The San Diego Union Tribune published an op-ed written collaboratively by faculty and students including (but not limited to) SDFA board members. It is available on their website here and the full text is below.
Chancellor Khosla, “Going Hybrid” Will Not Fix Inequality
By: Wendy Matsumura, Andreas Araiza, and Akshatha Silas ’20.
On April 20th, on KPBS, UCSD Chancellor Pradeep Khosla noted that the COVID-19 crisis has catalyzed the need to shift higher education to a “hybrid” model that combines in-person and online learning. Remote learning “opens up more opportunities” for people “traditionally cut out of higher education,” the Chancellor said. That online education makes higher education more accessible to underserved communities is at best, naive, and at worst, deceptive.
We agree that UCSD has a systemic problem with inclusion and diversity, despite UCSD developing one of the nation’s first offices for diversity, equity, and inclusion. According to university data, the student demographic is 20% Chicanx/Latinx; 2.6% Black; 0.4% Native American. Meanwhile, California’s demographic breakdown is 39.4% Chicanx/Latinx; 6.5 percent Black; and 2.1% Native American.
Normalizing the “hybrid model” will not fix but exacerbate existing social, structural and racial inequalities. Research shows that students from underserved communities perform markedly worse in online versus in-person classes, experience higher failure rates because they lack mentorship, support, and opportunities for collaboration and research, and may rack up more student debt. Students who succeed in hybrid models tend to be more independent, well-resourced, and privileged. In other words, online learning disproportionately benefits learners who are Western, white, educated and male. Meanwhile, face-to-face connections between learners and instructors increases motivation, engagement, and retention.
While remote learning may offer more flexibility, it is unclear how it will impact the cost of education, which remains the most significant barrier to access for diverse populations. It costs $34,000/year to attend UCSD, and graduating students average $22,000 of debt upon graduation. Thus far, UCSD has not offered tuition reductions for remote learning, and private online platforms often include hidden costs for subscriptions, software, upgrades, and high-speed internet–which fall on students. Many private platforms also include hefty administrative expenses, which divert resources from libraries, student clubs, tutoring, and counseling services. Without consulting with teachers, UCSD and a private company, Cognitive Edge, are promoting hybrid learning as “the future of education.” Whose futures will be sacrificed in this vision? Existing research suggests that a hybrid model will produce a two-tiered system of education, where privileged students participate in a four-year residential college experience with its myriad advantages, while others receive online modules equivalent to a paid subscription to an educational channel.
Remote learning was an emergency measure faculty had to adopt to ensure educational continuity in a pandemic. Implementing this model as the new normal desecrates the mission of public institutions and ignores the science of learning. For example, asynchronous learning relies on standardized, pre-recorded lectures that can be recycled without keeping up with social change. While this model may allow students more flexibility, it may also further isolate students from instructors and peers. Online teaching also forces additional labor onto graduate students, many of whom are already struggling in the pandemic.
Asynchronous learning also hurts diversity — of ideas and people. Pre-recorded content robs us of the intellectual diversity that comes through lively discussions of people from different backgrounds. Further, the asynchronous model may eliminate talented instructors who have little job security, but teach 30-50% of credit hours across UC campuses. Many are first-generation PhDs and women experiencing systemic barriers to entering academia (at UCSD, only 26% of tenure track faculty are women). Without lecturers, the pool of tenure-track faculty at UCSD will remain overwhelmingly male and white.
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To be clear, our critique of online learning does not mean we want a swift return to in-person instruction, as the “Return to Learn” model appears to do. We are deeply concerned about using vulnerable staff, faculty and students’ bodies to test a brand new public health intervention. We want to ensure that the COVID crisis is not used to institute unpopular, disingenuous, or harmful profit-seeking educational policies–including those done in the name of public health. The pandemic’s social and economic effects demand restoring public universities’ mission to improve the well-being of communities through teaching, research, and employment. This can only happen if we return to funding levels before Prop 13, when the UC was singularly focused on delivering free public education.
Only a generation ago, tuition did not exist at the UC, but since 1990, tuition in the UC has increased 800%. Meanwhile, state support has plummeted. As one of the nation’s largest employers of unionized workers and people of color, the UC can become a national leader in diversity, equity, and inclusion if it enacts policies that prioritize people over profits. The most important determinants of student success are teachers, mentorship, and community resources–not technologies that reinforce existing inequities. Only reinvestment in community resources, not a hybrid model, will create the opportunities the Chancellor hopes.
This piece was written collaboratively by faculty (lecturers and tenure track) and undergraduate students at UCSD.