Did you see this article “Supreme Court declines case on making online retailers collect sales taxes” in the Washington Post?

For most of us in higher education, we’re struggling with not only how to comply with the state authorization mandate but dealing with the simple fact that this situation even exists. Those private liberal arts institutions without an online presence, you should wake up and pay attention to this because it will impact you more than you can imagine. Also, you might want to pay attention to the Gainful Employment movement currently impending on the for-profits because you are next!

This Washington Post article reported that the Supreme Court of the United States decided not to hear an appeal regarding the collection of sales tax for online retailers. Simply put, states can continue to establish policies regarding the collection of online sales from out of state companies to the citizens of their state regardless if the company has a physical presence in their state. Currently, Amazon collects sales taxes from sixteen states.

Sounds a lot like if you have an online student in our state you need to be authorized to operate as an educational institution in our state…just like you were going to build a brick and mortar building in our fair state! But the good news, the high court felt it was Congress’ responsibility to legislate interstate commerce.

What could possibly go wrong with Congress involved? Oh wait, didn’t this entire state authorization debacle get started because one Senator wanted to stop the spread of for-profit education. Hey, thanks for the help!

Most for-profits already are compliant in most states because they actually have a physical presence there and have a stable of attorneys ensuring their compliance because everyone is shooting for the for-profits to make a mistake. But really, could we have expected a Senator to know this before he submitted the legislation (wait, you mean Senators actually have other people draft the legislation… like 22 year olds and then don’t actually read what it says before submitting it…and passing it!).

Well maybe Amazon will have more influence than a few colleges struggling to keep tuition low and an education attainable for all that desire.

Share your thoughts

What are your thoughts on state authorization? Are you frustrated or have you just given up? Share your thoughts below with me.

Inspiration

Protecting the Brand: The Hells Angels have grown increasingly litigious, learning to employ the legal system to protect the recognizable symbols of their club.

I was reading the NYTimes article on protecting your brand, this one happened to be about the Hell’s Angels and how they sue over their brand name usage. (see the article here)

Let’s face it; most colleges really don’t understand branding. Heck, most don’t understand results driven marketing. Please, don’t even mention social media marketing… But we have a Facebook page.

Most colleges will tell you they get branding… you know… our website looks like our brochures. Dig a little deeper and you find many institutions with no real idea which logo is being used by which department and how many Facebook pages actually exist that use their name. How many small colleges turn their brand into revenue generation like the big D-1 schools? Granted most Saturdays there are a couple of thousand fans in the stand for a football game…if they are lucky. Find me a small liberal arts college and I will find you a local screen-printing company using their logo and selling it to their students, alumni and fans.

At eduKan we fight the branding fight

Bring in the Hell’s Angels… and their litigious presence. I love this article and in a previous life worked with some motorcycle clubs and can tell you first hand they are serious about protecting their name, image and logo. The three-part patch they wear on their back, called their colors, is trademarked and defended in both style and format. In the old days it was mostly threats and broken knees, few lawyers were involved.

At eduKan we fight the branding fight. Small e (by the way Word hates when we do that) and capital K with an ampersand-like symbol for the “U”. It all has meaning; capital K for Kansas, the circle around the “U” because you are the most important part of eduKan. The e is small, well, because it just looks stupid with a capital E. Innovating Education is what we do, the circle U carries over from the logo and show that the education if for U.

Brand Champion

As the brand champion for eduKan I have not physically fought anyone or taken the shirt off of their back but I have required all eduKan faculty and staff get the logo tattooed on some visible part of their body… Wait… they don’t know about that yet…

For those of you offended by the use of the word tattooed in an educational blog… get over it… As for the faculty and staff getting tattoos, just joking… for now! 

What do you think?

Share your thoughts about how your brand is being (mis)used below. We’d like to get your take on this subject too.

The United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA) has declared November 11-15, 2013 National Distance Learning Week.

As we all prepare our campuses for a week of ceremonies and festive activities…does anyone else see the irony in celebrating distance learning week in a physical location…or is it just me?

