Dear Commons Community,

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders will leave her post as press secretary at the end of the month, President Donald Trump announced yesterday.  She had lost all credibility with the White House press corps but is one of Trump’s closest and most trusted White House aides and one of the few remaining who worked on his campaign.  As reported by the Associated Press:

“Trump described Sanders as a “warrior”.  Sanders, appearing emotional, said serving Trump has been “the honor of a lifetime” and pledged to remain one of his “most outspoken and loyal supporters.”

Sanders, who is married and has three young children, later told reporters she wanted to spend more time with her family, but did not rule out running for public office.

“I learned a long time ago never to rule anything out,” said Sanders, 36. She was the first working mother and just the third woman to be named White House press secretary.

Under her roughly two-year tenure as chief spokeswoman for the White House, daily televised briefings led by the press secretary became a relic of the past after Sanders repeatedly sparred with reporters who aggressively questioned her about administration policy, the investigation into possible coordination between Trump’s campaign and Russia or any number of controversies involving the White House.

Sanders has not held a formal briefing in more than three months – since March 11— and said she does not regret scaling them back. Instead, reporters were left to catch her and other administration officials on the White House driveway after their interviews with Fox News Channel and other networks.

Trump also has made it a habit to regularly answer reporters’ questions in a variety of settings, most notably on the South Lawn before boarding the Marine One helicopter. Sanders often sought to justify the lack of formal briefings by saying they were unnecessary when journalists could hear from Trump directly.

Behind the scenes, Sanders worked to develop relationships with reporters, earning the respect and trust of many of those on the beat.

Still, her credibility had come under question after she succeeded Sean Spicer, Trump’s first press secretary, in mid-2017 in the high-profile role.

The Russia report released by special counsel Robert Mueller in April revealed that Sanders admitted to investigators that she had made an unfounded claim about “countless” FBI agents reaching out to express support for Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey in May 2017.

Sanders characterized the comment as a “slip of the tongue” uttered in the “heat of the moment.”

…

Sanders told reporters yesterday that she had informed Trump earlier in the day of her decision to step down. Her staff learned the news shortly before Trump tweeted, “After 3 1/2 years, our wonderful Sarah Huckabee Sanders will be leaving the White House at the end of the month and going home to the Great State of Arkansas.”

Trump added that “she would be fantastic” as Arkansas governor. Sanders said she’s had people “begging” her to run for governor for more than a year.

Her father is former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a two-time GOP presidential candidate. She managed his second White House bid.

Asa Hutchinson, the current Arkansas governor, was re-elected in 2018 and is limited to two terms. The seat will become open in 2022.

Sanders said she hasn’t discussed possible replacements with Trump. She said she saw no reason to delay informing the president once she had made her decision, saying her departure should give Trump time to put someone else in place before the 2020 presidential campaign heats up.”

Good luck and good riddance to a another Trump twister of truth.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Various media are reporting that Senior White House aide Kellyanne Conway should be removed from federal service for repeatedly violating a law that prohibits government employees from engaging in political campaigns, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel said this morning.

The independent federal agency ― which is different from the Justice Department office once operated by Robert Mueller ― sent a report to President Donald Trump this morning outlining numerous occasions in which Conway violated the Hatch Act by disparaging Democratic presidential candidates while speaking in her official capacity on TV and in social media.

“Like with other presidential appointees, the President has the authority to discipline Ms. Conway for violating the Hatch Act,” the OSC said a statement. “Given that Ms. Conway is a repeat offender and has shown disregard for the law, OSC recommends that she be removed from federal service.”

The White House quickly fired back at the OSC’s recommendation, accusing the agency of taking “unprecedented actions” that violate Conway’s “constitutional rights” and attempting to “weaponize” the Hatch Act.

“Its decisions seem to be influenced by media pressure and liberal organizations ― and perhaps OSC should be mindful of its own mandate to act in fair, impartial, non-political manner,” White House deputy press secretary Steven Groves said in a statement.

Another large snake caught in Trump’s swamp.

Tony

Read: Full OSC Report recommending Kellyanne Conway removal from White House post

Dear Commons Community,

A colleague of mine, Bob Ubell examined the  “largely unacknowledged but inevitable consolidation” in the adaptive learning industry in an opinion piece for Inside Higher Education.  Above is a brief box score of adaptive learning companies (on the left) and their acquirers (on the right).  The simplest definition of adaptive learning (also referred to as personalized learning)  is the delivery of custom learning experiences that address the unique needs of an individual through just-in-time feedback, pathways, and resources rather than providing a one-size-fits-all learning experience.

