Don’t forget the mission

When discussing issues related to funding, one of my school’s president’s favorite sayings is that we are “not for profit, but we’re not for loss.” I recently saw this phrase in a book somewhere, so I imagine that my school’s president is not alone in his affinity for this statement that is intended to justify whatever he is arguing for at the time (such as outsourcing various things, expanding degree programs for non-traditional students, and bringing in huge freshmen classes).  I am relatively certain that he makes these decisions based on what he believes is in the best financial interest of the school. When chasing money, though, one must be careful not to forget the mission, as a recent failed experiment in online courses at San Jose State University demonstrates.

Will Oremus at Slate reports that more than half of the students enrolled in SJSU’s first batch of five online courses through Udacity failed their final exams. Tenured Radical has a good take on this, writing:

I am not against online learning, and I am persuaded that under the right conditions it can be effective. It is, however, becoming ever clearer that corporate methods for extracting profit from education are exploitative and ineffective for students.  I don’t think any of these providers are honest about the down side of not having a real, live teacher — not to mention the absence of classmates who might help you learn.

Furthermore, what course open to thousands of random people could really teach all of them well? Part of what actual schools (where students are taught in non-profit numbers) can provide is some sense of what might be expected from a course. At my last job, it was reasonable to expect that students would devote themselves full-time to school, and when they didn’t that was a choice. At my first job, and my present job, it is reasonable to assume that students are pressured by work and family. That means, depending on which group I am teaching, I assemble different courses, different ways of using class time and pacing the semester, different ways of paying attention to my students, and different ways of choosing course materials. One is not easier than the other; they are different. Increasingly, I teach students differently within the same class.

David Silbey at Edge of the American West notes that “Not finishing or failing the course is – from a monetary standpoint – a feature, not a bug. Students who fail to finish or finish but fail have to pay again for the same (or an equivalent course). Profit!”

Both points underscore the importance of focusing on a school’s mission. What does the mission statement actually say about educating students. Whose responsibility is it to ensure that students are actively engaged in a course? This is something that I have struggled with over the years; as I implement requirements that students dislike but that force them to engage with a course or give very detailed writing assignments because many students cannot handle the lack of structure in more open-ended assignments it is inevitable that some students will complain I am treating them like “high schoolers” or that they should be able to skip class if they want to.

As Tenured Radical notes, being there in person I can adjust things, sometimes even for students in the same course. If I were responsible for thousands of students through an online course, though, not only would these sorts of adjustments be very difficult to manage, but requiring students to complete discussion questions or take quizzes about the reading themselves would be nearly impossible.

SJSU’s mission statement declares that its goal is “To enrich the lives of its students, to transmit knowledge to its students along with the necessary skills for applying it in the service of our society, and to expand the base of knowledge through research and scholarship.”  This, like most mission statements, seems fairly vague. If, as a job candidate, you are able to meet with a school’s president, I think that an important question to ask is how the president personally views the school’s mission statement and works to fulfill it. Is he or she focused on keeping the school afloat financially or on enriching the lives of students? The answer will likely tell you much more about the school’s direction than the mission statement itself.