Articulation pacts, special degrees, and scholarships are used to boost enrollments
It took Chuck Lewis 10 years to get his associate’s degree, working full time and taking classes at Linn-Benton Community College as his schedule permitted. He planned to go on for a bachelor’s in electrical engineering at nearby Oregon State University.
Then a more appealing option presented itself.
Mr. Lewis now attends the University of Phoenix in classroom space that Phoenix has been renting from Linn-Benton for two years. His credits transferred without a hitch, thanks to an articulation agreement between the two institutions.
Applying was even simpler: The manager of this Phoenix outpost, which, by agreement with Linn-Benton offers only upper-division courses, drove the 25 miles from the campus in Albany to Mr. Lewis’s workplace in Corvallis at a Hewlett-Packard facility for manufacturing and research and development to walk him through the process.
Now, not only can he pursue his bachelor of science in information technology without having to quit his job -- courtesy of Phoenix’s style of compressing class time into a single night a week -- he does so in familiar surroundings.
“I know the parking lots. I know where the rooms are. It’s very comfortable,” says Mr. Lewis, 31. “I could not do school, take care of my son, and go to work” without this option.
Articulation agreements, special recruiting efforts, scholarships, and, in the case of Phoenix, branches located right on the campuses of community colleges are just some of the ways for-profit institutions are more actively pursuing community-college students.
A few of the companies have even designed degree programs tailored to complement the technically oriented education that some community-college graduates receive. DeVry Institutes has had such a degree for about five years. Phoenix just added its degree this fall -- as part of a larger community-college strategy.
This recruiting trend, which has accelerated in recent years, reflects the agility and maturation of the for-profit sector, says W. Norton Grubb, a professor of education at the University of California at Berkeley who studies community-college issues. For the community colleges, improving transfer opportunities is a persistent issue. Despite pressure from colleges and legislatures, many state universities still make such transfers difficult by not accepting some community-college credits or not making their transfer policies clear. The for-profit companies -- particularly those that are becoming more national with new campus locations and online operations -- obviously see this as an opportunity, says Mr. Grubb.
“They certainly are reaching out more,” he says. “Every place they go they look for as many markets as possible.” Articulation agreements help to establish the for-profit colleges as legitimate transfer alternatives.
Mr. Grubb says he’s still a bit skeptical about the for-profit institutions as a whole: He fears that their job-oriented curricula might not be serving students well in the long run, and is nervous about the way they talk about getting course work “out of the way” with compressed class schedules. Still, he acknowledges that the strategy helps the companies and students.
Community-college graduates are more likely to succeed and require fewer remedial classes than those with less college-level experience, he notes, and “all that is to the good of the bottom line.” And, he adds, “anything that facilitates the upward mobility of students” should be encouraged.
To be sure, state universities and traditional colleges still attract the largest proportion of community-college graduates, officials at community colleges report. And many four-year institutions say the intensified efforts of the for-profit universities are not a threat.
At Oregon State, for example, in fields like computer science -- a field in which Phoenix is also offering courses -- professors say they have far more students than they can handle. Though not familiar with the specifics of the Phoenix curriculum, Michael J. Quinn, the head of the computer-science department, says he is confident his program is the best in the state academically, in large part because of its diverse and flexible curriculum. Still, he acknowledges that Phoenix’s course schedule is much more accommodating to working adults. Almost all of the Oregon State courses are offered on the Corvallis campus on weekdays, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The strategy of recruiting community-college graduates might also win the companies some points in other circles. “It’s likely to be well-received by certain elements in state legislatures who want to encourage transfers from two-year to four-year institutions,” says Brian Pusser, an assistant professor of education at the University of Virginia who is active in a research project on for-profit education. The strategy might even help them build their case for greater support through state financial-aid programs, he suggests.
For colleges where profitability is a prime objective, and where fees are set to ensure that every student adds to the bottom line, a recruiting strategy that results in students who pay two years of tuition rather than four might seem off base. But many of the companies see it differently.
“Our goal is to have graduates,” says Jared Tausz, director of Phoenix’s operations in the Seattle area, where the university also offers upper-division courses in community colleges. “The more graduates we have, the more referrals we get. It’s a snowball effect.” He adds: “The word gets out. People are happy. And then they can go into a master’s degree.”
It’s that kind of sentiment that prompted DeVry to create its bachelor of science in technical management degree. Loaded heavily with required courses in communications, humanities, and business, the degree is designed to balance the more-technical course load the students receive in getting their associate’s degree.
DeVry officials initially marketed the degree to their own alumni with two-year technical degrees, and to adults working in technical fields who have become supervisors and might want additional education in business and management. More recently they’ve begun promoting it to community-college students. “We’re trying to be transfer-friendly,” says Charles W. Koop, director of academic planning and technology at the 19-campus institution. For example, DeVry offers 60 scholarships a year, worth $16,000 each, for recent community-college graduates.
Now, the University of Phoenix is rolling out a similar degree -- a bachelor of science in management. Phoenix is promoting it, along with other transfer-oriented programs, through a broad partnership with the League for Innovation in the Community College, an organization of 750 community colleges trying to make better use of information technology.
The partnership, which was introduced at the league’s annual conference in November, could give Phoenix an opening to reach the more than four million students who attend community colleges associated with the league.
