A University Without Intellectuals: Western Governors University and the Academy's Future

A University Without Intellectuals: Western Governors University and the Academy's Future

Western Governors University becomes conceptualized in 1995 at a meeting of the Western Governors Association, and based quickly after with a view to boom diploma production in better training at a decrease value.1 It has improved considerably over the last few years, pushed each by using improved demand for on-line schooling and by way of drastic country budget cuts. Touted as offering a new, quicker technique to university stages by using worthwhile college students for what they already understand, a few see in it the future of better education. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, as an example, lauds WGU for hard “the century-vintage exercise of awarding levels based on seat time in a classroom, instead of on validated competence.”2

Rather than require students to spend money and time to research what they already know, WGU asks students to demonstrate mastery of a hard and fast of talents, which college students can do over the years or if they're in a position, months. Once a pupil has handed the abilities, he or she is eligible for a diploma.3 In an economy that depends on specialized technical capabilities and calls for certification, WGU’s method rewards experience by using spotting how a great deal people analyze the task.

Despite the espoused aim of manufacturing low-price stages, however, WGU’s costs are similar to traditional public establishments. Two six-month phrases at WGU cost about $6,000, at the same time as the fee consistent with a scholar at public schools has remained around $10,000 in step with year seeing that 1985. College expenses, in different phrases, have not been growing dramatically. What has been growing is the lessons paid through dad and mom and college students, way to drastic cuts in kingdom investment. Moreover, in contrast to maximum schools, WGU prices equal for part-time and complete-time students. Four

WHAT DEFINES A COLLEGE EDUCATION?

WGU does no longer provide college training. The problem isn't always that WGU is online, even though there are motives to doubt whether a very good education can be provided on-line. Five Instead, the very issue that makes WGU valuable for certification—its competency-primarily based technique—prevents it from offering the varieties of learning experiences that define liberal arts college training. As different other establishments test with the competency-based approach—including, currently, the University of Wisconsin system and Northern Arizona University—it is critical to recognize in which this technique is probably relevant and where its software might be unfavorable.6

Liberal arts schooling is tons exceptional than what WGU offers. College training may be as compared to gaining knowledge to drive. We all know what it takes to bypass a driving test, and we all recognize how we do it: we cram a group of stuff into short-time period memory, after which pass a competency-based exam. We additionally recognize that becoming a driver is a far distinctive technique; it calls for steerage and repeated exercise (or seat time). WGU’s method may additionally help college students bypass licensing tests, but it does now not help them emerge as drivers.

Similarly, one could argue that the Boy Scouts has a “competency technique” due to the fact scouts are asked to earn benefit badges. But of the path, the Boy Scouts’ project is to provide “a program for younger human beings that builds person, trains them inside the responsibilities of collaborating citizenship, and develops non-public fitness.”7 Thus, scouts camp, learn collectively and work collectively below the guidance of masters who educate understanding and version the scouts’ values. Abstracted from this broader way of life of scouting, the merit badges would lose their that means and value.

Had the competency technique been able to achieve the dreams of liberal arts education, it'd have finished so long ago. Not handiest have we long had correspondence publications, but textbook manufacturers additionally have lengthily packaged their products with assignments and evaluation gear. Despite their efforts, the middle getting to know the experience has persevered to take location in interactions between instructors and college students, and between college students themselves—the stuff that takes place past the textbook. WGU’s on-line modules may be higher than correspondence guides, but they're versions on a subject matter, and suffer from the equal barriers.

