St. Cloud State University

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January 6, 2012 | 3:53 PM | By

What’s St. Cloud’s Potter doing with online education?

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MPR photo/Tim Post

MnSCU, too?

St. Cloud State University sounds like it’s working on some sort of boost in how it and the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) system provides online education.

President Earl Potter is teaming up with Provost Devinder Malhotra to “reinvent” the online game, the school announced yesterday.

In a news release, Malhotra says:

 

“The growth in online courses and programs at SCSU has been a critical area of enrollment growth, much of which has occurred organically. We need to begin to think more strategically about our online activities.”

Big stuff, or just marketing talk?

Not sure, but I’ll try to find out next week what’s going on.

FILED UNDER: Schools, MnSCU (Minnesota State Colleges and Universities), online education, St. Cloud State University, technology
December 22, 2011 | 1:50 PM | By

What a dean says about St. Cloud’s differential tuition system

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MPR photo/Tim Post

It's about convergence

After writing a post  earlier this month that asked questions about how St. Cloud State University (among others) should handle the charging of different tuition rates among various programs, I recently got this reply from Mark Springer, interim dean of the university’s College of Liberal Arts & School of the Arts.

St. Cloud State had added mass communication to nursing and art — programs that already charged such “differential tuition.”

I’d asked whether the right programs were being charged, and whether the journalism program was really one that required extra charges for technology (compared to equipment-heavy sciences, for example).

How much was market demand a factor? And should all students within a department pay higher tuition when one of the divisions is more prone to use such technology?

I had no real stance on the issue, but was just asking some preliminary questions, so I put the call out for some more opinions.

Here is Springer’s response, which I’ve edited for length.

The most significant element to note is that the differential tuition at St. Cloud State in mass communications is not intended to fund the dollars needed to update our current television studio. Those costs are large and program-based tuition cannot and will not shoulder that expense. The program-based tuition investment is part of a larger strategic initiative within the mass communications department to move toward a “converged” curriculum.

It is a multi-faceted experience in which several kinds and formats of media are “converged” in one place. Often this is a website where one encounters audio, video, advertising, photography and journalism simultaneously. With the added impact of hand-held devices, pads and smart phones, it becomes a very technology rich, multi-media experience.

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FILED UNDER: St. Cloud State University
December 9, 2011 | 9:51 AM | By

How fairly is differential tuition being carried out in Minnesota?

“I think it’s all part of the puzzle. Universities have to find out ways to fund their programs, and (differential tuition is) part of it. But from a student’s perspective it can be difficult to continue to watch your tuition increase.”

– St. Cloud State student leader Amanda Bardonner to the St. Cloud Times on her university’s increased use of “differential tuition,” or the charging of higher tuition for certain majors.

According to the article, St. Cloud State has added mass communications to nursing and art as the degrees that will carry higher costs for upper-level students.

The idea of charging varying levels of tuition does make some sense. But to me it raises a few questions of fairness:

Are the right programs being charged?

Are universities charging those that truly have the highest costs, or is market demand — the popularity of the degree — a big factor in the price increase? And should that matter?

For example: Where do equipment- and chemical-heavy science programs stand in this “differential tuition” program at various colleges and universities? One might think that costs there would be higher than average — potentially higher than those in art, nursing and mass communications — and thus be the first to take on the price increase. Are those costs being born by grants and donations?

And at what level should universities charge more?

For example, mass comm students have reportedly agreed to pay $25 per credit more in exchange for an upgrade of tech facilities — for its TV facility and some computer improvements.

I wonder how well that sits with non-TV students (print, PR and advertising), since most journalism programs (as I remember) tend to require standard computers and only a few mass-market programs such as Photoshop, InDesign, and the like, as well as some cameras. Do all mass-comm majors use the TV facility?

And is the mass comm department really the one that requires the most critical high-tech upgrades?

Just some preliminary questions. I may be over-thinking it. But I’d like to get some more info to see how this all functions.

Anyone with insight is welcome to chime in.

FILED UNDER: Money, Schools, St. Cloud State University
November 23, 2011 | 9:19 AM | By

After saving athletics, St. Cloud students veto student center renovations

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MPR photo/Tim Post

What's business saying about Minnesota grads?

St. Cloud State University students have again rejected a fee increase to pay for renovations of Atwood Memorial Center, the St. Cloud Times reports.

Nine percent of the student body voted, and 42 percent supported the increase, which would have been an additional $4.20 a credit, up to 12 credits, for the next two decades.

Interestingly, you may remember that last year around this time, students approved a $1.74-per-credit fee increase to buy some time for the university’s athletic department.

The renovations were needed in part to meet growing demand, the student newspaper reported in September.

Read the full St. Cloud Times story here.

FILED UNDER: Money, Schools, Student Life, St. Cloud State University
November 1, 2011 | 8:32 AM | By

Why St. Cloud State is so pumped about its new science building

In light of last week’s Governor’s Job Summit, discussion of STEM and the need for higher education to work more with business, St. Cloud State has some big words about its $45 million ISELF science teaching-and-research building, which should open in 2013:

ISELF is the big idea, the game changer that will transform St. Cloud State into the Minnesota leader in science education and science business collaboration.

Not a leader. The leader.

Read more here.

FILED UNDER: Learning, St. Cloud State University