Bible Colleges in the 21st Century (Part 1)

From Voice, Nov/Dec 2014. Used by permission.

Just a few weeks after terrorists hijacked planes and used them to attack the Pentagon and World Trade Center, I was asked to become the president of Piedmont International University in Winston Salem, North Carolina. I had no way of knowing the extent of how the tragic events of September 11, 2001 would transform our world, nor could I have imagined the changes that would sweep across the higher education landscape. Like many other Bible college leaders, I had to quickly learn to navigate a variety of shifting currents in the post 9/11 economy and deal with the continuous emergence of disruptive innovations and new technologies. In addition, I felt the urgent need to address the two horrible trends that have been plaguing American higher education for years.

First, over the past several decades the overall cost of attending college has been skyrocketing out of control unlike anything else in the economy. According to a Bloomberg Report, college tuition and fees have increased more than 1,120% since 1978. That is roughly twice as fast as the increases in medical care and four times faster than increases in the consumer price index.¹ Student loan debt totals over $1 trillion and now exceeds total credit card debt and total auto loans in the U.S.² The average college graduate this year owes over $32,000 in college-related debt.

Second, to make matters even worse, college outcomes seem to be falling as fast as tuition rates are rising, with the majority of recent graduates facing bleak prospects for good jobs related to their degrees. No wonder Forbes recently reported that “about one-third of millennials say they would have been better off working, instead of going to college and paying tuition.”³ The combination of unrealistic cost, suffocating debt and diminishing outcomes has led to numerous calls for comprehensive reform with many experts offering dire predictions about higher education being the next bubble expected to burst. The trends are simply unsustainable.

Innovation

One silver lining that these problems are driving is new innovation with real potential to simultaneously cut tuition, reduce student debt and improve learning and outcomes. A number of universities are beginning to look beyond static traditional classrooms and dated online models toward far more creative and affordable approaches. A good example is the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), which has taken the world of higher education by storm. Offered free to students around the world, MOOCs typically utilize interactive web tools in sharp contrast with the taped lecture approach that has been a hallmark of traditional online education.

The first open online course that was truly “massive” was taught by a celebrated Stanford University professor named Sebastian Thrun. In 2011 he offered his Introduction to Artificial Intelligence course free to anyone on earth. Over 160,000 people enrolled from some 190 countries. Dr. Thrun stated that in one course he had taught more AI students than all the rest of the AI professors in the world combined. Students listened to the same lectures and participated in the same experiences as Stanford students who were typically paying over $50,000 per year. The top 400 highest grades in the class were from non-Stanford students. In 2012 Dr. Thrun cofounded Udacity to offer free MOOCs to the world.

The following year Harvard and MIT each invested $30 million to create edX and offered their first MOOC (Circuits and Electronics) from MIT. That one course drew over 150,000 students from some 160 countries. Within a year edX had enrolled a million students and now partners with scores of elite universities from around the globe. Next came Coursera. Offering a variety of courses and partnering with key universities, Coursera now has over 9.2 million users in 750 courses from over 100 institutions. Subjects cover everything from history to poetry, computer science, and health-care policy.

Collaboration

Another growing trend is collaboration. American colleges have always developed partnerships, but the Internet has removed geographic barriers. Dozens of consortia have been developed, and colleges are coming together to cut costs, reduce duplication, enhance research and improve quality. Consolidation, cooperation and consortium are the new normal.

Technology is also driving a variety of exciting new approaches for improved learning. For example, Piedmont has embraced the flipped classroom. This approach inverts traditional teaching methods by delivering instructional online video lectures outside of class and moving interactive “homework” into the classroom. Unfortunately, traditional online education used the Internet to deliver content but failed to utilize technology to improve pedagogy. Schools simply took their old classroom lectures and assignments and pushed them out through the wires. While this provided greater flexibility for students and new sources of revenue for schools, it failed to address teaching and learning. Various versions of the flipped classroom are improving both.

First, there is the improved lecture that is on video and available for students to watch online wherever and whenever they prefer. Professors know that their videos will be out there on the Internet for the entire world to see, so they work very hard to make sure they are outstanding. Students enjoy working through the material at their own pace and can replay the videos as often as needed. Second, the big win takes place when the students return to the classroom after watching the video lecture to learn through joint activities, direct mentoring and a variety of creative and interactive projects. Teachers do more mentoring than ever before, and now they can help individual students overcome obstacles to learning.

Clintondale High School in Metro Detroit was an early adapter of the flipped classroom and has garnered national attention because of its amazing turnaround after flipping every course in the entire school.⁴