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 turns into conceptualized in 1995 at an assembly of the Western Governors Association and primarily based fast after a good way to growth degree manufacturing in better schooling at a lower value.1 It has stepped forward considerably over the last few years, driven each by using the usage of stepped forward demand for on-line training and with the aid of manner of drastic country budget cuts. Touted as providing a brand new, faster method to college tiers by using worthwhile college students for what they already apprehend, a few see in it the destiny of better training. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, as an example, lauds WGU for tough “the century-antique workout of awarding degrees primarily based on seat time in a study room, instead of on validated competence.”2

Rather than require college students to spend time and money to research what they already know, WGU asks college students to illustrate mastery of a tough and rapid of capabilities, which college students can do through the years or if they're in a function, months. Once a pupil has exceeded the skills, she or he is eligible for a degree.3 In an economic system that relies upon specialized technical competencies and requires certification, WGU’s method rewards revel in via the usage of spotting how a terrific deal people examine the task.

Despite the espoused aim of manufacturing low-fee tiers, however, WGU’s prices are much like traditional public institutions. Two six-month phrases at WGU value approximately $6,000, at the identical time as the rate regular with a student at public schools has remained around $10,000 consistent with a year since 1985. College prices, in one-of-a-kind terms, have not been developing dramatically. What has been developing is the classes paid through mother and father and university students, way to drastic cuts in-country investment. Moreover, in assessment to most colleges, WGU charges the same for component-time and whole-time students. Four

WHAT DEFINES A COLLEGE EDUCATION?

WGU does no longer provide university training. The trouble isn't always that WGU is online, even though there are motives to doubt whether or not superb schooling may be furnished on-line. Five Instead, the very problem that makes WGU treasured for certification—its competency-based technique—prevents it from imparting the forms of learning reports that outline liberal arts college training. As exceptional different institutions check with the competency-primarily based approach—which includes, presently, the University of Wisconsin machine and Northern Arizona University—it's miles critical to recognize wherein this approach might be relevant and where its software program might be damaging.6

Liberal arts education is lots of top-notch than what WGU offers. College training may be compared to gaining expertise in power. We all realize what it takes to bypass a riding check, and we all recognize how we do it: we cram a collection of stuff into short-term memory, after which skip a competency-based examination. We additionally understand that turning into a driving force is a miles different technique; it calls for steerage and repeated exercising (or seat time). WGU’s technique can also additionally help university college students pass licensing checks, however, it does no longer help them end up drivers.

Similarly, one should argue that the Boy Scouts has a “competency technique” because of the truth scouts are asked to earn gain badges. But of the course, the Boy Scouts’ challenge is to provide “a program for more youthful people that builds person, trains them within the responsibilities of participating citizenship, and develops private fitness.”7 Thus, scouts camp, learn together, and work collectively below the steerage of masters who train know-how and version the scouts’ values. Abstracted from this broader way of existence of scouting, the advantage badges could lose their which means and value.

Had the competency approach been able to attain the goals of liberal arts education, it would have finished goodbye ago. Not handiest have we long had correspondence courses, but textbook manufacturers additionally have lengthily packaged their products with assignments and assessment equipment. Despite their efforts, the middle studying the experience has endured taking region in interactions among teachers and college students, and between university college students themselves—the stuff that takes vicinity past the textbook. WGU’s online modules may be better than correspondence publications, but they're versions on a topic count, and suffer from the identical limitations.

Although commentators embrace WGU’s model because it gives effortlessly assessable results, this could moreover be its problem; too frequently we conflate without problems assessed outcomes with responsibility. Eight A liberal arts education can not be narrowed to a difficult and speedy of technical abilities or expertise. Because the purpose of a liberal training is extra profound and time in-depth and because of the truth in lots of approaches liberal schooling is a non-public quest, efforts to standardize effects threaten its charge. What Diane Ravitch, schooling historian, has in recent times concluded about excessive faculty applies to the university, “When we outline what subjects in education best by using what we can diploma, we are in critical trouble. When that takes place, we generally tend to overlook that schools are liable for shaping individual, growing sound minds in healthful our bodies, and forming citizens for our democracy, not only for training the number one abilities. We even forget to mirror what we propose while we speak with a pinnacle training.” nine

Ravitch’s comments element to each different problem about WGU’s method. Colleges do greater than require seat time; they ask university students to mirror on attention on topics in which they've not had masses to enjoy. Unlike education this is learned or reinforced at the assignment, a university education is grounded inside the liberal arts.10 Colleges introduce students to an international divorced from their ordinary stories and therefore one which calls for tremendous “seat time” earlier than students may be virtually conversant. While an operating character may also already be practicing a whole lot of what she or he needs to realize for certification, there are few human beings with comparable reports in literature and physics, records and biology, Plato and Freud. This has to now not great be observed out however strengthened.

EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING FOR THE MIND
Liberal arts training is experiential mastering for the mind. It’s approximately grappling with the tough stuff. The exams (or skills)—tests, papers, labs— are the simplest part of the photograph; similarly critical is what occurs while college students are in elegance and, extra normally, on campus: the discussions, questions, conversations; the publicity to new thoughts and one in all a type perspectives. A university graduate has to end up an interpretive being, capable of not really answering however asking modern questions; of not without a doubt understanding information, but making feel of them; of no longer genuinely information what’s in an ebook or lesson, however imparting authentic mind primarily based on their studying. Developing this deep knowledge depends, as Socrates identified, on conversations among instructors and students. Cognitive science confirms what the ancients knew. Eleven As philosopher Michael Oakeshott has written approximately liberal schooling, “in each ‘potential’ there is an issue of knowledge which can not be resolved into records” for the cause that “‘skills’ do now not exist in the precis however individual examples.” As a result, gaining fluency in liberal arts is like learning a new language. One needs to master fundamental recommendations but “till you can talk the language in a manner now not expressly supplied for within the rules, you probably can make no significance utterance in it.”12

In short, it’s every how things are taught and what is taught that makes university schooling specific. Yes, the university may also enhance vital thinking and foster creativity, however, there are many essential thinkers and innovative people who've by no means attended college. College may additionally or might not be pleasing training for all subjects. But faculties ask college students to assume appreciably and creatively about particular matters— the humanities and sciences—and, as one result, they become greater critical and innovative approximately many things.13

Certainly, the above image of college education takes location most often for complete-time students in establishments with a robust determination to the liberal arts.14 Many different college students fail to collect this enjoy. Colleges can do better the usage of focusing interest on how university students examine, offering more sources to assist college students to achieve success, and developing an additional coherent center curriculum.15 But many university college students do not need a university training and others are unprepared for it. For many, better financial help may assist, but for others, who spend years incomes credit score factor-time and resent their guides in history and biology whilst all they want is a higher venture, WGU gives what is wanted and wanted. Again, that is right, but, it isn't college.

HOW DID WGU GET ACCREDITED?

WGU is well aware of the above reviews, and it responds that it has been regularly occurring through the Northwest Commission on Colleges and University (NWCCU), “the same accrediting frame answerable for the accreditation of fundamental institutions which includes the University of Washington and the University of Oregon.”16 WGU turn out to be legal via NWCCU in 2003, with a meantime evaluation finished in 2009. After the school modified into endorsed through the Washington nation legislature, the Seattle Times opined that WGU “consists of the identical stage of accreditation as Stanford University.”17 Certainly, WGU and its boosters exaggerate. Celebrating accreditation is like celebrating vaccination; it’s a remarkable element, however, it’s a baseline.

More importantly, a close examination suggests that WGU fails to fulfill the NWCCU’s standards because its labor model fundamentally undermines faculty governance, college pleasant, liberal training, and educational freedom.18 With that in mind, notwithstanding WGU’s motto that it is “on-line, extended, decrease-priced, authorized,” it isn't clear how and why it acquired accreditation.19

In its 2003 published necessities, NWCCU requires that faculty have “a top-notch function and obligation in the layout, integrity, and implementation of the curriculum,” but, in step with WGU, “educational programs are developed and guided by way of WGU directors running thru several councils, which can be produced from academicians and employer experts within the various fields of information.” These councils are made up of out of doors specialists, now not WGU employees. For instance, the Liberal Arts Program Council includes college from Utah State University, the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Berea College, George Mason University, and someplace else.20

For its diploma packages, WGU seeks—for the proper cause—to align its competencies to the needs of agencies so that it will hire its graduates. But, again, programmatic picks are made through the way of outdoor specialists. It's Health Professions Program Council includes college from Eastern Kentucky University, Loma Linda University, and from such companies as HealthInsight and HCA (previously referred to as Health Corporation of America).21 Simply placed, WGU has outsourced academic governance in violation of NWCCU’s standards.

Similarly, NWCCU requires that the “college is good enough for the instructional stages offered, which include whole-time school representing each vicinity in which it gives the most vital artwork.” Again, WGU falls fast. For starters, university college students do not engage typically with college, but as a substitute with non-education mentors defined as “life coaches.” These may be part of Student Affairs at different schools, and as a result, can not be considered university.22

Courses are overseen via using “course mentors,” but there's no evidence on WGU’s web sites that those direction mentors constitute the fields in which WGU gives courses. WGU admits that it dodges NWCCU necessities, mentioning that its course mentors’ “training is unique to the courses they guide,” as opposed to their fields, as required with the aid of the NWCCU.23 Forget asking college students to do complicated unbiased interpretive tasks—which incorporates senior theses—that require professors to be informed of their fields.