Here is an excerpt from Bob’s piece:

“Why is the adaptive industry house cleaning now, sweeping up some early, promising start-ups?

“Companies like Knewton and others went straight into black-box algorithms, assuming mastery of what learning data actually means and how students learn,” observed Hill in an email message. “Their customers were really venture capitalists, not academic programs with real teachers and students.”

The biggest lesson is that inventing whiz-bang software is not nearly enough. To succeed, vendors must assemble an adaptive Rubik’s cube, snapping four essentials securely in place. The central one, of course, is brilliantly crafted technology, coupled with a deep reservoir of high-quality content, integrated with shrewd assessment tools, embedded with skilled teacher training at each site — all at scale to secure market share, sustainability, profits and plugged-in implementation at every campus. Not trivial.

While some were good at this or that, few pulled it all together. The biggest handicap for many is their thin content libraries. In his prescient insight, Bill Gates wrote in his famous 1996 essay, “Content Is King,” “Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the internet.”

One thing start-ups didn’t need was arrogance, especially trumpeting extravagant claims. In 2013, five years after Jose Ferreira launched Knewton, he boasted in Time that there will be only one company in the world capable of succeeding at adaptive learning. “I think it’s going to be us because we’re so far ahead now.”

None achieved significant scale, except McGraw-Hill’s ALEKS, a math and chemistry tutoring system, and its sister product, SmartBook. ALEKS reports 4.5 million unique users in K-12 and higher ed courses. Since 2010, it has generated 8.7 billion interactions. In humanities, social sciences, science and business, the company claims 11.8 billion interactions since 2009. McGraw-Hill offers more than 800 titles for adaptive users.

It turns out that adaptive systems are neither the best thing since sliced bread nor half-baked. Like much of ed tech, adaptive research results can be ambiguous, with some saying the software is marginally better than classroom instruction, while others report impressive results.

Alfred Essa, vice president of analytics and data science at Macmillan, says that “in some domains, well-designed adaptive tutors are on a par with human tutors.” A truly remarkable feat. Until recently, Essa was head of research at McGraw-Hill.

The ironic denouement is that an old-line publisher, founded at the end of the 19th century, more than 130 years ago, outwitted high-tech upstarts, countering modern corporate trends in which whiz kids leave the old guard in the digital dust. Curiously, Knewton, an adaptive falling star, is now in the hands of Wiley, another venerable publisher, founded more than 200 years ago in 1807.”

Good information here for those who want to keep up with the dynamic world of instructional technology.

Tony

Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden in Iowa

Dear Commons Community,

President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden  ripped into each other yesterday as unfit to lead the country as they both traveled through the state of Iowa, giving voters a preview of what a general election matchup between the two men might look like.  As reported by The New York Times:

“In the most ferocious day of attacks in the six-month-old presidential campaign, Mr. Trump resorted to taunts and name-calling over several hours, saying Mr. Biden was “a loser,” “a sleepy guy” and “the weakest mentally,” and claiming that “people don’t respect him.” Mr. Biden took a different tack, laying out ways Mr. Trump was “an existential threat” to the country, its international standing and its values.

Mr. Biden, who leads in early polls for the Democratic presidential nomination, also brought up subjects he had previously avoided with reporters, such as Mr. Trump siding with the North Korean state media’s insults on Mr. Biden’s I.Q.

”He embraces dictators like Kim Jong-un, who’s a damn murderer and a thug?” Mr. Biden said at his second event of the day, in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. “The one thing they agree on: Joe Biden, he shouldn’t be president.”

The hostile exchanges, which went back and forth across multiple Iowa campaign stops, were the clearest evidence yet that the two men see political advantages in waging a battle against one another at this early stage of the race.

Mr. Biden has largely ignored his 22 Democratic rivals while building his campaign around the urgent need to oust Mr. Trump. Rather than get drawn into squabbles with more liberal candidates or lesser-known ones, he is trying to present himself as presidential material and the most electable Democrat against Mr. Trump — particularly in swing states like Iowa, where the president trounced Hillary Clinton in 2016 after Barack Obama carried the state in 2008 and 2012.

Mr. Trump, mindful of polling that shows him trailing Mr. Biden in several key states, has targeted him with ridicule lately, far more than he has the other Democratic candidates. While the 2020 general election campaign is still a year away, Mr. Trump is repurposing some of his most effective ad hominem attacks from the last election.

In his remarks at an ethanol plant in Council Bluffs, for instance, Mr. Trump claimed that Mr. Biden’s only message was to criticize him, and then brought up his oft-repeated insult for his 2016 opponent, Mrs. Clinton.

