Dylan Smith is a sophomore at Adrian College, a small liberal arts school with approximately 1,600 students in the state of Michigan.
When Smith looked at colleges, he liked Adrian’s small college environment. And the school wanted him to join their football and struggle teams. But Smith didn’t think a liberal arts education would help him get a job, so he planned to study supply chain management at Michigan State University, which has nearly 50,000 students. Supply chain management is an area of study on how to manage the flow of goods and services from raw materials to businesses.
But then Adrian College added supply chain management to its offerings. This made him change his mind and take care of Adrian.
“I couldn’t say no to the graduation I wanted at a small school versus a big university where you have 200 students in a class,” Smith said.
Course sharing
In the United States, a growing number of mostly small liberal arts colleges are attracting students like Smith by sharing Classes online with leading universities.
The move is a way for smaller colleges to deal with the declining number of students attending college. In the past ten years, 81 small private colleges have closed in the United States and nearly two-thirds of high schools the elderly now say that a university degree is not worth the cost. The information comes from a Study of the New America and the Third Way.
Rick Ostrander is Assistant to the President at Westmont College in Southern California. He said: “Course sharing allows us to maintain who we are, which is small and Residentialbut compete on selection and price.”
“Hundreds of schools are going to close if we don’t fix this,” said Jeffrey Docking, president of Adrian College. The school has used course sharing to add 17 subject areas in the past two years alone, including computer science, web design, cybersecurity and public health.
Parminder Jassal is the head of Unmudl, which is developing technology to facilitate course sharing between colleges. She said: “We share through Airbnb. We share cars. We share everything. Higher education is probably the last place where the idea of sharing finally hits.
More programs, less cost
Some employers claim that studying the liberal arts develops skills important to the workplace, such as the ability to write well and problem solve. But students and their parents worry that a liberal arts education isn’t enough to get the kind of jobs they want.
Getting a good job was the main reason given by students for going to university, a University of California Los Angeles study Higher Education Research Institute showed.
A 2021 Federal Reserve study found that half of students who earned a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts said they would choose a different field of study now.
Through course sharing, small liberal arts colleges can quickly add the technical programs students want at a lower cost. Some community colleges and historically black colleges and universities also choose to use course sharing.
Adrian College says the new programs it has added through course sharing have attracted 100 more students over the past two years. This equates to more than $8 million of the total four-year cost of educating these students.
It is also cheaper for a college to pay for course sharing than to hire new faculty. For many colleges, developing new programs on their own takes too long and costs too much. The solidify EAB estimated that it costs up to $2.2 million to develop a new curriculum.
“The way higher education has always worked is that if I wanted to offer these courses to students, I would have had to go out and to hire a Faculty member, add those courses and see if students would take them,” said Ann Fulop, vice president of Eureka College in Illinois. The school used course sharing to add a computer science curriculum this year.
President Docking of Adrian College said, “If we are willing to work together and share some courses, we can offer many, many more…programs at very little cost.
I am Andrew Smith.
Jon Marcus reported this story for the Hechinger report. Andrew Smith adapted it for VOA Learning English.
Quiz – America’s Small Colleges Use Course Sharing to Add New Programs
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words in this story
liberal arts -not. a curriculum including a mix of subjects such as history, philosophy, arts and languages, as well as natural sciences
struggle -not. a sport in which two people compete and try to knock their opponent down and make them stay on the ground.
Classes -not. course of a particular subject taught in schools
the elderly -not. fourth-year high school or college students
Residential –adj. have accommodation for students, such as a dormitory
solidify -not. a business or a company
to hire -v. hire a new worker
Faculty -not. professors
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