It's perhaps a shock to no one that the University of Arkansas System's proposal to link up with the for-profit, online University of Phoenix divided the system's board of trustees. System President Donald Bobbitt had in the last two years teed the project up close to the goal line, but on fourth down, lingering crosswinds made it difficult to put it through the uprights.
Yes, this is about academics, but sports analogies are more universal than educational ones, sad to say.
The crosswinds included strongly held opinions within higher education over the role of online learning, the impact on the UA's hard-won reputation and concerns over a deal structured just strangely enough that it was difficult for many people to put their trust into it.
Even since the board rejected Bobbitt's proposal on a 5-4 vote, it remains plausible that trustees missed the boat on an exceptional arrangement that would have given the UA access to technology and knowledge in the delivery of online education. At least some of the resistance seemed to come from people vested in traditional, in-person coursework who got their fill of online teaching during the pandemic.
Supporters argued irrefutable realities, that state support for funding higher education fades every year, it seems; that there's a limit to how much you can increase tuition and a need to find new sources of revenue; that demand for online access to higher education is growing, even if it's not necessarily the kind that eschews all in-person interaction, and a university system like Arkansas' will have to get much better at delivering.
Affiliating with the for-profit school (the UA plan included shifting it to nonprofit status), critics worried, would do harm to the UA brand because of the University of Phoenix's past reputational difficulties associated with fraud claims for which it paid penalties. But thousands of people still rely on the online school's program to pursue higher education. Is it fair to believe the UA's reputation isn't strong enough to improve the online school's profile? Do critics think the UA reputation is that weak?
Bobbitt's notion was undoubtedly disruptive, as the business gurus like to say. One has to wonder if that wasn't its chief sin among those who don't want the higher education apple cart disturbed. If the University of Phoenix offer isn't the right deal, no one should assume the UA system can afford to turn a blind eye toward the evolution of education delivery online even as it continues to nurture in-person instruction.
In the newspaper industry, we can attest to the discomfort of disruption. Some might even call it heartbreak and pain. But we know this: Resistance, to borrow a phrase from the Star Trek universe, is futile. Doing it the way it's always been done has never really been an option, but technology has shifted even what was once glacial change into overdrive.
Critics feared this Phoenix was really an albatross. But any suggestion online education won't be a big part of higher education's future simply won't fly.