Sure they say it’s for such work-related issues as business ethics and “retail inventory management,” but since when did retail work at any store, much less Walmart, equal undergraduate OR even graduate school credit?

Walmart is providing a 15% discount on tuition at American Public University, an online-only school based in Charles Town, West Virginia. You can also play the ponies and slots there. They charge $750 for a three-credit course undergraduate course, more for a graduate course. Offered only online. Heck, even if you paid all the activity and lab fees, one would pay only $435 at the University of Florida this summer.

What could cost APU so much to run an online course? How can you justify allowing worker bees up to 45% of a college education by working at Walmart?

What’s wrong with our current idea of “higher education,” one that opens it doors to anyone with a high school diploma (and we all know that some graduates read at the middle school level or worse) and then offers hundreds of hours of basically free classes and tutoring to get them up to speed? What is it “higher” than?

Truth is higher education has been slipping into mediocrity for years. This is yet another example.

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I have been a little hesitant to embrace some of the arguments, but I am starting to come around. Universities aren’t in such good shape either, and certainly the movement toward having higher ed work like business is losing traction, given the state of American business.

Maybe it’s time to collaborate.

In March Jonathan Zimmerman of the Christian Science Monitor suggested that professors could write for newspapers for free. After all, he reasoned, they already write for academic journals for free: what would be wrong with pushing some toward getting decent local content into the local paper?

My initial reaction was negative, but I’ve moved in that direction a bit. I believe we could find hundreds of willing professors, who in the world of “publish or perish,” would be happy to swap The Journal of Impossibly Unimportant Studies for The Daily Blab.

Professors are required to add to their field’s body of knowledge through research or work with professional colleagues on important projects to keep their skills fresh. The results of both are meant to be brought to the classroom as well, so that students benefit directly from professors’ non-teaching work.

It seems like a good approach to me. If institutions would better recognize and reward such publications, professors in many fields — not just journalism — would certainly sign up for a byline. If you build it, they will write.

More recently in Inside Higher Ed, David Scobey, a professor at Bates College, brought up the concept of dailynews.edu, another attempt to bring universities into the fray. Scobey suggests three potential models: (1) many public radio stations already are hosted by universities, why not a newspaper staffed by both profs and talented students; (2) something similar to the extension services that are part of land-grant institutions; and (3) something akin to cultural institutions such as museums, theaters and botanical gardens.

All are financial mash-ups of public and private monies that served the local area. Why not do the same thing with the newspapers? The ad model can’t carry the load by itself any more, and having the government simply step in to subsidize newspapers is not an idea I can live with.

Seems like a win-win to me. Professors would get a new creative and professional outlet for their work, students would gain a solid apprenticeship in the field that would supplement their classroom work, and the local public would benefit from the work of both.

I think it is worth considering.

Sources:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0309/p09s01-coop.html
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/08/28/scobey

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