Higher Ed: When UI Loses Its Monopoly

February 20, 2010, 7:30 a.m.

From SUI to ACT
(brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
Note: Today marks the first of a three-day series of news reports and opinion about the University of Iowa and its future. B.A. Morelli, "Is This The New UI? Teetering on the Brink; UI Officials Trying to Figure Out Where to go From Here; Finances," Iowa City Press-Citizen, February 20, 2010, p. A1. (The related news items and opinion pieces are linked below, along with my commentary about them.)

The second, Sunday, February 21, deals with faculty: B.A. Morelli, "Pressure and scrutiny on faculty increase; UI officials trying to figure out where to go from here," Iowa City Press-Citizen, February 21, 2010.

The final stories in the series (Monday, February 22) are: B.A. Morelli, "Return on investment; What will the UI student of the future look like?" Iowa City Press-Citizen, February 22, 2010, and B.A. Morelli, "Career mindset damaging to a complete education? Author cautions against trend," Iowa City Press-Citizen, February 22, 2010.

And a big "hat's off" to Morelli for this quality bit of journalism and real tour-de-force three days of lengthy stories!
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An op ed column of mine is included in today's (Feb. 20) paper: "What Happens if UI Were to Lose its Monopoly on Certification?" Iowa City Press-Citizen, February 20, 2010, p. A15. It deals with a subject I earlier addressed in this blog as, "From SUI to ACT: Higher Ed's Crumbling Monopoly," January 31, 2010.

Thus, perhaps a word about "SUI" and "ACT" is in order. What is today called "the University of Iowa" was created in 1847 as "the State University of Iowa," and was soon referred to as "SUI" -- giving rise to the call letters of the University's first radio station, WSUI.

So what is "ACT"? ACT's Web site says the organization's mission is "helping people achieve education and workplace success," and describes the organization as follows:

ACT is an independent, not-for-profit organization that provides a broad array of assessment, research, information, and program management solutions in the areas of education and workforce development.

In 2005, ACT began offering multimedia services appropriate for the classroom, homeschool students, business and industry, and on-the-job instruction at the Office for Distance Learning Resources.

Each year, ACT serves millions of people in high schools, colleges, professional associations, businesses, and government agencies—nationally and internationally. ACT has offices across the United States and throughout the world.

So now here is today's Press-Citizen op ed column in which I try to explain the possible transition I envision, "From SUI to ACT."

What Happens if UI Were to Lose its Monopoly on Certification?
Nicholas Johnson
Iowa City Press-Citizen
February 20, 2010, p. A15

Of all the reports about the challenges confronting higher education's missions, few address the worst-case scenario: the disappearance of universities as we know them. Unfortunately, the scenario has powerful analogies.

• Try 40, not 5-year plans. Over 40 years ago, when libraries had card catalogs, newspapers were printed, and TV only three networks, I predicted "Communications in the Year 2000" (ultimately a chapter in How to Talk Back to Your Television Set) would include "instantaneous, ubiquitous, no-cost access to all information." Today that's the Internet.

• The 99.99 percent-off sale. We're used to 10 percent to 50 percent-off sales. But 99.9 percent? Yet the $1 million computer 40 years ago is today $1,000 or less; 99.9 percent off. So what?

• Broadside blows. So unpredicted competition has caused companies and entire industries to disappear. That's "so what."

Ten years ago Facebook (300 million members), YouTube (20 hours of video uploaded each minute), Wikipedia (3 million articles; 161 language editions) and iPhone (3 billion downloaded applications) didn't exist.

The 4.5 billion smart phones in 200 countries have Internet capabilities. Cell phone networks may become the owners' preferred platform for the Internet.

Musicians no longer need record companies, filmmakers don't need studios, journalists newspapers, or authors publishers. Craig's List is the new classifieds. Amazon the new Sears. Downloaded movies closed video rental stores.

Why do we think our near-$300 billion higher education industry is immune to telecommunications tsunamis?

Forget for-profit Phoenix University. The online content of a Harvard, Yale or MIT undergraduate education is as free as the content of the New York Times. And 250 million Web sites provide the rest of what students need.

If students can learn for free, why pay? Because it's not about learning. It's about degrees. Degrees increase income, and universities control the degrees monopoly.

What if they didn't? Monopolies are fragile and short lived in today's "flat world."

