Paul Carr was one semester away from finishing his degree at Morehouse College when he found out his girlfriend was pregnant. So he decided to drop out of college to get a job and support his family. He told himself he would come back soon to finish his degree.
That was more than 25 years ago.
Carr had always intended to return. In fact, he promised his father on his deathbed that he would finish his university studies.
So when she saw an announcement that Morehouse was starting an online program designed to help older students with some college credits finish their degrees, it seemed like the perfect fit. She applied and joined the program’s first class of students in 2021.
Carr was one of the students we followed in a podcast series two years ago called Second Acts, which took an in-depth look at the challenges faced by adult college students returning to finish their degrees.
As our series came to a close, Carr still hadn't finished that degree. Even after taking courses for a year in the online program, he wasn't sure when Morehouse would be satisfied that he'd earned enough extra credits to earn a degree, or if he'd ever finish. He was, he said, in “limbo.”
And it turns out he wasn't the only one who encountered obstacles in the new program.
As he described in our final episode, he had become a student leader in an effort to raise student concerns with administrators after hearing from many classmates with similar difficulties navigating the program.
A USA Today investigative story More of the “obstacles” students have faced in the program were detailed last year.
“There weren’t enough seats for students to take the classes they needed, so they were being sent to take online classes at other universities,” says one of USA Today’s journalists, Chris Quintana. “They wanted to get a sense of when things would be done. When would those classes be available? And it was especially frustrating for these students because this is a degree-completion program.”
For this week's EdSurge podcast, we spoke with Carr to find out what happened next.
Carr made it clear that he and other students were reluctant to talk to reporters about their complaints because they feared any resulting article would be a “smear piece” that would make Morehouse look bad.
“And we weren’t going to allow that,” Carr says. “Because while there were some problems, Morehouse is a very, very important institution. It’s a beautiful institution. It’s imperfectly perfect.”
Morehouse is the only all-male HBCU, and its alumni include Martin Luther King Jr. “Historically, the black community has always had to do more with less,” Carr says. “And so, black people are always like, ‘OK, no one’s going to help us. We’re going to have to figure this out. ’”
But he and a few other students decided to participate in the USA Today story after learning that the article would go ahead with or without them. “So we made it our mission to give our honest experiences, but also make sure it’s clear that we’re here to protect our school,” he says.
Carr liked the outcome of the article and says it helped “light the spark” and push the university to make improvements to Morehouse Online more quickly. That didn’t happen because of media pressure, she says, but because the article brought to light stories about challenges students were facing that she felt administrators hadn’t previously known in detail.
As it turns out, some of the challenges faced by the fledgling Morehouse Online stemmed from its arrangement with 2U, the online program manager that the college worked with to help it develop the online degree program. The college originally announced plans to offer up to six majors in the first two years, including one in computer science. But now, more than three years after launching, it offers just one major, in business administration.
2U issued a blog entry While Quintana says he and the paper stand by their work and have not made corrections, when EdSurge invited Morehouse to comment for this article, Kendrick Brown, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, said the institution remains “dedicated to expanding” the online program.
“With an enrollment of 245 students and 42 graduates over the past two years, the program continues to offer exceptional value to men seeking to be part of the distinctive Morehouse experience,” he said.
Carr says he was close to giving up and posted a note on an online discussion forum for students in the program saying so. He soon received a call from a classmate he had never met who urged him to persevere.
Listen to the episode to find out what happened next. Watch it on Spotify, Apple Podcastsor in the player below.