“That reminds me of Crooked Hillary,” Mr. Trump said, earning chuckles from the audience. “She did the same thing. And then when it came time to vote, they all said, ‘You know, she doesn’t like Trump very much, but what does she stand for?’ Same thing is happening with Sleepy Joe.”

While they ave attacked each other from a distance, their appearances in the same state on Tuesday seemed primed to intensify the hostility. Mr. Biden wasted no time trying to frame the debate, releasing excerpts at 6 a.m. Tuesday from the remarks he had prepared to deliver at a speech in Davenport in the evening.

Throughout the day, Mr. Biden laced into Mr. Trump over a range of policy issues, such as pursuing an “erratic war on trade” and his approach to tariff negotiations, as farmers — including in this heavily agricultural state — have struggled.

Prior to leaving for Iowa, President Trump told reporters that he would prefer to run against former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020.CreditCreditDoug Mills/The New York Times

But the sharpest part of Mr. Biden’s remarks in Davenport was his argument that, while the nation “can overcome four years of this presidency,” Mr. Trump would pose an existential threat to “the character of this nation” if he were re-elected and served another term.

He portrayed Mr. Trump’s words and actions as antithetical to the nation’s “core values — what we stand for, who we are, what we believe in,” citing the president’s child separation policy at the southern border and referencing his remark that there were “very fine people on both sides” of the white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Va.

Mr. Biden also argued that Mr. Trump was a threat to “our standing in the world,” noting that the president has attacked NATO while embracing President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and saying he had shown poor character by using “crude language” and “embarrassing behavior that is burrowing deep into our culture.” And he said Mr. Trump was undermining American democracy by criticizing law enforcement agencies, defying the authority of Congress and using phrases like “enemy of the people” to describe a free press.

“In 2020, we not only have to repudiate Donald Trump’s policies and values — we have to clearly and fully reject, for our own safety’s sake, his view of the presidency,” Mr. Biden said. “Quote: ‘I have complete power.’ No you don’t, Donald Trump.”

“‘Only I can fix it.’ Fix yourself first,” Mr. Biden said as the crowd enthusiastically drowned him out.

The early excerpts from Mr. Biden’s remarks received prominent attention in the news media on Tuesday morning. Mr. Trump, as he departed the Oval Office, told reporters that he thought Mr. Biden was “a loser” and questioned his mental fitness.

“I’d rather run against, I think, Biden than anybody,” he said. “I think he’s the weakest mentally, and I like running against people that are weak mentally. I think Joe is the weakest up here. The other ones have much more energy.”

After arriving in Council Bluffs, Mr. Trump hinted that he was waiting until his kickoff rally on June 18 in Orlando for his official “political season” to begin. But he couldn’t help but take glancing blows at Mr. Biden in between touting the low unemployment rate and the boom in blue-collar jobs. “He was someplace in Iowa today and he said my name so many times that people couldn’t stand it anymore,” Mr. Trump said. “‘No, don’t keep saying it.’ Sleepy guy.”

Later, Mr. Trump noted that America “would never be treated with respect” under Mr. Biden’s leadership, “because people don’t respect him.”

The attacks by Mr. Trump were, in one way, a boost for Mr. Biden after days of Democratic criticism over his shifting stances on federal funding for abortion. On Tuesday, there was wall-to-wall cable news coverage of the Trump-Biden feud, not of abortion.

Mr. Biden, responding to reporters’ questions in Iowa after Mr. Trump’s attacks, laughed off the president’s remarks about his stamina and mental fitness, and repeated his past statements that voters have a right to question all of the candidates’ ages.

“Look at him and look at me and answer the question,” Mr. Biden said, when one reporter raised those comments. “It’s self-evident, you know it’s a ridiculous assertion on his part.”

Pressed specifically on Mr. Trump’s remark that Mr. Biden is “weak mentally,” the former vice president laughed.

“I’m not going to stoop down to where he is,” he said.

Mr. Biden’s face-off against Mr. Trump on Tuesday could have downsides, some Democratic strategists cautioned.

“The Biden campaign clearly seems to relish sparring with Trump. In their minds, they believe it elevates him above the rest of the Democratic field,” said Brian Fallon, who served as press secretary for Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 campaign. “The potential downside is that, as Trump road tests different attacks on Biden, it may help the Democratic primary electorate better visualize potential vulnerabilities that Biden would have in a general election.”

Mr. Fallon said that if any of those attacks — from his supposed lack of energy to his support for the 1994 crime bill — changed voter perceptions, “that could erode the aura of electability that is right now Biden’s strongest asset.”