• In 1971, 73 percent of college students wanted a "meaningful philosophy of life." Today, 78 percent identify "wealth" as their goal.

• Parents wonder if there will be enough of that wealth to make the $50,000-to-$200,000 cost of a B.A. plus professional degree a wise investment.

• Employers know a diploma doesn't guarantee basic math and language skills -- and that those skills don't require a diploma.

Southwest Airlines says, "we hire for attitude and train for skills." But as a local Fortune 500 executive told me, "We can't even train employees for skills if they haven't mastered the basics."

Passing the GED exam is high school equivalency. Passing the GRE, not the B.A., is the gateway to graduate school.

What if anyone could take a GRE-type exam, and if they pass have "college equivalency"? A local businessman told me he'd hire them for "college graduate" positions in a New York minute.

Educators are slow to change. Professors started lecturing 1,000 years ago because there were no books. Now, notwithstanding books, we're still lecturing to warm (if inattentive) bodies in lecture halls.

UI had a radio station 100 years ago (9YA); later the first voice AM west of the Mississippi; educational TV in the 1930s. Today those multi-million-dollar assets called WSUI and KSUI might as well be silent for all they're doing to advance the university's mission of engagement with the state's citizens.

Our university is among the nation's best. But we don't have 1,000 years this time. If UI ever loses its monopoly on certification, Marc Moen will be replacing four Pentacrest buildings with high-rise condos.

The certification process may remain in Iowa City, but be based on results of exams from ACT and Pearson, institutions with neither faculty nor students. Self study and certificates, rather than commencement ceremonies and diplomas, could become the passport to good pay for knowledge workers in a global economy.

It couldn't happen? I remember when no one else imagined a $1 million computer could ever sell for $1,000 and become part of a global network.

Nicholas Johnson teaches at the University of Iowa College of Law and maintains the blog, FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com (where this discussion continues).

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Note: Since writing that column I have learned of the "Kahn Academy." It turns out that not only can self-motivated students learn on their own, self-motivated professors can teach on their own -- via YouTube; see, e.g., the Kahn Academy's offerings on mathematics. And see video and transcript of this evening's (Feb. 22), "Math Wiz Adds New Tools to Take Education to New Limits," PBS Newshour, February 22, 2010, regarding the popularity of Kahn's approach.

And although this column/blog entry is focused on free, self-study college equivalency certification, consider "The [for-profit] University of Phoenix, with 455,600 students, is now the second-largest higher-education system in the country, larger than the California system and behind only the State University of New York. More than 90 percent of all the for-profit students are enrolled in degree-granting programs. 'They are clearly a threat for both public and private schools,' a consultant told The Chronicle of Higher Education this week." From a column very much worth reading in its entirety, written by an Iowa Board of Regents member and former President: Michael Gartner, "The Tuition Increase: Wrong on Every Front," CityView, February 11, 2010.

And for a confirmation of the beginning of the trend my op ed column projects, see, Diane Heldt, "College Growth: Online classes post huge growth in nation, Iowa," The Gazette, March 8, 2010, p. A1 (19 million students enroll in college each fall; nearly 5 million took at least one online course in the fall of 2008, a 17 percent increase over 2007 (while the total college enrollment increased only 1.2 percent); the online Phoenix University has gone from 25,000 students in 1995 to 456,000 as of last month -- more than the undergraduate enrollment of all the Big Ten Conference schools combined; for-profit online schools now educate 7 percent of all college students). Of course, the op ed column I wrote, above, projects a future in which both conventional, and for-profit, colleges have lost their monopoly on the granting of "college-equivalency certification," making "free" college education possible. That future is far from certain at this point. But a major element of that forecast requires acceptance of online instruction by students -- an acceptance which these statistics seem to indicate has been growing.

One of the earliest and most prominent of online universities is the United Kingdom's Open University. It's "History of the OU" page accords with my vague memory of having encouraged and supported its development; as it got started during the time I was traveling to London with some regularity, met with Prime Minister Harold Wilson and others, and was also encouraging the creation of the Fourth Channel -- though I would be the first to concede that my involvement with both would have been extremely peripheral compared to that of those directly involved, and may have been no more than mention in an occasional speech. The history page also reports,

More than 20,000 people are currently studying at a postgraduate level - a number higher than the entire student population of many other UK universities. . . .

In times of fast-changing technology, e-learning methods were incorporated into most of the university's courses, where such methods best met students' needs. As part of its commitment to educating all, the university began to commission peak-time series for broadcast on BBC TV.

