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May 23, 2022

Pros, Cons of Using International Student Agents, Consultants | Best Colleges

The total application and admissions system to U.S. universities can look overwhelming and sophisticated. For help, prospective international pupils may possibly contemplate making use of a college admissions agent or independent educational marketing consultant. But right before trying to get out either, pupils should really fully grasp how they function and weigh their pros and downsides.

Agents are typically contracted and paid by universities to guide and recruit pupils to their institutions, in accordance to Reliable Resources, a resource delivered by the Countrywide Affiliation for Higher education Admission Counseling in various languages. Consultants are ordinarily hired and paid out by the college student or spouse and children and present university admissions steering.

“Do your investigate and talk to a large amount of questions, this kind of as people detailed in Dependable Resources, of likely industry experts who might support you in the admission approach. Make an educated determination about who to function with so that you can be self-confident they are concentrated on your demands and finest passions in your college lookup,” says Lindsay Addington, director of world-wide engagement for NACAC.

No matter if looking at using the solutions of an intercontinental pupil recruitment agent or independent academic expert, prospective worldwide pupils must weigh the next professionals and cons.

Execs of Working with Schooling Brokers, Consultants

Individualized, professional aid. The world wide web can supply global pupils and their mom and dad with a prosperity of information and facts on U.S. universities, college or university rankings and admissions. But it can be a ton to get in. Students can get the job done with a proficient agent or expert who can sift by means of all the details, answer concerns and walk them as a result of the admissions system.

Stephanie P. Kennedy, founder of My School Arranging Workforce in Illinois, claims her agency assists college students in determining faculties that match the pupil and household in many strategies, this kind of as tutorial, money and social in good shape, job objectives and additional.

She suggests unbiased instructional consultants can “guidebook learners and families to make knowledgeable alternatives based on exact information and reasonable chances for acceptance to quality plans in the U.S.”

Pam Rambo, founder of Rambo Analysis and Consulting in Virginia, claims the important to obtaining price and results from an agent or marketing consultant “is possibly recognizing anyone who applied their products and services efficiently and/or earning guaranteed they are professional and certified.”

She suggests pupils can look at for skills by way of expert organizations these as NACAC, Greater Education and learning Consultants Affiliation, Impartial Educational Consultants Affiliation and the American Global Recruitment Council.

Advice in a student’s language. An agent or expert can offer prospective international pupils steering in their individual language.

“The tremendous range of U.S. colleges and the distinctions in software and enrollment procedures and deadlines is perplexing to U.S. and intercontinental students alike,” Rambo states.

Specialists say getting an agent or marketing consultant who is fluent not only in English but also in the applicant’s spoken language can support the method go smoother.

“Some agencies aid pupils put together for standardized exams and English proficiency examinations and have wonderful obtain to assets to enable the pupil,” states Dean Kahler, vice provost for strategic enrollment management at the College of Idaho.

Additional steering. Agents or consultants can inform worldwide pupils about scholarships or grants awarded by certain institutions and assist with student visa purposes as section of their providers. This suggests potential international students wouldn’t have to research for scholarships and decode the visa system by yourself.

Rambo says future international pupils, with small to no background in U.S. bigger education and learning, can extra rapidly detect and navigate U.S. faculties and processes with specialist aid.

“The method is even much more sophisticated for intercontinental learners who have several extra levels of visa and money prerequisites,” Rambo claims.

Cons of Working with Instruction Brokers, Consultants

Prices. When agents and consultants can give useful companies, one particular prospective downside to consider is the cost. Agents are generally compensated by universities to suggest and recruit students to their educational institutions but consultants frequently ought to be paid by the college student or spouse and children for their services.

The common hourly cost for a expert in 2017 was $200, but in depth package deal fees ranged from $850 to $10,000, in accordance to facts from the Impartial Academic Consultants Association. The average IECA member billed $6,700 to do the job with worldwide households, and the 2019 determine is believed to have risen to $7,500 for a extensive package deal, according to Sarah Brachman, director of communications for the affiliation.

“It is handy to discover out upfront what expenses will be incurred by the college student and/or spouse and children,” Kahler claims.

Final decision motivated by a expert. Prospective worldwide pupils must also be mindful that brokers and consultants may well advise specified educational institutions more than other folks centered on their viewpoints or biases, somewhat than a student’s personal study on universities.

