SNHU and College for America: Serving Those Who May Not Be Well Served

By George Lorenzo

Innovative educators like to make thought-provoking or debate-provoking statements. Consider the following:

“Too many people with college degrees can’t write or do quantitative problem solving, and they can’t get in front of a room and present.”

 “When we talk about adult learners, we are encumbered by a system that was not designed well for what we need to do. In some ways a lot of higher education has indifference toward adult learners.”

“It is easier to get a mortgage for $400,000 than it is to get a student loan for $5,000.”

“The credit hour is an arbitrary measure that is embedded in the way we think about knowledge and resource allocations, but it makes no sense. It is fiercely backwards. It has locked us into this notion of we can tell you how long someone sat in a seat, but we can’t say how well they learned.”

These comments came from President of Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU – often phonetically referred to as “Snew”) Paul LeBlanc at the opening keynote speech at the recent CAEL International Conference held in Washington, D.C.  

The folks at SNHU and LeBlanc are well known for their innovative, some say “game-changing” and “disruptive” practices in the field of higher education online teaching and learning and service to the adult learner. SNHU is an 80-year-old traditional, private, non-profit, residential college in Manchester, New Hampshire, with 2,500 undergraduates and about 1,000 graduate students. But beyond its traditional roots, it has built a strong online teaching and learning presence (started in 1995), currently offering more than 180 fully online undergraduate and graduate level programs to a student body approaching 22,000, the largest in New England.   

In February, Fast Company named SNHU the 12th most innovative organization in the world in its World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies, touting SNHU (the only university to make the list), "for relentlessly reinventing higher education online and off." Most recently, Forbes Magazine named LeBlanc to its Impact 15 list of “Classroom Revolutionaries,” noting that he “has put his sights on exploding the three-credit class system with a new program, College for America” (CFA).

Employer Partnerships Driving Beta Version in January

CFA is a unique A.A. in General Studies competency-based program. It is geared specifically toward “serving those who are not being well served,” LeBlanc said, “those for whom the next best education option is nothing at all.” After having a successful pilot this past summer, CFA is set for a strong beta test in January 2013, starting with about 200 students enrolled through partnerships with a variety of employers who are providing tuition assistance to “a level of worker they have traditionally neglected.”

ConAgra, for instance, is rolling out the CFA program with line workers from their food processing plant in Ohio. FedEx is rolling out CFA with its graveyard-shift employees in its Memphis package-handling facility. Blue Cross and Blue Shield is enrolling students into CFA who are their home-based customer-service employees. Most of these students have no college credit and earn in the range of $24,000 annually. Most have always felt that higher education was beyond their reach financially and perhaps even intellectually. CFA, however, is going to provide easy access and enable these students to learn and earn an A.A. degree that will ultimately emphasize and prove levels of meaningful learning outcomes and knowledge and skills achievement unlike any traditional, credit-hour-based associate degree program. And they are going to accomplish this without faculty or courses. That’s their basic claim. Here’s how - in a nutshell - they are going to do it:

Curricular and Delivery Innovation and More

They are basically starting with curricular and delivery innovation. The curriculum is organized around 120 work-at-your-own-pace competencies in the form of “tasks” (also called can-do statements) that are based primarily on Lumina’s Degree Qualifications Profile (DQP), but also on Department of Labor competencies, as well as a wide variety of other postsecondary education expectations and standards, such as a learning outcome that deals with information literacy and another on speaking and listening. “These are not arbitrary,” LeBlanc claimed. “They (the competencies) are all tethered to well-researched professionals within their disciplines.”

The competencies, each of which is typically comprised of three levels of tasks that grow in complexity, have been created around a framework that builds on the DQP, beginning with a “mastery triad of foundational skills, personal and social skills and content knowledge,” said Cathrael Kazin, former Executive Director of Strategic Initiatives, Educational Testing Service (ETS), and now CFA’s Chief Academic Officer.

Kazin gave an in-depth presentation all about CFA to a fully-packed room at the recent CAEL International Conference.  She explained how there are clusters within the triad. Under foundational skills, for example, are communication skills, critical and creative thinking, quantitative skills, digital fluency and information literacy. “These foundational skills are necessary no matter what you are doing,” Kazin said.  “We also thought that personal and social skills (personal effectiveness, ethics and social responsibility, teamwork and collaboration) were really critical for students to have because employers constantly say ‘well, their technical knowledge is okay but they can’t work in a team or they have expectations that are not reasonable.’ ” Under content knowledge are business essentials, which is an industry-specific elective, and science, society and culture, “which is the broad, integrative knowledge – the general education kind of exposures,” Kazin said.

All the tasks are archived inside an electronic portfolio under multiple criteria that are ultimately evaluated and commented on by a reviewer who uses a very simple rubric of “Yes” or “Not Yet” mastered. “Task completion is the primary form of assessment,” Kazin explained. “Students do not actually complete a competency; they complete a task which allows them to demonstrate mastery of a competency. And students can keep submitting until they get it. We don’t care about how long it takes them to get it. We just care about them getting it.”

