While the majority of my subscribers come here for writings on philosophy and religion, I am presently in the midst of three posts on education and its reform. (I promise to return to our regularly scheduled programming momentarily.)
This three-part aside was prompted by an op-ed I published with The Daily Wire. The article offers a simple but revolutionary proposal for education reform. The long and short is this:
Colleges and universities are accredited on the backs of their faculty, on their degrees and academic achievements. But what if the qualifications that secure college and university accreditation instead secured accreditation for individuals scholars, allowing them to offer accredited courses as private-practice professors…?
The piece received a glowing reception online, and I was flooded with messages from folks eager to know how they might support the proposal. (My apologies if you are one of those folks and I have yet to reply.) In response, I wrote the first of several posts on education and its reform. Last week’s explored ways to make the proposal a reality. You can find the piece here.
At the close of that post, I offer an interim solution. This solution, which I detail below, suggests a partnership between would-be PPPs and a failing college, willing to innovate.
To my delight, a failing college (which shall remain unnamed) has reached out to me. And I am now in dialogue with them about whether this interim proposal could work for them.
Today, I share with you the proposal I wrote for that school, which is currently being considered by its President and its Board. I will be sure to keep you apprised of developments. Please feel free to comment below.
To all my subscribers, thank you for subscribing. To my paid subscribers, thank you for your support. And to any visitors, please consider subscribing and supporting my work. Enjoy!
A PRELIMINARY NOTE TO READERS
To preserve confidence, I have redacted (indicated by [RT]) the name of the school from the proposal. Readers who have already read my op-ed and last week’s post, may want to skip the Overview and head straight to the Proposal, since the former is a summary of those two items.
The “Private-Practice” Professor
A Proposal in Higher Education Reform at [RT]
Overview
On January 5, 2024, an op-ed appeared in The Daily Wire (DW) by Dr. Nathan Jacobs entitled, “The ‘Private-Practice’ Professor, a Path to True Education Reform.” The piece offers a simple but revolutionary observation that unfolds into a novel proposal. Jacobs writes,
Colleges and universities are accredited on the backs of their faculty, on their degrees and academic achievements. But what if the qualifications that secure college and university accreditation instead secured accreditation for individual scholars, allowing them to offer accredited courses as private-practice professors, thereby opening the door to a host of free market innovations? With some imagination, this simple but radical innovation could mark a path for true education reform.
Jacobs contextualizes the insight with a story about homeschooling. He was gearing up to teach his daughter Intro to Philosophy, the very same class he taught at the local university, and several parents wanted to enroll their children in the class. Jacobs warned that they would not receive college credit, which prompted a query:
Why not? I had just taught the exact same class one mile down the road at the local university. Had my daughter taken the class there, she would’ve received college credit. Why could she, or any other student, not receive college credit for the exact same class taught in my living room?
I realize the answer is that the university is an accredited entity, and I’m not. But this, too, struck me as strange. Thinking back on when my prior university was up for accreditation renewal, the accreditors reviewed my credentials. It was my degrees, my publications — and those of my colleagues — that secured their accreditation. Yet, upon leaving, the university kept the accreditation; I did not.
Jacobs goes on to discuss the economic benefits to students and professors alike, only to note the obvious challenge:
But the challenge, again, was that my credentials secured accreditation for the university, not me. So arose in my mind a proposal for education reform. What if accreditation followed the scholar, not the university? What if, just as we have licensed counselors and attorneys and physicians, we had private-practice professors — accredited scholars in various disciplines?
On this proposal, scholars could offer accredited courses in their discipline to anyone they wish. Such a shift would create a college alternative. The proposal would not eliminate the distinction between credentialed experts and novices. It would only remove from universities the sole power to bestow credentials and hand that power to the experts in the field. One need not attend a university to study a discipline; he could, instead, study under the experts of his choosing in order to achieve mastery and attain credentials.
Not only does the proposal have a commonsense ring to it, but it opens rather interesting free market possibilities to address the rising cost of higher education and pave the way for innovation.
The article closes by fleshing out the various free market possibilities that the “Private-Practice” Professor (PPP) proposal opens up while also acknowledging challenges and exploring potential solutions. You can read the full piece at the DW.1
The proposal garnered a high degree of interest, outperforming most DW editorials on social media, all with glowing support, which prompted a flood of interest about how to make the proposal a reality. In the wake of this response, Jacobs offered a follow up on his Substack about possible ways forward. In the closing of the post, he offers a transitional solution, which is well suited for [RT]. He writes,
… [I]f colleges and universities were willing to accept PPP courses, this would be a major step toward legitimizing PPPs. However, colleges and universities have the most to lose from the proposal, so I expect they are the least likely to cooperate. Having said this, struggling schools in search of a more economically lean and competitive model may afford an interim step.
I could imagine a struggling college or university embracing a hybrid between traditional faculty and PPPs. For example, the school trades its full-time faculty for a series of independent academic contractors, scholars who are affiliated with the school but essentially operate as PPPs. These PPPs recruit students, whether through the school or independent of it, offering whatever classes they like within their discipline, entirely on their own terms, including pricing. The school, in turn, offers record-keeping and accrediting services for those classes — and degree-granting services, should a student earn sufficient credits. In exchange for these umbrella services, the PPP pays the school a percentage of his earnings, though the percentage would be meager in comparison with the typical economics of a traditional college or university.2
In what follows, I lay bare the details of this interim proposal and how it might offer a way to save [RT] and even provide a chance for it to thrive both economically and as a leader in higher education reform.
