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From DSC:
Note the troubling picture here for higher ed — the real median household income continues to decrease in the last several years, yet in those same years, there have still been increases in the cost of tuition. That is, I’ll bet the going rates of higher ed degrees in California are not at their 1998 prices/levels.
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Also see:
From DSC: First, some articles that caused these reflections
Discounting heads — from insidehighered.com by Kevin Kiley
Excerpt:
Despite spending nearly 43 percent of their gross tuition revenue from first-time, full-time freshmen on institutional aid for those students, many private colleges and universities had a harder time enrolling students last year, with almost half seeing no growth or a decline in enrollment for 2011, according to survey results released today by the National Association of College and University Business Officers.
From DSC:
It seems to me that it’s highly-possible that the higher ed bubble has started to pop — at least at private colleges and universities. So why doesn’t change occur? See the next article for several reasons.
Failure to change — from insidehighered.com by Robert J. Sternberg
Excerpts:
Universities teach about the importance of societal and organizational change, but often have trouble changing themselves in any but the most superficial ways. As a psychology professor interested in both individual and organizational modifiability, I have studied organizations, including universities, and why it is so difficult for them to change. Meaningful organizational change requires five elements, and unless all five of them are present, the organization — whether a department, school, college, or university — remains static.
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Change is not always for the better, of course. But a college or university that is static will inevitably fall behind more dynamic, positively changing institutions. And like any institution that fails to compete, it is on the path to stagnation or death. A dynamic institution will change and, if the change proves to be in the wrong direction, will redirect itself until it finds a sustainable path.
From DSC:
As a relevant aside, it’s not just the “younger folk” who are struggling with student loans either:
Student loans saddle both kinds of seniors: graduates and grandparents — from the Washington Post by Michelle Singletary
Excerpt:
Using data from Equifax credit reports, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that people 50 and older are carrying nearly $135 billion in student-loan debt. Those 60 or older have student-loan balances of more than $36 billion.
It’s these types of dynamics and trends that are catalysts for what I call:
“Learning from the Living Room”
Though 2-5 years away, signs point to it coming to fruition (my prediction is that this movement will really gain traction when Apple’s Connected/Smart TV hits the market and as more people get fed up with the current, unresponsive accredidation monopolies within higher ed). Some example/recent articles:
“The Forthcoming Walmart of Education” …which is already happening, but far more significant changes will come in the next 1-5 years as people look for more affordable alternatives. A graphic I created back in 2008 states what I see developing and will be a piece of the higher ed landscape in the future:
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Besides the items mentioned above (i.e. changes in price and delivery mechanisms),
what might some of these innovations look like? Here are some ideas/articles/examples:
From DSC:
As an addendum on 3/4, check out:
The human voice, as game changer — from nytimes.com by Natasha Singer
Matthew Cavanaugh for The New York Times
Vlad Sejnoha demonstrated Nuance’s Dragon TV system, which obeys spoken commands to
flip channels, for example, or shop on screen on Amazon.com.
Apple’s iCloud will teach Apple’s Smart TV remote new tricks — from patentlyapple.com
6 answers about your next TV, with or without Apple — from forbes.com by Michael Humphrey
10 tech commandments for the TV industry — from thenextweb.com by Martin Bryant
Smart TVs are growing in popularity — from business-news.thestreet.com by Steve Adams
Image from Gary Higgins/The Patriot Ledger
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10 AirPlay-ready iPad apps that make Apple TV worth it — from readwriteweb.com by John Paul Titlow
Entertainment and Streaming Media – The Recent Past and the Future — from homesystemintegration.com by Alan Ruby
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TVs may soon be used to spy on you — from smartplanet.com by Tuan C. Nguyen
Will Microsoft beat Apple and Google to make Connected TV work? –– from econsultancy.com by Sam Dwyer
Education 2.0 isn’t coming. It’s here. And the way you’re educated will be changed forever. — from bostinno.com by Dave Balter
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
Sometime in late 2010, I sat down with angel investor Josh Abramowitz in NYC. I asked him to invest in Smarterer, a business whose purpose was to validate people’s digital, social and technical skills. What I encountered for the next hour wasn’t someone merely evaluating my specific business concept – it was an attack on the entire higher education system.
