Coverage of Caltech's CTME program

To: The Caltech Community
From: Thomas F. Rosenbaum, President, and David A. Tirrell, Provost

The New York Times published in its Sunday edition an article critical of Caltech's Center for Technology and Management Education (CTME) program and its collaboration with online education provider SimpliLearn. The article does not accurately reflect Caltech's standards or the steps we take to ensure our educational standards and high-quality expectations are met. It also does not fully capture Caltech's relationship with SimpliLearn and CTME's approach to provide comprehensive access to professional development opportunities.

Caltech CTME has for more than a decade offered a broad range of extended education certificate programs in areas of technology and management interest. CTME supports thousands of students annually across more than 50 programs, 8 of which are offered in collaboration with SimpliLearn.

Many of CTME's programs, which may include online and in-person components, are customized to support corporate partners—such as ARAMCO, John Deere, and Toshiba Corporation—that are interested in designing programs to enhance the skillsets and practice of their employee groups. CTME's collaboration with SimpliLearn in the delivery of some online courses has in recent years allowed Caltech to expand educational access to training programs and expertise during a period where we have experienced increased demand from longtime corporate partners and growing public interest in individually paced and directed online programs.

Although the vast majority of student feedback has been positive, the New York Times, unfortunately, chose to focus on the accounts of a few students that are not in any way reflective of the overall quality of our programs or the expectations that we have for instruction or student experience. CTME has a very strong track record of learners who report satisfaction with their experiences. SimpliLearn, specifically, notes that the average rating of courses with Caltech is 4.6 of 5. When isolated incidents of issues, concerns or dissatisfaction have come to the attention of the staff, they have attempted to address those matters directly, quickly, and as effectively as possible with students. Nevertheless, we are evaluating our CTME course offerings and the relationship with SimpliLearn.

Caltech is committed to delivering high quality education experiences to all students and will take all necessary actions to ensure that we realize that goal.