The 1990s were a time for celebration too: 1998 saw the 25th anniversary of the university's first graduation ceremony and the conferment of the university's 200,000th graduate.

Is the Open University a 'real' university?

The Open University was the first institution to break the insidious link between exclusivity and excellence. It is a University founded on an ideal and, like all revolutionary ideas, attracted hostility and criticism. . . .

More than three decades on, The Open University has managed to convince sceptics that academic excellence need not be compromised by openness: . . .

* More than 50,000 employers have endorsed the value of the OU by sponsoring their staff to enrol on courses.
* The OU is the largest provider of management education in Europe, and one in five MBA students in the UK is studying with the OU.

Recognition for teaching quality

In 2004 The Sunday Times Universities Guide said "Just four institutions — Cambridge, Loughborough, York and the LSE — have a better teaching record than the OU".

For an example of a free (for now) online university, the "University of the People," see Tamar Lewin, "On the Internet, a university without a campus," New York Times, February 5, 2009 ("An Israeli entrepreneur with decades of experience in international education plans to start the first global, tuition-free Internet university, a nonprofit venture he has named the University of the People").

Students aren't the only ones to use online education. Professors can write, modify, and revise their textbooks online, too. Motoko Rich, "Textbooks That Professors Can Rewrite Digitally," New York Times, February 24, 2010, p. B4.

For an example of some Iowans creation of a very successful self-education iPhone app for learning Spanish vocabulary, see David DeWitte, "Success of iPhone App Boggles Coralville Software Firm," GazetteOnline, March 10, 2010.

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The earlier discussion along these lines appeared as a blog entry here, "From SUI to ACT: Higher Ed's Crumbling Monopoly," January 31, 2010.

Of the 750 entries in this blog since 2006, many relate to the University of Iowa in one way or another. Some of the more recent include:

"Porn and Censorship in the Academy," February 14, 2010

"Welcome Dean Agrawal!" January 4, 2010

"Is the University of Iowa 'World Class'?" January 2, 2010

"University of Iowa's Good News," December 30, 2009

"UI's Alcohol Abuse: Look to Nebraska," December 28, 2009

"UI's Alcohol Problem: Many Solutions, Little Will," December 16, 2009

"UI's Basketball Fees Self Defeating," November 23, 2009

"UI Has A Drinking Problem," November 18, 2009

"Corporatizing the University of Iowa; If We're Going to Do It, Let's Do It Right," November 17, 2009

"Strategic Communications a Failed Strategy; Actions Speak Louder," November 13, 2009

"Mickey Mouse Patient Satisfaction; UIHC's Troubles: Is Orlando the Answer?" November 8, 2009

"UIHC: 'Sick Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?'; A Check-In and a Check," October 31, 2009

"Cutting Slack, Cutting Budgets; Regents, University Presidents, Deserve Some Thanks and Credit," October 30, 2009

"UI Spence Break-In: Gazette Scoop Illustrates Issues," October 27, 2009


Here Are Links to the Press-Citizen's University of Iowa Series

News

B.A. Morelli, "Is This The New UI? Teetering on the Brink; UI Officials Trying to Figure Out Where to go From Here; Finances," Iowa City Press-Citizen, February 20, 2010, p. A1

B.A. Morelli, "Where other universities are heading; Michigan maintains quality, but it all comes at a cost," Iowa City Press-Citizen, February 20, 2010, p. A. 13

"University of Iowa's Budget Timeline," Iowa City Press-Citizen, February 20, 2010, pp. A12-13

B.A. Morelli, "Pressure and scrutiny on faculty increase; UI officials trying to figure out where to go from here," Iowa City Press-Citizen, February 21, 2010.