Kahler claims although there are quite a few very good brokers, there are a smaller range who give the relaxation a negative track record.

“All agents handle a small business for income and some may well not have the most effective fascination of the pupil in brain. There are some organizations who will demand the pupil for scholarships that are awarded by the higher education, demand both equally the institution and the college student for their services, undertake fraudulent procedures or propose a school that is not a excellent match for the student just to make a earnings,” Kahler suggests.

Reliance on other people. The software is most likely the initial paperwork potential global learners will deal with, and by utilizing the companies of an education and learning agent or marketing consultant, they would be relying on a specialist to guide the way. Learners may possibly overlook out on taking their first step of independence by not tackling admissions and software treatments solo.

Kahler says worldwide learners who decide on to go it by yourself will have help from prospective universities.

“A student should normally feel relaxed doing the job with the recruitment or admissions place of work of the college they want to go to,” Kahler says.

As an option to working with an agent, he claims learners can use EducationUSA, a network of advising facilities supported by the U.S. Division of State, to come across no cost support in their area. But he states over-all, schooling brokers and consultants can be beneficial means.

When looking at an agent, worldwide pupils really should verify references, discuss with pupils who have labored with them and talk to schools and universities if they are under agreement with the faculty, Kahler advises.

“Pupils and families need to shop around for respected organizations with whom to perform and always keep immediate communication with the U.S. university they want to show up at alternatively than just communicate through the agent,” Kahler suggests.

March 25, 2022

7 Time-Management Tips for Online College Students | Online Colleges

With the overall flexibility of on the web diploma programs, discovering can transpire from virtually any where – at home, on the road or even on a plane. College students have the skill to show up at college or university whilst also juggling other lifestyle commitments, like getting a mum or dad or doing work full time.

“Reflecting on the previous three yrs, the one detail that the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us is that ‘life happens,’ and in schooling it is important to fulfill learners in which they are,” Makana Craig, director of Chaminade On line at Chaminade College of Honolulu, wrote in an e mail. “This signifies acknowledging that pupils have other lifetime priorities, and affording them the versatility and autonomy to full their coursework when they have the time and room (mental, physical, psychological) to do so.”

But having on-line courses, which are mainly self-paced, needs motivation and willpower. Below are 7 time-administration tips to take into account.

1. Established Limited- and Lengthy-Phrase Goals

Factors for attending or reenrolling in higher education search distinctive for just about every university student. But building shorter-time period and very long-phrase aims, like graduating just before your kid goes to school, may provide as an incentive in the direction of diploma completion.

“Placing these aims and then doing the job toward them is seriously motivating,” says Jamie Guigar Storey, director of advising and scholar expert services in the School of Instruction and Human Providers at Central Michigan University.

2. Get Arranged Early

Just before every single semester, critique the training course syllabus and split down every single unit on a individual calendar to keep track of all assignments. Taking the time to get organized early decreases the likelihood of missing thanks dates later on on.

“That 40 minutes of operate will pay out off in spades later on on,” claims Luyen Chou, chief finding out officer at 2U, an on the net better education firm. “When you are in the middle of it and you will find a lot heading on, not acquiring to fear about irrespective of whether or not you’re on tempo just relieves your thoughts of large tension.”

3. Devote Chunks of Study Time

With family members, house or get the job done duties, it can be difficult to find time to look at a lecture or complete an assignment for faculty.

Learners may shell out at minimum a handful of hours a week on lectures, films and other study course materials, excluding reading or researching, so it really is important to make time for that, Storey suggests. But that can be tricky when you have competing duties, this sort of as having to select up youngsters from school.

She implies discovering a period of time of time when you can be no cost from distractions – right after your boy or girl goes to mattress, for example – and earning that your committed examine window.

“It’s distinctive for everybody for some people it can be Saturday mornings” that work greatest for executing schoolwork, Storey suggests. “But make certain you happen to be seeking by means of your complete plan ahead of the program begins and figuring out in which there are chunks of time that you can take away, like viewing Television set, in get to make time for your courses.”

4. Designate a Review Area

Acquiring a selected research area can be a problem for on the web learners – notably these who share a house with loved ones customers or roommates. But in addition to environment apart time for discovering, to the extent feasible, obtain a site within or outdoors of the home in which you can target.

