MAE 2009 Volume: 4 Issue: 5 (September/October)
Many students are willing to buy textbooks online, but relatively few sell their used textbooks online, according to a new survey commissioned by Alibris, an Emeryville, Calif.-based online marketplace for books, music and movies.
The survey of online textbook buyers found that 28 percent of online textbook buyers plan to sell their used books online, while the remainder plan not to or are not sure if they will. Alibris said its survey found that 46 percent those that do sell their books online do so within a month of the end of term, and the remainder within six months. The earlier the sale, the higher the price is, generally speaking, according to the company.
College Consortium Offers Comparative Data
Several colleges and universities serving professional or continuing education students have created a Website providing comparative data on such topics as total enrollment, average age of students and survey results for student “satisfaction” with particular academic programs or courses.
Located at www.collegechoicesforadults.org, the Website is administered by WCET, a division of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, and includes select data from the National Survey of Select Student Engagement (NSSE) that can help prospective students understand not simply what programs the schools offer, but how valuable they are considered by those who participated in them.
The schools presently part of the Website are:
• American InterContinental University Online
• American Public University System
• Capella University
• Charter Oak State College
• Colorado Technical University
• Excelsior College
• Franklin University
• Kaplan University
• Regis University
• Rio Salado College
• Southwestern College Professional Studies
• Union Institute University
• Western Governors University
• Ashford University
• University of the Rockies
While not everything within NSSE is included on the site, Karen Pederson, vice president at Wichita, Kan.-based Southwestern College Professional Studies, said data of this type that allows visitors to compare specific schools has not otherwise been made public before and represents a kind of “warts and all” approach by the participating schools.
Quite a number of sources of objective, comparative information already exist for more traditional colleges or universities, or at least the more traditional parts of higher education institutions, according to Russ Poulin, the director of the project and an associate director of WCET. But the comparative Websites previously available for distance learning schools have mainly been marketing Websites that may purport to offer objective information about schools but are essentially “lead generation” sites that collect contact information from site visitors, he said.
“We tried out some of those, just for the heck of it,” Poulin added. “Someone put their information in and got a callback from a school 45 minutes later. So we’re trying to do something where you don’t have to give your information to use the site.”>College Consortium Offers Comparative Data Several colleges and universities serving professional or continuing education students have created a Website providing comparative data on such topics as total enrollment, average age of students and survey results for student “satisfaction” with particular academic programs or courses.
Poulin said a number of schools have expressed interest in joining the site, but initially held back for various reasons. Any regionally accredited institution may join the initiative operating the site, which is called Transparency by Design and is being funded by the participating institutions as well as through a grant from the Lumina Foundation.
“We’re expecting quite a bit more [to sign up],” Poulin said.
There are some that have been lurking and wanted to see the Website before they signed.”
Gates Foundation Funds Community College Research
The Community College Research Center and Columbia University’s Teacher College received a $5 million, three-year grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to identify the most productive investments in community colleges, under an initiative by the Gates Foundation called Postsecondary Success.
With community colleges attracting significant numbers of young adults from low-income families because of such schools’ open admission policies and low tuition, the Gates Foundation project has focused on improving community colleges as a prime means of increasing the number of lowincome students who earn a postsecondary degree or credential by age 26.
“College enrollment rates have grown rapidly over the past 40 years, but completion rates haven’t kept pace,” Hilary Pennington, the director of education for the Gates Foundation project, said in a press release. “Getting students to college isn’t enough—we must help them get through college.”
As part of this same effort, Western Governors University received $1.2 million from the Gates Foundation to study whether enrollment in “flexible, competency-based” degree programs can improve graduation rates for low-income and minority students between the ages of 18 and 26. A recent study commissioned by the Gates Foundation found that low-income students view competing work and course schedules as a main obstacle to graduation that availability of online classes could help overcome.
School Briefs
• The U.S. Coast Guard added Ashford University to its SOCCOAST-4 degree network for bachelor degree programs. The more than 40 colleges and universities that are part of the network are required to accept credits from all of the other members, permitting Coast Guard-related students to continue their studies uninterrupted despite transfers.
• Henley-Putnam University created a new certificate program in “strategic security,” offering certification in such disciplines as intelligence analysis, security management, and intelligence and counterterrorism profiling.
• Grantham University said it is now offering bachelor’s degrees in accounting, with 122 hours of coursework required for completion.
• Raytheon gave the Businesss-Higher Education Forum new modeling and simulation software it created to help researchers, policymakers and educators examine how different policies would affect U.S. science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education and work forces. Users of the software can examine the potential effect of policy on such things as teacher-student ratios and class sizes, dropout and graduation rates, teacher attrition rates, and teacher and industry salaries.
Smallest Tuition Increase Since ’72
Tuition and fees at private, nonprofit colleges and universities rose 4.3 percent for the 2009–2010 school year, the smallest average increase since 1972–1973, according to a new membership survey by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU).
In comparison, the 2008 Consumer Price Index rose 3.8 percent, the NAICU noted. The average annual increase at private colleges over the past 10 years has been 6 percent. Institutional aid budgets at the 350 colleges and universities surveyed rose an average of 9 percent for 2009–2010.
NAICU’s survey covers percent increases rather than dollar amounts, but the group noted that the College Board reported private colleges and universities charged an average of $25,143 in tuition and fees in 2008–2009, with full-time students on average receiving $10,200 in grants and tax benefits. ♦