Maia Ferdman: State senate’s online education bill lacks universities’ input
By Daily Bruin Staff
March 19, 2013 12:00 a.m.
Scrolling down the list of General Education courses on the UCLA Registrar’s Office’s website during enrollment, one is likely to find that many are already “closed.” Often, limited enrollment opportunities are a prominent indicator of budgetary constraints.
Clearly, we need a solution, or at least a step forward.
On Wednesday, California Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg released Senate Bill 520, which would require all public higher education institutions in California to give academic credit for select online courses from private providers such as Coursera or Udacity.
SB 520 would approve 50 online courses as alternatives to the most in-demand lower division classes at community colleges, California State University and University of California campuses. Students unable to register for closed on-campus classes could take the online equivalents for a nominal fee.
While it is a relief that lawmakers have proposed a tangible and realistic solution to a long-standing and pressing student need, they are overstepping their bounds as legislators by placing demands on our universities without adequately consulting with them.
Moreover, the bill overlooks the online education infrastructure we already have in place at the UC, CSU and community colleges, like UC Online and Cal State Online.
Rather than looking to outside providers for online education opportunities, we should first invest in our in-house projects.
The University of California has recently kicked off the expansion of its own online education program. Last year, UC Online Education opened with 13 courses, accepted for credit by all UC schools. Cal State Online also offers a number of online courses for students. Should SB 520 pass, university administrators might have less incentive to continue developing these resources.
In his January budget proposal, Gov. Jerry Brown allocated $10 million to both the CSU and UC systems specifically to expand online education. Should this budget be approved, we can begin funding the development of these online courses ourselves.
Some might say the UC does not have sufficient resources to provide expansive online offerings and that SB 520 would fill this gap. But while the UC Online program has incurred significant debt and may not be able to develop a volume of courses that would match the 50 offered by SB 520, it should remain the sole focus of the University.
Furthermore, the UC’s four-year graduation rates are still very high, indicating that students are obtaining their degrees in a timely manner. The need for 50 new online courses, then, is unclear.
The UC Online website says that it expects to add 20 new courses in the upcoming year, largely to meet student demand. UC President Mark Yudof and the Academic Senate are holding April workshops to identify the most in-demand classes and to discuss the overall structure of UC Online.
Senator Steinberg failed to consult with the UC Academic Senate before proposing the bill, said Bob Powell and Bill Jacob, the chair and vice-chair of the UC Academic Senate, in a recently released open letter objecting to SB 520’s proposed public-private partnership.
That our Academic Senate, the body in charge of the entire UC system’s academics, was not consulted in the writing of this bill is puzzling at best and irresponsible at worst. The California legislature is treading upon the UC and CSU systems’ autonomy.
According to Powell, the public-private partnership that SB 520 proposes is a foreign idea to him. Powell said he has never heard faculty or administrators in the Academic Senate discuss the explicit brand of privatization that SB 520 suggests. This proposal then, while well-intentioned, goes too far, pushing a concept that university affiliates have yet to endorse or even suggest.
The bill also calls for the creation of a panel of nine faculty members from the Academic Senate of the community college, state and UC systems to review and approve course materials.
Powell said that the three UC faculty members sitting on this proposed nine-person board would not be able to speak for the entire system when approving courses. This sweeping approval would not be as thorough as the established system of faculty review for current university courses, he said. In this sense, the bill cannot assure the quality of privately provided courses.
By providing in-demand courses through the UC Online system, faculty members would play a central role in creating and evaluating these courses and would avoid the problems Powell foresees.
However, the educational value of privately provided courses might still be up to par: highly ranked schools like Caltech and Princeton provide courses for Coursera. These courses’ cheaper price tag might also attract more non-UC students to get ahead on their course requirements. However, UC and CSU online courses are created for and tailored specifically to California students.
We have a functional system already established to explore online education. Adding private providers to the mix would be frivolous and expensive.
By looking to private companies as prominent providers for public academic credit, we essentially outsource our education before properly developing the University’s internal resources.
