Left Field Blog

http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/768/1414
Wiley and Hilton (2009) suggest several features of openness in higher education: free or inexpensive access, no admission standards, mobility, digitized and open educational resources, ability to connect easily to others and additional, non-prescribed learning material, ability to tailor learning on a personally-meaningful basis. Online learning the most part is saddled with most of the restrictions familiar to traditional classroom settings. Though materials may be digitized and students freed from constraints of time and place, they for the most part remain isolated consumers of generic educational information within institutions that charge tuition and screen out those deemed to be less likely to succeed.
Their article suggests that universities’ traditional monopolies on content, learner support, access to research material, informal social communities, and certification are threatened by new entrants that can design more effective (read open) learning environments, as well as business strategies that focus on core learning activities. Even more importantly, successful institutions will be able disaggregate and outsource non-essential business processes that do not differentiate them from competitors, a process termed “dynamic specialization”. Failure to do so results in sub-optimization of the firm’s overall performance, and increases the likelihood of it succumbing to more focused competitors.
The authors particularly advocate for open educational resources, arguing that these lower transaction costs, and therefore make innovation less risky. “Open service providers” (encapsulating more than providers of OERs, but not sufficiently described: for instance, why not a diploma mill?) and those traditional institutions that can differentiate themselves through “world-class capabilities” (I assume e.g., MIT, Stanford, and other research intensive universities) will become (re. the former) or remain (re. the latter) pre-eminent. Only those institutions espousing some commitment to open education will have a place at the table when the discussion begins in earnest about how this confluence of described factors begin to break the academy’s traditional monopoly on higher education and significantly alter its organizational forms.
The authors present valid criticisms of current forms of online learning. This includes AU’s predominant educational model of individualized study. While the institution has several unique features of openness like ability for a student to enroll any time and proceed in an unpaced manner through a course, virtually no admission criteria, and extensive transfer credit for prior formal and non-formal educational experiences, there are still issues with course currency, learner isolation, and the overwhelming use of copyrighted and analog learning materials. Because learning materials cost are covered by tuition fees, increased use of OERs would enable fee levels to be reduced, other things being equal, and presumably provide a greater incentive for AU to adopt these. At present, though, the quality of OERs has not been deemed high enough to warrant general usage, and course design and production processes often mitigate against these.
The article is hampered by a few oversights. First, the role of government funding in the provision of higher education is not mentioned. Some degree of openness must exist at present when, for example, about 2 out of every 3 dollars of revenue is provided by government operating grants to Alberta’s three research based universities (U of Alberta, Calgary, Lethbridge), and lower though not insignificant levels to other universities and colleges in the province. These subsidies significantly limit the ability of non-funded competitors to enter the market, another point not recognized by the authors.
Another issue (common to most articles on open education) is the unstated conflict among various attributes of “open” education. Though the structure of AU’s individualized study courses limit communication by definition, some students like the anonymity and freedom of pace that this provides. Less formal interaction between tutors and students also reduces costs.
However, the authors are correct that the generally inflexible characteristics of the academy, whether online or classroom based, does not bode well for its future. It seems clear that growing demand for higher education cannot be met within a controlled paradigm like the present university system. This, combined with a worldwide entrepreneurial culture, the growing correlation between education and quality of life, and the increasingly strategic role of knowledge in determining the prosperity and security of nations, threaten the virtual monopoly of not-for-profit universities over the certification of higher learning in particular, but also the other current monopolistic features identified by Wiley & Hilton.
Unfortunately, I think one logical outcome of dynamic specialization would be a steady erosion of scholarly activity at universities other than those that choose to become or remain world-class research specialists. This would be unfortunate. It is quite possible to envision universities where open, technologically-facilitated educative processes are structured more openly, but where academic freedom and research remain highly valued. These attributes can be maintained by retaining the autonomous, faculty-centred governance structures of publicly-funded, not-for-profit universities; by strengthening the role of regional and national accreditation bodies; and by encouraging continued state funding of higher education. In effect, these measures retain barriers to entry from private competitors in the interest of supporting the demonstrable public good of publicly-funded, research-supporting universities.
At the same time, government funding practices could be fundamentally altered to encourage an atmosphere of innovation in public universities. In Alberta as noted above, 2 out of every 3 dollars of revenue to 3 of the 4 research-based universities in the province comes from government grants. The fourth, Athabasca University, receives a little more than 1 out of every 3 dollars from government grants. The effect of this relatively large public subsidy of campus-based education makes this mode of learning less expensive for students than otherwise, even ignoring the larger capital grants needed to maintain physical infrastructure. This reduces the relative demand for virtual education, which seems to be a necessary competent of open education innovation.
In the absence of any conclusive evidence that a campus-based learning experience provides a better education for students or inordinately benefits society, and to promote equity, learners who desire a campus-based learning experience should have to pay more for the privilege. The most straight-forward method of enabling this would be for the state to fund universities equally on a per-student or FLE formula for both operating and capital grants. Another method would be for the state to fund students directly. This could be accomplished by reimbursing a fixed dollar amount of tuition paid each year in the form of refundable tax credits when students file their personal income tax returns, for instance.
Under either option, more expensive campus-based universities would need to charge students a tuition premium to pay for learning experiences that require a large amount of physical infrastructure to support. This premium would vary across universities depending on their underlying cost structures. The presumably lower or non-existent premium charged by significantly virtual universities would provide students with the economic indicators necessary to decide whether a campus-based educational experience is worth the extra money they would be required to pay, (and also meet one of Wiley & Hilton’s criteria for an open institution). As well, admissions standards could be reduced or even eliminated, as they are at AU, where these exist to restrict supply because of space limitations.
In turn, students would signal their preferences to education providers by their enrollment decisions. If students are unwilling to pay a premium for campus-based learning, universities would have powerful incentives to embrace new organizational forms. Similarly, market signals should be used to indicate whether and which “open” universities are providing services that are valued by students, and provide further impetus for innovation and experiment.
In any system of university funding, present or proposed, advantages historically conferred on those in higher socioeconomic strata need to be counteracted. Regulations would still be necessary to ensure broad access to all areas of university education – by providing bursaries and loan programs to assist economically disadvantaged students, for instance. Key non-financial performance indicators would also need to be gathered and published to inform student choice. Funding “envelopes” may need to be provided to universities to specifically finance research activity of faculty. Fundamentally, though, students need to be apprised of the full cost of their chosen programs of learning to make more rational educational and economic decisions, and for universities to respond to these market signals.