Mike Rowe on the High Cost of College (Video Interview)

Dirty Jobs' Mike Rowe on the High Cost of College (Full Interview)

"If we are lending money that ostensibly we don't have to kids who have no hope of making it back in order to train them for jobs that clearly don't exist, I might suggest that we've gone around the bend a little bit," says TV personality Mike Rowe, best known as the longtime host of Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs.

"There is a real disconnect in the way that we educate vis-a-vis the opportunities that are available. You have - right now - about 3 million jobs that can't be filled," he says, talking about openings in traditional trades ranging from construction to welding to plumbing. "Jobs that typically parents' don't sit down with their kids and say, 'Look, if all goes well, this is what you are going to do.'"

Rowe, who once sang for the Baltimore Opera and worked as an on-air pitchman for QVC, worries that traditional K-12 education demonizes blue-collar fields that pay well and are begging for workers while insisting that everyone get a college degree. He stesses that he's "got nothing against college" but believes it's a huge mistake to push everyone in the same direction regardless of interest or ability. Between Mike Rowe Foundation and Profoundly Disconnected, a venture between Rowe and the heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar, Rowe is hoping both to help people find new careers and publicize what he calls "the diploma dilemma."

Rowe recently sat down with Reason's Nick Gillespie to discuss his bad experience with a high school guidance counselor (3:20), why he provides scholarships based on work ethic (6:57), the problem with taxpayer-supported college loans (8:40), why America demonizes dirty jobs (11:32), the happiest day of his life (13:14), why following your passion is terrible advice (17:05), why it's so hard to hire good people (21:04), the hidden cost of regulatory compliance (23:16), the problem with Obama's promise to create shovel ready jobs (33:05), efficiency versus effectiveness (34:17), and life after Dirty Jobs (38:24).

Approx. 41 minutes. Cameras by Meredith Bragg and Joshua Swain. Edited by Bragg. Published on Dec 13, 2013

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Boundless, free textbook startup, settles publishers lawsuit

Boundless, the free textbook startup, settles lawsuit with publishers | PandoDaily: "... Last spring, Pearson Education, Cengage Learning, and Macmillan sued the company for copyright infringement, unfair competition, and false advertising. They argued that since Boundless allows students to download an “equivalent” of the book they created, it is in violation of their copyright. Boundless countered the charges, arguing that the content in the Boundless’ free textbooks is not protected by copyright, since it is public domain material. Boundless further accused the textbook publishers of a copyright monopoly, saying their right to claim ownership of the OER material is barred by “their own unclean hands and inequitable conduct.”..."

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Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from eSumma.com

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University of Kansas online education

University of Kansas preparing to be more aggressive in online education efforts: "That strategy is not to simply move classes online in bulk, but to focus on specific targets. Students such as Remp, who might be using community college courses during the summer or at other times to fill requirements, are one example. Other plans call for more and more fully online graduate programs for working people. Another focus is combining online material with physical classrooms, allowing students from miles away to enroll in professional programs or improving education for KU's undergraduate students on campus."

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Is the US Spending Enough on Education?

The problem is NOT money -- (other than, perhaps, the way the money is allocated) --

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis: Is the US Spending Enough on Education?: "US Total Population and Children Population  . . . children as a percentage of the population plummeting from 1964 - where they peaked at over 36% to today where they are just 24% of the population. The number of children in '64 was about 69.7 million, today up to 76.7 million, a growth of 7 million while the overall population grew 123.7 million . . . Number of Children and Per Child Spending On Education in Constant 2009-10 Dollars -- I cannot understand how this spending, so absurdly high, is continually pointed out as too little to spend on education! In constant dollars we are spending 7 times the amount on education as the 1950's - the generation of students that put the man on the moon, invented computers, the list goes on and on. At 1/7th the cost!" (more at the link above)

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Enstitute, Alternative to College, Digital Elite

For a small group of the young, digital elite, Enstitute seeks to challenge the conventional wisdom that top professional jobs always require a bachelor’s degree.

Enstitute, an Alternative to College for a Digital Elite - NYTimes.com: " . . . But college is expensive, and becoming more so — between 2000 and 2011, tuition rose 42 percent, according to the National Center for Education Statistics — and students fear being saddled by debt in a bleak job market. (Students from the class of 2011 who took out loans graduated with an average debt of $26,000.) And some employers complain that many colleges don’t teach the kinds of technical skills they want in entry-level hires. Peter Thiel, the billionaire investor, upped the ante to this argument when he started the Thiel Fellowship, which pays a no-strings-attached grant of $100,000 for young people not to attend college and to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams instead. Enstitute doesn’t offer anything like $100,000 to its apprentices. Still, it is aimed at intelligent, ambitious and entrepreneurial types — people like Ms. Gao, who participated in the Technovation Challenge, a nine-week program and competition for high school girls to design a mobile app prototype at Google in New York. . . ." (read more at link above)

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For better learning, change the font

For better learning, change the font - Indian Express: "Font size has no effect on memory, even though most people assume that bigger is better. But font style does. New research finds that people retain significantly more material—whether science, history or language—when they study it in a font that is not only unfamiliar but also hard to read."

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Coursera, K-12 education, online courses for teachers

Coursera makes first foray into K-12 education with online courses for teachers — Tech News and Analysis: "Online learning startup Coursera is partnering with several schools of education, as well as other institutions and museums, to bring professional development courses to K-12 teachers online."

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Moolah for MOOCs, Coursera Raises Another $20M

Coursera is also on top of the buzziest trend in edtech: MOOCs — or massive open online courses — which aim to democratize education by making lectures from quality professors widely available. (source infra)

More Moolah for MOOCs -- Coursera Raises Another $20M - Liz Gannes - News - AllThingsD: "Coursera, with 5.5 million students taking classes from 100 universities and institutions, is one of the largest companies in a crop of ed-tech startups. Learn Capital partner Rob Hutter observed that at least 60 technology startups in the education space were venture funded in 2012...globally the market for education is $4.6 trillion, and the total market capitalization of companies in the space is just $50 billion...In some ways, Coursera is the last big MOOC standing. Udacity, which was also founded by a Stanford professor — Sebastian Thrun — has refocused on classes that help prepare people for jobs in the technology industry. And edX, the nonprofit version of Coursera that originated at Harvard and MIT, now seems somewhat more focused on open-source MOOC tools. (EdX started with $60 million from its founding universities, while Udacity has raised $20 million from venture capitalists.)...Coursera now has a staff of about 70 people, and it is making some money by selling verified certificates that students can use to show they’ve completed a MOOC...."

