Straighterline.com is close to it...

Inside higher education highlights two programs, with the delightful opening

"Self-employed professor" could soon be an actual job title, thanks to two companies that are helping a small group of college professors market their own online courses, set prices for them and share the tuition revenue.

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/12/14/two-companies-give-faculty-more-control-online-courses#ixzz2GqMXDr5V
Inside Higher Ed 

The article highlights Straighterline and Udemy.com.  the more interesting to me is straighter line, especially reading this quote in the article:

Smith calls the new course offerings an “eBay for professors,” who can now “hang out their shingle” with the company's help. “It used to be that students paid professors directly,” Smith said. “We’re rebuilding that model, but with a baseline for assessments.”

I've inquired after this point, because as far as I am concerned, I am the only one advocating students pay instructors directly, a resumption of the medieval model.  Straighterline has confirmed he refers here to the medieval model, and the article comments sections takes up this point.

I search constantly to find someone doing the revolution in education right, and this is pretty close.  But to my mind accreditation is the Berlin Wall of education, and although straighterline is not accredited, they are associated with schools that can get the students credit for classes taken with straighterline.

Now Straighterline gets criticized for some iffy content, to which the CEO has responded.  To my mind this is no big deal, since innovations are always pretty junky at first.  Think about the first Apple ... yeccch!... computers and their products today.    That will get cleaned up over time.

What is far more interesting is the CEOs defense of his courses, after being trashed by Inside Higher Education, this in the comments section after the article:

The course taken by the writer has been reviewed and fully recommended for college credit by the ACE Credit service, a service to whose recommendations more than 1000 colleges profess to adhere. This course was reviewed by DETC. This course was reviewed by the College Board’s AP service. Our partner colleges, who award transfer credit for our courses, have been given complete access to the courses. What is the appropriate way to evaluate courses – a single student’s perspective or course-level reviews conducted independently by dozens of professors, dozens of accredited schools and several higher ed associations?

Unfortunately, the standard used by most colleges for the award of transfer credit, the presence or lack of regional accreditation, is not only insufficient to determine course quality but is also unavailable to us. Despite the fact that credit (and courses) are the unit of academic currency in an age when students can take courses from anyone at anytime, individual courses cannot be accredited, only degree granting programs. This means that colleges can offer, and accept for transfer credit, taxpayer-subsidized courses of wildly varying and indeterminate quality under the umbrella of accreditation. If industry-wide course level, outcome based standards existed, we’d be thrilled to follow them. Unfortunately, such standards are always resisted by colleges and accreditors alike, resulting in entirely subjective decisions about what constitutes college credit. Such subjectivity lets colleges keep those with threatening business models out without having to examine their own standards of course delivery.

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/12/16/review_of_straighterline_online_courses#ixzz2GqUji5iK
Inside Higher Ed 

Correct!  Since the basis of accreditation is whimsical, yet it is mandatory for qualification for student loans, that which drives up the cost, and then with cheap money flowing to the schools they ladle on admin on top of admin, with payola to textbook makers, it is clear accreditation is the problem.

My quest continues:  unaccredited education, where students pays the instructors directly.

Read especially the comments sections in both articles.

What Other Teachers Need

Schools are run by administrators with students as the target market.    The teachers are given tenure and academic freedom, which is a pretty good deal.  What more could we want?

The tenured professors are a miniscule portion of those who carry the teaching load.  It would be interesting to know what percent of college teachers, or FTE, is tenured, and what the trendlines are.  My rough guess would be 80% of the instructors at a state college would be tenured, and maybe 25% at a community college.  In any event, given the amount of continuing and unaccredited ed going on in USA, I'd guess the majority of FTE in adult ed in USA is taught by not-tenured instructors.

The lucky few who have tenure are out of the debate, so a powerful voice in benefitting instructors is in effect bought off.  Nobody minds a system at which they win.

There is no doubt that this group would like representation.  We have the term "gypsy instructors" and there is a lovely website called http://www.adjunctnation.com which advocates for adjunct rights.

Now, what rights?  It seems to me that is heading in the wrong direction.  To try to struggle with administrators is to play their game, acknowledging the administrators as the source of instructors weal.

Now instructors are as varied in their needs as students.  Why sign on to a group that will necessarily fight limited battles for limited gains?  Why put any energy into fighting at all?

Why not an organization that is designed for the instructors, not the students?  What teachers want essentially is steady work, academic freedom and just compensation.  The definition thereof will be unique to each instructor.  They also want as little administrative requirements as possible.  Then the instructors need a means for promotion and enrolling students.

The Seattle Teachers' College provides precisely that.  It is modeled on the ancient system of the student paying the instructor directly.  Instructor quality is doubly assured by a combination of online feedback and reviews plus student payment of instructor directly upon performance.

We need to build up a cadre of instructors so we can get a critical mass of 300 instructors and 400 courses in order to have a solid launch of one working model from which to duplicate into as many markets as the world needs.  That is the task at hand.  let me know if you can join us either live in the Seattle area or online worldwide.

Advice on Continuing Education Programs

Here a California State educator lays out advice for continuing education programs.  Click through and download the .pdf.  It is a pretty good handbook on running a program.  It is remarkable for the granularity of the understanding of the field as it is in California today.

Better Websites

From Google:

Moving ads higher up on a page is a simple yet effective change that can have a big impact on your ad revenue. The area that's immediately visible when a page is loaded without scrolling down is known as "above the fold."

Here is a tool google offers, I used it, i'll see if it helps...

The Coming University Bust

A correspondent studying Chinese in Taiwan sends me this article, which states, inter alia,

At the Juilliard School, which completed a major renovation a few years ago, debt climbed to $195 million last year, from $6 million in inflation-adjusted dollars in 2002. At Miami University, a public institution in Ohio that is overhauling its dormitories and student union, debt rose to $326 million in 2011, from $66 million in 2002, and at New York University, which has embarked on an ambitious expansion, debt was $2.8 billion in 2011, up from $1.2 billion in 2002, according to the Moody’s data.

