University Corner: American Public University System
MAE 2010 Volume: 5 Issue: 9 (November)
Dr. Wallace E. Boston
President & CEO
American Public University System
Q: How is American Military University, a member of the American Public University System, positioned to serve military students?
A: AMU was founded in 1991 by a former Marine officer who had a vision to provide a quality education that would be professionally relevant, portable, flexible and affordable. Our success is based on a clear focus on developing programs that are distinct and related to a servicemember’s career, and hiring customer-oriented faculty and staff who understand a military member’s lifestyle. Today, we offer 79 degree programs to over 50,000 students serving on active duty. We continue to grow because our institutional culture of serving this constituency has not changed over the past 19 years.
Q: What do you think are the key issues facing higher education today?
A: Affordability, access and accountability. Over the past decade, public colleges and universities have increased tuition an average of 5 percent per year, and private colleges and universities have averaged 2.5 percent tuition increases per year during the same period. Those increases have exceeded the average increases in family income during the same period, decreasing the affordability of college for the average American family.
Most college students in the United States attend public institutions. The fiscal crisis has impacted public institutions more than others, primarily because higher education is not mandated for funding in state budgets like K-12 education. Resultant cuts in funding have led state institutions to increase tuition and fees and restrict the number of programs offered and the number of students who are allowed to attend college. In some states, there are hundreds of thousands of students unable to matriculate from a two-year community college to a four-year public institution because of funding decreases and reductions in student slots. At other colleges, programs or funding has been cut and students are unable to find open classes necessary to complete their programs in a timely manner.
College graduation rates have been decreasing since the late 1970s, and critics of the sector have increasingly called for greater accountability regarding outcomes for students. The most prestigious and elite colleges cite their high graduation rates as evidence of a satisfactory outcome, but critics maintain that students admitted to those institutions are destined to graduate based on their incoming GPAs, test scores and family backgrounds. Less than 10 percent of America’s colleges admit fewer than 50 percent of their applicants—this standard is deemed selective. The majority of colleges need to be transparent and inform prospective students, parents and the public how well they do in educating their students.
Q: What is the university doing to keep up with growing technologies?
A: To further create an effective and enhanced learning and teaching environment, we are in the process of migrating to Sakai, a new learning management system. Feedback from APUS students and faculty has increasingly indicated both groups desire a more robust environment with enhanced classroom features and better stability. Students will have access to a rich array of tools and features that will help them manage, access and share course material in the form of text, links, pictures, and audio and video formats. Students also will be provided with enhanced tools such as blogs, chats and wikis to further promote a sense of community in the learning environment.
Q: What are the most pressing tasks and issues AMU currently faces?
A: The current financial crisis for many of the traditional institutions has created an environment where some of the struggling institutions have again raised the issue of the quality of online programs, primarily to stem the exodus of students from faceto- face programs to online programs. We continue to work with institutions and academics dedicated to online education to demonstrate the effectiveness of quality online classes and degree programs and believe our collective efforts have improved best practices in all online programs, as well as received recognition from students, employers and higher education organizations.
As we serve working adults, we need to continue to find ways in which we can improve student success rates. There are many distractions for an older college student, primarily employment- and familyrelated, that make earning a degree difficult. Whether it’s partnering with employers to create a modern work-study program or providing more time-management courses, we need to continue to monitor the best practices for improving student success and implement them.
Q: How will the university realize its core objectives and aspirations?
A: Our passion has been to provide an affordable and quality online education to those who serve. We’ve held our undergraduate tuition at the same level for nearly 10 years by growing enrollment at a rate higher than our expenses, while improving quality and increasing the variety of classes and programs. We will continue to manage the balance between the growth in revenues and costs as we enroll more students.
We have a vigorous planning process that involves looking ahead five years at programs we would like to offer and sectors we would like to serve. There are additional degree programs we would like to develop to better serve our existing communities and serve additional communities. Balancing the development and implementation of those programs and the improvement of our programs will be important in enhancing the value an AMU degree has for our alumni and students. ♦