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For-Profit Education, FTC Warnings

After Being Unfairly Characterized by Regulators, For-Profit Institutions Slowly Rebranding Image | Jeff Ifrah - JDSupra:  " . . . Most recently, the FTC has launched a campaign to warn veterans about for-profit education: “Colleges are there to help you, right? Hmm, not so fast. Not every school has got your back. Some for-profit schools may care more about boosting their bottom line with your VA education benefits. Some may even stretch the truth to persuade you to enroll, either by pressuring you to sign up for courses that don’t suit your needs or to take out loans that will be a challenge to pay off.” (http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/veterans-dont-get-schooled) “[S]ome schools manipulate the data or lie about how well their graduates fare.” (http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0395-choosing-college) . . ."

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LAUSD, every student with iPads

LAUSD launches its drive to equip every student with iPads - latimes.com: "Two local elementary schools became the first to roll out tablet computers Tuesday in a $1-billion effort to put iPads in the hands of every student in the Los Angeles Unified School District. For Broadacres, in Carson, the tablets were an exhilarating upgrade for a campus that had no wireless Internet and few working computers. Technology was only marginally better at Cimarron, in Hawthorne, where the computer lab couldn't accommodate an entire class. "This is going to level the playing field as far as what schools are doing throughout the district," said Principal Cynthia M. Williams of Cimarron, where 70% of students are from low-income families. L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy has pushed for the technology, which will cost about $1 billion — half of that for the Apple tablets and about half for other expenses, such as installing a wireless network on every campus. The vast majority of the cost will be covered by school construction bonds, a payment method that has sparked some concerns and legal and logistical hurdles. Not everyone is sold on whether the tablets will improve learning...." (read more at link above)

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Tablets with Google Play for Education

Introducing Tablets with Google Play for Education 
Published on Nov 13, 2013
Schools in Hillsborough, New Jersey were among the first to try out Nexus 7 tablets with Google Play for Education. See the difference it made for students, teachers, and administrators. Learn more at http://google.com/edu/tablets

"Google Play for Education is basically Google Play, but curated specifically for kids by teachers, with apps sorted by age and genre. So, for example, users can find math-based applications that are appropriate for their kindergartener, who wants to learn more maths. It also contains educational videos and classic books for the classroom. The special edition Google Play will ship to schools on the Nexus 7 from today, while the 10″ ASUS Transformer Pad and the 8″ HP Slate 8 Pro will be added early in 2014. Tablet pricing starts at $229, with management costing $30 per device." (source: The Next Web)

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Using technology against cheating in online education

Using technology to fight cheating in online education - Los Angeles Times: " . . . defeating the ingenuity of computer-savvy students is a huge challenge that has attracted much investment and attention in the last year. The whole system can be corrupted with something as low-tech as a cheat sheet tucked out of camera sight. "Online courses are under scrutiny to show evidence of integrity in ways that face-to-face courses aren't," said Teddi Fishman, director of the International Center for Academic Integrity at Clemson University in South Carolina. William Dornan, chief executive of Phoenix-based Kryterion Inc., which monitors tests for several schools and companies, said technology is up to the task. He contends that his webcam system reduces cheating far below its occurrence in regular lecture halls. "Security is incredibly important," he said. "If it's known you can cheat, that completely dilutes the brand."" (read more at link above)

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Private Schools, Foreign Satellites

Some of England’s best-known private schools are rushing to set up satellites abroad. But the market may be reaching saturation point - "Most of the new breed of schools are run by local management companies. Some are even considering franchising entire regions to education providers, including American chains" Read more at On the playing fields of Shanghai

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Colleges Complicit In Raising Tuitions

How colleges are complicit in raising tuition - The Term Sheet: Fortune's deals blogTerm Sheet: "GW just built a new $130 million "super dorm" and $33 million textile museum. It is not alone. The University of Pennsylvania's gym recently underwent a $10 million renovation to include an Olympic-sized swimming pool, co-ed sauna, juice bar, golf simulator, and climbing wall. Kenyon College, a liberal arts school, has a $70 million athletic center with similar country club features. While these amenities are definitely an attractive proposition to prospective students at face value, what they really end up doing is spiking tuition costs, further contributing to America's $1 trillion student loan debt crisis. Additionally, these facilities are inconsistent with the core competency of higher education institutions. To be quite literal about it, the mission of GW is to "commit itself to excellence in the creation, dissemination, and application of knowledge." Are super dorms inherent in this thesis?" (read more at link above)

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Shanghai, Better Schools

The Shanghai Secret - NYTimes.com: " . . . In 2003, Shanghai had a very “average” school system, said Andreas Schleicher, who runs the PISA exams. “A decade later, it’s leading the world and has dramatically decreased variability between schools.” He, too, attributes this to the fact that, while in America a majority of a teacher’s time in school is spent teaching, in China’s best schools, a big chunk is spent learning from peers and personal development. As a result, he said, in places like Shanghai, “the system is good at attracting average people and getting enormous productivity out of them,” while also, “getting the best teachers in front of the most difficult classrooms.” China still has many mediocre schools that need fixing. But the good news is that in just doing the things that American and Chinese educators know work — but doing them systematically and relentlessly — Shanghai has in a decade lifted some of its schools to the global heights in reading, science and math skills. Oh, and Shen Jun, the principal, wanted me to know: “This is just the start.”" (read more at link above)

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Seniors Learning New Technology

