned with workforce and personal needs. For tomorrow’s talent pipeline, we need competence building communities that display the characteristics being invented by the edupunks.

Tomorrow’s blog will explore the impact of Dislodging and Disrupting Events in Higher Education.

Some Thoughts about Achieving Financial Sustainability

2009-08-07T09:37:00.002-04:00

Guest Blogger: Marcia Bromberg, former CFO at Tulane University, the University of Wisconsin System, and Wesleyan University.

I begin with a simple premise: “The Glass is Half Full.” The recession offers an opportunity to identify base resources required to provide academic services at all levels of education. Moreover, the recession provides institutions the opportunity to assess what is needed and what isn’t in order to operate and to identify operational efficiencies and inefficiencies.

Identifying the Revenue Base. The lowest point of income from all revenue streams reached during the recession should be used as the base-line for financial planning. This low point should exclude all one-time resources such as stimulus funds, special gifts, and accounting bonuses.

Institutions should manage growth incrementally from that low point:

• For private institutions this means modifying use of endowment proceeds as endowments begin to grow again by reducing payout formulas and using longer smoothing formulas (perhaps five rather than 3 year averages). It also means modifying tuition increases by using gift proceeds and other revenue streams (more about that later) to replace tuition revenue.

• For public institutions it means negotiating with states for a new “base plus increment” model of funding where increments reflect both enrollment changes and inflationary forces but are not tied so tightly to either that the academic mission is compromised.

Efficiency of Operations or Using Analytics to Lift out of Recession. In the very short term, expenditure reductions to meet reduced revenue streams will be expedient and, often, short term in nature.

An in-depth analytical review of expenditures will help identify longer term operational efficiencies and the changes required to implement these efficiencies. This is only a first step as efficiencies must be assessed as to whether they are desirable and attainable. (Note: without institution-wide understanding and acceptance of the reason for changes and impacts of changes the best ideas can be undermined).

A part of any analytic review will be to measure institutional performance against industry benchmarks. This is where the opportunity lies to truly transform educational support services and take the next steps beyond the types of outsourcing begun at the end of the last century. Rather than try to just replicate the “best of breed” or adopt methods of the most efficient institutions, organizations and businesses, institutions can begin to contract with those entities to actually provide those services. Examples include: enrollment management; accounting services; endowment management; purchasing and distribution; construction services and many more. In some cases these services can be provided at a distance through use of technology. In other cases clusters of institutions can share expert personnel.

The change from a single institution providing all services to one where services are provided from a myriad of near and distant sources based upon efficiency, quality and cost will require ongoing review to ensure services continue to meet institutional needs and expectations. More and more the role of institutional staff will be to monitor and manage rather than provide services using the analytic framework developed early in the process.

New Revenue Opportunities. While moving away from a campus-based model for support services offers an opportunity for reducing costs, it also offers an opportunity for those institutions which already excel in certain service areas to become income generators by providing those services to other institutions. In some cases several institutions might pool resources to form a central service center which can expand its operations to sell those services more broadly.

As part of an analytic review of institutional strengths and weaknesses all resources should be assessed for revenue potential including physical space (campus grounds and well as buildings), academic and non-academic expertise, technology resources, and efficient services (as noted above).

The potential for exploiting revenue opportunities can expand beyond higher education to other levels of education, non-educational nonprofits and for profit businesses.

Leadership in Innovation and Reimagination

2009-08-06T10:40:00.001-04:00

Reactions to an Interview with Leon Botstein, President of Bard College in May-June issue of Miller-McCune magazine.
In reimagining institutional futures, active leadership is key. In an article in Miller-McCune magazine, President Leon Botstein of Bard College reveals some of the approaches he has taken at Bard College over the years and the results achieved.

In President Botstein’s view. Leadership at leading universities has been too insular. They have been focusing on themselves and not their place in the world of education and the world at large. In Botstein’s view, there are major problems with the way American society deals with adolescence, learning, and mentoring young people on what it means to be an adult.

“The real problem in American education is how we deal with adolescence. For all the talk of early childhood and preschool, the real locus of crisis in America if from the onset of puberty to the early 20s. That is a kind of black hole for everyone except the very, very gifted and talented. Even with them we’re not doing as well as we could. We haven’t figured out how to inspire real ambition and a love of learning in the adolescent group, starting with middle school to really the end of college.”

Dr. Botstein’s prescription: Consider a variety of fundamental changes, and do something to change the status quo.. For example, he suggests we could eliminate middle school and start high school work in grade 7, enabling students to finish by age 16. As he puts it, “I think universities have a real responsibility to improve secondary education in the United States. The president needs to turn to the university community and say, “Do something about the high schools,” the same way that university hospitals took over public hospitals.” His advice - Do something.

Bard has done something. They have established Bard Early College High School, which consists of two high schools in New York, one in the Lower East Side and one in Queens. Each enrolls 500-600 students, and for the 160 entering slots, 3,000 applicants, assessed and selected by an interview process not standardized tests. By the end of high school, these students have a NY Regents degree and an Associate of Arts degree. These students are representative of the population of New York and go on to good colleges.

Other public and private colleges and universities are sponsoring early college high school programs, making a commitment to doing something. So have the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other foundations. These efforts are all part of the mult-faceted narratives from communities across the nation about reimaging PK-20 and doing something serious about the parlous state of K-12 education and its impact on student success in PK-20.

Bard has also undertaken community-based learning programs in California and has opened the only liberal arts school in post-Communist Russia.

Efficiency and Innovation in Preparing for the Recovery

2009-08-05T09:01:00.002-04:00

In an Executive Briefing reported June 22 in the MIT Sloan Management Review, Dr.Vijay Govindarajan, an expert on innovation at the Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth University, described a “three box” metaphor for the strategy needed during coping with recessionary times. This metaphor applies to enterprises in all industries – including higher education and health – but with obvious nuances.

Box 1: Improving the Efficiency of Today’s Businesses. Becoming leaner, smarter, and more efficient is critical in a recession. Indeed, many innovations are directed at improving the efficiency and effectiveness of processes, yielding dividends in both existing lines of endeavor and new areas. Dr. Govindarajan points out that recessions are followed by periods of expansion and by changes in the competitive landscape. The benefits of these conditions are captured by nimbler, leaner competitors.

During normal times, Dr. Govindarajan recommends enterprises spend 50% of their energies on harvesting efficiencies and economies. During recession, he recommends increasing this percentage to 70% because resources are diminished and the penalty for mistakes is greater.

Box 2: Forgetting the Past, Selectively, Identifying the Concepts and Folk Wisdoms That Must be Abandoned in order to Achieve a Prosperous Future. William Faulkner once remarked, “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.” What was true for fictional Yoknapatawpha County in Faulkner’s world is also true for colleges and universities. But to assure vibrant futures, colleges and universities need to revisit concepts carried forward from the past, embracing those that are timeless, reframing or abandoning others.

Needed change will be uncomfortable for those faculty who say: “Just give us the resources we need to do our jobs and get out of the way. We know quality and can do the job.” In public colleges and universities, the mantra takes a fresh twist, “Just give us the resources promised in the formula funding that always falls below the normative level and then gets cut during recessionary times.”

The harsh truth is that the halcyon days of unreflective autonomy and generous public funding will not return. They are past. Public funding will continue to be insufficient and institutions will need to aggressively reinvent, tweek, and reimagine and be more transparent and accountable about it.

This is a conversation that is occurring across American higher education. Sage leaders are reframing the saga of their institutions, post-recession and engaging faculty and staff in engaging fresh views of the future.

Box 3: Creating New Lines of Business that Are the Enterprise’s Future. Dr. Govindarajan proposes than enterprises spend 30% of their energy developing and migrating new lines of business, 25% into adjacent businesses close to current practice and 5% in genuine break thorough endeavors. These new endeavors require forgetting things about the past and spinning new sagas about the university of the future.

What are some examples of institutions that are reframing their future saga:

• Oregon State University (including its Extension Division) has partnered with several community colleges, local businesses, community governments and organizations, hospitals and other agencies to create Oregon Open Campus, a new model for creating community-based learning, embedded in community organizations

• Michigan State University is utilizing MSU Global to create new, online learning and development communities to discover what it means to be a “World Grant University”.

• Bard College is reaching out through Bard Early College High School to discover new partnerships to reinvent high school and change relationships between K-12 and and postsecondary education (more about this in tomorrow’s blog).

• In planning for new campuses in Loudoun county Virginia, George Mason University, Northern Virginia Community College, and Loudoun County Public Schools jointly planned for distributed operations and joint programming and for serving the students with half the square footage needed today.

Dr. Govindarajan believes in visioning a future strategy, not formulating a hard-and-fast plan. As he says, “You cannot plan for the year 2025, but you can prepare for it.” Expeditionary innovation can be used to discover the future, one successful experiment at a time.

John Seely Brown calls such an approach “radical incrementalism,” necessary in proceeding down the path to the “Big Shift” escribed in earlier blogs.

The Challenge for Institutional Leadership. Over the past decades, effective institutional innovators like Dr. George Johnston, President of George Mason University, relied on “driving wedges” into the prevailing academic culture and using special institutes and programs as “skunk works” to create and test innovations. This is still an effective strategy for launching innovations, but the stakes for innovation are higher and the pace of experimentation must be greater. Institutions must find ways to rethink their value propositions and release the latent value imprisoned in current practices. We don't have time for a leisurely approach to innovation and transformation.

Focusing on Value, Not Just Quality (2)

2009-08-04T09:26:00.003-04:00

Leveraging the Elements of the Value Web. The following graphic from The Business Value Web portrays the elements of value.