Although commentators embrace WGU’s version because it offers easily assessable effects, this can additionally be its problem; too often we conflate easily assessed effects with accountability. Eight A liberal arts education can't be narrowed to a hard and fast of technical capabilities or knowledge. Because the aim of a liberal schooling is greater profound and time intensive and due to the fact in lots of ways a liberal education is a private quest, efforts to standardize consequences threaten its price. What Diane Ravitch, training historian, has these days concluded about high faculty is relevant to the university, “When we outline what matters in training simplest by what we can degree, we are in critical trouble. When that happens, we tend to forget that colleges are liable for shaping character, growing sound minds in wholesome our bodies, and forming citizens for our democracy, now not just for coaching primary abilities. We even forget to mirror what we suggest whilst we communicate with a top education.”9

Ravitch’s feedback factor to every other difficulty approximately WGU’s approach. Colleges do more than require seat time; they ask college students to reflect on consideration on subjects wherein they've no longer had plenty to enjoy. Unlike education that is learned or strengthened on the task, a college education is grounded inside the liberal arts.10 Colleges introduce students to an international divorced from their everyday experiences and therefore one that requires tremendous “seat time” earlier than students may be honestly conversant. While an operating person may also already be practicing a lot of what she or he wishes to realize for certification, there are few human beings with similar experiences in literature and physics, history and biology, Plato and Freud. This has to no longer best be found out but bolstered.

EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING FOR THE MIND
Liberal arts training is experiential gaining knowledge of for the mind. It’s approximately grappling with difficult stuff. The checks (or abilities)—checks, papers, labs— are the simplest part of the photo; equally essential is what happens even as college students are in class and, extra generally, on campus: the discussions, questions, conversations; the exposure to new ideas and one of a kind perspectives. A university graduate has to grow to be an interpretive being, able to now not simply answering but asking state-of-the-art questions; of now not simply knowing facts, but making feel of them; of not simply information what’s in an e-book or lesson, however offering original thoughts based on their studying. Developing this deep know-how depends, as Socrates identified, on conversations among teachers and students. Cognitive science confirms what the ancients knew. Eleven As philosopher Michael Oakeshott has written about liberal education, “in every ‘ability’ there's an aspect of know-how which cannot be resolved into information” for the reason that “‘abilities’ do now not exist in the summary but man or woman examples.” As a result, gaining fluency inside the liberal arts is like learning a new language. One needs to master fundamental guidelines but “till you could communicate the language in a way not expressly supplied for inside the rules, you possibly can make no significance utterance in it.”12

In quick, it’s each how things are taught and what is taught that makes university training specific. Yes, the university may also improve vital questioning and foster creativity, however, there are many vital thinkers and creative humans who have by no means attended college. College may also or might not be a pleasant preparation for all matters. But faculties ask college students to assume significantly and creatively about unique things— the humanities and sciences—and, as one result, they become greater crucial and creative about many things.13

Certainly, the above photo of college training takes place most usually for complete-time students in institutions with a robust dedication to the liberal arts.14 Many other students fail to acquire this revel in. Colleges can do better using focusing interest on how college students analyze, presenting more sources to assist college students to be successful, and growing an extra coherent center curriculum.15 But many college students do no longer need a university education and others are unprepared for it. For many, better economic support might help, however for others, who spend years incomes credit component-time and resent their guides in history and biology whilst all they need is a better task, WGU offers what is needed and needed. Again, this is right, however, it isn't college.

HOW DID WGU GET ACCREDITED?

WGU is nicely aware of the above reviews, and it responds that it has been accepted through the Northwest Commission on Colleges and University (NWCCU), “the same accrediting body accountable for the accreditation of fundamental institutions consisting of the University of Washington and the University of Oregon.”16 WGU become authorized via NWCCU in 2003, with a meantime evaluation finished in 2009. After the faculty changed into endorsed via the Washington nation legislature, the Seattle Times opined that WGU “carries the identical stage of accreditation as Stanford University.”17 Certainly, WGU and its boosters exaggerate. Celebrating accreditation is like celebrating vaccination; it’s an awesome component, however, it’s a baseline.

