Rick Perry's remark at his "State of the State" has sparked an online debate from educators world-wide: Check out some of the conversation at the Times Higher Education.
A representative response from the article:
"If so, Texas’ higher-education institutions will have to come up with something nobody else has tried, says Jane Wellman, executive director of the Delta Project, which focuses on costs and productivity in higher education. Even the most efficient online colleges – for-profit companies, which have the advantage of highly centralised governance structures – cannot match that $10,000 end-to-end sticker price, she says."
Jane Wellman is right - the traditional delivery model of education will have trouble matching that price (even online). Let's say they can hit that number via ultra-cheap online options: a new problem emerges in terms of quality control and how to handle an influx of new graduates and their transition to the working world.
Here is my "slightly-biased" solution: Texas should sponsor the CBL exam (and other credentialing programs) for the students who want to get into the professional world. The model for the credentialing programs are a much more scalable way to address the Governor's problem: It's cheaper (we charge $250) and addresses directly the quality problem: a student can study and learn by any means necessary (from a school or online with free resources), and still be judged on the information absorbed vs. classes attended.
Trying to take a product that costs $40K-250K currently and challenging it to be $10K is like asking the car companies to build a $2,000 car. Instead of taking on a vast embedded system, go outside the system and come up with a whole new idea.
No comments:
Post a Comment