Distance Learning

I'm cognizant of the need to attract students with whatever means necessary, but the application of the so-called "bidness model" is just wrong, wrong, wrong. Regents use the bidness model because they are bidnessmen, and that's all they know; clearly they don't have imagination to consider a better approach. Colleges and universities once actually did a pretty good job of educating, and that was before the billboards and give-away pens.

Students shouldn’t be seen as our customers, but as our children. In the bidness model the bidnessman offers a product, and tries to line his pocket with the customer’s money; the assumption is that the bidnessman is trying to accumulate wealth at the literal expense of the customer. With the children model, the parent makes tough, sometimes unpopular, decisions about what’s best for the child, even if it’s not what the child wants; the assumption is that the parent is wiser and more experienced than the child. With the children model, we are providing structure and guidance for the benefit of the child and not for the bidnessman.

My college is instituting a new program in the fall, providing free tuition to Tulsa high school graduates. Will this attract good students who otherwise would not have gone to college? I hope so. Will it attract an even larger population of undereducated unmotivated students that would otherwise not have gone to college because it was too much trouble to apply for the loans and grants to pay for it? I fear so.

A recent study showed "conscientiousness" to be a better predictor of student college success than IQ was. Additionally, psychologists have demonstrated people value what is given for free less than what they have to work for personally. Let's take my adult son for an example. He's currently attending Texas State University, and has maintained a 4.0 there. He sent me a copy of one of his research papers and I was quite impressed. Few at my college, some faculty included, would have been able to put together such a good, tight piece of work (rumor has it that some of the applications for Associate Professor this year were an embarrassment of illiteracy). He's putting himself through college with a part-time job, loans, and grants. How conscientious will this hoard of fall freshmen be? How will it affect the classroom? I already have a sizable cadre of students that think that Intro Psych is a pretty good place to take a nap, my threats of evisceration non-withstanding.

A regent’s recent promise to train faculty who are not currently teaching Internet or telecourses so that my college can extended offerings in distance learning because that’s what the customer wants, is an example of the bidness model gone mad. I taught psych telecourses for only one year, and never experienced a whinier bunch of students. Time and again I was told that the reason they were taking the telecourse is because it was convenient (easy) but I was not making it convenient and additionally was damaging each and every one of their 4.0 averages. When I had an office visit or a telephone conversation with any of them late in the semester, I made a point of asking each to tell me the definition of psychology. Not a single one was able to do so correctly. In my view, the telecourse was not providing anything resembling education.

It's a sham.