(Professor Macgregor was recently appointed to the Associate of Arts Program Council of the Western Governors University)
Turning and turning in the widening
gyre
The falcon cannot see the falconer
Things fall apart; the center cannot
hold...
When William Butler Yeats lamented the anarchic decentering of twentieth-century civilization in his apocalyptic vision, "The Second Coming" (1921), he was mourning what he later explained as the chaos and "the growing murderousness of the world" out of touch with a "great memory passing on from generation to generation" ("Per Amica" 345). Today, only a few short years shy of a millennial intersection of Yeats's gyres, which his mythology marked as an apocalyptic moment in history, the impulse to read impending cosmic disasters in the twisting and turning entrails of local events is even more tempting. For instance, those of us steeped in, and committed to, the "great memory" of human history and achievement as embodied in a robust and healthy liberal arts core in our institutions of higher education are sorely tempted these days to echo Yeats's jeremiad, often expressing ourselves in equally apocalyptic terms.
For us, as for Yeats's immediate forebears, the late Victorians, the "decline of civilization as we know it" is seen as resulting from crass commercialization, social alienation, and the growing reliance on the technological products of a remote and powerful governmental/industrial/corporate culture. More and more at the close of the millennium, the chief demon threatening the temple of learning has come to be identified with technology.
The Winter 1998 Issue of The Montana Professor offers a rich and detailed illustration of this phenomenon in its two pieces devoted to discussion of distance learning and more particularly the Western Governors University (WGU) ("The Western Governors University: Solution and Crisis" by Marc Racicot, and "Managed Education: Controlling the American Mind" by William Plank and Keith Edgerton). Racicot's perspective is an essentially political one that accounts for the reasons for the rise of distance learning (and the WGU) on the one hand, and that sounds a warning to the liberal arts establishments in higher education that the public no longer shares their values. His conclusion?--"Universities will be increasingly asked to demonstrate increased efficiency in providing this public good" (4). None of us should be surprised by this part of the governor's message, since we've heard it so often in recent years from our state government: do more with less. What actually might surprise us in Montana's penurious academic environment is the Governor's explicit endorsement of the kind of liberal arts education, which he (and many of the rest of us) enjoyed and profited from. Racicot suggests, however, that he, and we, may be out of step with the public's values (and, by implication, the values of the public's elected representatives in the legislature).
Nonetheless, Governor Racicot's article assures us that, in his view, technology-based distance learning "will not replace, or seek to replace, traditional institutions of higher education. Instead, it will work to complement the offerings that our institutions currently provide, providing access at a more reasonable cost" (4).
However, the governor's reassurances do not comfort Professors Plank and Edgerton, who characterize distance learning as the demon-spawn of a commercial-industrial-technological power structure hell-bent on destroying the liberal arts. The gist of Managed Education is that insidious political, economic, and technological forces having no relation to the mission of the university are imposing distance learning on the institution for their own evil aims. The hyperbole of the article's conclusion equating the supporters of distance learning with the Medieval Church's burning of heretics and Hitler's mass murder of dissenters evokes the apocalyptic tone of Yeats's poem. Their article conveys a message that has become all too familiar: Something Big is Coming, and It Scares the Hell out of Us!
Before proceeding further, let me explain the source of my somewhat puckish tone. Over the past twenty years my commitment to use all the tools available to me to teach my courses in English and the humanities has sometimes condemned me to a professional limbo. My efforts were shunned by some English Department colleagues in the Seventies for incorporating in my classes computer aided instruction (CAI) technology (the distance learning of its day) to help students needing intensive assistance with grammar and usage. These defenders of the liberal arts characterized the situation then in terms similar to those of Plank and Edgerton: this technology would dismantle the integrity of the institution. The reason given at the time? A domino effect (remember our reasons for being in Vietnam?) created when English graduate students' jobs teaching bonehead grammar and usage would be supplanted by The Machine; without support, no graduate students; without graduate students, what would become of the English Department graduate program and its faculty?
