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Marlboro College, in Vermont, is merging with the University of Bridgeport?
For the benefit of readers whose New England geography is fuzzy, the physical gap between Marlboro and Bridgeport includes the state of Massachusetts. t’s relatively sizable.
Marlboro is known to followers of higher ed innovation as the place that Paul LeBlanc learned his trade before moving on to SNHU and making it into the behemoth it is. I mean that as a compliment.
This has been a rough year for small liberal arts colleges in New England. Demographics are unforgiving. I think of demographic changes as glacial. They’re underfoot, and you might not see the changes at first. But over time, they remake the landscape with remarkable indifference to what was there before. Ignore them at your peril.
For the benefit of the folks who work there, and of the people who live nearby, I hope that the job losses are relatively few. Whether this particular merger will work out, I don’t know. But I’m confident that more are coming in the next year.
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I don’t know if it’s good news or bad news that average textbook spending by college students is declining.
It’s good news to the extent that it reflects the impact of OER, whether directly (through adoption), or indirectly (through competitive pressure forcing prices down). I prefer the former, but even the latter represents an improvement in concrete ways.
That second category represents a fascinating story of grudging adaptation. It includes loose-leaf binders adapted from books; inclusive access programs; rental programs; straight-up price reductions; and software packages of ancillary materials designed to support OER books. (That last category is popular in areas like math, where online homework platforms are both crucial and high-maintenance.) Commercial publishers have gone from ignoring OER, to disparaging it, to trying to co-opt it. That’s progress, I guess.
The drop in spending is bad news to the extent that it reflects increasing economic desperation among students, and possibly increasing numbers of them simply going without textbooks at all. When that happens, what starts as a financial problem becomes an academic problem, which then often becomes a financial aid problem, and so on.
I haven’t seen good numbers on any change in the percentage of students going without books. Here’s hoping it’s the good kind of change.
Between innovation and, well, desperation, it looks like we may have passed the tipping point for textbook costs. I hope we have. When the next recession hits, which it will, students will be even more strapped than they are now. For campuses that haven’t started looking seriously at OER yet, this would be a really good time. Hint, hint.
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We’re heading to Virginia next week on a combination of summer vacation and student orientation. TB has orientation early in the week, at which point he’ll choose his classes. We’re planning to spend a few days after that at Virginia Beach, just relaxing. Given that we had to take him to orientation anyway, and that paying airfare is pretty much out of the question, it seemed reasonable to build the break around the orientation.
True breaks are rare in this business, thanks to the tyranny of electronic communication. There’s always a backlog of emails building, and it’s frustrating when they come in the form of “re: re: re” chains. (My pet peeve is the email that begins “please start from the bottom of the scroll.”) The week between Christmas and New Year’s comes the closest to a pure break, since everybody is off at the same time. Weeks in the dead of summer are lighter than during the year, but you can’t really disconnect for that long.
Still, it’s worth making the effort. I’ve picked up a gloriously stupid novel that has nothing to do with higher ed or politics. Once in a while, it’s good for the soul.
I’ll be back in the blogging saddle for Monday, August 5.
