Among the dismal track records for statewide online higher education initiatives, California’s is unquestionably the worst. It started in 1997 when California Virtual University was established by UC, CSU, the California Community College system, and independent colleges as a clearinghouse for existing online course offerings. Following a lack of funding, planning and leadership, CVU was abandoned in 1999.
In recent years, California witnessed the failure of both Cal State Online and UC Online. Cal State Online launched in summer 2012, but was terminated by June 2014. It was marketed as a degree-completion program for students who had earned some college credit at a CSU, but couldn’t attend classes on campus. From the outset, CSU’s fatal flaw was a top-down approach that failed to generate support from individual universities and generated no real enrollments. Faculty objections were but one manifestation of a broader problem. In the end, to assuage those concerns, the system decided all participation would be voluntary. Which meant that no one would participate.
UC Online was an ambitious effort to enroll students from around the world. The venture borrowed $6.9M from UC to develop plans, spending $4.3M of this with Blackboard’s marketing arm. The plan was to enroll thousands of Chinese students in UC Online courses in order to generate the revenue to pay back the loan. It never happened.
Each of these efforts involved a top-down approach, focused primarily on utilizing online delivery to attract new students and revenue to California colleges and universities that faced seemingly perpetual financial woes. But California’s latest online effort is different. It looks like lessons have been learned. Because the state is developing a bottom-up approach to utilizing online delivery to help schools do a better job of serving current students.
Three years ago California was on the verge of a higher education crisis. Across the community college system, students were being turned awayen masse; many more faced waiting lists, oversubscribed (or simply unavailable) courses. The state was faced with a stark (and, as it turned out false) choice: double down on its existing system and hope for the best, or follow the siren song of Silicon Valley disrupters who claimed they could do the job of faculty and staff better smarter cheaper faster.
Faculty rose up in protest against the prospect of an external solution to a problem they thought they could solve internally, given proper resources and room to maneuver. The ghosts of California’s failed investments in online learning loomed large. In response, the Governor and Senate President decided to bet on faculty and internal staff executing an entirely different approach.
In 2014 the California Community College system created the Online Education Initiative (OEI), managed by Foothill-DeAnza Community College District and Butte-Glenn Community College District with $77M in new state funding over five years. The goal was straightforward: create an online “Course Exchange” by pooling resources across colleges, providing students greater access to the courses they need. While we’re still in the early innings, OEI stands in stark contrast to the failed initiatives of California’s online past, and could provide a roadmap to system-wide initiatives of the future. Here’s why:
It’s bottom-up. While previous attempts held faculty and staff at a distance, OEI kicked off with an extensive roadshow, where Pat James, a former faculty member at Mt. San Jacinto Community College, traversed the state meeting with faculty senates and campus groups to get feedback. OEI includes a comprehensive online professional development program, dubbed @ONE, that supports faculty throughout the system.
It’s collaborative across campuses. The different elements of OEI were developed by individual community colleges themselves, but have been combined into a single system for the state to utilize. Rather than developing a central “solution” and selling it to community colleges, the initiative’s leaders have acknowledged the power of technology to support the work of forward-thinking, committed campus leaders. The result is an unprecedented level of collaboration.
No marketing. Unlike Cal State Online and UC Online, which aimed to operate their own sizeable marketing and enrollment management arms, the OEI leaves marketing to individual community colleges.
OEI’s Course Exchange begins rolling out in January 2017. It’s an initiative well worth watching to understand how higher education – when given the funding and support – can innovate from within.