“Really try out to dedicate you to building a time and a position for your on the internet mastering,” Chou states. “Having all those rituals and routines reinforces your ability to solution studying in a significant way.”

5. Make Mastering Social

Online studying comes in a wide range of formats, such as stay lectures, classroom discussions and personal perform.

In an asynchronous model that depends generally on discussion community forums, e mail or text for conversation, it can be simple to really feel lonely or isolated. Gurus counsel leaning into the social facet of understanding, like generating a review team with peers or scheduling office hrs with an instructor.

“Even if you don’t need it academically, study shows that sense of relationship with other learners and with instructors is related with strong outcomes for the learner,” Chou suggests.

College students can also obtain an accountability partner, this kind of as a fellow on the internet classmate, who can support you continue to be on top rated of assignments.

Conferences with each other “can be as small and sweet as a weekly electronic mail outlining your plans for the 7 days,” Craig wrote. “Or, it can be a scheduled time exactly where the college student fulfills with their accountability associate(s) on Zoom, and spends an hour doing the job on their respective assignments. Believe of this like the digital examine session at the library.”

6. Fortify Learning in the Off Several hours

Integrate study course topics into everyday conversations with loved ones, close friends or shut colleagues. Not only does this reinforce uncovered ideas, but it can also aid pupils detect areas of confusion.

“The far more that you have interaction with (the materials) in diverse configurations, the additional it can be going to solidify in your very own thoughts,” Storey claims. “It is actually useful to have exterior discussions.”

7. Speak Up When You Need to have Guidance

Specifically in an asynchronous understanding atmosphere, an teacher could not be conscious that a student is battling or slipping powering in class. You should not be fearful to talk up, experts say.

But if a scholar would not come to feel at ease reaching out to their instructor or tutorial advisor, quite a few on the web degree plans also give means for tutorial assist, these as tutoring or a crafting lab.

Looking for an on the net software? Get our entire rankings of Top Online Instruction Applications.

January 2, 2022

Taking a Step Back: US Colleges Returning to Online Classes | Illinois News

By COLLIN BINKLEY, AP Instruction Writer

With COVID-19 situations surging just as college students are about to return from wintertime crack, dozens of U.S. faculties are shifting classes on the web once again for at least the initial week or so of the semester — and some warn it could stretch lengthier if the wave of infection doesn’t subside quickly.

Harvard is going lessons online for the 1st a few months of the new year, with a return to campus scheduled for late January, “conditions allowing.” The College of Chicago is delaying the starting of its new phrase and holding the initial two weeks on the web. Some other individuals are inviting students again to campus but starting up courses on the net, like Michigan Condition University.

Several colleges hope that an further week or two will get them previous the peak of the nationwide spike pushed by the hugely contagious omicron variant. However, the surge is casting uncertainty more than a semester quite a few had hoped would be the closest to normal given that the start off of the pandemic.

For some pupils, commencing the phrase remotely is becoming regime — lots of schools made use of the tactic very last calendar year amid a wave of circumstances. But some fear the most current change could extend well past a week or two.

Political Cartoons

Jake Maynard, a university student at George Washington College in the nation’s money, reported he is wonderful with a week of online courses, but beyond that, he hopes officers have faith in in the booster photographs and provide a classic college knowledge.

He has presently taken a yr of on line mastering, which he claimed “did not work” and wasn’t what he expected from a faculty that expenses much more than $50,000 a 12 months.

“I’m a junior, but about fifty percent my schooling experience has been on the web,” said Maynard, 20, of Ellicott Town, Maryland. “You drop so substantially of what tends to make the faculty the faculty.”

The college is inviting students back again to campus starting off Monday, but courses will be held on the net till Jan. 18 as officers ramp up virus tests and isolate any infected pupils. The university has a lot more than doubled its isolation house and moved up the deadline for a new booster shot need by three weeks due to the fact of omicron.

“The omicron variant hit us at a awful time, generally the last few months of the tumble semester, which doesn’t give us a great deal time to get ready for spring,” stated Dr. Lynn Goldman, dean of George Washington’s college of public overall health.

The university was among the numerous that observed infections soar in the days in advance of wintertime crack. The campus averaged much more than 80 cases a day during finals 7 days, in contrast with just a number of a day for a great deal of the slide. And although most modern conditions ended up gentle, nearly all have been amid college students who had received at least two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.

