The Future of Higher Education: Bricks-n-Sticks vs. Point and Click?

It’s hard to live near a public college/university campus in the Commonwealth and not hear the roar of a bulldozer or the banging of a hammer. For instance, when I’m in Harrisonburg I constantly hear folks tell me that JMU will be increasing its enrollment by an additional 5,000 – 10,000 students in the next 10 years. Now, I don’t know exactly how accurate this number might be, but I think it’s safe to assume that a sort of “arms race” is now underway in the Commonwealth – and other states as well - in regard to our public institutions of learning.

But as Universities throughout the Country expand their physical campuses, in order to accommodate the influx of new students, another interesting trend is developing. For-profit institutions of higher learning – many of which exclusively conduct classes on-line – appear to be gaining favor with students, and more importantly Congressional legislators. For instance, yesterday the New York Times reported that Congress has recently scrapped the “one half rule”, and now will allow for students enrolled in on-line universities to have full access to Federal financial aid. Here’s a quick blurb from the NYT piece:

It took just a few paragraphs in a budget bill for Congress to open a new frontier in education: Colleges will no longer be required to deliver at least half their courses on a campus instead of online to qualify for federal student aid.

That change is expected to be of enormous value to the commercial education industry. Although both for-profit colleges and traditional ones have expanded their Internet and online offerings in recent years, only a few dozen universities are fully Internet-based, and most of them are for-profit ones.

The provision is just one sign of how an industry that once had a dubious reputation has gained new influence, with well-connected friends in the government and many Congressional Republicans sympathetic to their entrepreneurial ethic.

I don’t have a passionate opinion for or against the merits of on-line education. I do take pride that I received both my undergraduate and graduate degrees the “old fashion” way. Yes, by the time I attended graduate school portions of a few of my courses were conducted exclusively on-line. It seemed to work fine to me.

Think about it, if someone wants to further their education and an on-line program helps them to do this - then super. Unfortunately, on-line universities are not without controversies. Even the popular University of Phoenix, which presently has an enrollment of over 300,000 students, has had its share of problems. For instance, the Apollo Group - a company that the University of Phoenix outsources with to handle financial aid – has had several well-documented run-ins with the law:

In August 2005, Apollo Group was fined $343,000 (less than one percent of the federal funding the company received during the period) for two federal violations that involved student funding programs. The Office of the Inspector General stated that the university improperly used funds crediting student accounts for fees on prior learning assessments. Another discovery was that it had issued funds to students enrolled in ineligible programs. Apollo's after-tax income for the three-year period was nearly $700 million.

Of course other controversies surrounding the University of Phoenix involve things like Admission Counselors aggressively recruiting potential students in order to meet quotas. On an anecdotal level, I have a family friend who has been employed as an Admissions Director for many years at Strayer University, a for-profit institution of higher learning, which has several campuses throughout the Commonwealth. I’ll never forget when several years back I asked how things were going at Strayer. The answer caught me off guard. It went something like this: “Super, our stock is up $20 in the last 6 months.” (Note: To my knowledge the majority of Strayer’s programs are traditional “classroom” courses, not internet based, but I do believe that Strayer does offer a healthy dose of internet only courses.)

Regardless, my intention here is not to bash on-line education. I’m willing to accept that the paradigm has shifted, and that on-line education indeed has the potential to provide access to higher education to individuals who (because of their careers, schedules, children, etc.) never dreamed of attending college. But it does appear that two divergent forces are at play here: Congressional leadership which seems to be willing to extend access to billions of dollars of Federal aid to students enrolling in on-line education, and states which appear to be willing to spend billions of dollars on “bricks and mortar” to accommodate traditional students. My question: can the two coexist?