Comments on Road Too Little Traveled

• Posted by Maurice Meilleur at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on November 13, 2009 at 8:00am EST

• This reads exactly as I would expect an article to read written by someone who works for a firm called 'Eduventures'.

• Say "Yes" to Academic Program Review
• Posted by douglas haneline , Professor of English at Ferris State University on November 13, 2009 at 8:11am EST

• As the Chair of my institution's Academic Program Review Council, I wholeheartedly agree with the comments of this article. But academic program review requires time and care to establish, and it is important that it NOT be seen as the institution's hitman.

  Rather, APR needs to establish itself as the advocate of quality education whose role is to provide data about what the institution offers. The only way it can get all the information it needs to do this is by working with the faculty and administration who actually offer the programs.

  The APR process I have chaired now for ten years can be found at this URL:

  http://www.ferris.edu/htmls/administration/academicaffairs/vpoffice/senate/progreviewcounc/

  Our APR process has campus-wide buy-in because it is seen as an impartial source that has made recommendations that range from Continue with Enhancement to Discontinue the Program, and those recommendations have been supported by faculty and generally followed by administration.

  APR is a lot of work, but it is a valuable tool for an institution, in good times or bad.

• Waiting out the Recession
• Posted by sk on November 13, 2009 at 9:00am EST

• "If a program has neither the demand (marginal or declining enrollments) nor the market for its graduates, what other factors or rationale is used to support the program’s continuance?"
  Since the Great Depression, higher education has served as a buffer for high unemployment that lacks the stigma of welfare.
  This was the reasoning behind the GI Bill, and explains the popularity of low status programs such as woman's studies that do not provide employment opportunities.
  Job market dynamics have little to do with program offerings: how many students work in their major? Precious few.

  In fact, program participation depends more on internal population characteristics -- what your friends are majoring in -- just like the decision to attend.

  What better way to wait out the recession than by majoring in film studies and to have the government pay for it for a few years? Or by attending graduate school to get an edge on the competition when the economy is healthier?

• Posted by IHE Reader on November 13, 2009 at 9:45am EST

• sk, I agree with you that many students don't end up working in the field they majored in, particularly if they had a humanities major. That's fine as long as those majors aren't a drain on institutions. However, when a major doesn't have a critical mass of students to make it vibrant and self-sustaining and doesn't offer students good career opportunities after graduation, then one really has to question whether it should be sucking resources to the detriment of other areas.

• Posted by CSU Prof on November 13, 2009 at 11:00am EST

• I question the assertion that campuses with financial difficulties are not making programmatic changes. Our administration at the California State Universities are using the state's budget woes to do exactly that -- implementing structural changes that were rejected by faculty during better times, under the guise of necessary financial retrenchment. This is not the right way to make such changes -- it is fundamentally dishonest and coercive.

  I also disagree that a program must lead to jobs for students in order to be worth keeping. Our society needs unpopular knowledge and expertise too. Philosophy, for example, is not a well populated major on our campus but it is essential to ethical conduct and grappling with the difficult choice new technology brings to a variety of fields. If we lose the ability to think carefully about decisions there will be serious costs to all. Similarly, humanities that examine the subjective aspects of life allow us to engage in conscious examination of our choices, much as should be but is not occurring today, under financial pressure. For example, we are being asked to consider cutting social security and medicare. Where are the voices who understand what this would mean to elders? That personal meaning must be part of any cost-cutting equation. I don't see any sense of that in this essay.

• On the Allusion to Frost's Poem
• Posted by Muriel Slash on November 13, 2009 at 11:15am EST

• Remember, the title of Frost's poem is "The Road Not Taken." How come folks only remember the penultimate line that contradicts the earlier lines, "Though as for that the passing there/ Had worn them [two roads] equally about the same,/ And both that morning equally lay/ In leaves no step had trodden black"?

• Just wondering
• Posted by Beth on November 13, 2009 at 12:30pm EST

• Using the logic in the article, how many football programs would be left in the US if we had to measure cost, student achievement, employment in the field, etc...

• Posted by Philosophy Prof on November 13, 2009 at 1:30pm EST

• In response to CSU Prof, it's worth pointing out that philosophy majors do very well on the job market and have excellent earning potential (second only to math and engineering fields).

  The relevant question is: are our students able to find reasonable employment?

  This article is not anti-humanities. It is anti-programs that do not serve their students well in such important respects.