As for the mid-January concentrate on date for resuming in-man or woman studying, Goldman reported officers “figure out there is some risk that it won’t be attainable.”

So significantly, a lot more than 70 faculties across 26 states are setting up the phrase on-line, and some others say they are looking at it. Many building the transfer now use quarter systems that get started previously than all those with semesters.

A lot of of individuals shifting on-line are in the latest virus warm places, such as George Washington, Yale and Columbia on the East Coast, together with Wayne Condition College in Detroit and Northwestern College near Chicago. The record also includes most of the College of California campuses and Rice University in Houston.

At the University of California, Riverside, pupils can return on Monday but encounter two months of on line lessons. They are also being becoming questioned to sequester for 5 days although they bear two rounds of virus testing.

It’s the initial time because final spring that the college has moved fully distant, but Chancellor Kim Wilcox claimed it is the finest way to stop the virus from spreading just after college students return from getaway travel.

“We believe about it as rebuilding our bubble,” he claimed. “It provides us a chance to reset points and then hopefully be off and jogging.”

Some other colleges are delaying the new phrase without having presenting remote lessons. Syracuse University pushed its semester back again a 7 days, citing projections that the 1st three weeks of January will be “the most tough of this surge.”

Other individuals are pressing in advance with in-individual discovering, stating the wellbeing challenges are very low with masks and booster pictures.

At Northeastern University in Boston, just one of a rising amount of colleges necessitating boosters, learners are returning as prepared. Officials stated the faculty is shifting its target from avoiding all scenarios to warding off significant health issues or hospitalization.

“As we go into this endemic section of the pandemic, our work is to continue on to command COVID correctly, not permit COVID handle us,” Ken Henderson, chancellor and senior vice president for learning, said in a information to the campus.

The transfer drew praise from Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, who mentioned COVID-19 poses small threat to college learners, while “prolonged isolation is a incredibly real hazard to their advancement and mental wellbeing.”

The College of Florida designs to return to in-particular person mastering at the begin of the semester, in spite of a ask for from a faculty union to instruct remotely for the very first a few months.

Paul Ortiz, president of the campus chapter of the United Faculty of Florida, reported more mature college users will be at larger possibility, especially with no mask or vaccine mandates, which have been outlawed by GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“We do not want our campus to come to be a super-spreader,” Ortiz claimed. “There’s just a great deal of uncertainty suitable now, a lot of anxiety.”

At some schools setting up remotely, officers say they are committed to a fast return to the classroom.

The 50,000-college student campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ideas to resume in-particular person courses right after one particular week of on the internet instruction. Learners are currently being encouraged to return in the course of that to start with 7 days so they can choose two virus tests, which will distinct them to resume in-human being activities if they test adverse.

“Every semester we’ve had a spike when pupils occur back again,” university spokesperson Robin Kaler mentioned. “We want to make sure we’re on prime of that so we can crush it as quickly as attainable.”

December 26, 2021

It’s Time to Confront Special Privilege in Admission to Elite U.S. Colleges

Harvard School, engraving by Paul Revere, 1767.

Despite the fact that a significant scandal erupted in 2019 above bribery and other fraudulent methods used by rich Individuals to protected their children’s admission to elite faculties, the affluent carry on to reward from other varieties of exclusive admission guidelines that are correctly legal.

Consider the actuality that, according to a latest analyze, only about 57 p.c of Harvard’s white learners were being admitted on the foundation of educational benefit. The other 43 {e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} gained particular treatment method because their mother and father experienced made huge donations to Harvard, or they experienced mother and father who experienced graduated from the college (“legacy admissions”) or taught there, or ended up recruited as athletes. Without this preferential status, some a few-quarters of them would have been turned down in the intensive competitors for admission.

Truly, a preferential standing for the privileged has prolonged been a tradition in the top ranks of American better schooling. In the course of their first decades, elite faculties considered only rich white students as deserving of admission. Even by the conclusion of the nineteenth century, their campuses had been populated primarily by graduates of personal significant schools. In the early twentieth century, nervous administrators, nervous to restrict the range of Jews and other new immigrants, leaned significantly on legacy position, spouse and children donations, and athletic recruiting.

