Mistaken Goal: Where Higher Education & Technology Meet

Results from three research studies were released late last week. Two of them come from EDUCAUSE; I’m going to their annual conference this week and I’m really looking forward to attending presentations related to these studies.

• EDUCAUSE – or more accurately their research arm ECAR – released results from the 2011 ECAR National Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology. As always, the researchers at ECAR have done a great job summarizing the results and making actionable recommendations for colleges and universities. The survey is undergoing changes and two different versions were administered this year. Although the methodological details in the report are not as detailed as I would like, it seems that moving to a third party administration has addressed some of my consistent concerns about non-response bias in this survey and generalizability of its results. EDUCAUSE also commissioned an infographic to summarize some of the results.
• EDUCAUSE also released some data from the Core Data Service (CDS), their annual survey of member institutions. They have not yet released the summary report but they have released other reports including new “almanacs” that summarize data for large aggregations of Carnegie Classifications. The CDS has also been redesigned and several of these reports are also new. However, I am puzzled that they continue to use the outdated 2000 Carnegie Classifications. Not only the actual categories outdated and no longer used, the data on which they are based are well over a decade old.
• Statistics Canada, a government agency roughly analogous to the U.S. Census Bureau, released results from the 2010 Canadian Internet Use Survey. Comparative data are often useful and interesting to me, especially data from Canada and other countries culturally and economically similar to the United States. Unfortunately, only a few summary tables are available; you have to pay for other data. Hopefully Canadians can access these data for free and I am only being quoted a price because I am connecting to the Statistics Canada website from a U.S. IP address.

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The EFF, one of my favorite organizations, has announced a report describing a security vulnerability in Impulse Point’s SafeConnect product. I don’t have any new insight to add regarding the security flaw or SafeConnect. But the announcement is a quick read with a nice little history of Network Access Control (NAC) technology and its important role in managing residential computer networks.

(Off-topic reminiscing: In 2003, college and university campuses experienced massive problems on their student computer networks thanks to the Blaster and SoBig worms. In response, colleges and universities rapidly adopted NAC and similar technologies to curtail those problems. Around that time, a few people from a brand new company visited the campus where I worked to pitch their product; the company was located in Florida and they were visiting nearby colleges and universities to collect feedback and gauge interest. They had a nice product but it didn’t address our needs. If I remember correctly, the product hijacked downloads of copyrighted material – music, movies, etc. – and redirected students to vendors selling the material legally. Again, it was a neat product but one in which we had no interest. Instead, we told them how badly we needed a good NAC, especially after getting our asses kicked by Blaster and SoBig so badly that we shut down the network for several days until we could get a handle on things. Importantly, their product shared a lot with NAC products so our recommendation to develop a NAC was realistic. The nice people from Impulse Point left and when I next heard of them it was about the success of their SafeConnect NAC product. Maybe my memory is faulty or maybe I’m just silly and arrogant but I like to think that I played a teeny tiny role in the success of this company and their popular product. You’re welcome!)

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Right after I posted a screed about how some recent research about Twitter’s relationship with students’ grades has been misunderstood, along came another study that is being mischaracterized. I’m not looking for these things; I don’t want to be some kind of education research watchdog or bully. But this is important and I must speak up.

The demographics of U.S. college students are changing and too many of us are not changing our practices to match. Recently, Complete College America released a report focusing on these changing demographics with a specific focus on part-time students and the continued growth of non-traditional students. It focuses on some very important and often overlooked topics and it should elicit discussion and promote action.

Frustratingly, several of the media reports are misreporting what is in this study, particularly in their headlines and summaries. The study very explicitly says that “4 of every 10 public college students are able to attend only part-time” on its second page. So why are some reporters and commentators summarizing the report with headlines proclaiming that part-time students are the new majority? I can understand a relatively small shop making this mistake, particularly if they’re in a rush to try to get the word out about this important study and happy to make corrections. But why is the Washington Post getting it wrong and letting the error persist for days? And why are higher education professionals passing along this report with incorrect information, blindly repeating headlines and summaries that get it wrong?

(Not everyone is getting this wrong. For example, The Atlantic gets it just right.)

This is so frustrating to me because the topics discussed in this report are so important. Non-traditional students do make up the majority of students. The federal government does a poor job collecting information about these students by often focusing exclusively on first-time, first year students (which, coincidentally, was an issue I wrote about in my qualifying exam). Too many of us have tunnel vision and only focus on the students on our campus or – more accurately – the students we think are on our campus. In the context of student affairs, I worry particularly about the next generation of professionals and whether these demographic changes are being addressed in their coursework. My impression is that they are not; I hope I am wrong!

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