Focusing on the value web encourages leadership to deconstruct sequential processes and enhance value at all stages of relationships and services. Value has limitless potential. Productivity enhancement, innovation, process reinvention, and creative combination of these can always be used to enhance or even radically alter the value proposition that universities and professional schools offer to students and other stakeholders.

The latent value embedded in a university’s assets can be a powerful driver of strategic differentiation and growth, if it can be mobilized. The challenge to leadership is to marshal new resources and unleash the latent power of existing assets, combining these actions in pursuit of a unifying statement of strategic intent. Thinking in terms of the value web can enable extraordinary leveraging of resources, relationships, and innovations.

Focusing on value emphasizes imagination rather than merely adding additional resources to existing programs and practices. Instead of relying on simple addition, value maximization during tough times involves identifying, leveraging, repurposing, reusing, and creating new value combinations. It also involves creating ambitious stretch goals to stretch the imagination of stakeholders and to warrant new investments of resources.

Avoiding the Value Gap. Many colleges and universities are teetering on the brink of a “value gap” vis-à-vis their publics, a gap created by five factors:

• Misalignment between institutional purposes and the purposes of individual stakeholders, workforce needs, and public expectations. Most publics believe a realignment is necessary for many institutions.

• Placing power in the hands of autonomous professionals who can effectively veto attempts to realign individual, departmental, colleges, and institutional activities. This may be the single greatest barrier to innovation and will be discussed in a blog later this week.

• Agile deployment of resources is a core capability of tomorrow's winning institutions. Today by contrast there are widespread difficulties in mobilizing, leveraging, and repurposing the value that resides in the resources of colleges and universities. Most institutional resources are unavailable for agile use because they are fully booked through existing ways of doing things. More on this in tomorrow’s blog.

• Reductions in institutional offerings and disappearing slack resources in the face of financial hardship. The reductions and cutbacks caused by the recent recession have devoured any slack resources that remained and further reduced services to stakeholders, especially in places like California.

• Increasing relative costs, escalating debt burdens, and decline in family/learner resources, post-recession. Recent dramatic rises in tuition cost and cutbacks in colleges and university offerings create the potential for an even greater perceived value gap in the future, which colleges and universities must act decisively to avoid. Closing the perception of a value gap will require continuous efforts to align with stakeholder needs, improve outcomes and experiences, and control/reduce costs.

The tension/balance between outcomes, experiences, and costs must be a continuing issue for colleges and universities that hope to enjoy the confidence of students, parents, and the American public. Focusing on value will enable institutional leadership to assure they deliver on that promise.

Maximizing Value Through Efficiency, Forgetting the Past, and Creating the Future. Tomorrow’s blog will explore the principles espoused by Dr.Vijay Govindarajan, expert on innovation at the Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth University. Dr. Govindarajan spins a “three box” metaphor for the strategy needed during coping with recessionary times:

• Box 1: Improving the efficiency of today’s businesses;

• Box 2: Forgetting the past – selectively identifying what concepts and folk wisdoms do we need to move beyond in order to have a prosperous future; and

• Box 3: Creating new lines of business that are the enterprise’s future.

Focusing on Value, Not Just Quality (1)

2009-08-03T14:22:00.002-04:00

Analytics helps stakeholders to focus attention on the things that matter to them, and compare results across institutions/enterprises. When dealing with learning and workforce development, the key issue today is value.

Several years ago, Mark Olson (currently with IBM) and I wrote a book called The Business Value Web for the National Association of Business Officers (NACUBO). It suggested that maximizing value could be an effective unifying principle for leveraging all of the resources available to colleges and universities.

Value Is Different from Quality. A focus on quality typically seeks more and more resources for enhancing reputation based on traditional measures. In such a setting, greater expenditure of resources is often seen as a surrogate for quality in itself. Insufficient energy is placed on the creative reduction of costs while maintaining levels of performance. Quality measures often emphasize inputs, rather than outcomes (i.e., taking standardization of inputs as a proxy measure for standardization of outcomes). They focus on what can be measured and compared easily and aggregated to an institutional total, rather than being guided by what is important to stakeholders. Such measures of quality are typically seen through the eyes of the providers or external assessors of reputation and distinction.

Value Is Seen Through the Eyes of Stakeholders. Value is a dialogue between each stakeholder and the institution/enterprise. Quality is a monologue spoken by the institution or assessors of reputation. Value balances three factors:

• Nature of outcomes and their congruence with learner needs and the providers promise,

• Essence of the experiences through which the outcomes are achieved, and

• Cost/price.

Like the potential energy in the coils of a spring, latent value resides in the knowledge resources, programs, processes, relationships, infrastructure, and competencies of faculty, staff, students, and other stakeholders. The manner in which these resources are combined and engaged determines the value experienced by each individual stakeholder.

Value Distinguishes Institutions from Each Other – in the Eyes of Partticular Stakeholders. Delivering greater value for learners and other stakeholders can create strategic differentiation for individual colleges and universities and/or other providers of education, training, and workforce development. This is complicated by the fact that some institutions – like R1 research universities – serve many stakeholders at many different levels and in many different ways, while other educational enterprises – like for-profit learning enterprises or a graduate school of business – serve a more targeted stakeholder group.

Two institutions with similar “quality” of programs can have substantially different value propositions for particular learners and other stakeholders. Enhancing the value proposition for particular stakeholders often requires greater levels of collaboration, innovation and creativity, at all levels – individual, departmental, institutional, and inter-institutional.

Given resource scarcity, discerning and piecing together distinctive clusters of hidden value is emerging as a newly appreciated form of innovation. Innovation and creativity can release and enhance the latent value residing in institutional assets and resources of all kinds, creating new experiences for learners and other stakeholders.

Superior Value Propositions Based on Excellent Outcomes, Convenience, and Good Experiences. Consider the example of the University of Phoenix, Walden University, Capella University, and the growing cluster of for-profit learning providers. By 20th century measures of reputational quality, the research offerings of these institutions are undistinguished. But these institutions have fully grasped the value proposition required today by their key audiences. They have created world-class, convenient support services; treatment geared to adults, not adolescents; and accelerated, job-relevant learning offerings in both classroom and online settings. Typically these offerings are 6-8 weeks in length rather than following the traditional semester and are taught by seasoned practitioners rather than content experts. These offerings provide consistent, outcomes that are learner-centric and are tailored to workforce needs.

In consequence, adult learners have found the outcomes and experiences of the for-profit to be very appealing, generating tremendous growth for these enterprises. Moreover, adult learners have been willing to pay a premium price for these offerings, compared to public and even private universities. Since the for-profits have also figured out how to reduce the cost of faculty, on-line learning resources, and support services (in comparison with public and private institutions) they have generated substantial net margins that have been deployed in new product development, marketing (substantially more than not-for-profit education), and profit.

Coming Next, Aggressive Price Competition from For-Profit Providers and New Competitors. We’ve already commented on the price competition from providers such as Lamar University, partnering with a for-profit provider to provide on-line learning at a market-busting price. As the financial affordability crisis worsens, we will see more of this behavior.

Tomorrow’s blog will explore more about focusing on quality – how to leverage elements of the value web.

Analytics in the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (2)

2009-08-03T14:12:00.004-04:00

Guest Blogger: Dr. Linda Baer, Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs, Minnesota State College and Universities

The dashboard used at the system level by the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities enables Systems-level administrators and members of the Board to follow the aggregated performance of the system on ten key variables.

These ten variables fall into four strategic directions for the MnScU system: 1) access and opportunity, 2) meeting state and regional economic needs, 3) quality programs and services, and 4) innovation and efficiency.

At the present time, six of these ten variables are being used actively: 1) percent change in enrollment, 2) net tuition and fees as a % of total income, 3) related employment of graduates, 4) licensure exams pass rates, 5) persistence and completion rates, and 6) facilities condition index. The other four measures, while important considerations that figure in the Board’s deliberations, have not yet been adequately defined in a “quantifiable” manner to be “lit up” on the dashboard.

The first page view of the dashboard is the aggregate for the entire MNSCU system. The familiar “speedometer” view. In addition, the user can “drill down” to examine the performance of individual campuses, as reflected in the second page view for Alexandria Technical College. In addition to the variables displayed on the second view, many other statistics can be portrayed and presented in graphical form.

The dashboard has proven to be an excellent mechanism for engaging the Executive Team and the Board in understanding summative performance against the high-level strategic directions of MnSCU and its 32 institutions. It is also the basis for judging the performance of the President and his team and these measures are part of the performance evaluation criteria .

But the use of measurement at MnSCU goes far beyond the high-level outcome elements of the dashboard. Individual MnSCU institutions have a rich set of measures which they use to get at the effectiveness of the processes and people that actually generate those outcomes. Many of these institutions utilize a rich palette of Baldrige and/or AQIP measures to understand, refine, and redesign the performance of their processes and people. This sort of continuous churning and improvement is critical to the effective use of analytics.

Analytics at the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (1)

2009-07-31T11:25:00.002-04:00

Guest Blogger: Dr. Linda Baer, Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs, Minnesota State College and Universities

The concept of a comprehensive, technology-supported analytics capacity was an important element in the overall vision of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, created through the merger of three systems of institutions. The system was to ultimately serve a comprehensive continuum of educational needs from courses, certificates, diplomas, baccalaureates, through graduate degrees. The programmatic responses to these needs took on a range of forms, and analytics were developed to measure, monitor, and manage the programs. For MnSCU, vision, technology, and initiatives have come together, in an expeditionary manner, over time.