The Proposal
From Full-Time Faculty to PPPs
[RT] could terminate all full-time faculty in exchange for a network of PPPs. Each recruited PPP would receive a title, not as adjunct, but as [RT] professor in his area of expertise: e.g., Professor of Philosophy and Religion. The PPP would be contracted by [RT] in a revenue sharing structure. He would be free to teach at his discretion, offering anywhere from zero to six classes concurrently at any given time, but he would not be required to teach — ever. The arrangement would merely empower the PPP to teach for credit at his discretion.
The PPP contract would offer a simple arrangement. If the PPP teaches a class, there is a revenue share of 80/20, [RT] receiving 20% for accreditation and record keeping services, the PPP keeping 80%.3 How and when to teach — three times per week, twice per week, once per week, or some other format, be it intensive or lax — would be entirely up to the PPP. The PPP would only be required to satisfy very basic parameters:
A set number of face-to-face professor-student instructions, in person or over zoom.
Some method of measuring performance, be it papers, tests, or even oral exams.
The submission of a grade commensurate with performance.
All other details would be at the PPPs discretion.
Innovative Pricing
With minor tech support, [RT] could establish an innovative but highly modern and inviting means of green lighting classes. On the [RT] website, prospective students could look at the various PPPs under each discipline and what classes they offer. Each class would, then, have its own price structure and format determined by the PPP.
Much like a GoFundMe or Kickstarter campaign, the PPP could set his price for each class. Let’s say the PPP wants to teach a class on The Problem of Evil, but he is only willing to do so if the class hits $10,000 (i.e., $8,000 to him, $2,000 to [RT]). He could set that number as the price students need to hit for the class to move forward. Those interested could, then, conditionally register for the class (the condition being that it hit the specified price point), selecting the price they are willing to pay — $500, $1,000, all the way up to the full $10,000. If the price is met, the class is on, and the PPP is on the hook to teach the class.
This approach allows the PPP to determine what the class is worth to him and prospective students to, in turn, determine what the class is worth to them. It also incentivizes students who want to take the class to either pay more or recruit others to join the class.
Accountability & Oversight
Using Canvas or some other education site, [RT] could offer oversight and accountability to its PPPs. [RT] would simply require its PPPs to record all lectures and upload them for record keeping purposes. For example, if a professor teaches over Zoom, he must record and upload each session. If he teaches in person, he would record and upload the session by phone, laptop, or some other means.4 This digital record keeping ensures that PPPs are not simply selling credits but meeting the contracted requirements of face-to-face instruction.
In addition, PPPs would be required to upload copies of all papers, quizzes, tests, or recordings of oral exams. By uploading such materials to Canvas (or its equivalent), the PPP creates and [RT] retains an archive of graded materials.
Convincing the Higher Learning Commission (HLC)5
The HLC currently allows professors to teach in person or remotely. Hence, the only challenges to this proposal should be accountability and the unconventional revenue share. To the former, the above means of accountability should suffice, given that this level of accountability offers a higher bar than the typical college, where there is no record of what happens in the classroom.
As for revenue share, [RT] should have full discretion in this matter for one very simple reason: This is a business decision about how to compensate faculty, not an education decision. Hence, it falls outside the purview of the HLC.
Recruiting Top Talent
This proposal could immediately secure impressive scholars for [RT]’s faculty. The reasons are simple. First, the proposal requires nothing of the person committed. A reputable academic may sign a contract with [RT] simply to have the freedom to offer classes on his own terms, even if he never in fact does so.
Second, many talented and brilliant professors supplement their income with adjunct teaching. However, the economics of the PPP arrangement with [RT] are superior to typical adjunct pay. Hence, such academics may sign on, while retaining their other professorship, because they see the PPP option as a better means of supplementing their income. Note that if the school at which they teach accepts [RT] transfer credits, rather than teaching a summer class at their home school, the PPP could redirect a crop of students to a class at [RT], securing a better price for the student and better pay for them.
In short, the recruiting efforts are likely to move quickly, pulling in a host of notable scholars to serve as official [RT] faculty, even if not all are teaching a [RT] class at a given time.
Marketing & PR
As stated out the outset, this innovation offers [RT] an opportunity to spin its current restructuring, not as the death of a college, but as a true innovation in higher ed that is leading the way in education reform. If this succeeds, other schools will be clamoring to do the same, and [RT] will be ahead of the curve, leading the way in this reform. The revolutionary nature of the proposal is likely to garner media attention and, through that attention, a tremendous amount of interest from those concerned with education reform as well as academics clamoring for their shot at being a PPP. This type of innovation has the potential to propel [RT] into the cultural limelight, produce an economic win for the school, and set the stage for how higher education will work into the future.
Given that [RT] is offering administrative services, the school could set its own minimums for a class. However, such minimums would need to be true minimums, so as to not drive up costs for students or hinder the economic freedom of the PPP.
To be clear, the quality of the recording is not of concern here. The purpose of the recording is record keeping and accountability, not quality. Hence, whatever the PPP has available for recording purposes will suffice.
The school for which I wrote the proposal is accredited by the HLC.
This is all fascinating, and I am quite intrigued. I do have a burning question: who decides what courses are required for a degree?
Thank you!