The technology-oriented bachelor’s degree programs offered by both DeVry and Phoenix will make it easier for students in fields like allied health to transfer into a bachelor’s-degree program without losing the credits they earned in their applied courses. Students can keep as many as 72 credits upon transfer to Phoenix, leaving them needing to gain only 48 more to get the degree. Many traditional colleges typically will accept only 60 credits upon transfer. Phoenix itself usually accepts only up to 69 credits for its other degree programs. DeVry accepts up to 80 transfer credits, but requires students to take at least 35 percent of their credits at DeVry to qualify for a degree.
Along with the new degree, Phoenix is also offering a number of other enticements to encourage community colleges to sign articulation agreements under the league’s auspices. Colleges that have signed such agreements will be able to jointly enroll their students at Phoenix, giving them immediate access to the university’s online library and academic counseling services.
Colleges that have such agreements also will be given access to the online programs that Phoenix uses to provide pedagogical training to its 7,000 instructors, and to use the university’s Online Proficiency Assessment, a Web site that offers testing and remedial-education programs.
Phoenix already has articulation agreements with 150 community colleges.
Mark Milliron, the president and C.E.O. of the league, says any relationship is not intended as an endorsement, but rather a way to expand students’ choices. “In no way are we advocating that over traditional universities,” he says.
Lois Bolton, academic dean at Broward Community College, in Florida, says the new degree could be an incentive for her institution to sign on with Phoenix. The college has a number of articulation agreements in place already with traditional, nonprofit institutions she says, but they don’t all work so well for students in associates-of-applied-arts programs.
“They seem more flexible,” she says of Phoenix. Phoenix has campuses throughout Florida, but the institution says it can provide similar services to community colleges in states where it has no locations, through its online division.
Some of Broward’s traditional faculty members might not like the idea of aligning with a for-profit institution, Ms. Bolton adds, but she says a partnership would likely appeal to the “real world” instructors who teach the applied courses.
Sensitive to potential complaints from colleges about stealing their students, Phoenix officials say that, for colleges that sign articulation agreements, it will only grant junior status to students who have completed their associate’s degrees. “That would really allow us to work with community colleges in partnership,” says Elizabeth Tice, dean of Phoenix’s College of General and Professional Studies.
For some community colleges, the price of courses at many for-profit colleges is also an issue. Phoenix charges about $400 a credit, which is higher than that of most public four-year institutions. Undergraduate tuition at Oregon State for state residents, for instance, is $75 per credit.
“This is not the model for everybody,” Mr. Milliron allows. But he also notes that many community-college students are adults with full-time jobs, giving them the means to pay for tuition and possibly to receive tuition assistance from their employers.
While Phoenix appears to be making the most multifaceted push, other companies have also adopted transfer-friendly policies.
The all-online Jones International University, for example, will accept as many as 90 credits from transferring students.
Strayer University, a chain with an online division and 14 campuses in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, has a top-level administrator, John Tucker, assigned solely to the task of forging articulation agreements with community colleges.
The company has been making a concerted effort in this area for the last year, says Mr. Tucker, Strayer’s dean of academics and information technology. “It’s a big focus,” he says. Strayer has a dozen agreements now and hopes to sign an additional 15 over the next year.
DeVry, along with its special degree and community-college scholarships, offers free tuition for up to five courses for community-college faculty members. If community-college instructors have a good educational experience at DeVry, explains Laura Beal, college and business liaison for DeVry in its Chicago region, “they are more likely to recommend us to their students.”
Illinois, which is also where DeVry has its headquarters, is a region where DeVry does a particularly intensive amount of recruiting at two-year colleges. Two DeVry branches, in Chicago and DuPage County, are part of a statewide articulation initiative that helps community-college students easily identify how and where their credits will transfer to 52 four-year institutions.
DeVry also emphasizes recruiting at places like the College of DuPage, one of the state’s largest community colleges. DeVry advertises in the campus newspaper, sends administrators to the campus about once a month to attend career days, and makes sure the institute’s programs are listed in the college’s transfer center.
Jerry Dill, president of the DeVry campus in DuPage and a new one in Tinley Park, says DeVry typically has 300 to 400 students a year, out of an enrollment of about 4,000, with College of DuPage credits. As many as 25 percent of the students have credits from some community college. “It has really spiked up in the last several years,” he says. DeVry has become “part of the mix” for community-college transfer students.
Still, in Illinois, Oregon, and other states where the for-profit universities are making a push, some sensitivities remain.
Michael Holland, the vice president for administrative and student affairs at Linn-Benton, notes for example that his college would have never approved the Phoenix operation in its classrooms had the company not guaranteed that it wouldn’t offer lower-division courses. “We made it very clear. We did not want to compete for freshman and sophomores,” he says.
Some Linn-Benton instructors are still a bit suspicious of Phoenix, he says, but the college has seen some unanticipated benefits from the relationship: Some of the students who are rejected for admission to Phoenix because they lack an adequate background in areas like English, mathematics, and history are now enrolling at the college to pick up those credits.
And while the relationship may come at a small cost to Oregon State -- with students like Chuck Lewis opting to attend Phoenix instead -- Mr. Holland says the chance to offer students “a convenient alternative” to the state institution 12 miles down the road, is worth it.
“Our relationship with Oregon State,” he says, “is not so fragile that it can not withstand a small presence of the University of Phoenix.”
http://chronicle.com Section: Money & Management Page: A30
