{"id":413,"date":"2012-11-20T13:50:53","date_gmt":"2012-11-20T13:50:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=413"},"modified":"2014-02-12T19:29:02","modified_gmt":"2014-02-12T19:29:02","slug":"the-business-of-education-home-study-programs-in-the-1920s-1930s-and-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=413","title":{"rendered":"THE BUSINESS OF EDUCATION: Home Study Programs in the 1920s-1930s and Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

Record:<\/strong> Robert Hampel, \u201cThe Business of Education: Home Study at Columbia University and the University of Wisconsin in the 1920s and 1930s.\u201d in Teachers College Record<\/em> 112, no. 9 (September 2010): 2496-2517.<\/p>\n

Summary:<\/strong> Hampel<\/a>, a professor at the University of Delaware, here provides a fascinating look at a once popular but now largely forgotten form of education that was based in the home.\u00a0 In the early 20th century millions of Americans enrolled in all sorts of programs by correspondence.\u00a0 Most of them enrolled in classes with for-profit companies who often promised the moon, used aggressive recruitment strategies, and played hardball if you failed to make payments.\u00a0 But several thousands of Americans also took study-at-home courses from the nation\u2019s universities.\u00a0 In earlier work <\/a>Hampel has given us fine history of the for-profit companies.\u00a0 Here he looks at the universities.<\/p>\n

Specifically, Hampel examines the home study programs at Columbia University and the University of Wisconsin.\u00a0 In both cases he compares the university\u2019s programs with those of the for-profit companies with which they were in competition.\u00a0 For profit outfits used \u201cbrazen\u201d and frequently misleading advertising, spent a considerable share of their budget on recruiters who used every trick in the book to drum up business (and received commissions for doing so), and used every legal means available to make customers who had signed up on an installment plan keep paying even if they dropped out of the program (which the vast majority did).\u00a0 It all seems remarkably timely, as many of the for-profit online universities<\/a> that have been so much in the news <\/a>of late are doing much the same thing.<\/p>\n

Were the universities of the early 20th century so brash?\u00a0 Hampel digs into the archives to find out.\u00a0 And the answer, in general, is no.\u00a0 But beyond the simple truth that university home study offerings were not overhyped, were not marketed to the sort of student who would likely not be able to finish or pay, and were actually quite affordable compared to the for-profit companies\u2019 products, there were other factors that contributed to either the success or failure of university efforts.<\/p>\n

Columbia University\u2019s home study program, for example, was ultimately a failure.\u00a0 Partly this was precisely because<\/em> the university did not resort to strong-arm tactics.\u00a0 Only about 19% of students who signed up for Columbia\u2019s home study courses actually finished the programs.\u00a0 That meant that the great majority who signed up never paid up.\u00a0 But Columbia did not refer these students to collection agencies or file lawsuits to recover their balance due.\u00a0 After seven straight years of net losses Columbia University\u2019s President Nicholas Murray Butler decided, in 1937, to pull the plug.\u00a0 Columbia\u2019s commitment not to use the sorts of tactics that were giving home study a bad name was honorable, but it kept the program in the red during the Great Depression.<\/p>\n

Could it have been otherwise?\u00a0 Was the only choice financial success through misleading advertising, predatory recruitment, and draconian collection practices, or financial ruin through modesty and forgiveness of debts?\u00a0 For a third way Hampel points to the University of Wisconsin, which was able to craft a more successful home study program.\u00a0 How?<\/p>\n

First of all, Wisconsin followed the lead of the for-profits and used recruiters called field agents<\/em>.\u00a0 But these were not your typical slick salesmen.\u00a0 They worked on salary rather than commission, and most of them were educators as well as publicists.\u00a0 Secondly, Wisconsin\u2019s courses were very cheap compared to the competition but required payment in full at the beginning.\u00a0 Finally, and most importantly, Wisconsin\u2019s approach was to avoid recruitment from the general population.\u00a0 Instead, they worked mostly with Wisconsin high schools, explaining their programs to local administrators, who would frequently give the field agents time with graduating seniors.\u00a0 Wisconsin\u2019s program allowed students to count home study courses to their college degrees at the University of Wisconsin provided that they passed an equal number of courses on campus.\u00a0 This was a very attractive option, and it made home study a true extension of the university system rather than a stand-alone country cousin.\u00a0 Hampel summarizes, \u201cFrom the start, [Wisconsin home study] intertwined with public education in the state, positioning itself as one node in a larger system created to serve the people more altruistically than the private sector.\u201d (p. 2511)<\/p>\n

Atypically for a historical piece, Hampel concludes by reflecting on the meaning of these historic models of university-sponsored home study for our own time.\u00a0 His first point is that the gradual expansion of University systems to include branch campuses and community colleges made home study largely unnecessary, as landed tertiary public education was increasingly available close to home.\u00a0 But why satellite campuses rather than a robust statewide home study program?\u00a0 Hampel thinks it turned out that way largely because universities did not get their faculty behind the home study option and did not create high-level curricula for it.\u00a0 If they had, and if home study courses had been offered for the same credit one could get at a landed campus, it\u2019s quite possible that what now seems so novel\u2013online college classes\u2013wouldn\u2019t have been novel at all.<\/p>\n

Hampel ends on a somewhat sanguine note about current distance education.\u00a0 He thinks this time around colleges are doing a better job trying to understand the needs of online learners and are working out curricula that takes advantage of the unique opportunities for learning the online experience makes possible.\u00a0 He thinks this time we may get it right and that students who sign up for the programs will actually finish them.\u00a0 I hope so, but some of the for-profits currently driving the online learning spike seem to me to have a lot in common<\/a>, and not in a good way, with the more predatory firms of the past\u2013aggressive recruitment by agents working on commission, horrible retention rates, and a very questionable product.\u00a0 Hopefully the scrutiny such companies have recently come under by Congress and other bodies will lead to some housecleaning, and programs with more integrity will win the day and fulfill Hampel\u2019s predictions.<\/p>\n

Appraisal: <\/strong>All in all I thoroughly enjoyed Dr. Hampel\u2019s presentation, especially the refreshing and unapologetic connection of his historical material with current educational policy.\u00a0 Among historians of education it is controversial to do this, for it smacks of \u201cfunctionalism,\u201d the tendency to make history just prolegomena to public policy and in the process do violence to the past by anachronistically forcing our own assumptions and categories backward.\u00a0 Hampel I think avoids that here.\u00a0 His history is sensitive to its own time and place, but the lessons he derives from it are nevertheless relevant to our own.\u00a0 Both historians of higher education and<\/em> current policymakers would find this a rewarding text to ponder.<\/p>\n

Milton Gaither, Messiah College, author of Homeschool: An American History<\/a>\"\"<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer<\/strong>:\u00a0 The views expressed in reviews are not the official views of ICHER or of its members.\u00a0 For more information about ICHER\u2019s Reviews, please see the \u00ab\u00a0About these Reviews \u00bb Section.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Record: Robert Hampel, \u201cThe Business of Education: Home Study at Columbia University and the University of Wisconsin in the 1920s and 1930s.\u201d in Teachers College Record 112, no. 9 (September 2010): 2496-2517. Summary: Hampel, a professor at the University of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5,9,13],"tags":[362,364,359,360,361,363],"class_list":["post-413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-collegepostsecondary","category-history","category-public-schools","tag-columbia-university","tag-nicholas-murray-butler","tag-robert-hampel","tag-teachers-college-record","tag-university-of-deleware","tag-university-of-wisconsin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=413"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1137,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413\/revisions\/1137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}