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October 28, 2009 1:43 PM
Here’s Some Money to Prove That You Are Cool
Diverse: Issues in Higher Education reports that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation just gave a $1.2 million grant to the online Western Governors University to investigate whether online education programs can “improve completion rates for… low-income students and help them improve their economic status”
“The study’s goal is to demonstrate that the WGU competency-based online education system, with personal mentors for each student, can significantly improve completion rates,” says Dr. Robert Mendenhall, WGU president. “We feel it does, so now we aim to show the hard facts to support it, and through the study results encourage other online schools to adopt some of our protocols. [WGU’s] whole focus from the beginning has been to extend to underserved populations and help them succeed.”
WGU is the only accredited online university in the country that awards degrees based on the competency system. To receive a degree under this system, students must demonstrate skill in their subject matter as opposed to accumulating credits. Students undergo a series of examinations to measure their expertise in their subject matter, such as field work evaluations, performance tests and projects.
This is all well and good, but I don’t get why the Gates Foundation would give money to a school to prove its own usefulness. I’m not privy to the world of such grants and studies, but isn’t this a conflict of interest? I’d think that money would be better spent on an independent third party that could evaluate WGU from the outside.
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Walker on October 28, 2009 5:32 PM:
If you are going to have posts like this, it is hard to see how you can make meaningful statements about higher education.
Formal pedagogical studies require a lot of time and manpower. You have to have entrance and exit interviews (just to make sure that your performance does not come from selectivity bias). You have quantitative as well as qualitative studies. No university is going to hire people to do this when the market does not demand it. Yes, they do assessment, as is required by the regional accrediting bodies, but that assessment is never enough to constitute a formal scientific study.
People get funded to do pedagogical research all the time. It allows teachers to buy off their time (e.g. the university can hire additional, temporary manpower) so that they have the time to do the research. The results of these studies will go to peer-reviewed journals on pedagogical methodology. The university cannot just put out a report saying "we are great" and have that fly.