Tuesday June 8, 2010

Two Items to Update

I would like to provide you with a quick update regarding two items that are of concern to many colleges.

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Accreditation Task Group

In Monday’s Inside Higher Education appeared a very lengthy article with useful links about the Consultation Task Group on Accreditation and our concerns. Please go to
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/06/07/california to view this article.

In addition, I want to report that I attended a meeting on May 28th with two college Vice Presidents of Instruction (Renee Kilmer and Melinda Nish), John Nixon (a commissioner and president of Mt SAC) and Barbara Beno (ACCJC). The purpose of the meeting was to discuss plans for training ALOs (accreditation liaison officers) in conjunction with the CIOs Fall conference. ACCJC approached the CIO board to see if there are ways to collaborate in the planning of the upcoming training. Given that the effectiveness of the ACCJC training was one of the recommendations the Consultation Task Group presented to ACCJC, this was a move in the right direction.
 

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MOU with Kaplan

You might recall I told you about a previous Inside Higher Education article about the Kaplan MOU, http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/05/26/kaplan. On May 26th, a writer for the Chronicle of Higher Education took a quote of mine out of context and made faculty look self-serving in our objection to the MOU. I have sent the letter below to the editor to the Chronicle and whether or not they publish it, I wanted you to see it.

Mailed on June 7, 2010 to the Chronicle of Higher Education
To the Editor:

In Helping Ourselves (May 26, 2010), Sara Goldrick-Rab referenced a statement I made in Inside Higher Education (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/05/26/kaplan ) about the California community college faculty’s negative reaction to an MOU written between the state Chancellor and Kaplan University, a for-profit institution. I would like to summarize a few reasons why the community college faculty are concerned about this MOU.

• Community college students who concurrently enroll in a Kaplan course might assume that their credit automatically will be accepted when they transfer to a state university; in reality only the receiving institution can determine acceptability of credit.
• The most vulnerable of community colleges students could jeopardize their financial aid if they do not know when and where they should best apply their aid dollars.
• Even with a reduced tuition, the cost of Kaplan is burdensome for most students.
• The MOU implies that all the 112 colleges have agreements with Kaplan, although in California, each college is autonomous, and articulation is determined locally.

The faculty opposed the MOU only because of the potential harm to students. Readers might want to access the recent Frontline program (College, Inc.) about for-profit colleges and their potential harm to students. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/>

Jane Patton, President
Academic Senate for California Community Colleges
 

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