Higher Ed Needs to Keep Up with Tech

Higher education needs to develop new educational and training programs to keep pace with the technological changes that are reshaping the job market. Online learning and artificial intelligence (AI) will be part of those changes, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

The poll of industry experts and higher-education thought leaders noted that online learning is a flexible format that can play an important role in training workers, but added that requires more “on-demand” training focused on lifelong learners.

“Most of what we now call online learning is little more than glorified textbooks, but the future is very promising,” said David Karger, a computer science professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in an article for EdTech. “Online teaching will increase the reach of top universities, which will put pressure on lesser universities to demonstrate value.”

Nearly 30% of respondents to the survey said that AI and machine learning will be disruptive forces, killing more jobs through automation than they create. While automation eliminates many jobs, online learning could be the format to provide training for more sophisticated job skills.

“People will create the jobs of the future, not simply train for them, and technology is already central,” Jonathan Grudin, principal researcher at Microsoft, said in the Pew report. “It will undoubtedly play a greater role in the years ahead.”

Colleges Win by Pairing with Boot Camps

Short-term, narrowly focused, and job-oriented, coding boot camps were initially seen as a potential disruptor of traditional higher education. However, some of the companies offering those programs are now finding they need the imprimatur of established universities in order to have credibility with employers, according to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The relationships can take various forms. In some, boot camps and colleges share tuition revenues, while in others there are no direct financial ties. In many cases, schools provide space for the courses.

Both groups are finding these arrangements to be win-wins. The boot camps gain greater legitimacy, benefiting from the schools’ more trusted brands, while colleges and universities use the boot camps to expand their capacity to train students in desirable IT-related skills and increase their diversity, since the shorter, lower-cost programs attract more women and minorities.

Better Job Report for 2015 Grads

There have been plenty of studies that report college graduates can’t find jobs and employers aren’t satisfied with the skill level of the grads who do find employment. The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) would beg to differ.

The association surveyed nearly 500,000 graduates from 2015 and found the majority were either employed or in grad school within six months of graduation. A greater percentage of 2015 graduates landed jobs than those who graduated in 2014, and fewer accepted part-time positions.

More than 65% of respondents who earned associate degrees in 2015 had either found a full-time job or were continuing their education. The percentage topped 70% of the graduates with a bachelor’s degree who either had a full-time job or went to grad school.

The graduates also landed better jobs. The survey reported that the average salary of 2015 bachelor’s grads was $50,219, compared to a $48,190 average salary just the year before.

The report noted that 76% of computer-science students found employment, with majors in social sciences, English, and history all improving their employment figures when compared to the Class of 2014. Graduates from New England and the Plains states did the best in finding employment after graduation, while respondents from the Southwest or far West were the least likely to be employed full or part time.

“Overall, 2015 was a comparatively good year for graduates,” wrote the authors of the report. “Employment improved and starting salaries were up. A smaller percentage of the class had not yet found a landing six months after graduation than had the graduates from the Class of 2014 at the same point.”

Education Benefits Back on the Table

Employer tuition-reimbursement programs, a casualty of the Great Recession of 2008, are making a comeback. Companies are rediscovering that education incentives help keep workers on the job and make finding new employees easier.

“Companies really did slash and burn their professional development budgets,” Bruce Elliott, manager of compensation and benefits of the Society of Human Resource Management, said in an article for The Hechinger Report. “Now we’re starting to see things come back, but we’re seeing them come back in completely different ways.”

For instance, many new tuition-reimbursement programs limit workers to courses from specific for-profit providers that are, in turn, providing employers deep discounts for access to those employees. Some companies also require employees to apply for federal financial aid before its education benefit is applied.

“It’s not just a charitable thing,” said Jaime Fall, director of the UpSkill America initiative. “Companies that hire frontline workers know that if they don’t offer benefits that are competitive, they’re going to lose out on workers who want to go to college.”

Another reason for companies to offer education benefits is dissatisfaction with the work skills of recent college graduates. Just 11% of business leaders told a Gallup survey they strongly agreed that graduates were ready for work, even though 96% of higher-ed officials believe their institutions are very to somewhat effective in preparing students for jobs.

“This is a way for the for-profits to maintain relevance,” said Howard Lurie, analyst for the education consulting firm Eduventures. “They’re under the gun. It’s an enrollment-management solution for them.”

Demise of Borders Brings New Opportunities

“When there’s a massive transition in an industry, the strong players make it through to the other side,” explains David A. Schick, a retail analyst who covers booksellers for Stifel Nicolaus Equity Research. “What gets caught up in the change are the weaker players.”

This is a quote from Bloomberg Businessweek article from 11/10, “The End of Borders and the Future of Books.”  The story covers the demise of Borders and the rise of small independent bookstores.  These new community minded stores are filling the void left behind by Boders bankruptcy.

In November, 16, 20011 NY Times there is an article, “Novelist Fights the Tide by Opening a Bookstore” that gives several other examples of smaller sleek bookstores popping up in areas where Borders once existed.

Could this be an opportunity for campus stores as well?  Is there room for campus stores to provide unmet need in their communities?  Are stores thinking about whether there is a void left by the demise of Borders in their area and can they fill that void? 

Competing with Free -- again...

Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger recently issued a request for philanthropists to make textbooks free online. The Chronicle's blog, The Wired Campus, recently posted an article about this, which generated a range of interesting feedback.

