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Articles of Interest
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Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe announced a new plan to help train workers for higher-skilled jobs as well as increase the rate of employment for military veterans, the Washington Post reported.
The "New Virginia Workforce Initiative" focuses on what experts refer to as "middle-skills jobs," meaning they require some post-high school training, but not necessarily a four-year degree. They're the kinds of jobs most in demand in many places, including Virginia.
Officials estimate that 600 or more of the state’s approximately 1,800 schools could be “accredited with warning” next month — an exponential increase from five years ago, when 15 Virginia schools had the downgraded status.
Charles Pyle, spokesman for the state Department of Education, said as many as 250 schools will drop next month from “fully accredited” status, joining nearly 400 schools that had the lower status last year. Pyle said the state has increased the difficulty level of the annual Standards of Learnings (SOL) tests during the past three years and also has raised the bar for passing scores, leaving an increasing number of schools with substandard performance.
Federal Policy
Higher education report card for the president
The Hill, August 14, 2014
When President Obama took office in 2009, he proposed the U.S. regain its leadership in higher education by increasing college degree attainment from 40 percent to 60 percent, adding an additional 10 million Americans ages 25-34 with an associate or bachelor’s degree. Using government data and third party survey results, we have evaluated the president’s progress in moving toward his “Big Goal” along four dimensions: enrollments, degrees, cost, and advocacy.
1) Do we have more people enrolled in higher education today than in 2009?
Yes. But the increase in enrollment, 3.5 percent between 2009 and 2012 (the most recent year for which NCES data are available) is nowhere near sufficient to meet President Obama’s aggressive goal. Admittedly, the decline in overall postsecondary enrollment in 2010-2011 and a particular downturn within the two year sector skews the overall picture. A tough economic climate hasn’t helped either, and an apparent decline in employer tuition assistance hinders adults with some college from completing their credentials.
The President’s Report Card:
Enrollments: C
Degrees: B
Cost: D
Advocacy: F
Obama's Weekly Address: Everyone Should Be Able to Afford Higher Education
The White House Blog
August 16, 2014
In this week’s address, with schools getting ready to open their doors again over the next few weeks, the President talked directly to students and parents about the importance of preparing for an education beyond high school.
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As thousands of parents drop off college students at institutions of higher learning this week and next, many may well wonder for a moment or more whether they made the right choice - of school, of location, of classes. It's less likely, however, that those same students or parents will wonder whether their chosen institution will still be around in 10 years. After all, when colleges and universities feature their founding dates prominantly on seals and insignias, its easy to assume that 150 years will gradually become 200.
Around higher education, however, there is a steady stream of stories about the potential demise of the current model, including a recent article in The Atlantic about a newly founded university called Minerva.
"[The] long-term goal for Minerva," the author writes
, "is to radically remake one of the most sclerotic sectors of the U.S. economy, one so shielded from the need for improvement that its biggest innovation in the past 30 years has been to double its costs and hire more administrators at higher salaries."
"If [the new model] succeeds, it could inspire a legion of entrepreneurs, and a whole category of legacy institutions might have to liquidate. One imagines tumbleweeds rolling through abandoned quads and wrecking balls smashing through the windows of classrooms left empty by students who have plugged into new online platforms."
The warning bell for the doom of colleges was also sounded in recent years with the advent of massively open on-line courses (MOOCs) - and many schools have sought to catch that wave of innovation in course content delivery. UVA, through a partnership with Coursera, offers more than a dozen MOOC's, including Foundations of Business Strategy and Plagues, Witches, and War: The Worlds of Historical Fiction
However Wood's article points to another gap in higher education effectiveness - much of the teaching may be done with little training on effective pedagogy. The requirements to be a college professor include completing a research dissertation but not demonstrating proficiency in pedagogy. The Minerva start-up uses a software platform with
"pedagogical best practices . . . programmed into [it] so that they are easy for professors to apply. They are not only easy, in fact, but also compulsory, and professors will be trained intensively in how to use the platform."
Of course the article also points out that much of what college is in the United States - a coming of age experience and a cauldron of creative collaborative research - may not be replicable through a computer platform.
In light of this debate, our poll snapshot this week takes a look at public perceptions of educational quality among different types of higher ed institutions. We also share the listing of links to higher ed informational resources from our website. We'll be revising this set of links shortly, so if you have suggestions for additional sites, please contact us.
Finally, Dr. Bosher's editorial this week reviews recent proposals for UVA board of visitors members to ban public expressions of disagreement.
Sincerely,
CEPI |
Poll Snapshot: Public ratings of Higher Ed types - Four-year schools still dominates
The last several decades have seen a proliferation of types of higher ed institutions, including fully internet-based programs. Our most recent poll asked respondents in Virginia to rate the quality of three different types of higher eductation institutions - four-year, community college and internet-based. The results are summarized below, alongside, for comparison purposes, the results of a nation-wide survey conducted by Gallup in October 2013.
The obvious take-away from both polls is that respondents believe the quality of education is better at four-year and community college institutions than in internet-based programs. Fully 79% in our poll felt the quality of education at four-year institutions was excellent or good, with 77% feeling the same about community colleges.
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Demographic breakdowns provide some interesting insights about perceptions of internet-based programs. Not surprisingly, the percent of respondents older than 65 who responded "don't know" regarding the quality of internet-based programs (27%) was higher than for younger age groups (20% among ages 45-64; 18% among ages 35-44; 12% among ages 18-34). This could indicate that internet-based programs have room to convince people they have high-quality offerings.
Unfortunately, the number of respondents who judged such institutions as "poor" was higher among younger respondents, who are likely more familiar with the offerings, than older respondents. While only 7% of those 65 and older rated internet-based programs poor, that number was 17% among 18-34 year-olds.
In contrast, the 18-34 year-old group was more likely to rate four-year institutions as having excellent or good quality (85%) than 35-44 year-olds (79%), 45-64 year-olds (78%) or those 65 or older (only 73%).
(To read the full results of the poll, visit our website. Question 22 is the question cited above on higher ed quality - topline results are on page 35; crosstabs are on pages 72-74.)
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Higher Education Informational Links
Excerpted from CEPI's website
Below are links we currently have listed on our website. CEPI provides these resources for your convenience and neither endorses nor opposes the viewpoints of these organizations. If you have a recommendation regarding a link to be added to this list, please contact us at cepi@vcu.edu:
To access these and other links on K-12 education, visit our website.
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