Four ideas to help students get to and through college, and beyond
Since 2015, The Chronicle has been showcasing the ideas of higher-ed entrepreneurs during SXSW EDU at a pitchfest we call “Shark Tank: Edu Edition.” Unlike the TV show, we don’t offer any investment money — just comments and free advice (for what that’s worth). As one of the original sharks and coordinator of the panel, I’m always curious to see what problems facing higher ed seem most pressing to contestants, and what solutions they propose. To me, it’s an interesting refraction of the state of the sector.
This year’s offerings, presented live last week in Austin, Tex., covered several slices of the student lifecycle, including ideas to help applicants find the best fit, with a tool that “looks like a dating app, but for college”; to let undergrads pursue interdisciplinary exploration and prepare for careers; and to support grad students’ success in advanced-degree programs.
With thanks to the fellow sharks who joined me in the tank — Catharine (Cappy) Bond Hill, managing director of the nonprofit research consultancy Ithaka S+R, and Paul Freedman, an education entrepreneur and executive adviser at Guild Education — here are the pitches and reactions.
Pitch 1
The idea: A program of assessments and “mind-set” interventions called the Resilience and Engagement Project to improve persistence for law students and eventually other graduate and professional programs, presented by Andrele St. Val, an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, along with Omid Fotuhi, a research associate, and Ann Sinsheimer, associate dean of equity and inclusive excellence there.
The pitch: Law school is a slog for many students, and for those from underrepresented backgrounds, the experience can also be alienating. This project aims to foster students’ sense of belonging, a concept that is increasingly common at the undergraduate level but, as Fotuhi said, overlooked for far too long in graduate and professional programs. While focused now at Pitt, the program aims to expand through a consultancy service, St. Val said, and to “revolutionize graduate education on a global scale.”
The reaction: It’s hard to fault a program aimed at student persistence, but we sharks wanted more compelling evidence of the effectiveness of this approach. With more data on results, the project could make a better economic argument for its value, Freedman noted, and “will be easier to spread” to other institutions. That data should include students’ post-graduation outcomes, Hill added, because it would be nice to know if the interventions had a lasting effect on students once they finished law school and began challenging jobs at law firms and in other environments that may not be as supportive. I have my own doubts about this approach, but the more I hear about the problem of rising debt among graduate and professional students, the more important seems any effort that could help them complete their degrees.
Pitch 2
The idea: A mobile app, Loper, that uses quizzes and dating-app models to help students develop personalized lists of colleges to apply to, based on their interests, and that helps colleges recruit, presented by the company’s co-founder, Sam Bernstein.
The pitch: Considering the time and money at stake, Bernstein said, Loper is a response to a marketplace where prospective car and home buyers can readily find oodles of information online, yet there is still “so little transparency for consumers” about colleges. Unlike the current model, where “students feel like they’re being spammed” by colleges, Loper lets students identify traits about colleges, activities, and communities that interest them by swiping right and left — “and a little swiping up and down, too” — before matching them with potential colleges using an algorithm that gathers data from more than 100 sources. “They feel agency,” Bernstein said of the students who use the app. Loper is free to them; the company makes its money from the fees that colleges pay to target their marketing, via what Bernstein said were separate channels.
The reaction: We liked it. Hill called the dating-app approach “brilliant,” and was especially interested when Bernstein said the company had the leeway to decide if a college with a low graduation rate would make it onto the app. “It shouldn’t,” she advised him. Freedman was a fan, too, but considered the model merely “brilliant-adjacent.” His concern was that the fee structure would compromise the app’s objectivity, although Bernstein pledged “the Loper match is not something that can be affected by money.” I was most impressed by how Loper can help college counselors — and its work with the College Advising Corps — and eager to see if and how it fulfills its plan to expand to postsecondary pathways beyond four-year colleges, an area that Bernstein acknowledges is the “wild west.”
Pitch 3
The idea: A series of embedded mini-courses known as Business in Practice, taught by working professionals, for undergraduates to develop specific skills that will help them in their careers, presented by Neil B. Niman, an associate professor at the College of Business and Economics at the University of New Hampshire.