This is an intesting concept -- and one that has both pros and cons. Originally, I wrote a lengthy response to this plea. I decided in the end that going through all of the pros and cons might only stir up the advocates of one side of the equation or the other. Do we need to find a way to reduce the cost of course materials for students? Yes, and it seems pretty clear that mechanisms will step in to help make that happen in the near-to-midterm future. Open-source or open-access content will be one of those mechanisms.

If I have learned anything, though, in this position over the past three years is that the textbook market is far more complex than a simple list of pros and cons could capture. There are many stakeholders (students, faculty, stores, institutions, wholesalers, publishers, authors, parents, online retailers, editors, software developers, etc., etc., etc.) -- it is a sizeable industry. While I am often among the first to argue that old mature industries have a lot of room for improvement and have many opportunities to create improved efficiency and effectiveness, we must also be careful not to sacrifice quality or value at the sake of cost or in a rush to find a quick fix.

A fomer professor of mine used to say, "You can have things better, faster, or cheaper -- pick any two." I believe digital solutions are moving toward some options that are better and cheaper, but we are still learning how to do that, which will take time. We have many complex dynamics to work out. For example, for many institutions, part of the revenue from textbooks directly contributes to financial aid scholarships or supporting student activities on campus. Thus, when students buy through their college store, they are helping support other services for students on their campus. [Note: Is this universally true, no. I am referring to the majority of cases here, not the exceptions.] If stores went to a break-even model tomorrow, covering only costs and generating no profits, some other mechanism would need to step in to cover the revenue shortfall. Because most US academic institutions are heavily tuition-driven or tuition-dependent, either services would need to be cut, or tuition and fees would have to be increased. Again, that does NOT mean that we cannot or should not find ways to reduce the cost of course materials. Philanthropy could be part of that solution. Digital could be part of that solution. Faculty could be part of that solution. Other stakeholders and new entrants to the market could also be part of that solution.

For stores, one way we can help is to provide students options or choices. Digital gives us more opportunities to provide more options. For example, we find that students prefer to read the print, but study from the digital. Faculty contribute greatly to the cost of textbooks -- something I never knew or understood as a faculty member, but now have greater appreciation for having seen more of the economic models embedded in current industry business models. There are ways through the stores that we can still support our institutions, while providing better value at lower costs for students. Many of us are working on those solutions--but that will take some time.

In the interim, philanthropists could help by creating textbook scholarships at institutions, or supporting initiatives that help make quality textbooks more affordable to those who are socio-economically disadvantaged. And to put my money where my mouth is -- I did create an endowed scholarship at my undergraduate alma mater to help defray educational costs for students as they approach their junior and senior years. What would be ideal is to help every institution have fully-endowed financial aid, like we see at Princeton U -- so that no student should be denied a quality education because of the cost. Fully endowed education would make textbooks, and in fact education, appear to be more free for those who need financial assistance most. A daunting goal -- but one equally worth pursuing.

Okay, okay -- so I still wrote a lengthy response to Larry's plea. I probably still managed to stir up advocates on different sides of the equation. I will endeavor to stay off my soapbox going forward. :)

Requesting your Use Cases...

A number of the digital content projects NACS is involved with on behalf of college stores have reached a stage where we require greater input and involvement from stores. To streamline the process of gathering input, we will be adopting a format for developing "use cases" that can be employed with several different groups. In this instance, use cases are stories about how people successfully and/or unsuccessfully complete transactions for digital content (e-textbooks, digital course materials, print-on-demand, etc.) through college stores. We are looking for college store volunteers willing to help us develop a set of use cases (individually and/or collaboratively) that we can use in response to requests from projects like the CSU Digital Marketplace, OhioLink digital textbook prototype, IMS' e-Textbook taskforce, in addition to others. Contribution of use cases is a critical process to facilitate college store input into future digital initiatives.

Use cases are a common modeling technique in systems development in which we identify stories or scenarios that capture the sequence of events that occur when an individual (actor) attempts to complete a process (in this case, a digital transaction through a college store). A use case answers a question, for example, "How do I (as a student) purchase digital resources for my biology class through the college store?" There are a number of scenarios by which this could happen. The use case breaks this down into the multiple possible scenarios and eventually into individual actions or events, along with the interactions required to achieve the goal. For example, one use case might describe the process by which students purchase content via "hang tags" with access codes. Another use case might describe a similar scenario where access codes are generated at the point of sale, either at the in-store register or online. Yet another use case might describe how students could purchase content using in-store print-on-demand technology. Other possible use cases might describe scenarios by which college stores could broker transactions for content provided through campus course management systems (e.g., Blackboard, WebCT, Sakai, Desire2Learn, Angel, etc.)

This is an opportunity for college stores to participate in defining and designing how we would like to see the transactions take place within our stores for digital content. We need individuals with store-level expertise and ideas about how college stores might be involved with such transactions to assist with developing these use cases. Most use cases are only a couple pages in length and at this stage they do not need to be completely detailed. The outcomes from this process will be used to help communicate to other stakeholder groups how college stores see themselves being involved in future digital content transactions. If you are willing to help develop the use case scenarios, even just one, please send your ideas to Mark Nelson, NACS' Digital Content Strategist (mnelson@nacs.org). Questions about developing the scenarios, or ideas you have for a scenario (even if you do not have time for scenario development), are also very welcome.