• Planning for budget stringencies
• Posted by Jim Farmer , Technical Advisor at instructional media + magic, inc. on November 13, 2009 at 1:30pm EST

• The role of the curriculum on the costs of instruction was modelled by the NCHEMS Induced Course Load Matrix. This model was made available to colleges and universities in the 1970s associated with cost finding principles. NACUBO sponsored NCHEMS training for business officers.
  This methodology was used by the SUNY Community Colleges with support by SUNY Central. At this week’s JISC CETIS (Joint Information Systems Committee, Centre for Education Technology and Interoperability Standards) Conference modeling was the dominant issue. The models typically were models of the enterprise, business processes, and information technology. Several of the presentations focused on enterprise models including curriculum redesign. As a result of redesign courses were more closely aligned with the student’s major, some optional courses were discontinued, and some majors were eliminated—primarily due to a change in workforce needs and changed demand. The business processing models both improved service to faculty and students and reduced administrative costs. The most improvement occurred when the service required participated by more than one administrative entity. CETIS had provided guidance on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
  Many universities had several years of development and implementation experience. Using SOA reduces both the cost of application development and software maintenance—a needed cost reduction. The British universities are experiencing an instructional budget decrease between 10 and 20 percent this year and next. The response of the universities has been similar to Tim Mann’s suggestion. At last year’s JISC CETIS Conference the forthcoming budget challenge was presented in two ways. Oxford University’s Stuart Lee’s keynote implied the budget issues for information and computer technology. He cited the flat ICT budgets at a time of sharply increased demand for computing resources by faculty—especially online storage of large data sets—and the increased cost of electricity. He said the OUCS costs of electricity had increased £200,00 ($334,000). The audience understood this had to be covered within the current budget. And the introduction of modelling so ICT could support institutional planning.
  Many of the UK universities were prepared for the budget stringency and, as Tim suggested, made good use of the models. UK universities increasingly use blended and distance learning.
  Open university has provided a successful model including continuing student assessment to identifty students who had difficulty mastering the couse. These students get additional assistance. The Academic Program Review Douglas Haneline cited should give similar results to the Eduventures approach, the NCHEMS curriculum cost methodology, and the models used by UK universities.
  The point is planned budgets as contrasted to last-minute adjustments by reducing all academic departments by a fixed percentage.

• Business or not business?
• Posted by Nick , Assistant Prof., Chemistry at Hamline University on November 13, 2009 at 7:15pm EST

• I personally have never seen the logic of trying to make academics fit a business model. If it doesn't fit a business model then little of this article makes sense. We don't make a profit. We are for the public good. This doesn't mean we can ignore the public's wishes, but it also doesn't mean the public knows best either. The bulk of academic programs have historical claims to support their importance to educating the minds of students. Civic responsibility doesn't need to lead to a job, but to a better person. You want a job - go to a trade school. You want to be a leader - come to college, no job guarantees!

  If we buy into the business model we become subject to being managed by the public. Our students become our customers - does anyone really believe the "customer" is always right in this context? This leads to all kinds of silliness. To sell education as a commodity is to devalue it. Already our high schools can't tell the difference between a sow's ear and a silk purse - they all graduate. Higher education now must reteach high school topics to many college students. Our community colleges have more levels of algebra and pre-algebra than were available in high school. You want to save money....look at the entire education system, look at who should really being going to college, and look at the real need for a college degree. I suspect we have too many seats to fill and not enough real college material. Perhaps we should look at more selective admissions and fewer colleges....not what higher ed wants to hear if the business model is in force. Growth will not fix things when there are finite resources.

• Academics are FOR Rigorous Analysis, No?
• Posted by Walter Hutchens , Assoc. Prof., Business at Whitworth Univ. on November 15, 2009 at 5:15pm EST

• Even granting higher ed. ought not be run strictly or market principles, program evaluation of the kind described allows for periodic re-evaluation and institutional self-reflection, which seems like a strange thing to oppose. Moreover, it encourages any trade-offs being made to be made explicitly, not carried forward as mere historical accidents or consequences of neglect. The suggested questions do not mandate that only programs with direct, immediate vocational utility be offered or that only programs of that sort can be regarded as having merit. Nothing suggested would prohibit an institution from deciding "we want to keep doing x even though it is a drain on resources and appeals to only a small group." In fact the proposed questions explicitly embrace that possibility.

• Walter Hutchens
• Posted by DFS on November 19, 2009 at 4:15pm EST

• Unfortunatey, as you know, it's not about actual data.

  It's all about whatever data keeps in control who we wish to keep in control.

  Sounds like the Democrat Party, no?