More importantly, a close exam indicates that WGU fails to satisfy the NWCCU’s standards because its exertions version fundamentally undermines school governance, college pleasant, liberal education, and educational freedom.18 With that in thoughts, notwithstanding WGU’s motto that it is “online, extended, lower-priced, approved,” it isn't always clear how and why it obtained accreditation.19

In its 2003 posted necessities, NWCCU calls for that school have “a first-rate role and duty within the design, integrity, and implementation of the curriculum,” but, in keeping with WGU, “educational programs are developed and guided by WGU administrators running thru numerous councils, that are made out of academicians and enterprise specialists in the diverse fields of expertise.” These councils are made up of outdoor consultants, no longer WGU personnel. For example, the Liberal Arts Program Council includes school from Utah State University, the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Berea College, George Mason University, and someplace else.20

For its degree programs, WGU seeks—for the right motive—to align its talents to the needs of businesses that will hire its graduates. But, again, programmatic choices are made by way of out of doors consultants. It's Health Professions Program Council consists of faculty from Eastern Kentucky University, Loma Linda University, and from such businesses as HealthInsight and HCA (formerly referred to as Health Corporation of America).21 Simply put, WGU has outsourced instructional governance in violation of NWCCU’s standards.

Similarly, NWCCU calls for that the “faculty is ok for the educational ranges offered, consisting of complete-time faculty representing every area wherein it offers most important paintings.” Again, WGU falls quickly. For starters, college students do no longer have interaction typically with college, however rather with non-coaching mentors defined as “life coaches.” These could be a part of Student Affairs at other schools, and as a result, can't be considered college.22

Courses are overseen by using “path mentors,” but there's no evidence on WGU’s web sites that those route mentors represent the fields wherein WGU gives publications. WGU admits that it dodges NWCCU requirements, stating that its path mentors’ “schooling is precise to the publications they guide,” instead of to their fields, as required with the aid of the NWCCU.23 Forget asking college students to do complex unbiased interpretive projects—which includes senior theses—that require professors to be informed of their fields.

The governing bodies are no higher. Although WGU calls for students to complete coursework inside the arts and humanities, the overseeing Liberal Arts Program Council has specialists in arithmetic, physics, and writing, however none in any of the alternative arts and sciences.24

Additionally, NWCCU requires that to “offer a suitable degree of instruction for the graduate student, a school whose obligations consist of a prime dedication to graduate education are involved in keeping tempo with and advancing the frontiers of, information.” Despite imparting masters’ tiers, nowhere on WGU’s internet site are there any statistics about its school’s scholarship. For proper motives, NWCCU acknowledges that graduate students require education by folks that are lively pupils of their fields, but WGU’s website gives no proof that it could meet this fashionable. NWCCU additionally calls for faculties to provide “an enormous core of trendy education.”25 While WGU claims to accomplish that, as discussed in the previous section, its competency technique does not encourage serious engagement with the liberal arts and sciences.

Finally, there's no proof that WGU “fosters and protects academic freedom for college,” as the NWCCU’s 2003 standards mandate. Academic freedom applies to both research and the schoolroom.26 With the absence of faculty governance, however, it is not clean that route mentors are allowed to exercise their expert judgment in deciding on direction materials. Given WGU’s reliance on standardized modules, it also isn't always clean that path mentors workout any significant discretion over the curriculum. Robert Mendenhall, WGU’s president, notes that “we do now not increase any of our courses,” actually violating instructional freedom. WGU instead relies on such business providers as Pearson and McGraw-Hill, in place of college.27 Another key factor of academic freedom is tenure, however, there's no evidence WGU gives such protections to its non-unionized personnel.28

WGU is predicated as a substitute on a “disaggregated school” model in which the numerous additives of college paintings—curricular improvement, pupil mentoring, direction supervision, assessment, and academic application governance—are separated into specialized departments.29 Kevin Kinser, a scholar at the University of Albany, notes that WGU “instructors are largely broken free the direction planners, designers, and assessors.” Mendenhall celebrated this model: “in online surroundings that without a doubt takes advantage of generation, the school role may also alternate from delivering content material to mentoring students.”30

