Education – Page 3

Analysis, Coronavirus, Education, Science & Technology News, Trending

New global data reveal education technology’s impact on learning

August 3, 2020

The use of technology in education has become a lifeline during the COVID-19 pandemic. As students return to the classroom, school systems must carefully consider the longer-term role of technology.

The promise of technology in the classroom is great: enabling personalized, mastery-based learning; saving teacher time; and equipping students with the digital skills they will need for 21st-century careers. Indeed, controlled pilot studies have shown meaningful improvements in student outcomes through personalized blended learning.1 During this time of school shutdowns and remote learning, education technology has become a lifeline for the continuation of learning.

As school systems begin to prepare for a return to the classroom, many are asking whether education technology should play a greater role in student learning beyond the immediate crisis and what that might look like. To help inform the answer to that question, this article analyzes one important data set: the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), published in December 2019 by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

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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, Children, Coronavirus, Education, Science & Technology News

If COVID Fatalities Were 90.2% Lower, How Would You Feel About Schools Reopening?

July 27, 2020

According to the CDC, 101 children age 0 to 14 have died from influenza, while 31 children have died from COVID-19.

No evidence exists to support the theory that children pose a threat to educational professionals in a school or classroom setting, but there is a great deal of evidence to support the safety of in-person education.

According to the CDC, 131,332 Americans have died from pneumonia and 121,374 from COVID-19 as of July 11th, 2020.

Had the CDC used its industry standard, Medical Examiners’ and Coroners’ Handbook on Death Registration and Fetal Death Reporting Revision 2003, as it has for all other causes of death for the last 17 years, the COVID-19 fatality count would be approximately 90.2% lower than it currently is.

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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.

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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.”

Artificial Intelligence, Children, Education, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News

Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott believes artificial intelligence will help reprogram the American dream

June 30, 2020

Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott rise to his current post is about as unlikely as you will find. He grew up in Gladys, Virginia, a town of a few hundred people. He loved his family and his hometown to such an extent that he did not aspire to leave. He caught the technology bug in the 1970s by chance, and that passion would provide a ticket to bigger places that he did not initially seek.

The issue was one of opportunity. In his formative years, jobs were decreasing in places like Gladys just as they were increasing dramatically in tech hubs like Silicon Valley. After pursuing a PhD in computer science at the University of Virginia, he left in 2003 prior to completing his dissertation to join Google. He would rise to become a Senior Engineering Director there. He left Google for LinkedIn in 2011. He would eventually rise to become the Senior Vice President of Engineering & Operations at LinkedIn. From LinkedIn he joined Microsoft three and a half years ago as CTO. He is deeply satisfied with the course of his career and its trajectory, but part of him laments that it took him so far from his roots and the hometown that he loves.

As he reflected further on this conundrum, he put his thoughts to paper and published the book, Reprogramming the American Dream in April, co-authored by Greg Shaw. As he noted in a conversation I recently had with him, “Silicon Valley is a perfectly wonderful place, but we should be able to create opportunity and prosperity everywhere, not just in these coastal urban innovation centers.”

Scott believes that machine learning and artificial intelligence will be key ingredients to aiding an entrepreneurial rise in smaller towns across the United States. These advances will place less of a burden on companies to hire employees in the small towns, as some technical development will be conducted by the bots. He also hopes that as some of these businesses blossom, more kids will be inspired to start their own businesses powered by technology, creating a virtuous cycle of sorts.

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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.

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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?’”

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Children, Coronavirus, Education, Science & Technology News

Wealthy parents are paying to have their kids homeschooled by professionals for up to 5 hours a day, and it shows how the pandemic is widening the gaps in America’s education system

June 9, 2020

K-12 students have been educated online since March, and parents fear they are falling behind.

With most schools across the US closed since March to slow the spread of the coronavirus, some ultrawealthy parents are hiring private educators to make sure their kids don’t fall behind.

Some of these educators are former teachers or people who have degrees in education, and they charge between $25 and $60 an hour for their services.

Some parents may continue to employ these professionals to homeschool their kids even after schools reopen in the fall in case the US experiences a second wave of the coronavirus, as some experts expect.

Educators are concerned that lower-income families’ lack of internet access will further widen the achievement gap between rich and poor students when schools eventually reopen.

Continue reading… “Wealthy parents are paying to have their kids homeschooled by professionals for up to 5 hours a day, and it shows how the pandemic is widening the gaps in America’s education system”

Children, Coronavirus, Education, Science & Technology News, Trending

Many parents will likely continue at-home learning in the fall, poll finds

June 8, 2020

With the president pushing for children to return to the classroom and a number of states intent on pursuing phased reopenings, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released guidance for reopening schools. But a new Ipsos poll conducted on behalf of USA Today has found that if schools reopen in the fall, they may find attendance down as many parents will likely continue at-home learning.

While more than half of Americans polled, just more than 2,000, said they supported a range of suggested proposals for reopening schools for in-classroom learning in the fall, a majority of the parents surveyed appeared hesitant to return their children to school before a vaccine had been found. A total of 59% of parents surveyed who had at least one child in a K-12 grade said they would “likely” pursue at-home education options such as homeschooling or remote learning instead of sending their children back into the classroom. Another 30% said they were “very likely” to continue to pursue at-home learning.

Continue reading… “Many parents will likely continue at-home learning in the fall, poll finds”