For those of us that have been actively engaged in online education for the better part of our careers, this weeklong promotion designed to bring awareness and recognition to quality distance education conjures up some mixed feelings.

While it is nice to see this segment of higher education get the accolades it certainly deserves, it is also a little sad that after almost two decades of success in the higher education market place, we needed to designate a specific week in its honor?  I feel the same way about National Grandparent’s Day.

Do we really need a special day, or week in this case, to recognize something so good? I started thinking about some other things happening in higher ed that could benefit from having their own specially designated weeks for recognition.  How about these:

• National Private College Disappearance Week – for those colleges that have been resisting distance education for years and are now starting to disappear.

• “You Can’t Deliver that Class Online” Week – for those faculty members that continue to assert their classes could not possibly be delivered online.

• National “Save Our Institution” Week – for college administrators who think putting a syllabus online or contracting with a third-party vendor to deliver their courses will save their failing institutions.

• Faculty Against Technology Week – you can figure this out by the name, but unfortunately, it was cancelled this year due to poor response.  Evidently, none of the faculty read their email or saw the post on social media. Paper surveys will be mailed to them next week to solicit consensus on a unified position statement about why technology is bad in education.

• Department of Education is Here for You Week – unfortunately the development of the portal to engage with the DOE was awarded to the same Canadian firm developing the ObamaCare website…enough said.

So party on people, virtually of course. Let’s raise of glass of symbolism over substance and give three big cheers to tradition.

Be sure to share and comment…  Mark

The United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA) has declared November 11-15, 2013 National Distance Learning Week. As we all prepare our campuses for a week of ceremonies and festive activities…does anyone else see the irony in celebrating distance learning week in a physical location…or is it just me?

For those of us that have been actively engaged in online education for the better part of our careers, this weeklong promotion designed to bring awareness and recognition to quality distance education conjures up some mixed feelings. While it is nice to see this segment of higher education get the accolades it certainly deserves, it is also a little sad that after almost two decades of success in the higher education market place, we needed to designate a specific week in its honor?  I feel the same way about National Grandparent’s Day.  Do we really need a special day, or week in this case, to recognize something so good?

I started thinking about some other things happening in higher ed that could benefit from having their own specially designated weeks for recognition.  How about these:

• National Private College Disappearance Week – for those colleges that have been resisting distance education for years and are now starting to disappear.

• “You Can’t Deliver that Class Online” Week – for those faculty members that continue to assert their classes could not possibly be delivered online.

• National “Save Our Institution” Week – for college administrators who think putting a syllabus online or contracting with a third-party vendor to deliver their courses will save their failing institutions.

• Faculty Against Technology Week – you can figure this out by the name, but unfortunately, it was cancelled this year due to poor response.  Evidently, none of the faculty read their email or saw the post on social media. Paper surveys will be mailed to them next week to solicit consensus on a unified position statement about why technology is bad in education.

• Department of Education is Here for You Week – unfortunately the development of the portal to engage with the DOE was awarded to the same Canadian firm developing the ObamaCare website…enough said.

So party on people, virtually of course. Let’s raise of glass of symbolism over substance and give three big cheers to tradition.

Be sure to share and comment… 

Mark

Last week I received a phone call from Maranda, a stay-at-home mom who has been working on her PhD and is ready to re-enter the higher education admissions game after taking ten years off to care for her children. Maranda was my Director of Admissions for the now defunct Mountain State University, and what a story we could write about the rise and fall of a wildly innovative organization. Recruiting and enrollment management were two things MSU did with precision and Maranda was the best Director of Admissions I have ever had the pleasure of working beside.

Maranda explained that the timing is right and she is ready to get back in the enrollment management game; she is nearing end of her PhD program and her husband is considering relocating his practice. She wanted to know if I could find her an unpaid internship in an admissions office so she could get back up to speed with the new practices and policies for higher ed recruiting that emerged while she was home being a Mom.

