I remember how it was -- JR
Regulatory Overreach 101 – Brought to You by the Department of Education
Democrats’ war on for-profit education has now reached a point where it threatens the online offerings of traditional schools.
After a disastrous attempt at introducing new guidance earlier in the year, the Department of Education is again preparing to attack the online program management industry. Online program managers – or OPMs – are companies that provide the internal organs, in essence, that make modern online education initiatives go.
Depending on the schools and contracts they’re honoring, online program managers market the universities’ online education programs, recruit students, counsel them through the admissions process, enroll them, provide the software and tech support and even work with professors to make the professors’ courses more online-friendly.
Harvard, Yale, Georgetown, NYU, Cal-Berkeley, North Carolina, Northwestern, Syracuse and Rice are among the highly regarded schools that use online program managers, although the schools rarely mention their involvement in the product.
Their services are so critical to the programs’ operations that online program managers typically earn 60% of the course’s revenue, although some schools are moving away from the revenue sharing model to a fee-for-service arrangement as schools develop their own online capabilities and no longer need everything on the online program managers’ menu of services.
Third-party providers, such as online program managers, are forbidden by law to earn commissions for recruiting students, but they can recruit if this is part of a package of services the providers offer to colleges, which is the case with online program managers.
That’s too much profit for the Biden administration, so it has proposed regulatory changes that would force schools to rework their contracts with online program managers in a way that will add crippling costs and risk to all parties.
The department has indicated that it wants to change the rules to more closely scrutinize whether online program managers are being paid according to how many students they recruit in violation of the law. The Government Accountability Office said last year after studying the industry for more than two years that some arrangements with colleges may skirt the rule, but by and large the industry and the universities it serves comply with the law as is.
The charge is that if online program managers are being paid to recruit, that imposes costs that unnecessarily and unlawfully drive-up costs and erode the effectiveness of higher education.
But what the schools and their partners in online program management have actually done is innovate, both in terms of product offerings and in terms of their relationships, so as to provide maximum access to flexible, innovative, and effective online education for millions of American college students. The department claims these vendors have increased costs and eroded the effectiveness of higher education in America.
But like a college freshman, the department has failed to show its work. It has presented no evidence that online program managers increase costs or reduce access. It has failed to explain why the colleges would so eagerly enter into these arrangements if they were counter to the wellbeing of their students. It has failed to explain how this demand would be met – which is greater and more consistent since Covid – without these arrangements. Other than political talking points and partisan preference, it has failed to give any reason for changing the rules on something that appears to work.
This is the worst kind of regulatory overreach. This process would be unacceptable if it was being used to change something as mundane as the way asphalt is used as a highway surface. The fact that this rushed, half-baked process is being allowed to change something as essential and fundamental as the way Americans learn is both unbelievable and unconscionable.
Online education programs aren’t quick or easy to develop. The initial budget impact of a college attempting to build an online curriculum from the ground up would be prohibitive without the knowledge and experience provided by OPMs. These partnerships have been effective and beneficial for all involved, from schools to private companies to, most importantly, students.
What the Department of Education should do is what the GAO recommended – continue to study the issue and ensure there aren’t abuses and violations of the current rules. Officials should look at costs, student outcomes and the relationships with colleges to make sure taxpayers and students are getting their money’s worth. But absent evidence they’re not – and we haven’t seen any such evidence – there’s no reason to change the current 2011 guidance.
https://townhall.com/columnists/brianmcnicoll/2023/08/31/colim-n2627791
*******************************************************Historic University With Christian Background Allows Students to Live in Dorms Based on 'Gender Identity'
Earlier this year, Townhall reported how Wellesley College, an exclusive all-girls school, decided to allow its student body to vote on allowing transgender and non-binary students. And, in January, Townhall reported how Ithaca College in New York will allow students who identify as “transgender” or “non-binary” to live in a separate residential community that excludes “cis-identifying students.” This move was meant to create a “supportive community” for students who identify as LGBTQ+.
Furman University, the oldest private university in South Carolina and among the 75 oldest high education institutions operating in the U.S. today, allows students to live in a dormitory based on their “gender identity” rather than their biological sex. The school was named after Baptist pastor Richard Furman.
On the university’s website, it clearly states that “Furman will provide students housing consistent with their gender identity.” This means that students who “identify” as the opposite sex can live in the student housing among them.
Additionally, transgender students can choose whether or not to disclose this information to their new roommates.
“Housing and Residence Life keeps a student’s disclosed gender identity confidential and will share it only with employees who need the information in order to perform their job duties. A transgender student may choose whether to disclose gender identity information to a roommate,” the website states.
Additionally, the school allows transgender students to use restrooms and facilities that align with their “gender identity” instead of their biological sex (via Furman University):
All students should have access to locker room, bathroom, and shower facilities that are safe, comfortable, and convenient. Transgender and gender non-conforming students may use any facility consistent with their gender identity. Moreover, gender-neutral bathrooms are located in the Chapel, Dining Hall, Estridge Commons, Infirmary, Library, Music Building, Physical Activity Center, Shi Center, and Trone Student Center.
