Dear Commons Community,

I am at the Online Learning Consortium’s Accelerate Conference in Orlando, Florida.  Yesterday, I attended several presentations on blended learning, faculty evaluation, and using social media for instruction.  Onsite attendance at the conference was over 1,100.  Prior to COVID, attendance was 1,600. Last night, I had dinner with colleagues I have not seen since 2019 because of the pandemic. 

This morning I will be on a panel with Patsy Moskal and Chuck Dziuban discussing research on data analytics and adaptive learning.  Much of our discussion will focus on a new book that we are currently writing and editing on the same topic.  Below is the program’s description of our presentation.

If you are at the conference, please stop by.

Tony

Featured Session

Data Analytics and Adaptive Learning: Research Perspectives

Dear Commons Community,

According to the United Nations, the world’s population was projected to hit an estimated 8 billion people yesterday, with much of the growth coming from developing nations in Africa. As reported by the Associated Press.

Among them is Nigeria, where resources are already stretched to the limit. More than 15 million people in Lagos compete for everything from electricity to light their homes to spots on crowded buses, often for two-hour commutes each way in this sprawling megacity. Some Nigerian children set off for school as early as 5 a.m.

And over the next three decades, the West African nation’s population is expected to soar even more: from 216 million this year to 375 million, the U.N. says. That will make Nigeria the fourth-most populous country in the world after India, China and the United States.

“We are already overstretching what we have — the housing, roads, the hospitals, schools. Everything is overstretched,” said Gyang Dalyop, an urban planning and development consultant in Nigeria.

The U.N.’s Day of 8 Billion milestone is more symbolic than precise, officials are careful to note in a wide-ranging report released over the summer that makes some staggering projections.

The upward trend threatens to leave even more people in developing countries further behind, as governments struggle to provide enough classrooms and jobs for a rapidly growing number of youth, and food insecurity becomes an even more urgent problem.

Nigeria is among eight countries the U.N says will account for more than half the world’s population growth between now and 2050 — along with fellow African nations Congo, Ethiopia and Tanzania.

“The population in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa is projected to double between 2022 and 2050, putting additional pressure on already strained resources and challenging policies aimed to reduce poverty and inequalities,” the U.N. report said.

It projected the world’s population will reach around 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and 10.4 billion in 2100.

Other countries rounding out the list with the fastest growing populations are Egypt, Pakistan, the Philippines and India, which is set to overtake China as the world’s most populous nation next year.

Even as populations soar in some countries, the U.N. says rates are expected to drop by 1% or more in 61 nations.

The U.S. population is now around 333 million, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. The population growth rate in 2021 was just 0.1%, the lowest since the country was founded.

“Going forward, we’re going to have slower growth — the question is, how slow?” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. “The real wild card for the U.S. and many other developed countries is immigration.”

Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, says environmental concerns surrounding the 8 billion mark should focus on consumption, particularly in developed countries.

“Population is not the problem, the way we consume is the problem — let’s change our consumption patterns,” he said.

Amen!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Here is a  retrospective that appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education in April 2019 and was reprinted this morning.

A Chronicle of Higher Education analysis of federal data shows that, in the last five years, about half a million students have been displaced by college closures, which together shuttered more than 1,200 campuses.

That’s an average of 20 campus closures per month. Many of those affected are working adults living paycheck to paycheck, who carried hopes that college would be their path to the middle class.

Most are age 25 or older. About one in four are at least 35 years old.

“ONE class left,” Lisa La More wrote on Facebook last month, after the for-profit college she attended, the Art Institute of California’s San Diego campus, shut down. “Less than 3 weeks from my BS in Graphics and Web. 6 years of my life WASTED. I am 48 years old, with teenage kids. What am I supposed to do now?”

College closures don’t just disproportionately hurt older students. They have severely hit low-income students, too: Nearly 70 percent of undergraduates at closed campuses received need-based Pell Grants. Black and Hispanic students also bear the brunt. About 57 percent of displaced students are racial minorities.

Most of the closures have one thing in common: It was a for-profit college that shut down. Among the more than 1,230 campuses that closed, 88 percent were operated by for-profit colleges. For-profit colleges represent only about one-tenth of U.S. college enrollment, but they account for nearly 85 percent of students displaced by closures in the last five years, according to The Chronicle’s analysis. That adds up to roughly 450,000 displaced for-profit college students.

In the last six months, the for-profit college implosions have included Vatterott College, which boasted 15 campuses across the Midwest; Alabama-based Education Corporation of America, which once had 70 campuses nationwide; and Dream Center Education Holdings, which shut down 41 for-profit campuses operating as either the Art Institutes or Argosy University.

