Education – Page 5

Economy, Education, Science & Technology News, women

The geography of gender: where women work, economies grow

January 5, 2020

Women from a single mothers’ association sweep rice at their processing plant in the town of Bolgatanga, Ghana.

Our world is full of brilliant possibilities. But they’re not always open to everyone. The opportunities for women to contribute to the global economy are intrinsically linked to where in the world they are born and reach adulthood. So long as global disparities exist in education and opportunity – as the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report reaffirms this week – this will always remain the case. This holds us all back. Yet, the business community can, and must, help tackle this divide.

The geography of gender is challenging and complex. The latest Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurs (MIWE), for example, highlights the significance of geography in female entrepreneurship. Unsurprisingly, MIWE showed that higher-income, advanced economies, with open and vibrant markets that support SMEs and the ease of doing business provide highly conducive and enabling conditions to support female business owners.

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Finance, Higher Education, Money Talk, Science & Technology News

How An Unlimited Supply Of Borrowed Cash Is Destroying Higher Education

December 31, 2019

Both of us grew up poor. College was our way out of poverty. Now, we see too many young people locked into poverty by a college education.

“You have to go to college” was an article of faith when we were growing up in poor families. Now we wonder if our ticket out of poverty still has the same value. Far too many of this generation are leaving college with substantial debt and few meaningful job opportunities.

Put a little differently, what is the value of a bachelor’s degree in women’s studies or sociology or any other fields that are not science, technology, engineering, mathematics, or business? Ask some of the young people working at your local coffee shop or favorite restaurant. They will probably tell you, “not much.”

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communication, Computer Security, Higher Education, new technology, Science & Technology News

Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines, tracking the locations of hundreds of thousands

December 30, 2019

Syracuse University is among the dozens of schools in the United States that use tracking systems to monitor students’ academic performance, analyze their conduct or assess their mental health.

When Syracuse University freshmen walk into professor Jeff Rubin’s Introduction to Information Technologies class, seven small Bluetooth beacons hidden around the Grant Auditorium lecture hall connect with an app on their smartphones and boost their “attendance points.”

And when they skip class? The SpotterEDU app sees that, too, logging their absence into a campus database that tracks them over time and can sink their grade. It also alerts Rubin, who later contacts students to ask where they’ve been. His 340-person lecture has never been so full.

“They want those points,” he said. “They know I’m watching and acting on it. So, behaviorally, they change.”

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Higher Education, Latest Trend, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

Fewer students are going to college. Here’s why that matters

December 22, 2019

This fall, there were nearly 250,000 fewer students enrolled in college than a year ago, according to new numbers out Monday from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, which tracks college enrollment by student.

“That’s a lot of students that we’re losing,” says Doug Shapiro, who leads the research center at the Clearinghouse.

And this year isn’t the first time this has happened. Over the past eight years, college enrollment nationwide has fallen about 11%. Every sector — public state schools, community colleges, for-profits and private liberal arts schools — has felt the decline, though it has been especially painful for small private colleges, where, in some cases, institutions have been forced to close.

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Education, Higher Education, Internet, Science & Technology News

Welcome to the third age of online education

December 8, 2019

The strangest things can trigger intense memories. For Marcel Proust, the taste of a madeleine cookie famously unleashed his entire childhood. In The Game, a reflection on life and hockey, my boyhood hero Ken Dryden, the great Montreal Canadiens goalie, recounts waking up in his parents’ home in Islington (a Toronto neighborhood) thinking he’s hearing the sounds of skates biting the ice and pucks thumping off the boards on the backyard rink his father built for him and his brother. And for Britain’s Prince Andrew, an allegation that he’d been intimate with a 17-year-old girl evoked an evening at a nondescript chain restaurant in a nondescript town in Surrey on the very date in question more than 18 years earlier.

Last month in an interview with the BBC’s Emily Maitlis, Prince Andrew contended he couldn’t have been with Virginia Giuffre on March 10, 2001 because he “weirdly distinctly” remembers taking his daughter to the Pizza Express in Woking that evening. If you’ve ever been to a Pizza Express – let alone one in a London commuter town like Woking – I guarantee you’ll have trouble remembering you were ever there. None of this was lost on the British public, which began posting video of the unremarkable restaurant and flooding Google and Trip Advisor with new reviews like: “Pizza Express Woking is like no other Pizza Express! It’s a memory which will never disappear… The pizza is so good from this specific branch, it gives you the ability to not only remember what year you visited, but the exact day and month! Truly incredible.” And “if you’re in need of an alibi, this is the restaurant for you.”

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

The 5 college majors American students most regret picking

November 21, 2019

Obtaining an undergraduate degree is almost always worth it — bachelor’s degree holders earn 84% more than those with just a high school diploma.

However, not all majors are the same, ZipRecruiter found.

As tuition costs soar, more students and their families are asking themselves if college is still worth it.

Some experts say the value of a bachelor’s degree is fading. Starting salaries for new college graduates have grown less than 1% over the past two years, remaining at around $50,000.

