Another thing I see time and again are administrators pushing online education. I see their point: if you don\u2019t care anything for education, online courses make much sense. Massive profit margins and incredible growth of the student base\u2014the only two things I\u2019ve ever seen admin care about\u2014are both quite possible with online coursework.<\/p>\n
MOOCs, Massively Online Open Courses, don\u2019t come from admin. They are labors of love, created and presented to the public, for free, by scholars who legitimately want to preserve and spread knowledge (you know, the whole purpose of higher education before admin re-purposed it to growth and profit).<\/p>\n
MOOCs are, of course, online, and open to anyone\u2014admin loves \u201copen admission\u201d normally, since that greatly enhances growth. They\u2019re also quite free, so not popular with admin. Trouble is, MOOCs have terrible completion rates.<\/p>\n
And here we have yet another study showing to the public what everyone in higher education already knows:<\/p>\n
The average completion rate for massive open online courses is less than 7 percent, according to data compiled by an Open University doctoral student as part of her own MOOC studies.<\/em><\/p>\n –29 courses were looked at, involving hundreds of thousands of students. Yes, hundreds of thousands.<\/em><\/p>\n That\u2019s right, we\u2019re looking at a 7% completion rate. Granted, it\u2019s common enough to see dubious schools, even fully accredited ones, get graduation rates below 0.7%<\/a>, less than 1\/10th as \u201csuccessful\u201d as the incredible failure rate of MOOCs\u2026but here we\u2019re just looking at course completion.<\/p>\n Now, the researcher here thinks that the miserably low completion rate signifies the overall failure of MOOCs, and explains as much:<\/p>\n \u201c\u2026she said completion rates were indicative of how successful a course had been. “People might have no intention of completing assessment when they register, but I don’t agree that completion rates are entirely meaningless.”<\/em><\/p>\n In no way am I criticizing MOOCs; they\u2019re free, and open, and perfectly within the mission of higher education. I want to get to the real issue, the interpretation<\/em> of the results here, and there are two things we learn. The first interpretation of results is straightforward:<\/p>\n While this is bleeding obvious, it must be kept in mind. Our \u201cleaders\u201d in higher education know full well indebting people for online education is hurting<\/em> people, often hurting our most vulnerable citizens just as they escape high school. Our \u201cleaders\u201d should also be able to conjecture that the debt that comes from open admissions is also hurting<\/em> people. Never in my whole career has a \u201cleader\u201d in higher education admitted these obvious things, even though every study indicates as much.<\/p>\n Now I\u2019ll come to the less obvious result from this study:<\/p>\n Allow me to explain. MOOCs are free\u2026they\u2019re very truly open admission, and nobody gets a check for signing up. I totally approve of MOOCs, in much the same way I approve of people just going to the library (or carefully perusing the internet) and learning things on their own. Part of the rationalization for MOOCs\u2019 low success rate is their open-ness: quite possibly, people are signing up for a MOOC with no intention of completing the course.<\/p>\n Everyone nods their head in agreement at this reason, myself included.<\/p>\n MOOCs are free. College coursework isn\u2019t. While students ultimately can go into debt for their coursework, in the interim they can get a check. At the often bogus local community college, students can even get the check without the debt<\/a>.<\/p>\n Me: \u201cI have a number of students registered for my class I\u2019ve never seen, but are getting financial aid, checks for signing up. Their contact information is hundreds of miles away. Why are we even registering these students for courses here which they can take much closer to home? Don\u2019t we have an obligation to help our students better than this?”<\/em><\/p>\n Admin: “They have a right to come here, and we can\u2019t stop them from checking the box applying for financial aid.”<\/em><\/p>\n –I\u2019m not just picking on a particular school here, lots of community colleges have this business plan.<\/em><\/p>\n When I try to tell admin that students are coming on to community college campus with no intention of completing courses, that they\u2019re obviously just coming for the check\u2026I get no nods in agreement. The \u201cPell Runner\u201d scam<\/a> of students wandering from campus to campus, is well known in higher education, but no real effort is made to stop it.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s more to the interpretation of the results of the study than this.<\/p>\n Admin: \u201cWe\u2019re placing you on probation. Your retention rate fell below 50% last semester. If this happens again, we will not renew your contract.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Me: \u201cDid I mention I have many students that never came to class even once? How can I possibly be held responsible for their failure?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Admin: \u201cGet your numbers up, or you will be terminated.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n If my retention rate, the rate at which students pass the course, drops below 50%, admin lets me know I\u2019m screwing up. There are campuses where faculty must pass 70%, even 85% of students in their courses, every semester. Faculty who pass 100% of their students generally get awards for \u201cgood teaching,\u201d even when they pass students who never spent an hour on campus.<\/p>\n Many studies have been done on passing rates in college courses, particularly at the remedial level. You see around 50% completion rates there, and, as the coursework gets more advanced, the completion rates actually go higher (I know, that\u2019s a little unintuitive, but bear with me\u2014there\u2019s a self-selection process at work here).<\/p>\n Most MOOCs are introductory level courses, so a 50% completion rate seems reasonable enough. And yet we see around 7%.<\/p>\n Most college courses are not assembled as labors of love. They\u2019re taught by sub-minimum wage adjuncts, pressured to pass as many students as possible by an administrative caste that cares nothing at all about education. These administrators just want to keep students in the system long enough to extract every dollar possible.<\/p>\n So, to summarize, for MOOCs: online, open admission, no profits, scholarly designed, 7% completion rate. On the other hand, for non-MOOCs: online, open admission, massive profits, massive administrative control, 50% completion rate.<\/p>\n Gentle reader, keep this in mind: every study that shows the low completion rate of MOOCs should raise the question of why non-MOOCs have high completion rates. Even a cursory inspection of the differences between MOOCs and non-MOOCs will suggest an answer.<\/p>\n www.professorconfess.blogspot.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n
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![\"MOOCs9\"](\"https:\/\/world.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/MOOCs9-1.jpeg\")
<\/a>What\u2019s wrong with this picture? MOOCs are put together by faculty who really care about education, who know what normal coursework should entail, and what it should mean to complete a course. There\u2019s no profit motive here, just a pure focus on education.<\/p>\n