I thought for a while about what has changed in higher education recruiting. Sure, the way schools use social media has certainly changed, and there have been some changes in student information system vendors, but other than those, I really don’t think we have made wholesale systematic changes in how we market, recruit and enroll students. So I started thinking, what could the new enrollment management function look like if we did things differently?

When trying to answer these types questions, I have a tendency to suggest an innovative solution that is EXACTLY the opposite of what is currently being done. What would happen, for example, if instead of admissions officers and selection committees choosing the incoming freshman class, we let the applicants themselves determine who will be in their class? Let them decide whom they ultimately want to be associated with as alumni. This would give those applicants who really want to attend one particular institution an opportunity to use crowdsourcing and Facebook-style tactics to improve their chances of getting accepted, an especially useful tactic for those students who, on paper, may not appear to be a perfect candidates, but whose uniqueness could ultimately enrich the campus. Now this cannot be the sole criterion, but it definitely could be a significant factor in the selection equation.  Of course, there are many details to work out, but it certainly is a conversation starter.

As for Maranda, I have found her an internship with one of the colleges in our consortium. The skills, tactics and approaches she used ten years ago are still relevant because we were so efficient and good at recruiting back then, now she is well ahead of the game today. Don’t tell her though, because they need her help… and for free to boot.

What are your thoughts about how to truly change the way we recruit and enroll students?  Post and share!

Dr. Sarver has been invited to participate in the panel entitled “How Transformation Initiatives at Academic Institutions are Shaped, Formed & Executed? Who are the trusted Advisors?” at the Annual Post-Secondary Grantee Convening, held in Seattle from September 18-20, 2013.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Number of employees: approximately 980
Asset trust endowment: $33.5 billion

Dr. Mark Sarver, CEO of the award-winning eduKan Consortium, will be a panelist at the convening covering the theme of “The Future of Higher Education: Is It Time for Transformation?” which be at the annual gathering of grantees of the Post-Secondary Success program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation being held in Seattle from September 18-20, 2013.  Covening expects about 300 people to attend with grantees, Post-Secondary professionals and foundation staff.

The panel Dr. Sarver has been asked to participate on is entitled “Where to begin? How transformation initiatives at academic institutions are shaped and executed (and helped by trusted advisors).” Moderating the panel is Anne Keehn, Entrepreneur in Residence & Fellow, Postsecondary Success, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, joining Dr. Sarver as panelists include Christine Geith, Ph.D., Assistant Provost & Executive Director, MSUglobal Knowledge & Learning Innovations, Michigan State University; Nathan Simon, Associate Director, Kennedy Consulting Research & Advisory (Digital Strategy Consulting), and Elizabeth DeVito, Associate Director, Kennedy Consulting Research & Advisory(Change Management Consulting Market). Dr. Sarver will share how he has worked effectively with intermediaries and change agents, both internal and external, to drive innovation and change across his consortium along with ideas on how attendees can do this in their organizations.

About the Gates Foundation Convening for Post Secondary Success

This convening, The Future of Higher Education: Is It Time for Transformation?, is an annual gathering of grantees of the Post-Secondary Success program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  Each panel consists of 3-4 senior leaders from diverse academic institutions undergoing significant transformation (i.e. community colleges & 4 year publics) and how these worked constructively with intermediaries and change agents to drive innovation and better performance across their organization. For more info please visit: http://www.gatesfoundation.org

About eduKan

eduKan provides access to quality higher education, including ELL courses, via college degrees, certificates, and individual courses, with affordable online classes. eduKan was founded in 1998 as a cooperative effort between member colleges to offer courses via the Internet. eduKan’s consortium schools are all accredited Kansas learning institutions with excellent reputations and long histories of providing degrees in traditional settings, as well as through online courses. eduKan Consortium member institutions are: Barton Community College, in Great Bend; Colby Community College, in Colby; Dodge City Community College, in Dodge City; Garden City Community College, in Garden City; Pratt Community College, in Pratt; and Seward County Community College/Area Technical School, in Liberal. For more information, please visit http://www.edukan.org.