Townhall previously reported how female students on the University of Pennsylvania’s swim team were forced to share a locker room with Will “Lia” Thomas last year. Paula Scanlan, one of Thomas’ former teammates, said in an interview that she used to “change as fast as possible” when Thomas was present.
“It [the locker room] was uncomfortable. I did notice a few girls – there’s a few bathroom stalls in the bathroom – and I did notice some girls changing in the bathroom stalls for practice, which I’ve never really seen that before,” Scanlan said. “For me personally, the biggest thing was, when you’re changing, there’s all these people talking in the background, all these women’s voices, and then all of a sudden you hear a man’s voice. I’d always kind of jump a little bit [hearing Thomas’ voice].”
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Australia: Students who are illiterate, innumerate, and scared: be disappointed, but not surprised
Why would anyone be surprised at the latest NAPLAN results? Yes, they are disappointing, but the amount of hand-wringing expressed through media demonstrates either naivety or ignorance.
Many of us have been explaining the reasons behind our struggling schools for a long time. This makes it all the more frustrating to hear the media’s tiresome excuses. Here are a few ways to translate common phrases thrown around in media reports as excuses for why so many of our students are not doing well, remembering that, as CS Lewis quipped, the best lie is the one closest to the truth:
We need to get back to basics: Of course, this is right, yes? It might be, if teachers knew what it meant. Many do not. Today I heard a commentator say, ‘Yes, we have to get back to basics with young students – they must learn how to learn.’ Learn how to learn? What incoherency… It reflects the ‘21st Century education’ philosophy that says if we know how to think, we do not have to learn sequential core content. But that is not true. We must have our students instructed in the underlying information upon which they can build. An expert is someone who knows more than others and then they have a basis for thinking critically. Too often our teachers are not taught this.
Our teachers are not trained enough: I remember visiting a school in the village hill districts of Costa Rica. They had their first year of graduating students leave the school, half of whom were from an economically poor village and yet obtained full scholarships to American colleges. Further, at least half their teachers had no tertiary teacher training. Who were they? They were American college graduates who came to live in that village and teach their college subject to these school students as an extended ‘gap year’. Why did this work? These young teachers demonstrated outstanding relational commitment to the students around them, and through that relationship, developed a fruitful teaching and learning environment. What would our teacher unions do with a program like this in Australia?
We must focus on anxiety crises: The environment is boiling, the colonials are oppressive, and we must develop our own identity based on our fleeting feelings… This sort of thinking has replaced any certainty about what individual character is about in our schools. Character used to be based on understanding that we, as humans, are made to live in certain ways. This gave us a common mind on which common sense was based. Now we have dysphoric minds that chase therapeutised illusions of reality. That is the relational context of the current Australian classroom.
Teachers must manage classrooms better: As one young teacher said to me, the best way to do this is to redirect students and use better words. Because character has disappeared, and identity personality tests have taken over, teachers are timid in implementing consequences for bad behaviour. Oh, and I just used two politically incorrect words – ‘consequences’ and ‘bad’. What might happen if teachers actually spoke of punishment for wilful misbehaviour?
Our teachers are not paid enough: the history of investment in education in Australia clearly demonstrates that spending more money the same way does not make a difference. As in all aspects of life, it is what we do with what we have that makes a difference. But like so many of our federal government ministers, bigger government is given as the answer to the problems created by big government.
Our teachers are not paid well because of independent schools: Last time I checked, the NSW independent schools saved the NSW government the same amount as the price of the NSW Police department. The pleas to close down the schools that parents are actually choosing over state schools is driven by the unspoken belief that the government should have more influence than the family.
Trust us to fix it: Again, nothing will change in schools while government policy does not support families as families. Why do we think the best way to live as a society is by the government paying people to care for us, cradle to the grave? I am old enough to remember when I could at least claim something for supporting the rest of my family, while we chose to have only one of us working for pay. Why is it assumed that a child is only ‘ready’ for school if he or she has gone to a pre-school? Why are families discouraged to look after those in need in the family by the push to have everyone in the paid workforce?
Reviewers like Kevin Donnelly have summarised all this by highlighting that we are not instructing our students enough on essential knowledge anymore, and we have ignored our Judeo-Christian heritage. Douglas Murray’s recent article spoke to the heart of our cultural malaise when he asked, ‘Are we pleased to be in this country compared to others, or not?’ The anthropologist might ask it this way: ‘Should all non-Indigenous Australians simply sail away so that the original locals can continue with their pre-medieval designer tribalism?’
It is good that we are disappointed by reports that reveal learning difficulties for our students. But acting surprised by this news is to deny the dynamics of the false reality being constructed by people who call themselves progressive, but are in fact are taking us to hugely regressive places.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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