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Why Cal State Went First
May. 14th, 2020 10:12 amFrom Inside Higher Ed:
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/05/14/cal-state-pursuing-online-fall
This is a much more carefully considered piece than some of what I linked to yesterday.
“CSU, unlike many other colleges, has not struggled with enrollment in recent years, said Carla Hickman, vice president of research at EAB, a higher ed consulting firm that works with the system and some of its campuses on research, technology, student success and academic affairs. Cal State has also made investments over the past decade in online education, she said, making the system better prepared than others.
Like many other public universities, the CSU system also serves many students who commute to campus from home.
"If you are principally an residential college and that is your mark in the world, it creates a different pressure," Hickman said. "That is the hallmark of the education that you offer."“
California State CAN say, we are going remote, because they have better developed skills with remote, and they have more students that can transition between remote and in person (commuter students), and they are not as terrified of losing the One Thing That Makes Them Special (residential education, in the case of Brown).
This article is also much more sensitive to parental concerns. The cohort of kids in college includes a lot of parents who worried about thimerosal, BPA, and agonized over choosing the safest car and the safest car seat and so forth. They have not stopped worrying and suddenly developed risk tolerance over the last year. They did not wait for local ICUs — or any US ICUs — to be overwhelmed to put their kids on planes and fly them home.
Finally, this article is way more thoughtful about what kinds of things need to be done in person and why. While Brown’s president was concerned about fierce intellectual debate / college BS sessions late at night, and believed those could not occur online (ROTFLMAO), this article — and, more relevantly, Cal State — realizes that you cannot do clinical nursing training over Zoom. And there a lot of lab things that you cannot do at home. Reserving the in person capacity (which is necessarily greatly reduced for sure until we get a vaccine, since we are NEVER going to get to herd immunity behaviorially) for those activities that really cannot be do online is very reasonable. The fierce intellectual debate, and the Oh But What About Equity Concerns of the Paxson article were tired retreads of the same I Do Not Wanna that let NYC and other city school systems delay closing and not plan for closing, because of Equity and because of Services and because of food programs.
We deliver food through school systems because it is easy. We do not keep in person school open and risk lives to deliver food in a manner that is no longer particularly easy. Instead, we modified to a new easy (P-EBT cards, apparently, but that is outside the scope of this piece). Similarly, there is no way in hell anyone is going to be sending their kids to Providence to have Fierce Intellectual Debate. And handwaving Equity and what about the poors is not going to change that dynamic. Middle Class Fear and Desire are the forcing functions of democracy. Cal State is giving us insight into what is feared and what is desired. And it does not look like in person school is on the menu in the fall.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/05/14/cal-state-pursuing-online-fall
This is a much more carefully considered piece than some of what I linked to yesterday.
“CSU, unlike many other colleges, has not struggled with enrollment in recent years, said Carla Hickman, vice president of research at EAB, a higher ed consulting firm that works with the system and some of its campuses on research, technology, student success and academic affairs. Cal State has also made investments over the past decade in online education, she said, making the system better prepared than others.
Like many other public universities, the CSU system also serves many students who commute to campus from home.
"If you are principally an residential college and that is your mark in the world, it creates a different pressure," Hickman said. "That is the hallmark of the education that you offer."“
California State CAN say, we are going remote, because they have better developed skills with remote, and they have more students that can transition between remote and in person (commuter students), and they are not as terrified of losing the One Thing That Makes Them Special (residential education, in the case of Brown).
This article is also much more sensitive to parental concerns. The cohort of kids in college includes a lot of parents who worried about thimerosal, BPA, and agonized over choosing the safest car and the safest car seat and so forth. They have not stopped worrying and suddenly developed risk tolerance over the last year. They did not wait for local ICUs — or any US ICUs — to be overwhelmed to put their kids on planes and fly them home.
Finally, this article is way more thoughtful about what kinds of things need to be done in person and why. While Brown’s president was concerned about fierce intellectual debate / college BS sessions late at night, and believed those could not occur online (ROTFLMAO), this article — and, more relevantly, Cal State — realizes that you cannot do clinical nursing training over Zoom. And there a lot of lab things that you cannot do at home. Reserving the in person capacity (which is necessarily greatly reduced for sure until we get a vaccine, since we are NEVER going to get to herd immunity behaviorially) for those activities that really cannot be do online is very reasonable. The fierce intellectual debate, and the Oh But What About Equity Concerns of the Paxson article were tired retreads of the same I Do Not Wanna that let NYC and other city school systems delay closing and not plan for closing, because of Equity and because of Services and because of food programs.
We deliver food through school systems because it is easy. We do not keep in person school open and risk lives to deliver food in a manner that is no longer particularly easy. Instead, we modified to a new easy (P-EBT cards, apparently, but that is outside the scope of this piece). Similarly, there is no way in hell anyone is going to be sending their kids to Providence to have Fierce Intellectual Debate. And handwaving Equity and what about the poors is not going to change that dynamic. Middle Class Fear and Desire are the forcing functions of democracy. Cal State is giving us insight into what is feared and what is desired. And it does not look like in person school is on the menu in the fall.