B.A. Morelli, "Return on investment; What will the UI student of the future look like?" Iowa City Press-Citizen, February 22, 2010

B.A. Morelli, "Career mindset damaging to a complete education? Author cautions against trend," Iowa City Press-Citizen, February 22, 2010

Editorial

Editorial, "Watching the Evolution of a Public University," Iowa City Press-Citizen, February 20, 2010, p. A14

Op Ed Columns (alphabetically by authors' last name)

Nicholas Johnson, "What Happens if UI Were to Lose its Monopoly on Certification?" Iowa City Press-Citizen, February 20, 2010, p. A15

[UI President] Sally Mason, "Continuing to provide accessible, affordable education for Iowa," Iowa City Press-Citizen, February 20, 2010, p. A15

Christopher Squier, "UI rhetoric versus reality," Iowa City Press-Citizen, February 20, 2010, p. A14

Tom Walz, "Generating Profits or Prophits," Iowa City Press-Citizen, February 20, 2010, p. A14

Bruce Wheaton, "University of Iowa must redefine the dream of its own maturity," Iowa City Press-Citizen, February 20, 2010, p. A15

Letters

Harold L. Hammond, "Is It Education or Entertainment?" Iowa City Press-Citizen, February 20, 2010, p. A14

Katherine Tachau, "Education Seen as Private Good," Iowa City Press-Citizen, February 20, 2010, p. A14

Commentary (references are to pieces linked immediately above)

The Press-Citizen's editorial addresses Provost Wallace Loh's Task Forces and the future of their recommendations. President Mason's column is something of a short-form annual report, reviewing the UI's accomplishments and strengths (which for what is attempted is a good job of it, and is probably about all a university president can do, even in this context).

Squire, Walz and Wheaton each take a critical and new directions look at the University and its future.

Chris Squire hopes "this new approach can set a direction for reviewing the entire regent system with an eye toward fostering the distinctive strengths of each institution. In such a model, UNI would be a premier undergraduate college, ISU would refocus on its strengths in agriculture and veterinary medicine and essential outreach activities and UI would reinforce its premier graduate and professional programs and build on its strengths in research and biomedicine."

He also notes that "we must be more effective at informing taxpayers and elected officials about the importance of Iowa's institutions of higher education and the unique role that UI plays. Communication efforts in the past have clearly failed when a Des Moines Register poll in November shows that fewer than one third of Iowans would oppose cutting state support to the universities."

In my op ed I strike a similar note with, "Today those multi-million-dollar assets called WSUI and KSUI might as well be silent for all they're doing to advance the university's mission of engagement with the state's citizens." I earlier urged that we "take the criticism head on; to accept the challenge to explain to the critics of the intellectual, academic, research life what the value of a university is, to its critics as well as its friends and graduates. Why is it our role to 'disturb all settled ideas'? Why are there more benefits than risks from a population engaged in critical thinking?" See, Nicholas Johnson, "Porn and Censorship in the Academy," February 14, 2010.

Tom Walz addresses, and is critical of, the University's corporatization: "UI has continued its journey toward full adoption of the for-profit corporate mode of operation. Central administration serves as the corporate management group. Deans and directors of academic units are addressed as department executive officers. Faculty and staff make up the non-management labor groups.

"Students remain consumers of education, but compete for attention and resources from the other products the university sells to corporations, governments and recreation and med care consumers. Scholarship tends to be measured in terms of big dollar research grants and contracts."

This is similar to a theme I wrote about last November in Nicholas Johnson, "Corporatizing the University of Iowa; If We're Going to Do It, Let's Do It Right," November 17, 2009.

Bruce Wheaton offers a creative approach different from, though consistent with, the rest of us. He questions the value of "growth" as a mission for a university, and says, "Despite the various standard three-part formulations of its mission, the university has one central obligation -- to fuel the imaginations of the individuals who inhabit it. Teaching, research and service are really only means to this unitary end -- not ends in themselves.

"A university so defined could be distinguished readily from any other large corporate entity. It would not be simply a large organization with rhetorically highly prized assets in its students and employees. Instead, the organization would become an asset of the scholars and students who justify its existence."

Thus, he not only touches on the corporatization of education, but ironically an element of successful institutional approaches, including those of corporations: the distinction between "ends" and "means," or governance. See, e.g., John Carver's "ends policies" discussed in Nicholas Johnson, "Board Governance: Theory and Practice," (2000-2001), and Nicholas Johnson, "An Open Letter to Regents on Governance," April 17, 2007.

Katherine Tachau's letter raises a fundamental issue underpinning the funding of higher education: to what extent should it be conceptualized as a "public good" (as K-12 education is conceptualized and paid for; that is, everyone benefits from mechanics who can read manuals and cashiers who can make change) or a "private good" (something that can increase the lifetime income of a college graduate -- as well as, one would hope, increase the graduate's "quality of life" in an intellectual and cultural sense)? It's an issue that simply must be addressed and resolved -- or at least develop a plurality of public and legislative opinion -- if the public funding of higher education is to be rationally addressed. Here again, this is an issue that I have often addressed in the past, e.g., Nicholas Johnson, "'Free' College Education," September 9, 2006.