Mendenhall’s argument is incorrect in two approaches. First, even though the internet and new era has made content material greater accessible, since the mass e-book of cheap books and magazines two centuries ago, Americans have had clean access to content.31 The net is awesome, just as the e-book of reasonably-priced books changed into wonderful, but today’s technology boosters are missing the principle factor: coaching, in particular within the liberal fields, has lengthy been approximately greater than content shipping. Otherwise, the printing press could have accomplished away with instructors long ago.
Second, mentoring is not a commonplace act. A mentor courses an apprentice within the pursuit of something precise. It is set taking fabric and helping the student turn it into expertise. Good coaching is good mentoring, and desirable mentors by using definition teach something. In truth, WGU has neither college individuals nor mentors.

The reality is that there's not anything surprising nor progressive approximately WGU. Despite its claims to be more scholar-focused, in reality, it's miles management-centered. Despite its claims to be greater pupil-centered than conventional institutions, it's far management-centered, reflecting broader trends at some stage in America. Even in conventional establishments, administrative bloat plus developing numbers of adjunct college threaten shared governance, educational freedom, and academic nice.32 There is not any motive to agree with those fantastically paid managers, experts, and profit-minded vendors will be extra pupil focused than a school who have given up opportunity, greater moneymaking, careers to educate and examine.

WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL?
One would possibly ask, “Who cares?” The school does because of the erosion of shared governance and educational freedom influences their potential to teach and study efficiently. But there are appropriate reasons for the wider public to be involved as well. The trouble handy isn't always absolutely whether colleges are or are not pupil focused, however, whether or not it is a good element for colleges to provide revolutionary and extraordinary publications, and whether or not faculty must be involved in the curricular layout and scholarly studies.

The academy is greater than a conveyer of knowledge; it is also the middle for the existence of the thoughts. Whether via studies or coaching, it embodies the pursuit— the affection—of knowledge. When college layout their guides, interpret records, and conducts research, and when they carry that excitement into the schoolroom, they show what it way to be a pupil. At its excellent, coaching and studies are acts of devotion. While the curriculum may additionally provide the “stuff ” college students need to understand, a group’s lifestyle shapes students’ values and attitudes in the direction of studying.33

Ultimately, this is about the character. Colleges seek to make people liberally educated, to provide them a basis on which they will hold to expand. Liberal arts education expands the abilities of college students as people and as citizens.34 Ideally, the academy seeks to be a “network of gaining knowledge of” wherein each teacher and college students are engaged inside the look for know-how.35 WGU’s labor version leads as an alternative to a global in which neither faculty nor college students participate in the lifestyles of the thoughts, wherein know-how is eaten up rather than produced.

WGU gives us an imaginative and prescient of the university without intellectuals. If the academy produced commodities, possibly WGU’s method might make feel. But the academy does no longer, and it isn't always served whilst college is replaced by using managers, curriculum specialists, providers, evaluation experts, and “path mentors,” any greater than a church would be served through outsourcing its theology and changing its ministers with managers, conversion coaches, rhetoricians, orators, conversion assessors, and accountants. The church may cost a little less however could not inspire worship. By treating the life of the thoughts as unimportant, WGU inverts the academy’s manner and ends, threatening the motive of instructional teaching and research.

Even worse, WGU’s version might take the power over-interpreting know-how faraway from the ones devoted to the look for reality and location it with for-profit curricular layout groups that vicinity their economic interests ahead of the hunt for understanding. Importantly, the academy publishes knowledge for public use, wherein as for-earnings organizations treat understanding as proprietary. Because WGU already outsources curriculum development, in lots of ways it's miles a nonprofit shell for curriculum development businesses searching for to make the most of students.36 WGU’s approach does no longer boom get entry to knowledge but privatizes it to convert knowledge into a commodity.