Not every displaced student drops out of school entirely. Some colleges might shutter a campus but allow students to continue their education through online courses. But in those instances, the students are not receiving the program they signed up for, on the terms that they wanted.

When a college fully goes out of business, there is no easy fix for the people caught in the crossfire. Closures can be both traumatic and financially ruinous for students — many of whom are single parents like La More. La More told The Chronicle that she had completed most of her final class, which required students to put together a full-scale rebranding campaign for a make-believe client. The project was an opportunity for students to demonstrate the skills they had accumulated through years of study.

La More completed every part of the branding campaign except one: a budget for how much to spend on billboards and business cards. The San Diego campus closed before she could complete the budget plan. There were two and a half weeks left in the academic term.

Some Art Institute professors scrambled to issue grades to students for the mostly-completed term. But La More’s instructor did not, she said. In the chaotic moments just before a college closes, its actions are unpredictable, and largely unaccountable.

And so La More won’t graduate.

“I don’t know how they can do this to people,” she said.

Kendrick Harrison, a disabled Army veteran who fought in Iraq, remembers how the recruiter at the for-profit Argosy University encouraged him to quit his job so he could focus on his studies. Veterans are heavily recruited by many for-profit colleges, and they, too, are disproportionately hurt by closures. About 22,000 GI Bill recipients were enrolled at for-profits when the colleges shut down between 2014 and 2018.

Harrison did quit his job as a youth basketball coach and enrolled in Argosy’s online business-degree program. The financial aid he received through the GI Bill was more than enough to cover tuition. He could use the leftover money, which students receive as a stipend check, to cover household bills.

Harrison relied on those quarterly checks. But when Argosy University recently ran into financial problems, the college illegally kept the stipend money that belonged to students — nearly $13 million — and spent it on payroll and other overhead expenses, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

Argosy closed its doors last month, when its parent company, a Christian nonprofit named Dream Center Education Holdings, went under. Also closing were four Art Institute campuses operated by Dream Center. In total, 20 Dream Center campuses went dark, displacing more than 10,000 students.

When Argosy University, a for-profit college system, suddenly closed in March, Kendrick Harrison didn’t just lose his foothold in higher education. He and his family lost their home.

What will become of the stipend money? That will be determined in the courts.

The Education Department has posted on its website that federal regulations prevent the agency from solving the issue by steering additional financial-aid funds to Argosy to distribute, or providing the money directly to students. Instead, the federal government is deferried to Mark Dottore, the court-appointed receiver who is managing what remains of Dream Center’s assets as the company winds down.

What a sad situation for the students who fell victim to the greed of their for-profit colleges.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Democrat Katie Hobbs was elected Arizona governor yesterday, defeating Kari Lake, an ally of Donald Trump, who falsely claimed the 2020 election was rigged and refused to say she would accept the results of her race this year.

Hobbs, who is Arizona’s secretary of state, rose to prominence as a staunch defender of the legitimacy of the last election and warned that her Republican rival, Lake, a former television news anchor, would be an agent of chaos. Hobbs’ victory adds further evidence that Trump is weighing down his allies in a crucial battleground state as the former president gears up for an announcement of a 2024 presidential run.

She will succeed Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, who was prohibited by term limit laws from running again. She’s the first Democrat to be elected governor in Arizona since Janet Napolitano in 2006. As reported by the Associated Press.

A onetime Republican stronghold where Democrats made gains during the Trump era, Arizona has been central to efforts by Trump and his allies to cast doubt on Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory with false claims of fraud. This year, many Trump-endorsed candidates faltered in general elections in battleground states, though his pick in the Nevada governor’s race, Republican Joe Lombardo, defeated an incumbent Democrat.

Before entering politics, Hobbs was a social worker who worked with homeless youth and an executive with a large domestic violence shelter in the Phoenix area. She was elected to the state Legislature in 2010, serving one term in the House and three terms in the Senate, rising to minority leader.

Hobbs eked out a narrow win in 2018 as secretary of state and was thrust into the center of a political storm as Arizona became the centerpiece of the efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost. She appeared constantly on cable news defending the integrity of the vote count.

The attention allowed her to raise millions of dollars and raise her profile. When she announced her campaign for governor, other prominent Democrats declined to run and Hobbs comfortably won her primary.

She ran a cautious campaign, sticking largely to scripted and choreographed public appearances. She declined to participate in a debate with Lake, contending that Lake would turn it into a spectacle by spouting conspiracy theories and making false accusations.