Dr. Sarver will share innovation tactics and tips to help Higher Education Institutions be more innovative by changing thinking and creating an environment that welcomes and inspires action during a pre-conference workshop at NUTN 2013 in New Mexico.

Dr. Mark Sarver, CEO of the award-winning eduKan Consortium, will be leading a pre-conference workshop entitled “Innovation Tactics and Tips for You and Your Institution,” at NUTN Network 2013 conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico on Monday, September 16^th from 9 AM to 11:30 AM prior to the official conference opening. The NUTN Network conference is in its 31^st year and is designed to cover trends and issues in Higher Education as well as give attendees the opportunity to network with their colleagues to have more open discussions. This format change will enable the leaders in the field of technology-facilitated learning to brainstorm on new ideas as well as look at challenges with fresh eyes.

About the 31^st Annual NUTN Network Conference

The conference brings together innovative leaders in teaching and learning and will be held from September 16^th -18^th, 2013 in Albuquerque New Mexico at the Hyatt Regency. The conference also honors individuals and institutions for their successes with an awards ceremony. Last year, eduKan was honored to have received the NUTN 2012 Distance Education Innovation Award. Topics covered at the conference will include assessment and accreditation, state authorization and regulation, student retention, prior learning assessment, post traditional credit hours, assessing student learning in distance-based education, competency-based models, low-cost degree programs, MOOC’s, mobile learning, analytics and Latino issues in education. For more information visit www.nutn.org/network2013

About NUTN

National University Technology Network was founded in 1982 and is headquartered at the Dallas County Community College District’s R. Jan LeCroy Center. The National University Technology Network (NUTN) is a consortium of higher education institutions and provides a networking and professional development arena for the advancement of teaching and learning. http://www.nutn.org

About eduKan

eduKan provides access to quality higher education, including ELL courses, via college degrees, certificates, and individual courses, with affordable online classes. eduKan was founded in 1998 as a cooperative effort between member colleges to offer courses via the Internet. eduKan’s consortium schools are all accredited Kansas learning institutions with excellent reputations and long histories of providing degrees in traditional settings, as well as through online courses. eduKan Consortium member institutions are: Barton Community College, in Great Bend; Colby Community College, in Colby; Dodge City Community College, in Dodge City; Garden City Community College, in Garden City; Pratt Community College, in Pratt; and Seward County Community College/Area Technical School, in Liberal. For more information, please visit http://www.edukan.org.

We’re very excited to see this Pearson overview of how eduKan is profiled under the guidance of Dr. Sarver and is working to help students achieve their goals while saving money and providing access via the Internet to affordable, best-in-class technology tools.

With more than 6.7 million students taking at least one course online, higher education institutions are responding to this demand by investing in digital learning solutions and looking for highly qualified partners to support them as they move to meet students’ needs.  

Break Through to Innovation in Digital Learning

Online Community College Consortium improves student achievement, access ad affordability, using digital course content and customized eBooks, all hosted within an innovative cloud-based learning management system.

Click here for access to the downloadable PDF article

When I recently read the August 26, 2013 edition of The New Yorker, I was enthralled with James Surowiechi’s article titled “Clawback” in which he describes the current contention over lobster prices and the impact the price has on the consumer, restaurants and lobstermen. I use the word enthralled because as I was reading, the connections between the price of lobster and innovating education became so evident to me.  Here’s how:

Glut of Lobsters Bring Prices Down (Robert F. Bukaty/AP)

Although several factors influence the wholesale price, in 2005, the price for lobsters off the boat was over $6 per pound. In 2009, however, it was less than half of that and this month lobsters were selling for as low as $2.20 per pound. As I am not a lobster fan, I have not been following lobster prices, but notice that the price of lobster on restaurant menus remains outrageously high, in spite of the low wholesale prices. Why? Pricing psychology. Lobster is perceived and priced as a luxury item and lowering its cost could diminish its status as the reining king of elegant entrees.

