Free courses may shake universities’ monopoly
Free or cheap online courses may shake universities’ monopoly on credentials, writes the Hechinger Report. “If I were the universities, I might be a little nervous,” said Alana Harrington, director of Saylor.org, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit established by entrepreneur Michael Saylor that offers 200 free online college courses in 12 majors. Among other similar initiatives [...]
Some college, no degree
Thirty-seven million Americans have some college credits but no degree, reports Emily Hanford of American RadioWorks. Marilyn Johnson Jackson could only manage the stress of night classes, two jobs and life as a single mom for so long. She gave up on the idea of ever getting her degree — and then discovered a new [...]
U.S. News ranks online degree programs
For the first time, U.S. News has evaluated online degree programs offered by public, private nonprofit and for-profit institutions. The magazine ranked 196 online bachelor’s degree programs and 523 online master’s degree programs in business,engineering, nursing, education, and computer information technology. There are no overall winners: Bachelor’s programs were ranked by student engagement and assessment, student services and technology, and [...]
Hess: Edu-stories for 2012
President Obama’s re-election campaign will promote Race to the Top and college affordability to woo suburban swing voters, predicts Rick Hess in Ten Edu-Stories We’ll Be Reading in 2012. The Republican nominee will stop attacking the Education Department and talk up education reform to appeal to moderates, he adds. For-profit college entrepreneurs will look to expand [...]
‘Open’ classes build confidence, success
Britain’s Open University, which offers free online Open Learn classes to all comers, is being imported to the U.S. to help “ill-prepared, self-conscious” students adapt to college work, according to the Hechinger Report. Students placed into low-level reading, writing or math — especially math — rarely succeed, researchers have found. Most give up. “You take [...]
Colleges greenlight data mining
Data-mining is helping Rio Salado College predict online students’ likely success and failure, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education. The Arizona community college is a pioneer in online education. By the eighth day of class, Rio Salado College predicts with 70-percent accuracy whether a student will score a C or better in a course. That’s [...]
Back to college? It’s not easy
Some 37 million Americans — more than 20 percent of working adults –have some college credits, but no degree. Persuading dropouts to try again for a degree is a popular strategy to increase the number of college graduates, notes the Hechinger Report. But college can be just as hard the second time around. The Center [...]
Obama puts college costs on agenda
Rising college costs was on the agenda this week, when President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan met with college leaders at the White House. Most were chancellors of large state university systems, but Thomas Snyder of Ivy Tech Community College was invited along with the presidents of the three nonprofits, the all-online Western Governors [...]
Online tutorial aids blind physics students
A computer-science major, Amanda Lacy was ready to drop her physics class at Austin Community College. Because she’s blind, she listens to a digital textbook on her computer or uses an electronic Braille display. But she couldn’t understand symbols, diagrams and graphs, until a professor came to her aid, ultimately designing an online tutorial for [...]
A new job training model
A new model for job training combines a curriculum designed by a private company, online tutorials and four weeks of community college classes, writes Ed Sector’s Kevin Carey. Joe Kitterman’s company, 180 Skills, has partnered with Boeing and Edmonds Community College, in the northern suburbs of Seattle, to teach airplane manufacturing skills. The 12-week program [...]