Harold Hammond, in his letter, is largely just having fun with Interim Vice-President for Student Services Tom Rocklin's decision regarding the student Bijou Theater showing a 40-year-old porn film, seemingly suggesting that the basis for his concern rested on the fact that it was mere entertainment, rather than being addressed in an educational context. What then are we to make of the football program and Hancher's offerings, Hammond asks. My comments on that one are in "Porn and Censorship in the Academy," February 14, 2010.

In short, it seems to me that these op ed columns and letters demonstrate that there is a lot of fundamental questioning about higher education that independent minds can come up with, and a kind of basic consistency (although obviously not identity) in where their inquiry leads.
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* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source -- even if I have to embed it myself.
-- Nicholas Johnson
# # #

From SUI to ACT: Higher Ed's Crumbling Monopoly

January 31, 2010, 9:20 a.m.

Universities Yesterday and Tomorrow
For universities today, and more, see the bottom of this blog entry
(brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
There are probably thousands of reports on the challenges confronting higher education, their missions, their five-year plans. From my perspective each challenge has a solution.

But few academics address the worst case scenario: the disappearance of universities as we know them. That challenge also has a solution. Unfortunately, it also has powerful analogies.

• Try 40, not 5-year plans. Over 40 years ago, in an environment of libraries’ card catalogs, paper newspapers, and three TV networks, I predicted “Communications in the Year 2000” (ultimately a chapter in How to Talk Back to Your Television Set) would include “instantaneous, ubiquitous, no-cost access to all information.” Today it's here. We call it the Internet.

• The 99.99%-off sale. We’re used to January's 10% to 50%-off sales. But 99.9% off? The computational capacity you could buy for $1 million 40 years ago -- but would have been far too heavy to lift -- today's students now have delivered by UPS, carry in backpacks, and costs them $1000 (or less). The 99.9%-off sale. So what, you ask?

• Broadside blows. So companies, even entire industries, have disappeared or struggle against formerly unpredictable competition. All the rules have changed – and at an accelerating rate of change. That’s “so what.”

Ten years ago Facebook (300 million members), YouTube (20 hours of video uploaded each minute), Wikipedia (3 million articles; 161 language editions), and iPhone (3 billion downloaded applications) didn’t exist.

With 4.5 billion cell phones in over 200 countries, and smart phones’ Internet capabilities, cell phone networks are rapidly becoming the platform, the pathway to the new Internet. The cable TV and landline phone companies, and the Wi-Fi systems they feed, may feel the same kind of broadside blow out of nowhere from which the newspaper industry is now trying to recover.

Musicians and their fans no longer need “record companies,” film makers don’t need “studios,” journalists “newspapers,” or authors “publishers.” All can go directly to the Internet. Craig’s List is the new “classifieds.” Amazon the new Sears. Downloaded movies closed video rental stores.

Why do we think our near-$300 billion industry called higher education is immune to such telecommunications tsunamis?

Just as the online content of the New York Times is available for free, so is the online content of an undergraduate education. Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Princeton make courses available online for free. The near-250 million additional Web sites provide the rest of what students need.

Is the "college education" a student can get off the Internet "the same" or "as good as" what can be obtained by sitting in a college classroom or lecture hall for 1800 hours (120 credits times 15 weeks each)? Probably not. Though I would say, "it depends."

Faculty can inspire, excite, encourage and direct students who want to learn. And that makes a difference, often a big difference in an occasional student's life. But no one can "teach" someone else, particularly someone who is not all that enthusiastic about learning in the first place. "You can lead a horse to water . . .."

With "public" universities' tuition closing the gap with that of Ivy League colleges, it is not that unusual for the total cost of an undergraduate and graduate education to cost on the order of $200,000 or more (tuition is only a part of that total), whether the parents saved for it, pay for it, or the student borrows for it. (Of course, the cost is even greater if the opportunity cost -- what could have been earned in the marketplace during those four-to-eight years, but wasn't -- is factored in.)

Thus, even if the gains from sitting in that classroom (offset by the losses from binge drinking and other temptations and time wasters) exceeds the value of obtaining that education on one's own, is the incremental value worth the $200,000 or more?