Today, English graduate programs are thriving, still cranking out far more English Ph.D.'s than there are academic posts to employ them. And the CAI technology? What in the Seventies was known as PLATO (Programmed Logic for Teaching Operations) survives today as a commercially delivered adjunct to a wide variety of instructional programs, from storefront job-training centers to support centers for university academic programs, most widely known under the NovaNet moniker. For years, whenever and wherever it was available, I used PLATO--to my students' benefit.
Did it destroy the integrity of the institution, as my colleagues had feared? Hardly. Did it fulfill the glorious objectives set for it by its proponents? The scuttlebutt on the campus of the University of Colorado at Boulder reported that a PLATO marketer proposed to the Chancellor that the campus buy 500 workstations and fire 500 faculty! The marketer was unceremoniously thrown off the campus. So--not even close.
The PLATO marketers' vision of what the technology could do by itself so far outstripped reality, that none of us actually using it were terribly surprised when it began to disappear from the academic scene. Faculty, administration, and state education commissions (not to mention state legislatures and federal agencies footing the bills for the technology) had finally become disillusioned--not because the technology didn't work (it worked fine), but because it didn't magically make all the problems in higher education go away, as many had been led to believe.
Thus, my bemused response to the two WGU articles in the Winter Issue: I've heard both the alarmist apocalyptic message of Plank and Edgerton, and the more optimistic "solution" message of Governor Racicot before--not as an outsider, but as an active participant--and my experience leads me to be skeptical of both perspectives. If, however, I were to have to choose between them, my nod would go to the governor's impulse to define a balancing act that keeps in equipoise the need to respond to fiscal realities, public needs, and technological "fixes" on the one hand, and the need to preserve an empowering, lively, and robust liberal arts core, on the other.
My prior twenty-odd years' experience in using teaching and learning technology leads to another observation about the apocalyptic tone of Managed Education and the optimism of Solution and Crisis. The technology driving these newest attempts to support learning-at-a-distance is not revolutionary; its roots are at least a generation old. If earlier efforts are any indication of what is likely to happen with Web-based distance learning (the core of what WGU envisions as its technology base), this movement will find a niche, meet educational needs that traditional institutions aren't meeting (and perhaps shouldn't try to meet), and leave a more well-defined role to traditional institutions.
If WGU is even moderately successful, the fears of Plank and Edgerton that it will drive a wedge between society's winners and losers will be clearly tested. One of WGU's underlying premises in its planning is that today's students are shoppers; WGU leaders cite the fact that more students today graduate having attended several institutions of higher education than those who only attend one institution. Thus, one role WGU sees for itself is a modular one: to allow an ever-more-diverse college-going population to select those parts of their educational experience that best lend themselves to distance delivery. Moreover, WGU defines itself as the broker, not the teacher; it aims to bring together those who need educational offerings with those who can meet that need. Criticizing it for not talking about how it will teach its classes is like criticizing your admissions office staff for not stipulating the teaching methods used on campus.
Finally, WGU understands that its survival and growth depend on the acceptance throughout the region of the quality and validity of its "credentialing" process. According to WGU's Chief Academic Officer, Dr. Robert Albrecht, accreditation issues are crucial to everyone involved. He avers that in fact the North Central Association DID grant University of Phoenix accreditation. (Apparently the Traub article in The New Yorker was in error on that point.) Moreover, the Inter-Regional Accrediting Council (IRAC) responsible for WGU's accrediting process comprises all the regional accrediting organizations represented in the member states---and their cooperation in this enterprise shows hope for future interstate and inter-region cooperation.
If WGU's premises are sound, if its "brokering" function succeeds, and if its operations receive IRAC approval, then the liberal arts core curricula at traditional institutions are at least as likely to benefit as they are to suffer. Modular educational offerings that allow students to demonstrate mastery of isolated "subdomains" (in WGU's competency-based jargon) can help eliminate or at least reduce the plethora of courses that have evolved to make up for shortcomings in students' K-12 experience. On our campuses, resources can then be redirected away from the Trivium and onto the Quadrivium--and other assorted post-medieval subjects that more closely fit the ideal of the liberal arts today.
