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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Governor Rick Scott asks Florida universities not to raise tuition

Rick Scott asks Florida universities not to raise tuition - South Florida Business Journal: "Gov. Rick Scott is continuing his push to keep tuition stable at all 12 state universities. Scott has been meeting with and calling university presidents urging them not to raise tuition as they discuss their next year’s budgets with boards of trustees, The Gainesville Sun reports."

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In Chicago they pay big money for abysmal results

Andy Kessler: Professors Are About to Get an Online Education - WSJ.com: "I began by pointing out that in 2011 only 7.9% of 11th graders in Chicago public schools tested "college ready." That's failure, and it's worse when you realize how much money is wasted on these abysmal results. Chicago's 23,290 teachers—who make an average salary of $74,839, triple U.S. per capita income and 50% more than median U.S. household income—cost Chicago taxpayers $1.75 billion out of the city's $5.11 billion budget. Why not forget the teachers and issue all 404,151 students an iPad or Android tablet? At a cost of $161 million, that's less than 10% of the expense of paying teachers' salaries. Add online software, tutors and a $2,000 graduation bonus, and you still don't come close to the cost of teachers. You can't possibly do worse than a 7.9% college readiness level."

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Professors Are About to Get an Online Education

Georgia Tech's new Internet master's degree in computer science is the future. (source infra)

Andy Kessler: Professors Are About to Get an Online Education - WSJ.com: " . . . Since 1990, the cost of college has increased at four times the rate of inflation. Student loans are clocking in at $1 trillion. Something's got to give. Education is going to change, the question is how and when. Think about it: Today's job market—whether you're designing new drugs, fracking for oil, writing mobile apps or marketing Pop Chips—requires graduates who can think strategically in real time, have strong cognitive skills, see patterns, work in groups and know their way around highly visual virtual environments. This is the same generation that grew up playing online games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, but who are almost never asked to use their online skills in any classroom. MOOCs will inevitably come to K-12 education too. Everyone knows great public school teachers. But we also all know the tenured type who has been mailing it in for years. Parents spend sleepless nights trying to rearrange schedules to get out of Mr. Bleh's fourth-period math class. Online education is about taking the "best in class" teachers and scaling them to thousands or millions of students rather than 25-30 at a time. The union-dominated teaching corps can be expected to be just as hostile as college professors to moving K-12 to MOOCs. But a certain financial incentive will exist nonetheless. I noted this in a talk recently at an education conference where the audience was filled with people who create education software and services. . . ."

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Colleges Cut Prices by Providing More Financial Aid

Colleges Cut Prices by Providing More Financial Aid - WSJ.com: "Private U.S. colleges, worried they could be pricing themselves out of the market after years of relentless tuition increases, are offering record financial assistance to keep classrooms full. The average "tuition discount rate"—the reduction off list price afforded by grants and scholarships given by these schools—hit an all-time high of 45% last fall for incoming freshmen, according to a survey being released Monday by the National Association of College and University Business Officers."It's a buyer's market" for all but the most select private colleges and flagship public universities, said Jim Scannell, president of Scannell & Kurz, a consulting firm in Pittsford, N.Y., that works with colleges on pricing and financial-aid strategies."

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Peter Thiel Talked 20 More Kids Into Dropping Out of School

Peter Thiel Talked 20 More Kids Into Dropping Out of School | Betabeat: " . . . . Peter Thiel and co. just announced the latest class of “20 Under 20″ Thiel Fellows. In exchange for foregoing traditional higher ed, each of these baby Einsteins gets $100,000, some mentors and the mandate to start a company. . . ."