Worse yet: A decade after leaving school, more than 1 in 5 graduates are working in a job that doesn’t even require a degree.

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Blockchain, Education, Higher Education, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

How Blockchain could disrupt the education industry

November 12, 2019

Blockchain is undisputedly an ingenious invention. It’s a technology that began as underpinning for virtual currencies but it is quickly becoming obvious that blockchain is more than just bitcoin.

The encrypted ledger technology that powers bitcoin is primed to reshape the future of many industries. Be it healthcare, finance, media, or the government, the blockchain technology will bring about a revolutionary change across many industries.

The technology is sure to disrupt every industry, including education. There is no denying the fact that the education system is far from where it needs to be. Using this technology, a lot of improvements can be made in the education sector.

The edtech sector is huge. It is estimated that it will reach $93.76 billion by 2020. Technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality are already making their way into the education sector. It’s only a matter of time before the blockchain technology becomes mainstream too.

Let’s see how this disruptive technology can revolutionize the education sector.

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Award Winner, Higher Education, Intelligence, Law Enforcement, Science & Technology News

Harvard’s prestigious debate team loses to New York prison inmates

November 11, 2019

Prisoners participating in Bard College initiative to provide them a liberal arts education beat Ivy League students who won national title only months ago

Months after winning a national title, Harvard’s debate team has fallen to a group of New York prison inmates.

The showdown took place at the Eastern correctional facility in New York, a maximum-security prison where convicts can take courses taught by faculty from nearby Bard College, and where inmates have formed a popular debate club. Last month they invited the Ivy League undergraduates and this year’s national debate champions over for a friendly competition.

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Business, Employment, Finance, Higher Education, Science & Technology News

Why no one wants to be an MBA anymore

October 30, 2019

A recent Wall Street Journal article focused on the steep decline in elite MBA program applications. In an era of an increasing divide between the economic haves and have nots, you’d think that the vaunted Masters in Business Administration degree would be valued more than ever. After all, with the recent boom in the stock market coinciding with a steep reduction in corporate taxes, big corporations are awash in profits to reward their highest achievers. Though there has been only slight progress in wage increases for rank and file employees, the top brass is enjoying greater compensation than ever. And a quick look at the CEOs of the companies with highest market caps reveal at least one thing in common: both leaders obtained MBAs from prestigious institutions. Apple’s Tim Cook graduated from Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, while Satya Nadella of Microsoft received his MBA from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago.

Yet MBA applications are down sharply, even at the most celebrated institutions. The Journal article has highlighted declines between 5-20% in applications to the top U.S. MBA programs. What gives?

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Employment, Higher Education, Latest Trend, Report, Science & Technology News

Why some say college is no longer the sure path to success

October 8, 2019

An alarming—yet illuminating—new study conducted by Third Way, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, concludes that many who go to college come out earning less than the typical salary of a high school graduate. Contrary to popular opinion, which contends that the path to success is rooted in attaining a college education, the findings indicate that half of U.S. colleges in 2018 left their students earning under $28,000 a year.

In past generations, primarily the upper-class, wealthy elites attended universities. After World War II and the passing of the G.I. bill, soldiers returning from the battlefields were offered financial assistance to attend college—and they did so in large numbers. Slowly over time, in the ensuing decades, enrolling into college became almost commonplace for the average American. Today, there is great pressure put upon high school students to attend universities—even if they lack the aptitude or interest. Sometimes the pressure exerted on kids to attend top-tier institutions is intense. This was clearly exemplified by the recent college admittance scandal, in which the rich and famous parents allegedly bribed school officials to get their children into ivy league and top-tier universities.

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Augmented Reality, Education, Science & Technology News, VR

A new immersive classroom uses AI and VR to teach Mandarin Chinese

August 3, 2019

Students will learn the language by ordering food or haggling with street vendors on a virtual Beijing street.

Often the best way to learn a language is to immerse yourself in an environment where people speak it. The constant exposure, along with the pressure to communicate, helps you swiftly pick up and practice new vocabulary. But not everyone gets the opportunity to live or study abroad.

In a new collaboration with IBM Research, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), a university based in Troy, New York, now offers its students studying Chinese another option: a 360-degree virtual environment that teleports them to the busy streets of Beijing or a crowded Chinese restaurant. Students get to haggle with street vendors or order food, and the environment is equipped with different AI capabilities to respond to them in real time. While the classroom is largely experimental, it is being used for the first time in a six-week, for-credit course at the university this summer.

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Children, Education, Music, Science & Technology News

Want your kids to do well in math and science? This is the 1 totally unexpected subject they should study (says science)

July 22, 2019

A new study offers extraordinary findings.

You want the best for your kids. Even if they don’t deserve it. The world has become an ever more traumatized place, so you feel you should do ever more to give them a helping hand.

Though it surely stops before you pay a fixer $500,000 for them to go to USC. I want to help you for free, oh traumatized parent.

So I’ve just found a fascinating piece of research that might be a good guide, should you want your children to be good at the basics.

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