I had a imprecise sense of these priorities when, from 1958 to 1962, I was a college student at Columbia College or university. Founded in 1754, this male undergraduate school furnished the core of Columbia College, which grew up close to it. Composed of about 2,000 students, the school was a part of the prestigious Ivy League, and the suitable, promoted by the administration, was “the very well-rounded man.” This phrase had a rather patrician, inbred ring to it, and certainly didn’t describe me or most of my higher education friends, who had attended city public schools, arrived from modest economic conditions, were devoid of athletic skills, and lacked family connections to the institution.

Nonetheless, when a Columbia undergraduate, I seen features that prompt a disturbing hierarchy in admissions. A ton of my classmates experienced attended extravagant prep educational institutions, and continue to some others have been professional athletes who ended up as relatively dim stars in the school’s lustrous mental firmament. Furthermore, the huge the vast majority of Columbia’s pupils ended up white. My getting into yearbook (The 1962 Directory), which shows shots of virtually the overall freshman course, shows only five learners who are clearly Black. At the time, higher education admissions programs needed a picture of the candidates, a handy tool for screening out all those thought of undesirable.

Issues began to alter a bit—though not much—in 1970, when I was training history at Vassar University. As one particular of the Seven Sister Faculties, Vassar had an elite status similar to Columbia’s, and arrived inside of a hairsbreadth of merging with Yale in the late 1960s. Even so, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the discovery of poverty shook Vassar up, primary to force to go further than its historically white, economically comfy (and at times quite wealthy) college student constituency and build a much more assorted a single. As a final result, a committee was billed with establishing new admissions conditions, and I was appointed to the committee.

Right after several committee meetings, we last but not least agreed upon a basic affirmative action technique. In the position of admission candidates from 1 (the finest) to 5 (the worst), we would give associates of previously excluded groups a in addition, thus providing them with an edge about other people in their rank. At this issue, nevertheless, with about 15 minutes still left in the past conference, the admissions director declared, relatively casually, that the suggestions would, of training course, keep on to give a as well as to young children of Vassar graduates! I promptly objected, pointing out that this would reproduce the old admissions sample. A Black college student who served on the committee agreed with me. But we ended up outvoted, and standard privileges prevailed.

It really should arrive as no shock, then, that, even as affirmative motion has increased the amount of students of shade at America’s elite schools, older patterns of favoritism have ongoing.

This is specially correct when it comes to the kids of the loaded. Researchers have located that the offspring of the best 1 {e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} are 77 times far more probably to attend an elite personal U.S. school than these from the base 20 percent. And this is no incident. At Harvard, major administrators regularly bent the school’s admissions specifications to accommodate wealthy donors. Jared Kushner’s admission to Harvard, just after a desultory academic performance at his prep university, followed on his father’s offer you of $2.5 million to the university. Of program, presented inflation and the rigorous levels of competition for admission, the selling price has risen around the decades. “You made use of to be equipped to sway an admissions business office for $1 million,” remarked Mark Sklarow, the main govt officer of the Impartial Instructional Consultants Affiliation. “Now it is most likely $10 million and up.”

Even though some elite faculties no more time give exclusive therapy to little ones of their alumni, most of them carry on this follow. As a final result, “legacy” students—who have a tendency to be affluent and white—constitute a sizeable constituency, which include 14 per cent of the freshman course at Yale, 13 p.c at Dartmouth, and 10 per cent at Brown. At Harvard, “legacy” candidates are 6 periods more possible to be admitted than pupils without this hereditary privilege.

Lastly, most elite schools proceed the observe of prioritizing the admission of athletes. This priority, like other regular types, lowers academic criteria and—largely thanks to the actuality that a lot of Ivy League teams are positioned in higher-class athletics like sailing, golfing, drinking water polo, lacrosse, and fencing—contributes to the admission of large quantities of white, affluent pupils. As a Harvard school member pointed out, the athletic preference is “blatantly privileging previously privileged groups.”

Overall, it truly is apparent that merit-based admission at the nation’s very best schools will not be secured when these types of priorities continue to be in area.

November 24, 2021

Scaling online education: Five lessons for colleges

As the COVID-19 pandemic surges across the United States, colleges have been forced to adjust their plans almost daily. As of late August 2020, just one-fifth of colleges in the United States were planning to return to campus fully or primarily in-person,

with the balance either undecided or planning for hybrid, online, or other remote teaching models. Already, several colleges have had to rapidly shift to 100 percent remote instruction following local COVID-19 outbreaks.