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Big Data, Education Innovation, MOOCs

Data key to education innovation--

As Data Floods In, Massive Open Online Courses Evolve | MIT Technology Review: "In 2012, education startups attracted millions of students—and a surge of interest from universities and the media—by offering massive open online courses, or MOOCs. Now some core features of these wildly popular courses are being dissected, enabling the course providers to do some learning of their own. As these companies analyze user data and experiment with different features, they are exploring how to customize students’ learning experiences, and they are amassing a stock of pedagogical tricks to help more students finish their courses.
“The data we are collecting is unprecedented in education,” says Andrew Ng, a cofounder of MOOC provider Coursera and an associate professor at Stanford University. “We see every mouse click and keystroke. We know if a user clicks one answer and then selects another, or fast-forwards through part of a video.”"

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Offerings in online education

Lots of offerings in online education - SiliconValley.com: "Several up-and-coming companies -- including Udemy, Udacity, Khan Academy, 2U and Coursera -- are offering ways for people to educate themselves online, with many courses geared toward practical knowledge and skills for a fast-changing and often forbidding economic landscape. "This is all part of lifelong learning," said Dennis Yang, president of San Francisco-based Udemy. "People feel they must train endlessly just to stay in the game." Courses at the online schools include basic algebra, computer science and physics, along with skills training for Web development and launching a startup company. Also available are courses on artificial intelligence and how to build a computer language. "Online learning is not new, but what is new is what is possible now with the technology that is available to us," said Clarissa Shen, a vice president with Mountain View-based Udacity. "There is a huge amount of scale and the experience is very rich."" (more at link above)

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MOOCs are the future of higher education

Nathan Heller: Is College Moving Online? : The New Yorker: "Many people think that moocs are the future of higher education in America. In the past two years, Harvard, M.I.T., Caltech, and the University of Texas have together pledged tens of millions of dollars to mooc development. Many other élite schools, from U.C. Berkeley to Princeton, have similarly climbed aboard. Their stated goal is democratic reach. “I expect that there will be lots of free, or nearly free, offerings available,” John L. Hennessy, the president of Stanford, explained in a recent editorial. “While the gold standard of small in-person classes led by great instructors will remain, online courses will be shown to be an effective learning environment, especially in comparison with large lecture-style courses.”" (more at link above)

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What Most College Grads Need To Do

Kirk McDonald: Sorry, College Grads, I Probably Won't Hire You - WSJ.com: "Unless you understand the fundamentals of what engineers and programmers do, unless you're familiar enough with the principles and machinations of coding to know how the back end of the business works, any answer you give is a guess and therefore probably wrong. Even if your dream job is in marketing or sales or another department seemingly unrelated to programming, I'm not going to hire you unless you can at least understand the basic way my company works. And I'm not alone. If you want a job in media, technology or a related field, make learning basic computer language your goal this summer. There are plenty of services—some free and others affordable—that will set you on your way. Teach yourself just enough of the grammar and the logic of computer languages to be able to see the big picture. Get acquainted with APIs. Dabble in a bit of Python. For most employers, that would be more than enough. Once you can claim familiarity with at least two programming languages, start sending out those resumes." (more at link above)

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Laurene Powell Jobs Promotes Dream Act

Laurene Powell Jobs, Widow of Steve Jobs, Goes Public to Promote Dream Act - WSJ.com: " . . . Ms. Powell Jobs started tutoring low-income students on the side in 1995. Three years later, she channeled her passion for education into College Track, an after-school program she founded to help low-income students get into college. College Track offers tutoring, extra-curricular activities and leadership classes. The program put her in contact with students who couldn't get financial aid for college because they were in the country illegally, usually brought here as children. Among them was Nora Razon, who received tutoring in English at the first College Track center in East Palo Alto, Calif., starting in 1999. In her senior year of high school, after skipping sessions dedicated to preparing college applications, Ms. Razon broke down and told the center's director that she was undocumented. College Track helped Miss Razon, who has since become a legal resident, find private scholarships and donations that enabled her to enroll at San Francisco State University and helped pay for books and rent. But after graduation, undocumented students couldn't work in their field because of their status. "Year after year we saw potential wasted," recalls Ms. Powell Jobs. . . ."

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