On Tuesday night, Mr. Trump skipped over Mr. Biden and focused on painting top Democrats as socialists. In a red-meat speech to a red-cap-wearing crowd of 700 Iowa Republicans in West Des Moines, Mr. Trump argued, without evidence, that the United States could tumble into a state of decline like Venezuela under the wrong leadership. He notably name-checked Senator Bernie Sanders, who is set to give a speech on democratic socialism on Wednesday.

“More than 100 Democrats have signed up for the Bernie Sanders government takeover of health care,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Sanders’s “Medicare for all” plan. “We have 180 million Americans having great private health care. That would all be taken away. Democrats also support the $100 trillion Green New Deal, how about that beauty.” Making an oblique reference to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Mr. Trump said the bill was “made up by a young woman, who is, well, let’s see how she works out.”

Public and private polls that show Mr. Trump trailing Mr. Biden in critical states have contributed to his preoccupation with Mr. Biden, whom the president has told aides to describe as old and feeble (Mr. Biden is 76; Mr. Trump will turn 73 this week).

Up to this point, Mr. Biden has largely resisted responding to Mr. Trump’s individual broadsides, insisting repeatedly that he wants to avoid a “mud-wrestling match” with the president and often ignoring shouted questions from reporters about Mr. Trump’s remarks.

But that hardly means Mr. Biden avoids discussing Mr. Trump. He is centering his campaign squarely on defeating the president, calling him an “aberration.” It is a point of emphasis sharply at odds with several of his Democratic opponents, who believe Trumpism has redefined the Republican Party and say the country needs bigger, structural change that goes beyond defeating one man.

At every turn, Mr. Biden is seeking to keep the focus on a possible general election matchup between himself and Mr. Trump. He has recently visited Pennsylvania and Ohio, important general election swing states, arguing that he is able to connect in the industrial Midwest and torching Mr. Trump’s leadership approach.”

If Biden gets the Democratic presidential nomination, the barbs and verbal confrontations by the two candidates will be blistering.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Hundreds of thousands of protesters blocked entry to Hong Kong’s government headquarters yesterday delaying a legislative session on a proposed extradition bill that has heightened fears over greater Chinese control and erosion of civil liberties in this semiautonomous territory.   Teachers unions have also called on their members to strike and cancel classes until the extradition issue is resolved. As reported by the Associated Press:

“The overwhelmingly young crowd overflowed onto a major downtown road as they overturned barriers and tussled with police outside the building that also houses the chambers where the legislature was to discuss the bill, which would allow criminal suspects in Hong Kong to be sent for trial in mainland China.

A curt government statement said the session scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. would be “changed to a later time.” An earlier statement said staff members were advised not to go to work and those already on the premises were told to “stay at their working place until further notice.”

The delay appeared to be at least a temporary victory for the bill’s opponents, whose protests have prompted Hong Kong’s biggest political crisis since pro-democracy demonstrations closed down parts of downtown for more than three months in 2014. Some businesses closed for the day, and labor strikes and class boycotts were called.

The protests are a challenge to China’s ruling Communist Party and President Xi Jinping, who has in the past said he would not tolerate Hong Kong being used as a base to challenge the party’s authority. But they are also giving vent to young Hong Kongers alienated by a political process dominated by the territory’s economic elite.

Protesters said they hoped the blockade would persuade Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s administration to shelve the proposed amendments to the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance and the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Ordinance.

“We want the government to just set the legislation aside and not bring it back,” said a protester who gave only his first name, Marco, to avoid possible repercussions from authorities.

The protest was a watershed moment for Hong Kong’s young generation, who face difficult job prospects and skyrocketing housing prices, said another protester, who gave her name as King, also out of fear of repercussions.

“We have to stand up for our rights or they will be taken away,” she said.

Dressed in black T-shirts and jeans, many protesters appeared undaunted by demands to disperse from police who briefly used pepper spray and detained dozens overnight Tuesday. They also appeared mindful of Beijing’s growing use of electronic surveillance such as facial recognition technology to build dossiers on those it considers politically unreliable, with many donning surgical or anti-pollution masks to hide their features, as well as to safeguard against tear gas.

Such protests are never tolerated in mainland China, and Hong Kong residents can face travel bans and other repercussions if they cross the border.

Under its “one country, two systems” framework, Hong Kong was supposed to be guaranteed the right to retain its own social, legal and political systems for 50 years following its handover from British rule in 1997. However, China’s ruling Communist Party has been seen as increasingly reneging on that agreement by forcing through unpopular legal changes.

The government pushed ahead with plans to present the amendments to the legislature on Wednesday despite a weekend protest by hundreds of thousands of people that was the territory’s largest political demonstration in more than a decade.