Creating the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System required merging three systems from the separate technical colleges, community colleges and state universities. One of the most critical issues for success in the merger was the ability to have common data. This was a big order given that the three systems had existed in very separate realms with different approaches to data including a wide range of practices around highly centralized data in the colleges to highly decentralized data in the state universities. Creating the capacity of all colleges and universities to operate within a more standardized system was the challenge. This constituted the first foundational work to ultimately create a futuristic, broad-based analytics system.

In order to create an integrated data system, it was necessary to develop standardized definitions of data, create a data warehouse, and craft the capacity to mine the data and retrieve data for reports and decision making across the thirty-two institutions.

Metrics and Analytics for Diverse Populations. The vision remained; serving the comprehensive continuum of educational needs, not only in terms of certificates and degrees but also the full continuum of services to an increasingly diverse student population. The technical colleges served adult learners, career changers and employer training needs. The community colleges served more traditional learners as recent high school graduates on occupational pathways or in transfer programs. The state universities served as comprehensive institutions serving as residential and commuting campuses with a wide array of student diversity.

Innovation Through Initiatives. Initiatives and programs were developed to assist these diverse campuses to work together on behalf of student learners. Initiatives included transfer articulation agreements between and among campuses; the development of baccalaureates of applied sciences with universities and technical colleges forming partnerships to design and deliver the curriculum; exploratory work on developing state-of-the-art, on-line student services and an expansion of targeted curriculum. Yet the key vision of serving the wide range of students required more – much more. Initiatives were developed to support serving underserved students in more flexible, personalized and customizable models. Student success was paramount with programs being developed in partnerships with K-12; middle colleges were created to serve a fused 11-14 grade level. A statewide P-16 Council was developed to begin to create better alignment between high school curriculum and college level courses. Firs- Year Experiences were launched at many campuses. As this reflects, there were many innovative projects.

Investing in Serving the Underserved. The state legislature funded a significant investment in serving the underserved student population; first generation, low income, at-risk students. The requirements were that campuses needed to develop more successful partnerships with high schools and create recruitment and retention strategies. The Board of Trustees and the Chancellor of the system created a campus-level dashboard that reflected progress towards the goal of improving serving underserved students as measured by enrollments and retention over time by race and gender. This year the accomplishments of the agreed-upon targets were used in the performance evaluation of each president.

Linking Activities and Metrics. The second foundation step is to begin to link these many activities. The technology and infrastructure capacity of the system was supporting a large data warehouse with selected data mining capabilities. The dashboard enabled full display of campus and system accomplishments. Yet, the question remained: What activities were contributing to the most student learning and student success? A beginning activity was to build a repository of best practices so all campuses could share and learn from the activities of others. Direct reporting required campuses to describe what programs led to what student accomplishments.

Boosting Analytics and Predictive Modeling. Realizing that the next big step was to develop analytic and predictive modeling capabilities, the system contracted with three vendors to assess the system capacity to go to the next level of analytics. Recommendations were provided that assisted the system in determining the next investments required to move to the next level where, using national, state and local data, we could develop student information dashboards so each faculty member could review where the student was academically and then advise the best academic choices for ongoing success. Curricular assessment could be made to see what components of course learning worked for students and what needed more emphasis so tutoring and advising could further align best learning experiences to accomplish successful learning. The goal is to be able to individualize the learning experience to where students can be advised in a manner where the message is: “Students like you were most successful in ultimately graduating in this field when they did the following… course pathways, simulation models, tutoring, summer enrichments, internships and apprenticeships, etc.”

The Technology Is Getting Smarter. Our capacity to assess and advise for success is getting smarter. We are compelled to continue to build the best action analytics and predictive modeling that we can to significantly improve student learning, student success, student matriculation and ultimately worker/professional success on the job or in the career of their choice. The imperative is to re-create and transform higher education to be the direct provider of successful learning experiences that lead to highly competent, globally competitive workers and professionals.

Our next steps include further exploration of better longitudinal student data across P-16. This will allow analysis of student course taking and success and also the assessment of what teachers are teaching what curriculum that result in better college and university success. In addition, we intend to link with workforce representatives and the department of employment and economic development to assess linkages between curricula, based on national industry standards and other curriculum and entry level worker competency, low-skilled adult training and skill development and targeted incumbent workforce professional development.

Tomorrow's blog will describe MnSCU's dashboard initiative in greater detail.

What Kinds of Graduates are Needed for the Post-Recession, Global Economy?

2009-07-31T11:06:00.004-04:00

At the Annual Meeting of the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP), many presenters and a considerable amount of hallway chatter was directed at the question, “What kinds of educations and competences do graduates need to thrive in the re-imagined, highly competitive, global economy that will emerge as we lift out of the current recession?”

No surprisingly, the Answers to this Question Are Multi-Faceted. First, it is clear that thoughtful learners at all levels and in all settings need to align their capacities with the needs of the workforce. Moreover, learners need to be far more reflective about how they can truly demonstrate the sorts of competences that employers covet. We believe learners and families will get even more serious about these issues over the next few years.

Second, alignment with he needs of the economy can have vastly different meanings for an entry-level green career aspirant, an engineering graduate from a large state university, a liberal arts graduate from a small, well regarded private institution, or a masters degree graduate from an on-line, for-profit provider. Different people, different stages in development and careers, different industries, different aspirations.

Third, early attention to aligning with workforce needs need not translate into narrowing of options and systematically lowering of expectations for some groups. Career tracks should not become impermeable silos. One of the great strengths of American higher education has been our capacity for learners to have second and third chances at getting their act together (a weakness being that too many need second and third chances). At SCUP, Jonathon Kozol spoke eloquently of the need for minority students to be encouraged in their aspirations for a horizon-expanding liberal arts education, for example.

When we use the term “demonstrated competence” we do not mean an exhaustive punch list of micro-competencies, but a fully integrated set of skills and capabilities that enable individuals to function with confidence, flexibility and a voracious capacity for perpetual learning.

Competences in the Global World of Shared Sociability. In his breakthrough book, The World Is Flat, Thomas Friedman outlines what learners need to know to thrive in the emerging world of global, shared sociability. In “Education for Exponential Times,” Diana Oblinger offers some fresh views that extend Friedman’s thesis. A consolidated description of the competences of the new model graduate contains:

• A foundation of curiosity, passion, flexibility, self-motivation, and psychological flexibility;

• A new portfolio of roles: collaborators and orchestrators, synthesizers, explainers, leveragers, adapters, “green” people, passionate personalizers, and localizers;

• Individuals will need to demonstrate their capacity to perpetually incorporate new knowledge - disciplinary knowledge will be relatively less important; and

• The capacity to work in highly diverse, transnational teams and leverage personal knowledge networks will be paramount.

Increasing international experiences are a key ingredient in this model; both institutions and individuals are responding aggressively to New Age variations on study abroad, joint degree, collaborative research, and internship programs that span international borders.

Double Down on the Liberal Arts and Sciences – But With a Difference. What does this mean for liberal arts and sciences graduates? And for institutions whose “brand” depends on the public perception that liberal arts and sciences degrees and experiences provide an appealing value proposition - onew that is worth a healthy price premium, in many cases? Several thoughts emerge:

• Liberal arts and sciences majors should be highly reflective about aligning their broadly articulated competences with the Friedman/Oblinger view of the proven capacities necessary for what the Chinese call “golden future jobs?” They should also be ,aggressive in being able to demonstrate their competences and present a contextualized, confident, rich portfolio of achievement and ability.

• Institutions depending on the liberal arts and sciences for their brand should continuously question whether their programs and experiences are as developmentally rigorous and broad as they claim. Do they includes math and sciences as well as the liberal arts? Do they include capastone and synthesizing experiences? They should also affirm and assure that they provide the sorts of developmental experiences that prepare graduates to thrive in a Flat, Global, Shared Sociability, and Exponential Education World.

So institutions that believe in the strong value proposition of their liberal arts and sciences offerings should “double down” on their bet – advocating the increasing potential value of a broad liberal arts and sciences preparation. But with a critical difference: Affirming a strong emphasis on the Friedman/Oblinger-type competences that will be critical to thriving in the post-recession, global economy. And assuring that the reality of the experiences measure up to the promise.

Frankly, proponents of the liberal arts and sciences cannot be complacent over the next few years, even if they have a compelling story to tell. As students and parents rethink the value propositions of prospective institutions and career tracks, they will want to see proof that a well grounded liberal arts and sciences degree and accompanying experiences actually prepares graduates for “golden future” careers. And that employers recognize this value proposition.

In future blogs we shall describe successful institutional efforts to promote a globalized liberal arts and sciences education.

Raising the Stakes and Broadening the Scope of Analytics (2)

2009-07-29T17:47:00.004-04:00

Yesterday’s blog suggested that the current financial crisis had “raised the stakes and broadened the scope of analytics” that are needed to help address the following challenges:

Reducing the Total Cost of Learning. Increasing the size of Pell Grants and assuring that learners and their families have access to financial aid are necessary actions to improve affordability. However, these measures are not sufficient to solve the affordability problem. The rate of increase in tuition is likely to continue to exceed the rate of inflation for many, if not most institutions. This especially true in the short term, given the gaping holes in institutional budgets left by funding cutbacks for state institutions and endowment income reductions for the privates.

Individual institutions can reduce the total cost of achieving targeted certificates or degrees by attaining greater efficiency and effectiveness in degree planning, course availability, and use of online learning options to fill gaps and enable students to finish certificates and degrees on time. Many are doing this now; they will need to redouble their efforts.

Some families will require even more: accelerated degree completion through compressed schedules or high school/college programs such as early college high school, dual/concurrent enrollment, and/or bridge/pathways programs. The programs bridging into high school need to be part of a fundamental improvement of the middle school and high school experience and the readiness of their graduates for college-level work. Over time many families will get even more serious about such programs, given the current state of family finances. Institutions that are able to offer baccalaureate degrees in three years (or even two years past high school for exceptional students) may achieve a competitive advantage with particular groups of students. Analytics will play a key role in conveying the comparative costs of education and the capacity of students to achieve accelerated completion.

