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| Cyber University vs Site-Based University |
When distance education has been delivered by site-based institutions, OPE has not generally been concerned about the quality of their programs until the distance education courses top the 50 percent mark. These institutions have faculty to oversee the curriculum, and long-standing traditions for dealing with matters of institutional integrity. The Higher Education Act recognizes this by allowing considerable latitude to institutions in designing non-traditional programs, including distance education programs. But what happens now that Cyber University has entered the scene?
Cyber U is an institution without a campus and without a standing faculty. Suppose this institution is delivering a self-paced, competency-based degree program in which students have little or no face-to-face interaction with other students or instructors. These circumstances challenge most traditional notions about a quality postsecondary education. In what sense is Cyber U offering what we consider a college education? Is it really necessary to have a faculty? If so, should that faculty be full-time or part-time, in residence or dispersed throughout the world? Who develops the curriculum? Who defines the competencies and assesses student learning? Or, if we are really judging the quality of programs by the learning outcomes of students, should other factors such as whether Cyber U has a campus, or how instruction is provided, matter? All these questions demand that all in the postsecondary education community rethink some of our basic, older assumptions.
Moreover, since the Internet recognizes no national or even international boundaries, and educational delivery therefore will not be limited to state or even regional boundaries, consumer protection is likely to emerge as a new federal issue.
In the past, accreditation relied primarily on institutional inputs (such as faculty credentials and library holdings) and processes (such as on-going institutional planning) to evaluate quality. Recently, accrediting agencies have begun to include student outcomes (such as graduation rates) as a measure of the quality of the education the institution offers. In the digital age and with the increasing number of non-traditional and for-profit institutions, evaluating student outcomes, particularly learning outcomes, must become more central to the accrediting process. Learning, after all, is where our focus should be, yet few institutions have any comprehensive program in place to examine their effectiveness in terms of what students actually learn. But how do we evaluate the worth of being on a campus, in a classroom, in face-to-face encounters with faculty and peers? We shouldn’t discount the value of these experiences simply because we cannot measure them with accuracy.
Meeting the challenge of reorienting how we evaluate quality from proxy measures such as inputs and processes to student learning outcomes must be a shared responsibility of all sectors of higher education, the public and the private, the non-profit and the for-profit, the corporate and entrepreneurial. And, of course, accrediting agencies must play a principal role. Many accrediting agencies have been seriously examining their standards and processes to make sure they will meet the challenges the emerging postsecondary education market poses to evaluating quality. OPE applauds these efforts, and at the same time raises the question of whether or not the changes they are making will actually place student learning outcomes at the center of the evaluation process.
We embrace technology for the opportunities it provides to enrich higher education and extend its reach into areas we have yet to envision. Along with the opportunities, we must also meet the challenges that it poses to access, to accountability, and to quality assurance.
Responding to these challenges must be a shared responsibility. The public and the private sectors, non-profit and for-profit institutions, corporate and entrepreneurial entities, all must work individually and in partnership to make lifetime learning a reality for all Americans
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