A crowd began gathering outside the Legislative Council on last night, and the U.S. Consulate warned people to avoid the area, exercise caution and keep a low profile.

The legislation has become a lightning rod for concerns about Beijing’s increasing control over the semi-autonomous territory.

Lam has consistently defended the legislation as necessary to close legal loopholes with other countries and territories. A vote is scheduled on June 20.

Sunday’s protest was widely seen as reflecting growing apprehension about relations with the Communist Party-ruled mainland, where Xi has said he has zero tolerance for those demanding greater self-rule for Hong Kong.

Critics believe the extradition legislation would put Hong Kong residents at risk of being entrapped in China’s judicial system, in which opponents of Communist Party rule have been charged with economic crimes or ill-defined national security offenses, and would not be guaranteed free trials.

Lam, who canceled her regular question and answer session on Wednesday, said the government has considered concerns from the private sector and altered the bill to improve human rights safeguards. She said without the changes, Hong Kong would risk becoming a haven for fugitives.

She emphasized that extradition cases would be decided by Hong Kong courts.

Opponents of the proposed extradition amendments say the changes would significantly compromise Hong Kong’s legal independence, long viewed as one of the crucial differences between the territory and mainland China.

Hong Kong currently limits extraditions to jurisdictions with which it has existing agreements and to others on an individual basis. China has been excluded from those agreements because of concerns over its judicial independence and human rights record.

Those in Hong Kong who anger China’s central government have come under greater pressure since Xi came to power in 2012.

The detention of several Hong Kong booksellers in late 2015 intensified worries about the erosion of Hong Kong’s rule of law. The booksellers vanished before resurfacing in police custody in mainland China. Among them, Swedish citizen Gui Minhai is being investigated on charges of leaking state secrets after he sold gossipy books about Chinese leaders.”

This is a volatile situation that will be closely watched by world news organizations. The protesters in particular appear organized and determined to prevent this bill from being enacted.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Michelle Goldberg in her column today reviews Donald Trump’s tariff deal with Mexico that was announced last Friday.  Entitled Congratulations on Fixing the Border, Mr. President! Should we pretend that Donald Trump made a real deal with Mexico?, Goldberg exposes the phony theater that Trump provided on a deal that was basically made months ago.  Here is an excerpt:

“Which brings us to Trump’s recent deal — or “deal” — with Mexico. Once again, Trump made a series of unhinged threats against another country, leading to high-stakes diplomacy, and the announcement of a breakthrough. Once again, chest-beating conservatives jeered at Democrats for refusing to concede that Trump’s belligerence had borne fruit. Once again, when the details were revealed, it became obvious that Trump had accomplished very little of any substance. And once again, Trump has created a situation where it’s hazardous for his opponents to say too much about his incompetence.

On Friday, as the clock ticked down to Trump’s threatened imposition of 5 percent tariffs on Mexican goods, the two countries announced a last-minute deal. The U.S. would hold off on imposing the levies, and Mexico would take action to deter Central American migrants. For a moment, it looked as if Trump had cowed America’s neighbor with his madman foreign policy.

But giving Trump the benefit of the doubt is almost always a mistake. The president had claimed, using the floridly Stalinesque language we’ve all had to become accustomed to, that Mexico had agreed to “IMMEDIATELY BEGIN BUYING LARGE QUANTITIES OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCT FROM OUR GREAT PATRIOT FARMERS!” This appears to be untrue. In fact, as The New York Times reported on Saturday, the deal consisted “largely of actions that Mexico had already promised to take in prior discussions with the United States.”

Months ago, Mexico consented to expanding a program in which migrants seeking asylum in the United States wait in Mexico while their claims are adjudicated, and to deploying more of its national guard to block migrants. It looks as if negotiators of the deal made on Friday simply ramped up the scale of these agreements to give Trump a face-saving way to back down from tariffs that threatened the American economy as well as the Mexican one.

As it became clear — at least to those outside the Fox News bubble — how little Trump had achieved, he grew even more splutteringly incoherent than usual. “Mexico was not being cooperative on the Border in things we had, or didn’t have,” until the deal, he wrote in one tweet. Trump went on to claim that Mexico had made further, secret concessions that would be revealed at a later date, which Mexico’s foreign minister denied. (Some have reported that Trump was referring to a potential regional pact on asylum that would include Central and South American countries and the United Nations, which Mexico said it could be open to discussing.)

All this was just the latest demonstration that, personal branding to the contrary, the president is terrible at making deals. What he’s good at is what might be called deal theater — made-for-TV melodramas with self-generated crises, over-the-top demands, and suspenseful arbitrary deadlines. The point of these exercises isn’t to solve a problem, but to pacify Trump with the illusion that he is winning so that he doesn’t feel the need to break anything.

