BottomUp Program FTE Deployment

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Tuition dependent colleges with large transfer populations should be preparing now for the possibility of free community college. Politicians at various locations on the ideological spectrum have been talking about this so some version of it could happen in the foreseeable future. (Read more...)


Who Can Afford a SLAC Education?

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Historical Income Tables: Households (Read more...)


Use "Merit" Aid to Connect Students to Faculty in Research

Merit aid is rightly controversial but "everybody does it." In its current form we rely almost entirely on its pecuniary qualities. There is an emotional component insofar as a student feels recognized for her achievements, but mostly we expect it to have positive yield consequences because it lowers the cost of attendance beyond what need-based aid accomplishes. In a not dissimilar move, we award work-study money with no suggestion of what the work might be and the work often enough is working in a clerical position somewhere in the college. WHY NOT exploit the relational and identity dimensions by attaching this aid to a concrete programmatic offering. Example: "We would also like to offer you a $4,000 fellowship to participate in our first year "Innovation Exploration" program or "Our offer also includes a $3,000 research assistantship you can apply after your first year to work as a research assistant to a professor." (Read more...)


Shatter the Semester

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Expanding Offerings via Teacher as Lead Student

Teacher as Lead Student Rather than talking about sending our students off to do online courses we know nothing about (either their content or their quality) as a substitute for courses we DO teach, why not expand our own reach, have some fun, and do well by our students by taking online courses WITH them? (Read more...)


Go SAT Optional

It's easy for students to find what schools are SAT optional - appears to be a mental category prospective applicants have. And, the list of schools that do it contains some pretty respectable schools. (Read more...)


Innovate on the old German "Vordiplom"

Innovate on the old German "Vordiplom" the German university system used to have its programs structured in terms of a preliminary diploma earned after exams at the end of, say, two years. It acted as a sort of admission to candidacy. We can expect that within a few years the free or very low cost AA degree will become a reality and sharply cut into our four year enrollment. We can prepare for this in a creative manner that will have other salutary benefits by adopting a sort of Vordiplom system. It can gather gen Ed and prep course in a degree program into one bundle with a well defined capstone or threshold experience. (Read more...)


Institutionalization of College Majors

Institutionalization of College Majors For a long time I've ranted that we should stop outsourcing curricular R&D to enterprising sophomores. And we should. But we should also stop throwing out this intellectual property as soon as one of R&D staff graduates! Let's review college majors that have been done over previous 5 or 10 years and see which ones can be fleshed out, made coherent and then sold back to current and future students. (Read more...)


Move Toward Modules

Move Toward Modules Find a colleague who could also teach some course you teach. Agree to split the course in some manner (half and half, alternating weeks, what have you). Then, each of you offer a half-semester module on some elective topic (one of which might be a shortened version of what the other person would have taught).

  • Shorter time can track with reducing focus on "coverage"
  • Our students might be less intellectually winded by a 7 week course.
    • Students get less far behind.
    • Cost of choosing wrong course or wrong instructor is reduced.
    • Predict fewer disappearing/burnt out student casualties (empirical question: we can study this).
  • More variety.
  • In the split course, if split as module A, module B the pedagogy can be built around two stages of consolidation for a final evaluation so that second half of course depends on demonstrated intermediate mastery.
  • Dropping a module might not affect financial aid the say dropping a course does.
  • It might be more fun as an instructor to teach different topics.
  • Expands the repertoire a program can offer.
  • More room for experimentation. (Read more...)

Get Off the Bandwagon Right

There are institutions that have a minor legacy of firsts, alongside which they have an even bigger legacy of seconds, or even lasts as in being the last to jump on a bandwagon. That can be a virtue when it's a principled rejection of the latest fad or fashion but I'm talking about really late adoption of innovations due to factors ranging from stupid politics to parochial ignorance of what's going on in the rest of higher education. It's too common in higher education for us to reproduce our disciplinary blinders (which are problematic too) in institutional blinders that shield us from what's going on in the rest of the world. Selection bias worldliness? (Read more...)