Increasing the Number of College Graduates and Enhancing America’s Competitiveness and Re-establishing Financial Sustainability for Institutions. President Obama has called for the US regaining its international lead in educational rates by 2020; this includes generating five million more community college graduates by 2020. This is a huge proposed leap, coming at a time when government finances are overextended; moreover, institutional finances are depleted and their energies diverted into short-term coping strategies. Even community colleges, the recipients of the Presidents attention and financial largesse, are finding themselves flooded with students, yet many face short-term cuts as a result of the financial woes of their states/locales.

What Is Financial Sustainability for Colleges and Universities? The patterns and cadences of finance are dramatically different for public and private institutions. For private institutions, sustainability means continuing to offer a perceived value proposition that justifies their tuition level (recognizing discounting) in comparison with other providers (public institutions, for-profits). For public institutions, sustainability means both competing with other providers on value and developing the capacity to weave together a mercurial combination of tuition, public funding, and other revenues, always dealing with the roller coaster ride of unpredictable public finance during booms and recessions.

In order to lift out of recession and achieve the gains in degree output advocated by President Obama, a new vision for financial sustainability will need to be articulated – and provided for. Analytics will be key in articulating, describing and monitoring the state of institutional finance and supporting the capacity of the public comparatively to evaluate institutional value propositions

In a July 16 column in The Boston Globe, Joseph Aoun, President of Northeastern University, asked the penetrating question: “Is higher education ready to accommodate – and graduate – millions of additional students?” His answer: “No, not without diversification of the current model, including growth in for-profits, no-frills universities, flexible degree programs, and more online offerings.”

Creating Greater Flexibility, More Choices, New Mechanisms, Structures, and Networks for Perpetual Learning and Competence Building. The new vision for institutional sustainability must include a substantial commitment to cheaper, better options. This will include greater flexibility, more choices, “no frills” options and differential fees to reflect these choices, and the capacity of relatively low-cost public institutions to accommodate the bulk of the possible tidal wave of new learners. Traditional colleges and universities that wish to participate in this learning bulge will need to develop their capacity for flexibility and reinvention.

Moreover, new approaches are required to deconstruct existing learning experiences, courses and degrees so that entry-level learners can acquire sufficient learning to enter the workforce even more rapidly, then complete their learning while employed. For such learners, completing a course or two, gaining a job based on that learning, then completing an associates degree while employed is today's model. New, green career pathways for such entry-level workers need to emerge from current stimulus funding.

Finally, new, community-of-practice-based learning models are emerging to support networks meeting the perpetual learning and competence building needs of adults who are combining work and learning, every day. These networks are deploying the social networking, collaboration, and analytic tools of Web 2.0. The vast majority of continuous learning experiences in the economy could benefit from these sorts of ongoing networks. These competence networks will involve traditional colleges and universities, hospitals, business enterprises, and other community organizations. But the culture of these networks will differ dramatically from traditional institutions. They will be fast, fluid, flexible, and affordable. They will require different sorts of performance metrics and descriptive dashboards.Over time, such network communities will dominate the market for adult learning. My colleague Paul Lefrere and I have coined the term Competence 2.0 ® to describe this phenomenon, which we will explore at greater lengths in future blogs.

Raising the Stakes and Broadening the Scope of Analytics (1)

2009-07-28T09:17:00.002-04:00

As we’ve noted in previous blogs, it’s no secret that improving student retention and success is the “killer app” for action analytics on campus. Investments in analytics that improve admissions yield, student progress from freshmen to sophomore year, and degree completion statistics provide a health ROI/VOI for institutions. They also improve institutional scores on comparative statistics that are used by evaluators in calculating institutional rankings and by prospective students in evaluating colleges and universities.

When these tools and practices are applied to “at risk” or “underserved” students to improve student success, they also improve both institutional and national statistics on student success. This contributes toward the elimination of the “achievement gap” for underserved students that is a major target of national organizations such as the NAtional Association of System Heads (NASH).

Not surprisingly, the most advanced and mature examples of analytics on campuses today reflect these priorities: 1) predictive modeling to shape institutional policies and practices; 2) strategic enrollment management supported by predictive modeling and admissions pipeline management; 3) real-time analysis of current student success and engagement, using dynamic viewing, drill down, and alerts/interventions for at-risk students; and 4) active use of dashboards dealing with student progress and success – in the context of other important institutional variables.

Many of the best practices in this first generation of academic/action analytics can be reviewed in the two articles we cited in earlier blogs, Action Analytics http://www.strategicinitiatives.com/documents/action_analytics_educause.pdf and Academic Analytics (http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume42/AcademicAnalyticsANewToolforaN/161749).

The economic recession has been a perfect storm, devastating both institutional finances and student/family finances. This has created several immediate imperatives for institutional enrollment management officers: 1) finding adequate financial aid support for students in the new context, 2) creatively packaging financial aid and coaxing nervous students, 3) engaging admitted and continuing students to maximize the likelihood they will enroll in the fall, and 4) fretting about the myriad of the things that can go wrong for students enrolled during a diminished resource environment – institutional and family- and finding solutions.

This is heavy lifting. This week’s edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education contains examples from Lawrence University, Clark University, Michigan Technological University, Alleghany University and others, where inventive administrators have addressed one particular challenge, “summer melt” - the percentage of students who have paid deposits who do not show up for enrollment.

Looking beyond current challenges, the economic perfect storm has brought into sharper focus some longer-term imperatives – and opportunities. These will require a broader range of analytics than the first gen, “killer app” analytics focusing on student success. Many of them involve “raising the stakes” by exploring fundamental changes in the elements of higher education’s/institutional value propositions. These elements include: 1) outcomes, 2) the experiences through which they are achieved, and 3) cost/price.

In tomorrow’s blog, we will explore several of these broader issues and the analytics needed to support them:

• Reducing the total cost of learning for learners and their families;

• Increasing the number of college graduates and enhancing America’s competitiveness;

• Re-establishing financial sustainability for institutions; and

• Creating new mechanisms, structures, and networks for perpetual learning and competence building.

How About Lengthening and Intensifying the School Year – K-20?

2009-07-27T11:19:00.002-04:00

Sometimes you have to rely on an international magazine to give us a fresh perspective on ourselves. In the June 13, 2009 issue of The Economist, the columnist “Lexington” described an ironic situation: Americans, who as adults work longer hours than peers in almost all other developed countries, require less work from our children than any other developed country. Describing “The Underworked American,” Lexington points out that American children have one of the shortest school years anywhere, 180 days compared to 195 days for children in OECD countries. Over 12 years, a 15-day deficit translates into 180 days of school, equivalent to a full school year. And the story gets even worse.

Moreover, we have one of the shortest school days, six and a half hours, adding up to 32 hours a week. This compares to 53 hours a week in Denmark and 60 in Sweden. We also divide up our school time in peculiar ways. The long summer holiday is particularly detrimental – students typically forget a month’s worth of learning in most subjects, and three times as much in math. Our relatively non-competitive K-12performance is reflected in the high levels of remediation required by students entering public universities.

Lengthening the school year for American K-12 will not be easy, because of the highly decentralized nature of American K-12 education (not to mention the powerful lobbying efforts of teachers unions and summer camp advocates and the desire of some wistful American parents to give their children a modern variant of the “Huckleberry Finn” summer). But 1,000 out of the country’s 90.000 schools have abandoned the traditional school day. These include charter schools in the Knowledge Is Power Programme (KIPP) whose classes begin at 7:30 and end at 5:00 pm and include some classes on Saturday and teach for several weeks in the summer. These students regularly score better than their peers – largely a tribute to spending 60% more time in class.

Thinkers as disparate as President Obama and Newt Gingrich have encouraged educators to take action to address these problems.

Why not lengthen the school year, not just K-12, but K-20? Stephen Joel Trachtenberg and other administrative leaders have called for universities to take serious looks at making even greater use of intensive year-round operations. Many postsecondary students already do so, enrolling in courses in community colleges and hometown universities when they are home for summer vacation from their “regular” university. Many students in community colleges and metropolitan universities are already working part-time during the regular school year and carry their work and learning efforts through the summer.

Comparative analytics have been critical in describing the problems and competitive shortcomings of American education, K-20. They will also be critical in framing, modeling, and executing efforts to lengthen and intensify the school year, K-20.

Will This Economic Downturn Spur Innovations?

2009-07-26T08:34:00.002-04:00

In screening key resources from the business literature – Business Week, Fortune, Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, McKinsey Quarterly, and others - we have distilled a summary view of how leaders in other industries are responding to lifting out of the current recession.

Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric, said of the current recession, “This is not a cycle. It’s a reset.” A great many business leaders – perhaps a majority - share his view that new business practices will emerge from this recession in the context of the highly competitive global economy. Many companies have shed workers, slimmed down, and are rethinking their lines of business.

John Seely Brown and John Hagel III have coined the term “The Big Shift” to describe the phenomenon facing industries, today. Quite literally, every industry from financial services to real estate to food and agriculture to manufacturing to health care to information technology – even education – is facing a reshaping of its principles, practices, and products. Shrewd leaders know that knee-jerk cutback reactions can do more harm than good. The risk of not investing during recession is often higher than the risks associated with shrewd investments.

Clayton Christensen, author of The Innovators Prescription, observes that downturns are often good times for innovations. They force innovators not to waste money and to think about what they are doing. Many innovations start out in the wrong direction and need to be realigned. Downturns force enterprises to push innovations out into the marketplace and make rapid adjustments and refinements to produce success.