She bet instead that voters would recoil against Lake, who picked verbal fights with journalists as cameras rolled and struck a combative tone toward Democrats and even the establishment Republicans who have long dominated state government.

Pre-election polls showed the race was tied, but Hobbs’ victory was still a surprise to many Democrats who feared her timidity would turn off voters. She overcame expectations in Maricopa and Pima counties, the metro Phoenix and Tucson areas where the overwhelming majority of Arizona voters live. She also spent considerable time in rural areas, looking to minimize her losses in regions that traditionally support Republicans.

Lake is well known in much of the state after anchoring the evening news in Phoenix for more than two decades. She ran as a fierce critic of the mainstream media, which she said is unfair to Republicans. She earned Trump’s admiration for her staunch commitment to questioning the results of the 2020 election, a stand she never wavered from even after winning the GOP primary.

She baselessly accused election officials of slow-rolling the vote count this year and prioritizing Democratic ballots as she narrowly trailed Hobbs for days following the election.

We do not need the Kari Lakes of the country running for office.

Congratulations to Ms. Hobbs!

Tony

EXCLUSIVE: "The president's words were reckless," Mike Pence tells @DavidMuir of Trump’s words on Jan. 6, saying they "endangered me and my family and everyone at the Capitol building."

Watch more on @ABCWorldNews, tomorrow on @GMA, and stream on @hulu. https://t.co/LCA0vICJWS pic.twitter.com/ECPrqUAZVk

— World News Tonight (@ABCWorldNews) November 13, 2022

Dear Commons Community,

Former Vice President Mike Pence in an interview with ABC’s David Muir said that “The president’s [Trump’s] words were reckless,” on Jan. 6, and they “endangered me and my family and everyone at the Capitol building.”

Dear Commons Community,

Elaine and I arrived in Orlando yesterday afternoon having spent the weekend in St. Augustine.  We are here for the OLC ACCELERATE Conference which starts today and goes through Thursday.  Last night we had dinner with my good colleague and friend, Chuck Dziuban and his wife, Judy.  I had not seen Chuck for almost three years since we both were being cautious due to the pandemic.  It was great catching up with him. 

Chuck and I  have a session on Wednesday morning with our  co-author Patsy Moskal.  The session will focus on research for our upcoming book on data analytics and adaptive learning.

If you are at the conference, I would love to see you.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education this morning has an article begging the question of whether Pennsylvania has too many college campuses given the size of it student population. This comes after Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education (Passhe) recently consolidated six of its campuses into two after a decade of low enrollments enrollment and financial pressures. The article makes the point that while some factors — like declining enrollment, anemic state investment, and a dwindling pipeline of high-school graduates — affecting institutions in the Keystone state are also common elsewhere, there’s also a distinctly Pennsylvanian force at play: The state has a large number of colleges relative to its traditional-age student population.  Here is an excerpt.

A Chronicle analysis of the higher-ed landscape in Pennsylvania reveals that 149 four-year public, four-year private, and two-year institutions served undergraduates in 2020. That’s 7,570 18- to 24-year-old Pennsylvanians for every college.

In comparison, two states that share Pennsylvania’s borders have more 18- to 24-year-olds per college, which roughly translates to a less-crowded landscape. (The more people there are per college, the less crowded the landscape is with institutions.)

Ohio had 8,882 18- to 24-year-olds for each of the state’s 120 colleges in 2020. New York had 7,655 people of traditional college age for each of its 228 colleges. The national average for the same types of colleges in The Chronicle’s analysis is 10,444 per campus.

“We’re in a state with a very large private sector of higher education, so the competition for students is fierce, with a declining number of Pennsylvanians,” said Joni Finney, former director of the Institute for Research on Higher Education at the University of Pennsylvania.

More than 60 percent of the institutions in The Chronicle’s analysis are four-year private nonprofit colleges. Of this group, more than 72 percent derive at least half of their freshman class from within the state. About three institutions in 10, in The Chronicle’s sample, are four-year public colleges. The rest are community colleges. (For-profit, two-year private, and graduate-student-only colleges were excluded from the analysis).

Two-thirds of Pennsylvania’s counties are home to at least one college. The top three counties by number of colleges are among the state’s most populous. Philadelphia County has 16 institutions; Montgomery County, adjacent to Philadelphia, has 12; and Allegheny County, dominated by Pittsburgh, has 11.

