For decades, the cost of college education has risen faster than inflation, and a private college now costs $30,000 annually. That cost is for $20,000 in tuition and fees, and $10,000 for room and board. There are many causes, but the cost of providing in-class instruction by qualified educators is clearly one of the biggest expenses for any college. However, the cost of faculty is NOT the biggest cost at every college.
A new model is needed to stop the runaway cost of college education. That model requires a bit of out of the box thinking, practical financial analysis, better use of existing technology and aggressive outsourcing. Let's dive right in and see how we can change the cost of a college education!
The basic educational model has not changed in centuries. Students may now choose their classes on-line, or talk to their professor via email, but the basic model is to put an educator and students together in a room, with the educator sitting in the front of the room, talking to students (communicating the day's lessons and answering student). This labor-intensive model has not changed in one hundred (or one thousand) years, and as a result has a very high cost. Almost every other service or product we buy has taken on progressively more technology that has lowered its cost. Our very concept of an improving standard of living is based on technology providing more for less.
Education is an anomaly, because so much of their cost comes from human labor.
These services always rise in cost relative to products and services we purchase. As a result, in 30 years the cost of tuition has risen by 1,120 percent. Compare that to the "out of control" cost of health care, which has risen a mere 600 percent. Healthcare has been far more aggressive than education in embracing technologies that reduce cost. In 2011 the average American had a life expectancy of 78.5 years, vs. 73.7 in 1980. Health care is expensive, but we live five years longer. The cost of a college education has risen twice as fast as health care, but what additional benefits do we have now compared to 1980?
The 20th century turned muscles into metal, and the 21st century is converting brainpower into silicon processors. In finance, research, and even in media, automation has changed the way everything works. However, education is largely unchanged. Instead of changing the educational model, colleges have tried to tweak their cost structure by paying less for educators. They've done this by creating a "second class" professor, often called an adjunct professor. Adjuncts are, essentially, temps.
In a college, the top paying position, which also have the greatest job security, is the "tenured professor.' Before becoming a professor, you are an assistant professor who is paid less, has less job security, and is waiting (for up to seven years) to be granted tenure. There may also be other titles (assistant professors, lecturers, etc.) in this hierarchy. But there is a separate hierarchy, that is paid far less and is ineligible for tenure. These are the adjuncts. Colleges have always employed adjuncts, but never to the extent used today. In 1975, a mere 43% of college faculties were adjuncts, rising to 58% in 1995 and 70% in 2011.
Paying less to most educators was the primary strategy by colleges to control college costs. There are very few recent studies that break down the cost structure of colleges, but a reasonable estimate is that 40% of tuition ($8,000 of the $20,000 tuition) goes to faculty costs. Thirty years of paying less for educators has resulted in 1,120%% inflation. I'd have to call that a catastrophic failure. We can do better. Let's look at the classroom and see how we can improve the cost of education, by tweaking an existing form of education used in almost every college... distance learning.
DISTANCE LEARNING:Distance learning began over 200 years ago as "correspondence courses," where lessons were sent to students via the mail. In the 1970s, broadcast TV and conference calls improved the classroom experience, allowing physically isolated individuals (in remote military bases; dispersed villages in Africa, India, and Alaska, etc.) to attend. Virtual classes are offered by most colleges today, using computers connected through the Internet. However, few colleges seem to understand how to use these tools and have merely recreated the classroom model, and added a webcam.
Consider this typical class description at a large college, “Virtual Classroom Instruction is a cutting-edge, educational opportunity… The virtual classroom is … held at designated times and days… filled with 6 - 15 fellow classmates … taught real-time … just like a 'regular' classroom.” Aside from saving students a bit of commuting time, this is the ancient model of a professor standing in front of you, talking. Nothing has been done to change the cost equation. Lets fix that.
BEST OF CLASS:Instead of just broadcasting virtual classes, record them. A professional video editor then compiles the best segments of multiple classes (of the same course), by the same educator, and produces "best of class" videos for each lesson. In the real-world educators (especially junior educators) aren't their best every day: a bad night's sleep, a sore throat, being focused a paper they are writing, or competing with the sound of construction on another floor... all take away from the classroom instruction. A "best of" recording ensures better communication of the lesson.
Of course, a recorded lesson can become quickly outdated, or new events may need to be incorporated. This requires that the service that creates the virtual materials must be available, and have the capacity, to quickly turn add or modify content. For this reason, the management, storage, editing and technical support of the virtual classroom system needs to be outsourced. As the overall cost of colleges has shown, college managed services tend to be inefficient and rise in cost faster than inflation. Except for a very few colleges of media and art, the skills needed to cost effectively mange these services are not the core services found in colleges.