Well, yes.  The theme is students must pay for this.  Indeed, where else does money for a college come from, except tuition.  Largely borrowed.  There are alumni donations, and government grants, but these debts are in the range of impossible to repay.  And if impossible, they will not be repaid.  At some point, the schools will default on the loans, and the balances written off, and although the bondholders should suffer, where we have state intervention we have chaos, so we cannot know who will bear this burden.

One group that will, no matter what, is the students themselves.  Their tuition contributes, so the cost of the education comes with the gilt-premium.  But it is unlikely they can ever earn enough to cover the cost of the education.

Almost no one is predicting colleges will experience default rates on par with those of indebted students and graduates, at least not anytime soon. While payments on debt principal and interest have increased over all, they remain a manageable piece of the expense pie for most institutions, partly because of historically low interest rates, financial analysts said.

The low interest rates caused the misallocation of resources and the malinvestment in the building boom.   The interest rates will not stay low forever.  Then comes another boom, as in the lowering thereof.  But my jaw dropped at the implication:  "hey, who cares about the students and graduates insolvency problems after getting "educated" as long as the institution does well."  How come the attitude?  Adminstrators pensions.  That is all that matters.

The article goes on:

“We borrowed a lot of money, but we had no choice,” said Thomas H. Powell, the university’s president, who maintains, despite the credit rating, that it has regained its footing and has no need for additional debt. “I wasn’t going to watch the buildings fall down.”

False dilemma and straw man argument, at once.  You always have a choice.  The problem is gilding the lily, misallocation and malinvestment, not "buildings falling down."  Maintenance of beautiful 100 year old buildings would have cost mere millions.  Trying to buy your way into the USNews top 25 costs hundreds of millions in smoothie machines and rock walls.

Still, higher debt payments and other expenses have contributed to the runaway inflation of college costs, and the impact on students is real and often substantial. New financial realities on campuses are imposing conflicting demands on college administrators: do they make their institution more affordable, or continue to spend money to make their campus more attractive?

Did you notice anything?  The word "education" is not in that paragraph.  College costs, demands on administrators (poor things), institution, expenses, even "institution more affordable" but not "education."  How come?

Despite a lull in construction after the financial crisis, borrowing has continued to grow, Moody’s data shows. “Schools are behaving like the Greeks, irresponsibly,” said Richard K. Vedder, an economics professor at Ohio University and director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity.

And why not?  Those Greek leaders were often educated in USA, one prime minister was actually born in USA, educated at Amherst and Harvard, was the son of an econ prof, so naturally, he would be a socialist.

By comparison, the cost of instruction grew 5 percent in that time period. The Bain report estimates that a third of colleges and universities are financially weaker than they were a few years ago.

That is actually a reduction in actual costs.  I have two daughters at university, and from their comments it is clear that this money is not making it into the classroom or to the instructors.  The universities are pulling emeritus back into the classroom to keep from hiring young new stars, ones whose cost includes pension contributions.  Cutting corners today that will lead to deleterious effects tomorrow.

“How do you bring people to teaching facilities that are really subpar?” he said. “It’s not a matter of gilding the lily, in many cases.”

False dilemma again:  We have an excess of first rate instructors looking for work.  A university is a library with faculty associated.  If you have more than a library, some classrooms, faculty offices and maybe some dorms, you are over doing it.    

David K. Creamer, vice president for finance and business services at Miami University, said the importance of college rankings had pressured administrators to spend more and more. In some rankings, the effect of spending is direct because institutions with “the best dorms” or “the best athletic facilities” are singled out. The effect on other rankings is indirect: better facilities attract better students, and that ultimately raises rankings, Mr. Creamer said.

Ah yes.  We get better students.  And how do we know?  Why, the SAT scores of our applicants are higher.  Never mind that SAT scores are no predictor of success in college or life.  Never mind that SAT scores have been inflated and with the self-selecting teaching to the test prep classes a school would have had an "improvement" in SAT scores anyway.   Just blow smoke.  "I'm getting $285k a year in salary alone (back in 2008, who knows how high it is now) and an astonishing pension ahead.  This will blow up on someone else's watch."  

One rule if you have kids heading to college: no student loans.  This whole problem is based on "easy credit."  You expose your child to being chained to this looming disaster if you burden them and yourselves with student loans.  It may be harder to get an education without student loans, but not impossible.  I've got two kids through and one with a year to go.  No student loans.  It can be done, it is a discipline.  But teaching kids economic discipline is important, since they certainly will never learn it at a USA university.

Direct Granting

I like this trend, in this case a University is facilitating alumni giving money directly to entrepreneurs.  I would say that of course, we need customers, not money, but money can speed things up.

That is fascinating, somethign I think should have started a while ago.  The kickstarter people are finding challenges, the SEC is getting involved, and it may be a tax-free donation to the donor but it is taxable income to the recipient, or so it will probably turn out.

I hope those are pushed back and this direct financing thing works out.

Wy They No Longer Teach Latin

Because people might start getting ideas...

"Quid autem interest quomodo sapiens ad otium veniat, utrum quia res publica illi deest an quia ipse rei publicae, si omnibus defutura res publica est?" (Seneca, de otio, 8.2)

in this case, otium is time characterized by private/social reading/writing as opposed to public involvement (sylvias explanation)

"But what does it matter how a wise man comes to otium, whether because the state is unavailable to the man or the man is unavailable to the state - if the state is going to fail everyone, no matter what? " ( trans sarah stroup from her book catullus, cicero, and a society of patrons,