In early 2012, leading minds from Harvard, Stanford and M.I.T. started three companies to provide Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs. They were open to anyone in the world with an Internet connection, no cost, millions of students signed up, and pundits called it a revolution. The technology was supposed to transform higher education. What happened? Continue reading… “Reforming higher education: when online degrees are seen as official”
The first Massive Open Online Course (MOOCs), Connectivism and Connective Knowledge (also known as CCK08), led by George Siemens of Athabasca University and Stephen Downes of the National Research Council, was offered in 1998. Twenty-five tutition paying students from the University of Manitoba and over 2,200 tuition free students from the general public, participated. Continue reading… “Can Massive Open Online Courses change the way we teach?”
If the fundamental premise of President Obama’s new initiative to make community college free is to open up career and life opportunities for the nation’s young — especially those from underprivileged backgrounds — then the federal government should also be thinking of ways to cover the tuition costs of individuals attending coding boot camps. Instead of paying for a two-year community college program, the government could instead get more bang for less buck by paying for a 12-week program. That’s something that the nation’s first coding president should understand.
Germany didn’t just abolish tuition for Germans, the ban goes for international students, too.
Lower Saxony has made itself the final state in Germany to do away with any public university tuition whatsoever. As of now, all state-run universities in the Federal Republic—legendary institutions that put the Bildung in Bildungsroman, like the Universität Heidelberg, the Universität München, or the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin—cost exactly nothing.
Students leave college with an average $29,400 in loans.
The appeal of a $10,000 college degree is impossible to deny. Average tuition for a public university is more than $35,000 for four years. Students leave college with an average $29,400 in loans. Who wouldn’t get behind an effort to offer bachelor’s degrees that won’t shackle young people to debt for decades after they graduate?
Continue reading… “The new $10,000 college degree has everyone talking”
It’s dismaying how easy it is to screw up college.
I don’t know exactly when, why, or how it happened, but important things are breaking down in the US higher education system. Whether or not this system is in danger of collapsing it feels like it’s losing its way, and failing in its mission of developing the citizens and workers we need in the 21st century.
This mission clearly includes getting students to graduate, yet only a bit more than half of all US students enrolled in four-year colleges and universities complete their degrees within six years, and only 29% who start two year degrees finish them within three years. America is last in graduation rate among 18 countries assessed in 2010 by the OECD. Things used to be better; in the late 1960s, nearly half of all college students got done in four years.
Continue reading… “The Sorry State of Higher Education”
Technology trends will transform higher education.
Higher education is facing an onslaught of disruptive forces right now. Technologies such as MOOCs and mobile devices are disrupting institutional structures from the classroom and across entire campuses. As tech transforms these learning environments, universities must decide whether to resist the change or get out in front of it. To choose the latter option, however, we need to envision what universities of the future will look like—if they exist at all.
Continue reading… “12 tech trends that will alter higher education”
Coursera adds 29 universities and institutes to their online venture.
Providers of free online higher education are expanding the ranks of universities that contribute courses to their Web sites. They are also adding many schools from outside the United States.
Adding to a drumbeat of concern about the nation’s dismal college-completion rates, the College Board warned Thursday that the growing gap between the United States and other countries threatens to undermine American economic competitiveness.
Continue reading… “U.S. Once Led the World in College Degrees Now Ranks 12th”
Seth Godin: For 400 years, higher education in the United States has been on a roll. From Harvard asking Galileo to be a guest professor in the 1600s to millions tuning in to watch a team of unpaid athletes play another team of unpaid athletes in some college sporting event, the amounts of time and money and prestige in the college world have been climbing.
I’m afraid that’s about to crash and burn. Here’s how I’m looking at it.
Continue reading… “The Coming Meltdown in Higher Education (from a marketing perspective)”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
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