I appeared on AETN’s “Arkansas Week” Friday with host Steve Barnes, longtime journalist Ernie Dumas, and KUAR’s Ernie Dumas. We discussed the upcoming runoff elections, the Pryor-Cotton Senate race, state revenues and the possible upcoming special session about school employee insurance.
Category Archives: Education
UA, colleges go online to avoid Kodak’s fate
By Steve Brawner
More than 350,000 Arkansans have taken some college classes but do not have a degree. That’s a business opportunity for Arkansas colleges and universities. Meanwhile, 95 out-of-state, online higher education providers offer programs to Arkansas students that have been approved by the Department of Higher Education, and that number is growing. For Arkansas colleges and universities, that’s a market threat.
How do service providers respond to opportunities and threats in a free market economy? Adapt or die.
Dr. Donald Bobbitt, president of the University of Arkansas System, told the House and Senate Education Committees Monday how his system is adapting. The eVersity program will offer degrees starting this fall that are designed to reach older Arkansans who need employment skills but not the on-campus college experience. It’s meant to fill jobs that are available right now. The approach will be systemwide and funded entirely through student tuitions.
The courses are being designed to be cheaper and more convenient than traditional on-campus classes so a mom with three kids can go back to school without leaving home. Semesters will last six weeks, and there will be eight of them a year so that older students can take one course at a time and still finish in five years. Billing will be done monthly rather than in lump sums. Credit hours will be offered to students with relevant work experience. Bobbitt said a student will be able to earn a degree from home in five years at a cost of $18,000 – maybe significantly less.
Bobbitt acknowledged that his profession hasn’t changed all that much in 1,000 years, but changes are coming now. Online college-level chemistry course experiments can be done at home with the professor checking the results on YouTube. Courses are being designed to take advantage of free online material instead of textbooks.
Offering online courses is nothing new, of course. Arkansas State’s online MBA program was ranked 14th in the country by U.S. News and World Report, while Harding University students can earn an online MBA. Arkansas Tech’s eTech program offers several associate’s, bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
eVersity’s primary market is older, nontraditional students – not students who go to college straight from high school. But those students face challenges of their own. Student debt nationally is about $1 trillion, and far too many college graduates don’t have much to show for that debt but a job at Starbuck’s. If Arkansas colleges don’t provide sufficient value, more students will do what consumers always do – purchase what they need (job skills) at a cheaper price elsewhere.
And they do have choices. As Bobbitt explained, 95 out-of-state providers deliver more than 1,200 degree programs and credentials in Arkansas. Students can earn degrees from for-profit colleges like the University of Phoenix, public universities like the University of Missouri, and private schools like Liberty University. Those schools are educating students that might have chosen Arkansas institutions, which means those institutions have to step up their games, which is good for everybody. Plus, offering online courses gives Arkansas schools a chance to reach a potential worldwide marketplace.
Interviewed in a Capitol hallway after his presentation to legislators, Bobbitt said that faculty acceptance of the new online model has varied from professor to professor, but as a rule, “They understand that we don’t want to be Kodak.” That’s a reference to the film manufacturer and developer that failed to respond to digital photography and ended up declaring for bankruptcy.
Bobbitt had used another metaphor speaking to legislators earlier. He said the UA System is trying to operate like a fast-moving yacht, not the Titanic.
It must, as must other Arkansas colleges and universities. There are many ways for Arkansas students to get across the ocean these days, and many of them don’t require leaving home.
Help wanted for 400 jobs, and more
What would happen if an out-of-state employer was prepared to build a factory in Arkansas and pay 500 people a starting salary of $50,000 a year – but was having trouble finding the employees?
The state of Arkansas and the local community would pull out all the stops for that $25 million annual payroll. After ensuring the industrial park had adequate water, wastewater and electrical connections, there might be an offer of state-financed employee training. Then there would be a big press announcement with the governor, the mayor and the plant manager.
What if I told you a similar opportunity already exists with one of Arkansas’ established employers, immediately, with no need for a factory?
Here’s what Steve Williams, CEO of North Little Rock-based Maverick Transportation, told me about his trucking company’s situation.
“I’d go out and buy, easily go out and buy 500 trucks … and have more than enough business for those people to haul. I just can’t find 500 people to train to put in the trucks to do that. It’s literally, they do not exist.”
Because he can’t find enough drivers, Williams is buying about 100 trucks, leaving unfilled 400 jobs with starting salaries of about $50,000 a year. Some truck drivers earn $80,000.
