Articles
Editor’s Picks
Ashford Accreditor Greenlights Merger, Holds Off On Decision to Convert to Non-Profit
By Henry Kronk
July 21, 2018
On Wednesday, Ashford University and University of the Rockies (both for-profit schools) announced their plan to merge into a single institution has received the green light from their accreditor, WASC Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC). The colleges also hope to transition the newly formed Ashford University into a non-profit entity, but the accreditor did not make any decision in that regard.
In March, Bridgepoint Education, the parent company of Ashford and UotR, announced plans to separate from the schools and transition into a course management company. If all goes as planned, Ashford University will be its first client.
Bridgepoint Breaks Up, While Ashford University and University of the Rockies Merge
Bridgepoint told Politico that WSCUC will consider the conversion to a non-profit entity sometime around November of this year.
“We’re pleased to have reached this important first milestone in the merger process,” said Dr. Craig Swenson, Ashford University president and CEO. “When the merger is complete, our two institutions will become a single comprehensive institution with an expanded number of program offerings, degree levels, and student pathways. It will also further strengthen our ability to serve employers as we work together to close the nation’s skills gap.”
The merger still awaits state and U.S. Department of Education approval.
If the deal clears those hurdles, Ashford and University of the Rockies’ programs will combine, expanding the offerings of both institutions. The revamped Ashford University will, as a result, offer higher education programs from Associates’ degrees all the way up to the doctorate level.
“The faculty and staff at the University of the Rockies are excited about the opportunity to offer our doctoral programs on a broader scale through this merger,” said Dr. Dawn Iwamoto, president and CEO of University of the Rockies. “The additional support available to our students through Ashford University’s robust student service organization will also strengthen our ability to maintain the excellence of our doctoral programs.”
“President Iwamoto and I are committed to ensuring a seamless transition for University of the Rockies students and making them feel at home at Ashford University,” Dr. Swenson said. “We believe our institutions will be stronger together.”
The Flight from For-Profit
The effort comes after years of stagnant enrollment at both institutions, which has resulted in dropping profits. After netting $750 million in 2013, a year or two after the peak of for-profit education, earnings have entered a long slide at Bridgepoint. Gross revenue in 2017 was $450 million. Since the Obama administration crackdown on the sector (and possibly before), enrollment in for-profit institutions of higher education have slid consistently year-over-year since the early 2010s. To be fair, total U.S. enrollment has declined at the same time, but it has fallen much lower among for-profits.
Enrollment in for-profits dropped by 69,000 between 2016-2017 and the following school year. That 7.1% drop in the sector is actually lower than it has been in previous years.
A few other institutions in the past year have sought to transition into non-profit status besides Ashford University and the University of the Rockies. Grand Canyon University in Arizona is currently seeking to make the same move. Purdue also acquired Kaplan University for the price of $1, a deal that continues to draw ire from Purdue faculty and raise eyebrows elsewhere. Meanwhile, Strayer Education merged with Capella Education in a $1.9 billion deal last October.
Cover Image: U.S. Air Force photo/Airman Jerilyn Quintanilla
“As bots enter the classroom, both teachers and learners will have to reflect on their uses and outcomes. They will need to adopt an awareness of AI’s presence. Teachers must recognize AI’s short comings, such as inherently developing biases and its inability to process human emotions.”
This statement is correct as it relates to AI, generally; however, it assumes that AI exists as THE entity that students directly interact with. There are many potential expressions of AI, including a human-in-the-loop approach, in which it is configured in such as way as to facilitate dialogs and interactions between people, either studentteacher or studentstudent.
For example, we’re building an L2 language speaking practice app (Language Hero Smart Chat). We use AI to enable beginning students, who speak different languages, to have natural, real life conversations in each other’s language from Day 1. They speak directly to each other, interacting with the system only to select from multiple content choices suggested by it, designed to facilitate a real free-ranging dialog resulting in real bonding, to the extent it’s possible, rather than to practice a particular lexical structure (they can also text or go off the grid to have pure video chat).
Teachers can use this system as well for group chat. They can upload their own curriculum as well (the Smart Chat system configures it as multiple vector (branching script) chat or merges it with the system curriculum (focused on real life useful topics like travel, food, shopping, social chat, expressing ideas, etc.). Everything they say is comprehensible to their students, and so are all student responses.
When such a system is implemented in a manner that pays particular attention to the affective components that make human interaction so effective for creating the desire to learn (and corresponding openness to processing L2 content, in this case), we think it can be a more effective tool than bot chat.