The question for everyone else is whether to play along, because Trump is less dangerous if he thinks Mexico has submitted. Until now, the president has regularly stoked his nativist base by treating the humanitarian emergency at the border as a security threat. Now he has an interest in exaggerating the degree to which the problem has been solved, just as he now plays down North Korea’s nuclear capabilities rather than admit his own failure.

Facing widespread mockery for his Potemkin deal, Trump tweeted on Monday that if Mexico’s legislature fails to enact the provisions of its purported secret agreement with the U.S., the tariffs will go into effect. There’s an implicit threat here: Don’t provoke him. If he doesn’t get the headlines he wants, there’s no telling what he might do.”

Goldberg has Trump’s number!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

In all but 17 states, online education is more of an export than an import. That’s a missed opportunity for policy makers to champion things like access and affordability according to Goldie Blumenstyk, a writer for The Chronicle of Higher Education.  She makes her point in a brief article based on a presentation at the Eduventures Summit last week that showed how states stack up in their population of online students. The presentation compared the number of residents enrolled in online programs at out-of-state institutions to the number enrolled online in-state on a color-coded state map (above) of “Winners and Losers” in online education.  As she described:

“The map, along with Garrett’s commentary, highlighted for me some overlooked opportunities. Many states are not taking concerted steps to use online education to promote the kinds of priorities that state leaders have historically championed, such as affordability, access, or meeting the needs of local employers.

Garrett, the chief research officer at Eduventures, an advisory and research organization, had been talking about trends in distance education, including the dominant role now being played by institutions like Southern New Hampshire University (which I wrote about last year) and other online mega-universities. Then he showed that slide on how states stack up in their population of online students. It compared the number of residents enrolled in online programs at out-of-state institutions to the number enrolled online in-state.

In all but 17 states, the trend is clear: The out-of-state option is winning, even though surveys, including one released last week by Learning House and Aslanian Market Research, show that online students prefer colleges within 50 miles of where they live. Notably, the out-of-state trend was less prevalent in states with a high-profile option, like New Hampshire (SNHU), Arizona (Arizona State University), and Florida (the Universities of Central Florida and Florida)…

…But as Garrett noted, when mega-universities like SNHU and Western Governors University, both nonprofit institutions, are drawing away so many students, and others, like the University of Massachusetts, are looking to grab their own share of the pie, that should be “a wake-up call to states” to start thinking strategically about using online education to further their needs and goals.

Yes, I recognize that in several states, WGU is formally part of a state strategy. Maybe it’s because I started out at The Chronicle covering state policy, but Garrett’s argument really hit home for me.

Not that this is easy. Earlier this decade the University of South Carolina system announced a big push in online education with its Palmetto College. Yet I noticed on Garrett’s map that South Carolina is still a big exporter of online students. At the summit, Garrett highlighted Connecticut as one state where policy makers had turned their focus to an online-education strategy. Proposals like common course-numbering and new programs in fields now in demand among employers are among the options under consideration.

Still in most states, as Garrett said, policy makers are acting “as if it’s 1990” when looking at online education as a policy tool.

That’s a lost opportunity. Right now, the only enrollment momentum in higher education is occurring online; it’s growing while overall enrollment is falling. And state leaders who ignore this trend will forgo a moment to have an impact.”

Ms. Blumenstyk provides important insight for higher education policymakers to consider especially if they are planning expansions of online education.  It is increasingly a critical part of the solution for expanding access to students.

Tony

Diane Auer Jones

Dear Commons Community,

Ten years ago Diane Auer Jones resigned as an assistant secretary for postsecondary education in the George W. Bush administration, after protesting the department’s treatment of an accreditor that oversaw religiously affiliated, liberal-arts colleges. Department officials saw accountability in their crackdown; Ms. Jones saw bias against a gatekeeper for nontraditional college degrees.

Now, as the chief architect of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s higher education agenda, Ms. Jones is leading the charge to overhaul the accreditation system, and, to critics, revive the fortunes of for-profit organizations that operate low-quality education programs that have a track record of shortchanging students and taxpayers.  As reported in The New York Times:

“The fact that Ms. Jones went on to work for some of those institutions after she resigned has made her perhaps the most controversial appointee at the Education Department.

“President Trump’s Department of Education is stacked with former for-profit executives whose companies got rich by ripping students off,” said Charisma L. Troiano, the press secretary for Democracy Forward, a government watchdog organization that has accused Ms. Jones of several conflicts of interest. “For decades, Diane Auer Jones has advocated for this predatory industry.”

