A cyber-UC campus? Please, NO :-(

It is time for an 11th University of California campus: a cyber-campus devoted to awarding online degrees to UC-eligible students.

That wasn't me calling for a cyber-campus. It is the opening line from a LA Times op-ed by Christopher Edley, Jr., who is the dean of the law school at UC-Berkeley. He writes:

The UC XI cyber-campus could be a way to put high-quality higher education within reach of tens of thousands more students, including part-timers, and eventually provide a revenue boost for higher education.

A new California master plan should define and deliver state-of-the-art online education. There are scores of tough questions to be answered, and business plans to be drafted and redrafted. But every cliche about a crisis tells us that the best offense is often innovation.

I don't know what to make of this response he has in the Q/A with the Chronicle:

Q. Have you ever taught in an online setting? Would you teach in the online campus?

A. I have not but would love to. Look, if you have pride in your teaching and you get satisfaction out of reading papers and final exams that demonstrate how much progress your students have made, then … technology that allows you to multiply your impact beyond the four walls of your classroom can be an exciting prospect, especially if you don't have to grade all of the exams yourself.

"especially if you don't have to grade all of the exams yourself"? This research-university system of the professor only to "lecture" and then graduate assistants grading papers is all screwed up. It will be a shame to carry that screwed-up format into online teaching and learning also.

Edley adds:

I would expect that the best faculty would teach regular courses, and that some cybercourses would be included in their course mix. There would have to be an instructor of record and graduate students available for one-on-one contact and for grading purposes.

I do want to give the guy the benefit of the doubt here. But, I think he is looking at it strictly from a dollars perspective. I wonder if the logic here is something along the lines of videotaping those brilliant UC faculty lectures, which is why students attend UCs (yeah, right!), and streaming them online. Student progress would be assessed by TAs. In other words, it is the dull, boring, awful focus on "look at me, I am a brainy faculty"...

BTW, assessing student progress is not merely about "grading" ..... oh well!!!

Is higher education really student-centered?

Not actually about online teaching/learning. But, triggered by reading about an experience that one of our team members went through .....

To a large extent, the whole academic enterprise has become a system of exploitation. At research universities, the tenured and the tenure-track can't be bothered with teaching and, therefore, these research universities lure a whole bunch of instructors for the lower division courses by offering them graduate assistantships. Rarely does any university do a full-disclosure that most of those aspiring doctoral or masters students will find academic jobs. After all, getting a Phd from Harvard is one thing; getting a Phd from some Podunk university is a totally different thing.

I am simply amazed that this system continues on, and gains strength.

Instead of addressing this point of departure, students and faculty get distracted with negotiating better compensation for these graduate assistants. I don't mean to suggest that compensation is not an issue. It is. But, negotiating a better compensation without doing anything about the very issues that trigger the need for graduate assistants in the first place is to merely "paint a lipstick on a pig"

So, from that very moment on, we have a system that intentionally graduates way more masters and Phds than it will ever need. which means that we then run into situations where for every academic job opening we get gazillion applications, and we also have a huge army of highly qualified but unemployed people who are willing to carry on as adjunct instructors. And this then leads to the temptation to abuse adjuncts ....

I have run into quite a few people who now regret ever having gone on to graduate school, and for a PhD .... their comments are typically along the lines of "if only I had known that getting a job will be this difficult", or "if only I had known how little academic jobs pay" ....

Universities do a fantastic job of glorifying the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge sake--but the ones who glorify them are the ones with safe and secure jobs.

We do this in our own world here at WOU--we tell students how wonderful liberal education is, without ever telling them anything about the reality of the employment world where a liberal education diploma from WOU might not even get them a job at McDonald's .....

Which is why I suppose I warn students that they are screwed. Yes, I actually use these very words. And then follow it up with how they might prepare themselves. I warn them about how they are screwed because while it is a great idea that man doesn't live by bread alone, well, when that bread isn't there, it gets to be a horrible existence. (I am fortunate that I haven't experienced it myself) furthermore, I do not want to prepare students for that kind of a horrible existence where they have to wonder where their daily bread will come from after getting into a debt of more than 20,000 dollars for a diploma that won't get them any job.

I wrote an op-ed about some of these issues; the editor titled it "Does U.S. oversell college?, which wasn't much liked at least according to one response piece that was published in the same paper!

Our ultimate bottom line is the betterment of our students at every level of higher ed. If we don't do that, and instead we screw up their lives, well, ....