There are a multitude of new initiatives aimed at making college more affordable, yet tuition continues to rise. Although most institutions spend a large portion of their budget and their administrator’s time strategizing about ways to increase efficiencies and reduce costs, and some have been successful by replacing full-time faculty with adjuncts and implementing online programs, they continue to charge exorbitant prices to the students.

Maybe higher education is like the lobster industry: if we make it affordable, people will not see perceive it as quality. So our students, like the customers in a restaurant, will continue to over-pay for perceived quality, and the institutions, like restaurant owners, are banking on it.

Rising Cost of Tuition

Given the inability of higher education to change in general, if we want to make education more affordable, then we need to stop buying overpriced lobster and let the market drive the prices down.

There are alternatives emerging that challenge the very core of higher education; MOOCs, mandated transferability of courses and the emergence of para-educators, to just name a few. I think it is time for us to rethink the value of choosing the lobster and consider ordering the tilapia, coconut-encrusted, of course.

Tell me what you think about the rising cost of tuition and what you think could be done?

Stats of Immigrants

Last night I had the privilege and honor of meeting Hector and Dianna from Honduras. This husband and wife came to an info session for our Spanish General Education Program that allows students with limited English proficiency to enroll directly into college-level courses that are delivered in Spanish to facilitate English language learning.

Hector asked most of his questions in Spanish, worried that his English was not strong enough to convey the complex and sophisticated questions he had about the program. He needed to be sure he understood the details.

I discovered Hector was about to turn 55 and wanted his Associate’s degree so that he could become a para-educator in the local public school.  After the meeting was over, I asked Hector and Dianna to tell me why they came to the United States. Being the grandson of an immigrant from Spain, I am always curious about the reasons a person leaves their home country to come to the U.S.A. Hector told me his story. At 5:39 am on June 28, 2009, Honduras experienced a coup d’état in the form of a constitutional crisis, resulting in public protests and military intervention. At the time, Hector, who had served as a teacher and a principal in the local school system, was a professor of Sociology at a local university.  Dianna taught Geology at the same university. Feeling a sense of duty and obligation, they recorded some of the public protests and sent the footage to media outlets in the United States and other countries.  As a result, they were threatened by local authorities and forced to flee from their home and to seek asylum in the U.S., a place they had only visited earlier in their lives.

Meat Packing Plant

Today, this former university professor works in a meat processing plant, literally slaughtering cattle with a knife, every day. Dianna, recently promoted to a union representative, had also worked in the ground beef packing division of the same meat processing plant.

As a former Director of Admissions, I have personally conveyed to incoming students the value of an education, describing it as an investment that will have a lifetime return.  What I learned from Hector and Dianna is that I was wrong.  I learned that the same system of higher education that makes those bold promises of irrefutable value is the same system that diminishes it.

This week I have met Spanish-speaking students who hold Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from institutions in their home countries that are not recognized by the American education system.  Forcing these students to start over, only after being subjected to months, if not years, of ESL programs, is an outrage.  As I listened to Hector and Dianna, the full gamut of emotions swept over me – from sorrow, to frustration then to anger – at how something like this could possibly happen in a system purportedly run by highly educated individuals.  Then my thoughts turned to the hypothetical – how quickly could this could happen to us if something equally as catastrophic happened in our hometown?  How many of us in HigherEd would be willing to seek asylum in another country, kill cows with a large knife and package their parts while possessing the intellect and education to be a professor or an administrator at a college?

eduKan’s ELL Program

Hector and Dianna’s passion for education and their patience with their new American life has inspired me to so something about the situation.  Frankly, I am not sure what that is, but I made a promise to my new friends to help them in any way I can. They truly feel blessed to have the opportunity to be in the U.S. and to raise their three children in a country as free as ours. Although they make more money as meat packing employees in the U.S. than they did as university professors in Honduras, Hector is relentlessly pursuing his Associate’s degree, not to earn a promotion at the plant, but to earn certification to be a Para-educator at his children’s school – a job that fills his soul more than his wallet.