Straight Talk: March 30, 2011

Straight Talk:  The StraighterLine e-Newsletter Issue #7, March 30, 2011
Edited by Jeffrey Lee Simons

In this issue…

Now Live: Psychology and 7 other StraighterLine Courses

Our new courses are live! Now you can enroll in any of the 8 courses the American Council on Education's (ACE) Credit Recommendation Service reviewed and recommended for credit this month. Click the subjects below for more information or to get started:

Best of The StraighterLine Blog

Paying for College? Don’t Overlook Local and Special-Interest Scholarships
Looking for scholarships? Did you know that there’s a $500 scholarship for Trekkies who want to master the Klingon language? Or that there are scholarships for cancer survivors, women over 5’10” and… Read Full Post

Problems Finding a Job? Some Special Advice for the Class of 2009
While the job outlook is improving for the Class of 2010, the same can’t be said for the Class of 2009. Barry Lenson has some good advice for stagnated job seekers. Read Full Post 

Don’t Let a Lack of Sleep Hurt Your Ability to Learn
If you missed this post from National Sleep Awareness Week, it may have been because you were sleep deprived. Read up on the symptoms and find out what you can do about it. Read Full Post 

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No-Risk Free Trial

Do you ever drift off while reading Moby Dick and daydream about becoming an Accountant? Do you lie awake at night fantasizing about Microeconomics, or, dare we say it, Macroeconomics? Stop wondering and find out with a risk-free trial of one of these 6 StraighterLine courses. You’ve got nothing to lose!

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Online Education in The News

Why isn’t higher education more like online dating?
Fortune/CNN.com, Alex Taussig, 3/21/11

According to venture capitalist Alex Taussig, “To some, online education may feel like online dating sites felt 10-15 years ago: sketchy at worst, a poor substitute for the real thing at best. Yet, today Match.com claims that 17% of married couples met online.” In the future, claims Taussig, online education will be “pervasive and of acceptable, even higher quality.” Read Full Article

Going to Harvard from your own bedroom
BBC News, Merlin John, 3/20/11

The BBC takes a look how online study’s biggest impact is on a grass roots level, rather than at elite universities. “What I am most excited about is that the privilege of going to higher education is not something that is connected to the wealthy or to the smartest or most well-equipped students for the future. It is becoming a wider social imperative,” says Anthony Salcito, Vice-President of Worldwide Education for Microsoft.

According to Lord Jim Knight, England’s former education minister, "That development of choice and access to quality, and people being digital natives, will, I think, transform things. Whether universities are yet ready to make those changes is another question.” Read Full Article

Bill would partner state with online university
The Seattle Times, Katherine Long, 3/19/11

As the state of Washington’s budget for higher education is being cut, the Seattle Times reports that the state is exploring a partnership with Western Governors University that is very similar to the one WGU has with Indiana. (Note: both Western Governors University and WGU Indiana are StraighterLine partner schools. Ed.)

The article contrasts critics who doubt that online education is a substitute for traditional college with WGU President Robert Mendenhall, who “calls the university "a faster and more cost-effective path" for a working adult to get a degree than going to a traditional college or university. He says it does require students to complete course work and demonstrate competency in the liberal arts. Most WGU students would have a hard time getting accepted into a four-year state school, or if they were, would struggle to finish because they are working full-time, he said.” Read Full Article

Straight Answers: This Week’s StraighterLine Survey Question:

So, which of our new courses did you say you most wanted to take? The hands-down favorite is Introduction to Psychology, with 44% of responses. 2nd place went to Calculus II. Thanks to everyone who answered.

Now, on to this week’s question:

To what kind of school are you planning to transfer your StraighterLine credits?

Answer the survey here and see how your answer compares to other students.

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Are you an influencer? A networker? Need cash?

Spread the word about StraighterLine on campus. Tell your fellow students they can graduate sooner with less debt – and you can earn commission money for yourself at the same time. Join the StraighterLine Campus rep program today!

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Burck’s Blast: "Disrupting College? Lessons from iTunes"

Opinion from StraighterLine's founder, Burck Smith

Excerpted from March 22 article published on The John William Pope Center for Higher Education by Burck Smith

In a freer market, competition would drive the price of online courses down to something approximating their cost to deliver. In time, those willing to price courses more cheaply would outperform those that weren’t, resulting in a new set of winners and losers in the college market. Consider a recent disruptive technology—single-song downloads. iTunes disrupted a music industry that relied on CDs, records, and cassettes by disaggregating music—breaking apart the 10-song album and dropping the price dramatically. The combination of the Internet and advances in computer memory enabled songs to be delivered and stored in an exponentially cheaper manner.

Something like that could happen in higher education, but it hasn’t. Colleges only spend about $100 in direct instructional costs to deliver the most popular college courses like those taught in the first year of college. Yet they are able to generate between $1,000 and $2,000 in revenue from such a course. This revenue comes in the form of state support, tuition, and fees. The “margin” (the difference between the actual cost and the revenue) goes to support the remainder of the college infrastructure—buildings, security, low-enrollment majors, upper-level courses, climbing walls, marketing, profit, and others. Arguably, this is money well spent in a face-to-face environment. However, online students do not benefit from this infrastructure at all.

In theory, online courses should not be saddled with the subsidies necessary to perpetuate a face-to-face infrastructure. In practice, such disaggregation is difficult because, according to the accreditors, providers of individual courses cannot be accredited, and the form of new competitors must be comparable to the form of the existing providers. If such a system were applied to the music industry, only companies that produced and distributed CDs would be allowed to sell and deliver songs electronically. And the fact that colleges have complete discretion to award or deny credit transferred from somewhere else is comparable to declaring non-proprietary file formats ineligible.