Ms. Jones has proposed a significant rewrite of rules that would loosen the federal government’s reins on accreditors, largely invisible but critical watchdogs whose stamp of approval serves as an education institution’s lifeline to millions of dollars in financial aid.

The rules would make it easier for accreditors to be recognized by the Education Department to oversee institutions, and afford them more flexibility in how they manage programs. They would also relax departmental standards for measuring accreditors’ performance, and potentially allow them to take years to penalize troubled schools. The rules would strengthen the role that accreditors have in preventing abrupt school closures, and extend federal funding to troubled schools longer to allow students to make other plans.

The new regulations are expected to be published as early as this week for public comment.

The rules would deliver on Ms. DeVos’s promise to deregulate higher education to foster innovation and competition among institutions, particularly for-profit colleges and career-education programs, that serve a vast and diverse population.

For Ms. Jones, they also reflect unfinished business. After she left the department, she joined the board of the American Academy for Liberal Education, the religious-school accreditor that prompted her resignation, where she railed against the Education Department’s accreditation process.

In the Trump administration, she has found exoneration. When the accreditation rule-making session ended, with negotiators reaching a rare consensus, in April she popped champagne in the negotiating room. She trumpeted that the rules cut down on “bureaucratic minutiae that distracts institutions from students.”

Consumer protection advocates see the rules as part of a larger plan to allow Ms. Jones’s allies in the for-profit industry to proliferate and operate with few guardrails. Some of the proposals reflect wish lists that for-profit and career schools have lobbied for in Congress. They throw a safety net to accreditors and programs that have struggled to meet departmental standards.

“The proposed regulations cut any serious oversight of colleges off at the knees,” said Clare McCann, the deputy director for federal policy at New America, a policy research group. “Bottom-feeder colleges will be able to keep enrolling students and pulling in taxpayer dollars for years, and it will be nearly impossible for the Education Department to take action against failing accreditors.”

Some higher education experts have been supportive but cautious. Terry Hartle, a vice president at the American Council on Education, an association representing more than 1,700 colleges and universities and related organizations, said the accreditation rules were “important, incremental movements” that have been long desired by a range of institutions. He served on the committee of department-appointed negotiators, including department officials and consumer protection and higher education representatives, and said the rules would allow high-quality institutions to experiment in new ways.

Mr. Hartle, who has known Ms. Jones for more than a decade, said he believed allegations that the rules were designed to benefit flailing for-profits was an “easy answer.” “Diane is extremely knowledgeable and she’s always been a professional,” he said.

What opponents and proponents can agree on is that none of the changes are as contentious as Ms. Jones herself.

As principal deputy under secretary at the Education Department, Ms. Jones is seen as the mastermind behind Ms. DeVos’s most criticized decisions, including the rollback of two major Obama-era regulationsthat sought to protect students from predatory practices by for-profit institutions.

She also recommended the reinstatement of a scandal-plagued accreditor, Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, known as A.C.I.C.S., which the Obama administration sought to banish after the collapse of two for-profit chains, ITT Technical Institute and Corinthian Colleges, which were under its supervision.

The decision prompted Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, to call Ms. Jones a “former for-profit college lackey.”

In an interview, Ms. Jones rejected such characterizations and said she took her cues from Ms. DeVos.

“When you have a bold leader, that emboldens you to do the right thing,” she said, “even when it means bad press, even when it means an ugly tweet.”

Although her ethics forms have been cleared, Ms. Jones has frustrated advocates and Democrats by repeatedly rejecting their calls to recuse herself from policymaking that could benefit her former employers.

In addition to serving on the board of the American Academy for Liberal Education, she was also an executive at Career Education Corporation — where she lobbied against the regulations she is seeking to revise. The company is one of the largest for-profit operators in the nation and settled multistate, yearslong investigationsover accusations that it misled students with inflated job-placement rates. The majority of the company’s campuses were accredited by the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools.

Ms. Jones said she is not concerned with making the company money. She was the one who reported the improprieties found at its schools to the schools’ accreditor and the Education Department, she said. The corporation’s financial records show it lost millions during her tenure.

Ms. Jones’s recommendation to reinstate the accrediting council, which is now struggling financially, is under investigation by the Education Department’s inspector general. This week, students from Virginia College, a chain of for-profit schools, sued Ms. DeVos saying that the reinstatement led to their colleges’ demise.

She denies allegations that there was anything nefarious behind the decision to reinstate the accrediting council, which was prompted by a judge ordering the department to review the Obama administration’s decision to banish the accreditor.

Ms. Jones answered bluntly when asked why she refused to recuse herself from the decision to avoid perceived conflicts: “It was my job. There are only a few of us at the department who know accreditation as well as I do.”