Computers and the Internet can open up new worlds for the elderly--

Helping Seniors Learn New Technology - NYTimes.com: "Several years ago Garrison Phillips, a retired actor, bought himself a Dell computer. He soon recognized that he didn’t know what to do with it. “I needed instruction,” he told me in an interview conducted — perhaps surprisingly — by e-mail. “The technology of the Internet, cell and iPhones was like a foreign language.” Mr. Phillips then attended one of the first classes offered by OATS, a New York City nonprofit (the acronym stands for Older Adults Technology Services) that provides free tech training for seniors. Despite serious hearing loss from an injury in the Korean War, Mr. Phillips learned his way around his desktop, went on to more advanced OATS classes and now, at 83, uses his computer (his third) to blog, write stories and theater pieces, and to communicate with friends and family from England to California. It’s become “the most important activity and creative outlet in my life,” he wrote. . . . " (read more at link above)

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Schooling-Education Gap

Schooling does NOT equal Education -- ever hear of "credentialed" but "uneducated"? That's how you get high school graduates in the US who can't read! --

The Gap Between Schooling and Education: (NY Times) - "The world has made dramatic gains in getting children — even very, very poor children — into school. But are they learning? The discomfiting conclusion from Lant Pritchett, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School, is, in many cases, no. . . . “Good governments do schooling, but nearly all bad governments do it, too,” Mr. Pritchett writes. But that does not mean that all that schooling has translated into much education, he says. For instance, in the state of Uttar Pradesh in northern India, less than half of surveyed children in fifth grade could read a story intended for second graders. About one in six students in fifth grade recognized letters but could not read words. What can schools and countries do to make sure students are learning while they are in school? What are the consequences of this schooling-education gap? . . . "(read more at link above)

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The Threat to American Prosperity

Lack of skills, knowledge, declining quality of human capital --

A Threat to American Prosperity Worse Than Congress - Bloomberg: " . . . the survey measures the quality of human capital, one of the crucial drivers of long-term economic success. The U.S. performance in these rankings isn’t just poor, it’s pitiful. Comparing Scores - The average literacy score for Americans ages 16 to 65 places the U.S. 18th out of 22 participating countries. In numeracy, the U.S. ranks 20th out of 22. In “problem-solving in technology-rich environments” -- a measure of the capacity to interact productively with computers -- the U.S. comes in 14th out of 19. Those results are actually quite good when compared with the performance of adults ages 16 to 24. In literacy, young Americans rank 20th out of 22; in numeracy, 22nd out of 22; and in problem-solving, 19th out of 19. The only glimmer of good news in these figures, if you can call it good news, is that U.S. standards of literacy, numeracy and problem-solving aren’t falling in absolute terms as fast as the poor relative performance of U.S. youngsters might suggest. Young Americans have slid to the bottom of the rankings mainly because young adults in other countries are doing much better than their predecessors did, whereas their American counterparts aren’t. The fact remains, the capacities of the U.S. labor force are consistently well below average, and those of the youngest segment rank (on two out of three measures) dead last. . . ." (read more at link above)

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Education start-ups, technology, exploding

Education start-ups are exploding: "At the Education Nation summit over the past few days a recurring theme has been how new tech tools can improve education and tackle soaring costs. A relatively new category of "EdTech" start-up looks to use technology to make education more effective and accessible to hundreds of millions of people. "Anyone in the world should be able to take high-quality courses, whether at the college or high school level," said Anant Agarwal, the president of nonprofit EdX, which makes college courses available online. "They should be able to take it freely, maybe pay a small amount to get a credential.". . . ." (read more at link above)

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Amazon, TenMarks, Education

Amazon continues its move into education --

Amazon.com to Acquire TenMarks - WSJ.com: ". . . ."I've used TenMarks for the past two years at Grand View with fourth and fifth grade students to help a diverse group of students achieve in math and take ownership of their own learning," said Sujata Bhatt, founder of the Incubator School and a National Board Certified teacher who spent 11 years at Grand View Boulevard Elementary in Los Angeles Unified School District. "As we launch the Incubator School this year, we focus on technology that truly activates learning and self-starting. TenMarks's products are designed to enable both students and teachers to be in the driver's seat by seeing where they're successful and where they need to revisit. TenMarks is an important part of our math plan this year." TenMarks offers personalized online math instruction and practice in a clear, manageable format for K-12 students complete with helpful hints, video lessons, and real-time results. TenMarks's products are designed to help students be individually motivated, engaged and nurtured. . . ." (read more at link above)

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Colleges Soak Poor US Students, Funnel Aid to Rich

Financial aid for only rich kids?

Colleges Soak Poor U.S. Students While Funneling Aid to Rich - Bloomberg: "U.S. colleges such as Boston University are using financial aid to lure rich students while shortchanging the poor, forcing those most in need to take on heavy debt, a report found. Almost two-thirds of private institutions require students from families making $30,000 or less annually to pay more than $15,000 a year, according to the report released today by the Washington-based New America Foundation. . . ."

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Google Enterprise Cloud in the Classroom

Going Google in schools --

Google's Enterprise Cloud - Cloud Computing - Software as a: Google says that 22% of U.S. school districts are using Chromebooks and points to its 99.9% uptime service-level agreement, SSAE 16/ISAE 3402 Type II audit and remote mobile device management, among other features important to IT...

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Pearson App, Interactive Textbooks

Pearson’s New App Makes Print Textbooks Interactive | Digital Book World: "Print textbook pages come to life with today’s launch of Pearson BouncePages. Now available on any mobile app store, this free app allows parents, teachers, and students to instantly launch interactive instructional content directly from a textbook page. The app was developed in collaboration with Layar, the global leader in mobile augmented reality and interactive print. . . ." (more at link above)

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American adults, low (and declining) reading proficiency

American adults have low (and declining) reading proficiency - latimes.com: ". . . .“It's long been known that America's school kids haven't measured well compared with international peers,” the Associated Press wrote in a survey of the study. “Now, there's a new twist: Adults don't either.” And it appears students who leave high school without certain basic skills are not learning those skills later in adult education or job training programs. . . ." (read more at link above)

Americans: semi-illiterate, ignorant, but exceptional?

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Book Discussion on Why Teach?