The governing bodies aren't any better. Although WGU requires college students to complete coursework within the arts and arts, the overseeing Liberal Arts Program Council has professionals in arithmetic, physics, and writing, but none in any of the opportunity arts and sciences.24

Additionally, NWCCU requires that to “offer an appropriate diploma of education for the graduate pupil, a college whose obligations encompass a prime determination to graduate training are involved in retaining pace with and advancing the frontiers of, facts.” Despite offering masters’ stages, nowhere on WGU’s net site are there any facts about its school’s scholarship. For the right motives, NWCCU acknowledges that graduate college students require schooling by using parents that are energetic pupils in their fields, however, WGU’s internet site gives no evidence that it can meet this elegant. NWCCU moreover calls for colleges to provide “a sizable center of brand new education.”25 While WGU claims to accomplish that, as discussed inside the preceding segment, its competency approach does now not encourage extreme engagement with the liberal arts and sciences.

Finally, there's no evidence that WGU “fosters and protects instructional freedom for university,” as the NWCCU’s 2003 standards mandate. Academic freedom applies to both studies and the schoolroom.26 With the absence of school governance, however, it is not smooth that direction mentors are allowed to work out their professional judgment in deciding on course substances. Given WGU’s reliance on standardized modules, it also isn't always smooth that direction mentors exercising any sizeable discretion over the curriculum. Robert Mendenhall, WGU’s president, notes that “we do not increase any of our publications,” absolutely violating instructional freedom. WGU alternatively relies on such business providers as Pearson and McGraw-Hill, in the location of the college.27 Another key element of academic freedom is tenure, but, there's no evidence WGU gives such protections to its non-unionized personnel.28

WGU is based as a substitute on a “disaggregated school” version wherein the several components of university artwork—curricular improvement, student mentoring, route supervision, evaluation, and educational utility governance—are separated into specialized departments.29 Kevin Kinser, a student on the University of Albany, notes that WGU “teachers are in large part broken free the path planners, designers, and assessors.” Mendenhall celebrated this model: “in an online environment that without a doubt takes benefit of technology, the school role may alternate from delivering content cloth to mentoring college students.”30

Mendenhall’s argument is incorrect in two procedures. First, even though the net and new era have made content material more available, because of the mass e-book of cheap books and magazines two centuries ago, Americans have had easy get admission to content material.31 The internet is super, simply as the ebook of cheap books changed into exceptional, but nowadays’s era boosters are missing the principle component: training, particularly in the liberal fields, has prolonged been about extra than content transport. Otherwise, the printing press may want to have performed away with instructors lengthy in the past.
Second, mentoring isn't always a commonplace act. A mentor guides an apprentice in the pursuit of something unique. It is set taking fabric and supporting the scholar flip it into information. Good training is ideal mentoring, and perfect mentors by using definition teach something. In truth, WGU has neither university people nor mentors.

The fact is that there is not something surprising nor modern approximately WGU. Despite its claims to be greater scholar-targeted, in reality, it's far management-focused. Despite its claims to be extra student-centered than traditional establishments, it is management-centered, reflecting broader developments at some stage in America. Even in conventional institutions, administrative bloat plus developing numbers of adjunct college threaten shared governance, instructional freedom, and educational best.32 There isn't any cause to trust those notably paid managers, specialists, and earnings-minded companies might be extra scholar targeted than a faculty who've given up possibility, more moneymaking, careers to train and study.

WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL?
One would possibly ask, “Who cares?” The school does due to the erosion of shared governance and educational freedom influences their capability to educate and look at successfully. But there are appropriate reasons for the broader public to be worried as properly. The trouble on hand is not without a doubt whether or not schools are or aren't pupil targeted, but, whether or not or not it is a superb detail for schools to provide modern and tremendous publications, and whether or now not college should be concerned in the curricular layout and scholarly studies.

The academy is extra than a conveyer of knowledge; it is also the middle for the lifestyles of the mind. Whether via research or coaching, it embodies the pursuit— the love—of knowledge. When college format their guides, interpret information and conducts studies, and whilst they carry that exhilaration into the schoolroom, they show what it manner to be a student. At its top-notch, training and research are acts of devotion. While the curriculum may additionally offer the “stuff ” college students need to apprehend, a collection’s way of life shapes college students’ values and attitudes inside the course of reading.33

Ultimately, this is about the person. Colleges are seeking to make human beings liberally educated, to offer them a foundation on which they'll maintain to amplify. Liberal arts training expands the capabilities of university college students as humans and as citizens.34 Ideally, the academy seeks to be a “community of learning” in which every teacher and university students are engaged inside the search for information.35 WGU’s exertions version leads as an alternative to an international wherein neither college nor university college students participate within the life of the mind, in which understanding is eaten up in preference to produced.

