Higher education at the crossroads

I remember the first couple of weeks I spent in classrooms at the U in Fayetteville, Arkansas like it was yesterday. I came from a pretty small school in Arkansas (46 in my graduating class) and, not knowing any better, expected the same kind and quality of instruction I had received in high school. I was amazed to find out it was absolutely nothing like high school at all. I took five classes my first semester there: English, Journalism, Philosophy, Biology, and French and encountered first rate thinkers in all of them. The only teaching assistant I had was in English; the other four were all tenured professors and their knowledge and teaching skills were of an order I had not been exposed to before.

I liked all of my teachers in high school but intellectual giants they weren't. Most had gone to the college 13 miles up the road, gotten their teaching degrees, and then came back home to teach. My high school football coach, who also taught social studies, told me many years after I graduated that he would always check his class roster to see if my name was on it because he knew from experience that I would ask him questions he didn't have the answers to. I took that as a compliment. I've always had a fascination for the facts and the process that leads to the facts. I would do the same thing with my folks, my preachers, my friends, just about everybody I would come in contact with. I don't think it was anything that I learned, I had just always wanted to know what and why for as long as I could remember. So attending the University as a freshman and encountering professors in every class who actually KNEW the answers to my questions and the reasons behind the answers was an exciting experience for me. I never got tired of going to class, all the way through my Ph.D program at Oklahoma State University because I loved to ask questions, get answers, and, on occasion, challenge the answers I received. Most of my experience with higher education classes at both the undergraduate level and the graduate level were conducted using the Socratic method, memorialized by Professor Kingsfield in the movie several years ago about law school called "The Paper Chase." The professors would ask the questions and the students were expected to answer them. Those students who didn't study or prepare for class were put on the hot seat by the professors, often being asked one question after another, because coming to class unprepared was simply not acceptable.

My, how times have changed. As valuable as the classroom experience is, it appears to be going the way of the dinosaur. Every year, more and more online classes are offered as colleges and universities compete for students. It is now possible at McCook Community College to receive a two-year degree without ever stepping foot in a classroom. This is a concept that would have been perceived as simply incomprehensible a couple of decades ago because college WAS the classroom. That's where you developed and honed your intellectual skills. That's where you challenged and were challenged by the professor. That's where you challenged and were challenged by other students. But all of that is slowly passing away.

Now you can get a degree by sitting in front of your computer. You read your lessons, you post messages on the message board if required, and you submit all of your work through the computer. No more debates, no more face-to-face interactions, challenges, and discussions, no more excitement about being in a physical environment where real learning and real teaching takes place, no more applause at the end of class for an inspiring and challenging lecture, no more of anything that is typically gleaned in a classroom environment. Just you and your computer. And the on-line teachers aren't even for sure that it's really you on the other end. Maybe you hired someone else to take the class for you or do your assignments for you. Since you can't see the teacher and the teacher can't see you, that's certainly possible, perhaps even likely in some cases.

Predictions made by professional educators suggest that in the coming years, full-time faculty members who retire will not be replaced by new full-time faculty members but rather by part-time and adjunct professors who are willing to teach most or all of their load on-line, saving the colleges and universities tens of thousands of dollars in the process, especially at the community college level where competition for students is so intense.

I understand why this might not only happen but, in all likelihood, WILL happen in the near future. Boards of Governors do not see providing quality education to students as their highest priority, even though a lot of lip-service is given to that. Board members are elected officials and most see their primary responsibility as protecting the investment made by the tax-payers and making the institution financially viable. By the same token, college and university administrators serve at the pleasure of their Boards and are much more likely to see the college as a business rather than an educational institution. That's why you hear titles like CEO bandied about today instead of the traditional college titles of President and Vice-President. This conundrum between on-line education and classroom education is a particularly salient issue in this part of the country where towns continue to lose populations and high school graduating classes continue to shrink.

Fortunately, for me, I'm much closer to the end of my teaching career than I am the beginning, plus my children have received and are receiving the same kind of traditional college education that I did. But for those newbie's in the college teaching profession and those to come in the future, and especially for the students, online degree programs will be the rule and not the exception and I think we will lose something not only extremely valuable but, in fact, irreplaceable in the process; face-to-face interactions that require on-the-spot critical, analytical thought.

And I think our society will be less because of it.