Downturns also force consumers to be more frugal and cost conscious. In the process, they rethink the basic value propositions they are seeking. Value consists of three basic elements: 1) outcomes, 2) the experiences through which those outcomes are achieved, and 3) cost/price. When consumers reappraise value, all three elements get rethought.

Christensen’s specialty is disruptive innovations – ones that change the dynamics of industries. He observes that disruptive innovations have three elements: 1) a technological enabler, 2) a business model innovation and 3) a new commercial ecosystem. In higher education, the most recent disruptive innovation has been for-profit education, whose providers have used technology to create competence-focused, consistent learning experiences, tailored to the needs of adult learners. For this achievement, learners have been willing to pay a premium price.

The next generation of disruptive innovations in education will follow several courses. First, providers will extend the for-profit business model, but in a way that reduces cost/price. Lamar University has partnered with a for-profit provider to field an on-line, masters in education program for half the price of public university competitors. It now dominates that niche market. This neatly demonstrates the aphorism, “Cash cows are never fatter than the sunny afternoon before the moonless night when they are rustled by new competitors – or old competitors with new tricks.”

Second, Web 2.0 technology will be used to change the patterns and cadences of ongoing learning, introducing a community of practice model to learning and perpetual competence building. Such communities of practice will grow in business enterprises, industries, and communities, often involving a broad range of partners, including colleges and universities. But the dynamics and business models will be very different and these communities will deconstruct learning, competence demonstration, and certification. Much of the learning will be free, using open educational resources.

Many colleges and universities are counter-cyclical, so their enrollments typically grow during business downturns. But the affordability crisis for learners and families is so great that widespread rethinking of value propositions is underway. As learners and their families begin to reconsider outcomes, experiences, and cost, innovations that provide fresh value propositions will receive favorable consideration. Institutional leaders should take note.

Perspectives on the Funding Crisis from the SCUP Conference (2)

2009-07-24T12:34:00.001-04:00

So what analytics applications that might improve planning, sustainability, and lifting out of recession were on display at the meeting of the Society for College and University Planning? Two are worth mentioning.

Nuventive’s TracDat product is an assessment management tool that is sufficiently powerful/adaptable and properly architected so that it can be used to support assessment, accreditation, strategic planning, sustainability planning, and other specialized planning functions. Other assessment management products do an adequate job of portraying and managing assessment, but do not have the basic architecture to broadly fulfill the alignment function as achieved by TracDat.

TracDat enables users to align planning and execution efforts both vertically and horizontally. Vertical alignment means aligning strategies, goals, actions, measures, and responsibilities for actions at the institutional, college, department and program levels. Horizontal alignment means having the capacity to align regional and programmatic accredition efforts, sustainability plans, and capital plans with institutional strategy, goals, and actions. TracDat enables users to keep track of these alignments, manage responsibilities, actions, and corrective actions, all electronically.

Why is alignment so important to institutional efforts to establish financial sustainability? Experience has shown that it is profoundly challenging to stitch together the various elements of institutional strategy and to redirect existing initiatives as will be necessary to lift out of recession. TracDat dissolves the boundaries between planning “silos” and process “silos.” It enables measures and responsibilities to be assigned to the various aligned actions. These functions are discussed in A Guide to Planning for Change, published by the Society for College and University Planning.

In Portland, Nuventive premiered a demonstration of TracDat used to portray and manage an institution’s Sustainability Plan, fully aligned with institutional strategies.

Another part of the analytics puzzle is addressed by iStrategy Solutions – providing real-time action analytics for the masses. iStrategy is a prepackaged analytics application that combines: 1) data mapping to the data files of major ERP providers such as PeopleSoft/Oracle, Sungard, and Datatel; 2) Extract, Transfer and Load (ETL), 3) Data Warehous; 4) Online Analytic Processing (OLAP), 5) Business Intelligence (BI), and 6) presentation in a user friendly wrapper. iStrategy uses Microsoft tools to drive down the cost of extending analytics to a large set of end users. As a prepackaged solution, iStrategy can be deployed on campus quickly, presenting the institution’s own data in a few days, followed by a period of definitional refinement.

iStrategy addresses the analytical need to provide decision makers with the capacity to conduct dynamic analysis of data resources to support management retention and student success, productivity, personnel and talent management, and succession planning, all in real time. Using iStrategy, a student services worker can dynamically select the OLAP variables for an analysis, run the analysis, change the variables again to get just the right view, examine particular groups/cells of students in the analysis, then drill down to see the individuals in the group. This drill down can then stimulate an alert or intervention.

iStrategy is also easily extensible. Over time data from other “buckets” (so-called “shadow systems,” other third party administrative applications, academic information systems, assessment, external data) can be drawn into the data warehouse.

Perspectives on the Funding Crisis from the SCUP Conference (1)

2009-07-23T08:22:00.001-04:00

The 44th Annual Conference of the Society for College and University Planning was overshadowed by a great, gray cloud: the impact of the current recession and college and university funding crisis. Titles of some of the sessions convey this spirit:

• “Dear President Obama – Looking Beyond the Crisis to a New Future for Education in America,” Jonathon Kozol, Plenary Speaker;

• “The College Funding Crisis: Five Ways Planning Can Help,” Philip J. Parsons, Sasaki Architects;

• “Are We Wasting a Perfectly Good Crisis?” George Pernsteiner, Chancellor. Oregon University System; and

• “Maintaining Sustainability Initiatives in Tough Economic Times,” William J. Flynn, Managing Director, Emeritus, National Council for Continuing Education and Training, et al.

Several prevailing perspectives seemed to emanate from the strategic planners, facilities planners, architects, and academic leaders at this conference:

• The building boom in American higher education has surely slowed down, but compared to residential and commercial real estate, higher education construction still is relatively healthy; given the lead time for capital planning, many projects are still “in the pipeline;” but thoughtful leaders are concerned about future prospects;

• The continuing and cascading cycles of budget cuts, rescissions, travel freezes, furloughs, and other financial adjustments have thrown most institutional plans into a cocked hat; financial exigency, short-term fixes and just plain “muddling through” have trumped institutional plans, innovation-driven change and transformative strategy;

• Most leaders have reached some level of comprehension of the fact that the decline in America’s relative standing regarding education and skills outcomes must be reversed, and that our education gaps between different population groups is simultaneously a betrayal of our values and a drain on our competitive position;

• Many leaders can articulate a vision of the desirability of reestablishing financial sustainability, post-recession; they even can describe individual puzzle pieces that may help; but they no conception of the sorts of comprehensive strategies for realigning existing and new initiatives to achieve financial sustainability and restore our competitive standing;

• The next several years are expected to present even tougher decisions as leaders grapple with the challenge of moving beyond the current imperative of “muddling through” and the need to launch the combinations of operational efficiency, innovation, and transformative change necessary to lift us to a higher plane of achioevement.

SCUP is one of the national leaders in sustainability, a theme that pervaded many sessions and hallway conversations at the conference. Most manifestations of sustainability deal with “green” features involving energy, water, and atmosphere. Another important "green" facet of sustainability – financial sustainability – will feature prominently in the continuing conversations in the halls of SCUP conferences and workshops.

Tomorrow’s blog will provide more feedback on analytics, lifting out of recession, and financial sustainability at SCUP.

Rediscovering Financial Sustainability: Innovate or Decline

2009-07-22T07:46:00.003-04:00

In our blogs on “Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?” we introduced the notion that two forces had collided: 1) the continually rising relative cost of American higher education and 2) the diminishing capacity of learners and families to afford higher education.

In this blog we shall further explore ways in which elements of US higher education’s funding models and performance are unsustainable. What are the various facets of unsustainability?

• McKinsey reports that the persistent gap in academic achievement between children in the US and their counterparts in other countries deprives the US economy of as much as $2.3 trillion dollars in economic output in 2008. This is a tremendous drain on our international competitiveness and cannot be sustained in the face of global competition. http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/The_economic_cost_of_the_US_education_gap_2388.

• The high attrition, failure, and remediation rates in American high schools and colleges are wasteful and unsustainable; in many American community colleges, even those being fed by “high performing” school districts, it is not uncommon to see rates of students requiring remediation in the range of 60-75%. This wasteful “redoing” of what should have been achieved in high school is unsustainable.

• Retention rates at American colleges and universities vary dramatically, but are very high in many institutions, representing a waste of effort and resources; institutions with serious retention improvement programs have demonstrated these rates can be improved substantially.

• Public universities have gone through a roller coaster ride of budgetary ups and downs, achieving new funding during good economic times, then experiencing mid-year rescissions, cutbacks, and retrenchment during periodic recessions. This repeating cycle has completely disrupted consistent funding and the nurturing of innovations and initiatives that might change institutional practices and performance. These cycles also have diminished enterprise capacity and sapped the energy of institutional leadership. This model is unsustainable.

• Public financing of higher education continues to decline as a percentage of state budgets; public institutions’ support from state appropriations as a percentage of their total budgets has declined to 10-15% for many flagship universities. Many of these institutions have accepted lesser funding to achieve greater flexibility in setting tuitions and other measures that would establish for them greater sustainability and predictability in budgets.

• On an enterprise level, higher education and health care institutions have used technology in ways that often raise the overall cost of service. Even successful innovations, like the efforts of Carol Twigg at the National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT) http://www.center.rpi.edu/ to reinvent course practices using technology, resulting in dramatically reduced cost and enhanced performance, have not been replicated at scale across institutions. This sort of failure to elevate innovate to the enterprise level is unsustainable.