Ms. Jones epitomizes the education-industrial complex that allows unscrupulous individuals to gravitate to major policy positions that benefit previous employers and in this case, for-profit colleges.

Tony

Alice Goffman

Dear Commons Community,

Alice Goffman is an assistant professor of sociology at the U. of Wisconsin at Madison who was denied tenure this past semester even though she wrote one on the most widely read sociology books, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City.   Her account of young black men caught up in the criminal-justice system became entangled in ethical controversies.  James Raymo, chair of the sociology department, would only comment that the department did not recommend Goffman for promotion to associate professor with tenure. Goffman, he said, did not appeal. Professors in her situation can continue at the university for one year, and she remains at Wisconsin.  As reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

“The decision is a low point in the seesaw trajectory that has turned the Goffman into a symbol of some of the thorniest dilemmas of academic life. Should privileged, white outsiders tell the stories of poor minority communities? Can scholars guard research subjects’ privacy while satisfying the growing demand for data transparency? Should students be empowered to block the hiring of scholars whose work they abhor?

Goffman entered sociology with heightened expectations. Her father, Erving Goffman, was one of the defining sociologists of the 20th century. The influential urban ethnographers Elijah Anderson and Mitchell Duneier nurtured her rise as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania and later as a doctoral student at Princeton.

Goffman’s On the Run, (University of Chicago Press, 2014) rested on six years of immersive fieldwork in Philadelphia. Journalists and scholars acclaimed it as a classic. A paperback edition, issued by Picador, sold about 30,000 copies, according to the publisher. Goffman’s TED talk has been viewed nearly two million times.

But that fame made Goffman’s work the target of intense scrutiny. Legal scholars questioned whether she had embellished parts of her book and accused her of committing an apparent felony while researching it. Others said her book presented a warped view of black life and might harm its subjects. When Pomona College hired Goffman as a visiting professor, some students demanded that the college revoke the offer.

Sociologists had mixed reactions to Wisconsin’s tenure decision. Some were unsurprised given what seemed to be an insufficient publication record beyond her dissertation-turned-book.

But Colin Jerolmack, an ethnographer and friend of Goffman’s who teaches at New York University, worried that Wisconsin’s decision could dampen students’ enthusiasm for time-intensive ethnographic field research.

“A number of my graduate students have asked me, ‘Well, jeez, like, I aspire to do what she did,’” he said. “‘To write a book that got a lot of attention and was seen by senior scholars as really important work. And if she gets all of that and doesn’t get tenure, what should I do? Should I think about doing other kinds of work aside from ethnography?’”

Marc Parry, the reporter for The Chronicle, stated that Professor Goffman did not respond to email or phone messages.  And much of the rationale for the University’s decision is veiled behind the confidentiality of tenure procedures.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

If you are looking for non-fiction to read this summer, I highly recommend Christina Thompson’s Sea People about the origins, language, and customs  of the earliest settlers of the vast area we call Polynesia.  For those of us schooled in the Western Canon, Sea People will help fill one of the gaps in our education.  Here is a brief review from Harper Academic:

“For more than a millennium, Polynesians have occupied the remotest islands in the Pacific Ocean, a vast triangle stretching from Hawaii to New Zealand to Easter Island. Until the arrival of European explorers they were the only people to have ever lived there. Both the most closely related and the most widely dispersed people in the world before the era of mass migration, Polynesians can trace their roots to a group of epic voyagers who ventured out into the unknown in one of the greatest adventures in human history.

How did the earliest Polynesians find and colonize these far-flung islands? How did a people without writing or metal tools conquer the largest ocean in the world? This conundrum, which came to be known as the Problem of Polynesian Origins, emerged in the eighteenth century as one of the great geographical mysteries of mankind.

For Christina Thompson, this mystery is personal: her Maori husband and their sons descend directly from these ancient navigators. In Sea People, Thompson explores the fascinating story of these ancestors, as well as those of the many sailors, linguists, archaeologists, folklorists, biologists, and geographers who have puzzled over this history for three hundred years. A masterful mix of history, geography, anthropology, and the science of navigation, Sea People combines the thrill of exploration with the drama of discovery in a vivid tour of one of the most captivating regions in the world.”

As someone who teaches education research, I especially enjoyed how Thompson presents the opposed approaches  between the Europeans with their objective “mathematical models, computer simulations, chemical analyses…” and the Polynesian “stories and songs passed from memory to memory and the layered , subtle, and difficult oral traditions, endlessly open to interpretation…”  She yaws back and forth between the two throughout the book.

Good read!

Tony