There are 365 start dates annually, and students can begin their studies at any level they choose. Tuition is $2,500 annually – all inclusive. “We are less than the national average for the cost of a community college degree, and we want to get it down to $1,500 – that’s our target, and we are driving in that direction,” LeBlanc said.  “No one should be denied because of finances.”  

Another feature of the entire program that contributes to cost savings is related to course materials and content. “We are using content that is already out there, meaning no textbooks that students have to pay for,” Kazin said. “To every extent possible, we use whatever is free or low cost. Obviously it has to be curated, because there is a lot out there. We had to make sure that students did not get trapped in an endless round of Wikipedia.”

Student-at-the-Center Model

Students have multiple sources of support, including an SNHU-assigned coach, an “accountability partner” (selected by the student), a mentor (from the workplace), the aforementioned reviewer/task evaluator, and other students from the CFA community who volunteer to be part of a peer-to-peer support environment.

“We shifted from the idea of the teacher as expert, to providing other ways to get information and learn,” Kazin explained. “For example, one part of a course is called Mentors in the Workplace because now we have access to workers,” allowing students to “harness the knowledge of their peers by embedding them in a network of support. ”

So far, the new model has worked well, at least at the pilot phase from this past summer. Kazin points to some of the highly positive comments collected from the students who took part in the pilot. “These were students who thought education was not an option for them, and their feeling of transformation and possibility was extraordinary,” Kazin said. “It was transformative for them.”

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Comments

[Beatrice]

Jennifer: I was addressing the article which mentioned SNHU in many facets, including CFA.
The growth at SNHU speaks to red flags not innovation.

You have every right to your opinion also, albeit true or misguided. The alumni of New Hampshire College (the former SNHU) are not so proud. We would like our reputation back.

[Jennifer]

Everyone is entitled to an opinion, whether true or false. Your comments seem to be a bit more deep rooted and go beyond the topic of CFA here. Again, I am proud of SNHU! It is exciting to be part of this University and see the growth and innovation to come. The great history of our alumni and current student success speaks for itself!

[Beatrice]

Jennifer: "misconstruded" you mean misconstrued. Oh dear I hope you are not a CFA coach. Employers are not looking for people with Associates degrees too much, it's 2013. CFA may evolve and prove itself, I don't know. The unfortunate fact is that it is connected to an institution that is only in the business of making money, where students are numbers, and have been numbers and will continue to be numbers. Like HR tells the employees, it is a marketing organization, if you don't like it then leave. In other words, SNHU is a diploma mill.

[Jennifer]

Beatrice: I am curious your affiliation to SNHU online. Your negative innuendos are quite misconstruded. SNHU being a non-profit institution utilizes profit to give back to the students through new resources and services. Again, a program such a CFA is a great opportunity. An associates degree is a great accomplishment for individuals personally and professionally.

[Beatrice]

The CFA division may be run by a level-headed leader, unlike SNHU Online, but its uniqueness is not enough to convince me that it is the right opportunity for people. These students are more likely to get grants than most, and as a tax-payer I want to see that grant mean something. An Associates degree means nothing much. Success at SNHU overall is not measured by success but by profits, and is not measured by quality of education or administration, but by profits. An example being the collection of M.Ed. students accepted and enrolled in license based programs; there was no license for them, this an example of a less than astute and profit-hungry marketing leader. The average dedicated employee is at the mercy of poor, destructive decisions at the top.

[Jennifer]

CFA is an innovative unique initiate that allows a true opportunity for people. As a proud SNHU Alumni and employee,SNHU is a true leader in Higher education. Leadership and employees follow a clear mission of, "We measure our success by the success of our students". Our continued gowth and success does not come by surprise. We strive for student success and offer not only a quality education, but the service and support is truly amazing. We listen to our students, we build relationships and get to know what they want and need. We believe in them and they believe in us.

[George Lorenzo]

I agree, but I think another side to this story needs to be provided here.

[Beatrice]

George: It is naive to think that any employee at SNHU - on campus, online or with CFA would be brave enough to support any statement I have made. The leadership would not like that....

[George Lorenzo]

Thanks Beatrice. Hope we get to hear from some of the folks at SNHU too.

[Beatrice]

George: SNHU online is not run from the campus, it is housed in the old Amoskeag Mill building. The F aid, the advising (especially) and the Admissions are all call centers run with call center software and a call center mentality of rules: talk time etc. Performance goals of retention and enrollment must be met.You are perhaps confusing the image of the University president whose legacy and fame is more important to him than the real effects of running a shady sweatshop on employees and students.

[George Lorenzo]

Beatrice: I don't see the "sweatshop of workers running a massive call center in a Mill building." You might consider providing some more detail or proof as to why you think this way about this program.

[Beatrice]

CFA is great in theory, but the type of people it is targeting will do better with skills and licenses not academics to the Associate level, which doesn't help anybody.
SNHU is not innovative, it never was. It is a sweatshop of workers running a massive call center in a Mill building, and following the less than ethical model of the for-profit industry.