Time matters

by Martin Hittelman 

Congress is about to begin work on reauthorizing the Higher Education Act (HEA). As its work unfolds, we will hear more conversations about concepts of time and place and what they have to do with educational quality. The act, which spells out the structure of the federal financial aid program, currently contains important limits defined in terms of hours and locations of learning. A loose coalition of distance-education providers--including traditional colleges as well as a growing number of for-profit institutions--is avidly working to lift these limitations. Billions of dollars of financial aid are at stake.

Also at stake, many traditional educators believe, is quality. Can the process of imparting and expanding knowledge and thought, refined over years and years of practice, be cast away in a decade because distance-education tools have the capability of making classrooms expendable? Do we know enough about the effectiveness of new ways of "delivering" education to let the market, not educators, determine what delivery systems work and for whom?

Were it just a question for the market, we could let the market decide. But education is a public good that Congress has recognized as such.

Federal student assistance has been the centerpiece of the national commitment to ensure that no student is denied access to higher education because of cost. It has also been a way of federally subsidizing public as well as private higher education institutions.

Because of concerns raised over the years regarding fraud and abuse by diploma mills, correspondence and other proprietary schools, Congress included protections in the 1992 reauthorization of the HEA and in federal regulations. The most important of these are the "12-hour rule" and the "50 percent provision"--two concepts that will figure in the next round of reauthorization.

The 12-hour rule is a regulation that refers to the amount of time a student qualifying for financial aid must spend per week on coursework associated with a nontraditional distance-education program. This past summer, the U.S. Department of Education proposed that the 12-hour rule be replaced with a loosely defined "one-day" rule. The public has until Nov. 1, 2002, to comment on the proposed change, after which the change becomes the rule.

The 50 percent provision requires that a student receiving financial aid must attend an institution that enrolls at least half of its students on campus. This requirement is part of the HEA and is therefore law. The House of Representatives has passed a bill that would eliminate the 50 percent provision; and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is planning to hold hearings on the issue in the near future.
 

What do time and place have to do with cyberspace?

Distance-education program providers (including the University of Phoenix, for example) claim that current rules hamper the development of distance education. Some institutions would like to cut courses into smaller and smaller pieces covering only a precise set of factoids. They say they need greater "flexibility" in the offering of programs available for student financial aid.

The AFT has been in favor of retaining rules limiting distance education until we have more research showing how effective this form of education delivery is and what effect the lifting of rules would have. (See "What's the Difference" at www.ihep.com/Pubs/PDF/Difference.pdf.)  Among the questions faculty have asked:

• Why are the dropout rates of distance-education learners higher than rates for traditional learners?

• What is the effect on the quality of an education when all or nearly all of the students' coursework is taken via distance education?

• Can deep understanding of material (not just the accumulation of facts) occur in the absence of human interaction?

• At what point in a student's education does the student have the necessary skills to effectively use the new delivery systems?

In May 2000, the AFT issued "Distance Education: Guidelines for Good Practice,".  The report recognizes that distance education has much to offer but also points out that faculty must continue to be the defenders of quality by retaining academic control of the curriculum.

In the final analysis, questions of time and place in cyberspace do relate to quality as far as distance education is concerned. We must ask: Should federal funds be used to promote educational institutions whose major focus is profit--not quality education? What laws and regulations will best protect our students from abusive practices? And finally, what constitutes a high-quality education? Can bite-size pieces of knowledge or facts, studied in isolation, ever add up to an experience worthy of the title "education"?