Under this scenario, WGU's influence on the Managed Education winners-losers issue is turned on its head. Rather than promoting the perpetuation of a pre-existing social and economic class system, this approach fundamentally subverts any attempts to exclude populations from entry into higher education opportunities based on, say, (using Plank and Edgerton's example) SAT scores. The competency-based, modular approach built into WGU's plans is incremental, non-exclusionary, and empowering to those who use it as a foothold into the world of post-secondary academic achievement.
I said above that I am skeptical of both the optimistic and the pessimistic positions regarding distance learning and WGU. Let me amend that: I consider myself a skeptical enthusiast (an enthusiastic skeptic?) That is, there are enough truths (and half-truths) on both sides that I consider it safe to enthusiastically support some of the best hopes of WGU:
These hopes for WGU's success have prompted me to agree to serve as one of eight faculty from the fifteen member states on WGU's Associate of Arts Program Council.
My skepticism, however, remains intact: the ambitious plans for this "reinvented university" will have to survive and prosper in two worlds, the strictly market-driven world of industrial training as well as the rigorously academic world. This will be no mean feat, since it will not be state-funded, but must make its way in the market by attracting students and maintaining curricular offerings to meet fluctuating demands. Moreover, many questions critical to the success of WGU remain unanswered (though WGU's planners seem to have asked most of the key questions). A number of technical capability issues are as yet poorly understood. For instance, security issues will require students to go to centralized assessment sites: that is, WGU has not yet determined how to ensure that an assessment being taken online is in fact being taken by the registered student. The same goes for laboratory work in science classes. Perhaps the most frightening of the unanswered questions for faculty to consider focuses on the potential new workload calculations implicit in the Web-based distance learning model. (And this is a consideration fundamental to distance learning, not merely to WGU's implementation of it.) If the potential class size for a highly popular class is limited only by local bandwidth, what quality (and sanity) assurance measures need to be built into the system?
But this skepticism is tempered by my understanding of "distance learning" as a relative term. At one extreme, we can say that each time homework is assigned, learning is mediated by distance and time; or again, that each time a student listens to a CD of a Mozart Concerto, or views a video of a Shakespeare play, learning is mediated by distance, time, and technology. Yet we don't think twice about assigning students homework, or, when appropriate, outside work that requires them to use technology to engage with course materials. Moreover, student comments about online discourse--including both dialogues among students, and those between teacher and students--tend very strongly to show appreciation for the mediation and the discipline imposed by the medium. A typical student response says that greater involvement, depth, and interest are actually achieved through these mediated discussions than through many conventional classroom discussions (Gilbert).
However, Plank and Edgerton are directly on target in their assessment of Montana's university system as "underfunded" and the state itself as basically "impoverished" (7). The comparative statistics just do not bear out the governor's rosy picture of citizens and legislature that have "never abdicated the responsibility of supporting what they created" (2). Over the past ten years, according to data gathered by Dr. Rodney Riegle of Illinois State University, for the 1985-1995 decade Montana's increases of appropriations for operating expenses of higher education are among the bottom four of the fifty states. Only Alaska, New York, and Louisiana show less gain (or in Alaska's case, a significant loss). That is to say, the governor's statement may reflect the priorities he wishes were in place in Montana, but the data don't support that wish.
What does this mean for funding of the technology needed to get into the distance learning game? If we assume, as many seem to, that getting into the game means abandoning whatever you're doing now and going over to the "dark side," then it's clear the prospect is absurd: there's not enough funding to sustain traditional operations, much less incur new ones. On the other hand, if we assume (as I do) that we're already in the game (visit the Web site of MSU's Burns Telecommunications Center at <http://www.montana.edu/btc/> for some examples), then the point is moot. Plank and Edgerton's assumption that this "WGU Project" will drain the state coffers is also flawed, in that state funding for WGU calls for a one-time state membership fee of $100,000. Further infusions are contingent only on states' interests in getting more involved in, for instance, specific WGU-certified academic programs.
