Daily Briefing

Welcome to Thursday, August 11. Today’s Briefing was written by Kate Hidalgo Bellows, with contributions from Julia Piper. Write to us: kate.hidalgobellows@chronicle.com.

Online education is booming. Can quality standards keep up?

A survey of more than 300 officials at American colleges shows many are planning for long-term growth in online education, but few are consistently evaluating the quality of their mushrooming course lists.

According to a newly released report on the survey’s findings, the vast majority of officials — 96 percent — said they’d adopted “quality assurance” standards to guide this rapid growth. Such standards advise faculty members on how to make online learning accessible, intuitive, and engaging for students. That might mean setting expectations for offering timely, regular instructor feedback on assignments, clearly aligning activities with a course’s learning objectives, and posting transcripts of all video content.

But ultimately, there’s no universal definition of what “quality” means, though experts note that there’s ample research on what quality teaching and learning looks like. And as the report’s authors acknowledge, both the scope and rigor of colleges’ quality standards vary considerably.

Our Taylor Swaak followed up on the report’s findings with officials at three colleges: Kent State University, in Ohio; Carroll Community College, in Maryland; and Fort Lewis College, in Colorado. Read her article here.

The takeaway: Though the report raises concerns about how colleges evaluate their online courses, researchers acknowledge that these systems are often works in progress. There’s considerable nuance at play.

Quick hits.

• More than 40 groups are calling on the Department of Homeland Security to investigate a fake Michigan university created by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2015. (The Hill)
• A group of Rhodes College graduates are asking their alma mater to remove Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett from the college’s hall of fame because of what she said in her Senate confirmation hearing about the legal precedent for abortion rights. (Commercial Appeal)
• Only three flagship presidents have led their universities for more than 10 years, according to an analysis by University Business.
• Drexel University, a private institution in Philadelphia, will offer a 50-percent tuition discount to graduates of New Jersey and Pennsylvania community colleges. (Philly Voice)

Reporter’s Notebook: Charlottesville’s lasting legacy.

Today marks five years since white nationalists marched with torches on the University of Virginia’s campus, and tomorrow is the fifth anniversary of the deadly Unite the Right rally in downtown Charlottesville, Va.

I was a sophomore at UVA at the time of the rallies but didn’t witness them firsthand. What I did see was how trauma brought students together and tore them apart. For the first few weeks, it felt as if the campus was shrouded by a heavy cloud. When the haze lifted, tense conversations about blame and responsibility took its place. UVA banned the organizers of the rally, including two UVA alums. An audit faulted the UVA police for failing to properly intervene in the torch rally. Teresa A. Sullivan, UVA’s president at the time of the rallies, received significant criticism for failing to protect students. The events raised key questions about campus free speech, safety, history, and leadership — a debate that has played out in the pages of The Chronicle.

The legacy of Charlottesville remains. On UVA’s campus, that includes some students’ mistrust of the university’s ability to protect them and a perception that tradition comes first. Beyond UVA, colleges across the country have seen the increasing influence of far-right groups on campus, and college leaders remain concerned about free speech turning violent, while also not wanting to infringe on students’ free-speech rights. Increasingly, they’re having to determine the limits of free speech and take flak when students say someone has crossed that line.

Comings and goings.

• George Grant Jr., chancellor of Pennsylvania State University-Berks, has been named president of Saginaw Valley State University, in Michigan.
• Susan Whealler Johnston, president and chief executive of the National Association of College and University Business Officers, will retire this month.

Footnote.

Fact check: The library at Queen’s College at the University of Oxford does NOT store a preserved rat from the “bubonic plague times,” according to its Twitter account. Someone replied, “Okay, but don’t you WISH it did?” My answer is no. No!