The pitch: The idea, which Niman calls “experiential learning meets Master Class,” began five years ago at the business school, and now enrolls some 1,600 students a year in 70 classes taught by more than 50 outside instructors. The real-world teaching brings a needed dimension, Niman said, because “higher ed is at risk of becoming irrelevant.” Along with teaching students, the program is a way to engage alumni and help students build professional networks and find career mentors. In their book, The Work-Ready Graduate, Niman and a UNH colleague, Jennifer R. Chagnon, outline many of the steps in developing the program, and they now plan to franchise the model to other institutions.
The reaction: We were all fans of the idea of building structured, project-based exercises into the curriculum, but a tad skeptical of the business prospects for extending this model elsewhere. The essence of the program is in the instructional design of these good mini-courses, Freedman said, so “how do you franchise that?” Or, as Hill asked, what happens if other colleges just buy the book and don’t bother paying for the franchise? Niman said there was still plenty of the program’s “secret sauce” that’s not divulged in the book, particularly in creating courses that are relatable “to today’s college student.” And when Niman told me that the business school pays outside instructors $3,000 each to teach the courses, I wondered if other colleges would find that too expensive.
Pitch 4
The idea: A project-based course of self-exploration, built around solving real-world problems and based on well-respected and primary sources, that develops students as empathetic leaders, presented by April Peebler, executive director of the nonprofit Heirs to Our Ocean.
The pitch: Heirs to Our Ocean is a youth-focused organization that uses creative teaching and coaching models — like wilderness backpacking experiences to teach self-sufficiency — and Peebler wants to extend that approach to higher ed. “Please, let’s remove students from four walls and a textbook,” she said. One possible idea: a semester-long course on colonization capped by an audio-visual presentation that could include overseas study along with a focus on the United States’ treatment of Native Americans. The key, though, is that the programs put empathetic leadership at the core — an idea she espoused further in her own SXSW EDU panel the next day.
The reaction: How could anyone argue with a program based on real-world issues with a goal of creating more empathetic leaders? We didn’t. But we did question how Peebler could turn this relatively small donor- and philanthropy-backed idea into something that has a real impact on higher ed. (In fairness, when Peebler first proposed this as a pitch, she told me that she wasn’t that far along in making her higher-ed connections, and frankly, I picked her for the tank because I loved the idea of showcasing this model in contrast with Business in Practice.) Peebler said she wants to find colleges willing to test the ideas, perhaps in a study-abroad model. Hill, meanwhile, said she often wonders if programs like these actually make a difference, or if “the people who choose to do this already were going to be empathetic leaders?” Peebler’s response: The approach is valuable for anyone, and should even be mandatory for business, government, politics, and other career-oriented students.
Want to learn more? Check out a recording of the whole session here. And to hear the spirited SXSW EDU conversation on how colleges can respond to the anti-diversity headwinds that my colleague Alexander Kafka moderated, you can find that here.
Exploring the roots of the “exodus from higher ed”
Last week The Chronicle published a new report on “Higher Education in 2035,” for which I wrote the introduction. The report covers a lot of ground, including the impact of artificial intelligence, the evolution of the campus, the next phase of online learning, the future of community colleges, and the fate of scholarship and research.
My contribution is a reported opening essay that offers a sobering look at the fundamental trends that could — or, actually, have already begun to — reshape the enterprise. Spoiler alert: It’s mostly not in a good way. One big theme animating my piece revolves around the enrollment challenges — not just the demographics but also the growing public doubt about the value of college among those who should be its future students.
New survey data being released today by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and two research partners offer added insights into what colleges are up against. The biggest takeaway for me: Adults ages 18 to 30 feel as if they “are on the outside looking in” when it comes to higher ed. That’s bad news for a sector that’s going to see a continuing decline in high-school graduates over the next dozen years.
This is the second time Gates and its partners, Edge Research and HCM Strategies, conducted such “exodus” surveys and focus groups. The latest research includes responses from high-school students, too. In the first survey, the older non-enrollees said they saw more value in trade school or courses that would lead to a license or a certificate than in attending a four-year college. In the latest survey, their opinions of college inched up, but their opinions of those other options also increased, still outweighing college.
For both groups, researchers found plenty of anxiety about applying to and paying for college. They also found that potential students would appreciate more direct guidance on financial aid and on ensuring that they’d be getting the most out of a college experience that could lead to a fulfilling career.
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