EMU union against online degrees

[DavidHume]

http://michiganradio.org/post/faculty-un...ntract-ads

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Considering that article from Harvard Business School that paints a dire picture for brick and mortar academic institutions, many are going to try to fight a losing battle instead of adapt.

[sanantone]

http://michiganradio.org/post/faculty-un...ntract-ads

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Considering that article from Harvard Business School that paints a dire picture for brick and mortar academic institutions, many are going to try to fight a losing battle instead of adapt.

This isn't a case of refusing to adapt. This is a case of lowering the quality of courses to save money. If I wanted an academic coach, I would spend less at a competency-based school. Also, the for-profit company the school wants to contract with plans to lower admissions standards for online students. There is a reason why low-quality, for-profit schools are suffering right now. People can now attend better schools online. 

Once just about every university has a good selection of online programs, I believe the standouts will be the ones with highly-qualified instructors. I preferred having full-time professors. There was a world of difference between the adjuncts I had in undergrad and the full-time professors I had in graduate school. When I ask for a letter of recommendation, they remember my name and know who I am. I know that some people say that they prefer instructors who are still working in the field, but when you're taking online courses with no lectures, it makes absolutely no difference.

[dfrecore]

http://michiganradio.org/post/faculty-un...ntract-ads

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Considering that article from Harvard Business School that paints a dire picture for brick and mortar academic institutions, many are going to try to fight a losing battle instead of adapt.

I see a school using questionable cost-cutting measures to try to stay afloat, because their state is going down the tubes and they can't see enrollment increasing to cover costs - much of which probably includes fancy fitness centers and granite countertops in dorm rooms.  Schools went crazy over the last decade or two, upping the ante, and now, with many millenials eschewing student loans, schools who've run up costs are going to suffer.  Students are going to go to schools they can afford, including online, and that's going to painful for many B&M schools who were doing a lot of long-term planning with a short-term mentality.

Here's just another example of it - let's use an untried model, and lower standards, and then in 5 years wonder why our school's reputation is sinking quickly, and we've created a death spiral that we can't recover from.  Sorry taxpayers and citizens of Michigan, you'll be on the hook for this mistake!

[DavidHume]

From the research I've done it appears the claims the union is making are not part of the contract signed by EMU with the Academic Partnerships service.
http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/m...1510686614

And from another article:
Molly Casey, vice president of brand marketing for Academic Partnerships, said that list simply reflects “items a university may consider when bringing a program online,” and that it is up to the university to decide what to use. “AP does not provide any teaching assistance nor oversight of it,” she added

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-11-16-...e-programs

[eriehiker]

Maybe Eastern shouldn't have chartered a whole bunch of cheap, low-paying charter schools in Michigan that drove enrollment in teacher-preparation programs in Michigan to half the previous enrollment levels and cut profits in half for a teacher-education school like Eastern. Yeah. Maybe that wasn't such a good strategic plan.

[dfrecore]

Maybe Eastern shouldn't have chartered a whole bunch of cheap, low-paying charter schools in Michigan that drove enrollment in teacher-preparation programs in Michigan to half the previous enrollment levels and cut profits in half for a teacher-education school like Eastern.  Yeah.  Maybe that wasn't such a good strategic plan.

CA has cheap low-paying charter schools (less than regular public schools) and teachers FLOCK to them.  Many are non-common-core (my kids schools don't do common core THANK GOD), and teachers prefer the flexibility in curriculum and ability to teach in ways they enjoy rather than some of the requirements that common core puts on other teachers.  AND, as an added benefit, the charter schools here get MUCH better test scores than public schools.  Our school is a great example - kids in our charter area are very low-income, but their math scores are 24 points higher and English is 18 points than the closest elementary school which we draw from.

There are waiting lists for all of our schools.

[eriehiker]

Maybe Eastern shouldn't have chartered a whole bunch of cheap, low-paying charter schools in Michigan that drove enrollment in teacher-preparation programs in Michigan to half the previous enrollment levels and cut profits in half for a teacher-education school like Eastern.  Yeah.  Maybe that wasn't such a good strategic plan.

CA has cheap low-paying charter schools (less than regular public schools) and teachers FLOCK to them.  Many are non-common-core (my kids schools don't do common core THANK GOD), and teachers prefer the flexibility in curriculum and ability to teach in ways they enjoy rather than some of the requirements that common core puts on other teachers.  AND, as an added benefit, the charter schools here get MUCH better test scores than public schools.  Our school is a great example - kids in our charter area are very low-income, but their math scores are 24 points higher and English is 18 points than the closest elementary school which we draw from.

There are waiting lists for all of our schools.

This wasn't a general charter school rant.  This was an Eastern Michigan University charter school rant.  If charter schools are created with the goal of actually improving student performance, pay and working conditions for teachers will follow because a well-treated teacher is likely to be a motivated teacher.  The EMU charters were mostly just created as a cheap-to-administer cash cow for EMU.

[dfrecore]

Really, I wasn't saying as much about charter schools as I was about the reasons teachers go there to teach, in spite of lower pay.  The environment can be much MUCH better, for various reasons.

Also, many teachers who are well-paid in the public schools are leaving like crazy, because the amount of paperwork required is insane due to common core.  We will be having a teacher shortage in the near future, not because of pay, but because of the crazy amount of bureacratic crap teachers have to go through - they are leaving after very short amounts of time to go into other fields (here in CA, I think it's 2-3 years).  It just isn't worth it to do the job, since they don't get to be creative and actually do what they wanted to do in the first place - TEACH!

[cookderosa]

I would have expected no less from a faculty union. This threatens their job security. As to whether or not it will have any teeth and cause EMU to back down? It will get headlines for a while, the public will be outraged for 5 minutes, and then EMU will do whatever is necessary to sustain the university - which likely includes launching an online division. Teachers will complain that the university sold out, that students are being short-changed, and that the state of today's education isn't what it used to be. Which is, of course, not entirely false- but technology in education is here and growing, not slowing.

[eriehiker]

Setting aside the issue of technology, Eastern Michigan University is a poorly run university. It has had difficulty in recent years with murders in dorm rooms on campus, involvement with a shell district named the EAA that resulted in decreased k-12 student test scores and other issues.