Gov. Brown’s plan re-imagines cyber learning, but faces skeptics
Laticia Middleton perches in front of a computer at the Greater Sacramento Urban League’s job center, scanning employment ads. At 30, with two children, a high school diploma and a job at a call center, Middleton is the kind of student Gov. Jerry Brown has in mind as he pushes for a new online community college.
The thing is, Middleton has tried online education before—and the results were less than stellar. Two years ago, she signed up for virtual business classes through De Anza College, a state community college in Cupertino. But when a question came up about her enrollment, Middleton said, she couldn’t find a real person to talk to.
“Trying to get in touch with them was such a headache,” she recalled. “It’s like, ‘hey, call this number,’ and then no one answers.” Discouraged, and busy with a newborn son, Middleton just dropped out.
Her story illustrates the challenges Brown faces as he tries to convince the Legislature and a skeptical community college faculty that online education is the key to reaching the 2.5 million Californians aged 25 to 34 who graduated from high school but lack a college degree.
With tens of thousands of Californians turning to private and out-ofstate schools for distance learning, Brown and Community Colleges Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley say they want to provide an affordable, high-quality option for busy adults to gain skills that will help them in the labor market. They’re asking the Legislature to approve $100 million in startup funds and $20 million in ongoing annual costs for an independent college district that would start enrolling students in fall 2019.
Designed in collaboration with employers and labor unions, the new college’s curriculum would feature short courses leading to certificates or badges that carry value in high-demand industries like health care, child care, information technology and manufacturing. Students could learn at their own pace, would be eligible for state financial aid and might even be able to pay a flat fee to access unlimited courses.
“What we’re talking about doing is adopting a completely different educational delivery model that allows for short-term learning that does not follow the traditional academic calendar and does not focus on associate degree and transfer-level courses,” said Oakley. “We want to break down the content already available in the colleges and put it in a format where we can reach working adults.”
But some faculty groups have raised concerns that the plan takes a group of students least prepared to succeed online and shunts them off into a virtual ghetto, while their transfer-bound peers enjoy the benefits of face-toface interaction with instructors. They say the funds should instead be used to bolster the community colleges’ Online Education Initiative, aimed at increasing the quality and accessibility of online courses at the system’s existing 114 colleges.
“In developing a structure in the name of being inclusive, are we actually segregating these students?” asked Jonathan Lightman, executive director of the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges. The strength of the community colleges, said Lightman, lies in their combination of basic skills, vocational education and courses that prepare students for transfer to a four-year school—all under one roof.
“You can call this whatever you want, but it’s not a community college,” Lightman said.
Oakley insists the online college would provide one more doorway for working adults who are currently shut out.
“We are not in any way, shape or form interested in creating terminal credentials,” Oakley said. “We want these individuals to have the opportunity to continue to learn and enter one of our other 114 colleges so they can achieve an associate’s degree or transfer.”
Nearly 4,000 of the California Community Colleges’ instructors— about 14 percent—teach courses online.
In interviews, professors at several community colleges said online classes provide an important option for students with busy schedules, but can exacerbate differences in performance between highly disciplined students and those who need more support to succeed. Students are also more likely to withdraw from online classes early on, they said, a phenomenon not captured in the system’s statistics on completion rates.
Jennifer Paris, an assistant professor of early childhood education at College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, has been teaching online for eight years. Online discussions can be surprisingly lively, she said, involving students who would be too shy to speak up in a traditional class.
But online classes may work better for theoretical subjects.
“In our infant child care class, they learn how to change diapers,” Paris said. “How do you assess that online?”
A successful online class, Paris said, requires connecting with students. “You need a lot of announcements, warm feedback when you’re grading. You have to figure out how to remind them that there’s a human being behind everything they’re seeing on their screen.”
Research from the Public Policy Institute of California backs up that point. Its review of the Community Colleges’ existing online offerings found that in the most successful courses, students had frequent contact with the instructors and with each other, and professors proactively reached out to students who seemed to be struggling.
CALmatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics. This story was done with support from the College Futures Foundation.