Book Discussion on Why Teach? - C-SPAN Video Library: "Mark Edmundson talked about his book, Why Teach?: In Defense of a Real Education, in which he argues that college should be more than just a place to get high-priced career training and should instead focus on teaching students how to think. He spoke at the University of Virginia Bookstore in Charlottesville, Virginia." (video at link above)

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Report Card on MOOCs (video)

An early report card on MOOCs - WSJ.com: "If the MOOC movement were in college, it would be time for a freshman report card. The assessment: great potential, but still in need of remedial work. MOOCs, or massive open online courses, went mainstream last year, heralded as the next great technological disruption in education. The big idea is that putting lecture videos and interactive course work on the Web will make it possible for top-notch university education to reach more students and allow for different styles of learning. Already, MOOCs have shown they can attract students in huge numbers. The largest provider, Coursera, has drawn five million, and nonprofit provider edX more than 1.3 million. And while the majority are still based in the U.S., their learners come from all over the globe: Among edX's students, 9% came from Africa and 12% from India. . . ."

Read more:
MOOCs Will Change the University Business Model - The Experts - WSJ

There Is No Business Model for MOOCs Yet - The Experts - WSJ

An early report card on MOOCs - WSJ.com

Jury’s Still Out on the MOOC Model - The Experts - WSJ

MOOCs Are Easy Targets, but Don’t Count Them Out - The Experts - WSJ

Online Courses Are a Double-Edged Sword - The Experts - WSJ

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College still valuable?

10 surprising economic trends that rule the world - Quartz: "If you want a good job, go to college. This has been a maxim of American life since the 1980s, when the “college premium”—the extra income boost from going to college—truly soared into the stratosphere. But an interesting thing has happened in the last decade and a half – the college premium has stagnated. College is still valuable, but by at least one measure, it’s not getting more valuable each year. Perhaps that’s why American college enrollment declined last year. Expect that to put a damper on skyrocketing college tuition and soaring student loans."

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Google joins Open edX platform

We are joining the Open edX platform: "A year ago, we released Course Builder, an experimental platform for online education at scale. Since then, individuals have created courses on everything from game theory to philanthropy, offered to curious people around the world. Universities and non-profit organizations have used the platform to experiment with MOOCs, while maintaining direct relationships with their participants. Google has published a number of courses including Introduction to Web Accessibility which opens for registration today.  This platform is helping to deliver on our goal of making education more accessible through technology, and enabling educators to easily teach at scale on top of cloud platform services. Today, Google will begin working with edX as a contributor to the open source platform, Open edX. We are taking our learnings from Course Builder and applying them to Open edX to further innovate on an open source MOOC platform.  We look forward to contributing to edX’s new site, MOOC.org, a new service for online learning which will allow any academic institution, business and individual to create and host online courses. . . ." (read more at link above)

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The Real Reason College Costs so Much

The Real Reason College Costs so Much | Wall Street Oasis: " "Nor is the president addressing what Mr. Vedder believes is a fundamental problem: too many kids going to college. "Thirty-percent of the adult population has college degrees," he notes. "The Department of Labor tells us that only 20% or so of jobs require college degrees. We have 115,520 janitors in the United States with bachelor's degrees or more. Why are we encouraging more kids to go to college?"""

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Teaching Emotional Intelligence

Can Emotional Intelligence Be Taught? - NYTimes.com: "...For children, Brackett notes, school is an emotional caldron: a constant stream of academic and social challenges that can generate feelings ranging from loneliness to euphoria. Educators and parents have long assumed that a child’s ability to cope with such stresses is either innate — a matter of temperament — or else acquired “along the way,” in the rough and tumble of ordinary interaction. But in practice, Brackett says, many children never develop those crucial skills. “It’s like saying that a child doesn’t need to study English because she talks with her parents at home,” Brackett told me last spring. “Emotional skills are the same. A teacher might say, ‘Calm down!’ — but how exactly do you calm down when you’re feeling anxious? Where do you learn the skills to manage those feelings?”..." (read more at link above)

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Sports, Education, Schools

Have Sports Teams Brought Down America's Schools? : The New Yorker:  . . .Polish kids now outscore American kids in math and science, even though Poland spends, on average, less than half as much per student as the United States does. One of the most striking differences between the high school Tom attended in Gettysburg and the one he ends up at in Wroclaw is that the latter has no football team, or, for that matter, teams of any kind. Sports, Ripley writes, were “the core culture of Gettysburg High.” In Wroclaw, by contrast, if kids wanted to play soccer or basketball after school they had to organize the games themselves. Teachers didn’t double as coaches and the principal certainly never came out to cheer. Thus, “there was no confusion about what school was for—or what mattered to the kids’ life chances.”. . . .

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Supersizing American Colleges, federal student loans

The Supersizing of American Colleges: accelerating tuition and other higher education costs, expanding budgets that fund more and more programs and facilities -- all incentivized by federal student loans . . .

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Harvard's Incoming Class, Cheating, Sex (video)

Harvard's Incoming Class: More Cheating Than Sex: Video - Bloomberg: "Scarlet Fu looks at vices that incoming Harvard freshman have tried. She speaks on Bloomberg Television's "Market Makers." (Source: Bloomberg)"

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Scalable Learning

The Value of Scalable Learning, Or How a Hardcore Geek Became a Softy | Big Think Edge | Big Think: "In his speech, Brown describes the challenge of learning new skills in a rapidly changing world and he presents a new model - scalable learning - that he says can and needs to be employed to reinvent our world today. We will explore this big idea in a moment. But first, let's read (or watch) the context, in this tribute to Brown in which the innovation guru receives an honorary degree...." (more at link above)

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JPMorgan to stop making student loans

JPMorgan to stop making student loans: company memo | Reuters: "JPMorgan's decision comes after Congress acted in mid-2010 to bypass the banks and have the government lend directly to students. The federal government now issues 93 percent of student loans. Banks and other private lenders have also come under pressure from regulators and politicians to offer more flexible repayment terms on student loans." (more at link above)

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Education Performance Measurement Is a Distraction

