Tale of Two Schools' Statistical Tricks
NPR’s Scott Simon interviewed Brad Wolverton who asks the perennial question for college athletes who are struggling in class, “Need three credits to play ball?” "Call Western Oklahoma" describes the online learning program at this isolated college. Before his expose, athletes across the nation would get themselves into academic trouble and say, “'Oh, I'm going to go take a Western Oklahoma.'" As a result of Wolverton’s article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools is planning an investigation of the program.
Wolverton describes a football player with 5th grade reading skills who completed a three-credit health class in three sittings. “Other students struggling to stay above a 2.0 on their own campus,” he writes, “have landed A's and B's from Western Oklahoma—all in the academic blink of an eye.” A former instructor was surprised at how many athletes earned credit by describing how to bake a cake. Another instructor designed her class to cover seven centuries of history in 50 hours. As with many virtual learning programs, students can retake exams and the exams are not monitored.
Western Oklahoma does not seem to provide more of a shortcut than many other online programs. For instance,