(Editor’s Note: Sam Geiling from APG is a co-author of this article for Animal Health News and Views.)
Considerable debate is underway this week in Washington, DC at the annual conference of the American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC). This prestigious gathering of Veterinary school deans, faculty and consultants was presented recently with the Council on Education’s (COE) new rules governing distance education for Veterinary colleges. Suffice it to say, the meeting at AAVMC with the COE staff will be intense.
The COE wants to set Veterinary medicine apart from other professional training programs in the United States with restrictive, antiquated rules governing modalities used in Veterinary education. The only rationale provided by the COE are results from a voluntary industry questionnaire, not a scientific study or analysis.
Keep in mind that Veterinary schools are short on faculty already and most cannot deliver every course with a full-time faculty member standing in an auditorium delivering lectures and slides. Since the COVID era, Veterinary schools have successfully implemented and improved distance education in a variety of subjects, either as full courses or as supplemental material. Also bear in mind that programs in other professional fields already have seen the value of virtual learning, and their use is widespread and welcomed.
Here are the COE’s new rules:
- Maximum 15% of the preclinical education may be delivered via distance education. This indicates that the COE believes sitting in an auditorium and looking at slides is meaningfully better than reviewing material at home through thoughtfully executed and produced content. It should also be mentioned that many students prefer recorded materials for the flexibility to rewatch or adjust playback speed. Schools everywhere and in every field have found that learning is no better sitting in an auditorium rather than allowing schools the flexibility to decide the mechanism and expert to deliver effective course content.
- Veterinary Colleges are not allowed to deliver more than 50% of a single course virtually without getting in line at the COE to ask for permission. It is not the Dean’s or University’s choice, but a group of COE staff or members who decide. The COE is a federal agency reporting to the Department of Education, so picture how this will go over in the current political environment. And how will this even work with 33 schools waiting in line for permission? Why would the COE staff or members know more than the Dean, his faculty and the university leadership?
- Each college and university that houses a Veterinary school is already accredited and reviewed by a regional accreditor and they provide much more flexible rules, including allowing schools to offer 50% of their curriculum through online technologies before they are categorized as a distance education program. But the COE wants to limit Veterinary medicine to just 15%. This means significantly higher costs if it’s even possible for schools to find the faculty needed to meet this threshold. And no school is allowed to appeal the 15% barrier . . . again a decision made not by universities or their Veterinary school Deans, but by the COE arbitrarily selecting a threshold, not based in outcomes or other objective data.
Most Veterinary students today are Generation Z’s and they have been raised on flexible, innovative, convenient tools using technology to gain information . . . both inside and outside of school. Yet the COE is sure it knows better to turn the clock back to models from decades ago.
To what end? Why not trust universities and Veterinary school Deans and faculty to make these decisions? Why be so prescriptive and suffer the consequences of a rise in tuition costs? If the goal is employing high-quality educators with responsible stewardship of student debt, embracing the use of distance education is an obvious solution.
Let’s hope the COE staff and members listen carefully to Veterinary school professionals this week and follow the lead of other programs in the United States who’ve embraced technology to educate professionals across many sectors.