The academy can be conscious of marketplace desires, but the academy needs to now not be a concern to them. Certainly, universities can prepare students to go into the fields and professions that the economy needs. There is also absolute confidence that the economic system advantages from the liberal arts and sciences, which develop the wondering, writing, analytical, and innovative capacities—the “transferable talents”—that employers desire.37 However, the primary intention of educational coaching and research is to apprehend the world and ourselves better for the general public right. Both inside and past the schoolroom the academy affords a forum for democratic deliberation. Academic freedom allows students to invite severe questions and to provide unpopular solutions; in reality, that is one of the academy’s most important contributions.38 If WGU’s version becomes tremendous, we would no longer have the aggressive market in thoughts we've today. This might not serve our democracy well, nor our economy, each of which rely upon the progressive ideas that universities produce.

By ensuring that college design courses and pursue research, our democracy guarantees that scholars are exposed to competing perspectives and are taught via folks who participate—and thus encompass—the existence of the thoughts. This is the actual foundation for academic freedom inside the classroom as well as in research. WGU’s method might standardize knowledge and centralize manipulation over it. This is less expensive for WGU and worthwhile for its companions, but it is a risky manner to prepare establishments dedicated to expertise.

Some argue that the vintage model costs an excessive amount of, however, this claim requires rationalization. Higher schooling has observed a price curve much like different exertions-intensive industries, suggesting that there are external reasons for growing training.39 Even when we consciousness closely on universities, but, we discover that the number one motive force of higher fees has been the collapse of kingdom funding within the public area mixed with the charges of a new generation, campus buildings, and the spectacular boom in administrative staff and packages.40 As the energy of managers develop, much less money is spent on coaching and studies and greater on different offerings. Rather than remedy those troubles, WGU is their logical end.

COLLEGE EDUCATION IS MORE THAN TRAINING

WGU offers human beings the credentials they want to get better jobs but it does no longer offer a college education. We want to accept that university isn't always the only form of postsecondary schooling. Instead, we must reply to Americans’ diverse needs and dreams by using imparting more than one “pathways to prosperity.” We should keep developing apprenticeship and certification applications that recognize Americans’ desires, are less expensive and faster than college stages, and prepare people for the personnel. Forty-one Too many college students move deep into debt taking training for which they have no desire or are unwell prepared, and too many of the one's college students fail to graduate, growing social and personal costs that can not be justified. Forty-two By making the university the only mechanism for economic and social development, we threaten each collegiate education and our democratic values.

At the equal time, we ought to ensure that access to college—to better getting to know within the arts and sciences—is to be had to all Americans searching for it. All excessive schools have to provide students a significant foundation in the liberal arts to prepare them for university, and faculties need to recruit and aid students from all sectors of American society. Collegiate education can not be for the privileged few and vocational schooling for the rest. Unfortunately, these days’ device tends to enhance present magnificence privilege as rich families input the most elite schools while states defund public institutions that used to provide the possibility. If faculties like WGU proliferate, and if they are used to justify persisted public defunding, we will deepen the class division between folks who get hold of a first-rate college education and people who do no longer.43

Faculty, directors, college students, and citizens should stand together to protect what makes university schooling unique and valuable. College education calls for “seat time” in the liberal arts and sciences and schools who devote their lives to studying and coaching. Faculty have to make certain that accreditors develop and uphold standards that enhance in preference to weaken the academy. We have to urge coverage-makers to sell training as opposed to levels. Colleges should domesticate and mobilize alumni to suggest higher education. But, most of all, as college, we have to write and teach with our hearts and souls so that our college students learn to fee the revel in as plenty as we do. We cannot just proclaim the values of the academy; we need to embody them.


Johann N. Neem is a partner professor of records at Western Washington University and writer of Creating a Nation of Joiners: Democracy and Civil Society in Early National Massachusetts (Harvard University Press, 2008).

The evaluations expressed in this text are solely those of the author and do no longer replicate the opinion of the National Education Association (NEA) or its leadership. After reviewing numerous universities, the NEA selected Western Governors University as one in every of its 3 NEA Academy partners based totally on their countrywide reputation, the first-class in their packages, and their popularity because the first online university to get hold of National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education accreditation.