Why Investment Performance Is a Distraction: "In education, performance measurement by the top two standardized tests (SAT & ACT) is still the primary tool for discriminating among potential college students. But a growing body of evidence demonstrates that non-cognitive traits such as determination, motivation, perseverance, good study habits and time-management skills are far more predictive of success in college than SAT scores. Children who work to internalize these traits end up with a process of learning that leads to success not just in college but in life itself." (more at link above)

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McGraw-Hill Education, Connect Digital Learning Platform, Higher Education

McGraw-Hill Education Releases Major Update to Connect Digital Learning Platform for Higher Education: " . . . Connect, which initially launched in 2009, is a digital assignment and assessment platform that strengthens the link between faculty, students and coursework, helping everyone accomplish their learning objectives in less time. In a new effectiveness study released in July, McGraw-Hill Education demonstrated that on average, instructors using Connect reduced their grading time by 77 percent. The study also revealed that Connect dramatically improves student engagement and performance by increasing the likelihood of students earning A's or B's in Connect classrooms by more than 50 percent. . . ." (more at link above)

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Future Education, Online, Accredited, Affordable, Useful

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis: Future of Education is At Hand: Online, Accredited, Affordable, Useful: ..."The entire education system is and has been for some time unsustainable. The cost of education keeps rising along with ... Government aid Union contracts Pension benefits Salaries of coaches Competition for the most elaborate dorms Fundraising". . .

" ... a Slate article The MOOC That Roared, subtitled "How Georgia Tech’s new, super-cheap online master’s degree could radically change American higher education...". Read more at http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/09/future-of-education-is-at-hand-online.html#KRVAx6o85Gk0fu77.99

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Who Will Prosper in the New World of Education

Who Will Prosper in the New World - NYTimes.com: "Within five years we will are likely to have the world’s best education, or close to it, online and free. But not everyone will sit down and go through the material without a professor pushing them to do the work. Those who are motivated to use online resources will do much, much better in the generations to come. It’s already the case that the best students from India are at the top in many Coursera classes, putting America’s arguably less motivated bright young people to shame. “Free” doesn’t really help you if you don’t make an effort." (more at link above)

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STEM Crisis Is a Myth says IEEE Spectrum

The STEM Crisis Is a Myth - IEEE Spectrum: " . . . And yet, alongside such dire projections, you’ll also find reports suggesting just the opposite—that there are more STEM workers than suitable jobs. One study found, for example, that wages for U.S. workers in computer and math fields have largely stagnated since 2000. Even as the Great Recession slowly recedes, STEM workers at every stage of the career pipeline, from freshly minted grads to mid- and late-career Ph.D.s, still struggle to find employment as many companies, including Boeing, IBM, and Symantec, continue to lay off thousands of STEM workers. . . ."  (more at link above)

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Dismal picture of US economic recovery, education

UCLA Anderson Forecast paints dismal picture of economic recovery - latimes.com: ". . . the country's education system isn't adequately developing the workforce of the future, he said. "Regrettably we reward teachers if their students can regurgitate the information on standardized tests," he wrote. Future workers will need creative and analytical thinking skills for 21st century jobs, he said. Though GDP growth has been lackluster since the recession ended, the sustained housing recovery is expected to boost GDP over the next couple of years and further bring down the unemployment rate, Leamer said. Economists predict the U.S. jobless rate will fall to 6.9% by the end of 2014 and edge down to 6.4% by the end of 2015. GDP growth is expected to average 1.9% this year, 2.9% in 2014 and 3% in 2015."

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Accelerated Learning, Gamification

Accelerated Learning: Hacking the CFA Exam | Dynamic Hedge: "The best thing about Anki is the gamification of learning. You always have something to learn, and there is always something to review. I made a game out of getting through the decks. If you break down the material sufficiently, none of the cards should be too daunting and finishing a deck should be painless. There’s nothing more satisfying than seeing ‘review zero, learn zero’ on your Anki interface."

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Colleges, universities, MOOCs, an uncertain future

Colleges, universities look to online programs to navigate an uncertain future - Business Monday - MiamiHerald.com: " . . . . Aside from their early mastery of the online platform, the for-profits excelled at marketing to adult, nontraditional students, as well as tailoring the educational experience to their unique needs. The University of Phoenix, for example, compressed its classes into five or six-week mini-semesters, with the idea that it’s easier for busy adults to absorb one fast-paced class than to juggle four classes in a full-length college semester. More recently, though, for-profits have been criticized for using overly-agggressive, car-salesman-like selling tactics to recruit students. The schools often charge higher tuition than public colleges, and the student loan default rates at for-profit schools are dramatically higher than at other types of colleges. The combination of bad publicity and stricter government oversight has slowed for-profits’ recent growth. . . ."

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Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/08/18/3571447/colleges-universities-look-to.html#emlnl=Business#storylink=cpy

Chicago Public Schools, Unable to read beyond sixth-grade level

When educational "success" is failure --

Ring the bell at Chicago Public Schools - chicagotribune.com: " . . . Eighteen years ago, Mayor Richard Daley took control of the schools. That fall, the Tribune reported on Karen and Sharon Franklin, 1991 CPS graduates who had been told all their lives that they were "smart." They went to Piccolo and Herzl Schools on the West Side and later Orr High School, a rough-and-tumble place that annually posts low test scores but is improving. In high school, they took classes in mathematics, English and other core courses, as well as cooking and sewing. Homework was simple and rarely assigned, they said, but they did it religiously. They went to class, earned A's and B's, and as a result, received too many academic certificates to display. They were on the honor roll. And so it was with great "shock," Sharon said, and "horror," Karen said, that two years after walking proudly across the stage in 1991 to receive their high school diplomas, the sisters applied to Malcolm X College and flunked the entrance exam. They were unable to read beyond a sixth-grade level. . . ."

