{"id":476,"date":"2011-08-01T13:13:16","date_gmt":"2011-08-01T17:13:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/?p=476"},"modified":"2011-09-21T17:52:32","modified_gmt":"2011-09-21T21:52:32","slug":"online-universities-dark-horse-to-win-higher-ed-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/2011\/08\/01\/online-universities-dark-horse-to-win-higher-ed-race\/","title":{"rendered":"Online Universities Dark Horse To Win Higher Ed Race?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many universities in this country, both public and private, are in a pickle.\u00a0\u00a0Public schools are losing large chunks of state funding, while private colleges are raising tuition to make up for rising costs, and sometimes declining attendance.\u00a0 In New Hampshire, the legislature slashed its contribution by about 48 percent<\/a>.\u00a0 Meanwhile, the private Franklin Pierce University is laying off staff<\/a> in an effort to keep its head above the choppy fiscal waters.<\/p>\n

Nationwide the cheaper alternative–community colleges–have seen an explosion in enrollment<\/a>, even though outside\u00a0funding there has been iffy as well.<\/p>\n

Then there’s the dark horse racing through the changing higher ed landscape: Online universities.<\/p>\n

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Patricia Drury \/ Flickr<\/p>

Could Harvard's hallowed halls empty out a bit with more students going for Ivies online?<\/p><\/div>\n

Right now, for-profit online universities are dominating the discussion of internet-based higher ed.\u00a0 And they’ve been taking a lot of hits, both in Congress<\/a> and the media<\/a>, for not delivering on their pricey promises as students spiral farther into debt.\u00a0 But be that as it may, Mary Charmichael of The Boston Globe<\/em> reports that a Harvard business professor is arguing for more internet-based higher ed,<\/p>\n

“…[Clayton] Christensen sees promise in more radical models. <\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>He touts Western Governors University – \u201cpioneering,\u2019\u2019 \u201cpath-breaking,\u2019\u2019 open to many at a low tuition of $5,780 – for its choice of majors. Not that there\u2019s much choice: The school offers four.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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According to Western Governors\u2019 website, there are no full-time instructors. There is no curriculum, no grades, no campus. Western Governors\u2019 website is, in fact, the university: It\u2019s an entirely online school.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The modern university as we know it has followed more-or-less the same basic model since the middle ages.\u00a0 It’s an institution steeped in tradition, and as Charmichael reports, Christensen’s ideas (enshrined in\u00a0 traditional, hardback book form) are already meeting some resistence,<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“What makes \u201cThe Innovative University”…stand out is its application of Christensen\u2019s singular business principles (briefly, eliminate the inessential and embrace new technology) to \u201crethink the entire traditional higher-education model.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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Some of the ideas Christensen supports are so dramatic that Jeffrey Selingo, editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education, recently wrote that administrators might consider them ‘toxic.\u2019<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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Christensen spares no one, not even Harvard.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Meanwhile another, less well-known NH school is already on the online bandwagon.\u00a0 Southern New Hampshire University offers both the staple graduate<\/a>\u00a0program geared toward the full-time employed, and undergraduate <\/a>coursework.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many universities in this country, both public and private, are in a pickle.\u00a0\u00a0Public schools are losing large chunks of state funding, while private colleges are raising tuition to make up for rising costs, and sometimes declining attendance.\u00a0 In New Hampshire, the legislature slashed its contribution by about 48 percent.\u00a0 Meanwhile, the private Franklin Pierce University […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[53],"tags":[35,493],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2123,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions\/2123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}