And if the answer to that question is not immediately obvious, it leads us to the next question: Why, then, would anyone lay out that kind of money just to learn stuff?

The answer, of course, is that they would not. Not when you can learn stuff for free. So why are they paying; what are they getting for that money?

They are paying the money to obtain the certification that they are a "college graduate," as they go into an economy that rewards that certification with higher pay.

If that's the primary goal, why don't they go elsewhere to get the certification? Because accredited colleges and universities are the only institutions licensed to print those certificates. (Paying $200, a much lesser amount (another 99.9%-off sale?), for the printing of the fake driver's license necessary for the illegal consumption of alcohol near campus is one thing. But lying about one's "college graduate" certification, or obtaining and framing a counterfeit degree, tend to be viewed as a much more serious offense in the workplace.)

Higher education's hold on parents' and students' wallets comes from the monopoly those institutions hold on the granting of degrees, and the resulting "medallion value" those diplomas possess.

Do you see how fragile that monopoly can be in our digitized, globalized world that Tom Friedman tells us is now flat?

If newspapers and book companies are discovering that writers can go directly to the global market that is the Internet without passing through their editors, if "record companies" find that musicians can do the same (with either samples or whole tracks for free or for sale), if video rental stores are boarded up while their customers download movies, why do we think higher education will forever hold a monopoly on "college" certification?

And what if we didn't?

• In 1971 73% of college students said it was “essential or very important” to have a “meaningful philosophy of life.” Today 78% identify “wealth” as their goal, and “business” is the most popular major.

• Parents understandably wonder about the value of a college degree that may cost $200K or more.

• Firms that seek self-starting, creative knowledge workers recognize the value of the equivalent of a liberal arts education. They also know a diploma doesn’t even guarantee the basic math and language skills the firm needs in its employees -– and that those skills don’t require a diploma.

Business doesn’t want “majors;” it wants employees with those basic skills. Southwest Airlines says, “we hire for attitude and train for skills.” But as the executive of a local Fortune 500 told me, “We can’t even train employees for skills if they haven’t mastered the basics.”

Passing the GED exam is treated as a high school equivalency. Passing the GRE exam qualifies a student for graduate school.

What if those who could pass a standardized exam were recognized as even better than college graduates (because of the rigorous language and math components)? A local business person told me he’d hire them for “college graduate” positions in a New York minute. He wants to know what they can do, their willingness to work and sense of responsibility, and what time management and social skills they have -- not what grades they got or how many initials they're legally entitled to put after their names.

Educators are slow to change. Professors started lecturing 1000 years ago because there were no books. Now, notwithstanding books, we’re still lecturing to warm (if often inattentive) bodies in lecture halls.

We don’t have 1000 years this time. If the UI ever loses its monopoly on certification Marc Moen will be replacing four Pentacrest buildings with high-rise condos.

The certification process may remain in Iowa City, but be based on results of exams announced by ACT and Pearson, institutions with neither faculty nor students, certifying those qualified for employment as knowledge workers in a global economy.

If we ever transform what was once SUI into ACT, the certificate ACT awards to a University of Phoenix graduate will be the full equivalent of the diploma we give a UI graduate -- or the certificate a dedicated student obtains without assistance from either institution.

It couldn’t happen? I remember when no one else imagined a $1 million computer could ever sell for $1000 and become part of a global network.

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More . . .

Today's blog entry is deliberately kept short enough to make it an easy read.

But because there were a lot of other thoughts running through my mind while writing it, I thought I'd simply append some of them here, rather than embedding them above.

Jim Stroud. As a young kid, there are some of your parents' friends you connect with and really like. Jim Stroud -- faculty member, neighbor, and family friend -- was one of those for me. I thought he looked like Mark Twain. He may have actually been from Missouri, I don't know. He had the moustache, smoked a pipe, wore tweed coats, had a bit of a twang and a great sense of humor. He and Dad claimed to be Swedish cousins, though I don't think they ever really documented that. They both worked at writing amusing "laws." As a sample, one of Dad's was, "What else is there to scratch but the surface?" One of Jim's was, "I'd rather walk down one dry road than ten muddy roads." Maybe you had to be there. (Actually, he lived at the top of the hill that is now "Greenwood," and was then sometimes a muddy road.) Since they had geese up there, I assume they must have been the donors of my sister, Kate's, goose "Blimp."