Financial sustainability requires innovations that improve and eliminate exist disparities in access, affordability, and success. This will requires significant changes in practices across PK-20.

Lifting out of recession is fundamentally about two things: 1) building competitiveness for the post-recession world and economy and 2)rediscovering and maintaining financial sustainability. These two factors are intertwined.

Tomorrow's blog will present insights gleaned at the Annual Conference of the Society for College an d University Planning.

Is Higher Education the Next Bubble to Burst? Yes and No (2)

2009-07-20T08:45:00.004-04:00

Bubbles burst when people will not or cannot continue to pay the irrationally, artificially overvalued price for prized assets. For example, when a real estate bubble bursts, buyers recalibrate their assessments of value and the value of residential and commercial real estate falls until a new market equilibrium is reached. In a field like education, readjustment will occur when new options appear that present different price points or value propositions that appeal to underserved or dissatisfied consumers. Over time, these new options both provide fresh choices and spur modifications in existing practices.

What are some of the options that will recalibrate value propositions and price points in higher education?

• Reduced Tuition Through Technology-Enabled Reinvention. Most institutions’ on-line offerings are actually more expensive than traditional offerings. But Lamar University has shaken up the marketplace in Texas for online graduate learning by collaborating with Higher Ed Holdings to offer an online masters program at a dramatically cheaper price point. The secret: using technology to change patterns of interaction and turning faculty into mentors and managers of the online learning space rather than content experts. Other disruptive, less-expensive offerings of various kinds are gestating in business development from Baltimore to Bangalore to Beijing. More about this in future blog “Disruptive Innovations in Higher Education.)

• Reduced Total/Net Cost of Learning/Three-Year Baccalaureate Degrees/One-year Associate Degrees. Tuitions at state universities are likely to continue to grow at rates greater than the CPI – unless states control it. Even so, the best way to address affordability is through reducing the total/net cost of degrees. Private institutions like Hartwick University have announced three-year options by compressing the university experience and making it year round. Stephen Joel Trachtenberg has suggested private universities consider full year-round operations. But the most promising initiatives are bridging and pathways programs between K-12, community colleges and four-year institutions. For example, the nursing pathways program involving Northern Virginia Community College and George Mason University assures that if students get on the prescribed pathway in ninth grade take prescribed courses successfully, they will achieve a baccalaureate in nursing within three years after graduation from high school (many such students currently require four to six years to achieve that end). There are numerous variations on such programs across the country.

Virtually every state has serious K-16 reinvention programs underway. The challenge is not just to push college-level work in high school, but to engage all high school students in more serious, immersive learning and competence building experiences. And to think of careers earlier. This acceleration and immersion should include vocational offerings and tracks. The real challenge is to move these programs from protoypes and experiments into full-blown reinvention of the high school experience, at scale. This will be discussed in an upcoming blog “The Underworked American Student.” Stay tuned.

• Deconstruction of Degrees into Certificates and Competences. For many entry-level workers, taking even two years to complete an associate degree before achieving employment is too long. The ideal solution is for learners to be exposed in high school to immersive learning and vocational/technical learning experiences (which may be achieved on community college campuses since we’re squeezed most voc tech out of high school) that prepare them for entry-level jobs, which they can take immediately after graduation. Then they complete other certificates and/or associate degrees while employed, a variation on the traditional apprenticeship model.

A corollary to this principle is to position entry-level job experiences to be the gateway to genuine career tracks. For example, substantial sums of stimulus money are being invested in weatherization and weatherization training, yet many of these workers will find their weatherization jobs to be dead ends. Extensive efforts are underway across the country to create green careers tracks, supported by online learning resources, that will enable entry-level workers to shape green careers, over time, and rise from installers to crew chiefs to auditors to managers and into technical elements of HVAC, solar, wind, and other renewables. These will require, different, more flexible approaches to community colege offerings. More to come about this in a future blog on “Deconstructing Green Career Tracks.”

• Community of Practice-Based Approaches to Competence. The traditional associates/bachelors/masters/doctorate degree progression is appropriate for individuals seeking traditional faculty careers. But the requirement of marketplace demands different learning and career paths. Suppose we used the tools of Web 2.0 (social networking, collaboration, knowledge repositories, and analytics) to create communities of practice into which student entered as undergraduates then continued through their careers? More about this alternative in the upcoming blog, “Perpetual Career Development Through Competence 2.0”

• Reduce Waste Through Improving Student Success. Improving graduation rates in high school and college is critical to reducing the total cost of leaning for the nation. The cost of our current culture of failure is huge and will be discussed in a forthcoming blog, “Destroying the Culture of Failure

Where does analytics come into this formulation? It is the element that enables us to measure performance and costs. Technology also the mechanism for deconstructing and reinventing processes and practices, then for measuring the impacts of processes on outcomes. Technology also enables citizens to engage in learning anytime, anyplace, anyhow, fusing work, learning, and other life experiences.

Is Higher Education the Next Bubble to Burst? (1)

2009-07-19T14:57:00.003-04:00

One of the basic premises of “Analytics and Lifting Out of Recession” is that higher education needs to reimagine and transform itself to thrive in the post recession economy. This transformation needs to include a reduction in the net cost of achieving degrees and certificates.

Reducing the net cost of learning is critical for two reasons. First, the capacity of students and parents to afford higher education has taken a serious hit, and will likely continue to deteriorate even after the economy improves. Financial aid has become problematic. Second, the cost of higher education has continued to rise faster than inflation and in comparison to other services and products. For many students and families, the higher education experience they aspired to and planned on may be beyond their reach.

In an article in The Chronicle of Education, “Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?” Joseph Marr Cronin and Howard E. Burton suggest that higher education may be “an asset that is irrationally and artificially overvalued and cannot be sustained.” This is the definition of a bubble, like the dot.com and housing bubbles. This article first appeared in the May 22, 2009 issue of TCHE and was reprinted on July 1, 2009.

Connecting the dots of evidence suggests they may have a point.

• Over the past 25 years, average college tuition and fees have risen by 440 percent – more than four times the rate of inflation and almost twice the rate of medical care (the rising cost of which is almost universally regarded as unsustainable).

• The price of education at elite institutions has reached $50,000 a year and the cost of public higher education has grown substantially; the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance reports that the percentage of students who were fully qualified to attend public four-year higher education and actually did so declined between 1976 and 2004 – and that was before the impact of today’s recession.

• Admissions officers have reported the recession is stimulating migration of many students from private to public institutions, from four year publics to community colleges, and to for-profits that offer efficiency, consistency of outcomes, and linkages to employment.

• William Baumol, in his classic article, “Why College Costs so Much?” in Planning for Higher Education in 1995, suggested that both education and health care, the “laying on of hands” professions, had not utilized technology-enabled reinvention to reduce their relative costs – unlike other goods and services in the economy. Unless this changed, Baumol projected education and health care would together account for over 50% of GDP in 2040 – an outcome that obviously was and is unsupportable. Baumol’s formulations did not receive the attention they deserved over the past 14 years.

• In Transforming Higher Education: A Vision for Learning in the 21st Century, also published in 1995 Michael Dolence and Donald Norris stipulated that higher education across the globe would need to realign, redesign, redefine, and reengineer its practices in order to educate the tidal wave of students clammering for learning. The current economic realities have placed exclamation points on this message.

Future conditions will exacerbate the competition for students – demographic decline in the Northeast and Midwest, disruptive competition from for-profit institutions and other new competitors, and fresh approaches to developing, demonstrating, and certifying competences. The processes of realigning, resigning, redefining, and reengineering higher education have shifted into a higher gear.

In tomorrow’s blog, we will discuss existing and projected innovations and transformations that are reducing the cost of tuition, the total cost of education, and the fundamental mechanisms for perpetually acquiring competences.

What National Organizations Are Doing ? (2)

2009-07-18T09:09:00.005-04:00

Guest Blogger: Dr. Linda Baer, Senior Vice Chancellor fore Academic and Student Affairs, Minnesota State College and Universities

The National Association of System Heads developed a potential measurement framework for participation and success rates for underrepresented and all students transitioning from high school preparation to college success. The value here is that the association has acknowledged the multiple factors and milestones critical to support and maximize student success. The following chart depicts the pathway, goals and indicators in a systematic manner based on key data elements including success in entry level math and English, successful completion of remediation, year to year retention and early accumulation of credits.

Each of the examples cited; enrollment management, Lumina’s Achieving the Dream, or the National Association of System Heads and Education Trust Access to Success all have common elements that have been found to make the biggest difference in student success, retention and graduation. The research has been clear for some time about what colleges and universities need to do to be more effective in serving students. The availability of data has supported the proof of best practices that work. Bringing the predictive modeling capacities within the analytics framework can maximize the research and data in a more customized and personalized manner for each student.

URM = underrepresented minority populations.

Check out the reference to NASH at www2.edtrust.org/EdTrust/A2S.htm

What Are National Organizations Doing to Promote Analytics? (1)

2009-07-17T06:21:00.003-04:00

Guest Blogger – Dr. Linda Baer, Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs, Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU).

While greater proportions of the U.S population are being educated, overall college/university graduation rates have remained relatively unchanged for decades. We know more about learning than ever before, yet all the research has not brought about wholesale changes in advising, educating and servicing students. Success rates for underserved populations have lagged. This has resulted in major and continuing efforts to analyze the “achievement gap.” Data banks and warehouses have reached a progressively higher levels of sophistication and technology solutions have been developed that bring together the massive data sets with statistical techniques and predictive modeling. The result is that higher education can now better customize and thereby maximize student success.

