Re:Learning | Can an Innovative Online College Help Adults Stay Employed?

[THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION] #subscribelink [Subscribe Today]( --------------------------------------------------------------- [Subscribe to The Chronicle today to get access to premium content and more.]( Re:Learning Tuesday, October 16, 2018 --------------------------------------------------------------- [Sign up for this newsletter]( I’m Goldie Blumenstyk, a senior writer at The Chronicle of Higher Education covering innovation in and around academe. Here’s what I’m thinking about this week: Stephen M. Kosslyn spent his 40-year academic career teaching at elite institutions where, he says, “a lot of those students didn’t really need me.” If you take him at his word, that also goes a long way toward explaining his announcement last week that he was launching a new venture called Foundry College, an online institution designed help prepare adults for middle-skill jobs that won’t leave them vulnerable to losing their livelihoods to a robot in the years to come. “At this point in my life,” Kosslyn told me, “I would really like to have an impact.” I’ve learned to be cautious about spending ink or pixels on announcements like this, having seen more than a few so-called higher ed innovations crash and burn in the face of their (often-self-generated) hype. But I’ve also learned to take Kosslyn seriously. He’s a legit academic — a former dean of social science at Harvard and a former director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. He’s also no stranger to the world of investor-backed education. At the Minerva Project, an edgy, five-year-old online college that quickly became [the darling of the Silicon Valley venture-capital set,]( Kosslyn served as founding dean and chief academic officer. In some sense, he gave intellectual gravitas to an educational experiment that aims to create a new technology-driven, campus-free, liberal-arts experience with highly selective admissions. Minerva, which this year will graduate its first class, now enrolls 600 students. It has said it will enroll 10,000 students by 2025. Foundry’s mission is diametrically different from Minerva’s, and it launches with its own set of trendy educational buzzwords: a competency-based educational curriculum; a focus on teaching critical thinking and soft skills; employer-aligned practical training for people working in “middle-skills” jobs (think store manager or IT-department supervisor). Like Minerva, where Kosslyn spent the past five years developing the teaching and curricular philosophy, Foundry is for-profit. But while Minerva drew lots of attention for its $95 million in investor backing, and initially, a splashy board of advisers that included Lawrence Summers and Bob Kerrey, Foundry is starting with just $6 million, from Learn Capital, and a more low-key group of advisers. And while Minerva aims to recruit students internationally, Kosslyn says Foundry is “very focused on America.” Or perhaps more precisely, Americans — specifically those adults whose jobs are most vulnerable to automation. Kosslyn told me that he’s long been fascinated by the topic, but he says the idea for Foundry began stirring in his head after reading Joseph Aoun’s recent book, Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. (My colleague Scott Carlson went deep with Aoun on the topic in this [interview]( last year.) Kosslyn and Aoun then co-wrote an article on the topic; look for it soon in Liberal Education, the publication of the Association of American Colleges & Universities. San Francisco-based Foundry of course isn’t the only organization thinking about serving the adult working student population online. Among many others, the California Community College system’s [planned new online college]( is also designed specifically for such students. But that venture is expected to focus more on skills training and certificate-level offerings; Foundry plans to offer an associate degree in business management. Before this announcement, the last time I had spoken with Kosslyn, we talked about [the value of synchronous education]( especially in online teaching. So I wasn’t surprised to learn that his teaching model for Foundry is built on student engagement in real time. In fact, that’s the entirety of the teaching for each course: two 90-minute classes a week, each designed with lectures and in-class quizzes and live-action exercises such as role-playing. He’s basing some of the teaching techniques on an idea first developed in the 1970s called the jigsaw classroom (I had to look it up, too.) Oh yeah, and no books to buy and no homework. I have my doubts about Foundry. Can it really attract students? (Kosslyn says he’s hoping to recruit through employers and organizations.) And as woo-woo and experimental as the curricular model sounds — including a focus on skills tied to emotion and judgment — will that really be enough to help a graduate stay employed? But I also find lots to appreciate about the venture: its mission and its target market; [its $12,000 price point]( (that’s far higher than tuition at a California two-year college, but Kosslyn says it’s below the national median price for an associate degree); the ratio of Ph.D.s to marketers among its initial team of employees; and quite frankly, the relative lack of hype around its launch. By contrast, see something called MissionU, which launched with a bang and [was gone a year later]( or for that matter, Minerva itself. For all the ways Foundry is the anti-Minerva, Kosslyn did learn one neat trick from his former employer. Minerva managed to avert the gantlet of challenges to getting accredited by aligning itself with an already-accredited institution. Foundry is planning to follow that same “incubation” model for its path to eligibility for federal financial aid. It’s already in talks with several institutions to determine which would be the best fit. [That approach]( always seemed a bit of a questionable shortcut to me. But when I raised that with Kosslyn he, unsurprisingly, disagreed. “There’s nothing at all sneaky or under the radar” about it, he told me. He hopes to have that mostly sewn up by January, when he expects the first students to enroll. Catching up on the news: While I was on vacation (thank you, Scott Carlson, for handling this newsletter in my absence), a couple of organizations that I’ve been following marked some noteworthy developments. —Gradescope, a company that sells a popular automated grading tool powered by artificial intelligence, [was acquired by Turnitin.]( Gradescope, which [I wrote about earlier this year]( in a special Chronicle issue on “The Digital Campus,” has some solid academic roots: Its two founders were Ph.D. candidates studying artificial intelligence when they created the first versions of the product — as a way of easing the boredom of grading exams as TAs. —College Unbound, an experimental institution designed specifically for adults and built around an unusually immersive work-based curriculum, was approved for candidacy status by its accreditor, the New England Commission of Higher Education. That wonky-sounding step means this unusual organization, which I’ve particularly admired as a model for how other colleges could rethink internships for working adults, could soon be eligible to award federal financial aid for its students. Adam Bush, its provost, highlighted some of its creative approaches with me in a conversation back February. Check out the short video of that [here.]( (Your curiosity piqued? We and a few other champions of “funky” approaches to teaching adult students will be talking about that, and more, at the meeting of the American Association of Colleges & Universities, in Atlanta in January.) Got a tip you’d like to share or a question you’d like me to answer? Let me know at [goldie@chronicle.com.](mailto:goldie@chronicle.com) If you have been forwarded this newsletter and would like to see past editions or sign up to receive your own copy, you can do so [here.]( Goldie’s Weekly Picks From The Chronicle --------------------------------------------------------------- [How a Low-Profile Leader Made Big Changes at Indiana U.]( [premium] By Eric Kelderman With little fanfare, Michael McRobbie has brought about a renewal on a campus where many once felt progress had halted. [Do Universities Value Public Engagement? Not Much, Their Policies Suggest]( By Audrey Williams June Scholars analyzed the language in documents from more than 100 institutions describing tenure-and-promotion criteria. [Higher Ed, Inc.]( [premium] By Ruth Perry and Yarden Katz How the university became a profit-generating cog in the corporate machine. 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