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US Government incentivized soaring College costs

Student loans and other federal programs are the root of the problem --

Allysia Finley: The Real Reason College Costs So Much - WSJ.com: " . . . . This growth in subsidies, Mr. Vedder argues, has fueled rising prices: "It gives every incentive and every opportunity for colleges to raise their fees." Many colleges, he notes, are using federal largess to finance Hilton-like dorms and Club Med amenities. Stanford offers more classes in yoga than Shakespeare. A warning to parents whose kids sign up for "Core Training": The course isn't a rigorous study of the classics, but rather involves rigorous exercise to strengthen the gluts and abs. . . ." (read more at link above)

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Learning, Love, Math

Also Common Core, Global Economic Crisis, Mathematical Models --

Weekend Confidential: Learning to Love Math - WSJ.com: "He is also an advocate of the Common Core State Standards Initiative, a set of academic standards he thinks should be applied nationally. He complains that varying state requirements make as much sense as doorways of different heights. And if more schools abolish core curricula—an idea proposed by some academics lately, to allow more focused students to take only the classes that interest them—he fears private schools would become the only ones to make difficult subjects like algebra mandatory. "So what's going to happen if you eliminate math or make it selective? The 1% is going to know mathematics," he says. The other problem with the public's meager mathematical knowledge is its role in the global economic crisis. "Mathematical models were misused" by financial institutions, says Mr. Frenkel. "People who were in charge did not fully understand them but were using them anyway."" (read more at link above)

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Mark Edmundson Essays Ask Why Teach?

In “Why Teach?” Mark Edmundson, an English professor at the University of Virginia, defends the mission of higher education against the contemporary “corporate university.”

Mark Edmundson’s Essays Ask, ‘Why Teach?’ - NYTimes.com: "According to “Why Teach?,” inspiration is in short supply these days on campus. In the book’s first section, Mr. Edmundson describes the growth since the mid-1990s of a more commercial, profit-oriented university culture. Like many other contemporary commentators, he sees a confluence of forces in higher education leading to greater conformity and consumerism at the expense of inquiry, inspiration and challenge. Mr. Edmundson’s critique is both personal and idealistic, drawing on his deep belief in the democratic mission of liberal education and on his practical experience as a teacher. He knows the studies showing that students spend less time than ever on their classwork, and he writes of an implicit pact between undergraduates and professors in which teachers give high grades and thin assignments, and students reward them with positive evaluations. After all, given all the other amenities available through the university, the idea that “the courses you take should be the primary objective of going to college is tacitly considered absurd.”"

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Massive Open Online Courses Evolve

education as a data-driven science --

As Data Floods In, Massive Open Online Courses Evolve | MIT Technology Review: "Ng says he doesn’t think a grand theory is needed for MOOCs to succeed. “I read Piaget and Montessori, and they both seem compelling, but educators generally have no way to choose what really works,” he says. “Today, education is an anecdotal science, but I think we can turn education into a data-driven science, where you do what you know works.”"

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Udemy, online learning marketplace

Udemy's online learning marketplace has 8k courses, 800k students, and ...
The Next Web
Online learning marketplace Udemy today revealed new statistics concerning the usage of its service. It shared that it now has more than 8,000 courses being taught to 800,000 students. Udemy says that its instructor acquisition growth rate has grown ...

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Google Play, Discounted Textbooks

Google Play Launches Line of Discounted Textbooks | News & Opinion | PCMag.com: "College is all fun and games, until you try to lift that 20-pound bag of textbooks. But Google wants to lend a hand.
The Web giant is joining the e-textbook revolution, this week rolling out a new Google Play feature for purchasing and renting digital textbooks."

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Minerva vs Harvard

The Weekend Interview With Ben Nelson: The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard - WSJ.com: " . . . Any education startup must also brave a regulatory swamp. By opting out of government-backed student-loan programs, Minerva won't have to abide by many of the federal rules for so-called Title IV (of the relevant 1965 law) schools. Americans won't have an edge in admissions and Minerva expects most students will come from abroad. But Mr. Nelson wants to be part of the club whose price of entry is accreditation. A cartel sanctioned by Congress places a high barrier to entry for newcomers, stifling educational innovation. Startups face a long slog to get accredited. So last month Minerva chose to partner with the Keck Graduate Institute, or KGI, a small school founded in 1997 that is part of the Claremont consortium of colleges near Los Angeles. Minerva degrees will now have, pending the regulatory OK, an accreditor's seal of approval. . . ."

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Coursera partners with Chegg and 5 publishers to give students free textbooks

Coursera leaps another online learning hurdle, partners with Chegg and 5 publishers to give students free textbooks - The Next Web: "The high-quality educational content, as the company puts it, consists of eTextbooks and supplementary materials will be delivered via Chegg’s DRM-protected eReader. The DRM limitation will allow for the content to be offered gratis only during the duration of the course. The list of participating publishers includes Cengage Learning, Macmillan Higher Education, Oxford University Press, Sage, and Wiley. This is the first time these publishers have made a commitment to online education of Coursera’s caliber."

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Google teams with Asus on upgraded Android 4.3-based Nexus 7

Google teams with Asus on upgraded Android 4.3-based Nexus 7 | ZDNet: "Just in time for the back-to-school season, Google is adding a much-needed section that helps it further compete with Apple iTunes. That is the addition of selling digital textbooks. Set to roll out in early August, Google Play Textbooks will host digital titles from "all five major publishing houses" with the ability to purchase or rent books for up to six months with up to 80 percent off in potential discounts."

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The Fight for Syrian Schools (video)

The Fight for Syrian Schools: "With Syria's population struggling just to stay alive, the education system has fallen apart. The Times's Mac William Bishop visits volunteers who run unofficial schools for Syrian refugees."

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Textbook publishers revamp e-books to fight used market

Textbook publishers revamp e-books to fight used market | Reuters: "A booming market in recent years for selling and renting used college textbooks has saved students across the United States a ton of cash. But it has put textbook publishers in a bind. They don't make a cent unless students buy their books new. So increasingly, publishers like Pearson Plc and McGraw-Hill Education are turning to a new model: Creating online versions of their texts, often loaded with interactive features, and selling students access codes that expire at semester's end. Publishers save on printing, shipping and process returns. The e-books are good for learning and good for their bottom line. There's just one catch: Persuading students to go digital isn't easy. Online products accounted for 27 percent of the $12.4 billion spent on textbooks for secondary schools and colleges in the United States last year, according to research firm Outsell Inc. But the publishers expect that percentage to grow, and are retooling their businesses to compete in what they see as the future of the industry. Half of Pearson's total revenue last year came from digital products and services (not all of which are digital), and executives expect that to increase. The company recently announced a restructuring to emphasize online content. . . ."

