Higher Education – Page 2

Higher Education, Science & Technology News

These 10 Colleges Have Produced The Most Billionaire Alumni

April 27, 2021

American universities dominate, but it’s not all Ivy Leaguers on the 2021 World’s Billionaires list.

The 2,755 people on Forbes’ 2021 World’s Billionaires list received their undergraduate degrees all over the world, from Al-Azhar University in Egypt to the Zhejiang University of Technology in China. Hundreds did not attend college at all, or left before obtaining a diploma, including a pair of Harvard dropouts who are among the five richest people in the world: Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.

But among the billionaires who completed their undergraduate education, a few schools stand out. Harvard leads the way, with at least 29 billionaire alumni on the Forbes list. (We found information about the undergraduate education of a majority, but not all, of the list members.) Four other Ivy League universities make the top ten. Nine of these ten schools are located in the United States—MIT and a trio of California schools round out the American colleges—although their alumni hold diverse citizenship, from Colombia to Ireland to the Philippines. The lone non-U.S. school? The University of Mumbai, a public university in India that is one of the largest colleges in the world by enrollment. Just missing the cut are South Korea’s Seoul National University and China’s Tsinghua University.

Here are the ten colleges with the most billionaire undergraduate alumni, based on education data collected by Forbes; net worths are as of March 5, 2021.

Higher Education, Science & Technology News

How Google’s New Career Certificates Could Disrupt the College Degree (Exclusive)

March 25, 2021

BY JUSTIN BARISO @JUSTINJBARISO

Get a first look at Google’s new certificate programs and a new feature of Google Search designed to help job seekers everywhere.

This morning, Google is announcing the next steps in its plan to disrupt the world of education, including the launch of new certificate programs that are designed to help people bridge any skills gap and get qualifications in high-paying, high-growth job fields–with one noteworthy feature:

No college degree necessary.

The new tools could be a game changer for a growing number of people who consider the current educational system broken, or for the millions of Americans who are currently unemployed, much due to fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The pandemic has led to a truly horrible year,” Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai tells Inc. in an interview. “But it has also created profound shifts along the journey to digital transformation in ways no one could have imagined.”

Analysis, Coronavirus, Higher Education, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

Reimagining higher education in the United States

November 5, 2020

As education leaders consider their options in the age of the COVID-19 crisis, they must rethink the conventional wisdom.

Higher education in the United States is at an inflection point. The core mission of the university—instruction, research, and service—has not changed. Nor has the need for advanced education to prepare individuals for a fulfilling life and to drive the knowledge economy. For individuals, the economic benefit of earning a college degree remains clear. College graduates are on average wealthier, healthier, and happier over a lifetime.1

Even before the COVID-19 crisis, however, the higher-education sector faced significant challenges. Consider student completion: only 60 percent of all those who started college actually earned a degree within six years in 2017 (the latest year for which data is available). The figures are even worse for Black (39.9 percent) and Hispanic (54.4 percent) students. Other troubling disparities persist. In student enrollment, for example, 69 percent of white high-school graduates enroll in college, compared with 59 percent of Black high-schoolers and 61 percent of Hispanics. Furthermore, the level of student debt is rising, while repayment rates plummet, creating a potentially unsustainable burden for many students.

The pandemic is intensifying these challenges and creating new ones. Students and their families are struggling with the impact of campus shutdowns and questioning whether it is worth it to pay for an on-campus experience when much of the instruction is being done remotely. Under these circumstances, the risk of outcome inequities—from completion to employment to lifetime earnings—could worsen. For example, evidence suggests that lower-income students are 55 percent more likely than their higher-income peers to delay graduation2 due to the COVID-19 crisis. Underpinning all of these challenges is a business model at its breaking point, as institutions face falling revenues and rising health-and-safety costs.

In short, the coronavirus has confirmed the case for fast and fundamental change. It has also demonstrated that change is possible. When the pandemic hit, many US colleges and universities moved quickly to remote learning and other delivery models, launched affordability initiatives, and found creative ways to support their students. Now is the time to build on these lessons to reimagine the next five to ten years and beyond.

Continue reading… “Reimagining higher education in the United States”

Big Problems, Coronavirus, Higher Education, Science & Technology News

The Economic Model of Higher Education Was Already Broken. Here’s Why the Pandemic May Destroy It for Good

September 2, 2020

Logan Armstrong, a Cincinnati junior, works while sitting inside a painted circle on the lawn of the Oval during the first day of fall classes on at Ohio State University on Aug. 25, 2020.

Karabell is an author, investor, and commentator. He is the president of River Twice Research. His forthcoming book is Inside Money: Brown Brothers Harriman and the American Way of Power.

