The future of higher education: White paper  — from IBM and the American Council on Education (ACE; specifically, the ACE Fellows Program)

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

The role of higher education is to give students the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in a globally competitive world. Education isn’t just about teaching students to take tests well, but rather to create lifelong learners who can contribute to a thriving society and competitive economy.

From DSC:
We will have a very hard time creating lifelong learners if a large swath of people dislike learning in the first place.  When 20-30%+ of our youth are not even graduating from high school, I can’t help but recall a saying from one of my first coaches:

Always change a losing game. Never change a winning game.

I think that our biggest gift to students is not what they were able to get on an ACT or SAT test — though I realize how important that can be in getting into College ABC or University of XYZ (and thus hopefully helping them get started on a solid footing/career).  Rather, on a grander scale, our biggest gift to our students is that they would enjoy learning; that we could help students identify their God-given passion(s), talents, gifts, abilities — and then go develop them and use them to serve others. Everyone will benefit if they do so; and the students will know joy and purpose in their lives. These are the types of WIN-WIN situations that square up with the thinking of many economists —  “Do what you do best and everyone benefits.”

 

College is dead. Long live college! — from nation.time.com by Amanda Ripley

Excerpt:

From DSC:
Whether MOOCs make it or not, the key contribution (at least as of fall 2012) about them for me is that they are helping usher in much more innovative ways of thinking and are helping us to experiment more within higher education.
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