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Last spring, as colleges were forced to move to remote models from one day to the next, the focus was on ensuring engagement and access for students, and just-in-time training for faculty to finish the academic year. As restrictions on in-person learning extended through the fall, the imperative shifted to building the capability to provide a robust remote offering for the longer term. This need for remote learning has expanded interest in developing or scaling proper online education, leveraging the best practices learned from a set of institutions that have successfully implemented this educational model.

In this article, we briefly outline trends in online higher education over the past decade. Then, we review five critical lessons from leading online institutions that could help every university improve and scale their online offerings. The marketplace is moving quickly, so institutions of higher learning must act now.

The shift to online: At first a trickle, and now a flood

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, online education was a driver of growth in higher education. As traditional enrollment in postsecondary institutions continues to decline, distance learning has increased by around 40 percent in five years, from 2.2 million students in 2012 to 3.1 million students in 2017. While some students studied online exclusively, more took a combination of online and in-person courses. Before the pandemic hit, roughly one-third of students had taken at least one online course.

However, this growth was unevenly distributed. Big institutions such as Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), Western Governors University (WGU), and Arizona State University (ASU) accounted for around 10 percent of the growth, building national brands for online higher education that set them apart from their peers (Exhibit 1).

Online education growth is uneven among institutions, with the top ten players consolidating 20 percent of the market. — Exhibit 1

A trend that was playing out over a decade was then compressed into a semester. While many students will likely return to in-person learning when it is safe, others may stay remote for the long term, raising the
stakes on building sustainable offerings, not just stopgaps. Indeed, GSV Ventures, a venture-capital fund focusing on digital education, forecasts that “online-first pedagogy will become normalized for virtually every college student” and all growth in higher education until 2030 will happen online.

The imperative is clear: every university should build a robust online offering, and fast.

Taking the plunge: Standing up online programs

We interviewed leading online universities to understand what it takes to plan and implement quality online programs in higher education. We identified five key success factors.

Develop a student-centered approach

“The secret sauce to our success is our student-advising operation,” says Paul LeBlanc, president of SNHU. Leading institutions agree with this statement and have developed online strategies with one main objective in mind: support students to successfully complete their programs. Institutions have put in place three types of student support mechanisms to achieve this goal:

Personalized counseling and guidance. ASU and SNHU use personal success coaches and academic advisers to help students navigate admissions, enrollment, degree selection, and course requirements. Counselors also employ predictive analytics to identify students at risk of struggling academically and provide the required interventions.
Engagement with in-person and online communities. Part of student success relies on developing strong ties with faculty and peers. To ensure student engagement, Pennsylvania State University and SNHU have introduced personalized feedback sessions between faculty and students, enhanced peer-to-peer interactions through video calls, access to in-person networking events, and development of online
communities (for example, an honors society).
24/7 IT support to enhance learning experience. State University of New York and ASU installed a 24/7 IT concierge service that helps students with technical questions related to course access, course materials, and software.

Invest heavily in marketing

The biggest players spend heavily on marketing (Exhibit 2). Institutions with the largest online enrollment have marketing budgets similar to fast-growth tech and digital-retail companies. We found a positive correlation between share of voice and market share; in other words, the more an institution spent on marketing, the higher its market share. This highlights the role of marketing in spurring enrollment.

Institutions that spend more on marketing have a higher market share of online enrollment. — Exhibit 2

Two-thirds of students complete their first application within four weeks of starting a search for online programs. Leading institutions recognize that online students move faster in their decision-making process than their peers in the in-person applicant pool and have seamlessly integrated their marketing efforts with enrollment departments. Students not only move faster during their application process but also expect to receive timely information on financial aid and transferring credits when finalizing enrollment. The Online College Students report shows that within two weeks of having applied, 71 percent of online students expect to find out how to transfer previously earned credits, while 66 percent expect to receive an estimate of their financial aid award.

To enable a seamless application and enrollment process, SNHU established a team of 275 admissions representatives that follow up with interested students within two minutes of a query. It also uses a credit-transfer team that supports students tracking down the necessary transcripts for a small fee. The university recognizes that time-sensitive adult learners are the target of its programs and require a streamlined application and enrollment process.

