Opinion: Let’s fix college first, before rushing to reopen campuses

Author: Shaan Hathiramani (CEO of Flockjay) URL: https://www.fastcompany.com/90507449/opinion-lets-fix-college-first-before-rushing-to-reopen-campuses One-line: Rushing to reopen campuses shifts the pandemic’s risk onto students; instead, use the moment to overhaul a broken, unaffordable higher-education system. University Disruption

Key claims

• As colleges crafted nuanced optimism about reopening in the fall, they shifted the burden entirely onto students to weigh highly uncertain disease risks for an on-campus experience that may not even happen — on top of tens of thousands in debt amid Great Depression-level unemployment. At least one in six college students are abandoning plans to enroll.
• Pushing to reopen college campuses seems tone-deaf at best, and catastrophically self-serving at worst.
• Colleges have funded deficits by passing the bill to students. Currently, 85% of students get some form of financial aid, and 70% of students graduate with average debt approaching $30,000.
• As the pandemic ravages state budgets, colleges may face funding shortfalls larger than the 25% cuts of 2008. Moody’s downgraded the entire sector, and Bob Zemsky (Univ. of Pennsylvania professor, coauthor of The College Stress Test) predicts at least 20% of colleges (≈1,200 of the 6,600+ American colleges) now face severe market risk.

  Kyle: Compare to The Innovative University and Disrupting Class by Clayton M. Christensen.

• It’s hard to imagine students incurring crippling debt for “virtual social activities replacing parties” and stadium lectures.

Nine ways to start fixing higher education

1. Reset curriculums to improve employment opportunities. 91% of students list improving employment opportunities as a top reason for attending college. ==This means tuition resets, job-ready curriculum, shorter degrees, and partnerships to connect job seekers with growing industries — particularly ones that accommodate remote working.==
2. Bite the bullet and dramatically overhaul costs. Tools such as financial exigency can address bloat and set a higher bar for costly administrators and disengaged staff (as much as 67% of tenured faculty).
3. Liberate instructors to design new courses across platforms and collaborate on best practices — the single biggest opportunity to scale personalized online learning. Alternative Education Online Education
4. Unlock endowments to put cash directly into the pockets of students, families, and campus workers.
5. Invest in holistic anti-poverty student support — connecting students with social services raises retention and revenue (one in four undergrads has children).
6. Provide reskilling resources to essential on-campus workers — subcontracted kitchen, janitorial, IT, and hourly staff who can’t work from home.
7. Make the internet a public utility. Only two-thirds of rural homes have high-speed internet; end the digital divide.
8. Embrace the internet’s power of community building — virtual concerts, commencements, campuses; incentivize students to build a new way of learning together.
9. Partner with hotels to create safe learning environments and local meetups — work toward in-person interaction among students in the same cities and states. Alternative Real Estate

Notable quotes

“If you were to design a place to make sure that everyone gets the virus, it would look like a nursing home or a campus.” — Paul LeBlanc, president of Southern New Hampshire University (130,000+ online students)

How it connects

• Shaan Hathiramani / Flockjay — author and his company; an alternative-education operator’s case for reform.
• University Disruption / Online Education / Alternative Education — the disruption thesis applied to the pandemic.
• Clayton M. Christensen / The Innovative University / Disrupting Class — Kyle’s cross-reference on higher-ed disruption.
• Alternative Real Estate — the hotels-as-learning-environments idea.
• Make the internet a public utility — closing the digital divide as a precondition.