When the Wisconsin state legislature cut university funding in this budget cycle, the UW System Board of Regents simply increased tuition by 5.5 percent. This is the sixth year in a row that the regents took such actions.
College graduates are being crushed by a mountain of debt. Present federal regulations do not allow an individual to walk away from college debt through bankruptcy. Is a college degree even worth it anymore?
An alternative system may be found on online coursework. Even traditional universities have gotten into the act. For brick and mortar institutions, online courses might bring in just enough money to keep their schools afloat. But as more prospective college students turn to these untraditional modes of education, fewer will become on-campus students. This trend could spell the demise for many institutions of higher learning.
A “merit badge” online system bypasses the traditional degree system all together. Students earn their badges through online coursework. The badge system often incorporates various levels of mastery sometimes using the terminology brown or black belt level from martial arts or rankings similar to fraternal orders.
Such certification systems are nothing new. Computer giants such as Microsoft have used this system for years. High tech computer software companies such as Facebook and Google are more interested in the skills an individual has than whether someone holds a BS in computer science.
For more traditional companies, the college degree system has been used simply as a gatekeeper or filtering agent. The human resource departments don’t have to weed through numerous resumes or a battery of tests to determine if someone is likely to be qualified for a position. A degree from a highly respected university is likely to put a prospective employee much higher on the will-hire list.
As long as traditional institutions put their good names behind the online coursework, they may be able to hold off the competition from virtual online alternative systems. Harvard and MIT still mean something even if it is through their online courses.
The badge system clearly has some problems, most notably no standardization of awarding badges from one institution to another. Once a standardized system is put into place, once some certifying body is created, alternative nontraditional institutions may be able to compete with traditional colleges and universities.
Recently I attended a workshop on gifted and talented education at UW-Whitewater. Individualized instruction through the use of online coursework was highlighted for students on the primary and secondary level. But in my discussions with some education professors, they agreed that such online education is coming to higher education faster than most of their colleagues realize. Colleges and universities may not be able to keep pace with this rapid paradigm shift.
If businesses begin to hire employees through these alternative online systems, indeed if they actually prefer employees from these alternative systems, a number of colleges and universities could see their on-campus student numbers plummet. The libraries will be quiet, the dorms will be empty, the lectures halls will be locked shut, and institutions of higher learning, both large and small, will close their doors forever.