Involve faculty early and enable academic staff to launch successful programs

Helping faculty develop successful online programs comprises two areas of support:

Provide faculty with the time required to develop online offerings. In our interviews, faculty members cited fear of time commitment and lack of recognition for remote teaching when asked to develop an online offering. Universities have added monetary and nonmonetary incentives to address those issues. University of Central Florida provides faculty with stipends and time for instructors to pursue the training required to develop and launch quality online courses. Similarly, Pennsylvania State University gives faculty the same credit for developing and teaching remote courses that they would receive for teaching in-person programs. The latter is aimed at addressing the perception that online classes are inferior to in-person courses.
Develop a standardized end-to-end process to support faculty. We identified a series of best practices that some universities have put in place to support faculty, from the assessment of the idea to quality assurance when launching an offering:
- Create a standardized course proposal and approval process. To launch viable online courses, University of Florida created a central curriculum-development team with a dual mission: first, identify potential offerings that respond to both students’ needs and labor-market demand while taking advantage of the university’s strengths, and second, assess ideas proposed by faculty using the same framework.
- Provide instructional design and course-production support to ensure offerings meet students’ needs. University of Florida’s Center for Online Innovation and Production supports faculty with training, instructional designers, and all production needs.
- Develop a strict quality assurance process. ASU has a dedicated design and development team that manages quality assurance with a detailed rubric to measure course quality. It includes 22 instructional designers who each support 50 to 75 faculty members.

Establish an online organization with clear accountability

When defining the organizational structure required to carry out and grow an online program, institutions reported following three guiding principles (see sidebar, “Choosing an appropriate operationalization model”):

Have a clearly designated unit, with budget responsibility and decision-making power, that is responsible for executing the online program.
Enable faculty participation to ensure that implementation meets student needs and provides the support faculty requires to develop quality programs. Most of the public institutions interviewed reported having the online organization under the provost as a mechanism to enable faculty to take a leadership role in shaping the organization’s value proposition.
Define clear targets and ensure standardized practices are put in place to meet these targets. Examples of standardized practices include a vetting system to assess financial viability of new programs along with a clear resource-allocation framework for course development.

Adjust standard operating procedures to align with the needs of frequent online start options and shorter terms

Online programs that scale rapidly typically offer concentrated learning modules of six to eight weeks. They have multiple, staggered start options ranging from four to six in a given year (for example, January, March, May, June, August, and October) to provide several flexible entry points for target audiences. August and January are the most popular and have the highest enrollment of the start options. Most traditional university programs offer only fall, spring and, in some cases, summer admissions cycles.

The multiple-starts approach has important implications for several teams involved with the operations and student life cycle, including:

Admissions. Six application-processing cycles, with shorter turnaround times compared with schools that have three traditional cycles.
Marketing. Digital and print advertising must be rapidly readjusted and relaunched for each of the six starts.
Financial aid. Turnaround and application-processing times ramp up with significant spikes in activity in the five days before the admissions deadline versus traditional admissions cycles, in which financial aid processing is typically completed several months before the deposit deadline.
Student success. Advisers and counselors must get accustomed to digital responses, broader availability, and proactive outreach to address motivation and persistence.

Universities that operationalize online programs successfully also take into account these adjustments:

appointing people dedicated to directing online operations within their respective teams
instilling a strong customer-focused view in colleagues who support online operations
tweaking the school calendar to be flexible for the variations needed with multiple starts (for example, flexible work hours over the holiday break to ensure support for the January launch)
creating buffer capacity in their teams to address spikes in activity just before and after a new class start compared with traditional enrollment cycle activity

The transition to any form of online education is a major effort. In the past, universities could choose whether to invest in a first-rate online offering. Now, they have little choice, and they need to act fast. The good news is that there is plenty of experience from which to draw and build. Universities that take these lessons to heart can create or scale an online offering that will not only carry them through the pandemic but also set them up for success in a post-COVID-19 higher-education world.

October 21, 2021

Navigating online education post-pandemic: advice for colleges

The landscape for digital learning has changed substantially due to the fact Robert Ubell published Going On-line in 2016: an explosion in outsourcing to on line program professionals, intensifying competition between would-be cheaters and technologies developed to thwart them — oh, and a international pandemic that turned practically every college student into an on-line learner and just about every professor into a technologist.

In a new ebook, Staying Online: How to Navigate Electronic Higher Education and learning (Routledge), Ubell, vice dean emeritus of on-line studying at New York University’s Tandon University of Engineering, delivers together his writings in Within Larger Ed and other publications about a wide range of topics.