I am literally a child of the University of Iowa: born it its then-new hospital on the west side of the River, part of the Iowa Child Welfare Research Clinic's two-, three-, and four-year-old groups (then at 9 East Market Street), and a student at (and ultimately graduate of) the College of Education's "University Elementary and High School" (Class of 1952), now simply "North Hall."

As such, we were the guinea pigs for a great variety of educational testing and doctoral dissertations. And one of those experiments was Jim Stroud's, and the world's, very early efforts at "speed reading."

As he traveled around the State of Iowa, trying to sell school districts on the idea of trying it, he was often confronted with the argument, "But if they read that fast they won't learn and remember the material." (Truth is, you often learn and remember it better.) Jim's response was, "Well, I figure if it takes 'em two hours to read their homework assignment now, and they don't understand it, and I can show 'em how they can read it in 45 minutes, and they still don't understand it, well, shucks, I've done 'em a favor."

That's kind of my reaction to the opposition to kids studying on their own from an organized curriculum available off the Internet at no cost to themselves. "Well, I figure if it takes 'em five years in college to get a four-year degree for $200,000 now, and they don't learn all that much in the process, and I can show 'em how they can get the equivalent "college" certificate by studying on the Internet, for free, and they still don't learn all that much, well, shucks, I've done 'em a $200,000 favor."

Certificates. There's an enormous amont of online education, training and certification going on now -- and that's before taking into account the increasing number of students (both on and off campuses) who are picking up academic credit for online courses from their own institution or others. The military has online courses and training, including college credits. Microsoft offers a number of certification programs online, qualifying those who "pass" with levels of expertise in various computer science specialties. Human subjects researchers are now required by the NIH to take an online training program regarding human subjects research ethics before receiving grants.

In fact, even teachers get "certification" as well as, or without the need for, formal "college" credits:

"West High journalism teacher Sara Whittaker has achieved Certified Journalism Educator status from the Journalism Education Association. To earn the certification, a teacher must earn college credit in news reporting and writing, communications law and publications advising, or pass an examination that demonstrates their proficiency in those areas." "Teacher Earns Certification," Iowa City Press-Citizen, February 1, 2010.

How can educators possibly argue that they can demonstrate proof of skills and professional advancement through certification without formal classes, but it is somehow inappropriate for students to do so?

Indeed, the University of Iowa is already offering online courses, instruction, training and certification, e.g., "UI Learning and Development/E-Learning." That's not really an answer to the potential "broadside blow" if higher education loses its certification monopoly, but it is an illustration of the fact that -- like the newspapers that gave away their content online and then came to regret it -- universities are certainly capable of offering education without buildings.

A couple days ago I met a woman, married with four kids, probably in her late thirties, who never finished college, but still has dreams of someday attending law school. Given the childhood she endured, no one could have predicted the success she has achieved in her chosen line of work. She has over the years put herself through every relevant certification program that relates to her job, and now has more initials after her name than your average Nobel Prize winner. I have absolutely no doubt that if a free, online route to certificate of "college equivalency" and "law degree" were available to her she would pursue them. And I suspect that, as extraordinary as she is, there are probably more like her out there, and that we are all poorer as a nation for not making that path possible for them.

The legal profession's "certification" approach. Ironically, the ability to practice law -- the study of which in universities is a graduate program on top of an earned undergraduate degree -- is controlled with a certification process in many ways unrelated to academic institutions: the "bar examination."

Admittedly, most lawyers attend, and graduate from, law schools before taking a bar exam. But there are still states and circumstances where that is not required. (I have not independently researched this, but this Web page cites as its source "Comprehensive Guide to Bar Admission Requirements 2004," published by the National Conference of Bar Examiners and American Bar Association Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar.)

And, like most professions, there is a kind of ongoing certification process called "continuing legal education" that requires practicing lawyers to earn a minimum number of "CLE credits" each year to maintain their "active" status and continue to practice law. Increasingly, these programs are offered online. (Although my bar membership can be maintained as "inactive status" because I'm not actually practicing law and taking clients, I "sat in" -- meaning, "in" front of my computer screen -- this past week, for an hour-long, online exploration of the use of trademarks on the Internet that would have provided me CLE credits had I needed them. It was a "class" offered, not incidentally, by a law firm not a law school.)

If we can select those who will be our nation's lawyers with online training, and a certification process unrelated to the academy as such, it's unclear why it would be impossible to do the equivalent for a basic college "certificate."

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* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source, even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson
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