The process is, and will remain, incremental--a gradual accretion of courses developed in response to opportunities identified, within either the state, the region, or any wider context that might be feasible. Will the operation of such high-tech facilities rob other programs of scarce funds? On occasion, they almost certainly will; but no more so than any other new functional entity on any of our campuses. Eventually, like all such newcomers, these facilities will have to become self-supporting. In fact, if they are managed effectively, such facilities should become revenue centers, earning both direct tuition and fees, and indirect cost returns that can further support core programs. If this is too hard to imagine, think of these as education-tourist dollars--keeping in mind, of course, what tourism contributes to the state's economy.
In short, both distance learning generically, and WGU specifically, strike me as less radical a solution than the governor believes, and less frightening a portent of totalitarian disaster than Plank and Edgerton believe. When more than 200 interested faculty (from all disciplines) and support staff convene in Helena to participate in one of Steven Gilbert's Teaching and Learning Technology Roundtables (TLTR) - what later becomes an electronically mediated approach to developing distance learning curricula - I am less inclined to accept the characterization of WGU as nothing but an attempt by "the governor and the few university presidents who support this plan"(8) to assert their control over an unruly bunch of faculty hotheads. The engaged and thoughtful discussions of what works and what doesn't that took place that day, and that continue in the online mediated discussion, belies the Plank and Edgerton declaration that "the professorate of the Montana University System will resist this second-hand life and education-at-a-distance" (6).
What I do find alarming, however, are the rhetorical tactics of micturismos, blundering, and guilt-by-association used in Managed Education. Statements like those quoted above may work when you're storming the Bastille, but here they serve only to divide the Professorate against itself. Many of us are committed to supporting the liberal arts, but are using a variety of tools, techniques, and approaches to meet the needs of different groups of students. The divisive rhetoric of Managed Education serves only to weaken support for the liberal arts by demonizing those of us who don't see in distance learning, or in the WGU initiative, the specter of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, or of the Borg from Star Trek. In fact, the juxtaposition of Sanford Pinsker's Demonizing in the Academy in this same issue of The Montana Professor left me with a sense that perhaps Pinsker's article serves as a commentary on Plank and Edgerton's, where, to borrow Pinsker's description, "the disinterested pursuit of truth has given way to a widespread feeling that 'everything is politics'" (18).
Some (both technophiles and technophobes) may see in the specter of technology-supported distance learning, or in an imagined domineering bureaucratic WGU juggernaut, reflections of Yeats's apocalypse, shimmering with that ambiguous figure of power, the "rough beast, its hour come round at last." I see instead a larger toolbox, and new kinds of work to perform. As time permits, I intend to test the new tools on the new tasks they make possible, and the new services they allow me to perform. Some tools, I know, will work better than others to achieve particular aims. As a member of the Montana Professorate, I shall choose what I judge to be the best tool for the job at hand.
Works CitedAlbrecht, Robert. Personal Discussion. March 9, 1998.
Gilbert, Steven. American Association for Higher Education, Teaching and Learning Technology Roundtable and AAHESGIT moderated Listserv <LISTPROC @LIST.CREN.NET>.
Pinsker, Sanford. "Demonizing in the Academy." The Montana Professor 8.1 (Winter 1998): 16-18.
Plank, William, and Keith Edgerton. "Managed Education: Controlling the American Mind." The Montana Professor 8.1 (Winter 1998): 4-8.
Racicot, Marc. "The Western Governors University: Solution or Crisis." The Montana Professor 8.1 (Winter 1998): 2-4.
Riegle, Rodney P. "Appropriations of State Tax Funds for Operating Expenses of Higher Education in the United States." OnLine 13 October 1995 <http://www.ilstu.edu/depts/coe/grapevine/cum1.htm>.
Yeats, William Butler. "Per Amica Silentia Lunae." Mythologies. New York: Collier, 1972.
Yeats, William Butler. "The Second Coming." The Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats. New York: MacMillan, 1972.