He answered questions by means of e-mail about his new e book and the evolving landscape for on the internet discovering. An edited version of the exchange follows.

Q: As anyone who has led institutional technique around on-line education and learning and viewed the landscape closely considering that the late 1990s, do you feel the pressured experimentation of pupils, professors and institutions with remote instruction has appreciably (and forever) reshaped the standing and status of technological know-how-enabled mastering? And if so, in approaches that will maximize support for it?

A: Crisis online studying, regardless of its largely novice shipping last calendar year, was a genuinely huge offer — shock therapy for higher education and learning. According to a amount of latest experiences, remote instruction through the pandemic accelerated broader acceptance and growth of on the web mastering, revealing how immediately establishments have responded to extending on-line mastering and how unexpectedly positively learners and college have reacted. Just one survey this spring concluded that a greater part of college students are amazingly eager to continue to keep learning on line, though school say they now come to feel significantly much more confident about remote schooling than at any time.

Even Harvard, a longtime holdout, launched its first on line diploma this spring, adopted by other institutions, keen to get on board, with quite a few both signing on with OPMs — professional suppliers who create and industry virtual packages — or setting up to launch new on the web levels on their possess.

But the nation’s headlong dive into digital schooling very last 12 months was not an solely radical departure. In excess of the past many years, on-line education and learning moved like an plane on a runway, getting off slowly and gradually at initially and then persistently, to occupy an ever increased share of increased instruction. If you seem at this eloquent graph, cleverly devised by the ed-tech guru Phil Hill from federal info, you are going to see how the on line wind has been blowing, with household enrollments sliding as on the internet steadily rises. These traits, obvious for many years, but etched in sharper reduction in the pandemic, are now more perilous than at any time.

Two realities account for these altered instructions: the campus downturn is mostly a direct final result of the nation’s skidding variety of high university graduates, whilst the online climb will come from the country’s vastly switching economy, swelling with fantastic numbers of learners who must function to go to school, filling virtual classes with nontraditional pupils.

To get paid digital degrees, midcareer adult learners are also enrolling in remote lessons to get a leg up on securing a far more fulfilling stake in our postindustrial overall economy. Together with fresh new batches of 19-yr-olds, educational leaders need to now go after nontraditional and midcareer pupils, Nowadays, digital schooling has a double obligation, not only critical in securing the continuation of larger instruction, but as an ethical exercise.

Q: If on line/electronic/virtual studying is heading to be a significant portion of a lot more (if not most) faculties and universities likely forward, what are the most significant problems they will have to confront? Are the difficulties additional technological, educational or organizational?

A: All 3, actually, considering that colleges that have not still joined the rush online will will need to get their ducks in a row, generating positive they have almost everything they require in place, with up-to-the-minute electronic magic, advanced pedagogy to keep learners glued to their screens and dynamic leaders, holding the online ship floating and flexible.

But there’s but a fourth necessity: industrial acumen. Colleges and universities confess they are not extremely excellent at it, but they will have to have to get up to pace to exploit electronic recruitment, at which for-profits and OPMs are considerably forward in any other case, even if they grasp the suitable digital abilities, they might be outmaneuvered. Helpful electronic recruitment involves nevertheless a different art that bigger education and learning has been hesitant to follow — investing really serious funds on internet marketing. To realize success, schools and universities will will need to crack some stuffy outdated behavior.

Q: You near your new guide with an admirably genuine chapter about previous assertions that, on 2nd assumed, you comprehend skipped the mark (at minimum partially). How did your intellect alter about large open up on the web courses and streaming movie instruction?

A: Transforming one’s brain is an necessary element of the human issue. If we get trapped in childhood, relatively than currently being open to experience, how would we ever master to adore olives or other foods most children uncover unappetizing? I dug my heels in opposing MOOCs and streaming video simply because they each lacked what I held as the gold common of top quality digital education — leaning forward in energetic college student engagement, somewhat than sitting down back again, passively viewing lessons.

But immediately after decades of adhering to how students essentially participated on-line, I discovered that electronic instruction is not a a single-sizing-fits-all garment, but a coat of numerous colors. It turned out that even even though learning science tells us that energetic participation is the most successful way of discovering, MOOCs and streaming videos can be a useful substitute to conventional training. Certainty is the bullheaded enemy of thoughts-altering conduct.