STUDENT INTERACTION:While the recording is playing (with set pauses every few minutes for questions), the educator is monitoring students (audio, video, texting) and can answer questions directly (and silently) or hold the question for the next break in the lesson, and share it with the class. This provides superior control of the classroom (especially in working with the "texting" generation), it provides far more time to interact with students. In many colleges, most of the "face-time" student have with a professor is time spent listening to a lecture, not interacting or receiving personal mentoring. Freeing the educator from being a "talking head" and allowing them to interact, increases the focus on higher value functions.
GRADING: When an educator isn't reading instructing, lecturing or answering questions, they are grading tests and papers. This is another low-value task. We know this task is low value, because tenured professors often assign the grading of papers to graduate students or less senior faculty. In a history class, a professor may spend as much time correcting poor grammar and punctuation and evaluating a student's arguing points. Luckily, there is a more cost-effective option that graduate students.
New software and cloud services can grade college level papers. Independent testing shows that the software is at least as good as a human, and more consistent between students. It is also nearly instantaneous. Academic research proves that the less time between a student doing the work and getting feedback (grades, comments, etc.) the more is learned. Xerox and other firms, including some open-source programs, have recently released grading products. By using these tools adding students to a classroom will not add more grading time, and the time currently spent grading can be used for more interaction with students.
QUALITY CONTROL:Professionally edited videos and on-line classes (which can be remotely viewed or recorded) provide the opportunity of far greater supervision of faculty, and measuring of the quality of learning in the classroom. Today, there is huge variation in the quality of teaching from one educator to another. This variation is obvious to students, since many colleges have student produced ratings of professors. The variation in ratings between junior educators who teach the same classes would be unacceptable in any other industry.
CONCLUSION:Today, each college builds it’s own “virtual classroom” solution, duplicating costs while creating mediocre products. Outsourcers, managing a lager number of virtual classes, would have the scale to develop better tools to: build, maintain and teach college course content. Consider Amazon's Web Services (AWS), a cloud service that manages storage and computer processing needs. For a fraction of the price of building your own servers, and offering greater reliability and flexibility, AWS can do this for you. That's the power of scale. Even so, services like Skype can provide most of the features you need, and Open-Source collaborations such as “Opencast Matterhorn” have even more functionality.
Educators must spend their time on interacting with students, rather than standing in the front of the room and reciting a lesson during the day, and grading papers during the night. If we follow the proposed virtual classroom model, and outsource the management of the virtual classroom system and the process of grading papers, students will have a better learning experience, while still doubling the attendance of each virtual classroom. Rather than continuing to cut educator compensation, leveraging technology is a better way of managing the rising costs of college. If our earlier estimates are correct, that 40% of the cost of tuition ($20,000) is the cost of faculty, this proposal could reduce it by $3,500. And that's a hypothesis that every college should critique!
A new model is needed to stop the runaway cost of college education. That model requires a bit of out of the box thinking, practical financial analysis, better use of existing technology and aggressive outsourcing. Let's dive right in and see how we can change the cost of a college education!
The basic educational model has not changed in centuries. Students may now choose their classes on-line, or talk to their professor via email, but the basic model is to put an educator and students together in a room, with the educator sitting in the front of the room, talking to students (communicating the day's lessons and answering student). This labor-intensive model has not changed in one hundred (or one thousand) years, and as a result has a very high cost. Almost every other service or product we buy has taken on progressively more technology that has lowered its cost. Our very concept of an improving standard of living is based on technology providing more for less.
Education is an anomaly, because so much of their cost comes from human labor.
These services always rise in cost relative to products and services we purchase. As a result, in 30 years the cost of tuition has risen by 1,120 percent. Compare that to the "out of control" cost of health care, which has risen a mere 600 percent. Healthcare has been far more aggressive than education in embracing technologies that reduce cost. In 2011 the average American had a life expectancy of 78.5 years, vs. 73.7 in 1980. Health care is expensive, but we live five years longer. The cost of a college education has risen twice as fast as health care, but what additional benefits do we have now compared to 1980?
The 20th century turned muscles into metal, and the 21st century is converting brainpower into silicon processors. In finance, research, and even in media, automation has changed the way everything works. However, education is largely unchanged. Instead of changing the educational model, colleges have tried to tweak their cost structure by paying less for educators. They've done this by creating a "second class" professor, often called an adjunct professor. Adjuncts are, essentially, temps.
In a college, the top paying position, which also have the greatest job security, is the "tenured professor.' Before becoming a professor, you are an assistant professor who is paid less, has less job security, and is waiting (for up to seven years) to be granted tenure. There may also be other titles (assistant professors, lecturers, etc.) in this hierarchy. But there is a separate hierarchy, that is paid far less and is ineligible for tenure. These are the adjuncts. Colleges have always employed adjuncts, but never to the extent used today. In 1975, a mere 43% of college faculties were adjuncts, rising to 58% in 1995 and 70% in 2011.
