The Herald Online

Issue date: 2/22/10 Section: News

Media Credit: Tami Wynn Chair of the political science department, Richard Wang, expresses his concern over the lack of control he said ASU Jonesboro will have on the courses in the HEH Mountain Home online associate degree program.

Editor's note: This is a corrected version of the original online and print article.

Senators expressed concern at Friday's Faculty Senate meeting as they discussed ASUJ's role in an agreement for ASU-Mountain Home to offer an associate's degree entirely online through a private organization partnership.

The agreement between ASU-Mountain Home and Higher Education Holdings (HEH) would create a program some senators likened to the University of Phoenix in which students can obtain an associate's degree via online courses. (Higher Education Holdings recently changed its name to Academic Partnerships LLC.)

According to the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) released after a faculty meeting last Wednesday, ASUJ's role in this agreement would be to offer services such as admissions, advisement and records management.

"Functionally, we're providing all the academic support services and they [HEH] are doing all the content development and content delivery," ASUJ Provost Dan Howard said at the meeting. "That's the differentiation of role and function and scope."

Howard said ASU-Mountain Home has full control over "course development and course delivery."

Faculty senators took issue with several aspects of the agreement as they discussed whether ASUJ should be a part of it.

Dr. Jack Zibluk, associate professor of journalism and faculty senator, expressed concern after the meeting about the lack of control ASU would have on the program.

"ASU Jonesboro has nothing to say about what happens at Mountain Home because it's a separate campus," he said. "We can't control any standards. We have no say of who's involved."

At the meeting Dr. Bill Humphrey, professor of agriculture studies, echoed Zibluk and was concerned with how prepared students obtaining their associate's degree online would be for upper-level courses.

"Their faculty can do what they want," he said. "The only thing we can evaluate is the outcome down the road when they finish with those students and they start showing up here."

Another concern was ASU's motivation for the agreement.

Since public universities receive state funding for each individual who enrolls full-time, agreeing to this program would increase enrollment numbers, thereby increasing state funding for the ASU system.

Howard said during the meeting that HEH would receive 70 percent of the profits while the ASU system will receive the remaining 30 percent.

Of the 30 percent going to the system, 70 percent will go to ASUJ, with the remaining funds going to ASU-Mountain Home.

Another issue the senators discussed was the assumption that students getting their associate's degree at ASU-Mountain Home would be likely to go to ASUJ for their bachelor's degrees might not be true.

Dr. Richard Wang, professor of political science, motioned to invite Chancellor Robert Potts to a future Faculty Senate meeting so he can discuss the issue in greater depth with the senators. Senators passed this motion.

In other business:

- Dr. Richard Freer, associate professor of social work, presented a draft of the university's exigency policy, a protocol to keep ASU alive in times of financial distress. Concerns were raised about the possibility of this policy being abused to remove faculty without a true state of distress. Senators voted to continue working on this issue with the committee.

- Senators voted to approve a calendar option for 2010-2011. The approved calendar gives a week-long break at Thanksgiving.

- The possibility of increasing student fees was discussed. IT infrastructure at ASU is lacking compared to peer universities.

Last edited Feb. 25, 2010, 4:51 p.m.

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