Campus Enrollment Management

Examples of campus use for enrollment management have been well documented. The use of data to improve likelihood of admissions is the next step. Examples of predictive modeling and student retention uses fundamental data as GPA, English course and grade, race, math course grade, total hours earned and ACT score to determine best practices in retention programming. Campuses have developed early alert systems to further enhance student retention. These include placement in developmental course, income below the federal poverty level, full-time work, and undecided major as measures to monitor. Another example is the use of course management systems to identify and monitor students at risk so that interventions can be in place early to enhance retention and success. See Academic Analytics: A New Tool for a New Era in EDUCAUSE Review. http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume42/AcademicAnalyticsANewToolforaN/161749

Colleges and universities have implemented analytics to improve enrollment management particularly in relation to recruitment and admissions. Colleges and universities use test scores, GPA, class rank and many qualitative measures when making decisions about admission to campuses. The predictive nature of these measures is a part of many enrollment management strategies.

ACT maintains a high level of reliability around the ACT scores, student course taking in high school and college success. ACT has established a predictive modeling template that determines enrollment probabilities and indexes as well. The indexes provide a probability that a student will show a specific enrollment behavior. These include:

• The mobility index which indicates the likelihood that a student will enroll at an out-of-state institution.

• The institution type index predicts the likelihood that a student will enroll at a private institution.

• The selectivity index predicts the selectivity of the institution at which the student is likely to enroll.

Variables included that are most predictive in each model include ACT Composite, High School, GPA, Years of foreign Language, program of study in HS, years of math coursework, and highest degree expected. See ACT website. http://www.act.org/predictmodel/variables.html

National Attention on Community Colleges

The Lumina Foundation initiated the “Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count” which is a multiyear program that focuses on helping more community college students succeed by earning degrees, certificates, and transfer to other institutions.

The key to the initiative is to use data to drive change. In the Achieving the Dream model, every decision made at a college – from setting educational strategies and allocating resources to scheduling classes and organizing student services – is grounded in data about student outcomes. Central to this work is setting measurable goals that consider outcomes of all students; and making lasting, institutional change to achieve them. Because there are disparities in student outcomes at community colleges, all work is disaggregated by race, age and other demographic characteristics—to better understand the performance gap.

Key strategies for improving the chances of college completion include:

• Successful completion of developmental education.

• Instructional techniques, such as collaborative learning, paired classes and learning communities.

• Student success courses which teach critical skills such as time management and study skills.

• Advising services to help students set and meet goals.

• Improving outcomes for gatekeeper courses such as introductory college level algebra and English.

For more on Achieving the Dream, see http://www.achievingthedream.org/_images/_index03/FS-Dream.pdf

Information about these elements have been available but not in a coordinated manner and not readily available to multiple users. With faculty and advisors gaining access to the information often in a dashboard format, it is possible to better understand student success and risk. Faculty can identify programs that can affect student completion and persistence.

Campus leaders believe that they will soon be able to match technologies with data resources to bring about the capacity to predict which students need interventions in a timely manner to provide the programs to help students succeed. This will allow colleges to follow the progress of students including need for developmental work, tutoring, and progress in courses, withdrawal patterns and completion rates. Currently these programs basically track students. The next step is to build proactive intervention tools customizable to each student.

National System Heads Call for Halving the Achievement Gap

The National Association of System Heads has developed an initiative called Access to Success. The Lumina Foundation and the Education Trust have joined with the National Association of System Heads to work to cut in half the achievement gap between majority and minority students. A call to focus on the need to reclaim America’s global competitiveness motivated system heads to launch a new national initiative to increase the number of college-educated Americans and to ensure that graduates include far more young people from low-income and minority families. These educational system leaders are aggressively pursuing improvements in student outcomes by closing the achievement gap by at least half in both college-going and degree completion that separate low income and minority students from others.

Several areas have received immediate cross system attention including:

• Increasing student success in remedial and other large enrollment, introductory courses

• Managing costs and investing in student success

• Improving preparation among entering students; and,

• Maximizing financial aid for low-income students

Tomorrow: The Pathway Chart of the National Association of System Heads (NASH)

What Is the Value on Investment from Analytics? (Continued)

2009-07-16T07:03:00.001-04:00

Just as I finished yesterday’s blog on VOI in Analytics, I came upon an interview in the Greentree Gazette with Tim Culver, Vice President of Consulting Services with Noel-Levitz, the firm that over the years has made a major contribution to defining the practice of strategic enrollment management (SEM) in higher education. http://www.greentreegazette.com/minute/load.aspx?art=1501

The interview focused on the major interests of Noel-Levitz’s community college clients and contains some useful examples of current best practice.

In response to the interviewer’s questions, Mr. Culver suggested that N-L’s community college clients were currently dealing with a variety of challenges that were utilizing analytics:

• Tracking student intent and outcome – are they seeking degree, transfer, or both?

• Understanding the student’s condition - is the student enrolled at multiple institutions concurrently?

• Using predictive modeling to improve fall-to-spring return rates, utilizing data-informed interventions,

• Increasing the success of online students by demonstrating and measuring readiness characteristics like commitment to time on task, critical thinking skills, and solid writing skills

Mr. Culver observed that the killer app for retention may lie in the retention modules that are now being made available by many of the ERP vendors. These include early alerts and modern communication modules so faculty, advisors, and counselors can track students and intervene easily.

Such modules are important steps. The establishment of analytic best practices in particular functional areas like strategic enrollment management or strategic planning or institutional advancement, each tied to a part of the ERP stack or a specialty shadow system, has been an evolutionary stage in the growth of analytics in higher education.

But the new gold standard is to loosen up the ERP stacks and create loosely coupled analytics that extract and combine data from the full range of data sources. These include non-ERP sources such as learning management systems, library systems, assessment shadow systems, continuing education management systems, and external data such as peer institution data, high school data sets, and cross-enrollment data with other institutions. The retention and student success killer app will be extended by these new wrinkles.

What Is the Value on Investment from Analytics?

2009-07-15T07:22:00.002-04:00

In times of financial exigency, institutional leaders need to scrutinize and justify all major expenditures or investments. Fortunately, making genuine commitments to deploy and leverage the investment in analytics in particular ways can be shown to generate substantial return on investment.

Return on investment (ROI) measures the tangible, measureable outcomes that result from an investment such as technology. Productivity gains, reduced or deferred costs, reduction in staff resources applied to particular processes, and increased revenues are examples of tangible returns that can result from technology investments.

An even more expansive concept is value on investment (VOI), which measures both the tangible and intangible outcomes that result from leveraging technology. Our experience has shown that most of the tangible outcomes come from productivity gains. On the other hand intangible value comes from a combination of new collaborations and innovations that change the dynamics of the institution and its relations with students. This can lead to enhanced approaches to strategic enrollment management, reorganization and restructuring of administrative units, and reshaping job responsibilities. These can enhance the institution’s competitive position and capacity to attract and retain students. Such intangible value often results in tangible outcomes, like increased enrollment and revenues, within a period of time.

We first deployed the concept of value on investment at Eastern Michigan University, in 2002-2004. We measured the impact of utilizing an aggressive combination of strategic planning, the implementation of an integrated ERP suite, leveraging the ERP system to reinvent processes and practices, and enhancing data governance/stewardship. In particular, we demonstrated the new ERP and related process reinvention generated millions of dollars in annual savings and very favorable ROI and VOI. The basic approach is described in a white paper for the EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research (ECAR) Value on Investment in Higher Education (http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERB0318.pdf).

In considering today’s higher education’s analytics environmnet, the killer app for analytics is retention and student success. By making an analytics-driven improvement of a few percentage points in freshmen-to-sophomore success rates and four- and six-year graduation rates, institutions can justify significant investments in analytics and in retention-support services.

Virtually every institution has some sort of serious program to improve student retention and success. While all use information to measure outcomes, many do not use a full range of reporting and intervention tools to actually scrutinize and reinvent the processes and practices that affect success. On the other hand, leading institutions are using analytics in predictive modeling and policy making to improve student performance. The excellent article in EDUCAUSE Review on “Academic Analytics” by Campbell, DeBlois and Oblinger offers many examples, including Baylor University, Purdue, the University of Alabama, Sinclair Community College, and Northern Arizona University of institutions using predictive analytics in recruitment and shaping policy. http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume42/AcademicAnalyticsANewToolforaN/161749

Some leading-edge institutions have taken an even more aggressive approach to analytics. Cuyahoga Community College has deployed a sophisticated analytics application, which they call institutional intelligence, to provide standard reports, ad hoc reports, query, interventions, and statistical analysis capabilities that can be used to improve the success of at-risk students. CCC has used a home-grown solution, built with the help of data warehouse consultants ans using Microsoft Sharepoint/PerformancePoint to provide low-cost “analytics for the masses.”

In a similar vein, institutions like University of Maryland Baltimore County and University of Maryland Eastern Shore have deployed iStrategy’s pre-packaged analytics application to enable dynamic viewing of at-risk students and actively drill down and intervene when conditions warrant. Such applications enable institutions to deploy analytics to measure student retention and success, predict which students are likely to be successful, shape policy to deal effectively wiuth at-risk students, and actively monitor and intyervene with students whose performance or level of engagement suggests they are at risk.

Put simply, most institutions use improving retention and student success as their analytics killer app. Such applications can deliver strong value propositions. In future blogs we will offer more examples of institutions taking an aggressive approach to retention. We will also offer broader examples of how other types of analytics can yield Value on Investment.

How Can An Institution Get Started on Action Analytics?

2009-07-14T08:28:00.002-04:00

The best way to get started on Action Analytics is to just do it. Begin by addressing immediate needs – predictive modeling for retention, peer institution comparisons of productivity, and measures of institutional outcomes, for example. Conduct an assessment of the current organizational capacity/readiness for analytics (technology, processes, people, and culture), identify analytic needs and the gap betrween current and future. Then plan to fill the gaps and advance a campaign to build the institution’s analytics IQ and organizational capacity.