Paying less to most educators was the primary strategy by colleges to control college costs. There are very few recent studies that break down the cost structure of colleges, but a reasonable estimate is that 40% of tuition ($8,000 of the $20,000 tuition) goes to faculty costs. Thirty years of paying less for educators has resulted in 1,120%% inflation. I'd have to call that a catastrophic failure. We can do better. Let's look at the classroom and see how we can improve the cost of education, by tweaking an existing form of education used in almost every college... distance learning.
DISTANCE LEARNING:Distance learning began over 200 years ago as "correspondence courses," where lessons were sent to students via the mail. In the 1970s, broadcast TV and conference calls improved the classroom experience, allowing physically isolated individuals (in remote military bases; dispersed villages in Africa, India, and Alaska, etc.) to attend. Virtual classes are offered by most colleges today, using computers connected through the Internet. However, few colleges seem to understand how to use these tools and have merely recreated the classroom model, and added a webcam.
Consider this typical class description at a large college, “Virtual Classroom Instruction is a cutting-edge, educational opportunity… The virtual classroom is … held at designated times and days… filled with 6 - 15 fellow classmates … taught real-time … just like a 'regular' classroom.” Aside from saving students a bit of commuting time, this is the ancient model of a professor standing in front of you, talking. Nothing has been done to change the cost equation. Lets fix that.
BEST OF CLASS:Instead of just broadcasting virtual classes, record them. A professional video editor then compiles the best segments of multiple classes (of the same course), by the same educator, and produces "best of class" videos for each lesson. In the real-world educators (especially junior educators) aren't their best every day: a bad night's sleep, a sore throat, being focused a paper they are writing, or competing with the sound of construction on another floor... all take away from the classroom instruction. A "best of" recording ensures better communication of the lesson.
Of course, a recorded lesson can become quickly outdated, or new events may need to be incorporated. This requires that the service that creates the virtual materials must be available, and have the capacity, to quickly turn add or modify content. For this reason, the management, storage, editing and technical support of the virtual classroom system needs to be outsourced. As the overall cost of colleges has shown, college managed services tend to be inefficient and rise in cost faster than inflation. Except for a very few colleges of media and art, the skills needed to cost effectively mange these services are not the core services found in colleges.
STUDENT INTERACTION:While the recording is playing (with set pauses every few minutes for questions), the educator is monitoring students (audio, video, texting) and can answer questions directly (and silently) or hold the question for the next break in the lesson, and share it with the class. This provides superior control of the classroom (especially in working with the "texting" generation), it provides far more time to interact with students. In many colleges, most of the "face-time" student have with a professor is time spent listening to a lecture, not interacting or receiving personal mentoring. Freeing the educator from being a "talking head" and allowing them to interact, increases the focus on higher value functions.
GRADING: When an educator isn't reading instructing, lecturing or answering questions, they are grading tests and papers. This is another low-value task. We know this task is low value, because tenured professors often assign the grading of papers to graduate students or less senior faculty. In a history class, a professor may spend as much time correcting poor grammar and punctuation and evaluating a student's arguing points. Luckily, there is a more cost-effective option that graduate students.
New software and cloud services can grade college level papers. Independent testing shows that the software is at least as good as a human, and more consistent between students. It is also nearly instantaneous. Academic research proves that the less time between a student doing the work and getting feedback (grades, comments, etc.) the more is learned. Xerox and other firms, including some open-source programs, have recently released grading products. By using these tools adding students to a classroom will not add more grading time, and the time currently spent grading can be used for more interaction with students.
QUALITY CONTROL:Professionally edited videos and on-line classes (which can be remotely viewed or recorded) provide the opportunity of far greater supervision of faculty, and measuring of the quality of learning in the classroom. Today, there is huge variation in the quality of teaching from one educator to another. This variation is obvious to students, since many colleges have student produced ratings of professors. The variation in ratings between junior educators who teach the same classes would be unacceptable in any other industry.
CONCLUSION:Today, each college builds it’s own “virtual classroom” solution, duplicating costs while creating mediocre products. Outsourcers, managing a lager number of virtual classes, would have the scale to develop better tools to: build, maintain and teach college course content. Consider Amazon's Web Services (AWS), a cloud service that manages storage and computer processing needs. For a fraction of the price of building your own servers, and offering greater reliability and flexibility, AWS can do this for you. That's the power of scale. Even so, services like Skype can provide most of the features you need, and Open-Source collaborations such as “Opencast Matterhorn” have even more functionality.
Educators must spend their time on interacting with students, rather than standing in the front of the room and reciting a lesson during the day, and grading papers during the night. If we follow the proposed virtual classroom model, and outsource the management of the virtual classroom system and the process of grading papers, students will have a better learning experience, while still doubling the attendance of each virtual classroom. Rather than continuing to cut educator compensation, leveraging technology is a better way of managing the rising costs of college. If our earlier estimates are correct, that 40% of the cost of tuition ($20,000) is the cost of faculty, this proposal could reduce it by $3,500. And that's a hypothesis that every college should critique!
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