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Helping kids beat the college-loan trap

Michelle Singletary: Book will help kids beat the college-loan trap - Personal Finance - MiamiHerald.com: " . . . Just a little more than 50 percent of those who enter college leave with a bachelor’s degree, notes Jeffrey J. Selingo, editor at large for The Chronicle of Higher Education. Selingo has written a compelling book looking at the state of higher education: College (Un)bound: The Future of Higher Education and What it Means for Students (Amazon Publishing/New Harvest, $26). “American higher education is broken,” Selingo writes. “Like another American icon — the auto industry in Detroit — the higher-education industry is beset by hubris, opposition to change and resistance to accountability.” Part of the reason higher education is in trouble can be traced to the “Lost Decade,” as Selingo calls it. He defines this time as the period from 1999 to 2009 when colleges were “chasing high-achieving students, showering them with scholarships to snatch them from competitors and going deep into debt to build lavish residence halls, recreational facilities and other amenities that contribute nothing to the actual learning of students.”. . . "

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Ethiopian kids hack OLPCs in 5 months with zero instruction

Ethiopian kids hack OLPCs in 5 months with zero instruction | DVICE:

"We left the boxes in the village. Closed. Taped shut. No instruction, no human being. I thought, the kids will play with the boxes! Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, but found the on/off switch. He'd never seen an on/off switch. He powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs [in English] in the village. And within five months, they had hacked Android. Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera! And they figured out it had a camera, and they hacked Android."

"This experiment began earlier this year, and what OLPC really want to see is whether these kids can learn to read and write in English. Around the world, there are something like 100,000,000 kids who don't even make it to first grade, simply because there are not only no schools, but very few literate adults, and if it turns out that for the cost of a tablet all of these kids can simply teach themselves, it has huge implications for education. And it goes beyond the kids, too, since previous OLPC studies have shown that kids will use their computers to teach their parents to read and write as well, which is incredibly amazing and awesome."

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Bill Gates on the future of education

Gates talked a lot about the issue throughout the Q&A session, and his hypothesis is simple: Education in the United States is broken — it has the highest higher-education dropout rate among rich countries — and MOOCs can help fix it. In fact, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has invested a lot of money into the education field (to the chagrin of some experts), including strong support of Massive Open Online Course, or MOOC, startups such as the Khan Academy. (source infra)

Bill Gates on the future of education, programming and just about everything else — Tech News and Analysis: "But, Gates acknowledged, we’re also a way out from online education achieving its full potential. We need to develop better understanding of what makes a good online course (“just sticking a camera in front of someone … who has a captive audience [won't cut it]“) and how to replicate non-lecture experiences like lab time and study groups. We also need to figure out how to supplement the cognitive and social development that comes along with attending school in person (although, he noted, MOOCs might also be able to help teachers focus on these things).

“We’re at the beginning of something really quite profound,” Gates said, “even though the temptation to oversimplify it is really quite great.”"

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Colleges offer nearly $400M to Chicago students

CHICAGO: Colleges offer nearly $400M to Chicago students - MiamiHerald.com: "College scholarships totaling nearly $400 million have been offered to high school students who attended Chicago Public Schools. Mayor Rahm Emanuel and schools chief Barbara Byrd-Bennett announced the amount Thursday. The school district began tracking scholarship offers in 2004 and the total has grown every year. School district officials say that growth results from a coordinated effort to let students know about scholarship opportunities"

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MOOCs terrify traditional universities

Higher education: The attack of the MOOCs | The Economist: " . . . EdX, a non-profit MOOC provider founded in May 2012 by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and backed with $60m of their money, is now a consortium of 28 institutions, the most recent joiner being the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai. Led by the Open University, which pioneered distance-learning in the 1970s, FutureLearn, a consortium of 21 British, one Irish and one Australian university, plus other educational bodies, will start offering MOOCs later this year. But Oxford and Cambridge remain aloof, refusing to join what a senior Oxford figure fears may be a “lemming-like rush” into MOOCs.

On July 10th Coursera said it had raised another $43m in venture capital, on top of the $22m it banked last year. . . ."

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Data from edX's first course offer preliminary insights into online learning

Data from edX's first course offer preliminary insights into online learning
MIT News
The course, the first massive open online course (MOOC) offered by MITx — and also the inaugural offering from edX, the online-learning partnership later founded by MIT and Harvard University — sparked worldwide interest, along with a large amount of ...(read more at link above)

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Coursera to offer MOOCs for teachers

Coursera to offer MOOCs for teachers
Washington Post (blog)
The Washington Post. The online education platform Coursera this week announced a new series of free courses to help elementary and secondary teachers improve their technique, with offerings from teaching experts at premier museums and universities ..." (read more at link above)

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Online universities: time for teachers to join the revolution

Online universities: it's time for teachers to join the revolution
The Guardian
... Mooc providers do to change education. Research is another. EdX and its partner universities are using the data we collect throughout a class to research how students learn most effectively, and then apply that knowledge to both online learning and ...

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Online Learning's Potential for the Digital Economy

Gauging Online Learning's Potential for the Digital Economy
Wall Street Journal (blog)
With college and universities demanding higher tuition and students facing reduced government funding, Guest Columnist Irving Wladawsky-Berger sees the rising field of online learning as an affordable and effective way to educate students for a ...(read more at link above)

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Third of student loan borrowers never earn degree

Third of student loan borrowers never earned degree - CBS News: "One out of every five adults 20 years of age or older owe money on student loans, and more than half of them are worried about this debt, according to a new study by the Urban Institute. The exact figures for American adults: 19.6 percent have student loans and 57 percent are concerned about repayment. A third of the debtors are not college graduates . . ."

