In recent years many universities have aggressively pushed for increased web-based instruction. Recently Arizona State University announced a partnership with Pearson to deliver on-line courses.

The CSU Technology Steering Committee, made up of campus presidents, likewise is scheming to move the CSU into the world of on-line instruction.

Arguments for increased on-line instruction are made on pedagogical grounds. No one has ever said “We choose to teach on-line because students learn better on-line.” Almost always it is justified on economic grounds: “It costs less to educate students on-line” augmented with high-minded rhetoric about “increasing access for students” and “providing a well-trained workforce for the state of California.”

The underlying assumption of these schemes is that the primary driver of the rising cost of a college education is faculty salaries. Once the pedagogical architecture is put in place by the “vendor” (Pearson or some other private sector provider) and the faculty member, labor can be “outsourced” to a low paid, benefit-less, non-tenure track faculty member, thereby placing “downward pressure” on labor costs.

Employee Classification	Change
Service and Maintenance	-33%
Clerical and Secretarial	-29%
Technical and Paraprofessional	– 4%
Skilled Crafts	+18%
Faculty	+28%
Managerial and Professional	+229%
Source: http://defendthecsu.blogspot.com/

Of course the underlying assumption is completely and totally false. As I have demonstrated elsewhere, labor costs are rising most rapidly at the administrative level not at the faculty level. And the growth in the labor force is not at the faculty level but at the administrative level, as the table to the left–which displays changes the number of employees in each employment classification between 1975 and 2008–attests. The problem is not more, and more-expensive, faculty.

Yes, the CSU may save money by pushing students on-line and outsourcing labor; but it is a poor response to a misdiagnosis of the problem.

Do not get me wrong: I am not philosophically opposed to on-line instruction. I know faculty who are particularly adept at using technology this way (and anyone who knows me personally knows that I have no fear of technology). And I know students who are sufficiently self-motivated to be able to take advantage of this style of education. I am skeptical, however, that there are sufficient numbers of both to make on-line education equal to, or better than, in-person instruction.

According to a planning document generated by the Technology Steering Committee, each campus has promised $50,000 from their individual budgets to kick-start the scheme. It may not sound like much but, during a time of budget-cutting on our campuses, $50,000 could help ease the pain a bit—especially on a small campus like ours.

Predictably the most massive expenditures envisioned in the document include payments to a a “technology partner,” and a “massive marketing effort.” And then, predictably, there is this: Section 5 “Proposed Timeline” point #4 “Hire an Executive Director by October 30, 2011.” And so the already-bloated bureaucracy on Golden Shore will increase by one (or, more likely, two, three or four, because no Executive Director could operate without someone to “direct”), while programs on my campus that are desperately in need of tenure track faculty will, once again, go wanting.