With the fall semester upon us, colleges and universities unveiled their plans for students—and many are just as quickly upending those plans. The University of North Carolina and Notre Dame recently announced they were changing their on campus plans as COVID-19 cases spiked. Many other universities are sure to follow. Already, universities ranging from Syracuse to Ohio State are suspending hundreds of students for violating social distancing rules, while COVID-19 outbreaks are on the rise on campuses such as the University of Alabama. While there is considerable variety in the actual plans, ranging from mostly in-person to all virtual, they all share one imperative: to maintain an economic model that is as imperiled by the pandemic as the hardest hit service industries.

Continue reading… “The Economic Model of Higher Education Was Already Broken. Here’s Why the Pandemic May Destroy It for Good”

2020 Predictions, Coronavirus, Higher Education, Science & Technology News, Trending

Why College is never coming back

August 1, 2020

Here’s some great news: one of America’s most broken industries is finally being exposed as a sham. And make no mistake, the end of college as we know it is a great thing.

It’s great for families, who’ll save money and take on less debt putting kids through school. It’s great for kids, who’ll no longer be lured into the socialist indoctrination centers that many American campuses have become. And as I’ll show you, it’s great for investors, who stand to make a killing on the companies that’ll disrupt college for good.

But Stephen, how can you be against education?! I love learning, but I hate what college has become. As recently as 1980, you could get a four-year bachelor’s degree at a public school for less than $10,000. These days, it’ll cost you $40,000 at a minimum, $140,000 for a private school, or well over $250,000 for a top school.

College costs have ballooned beyond all reason. They’ve risen even faster than healthcare costs, which is really saying something. Kids are burying themselves in debt—$1.6 trillion at last count—in order to attend college.

When I wrote about this last year, I had little hope things would change anytime soon. Why? It’s a tough sell to convince an 18-year-old kid not to attend the four-year party all his friends are going to, especially when the US government is financing it through student loans.

But a Lightning Bolt of Disruption Just Fried the Business Model of College.

Continue reading… “Why College is never coming back”

2020 Predictions, Coronavirus, Higher Education, Science & Technology News

This chart predicts which colleges will survive the Coronavirus

August 1, 2020

Universities are an expensive operation with a relatively inflexible cost structure, and it’s forcing many schools to make poor choices

Our fumbling, incompetent response to the pandemic continues. In six weeks, a key component of our society is in line to become the next vector of contagion: higher education. Right now, half of colleges and universities plan to offer in-person classes, something resembling a normal college experience, this fall. This cannot happen. In-person classes should be minimal, ideally none.

The economic circumstances for many of these schools are dire, and administrators will need imagination — and taxpayer dollars — to avoid burning the village to save it. Per current plans, hundreds of colleges will perish.

There is a dangerous conflation of the discussion about K-12 and university reopenings. The two are starkly different. There are strong reasons to reopen K-12, and there are stronger reasons to keep universities shuttered. University leadership needs to evolve from denial (“It’s business as usual”) and past bargaining (“We’ll have a hybrid model with some classes in person”) to citizenship (“We are the warriors against this virus, not its enablers”).

Continue reading… “This chart predicts which colleges will survive the Coronavirus”

Analysis, Artificial Intelligence, Culture, Higher Education, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

Study: Only 18% of data science students are learning about AI ethics

July 14, 2020

The neglect of AI ethics extends from universities to industry

A study by data science firm Anaconda found an absence of AI ethics initiatives in both academia and industry.

Amid a growing backlash over AI‘s racial and gender biases, numerous tech giants are launching their own ethics initiatives — of dubious intent.

The schemes are billed as altruistic efforts to make tech serve humanity. But critics argue their main concern is evading regulation and scrutiny through “ethics washing.”

At least we can rely on universities to teach the next generation of computer scientists to make. Right? Apparently not, according to a new survey of 2,360 data science students, academics, and professionals by software firm Anaconda.

Only 15% of instructors and professors said they’re teaching AI ethics, and just 18% of students indicated they’re learning about the subject.

Continue reading… “Study: Only 18% of data science students are learning about AI ethics”

Employment, government, Higher Education, Science & Technology News

Trump executive order directs feds to prioritize skills over college degrees in hiring

July 6, 2020

President Trump is reportedly preparing to redirect employers on how they should hire, prioritizing an applicant’s skills over a university degree.

Fox News has learned that the president will likely sign an executive order Friday, instructing the nation’s largest employer, the federal government, to take a new direction in its hiring tactics.

The order is expected to occur during a board meeting that advises the administration on worker policies.

Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, adviser and co-chair of the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board, has recommended the federal government — which employs more than 2 million civilian workers — re-strategize who they hire.

Continue reading… “Trump executive order directs feds to prioritize skills over college degrees in hiring”

Coronavirus, Higher Education, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

Is an MBA worth it ? After Covid-19, absolutely not.

July 6, 2020

For my parents’ generation, the default option for career development was getting an MBA. At one point in the late 2010s, I considered the degree, too. But as much as the brand glittered, a price tag of $200,000 plus two years of lost wages just didn’t seem worth it. And now?

Is an MBA worth it in 2020? It’s becoming more and more clear that an MBA degree is not just a questionable investment—it’s a risk that’s simply not worth it.

Let’s step back: The value of business school has been diminishing for a while. (Just ask Elon Musk, Sheryl Sandberg, or Mark Cuban for their opinion of the MBA or take a look at the declining application rates, even at the top schools.) The model of taking students out of the workforce to study decades-old cases was designed for a different era, when technology didn’t shift entire industries at such a breakneck speed.

Covid-19 has shone a glaring spotlight on just how archaic this type of education is. Almost overnight, business plans have been torn up, the rules we’ve played by scrapped. Executives can’t lean on the tactics they learned from outdated case studies—all of us are learning about our new world in real time.

Continue reading… “Is an MBA worth it ? After Covid-19, absolutely not.”

Coronavirus, Higher Education, Hot Issues, Science & Technology News

More than 60 colleges hit with lawsuits as students demand tuition refunds

June 27, 2020

Georgetown University, whose nearly empty campus in Washington, DC, is seen here on May 7, 2020—is one of more than 60 schools being sued by students, who are demanding a partial tuition refund after classes moved online due to the coronavirus outbreak.

At least 60 colleges and universities across the country, and perhaps as many as 100 or more, are now being sued by students who believe they were short-changed when their in-person college experience was replaced by an online one as schools shut down campuses this spring due to the coronavirus pandemic. The students are demanding a refund on tuition and fees equal to the difference between what they paid for in advance and the instruction and educational services they actually received.

The unprecedented number of class action lawsuits began as a trickle in April, picked up momentum in May, and have continued to expand throughout June, with experts saying there are likely many more to come.

The schools currently facing student lawsuits include elite universities like Brown, Columbia, Duke, Emory and Georgetown as well as major public university systems like Rutgers in New Jersey and the University of North Carolina.

Continue reading… “More than 60 colleges hit with lawsuits as students demand tuition refunds”

2020 Predictions, Coronavirus, Economy, Higher Education, Science & Technology News, Trending

Almost half of Universities may be gone in 5 to 10 years, professor admits

June 19, 2020

Scott Galloway, lecturer in Marketing at New York University, speaking at the DLD (Digital-Life-Design) conference in Munich, Germany, 18 January 2016.

An NYU professor of business surmises that because of the effects of the coronavirus, anywhere from one-quarter to almost one-half of universities in the nation may go out of business in the next five to ten years. NYU professor Scott Galloway also admitted that foreign students paying full tuition are the “cash cow” for universities and “might decide not to show up.” He commented, “What department stores were to retail, tier-two higher tuition universities are about to become to education and that is they are soon going to become the walking dead.”

Speaking with Hari Sreenivasanon on PBS’ “Amanpour and Co.,” Galloway spoke of the impact of the coronavirus on colleges and universities, forcing them to hold their classes over the internet, and how that may catalyze flight from the universities and the universities’ subsequent downfall. Galloway stated, “Students I think across America along with their families listening in on these Zoom classes are all beginning to wonder what kind of value, or lack thereof, they’re getting for their tuition dollars … There’s generally a recognition or disappointment across America, and I would argue that it’s not that they’re disappointed in the Zoom classes, it’s more the recognition that Zoom has uncovered how disappointing college education is. I think there’s a lot of households saying, ‘This is what we’re paying for?’”

Continue reading… “Almost half of Universities may be gone in 5 to 10 years, professor admits”

Analysis, Coronavirus, Economy, Higher Education, Science & Technology News

Community colleges could see a surge in popularity amid Covid-19

May 25, 2020

Historically, community college enrollment spikes during economic downturns.

This year, a public health crisis may draw even more students who don’t want to travel or live in a dorm.

The coronavirus crisis has already changed the way this year’s crop of high school seniors are thinking about higher education.

And community colleges across the country are preparing accordingly.

“Under the circumstances, families may turn to us as the gateway of opportunity, and we’ve been ready,” said Michael Baston, the president of Rockland Community College in Rockland County, New York.

Continue reading… “Community colleges could see a surge in popularity amid Covid-19”