Many institutions leaders are awakened by “eureka!” moments to the fact that their organizational capacity for analytics is inadequate to current imperatives.

These moments of realization can be caused by an unfavorable report from regional accrediting teams, citing the institution’s lack of information on key elements of student success. Or watching an excellent institutional strategic plan unravel over three years of implementation because it wasn’t aligned at the institutional, college, department, and program levels, creating clear targets, measures, and responsibilities at all levels. Or finding that their institution is awash in data, but that the data are “hiding in plain sight,” unable to be combined with other data to create just the analyses needed to address an institutional problem or an external mandate.

Other moments of clarity can come when the institution has taken steps to address analytics – such as upgrading its ERP systems, purchasing new business intelligence tools, and/or developing predictive modeling for use in enrollment management – only to find that these steps are not enough. The new gold standard for analytics requires greater functionality, openness, and the capacity to extract and combine data from a far broader set of resources – administrative, academic, assessment, alignment, and external.

My colleagues and I recently completed an intensive two-day action analytics consultation at a metropolitan university in which we convened working groups from across the institution. We emerged with an assessment/projection of their current and future analytics capabilities and their readiness for Action Analytics, and established a recommended set of next steps, including producing quick wins to demonstrate the value of analytics. One of the Vice Presidents observed, “If we had done this process, several years, we would have assessed ourselves much more favorably, but our exemplary analytics were in particular silos. The bar for analytics and alignment has been raised dramatically and we must respond.”

Making serious advances in analytics is a multi-year initiative and a campaign, not a defined project like implementing a new analytic tool or an upgrade to institutional ERP. But such initiatives begin with first steps and the awareness that current approaches to analytics are inadequate to future expectations - including lifting out of recession.

Why Is Web 2.0 So Important to Analytics?

2009-07-13T06:59:00.004-04:00

The progressive introduction and dissemination of Web Services is reshaping the nature of collaboration and analytics in many industries, including higher education. Many educators ask the question, "OK, we're using Web 2.0 on the academic side, but what does it have to do with analytics?"

Put simply, Web 2.0 is enabling the following developments:

1) Web 2.0 extends information sharing anad analytics beyond the tight integration of tradition enterprise resource planning (ERP) "stacks" to draw from loosely coupled sources of data. These include administrative ERP (Student, Financial, Financial Aid, Human Resources, Advancement) plus third-party operational systems (e.g. security, parking, residence halls), academic information systems (e.g. learning management systems, library) assessment (NSSE, CSSE, course evaluation, internal assessment), alignment (alignment of strategies and targets at institutional, college, and department levels), and external resources (peer institution data, cost and student success data, institutional rankings). Web 2.0 facilitates data mining and meta-analysis using these resources. Many vendors are "opening up" their proprietary products in response to Web 2.0, the attractiveness of open architecture, and the demands of university users dissatisfied with the limitations of tightly integrated, proprietary systems.

2) Web 2.0 enables mash-ups of applications - analytical and operational - that can support decision makers in new ways. It also enables the development and mashing up of specialized niche applications that address operational anad analytical needs that the ERP vendors have never been able to incorporate in their stacks (the ERP stacks typically address 85-90% of institution's functional needs). New applications providers are fashioning so-called "long tale" applications that address these niche applications in more flexible, less costly ways. This is superior to costly customizations in tightly integrated ERP applications.

3) Web 2.0 facilitates collaboration and social networking, support by rich information repositories and analytic resources that enable the functioning of Communities of Practice (CoP) that support academic and administrative practice. An excellent example is edu1world (http://www.edu1world.org/), a CoP serving higher education administrators. This CoP supports a variety of communities and subcommunities, some private and some public. These collaborative tools enable the formation of constellations of CoPs within institutions and/or spanning multiple institutions, special interest groups, vendor communities, and more.

4) Web 2.0 facilitates foresight, prediction, and the optimization of analytics drawing from multiple data sources. Many institutions are awash in data, but find much of this data is "hiding in plain sight." Web 2.0-based advances are opening data and insformation resources to analytic use and enabling greater optimization of these resources.

In future entries, we will provide examples of the analytic advances made possible by Web 2.0.

Why Analytics and Lifting Out of Recession?

2009-07-12T15:01:00.006-04:00

We are launching this blog to discuss three simple theses:

A new generation of “action analytics” is emerging in higher education.
The current recession requires both immediate, severe cutbacks/adjustments and longer-term innovation and reinvention of higher education.
Lifting out of recession in a manner that sustains higher education’s competitive advantage will require re-imagining our policies, processes, practices, performance, and value propositions for the post-recession global economy. Analytics will be critical to our success.

Premise #1: A new generation of analytic capabilities is emerging in higher education. These analytics are driven by two factors: 1) the skyrocketing demands for accountability by higher education’s publics – an issue that will be at the forefront of re-imagining institutions, and 2) the proliferation of Web 2.0 tools and practices. Some practitioners refer to these new practices as business intelligence, higher education informatics, or performance measurement and improvement. We prefer the term, Action Analytics ®, to describe the next generation of analytics practices, so powerful that they don’t just enable action, they demand it.

In the article, “Action Analytics: Measuring and Improving Performance That Matter in Higher Education”. EDUCAUSE Review, Jan/Feb 2008, my colleagues Linda Baer, Joan Leonard, Lou Pugliese, Paul Lefrere, and I described the elements of open-architecture enabled action analytics - http://www.strategicinitiatives.com/documents/action_analytics_educause.pdf :

The capacity to extract data from a wide range of internal and external data sources – administrative ERP, academic information systems, assessment, alignment, and external information sources – enabling greater cross-institutional/cross-sector analysis;
Loosely-coupled data, information, reporting, and analytics capabilities combining data marts/warehouses, ETL, OLAP, BI and data mining/predictive modeling capabilities with assessment management/alignment tools and other niche applications; and
A presentation and visualization layer consisting of a range of tools like dashboards, scorecards, portals, portfolio, data libraries/data books, and other visualization tools – more advanced and sophisticated than today’s.

The new generation of analytics will not be broadly distributed, overnight. Technology is just part of the issue. Building organizational analytics capacity requires changing the behaviors of leaders, faculty, staff, students, and other stakeholders and reshaping institutional culture. Already underway before the recession, the emergence of a culture of performance improvement will accelerate. The need to establish financial sustainability demands it.

Premise #2: The current recession is hammering high education in a way that requires both immediate cutbacks and longer-term innovations/reinventions of many aspects of higher education. Higher education’s pain is caused by a perfect storm of financial woes: reductions in state appropriations for public institutions, dramatic reductions in investments, most impactful on private institutions, and traumatic declines in the capacity of parents and students to pay for higher education, today and continuing into the future. The affordability crisis will likely accelerate even after the economy improves.

We are all familiar with the short-term adjustments pummeling campuses today: financial rescissions, short-term fixes, competing for and leveraging stimulus money, lay-offs, furloughs, pay cuts, creative approaches to financial aid, continuing to increase tuition to fill the gaps, compressing the time for an undergraduate degree from four (or more) to three years, and enrollment shifts to less-expensive institutions. In the short-run, financial exigency seems to be trumping innovation. But campus financial officers know that budgetary challenges in 2-3 years may be even more harsh when stimulus money is gone. Moreover, demands for transparency and accountability are growing. In years two, three, and beyond, institutions will need to pursue a mixed strategy of operation efficiency, innovation, reimagining, and new revenues to reclaim financial sustainability.

In the literature on responding to recession, writers from other industries emphasize innovation and preparing to compete in the post-recession economy. Higher education must do the same.

We are assembling examples of institutions responding to these imperatives with efficiencies, innovations, and reinventions – many of which will be shaped by analytics. Their cases will tell the story of survival and reinvention.

Premise #3: In order to lift out of recession, higher education needs to increase its use of analytics. Analytics will incease both internally and externally. Institutional leaders must discover and demonstrate improvements in operational efficiency and leverage innovation and re-imagination of programs and services. Action analytics will prove critical to improving and demonstrating the value proposition for high education.

Comparative measures of access, convenience and affordability (total time and cost of education), and success (completion, employment, satisfaction with outcomes and experiences) are emerging. The public will eventually demand these measures – and greater transparency from most institutions. Options for accelerated completion, greater convenience, and programs tailored to workforce needs will be valued. The availability of these programs will be broadly publicized.

Higher education is not alone in being under the microscope of public scrutiny. Virtually every industry is striving to reinvent its practices tio deal with the challenge of global competitiveness, post-recession: financial services, real estate, manufacturing, agriculture, retail, energy, transportation, and health care. In particular, our national competitiveness depends on health care and education reimagining themselves. Health care is being pressed to reduce costs, improve health outcomes, eliminate disparities in access to health care and outcomes, and practice evidence-based medicine. PK-20 education is facing expectations to remake itself in fundamental ways: halt the escalating total cost of education for individuals and families, increase the educational attainment of the population, reduce remediation and improve success rates, improve educational outcomes and provide evidence of their attainment, and provide the fexibility and choice needed by diverse populations of learners at all stages of life and careers.

Our goal is to blog on tales of analytics, lifting out of recession, and the intersecting of the two. Primarily in higher education, but also in other industries that can be illustrative. Stay tuned for more from the front lines of evidence-based, re-imagined practices. Please join the discussion and share insights, offer examples and best practices, and debate how higher education can emerge from this recession in a position to thrive.

Stay Tuned

2009-07-09T12:06:00.000-04:00

There is a lot to say, so stay tuned...