WGU gives us a vision of the university without intellectuals. If the academy produced commodities, in all likelihood WGU’s approach would possibly make feel. But the academy does no longer, and it is not served while college is replaced by the use of managers, curriculum specialists, vendors, assessment specialists, and “course mentors,” any greater than a church might 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 a bit much less but couldn't inspire worship. By treating the existence of the mind as unimportant, WGU inverts the academy’s manner and ends, threatening the motive of instructional teaching and studies.

Even worse, WGU’s version would possibly take the energy over-decoding information away from those devoted to the look for fact and location it with for-earnings curricular layout companies that vicinity their economic pastimes ahead of the hunt for understanding. Importantly, the academy publishes understanding for public use, wherein as for-profits corporations deal with know-how as proprietary. Because WGU already outsources curriculum improvement, in lots of methods it's far a nonprofit shell for curriculum improvement agencies looking to make the most of students.36 WGU’s approach does not grow to get right of entry to knowledge, however, privatizes it to convert understanding right into a commodity.

The academy can be conscious of market desires, but the academy desires to not be an issue to them. Certainly, universities can put together students to enter the fields and professions that the financial system wishes. There is likewise no question that the financial device advantages from the liberal arts and sciences, which broaden the questioning, writing, analytical, and revolutionary capacities—the “transferable skills”—that employers desire.37 However, the primary goal of instructional education and research is to recognize the sector and ourselves higher for most people proper. Both inside and past the schoolroom the academy presents a forum for democratic deliberation. Academic freedom permits college students to ask extreme questions and to offer unpopular solutions; in fact, that is one of the academy’s most critical contributions.38 If WGU’s version turns into exquisite, we'd not have the competitive market in mind we've nowadays. This might not serve our democracy properly, nor our economy, each of which depend upon the revolutionary thoughts that universities produce.

By making sure that college layout courses and pursue studies, our democracy guarantees that scholars are exposed to competing views and are taught via folks who participate—and as a result embody—the life of the thoughts. This is the real foundation for academic freedom within the classroom as well as in studies. WGU’s technique may standardize expertise and centralize manipulation over it. This is much less steeply-priced for WGU and worthwhile for its partners, but it is a risky way to put together institutions dedicated to information.

Some argue that the antique model charges too much, but, this claim requires clarification. Higher training has found a rating curve similar to one of a kind hard work-intensive industries, suggesting that there are external motives for developing training.39 Even whilst we recognition intently on universities, but, we discover that the primary reason pressure of higher fees has been the crumble of kingdom funding within the public region combined with the prices of a brand new technology, campus buildings, and the amazing boom in administrative personnel and packages.40 As the energy of managers expand, much much less money is spent on coaching and studies and greater on unique services. Rather than treating the one's troubles, WGU is their logical cease.

COLLEGE EDUCATION IS MORE THAN TRAINING

WGU gives human beings the credentials they need to get better jobs but it does now not offer a college education. We need to accept that university isn't always the simplest form of postsecondary schooling. Instead, we must respond to Americans’ various desires and dreams by way of the use of offering a couple of “pathways to prosperity.” We should maintain growing apprenticeship and certification packages that apprehend Americans’ goals, are less pricey and faster than college degrees, and prepare human beings for the personnel. Forty-one Too many university college students circulate deep into debt taking training for which they don't have any choice or are unwell organized, and to a few of the one's university college students fail to graduate, growing social and personal costs that can not be justified. Forty- By making the college the simplest mechanism for financial and social development, we threaten every collegiate schooling and our democratic values.

At the identical time, we have to ensure that get entry to university—to higher studying inside the arts and sciences—is available to all Americans trying to find it. All excessive faculties need to offer students an extensive basis within the liberal arts to prepare them for university, and schools want to recruit and aid college students from all sectors of American society. Collegiate schooling can't be for the privileged few and vocational training for the rest. Unfortunately, these days’ tool tends to decorate gift class privilege as wealthy households input the maximum elite faculties even as states defund public institutions that used to provide the possibility. If colleges like WGU proliferate, and if they are used to justify endured public defunding, we can deepen the elegance department among individuals who get hold of a top-notch college training and those who do not. Forty-three

Faculty, directors, university college students, and residents must stand collectively to shield what makes college schooling specific and precious. College training calls for “seat time” inside the liberal arts and sciences and colleges who devote their lives to reading and coaching. Faculty must make certain that accreditors broaden and uphold standards that decorate in preference to weaken the academy. We need to urge coverage-makers to sell training in preference to ranges. Colleges should domesticate and mobilize alumni to indicate better schooling. But, most of all, as a university, we ought to write and train with our hearts and souls so that our college students discover ways to charge the experience as plenty as we do. We can not just proclaim the values of the academy; we want to encompass them.


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

The opinions expressed in this text are entirely 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 each of its three NEA Academy companions based mostly on their countrywide popularity, the high-quality of their programs, and their popularity due to the fact the primary online college to get maintain of National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education accreditation.