Hartford Business Journal

14 Hartford Business Journal • April 6, 2020 • www.HartfordBusiness.com By Sean Teehan steehan@hartfordbusiness.com S outhern Connecticut State University was already preparing to roll out a slate of new online continuing-education and certificate courses when it joined almost all Connecticut higher- education institutions last month in moving courses for the rest of this semester online, to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. "I think we will see a cultural shift that needed to take place in higher education anyway, the tragedy of the virus has, I think, accelerated that," said Joe Bertolino, president of the New Haven-based school. "I think it's going to significantly change how we work in the future, there's no doubt about that in my mind." As the nation and world adjust to the new realities forced upon us by the coronavirus, experts and officials at Connecticut's public and private colleges say the situation will likely act as an accelerant to the already-existing trend of online learning in higher education. And some, like Bertolino, see this as a permanent shift to virtual classes. "We'll get to the other side of this crisis," Bertolino said. "But I think if anyone believes that things are just going to go back to the way they were, I think that's naive. That is not going to be the case at all." Long before the coronavirus tore through Wuhan, China, early this year, factors like the cost of higher education, changing demograph- ics and a decadeslong increase in American jobs requiring at least some college were pushing higher- ed institutions to at least experi- ment with online learning, said Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. The extraordinary situation that forced professors to teach courses online almost overnight serves as a mass-scale experiment of how effec- tive distance-learning technologies are, Carnevale said. And the results will have major implications on the industry's business model. "This will be an experiment in which this question is going to arise in a lot of people's minds: 'Why should we pay all this money for room and board when our kid can stay at home?' " Carnevale said. "We've got a lot of sunk investment. … American colleges are basically a brick-and-mortar system." And colleges rely on revenue from on-campus charges like room and board in a sig- nificant way. For example, UConn recently announced it will likely take a $30-million hit from residen- tial student-fee refunds as a result of pupils not finishing the spring semester on campus. Carnevale predicts over the next few decades there will be a realignment of how colleges, especially public universi- ties, operate. About 60% of jobs in America's workforce today require at least some post-secondary educa- tion, Carnevale said. Added to that, the federal government in recent years began requiring colleges that receive federal funding to publicly report student graduation rates and economic outcomes post-graduation. The result of the increased demand for higher education, and schools being judged for the success rates of each program they offer, changes the incentive for courses universities offer and how they offer them, Carnevale said. "Colleges tend to operate on a cafeteria model in which in order to compete, you have to have pretty much the full range of programs or fields of study," Carnevale said. But over time, it will likely make more sense for schools to offer fewer specialized programs with which they can compete on a national level, and expand online offerings so that students from anywhere can enroll, Carnevale said. In a situation like that, state uni- versity systems like the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities (CSCU) may have an engineering program at one of university, and an English program at another, rather than multiple schools having both, as is currently the case. "It will open the way for somebody to say, 'OK, I can't make another Harvard — that would cost hun- dreds of billions of dollars — but I can make a better program," Carnevale said. Southern Connecticut State Univer- sity already has four graduate degrees avail- able completely online, and also offers certificate programs online and some hybrid programs with a mix of online and in-class work, said Lisa Galvin, South- ern's director of graduate admissions. Before COVID-19 hit, Southern had just introduced a slate of online continuing-education courses, Galvin said. Since all professors are teaching online through the semester, everyone will get a better idea of what problems exist with an online model, she said. "I think it's going to give everyone the opportunity to say, 'maybe my argument against online didn't hold as much water for this particular program or course as I thought it did,' " Galvin said. More demand and pitfalls Many local colleges have been in the online game for sometime. For example, UConn had about 550 online offerings before the coronavirus hit, and expects to find many other courses will be adapt- able to that format over the next month or so, said school spokes- woman Stephanie Reitz. "UConn had already been moving quickly into online learning, although Online enrollment gaining steam Here is a breakdown of college students in the U.S. who are taking courses online. % of % of % Change, 2016 2016 Total 2017 2017 Total 2016-17 All students 20,224,069 20,135,159 -0.44% Enrolled exclusively online 2,974,836 14.71% 3,104,879 15.42% 4.19% Enrolled in some online courses 3,325,750 16.44% 3,552,581 17.64% 6.38% Enrolled in no online courses 13,923,483 68.85% 13,477,699 66.94% -3.31% Source: Inside Higher Ed Testing Ground Coronavirus could make online learning the new norm at CT colleges Anthony Carnevale, Director, Center on Education and the Workforce, Georgetown University Lisa Galvin, Director of Graduate Admissions, Southern Connecticut State University Amy Feest, interim dean of academic affairs at Tunxis Community College, says online learning may not work for all students. PHOTO | CONTRIBUTED

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