This situation is not sustainable and will likely lead to further consolidations in the future.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Democrats successfully defended their narrow grip on the U.S. Senate in the 2022 midterm elections   Senator Catherine Cortez Masto’s (D-Nev.) win over Republican Adam Laxalt in Nevada clinched the 50th vote for Democrats after days of uncertainty over thousands of mail-in ballots. Georgia’s Senate race, whose impact may be felt more strongly in 2024, will be determined by a Dec. 6 runoff election. As reported by CNN and other media.

Republicans hoped that voter dissatisfaction with Democratic policies and high inflation would usher in a “red wave,” carrying them to victory in both chambers of Congress. While they did make gains in some states like Florida and New York, Republican candidates, many of them extremists who were backed by former President Donald Trump, underperformed elsewhere around country.

Preliminary exit polls showed that fewer than a third of voters saw inflation as the defining issue of the election, with the survival of democracy and abortion rights weighing just as heavily in their minds. Attacking Democrats over crime also didn’t appear to be the winning strategy that Republicans had envisioned.

Democrats made the future of democracy a key issue in the closing days of the race. They argued that the scores of GOP election deniers on the ballot this year presented a critical threat that ought to be rejected before the next presidential election, especially with twice-impeached former President Donald Trump teasing another run for the White House.

Although many election deniers lost their races Tuesday, more than 160 who have either denied or cast doubts on Biden’s presidential win in 2020 will be in Congress in 2023.

With a majority in the Senate, Democrats can accomplish several things.

First, they’ll have an easier time filling vacancies in Biden’s cabinet and have another two years to reshape the federal courts. Biden’s team has been remarkably stable, especially compared to Trump’s. But several department heads are expected to depart in the coming months, and he’ll now have a better chance of confirming their replacements.

In the first half of his term, Biden also confirmed a record number of judges, a group more diverse than any prior president’s. A GOP-controlled Senate would have put a stop to that streak ― and likely would have ended any possibility of an appointment to the Supreme Court, should a vacancy arise.

Second, Democrats will hold a stronger hand in coming negotiations with a GOP-controlled House over must-pass fiscal measures such as government spending and the debt limit.

Republicans have already indicated that they will refuse to support a debt ceiling increase without extracting major policy concessions from Democrats, such as cuts to Social Security and Medicare. The 2011 debt ceiling fight resulted in the first-ever downgrade of the U.S. credit rating. A default on the debt would be disastrous.

A growing number of lawmakers want to see Democrats raise the debt ceiling in the lame-duck session of Congress this year, removing the threat of an economic armageddon for the rest of Biden’s term. They would need the support of all 50 members of the current Senate Democratic caucus to do so, however.

The next debt ceiling deadline will come sometime next year, though the precise date is uncertain because incoming tax revenue can be unpredictable from month to month.

Finally, Democrats now face a slightly easier path in 2024, when they will contend with a particularly brutal map. Democrats will have to defend seven seats in states former President Donald Trump won at least once, with only two pick-up opportunities. Republicans are hoping to run up the margins in that election, with even some early talk of potentially reaching a filibuster-proof majority.

If Democrats are able to defend Sen. Raphael Warnock’s (D-Ga.) seat in the upcoming Georgia runoff, they’ll be better positioned for the next election.

Congratulations Democrats!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Twitter users claimed irony was dead after far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene posted about the need for “candidate quality” in the GOP.

In a lengthy thread that the Donald Trump loyalist shared on Elon Musk’s social media platform Friday, Greene explained why she “truly” believes “one of the most important paths to saving America is by having as many strong Republican governors as possible” and “keeping them in place.”

“How about candidate quality, individual campaign work ethic & ability, and their campaign strategies,” Greene wrote in one message.

The call for “candidate quality” was too much for folks online, given how Greene has been stripped of her House committee assignments for liking social media posts calling for the murder of prominent Democrats.

Greene’s personal profile has also been suspended from Twitter for violating its COVID misinformation policies and she has previously peddled racist and antisemitic conspiracies, likened House mask mandates to the Holocaust and tried to cast doubt on evolution.

Irony is dead indeed.  Greene is possibly the worst congressperson in the history of the country.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Elaine and I are in St. Augustine, Florida, for two days and are on our way to Orlando for the OLC ACCELERATE Conference.  If you are at the Conference, I will be doing a presentation with Patsy Moskal and Chuck Dziuban on our upcoming book on research on data analytics and adaptive learning.

If you are at the conference, our session is on Wednesday morning.

We are staying at the Augustin Inn on a small quaint street in St. Augustine’s historic district.  We had dinner last night at the Columbia Restaurant which has been serving Spanish-Cuban food since 1905.

Hope to see you at the Conference!

Tony