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edX and Stanford team up

'Linux of online learning' gets stronger: edX and Stanford team up to build ...
GigaOM
In its mission to become the “Linux of online learning,” edX just got a powerful new partner. On Wednesday, the Harvard and MIT-backed non-profit is set to announce that it's teaming up with Stanford to collaboratively develop the open-source edX platform.

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Immoral Student Loans

Glenn Harlan Reynolds: What's Really 'Immoral' About Student Loans - WSJ.com: "According to an extensive 2012 analysis by the Associated Press of college graduates 25 and younger, 50% are either unemployed or in jobs that don't require a college degree. Then there are the large numbers who don't graduate at all. According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, more than 40% of full-time students at four-year institutions fail to graduate within six years. The National Center for Education Statistics reports that almost 75% of community-college students fail to graduate within three years. Those students don't have degrees, but they often still have debt."

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Education Giant Pearson Adapts To Digital Learning

Education Giant Pearson Adapts To Digital Learning
InformationWeek
"[They] need flexibility … so access becomes more online and blended." Similarly, although Hitchcock isn't sure that massive open online courses (MOOCs) will transform education, they have had the effect of "shining a light on online learning, access ...

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EdX Goes Open Source To Woo MOOC Developers

EdX Goes Open Source To Woo MOOC Developers
InformationWeek SMB (blog)
Justin Reich, an education technology researcher who last week joined HarvardX, Harvard's edXgroup, said in an email that he had done so in part because of edX's open-source direction. "Borrowing from SJ Klein, we have to decide as a society whether ...

Knewton partners with education publishing giant to bring online learning to ...
VentureBeat
The company develops online learning tools that can be adapted to each learner's individual needs, whether it's in K12, higher education, or professional development. The technology works by dividing lessons into building blocks ... an ex-venture ...

School's Out, But Learning Goes On(line) With The Internet
Imperial Valley News
Imperial, California (NAPSI) - For many schoolchildren, summertime means days of fun in the sun, family road trips and visits from the ice cream truck. But many parents don't realize that summer can also mean learning loss. Studies have found that ...

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edX-IMF Online Link

edX-IMF Online Link
Harvard Magazine
edX—the Harvard-MIT online learning venture for higher-education institutions—on June 19 announced that its technology platform would be used for the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) training courses in macroeconomics and finance. The IMF will not ...

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Online Classes Fuel a Campus Debate

Online Classes Fuel a Campus Debate
New York Times
Daphne Koller, the Stanford computer science professor who is a founder of Coursera, said she thought the C.I.C. paper represented an exploratory discussion driven by anxieties about how online education would change higher education. Coursera's ...

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More UK schools receive online learning boost

More UK schools receive online learning boost
Virtual College
More UK schools receive online learning boost. Aerohive Networks is boosting the role of technology in education by providing 50 more schools in the UK with Wi-Fi and cloud-enabled enterprise networking services. The company - which is already ...

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College Education Is Not An Investment

Don't Buy The Hype, College Education Is Not An Investment - Forbes: " . . . .She is doing well without a college degree because she understood that you’re not rewarded for credentials, but for capabilities. College used to look like a good “investment” because earning a degree usually entailed at least some serious work and having done it set the individual apart. Having that degree was a competitive advantage in landing a job, but success always depended on personal performance rather than educational pedigree. These days, with the labor market saturated with college graduates, the time and money spent on college is often wasted. What young Americans should think is, “How can I raise my value and demonstrate it?” That might best be done in college, like Student A, or it might be done elsewhere, like Student C. College itself isn’t an investment, just one way of increasing your value. --George Leef  is Director of Research at the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy. He is a graduate of Carroll University in Wisconsin and Duke University Law School."

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Education's Digital Future

Online learning: Somewhere between avalanche and revolution ...
Education's Digital Future · Stanford Graduate School of Education ... On May 2, panel convened to discuss "What online learning means for college classrooms ...
edf.stanford.edu/.../online-learning-somewhere-between-avala...

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Masters student lives aboard yacht to save thousands on rent

Masters student lives aboard a yacht he bought for £800 to save thousands on rent | Mail Online: "A student who couldn't afford to pay rent bought a boat to live on while studying at university - and saved himself £5,600. Physical geography student, Joe Pearce, 23, bought the 42-year-old yacht online for £800, the equivalent of two months' rent. He lived aboard the 23-foot Falmouth Gypsy class boat in a boatyard for 14 months while studying for his masters at Aberystwyth University. . . ."

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Coursera Makes Case for MOOCs

Coursera Makes Case for MOOCs
Wall Street Journal
Instead, she wants the free Web courses to improve the educational experience for students at cash-strapped public schools and enhance learning for midcareer professionals and those without access to postsecondary education. And she ... Coursera, which ...

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Ways Tablets Will Change K-12 Education

5 Ways Tablets Will Change K-12 Education | Digital Book World: "Tablets allow a class of 30 students to work on 30 different specific skills at the same time. The educational model in which a teacher stands in front of neat rows of students works when subjects are being introduced, but not so much when skills are being practiced. In the future, teachers will spend more time guiding and coaching students as they work on individual activities on their tablets" (read  more at link above)

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EdX Builds Community of Developers for its Online and Blended Learning Platform

EdX Builds Community of Developers for its Online and Blended Learning Platform
Sacramento Bee
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., June 10, 2013 -- /PRNewswire/ -- EdX, the not-for-profit online learningenterprise composed of the leading global institutions of the xConsortium, released its learningplatform via open source license on June 1 and today released ...

Aspen Institute Launches Task Force on Learning and the Internet
IT News Online
"Digital learning is the catalyst to ensuring students have the personalized education needed to be ready for college and careers. The Task Force on Learning and the Internet hopes to ignite a discussion around best practices that parents, government ...

Cyber school: Change snowballing
Charleston Gazette
Online learning offers a way to slash the severe cost of higher education, and to reach millions more students. A new book, Higher Education in the Digital Age, says a "tsunami" of electronic classes soon will sweep thousands of colleges. Nobody is ...

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