Maverick Transportation is not the only trucking company looking for drivers. The American Trucking Associations estimates that the industry will need to find about a million in the next 10 years. There are many trucking companies in Arkansas. Those trucks also have to be maintained and repaired.
A person can go from unemployed to a truck driving job offer in 20 weeks at a cost of $10,400. That’s what it takes to earn a commercial driver’s license at the Diesel Driving Academy in Little Rock. Barry Busada, senior vice president, said many motor carriers will reimburse drivers for the cost of that tuition after hiring them.
I’ve oversimplified this situation. Many long-distance truck drivers are away from home a couple of weeks at a time, which is why turnover at many carriers is 100 percent a year. New government enforcement mechanisms have reduced the labor pool by forcing carriers to hire only drivers with clean records, which is not a bad thing.
Still, truck driving is a solid, middle class job requiring a skill that can be gained in 20 weeks. Very few college graduates make that kind of money after four or five years of a taxpayer-financed university education.
Two thoughts. First, jobs out there, even in this economy, and not just in trucking.
Second, Arkansas’ education system and workforce policies should be about filling jobs as much as creating them. Yes, Arkansas should nurture high-tech companies and the so-called “jobs of the future.” But Maverick is ready to hire 400 people now, and those jobs don’t require constructing college classrooms or remaking the K-12 public education system. Plus, truck driving jobs can’t be outsourced to China. Diesel Driving Academy students are eligible for federal student aid. Could Arkansas also create or at least encourage truck driving scholarships or loans?
This is not just about driving trucks. It’s about the value Arkansas places on work that doesn’t require a desk or a college degree. In the recent fiscal session, Sen. Jane English, R-Little Rock, changed her vote on the private option from a no to a yes as part of a deal to revamp the state’s workforce training system. English, who has worked years in this field, says the current system is too duplicative, too inefficient, and doesn’t meet the needs of employers or workers. Young people are not encouraged to work in skilled, blue-collar jobs. People aren’t being trained for the jobs that actually are out there.
That would include truck driving, where 400 people could make $50,000 a year, if Maverick Transportation could only find them.
Lincoln High: What schools may look like someday
At Lincoln High School near Fayetteville, students learn not so much by listening to lectures but by working in self-directed group projects using laptops they can take home.
Could this be what schools will look like in the future? Maybe. This year, Lincoln is one of two New Tech schools – the other being Cross County High – using the New Tech model.
Begun 15 years ago in Napa Valley, New Tech schools give teachers and students more flexibility to decide how they will learn. Students are given a set of standards and then a project that they use MacBook laptops to design – in groups. They are graded not just on content mastery but also on their work ethic, communication skills and ability to collaborate with others.
Expect more Arkansas schools to adopt the New Tech model. Gov. Beebe’s STEM Works initiative encourages them to do so. Schools like Manor New Tech near Austin, Tex., have seen great success using the model. In the past month-and-a-half, at least 17 Arkansas schools have visited Manor.
Here’s more in my Sunday column.
An adult Arkansan learns to read
Dewitt’s Toby Allen Lane is 31 years old. He is married. He works at Dean Robinson Seeds, and his boss considers him management material. He is a responsible, upstanding citizen. And as of last November, he couldn’t read.
As of today, he can thanks to a decision he made to seek help from the Literacy Council of Arkansas County. His tutor, Terri Cooper, says he is a motivated, goal-oriented student, which explains why he now is reading at a high middle school level.
Lane is not alone. No one knows how many adult Arkansans can’t read, but the Arkansas Literacy Councils, the state’s umbrella organization, is working to reduce the number. For two years, I was president of the board of directors, so I know a lot about its work.
It would be hard to find a more efficient organization offering more bang for the buck. Thanks to an army of 6,000 volunteer tutors, last year it helped 12,063 adults improve their reading, writing, and/or English language skills at a cost of $675,000 in state funds, plus other sources of funding. That’s $56 per student.
But it could do more. That $675,000 hasn’t been increased for decades. According to Executive Director Jennifer Holman, there are 628 adults on waiting lists. There would be more if local councils had the money to better market their services.
Arkansas has made tremendous investments in K-12 and higher education – in other words, services for people under 25. Couldn’t it do more – either publicly or privately – for the Toby Lanes of the world?
That’s the subject of my column this week for the Arkansas News Bureau.