Josh argued that our higher education system was on the verge of crumbling. Not because there weren’t marvelous educators or exceptional institutions, but because colleges and universities were charging exorbitant sums that weren’t equal to the return. Our educators were burying our students with tremendous debt. But increasingly sophisticated learning and credentialing opportunities were emerging online, and they were free or nearly free. And this disparity would lead to a full-fledged education revolution, he predicted.
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What the Universities need to know is that what’s coming for education is something like the shift the music industry failed to see until it was too late. Things will never be the same again. Instead of griping about how hard it will be to tap their endowments to pay for education, they should be thinking about how to take advantage of the changes.
To save their universities, here’s the three-pronged ecosystem that every University Leader should start thinking about…
Also see:
Student-loan debt tops $1 trillion — from WSJ.com by Josh Mitchell and Maya Jackson-Randall
Excerpt:
The amount Americans owe on student loans is far higher than earlier estimates and could lead some consumers to postpone buying homes, potentially slowing the housing recovery, U.S. officials said Wednesday.
Total student debt outstanding appears to have surpassed $1 trillion late last year, said officials at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal agency created in the wake of the financial crisis. That would be roughly 16% higher than an estimate earlier this year by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
From DSC:
Phrases/words that come to my mind include (which many readers of this blog and my archived website will instantly recognize:
Addendum on 3/23/12:
The justification for the large increases at publics has been the need to maintain quality in the face of state appropriations cuts, an excuse private universities don’t have. For many privates, other revenue sources, including endowment returns and private giving, are back to where they were before the recession. And almost half the presidents of private doctoral universities surveyed recently by Inside Higher Ed said their institutions could make additional spending cuts without hurting quality, meaning there is little imperative for increases.
For this reason, the presidents of several private institutions have taken some measures to control costs. “Somewhere out there is a line, on the other side of which we become unaffordable. We haven’t crossed it yet, but we know we’re getting closer to it,” McCardell said. Total cost of attendance at some liberal arts colleges, including tuition, room, and board, is more than $50,000 a year.
From DSC:
The vision below involves:
(click on the image below to access it)
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From DSC:
Here are some items related to what I call “Learning from the Living Room” — a trend that continues to develop that involves:
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The modern mechanics of app stores: today, tomorrow and connected TV — from guardian.co.uk by Dean Johnson
Excerpt:
What’s next for app stores?
It’s time for each platform to up its game – smart TVs are coming. The small and medium screen experience will shortly be translated to the bigger screen as connectivity and discoverability takes on even greater importance.
Google and Apple will further interweave themselves into our daily lives as iOS and Android seamlessly combine our smartphones and tablets with our new smartTVs. Electronic Program Guides (EPGs) and the programmes themselves will suggest related content, from apps to music to film to books. This must all be presented in an approachable, then browsable manner to encourage additional discovery.
The quest for the perfect meta-data will become increasingly important and voice commands will need to deliver the best search results with the minimum of fuss. This time next year, the battle of the app stores will be fought on the move, on the desktop and on the living room wall.
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Samsung Launches Smart TVs With Gestures, Voice Control — from by Douglas Perry
Excerpt:
A Kinect-like feature is made possible via camera and microphone integration that comes standard with the LED ES7500, LED ES8000 and Plasma E8000 models. According to Samsung, consumers can launch apps such as Facebook or YouTube, or search the web via voice commands. Waving the hand will move the cursor and select links. The TVs integrate a Samsung dual-core processor as well as a new Webkit-based web browser to improve overall performance. The high-end 7500 and 8000 TVs ship with a remote with an integrated touchscreen. A wireless keyboard that is compatible with Samsung’s TVs as well as the Galaxy Tab tablet is sold as an option.
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New TV experiences through companion apps — from moxie pulse
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Udemy’s Faculty Project nabs 50,000 students and an Ivy league professor — from gigaom.com by Ryan Lawler
Excerpt:
About six weeks ago, educational video startup Udemy launched its Faculty Project, a nonprofit program for distributing streaming university curriculum online. Early results have been pretty successful, with more than 50,000 students signing up for the program. But that’s not all: the Faculty Project is also bringing on ever more prestigious faculty, with its first Ivy League professor soon coming on board.
In contrast to Udemy’s for-profit platform, which enables teachers to create online courses and charges for access to them, the Faculty Project is a free offering that is designed to connect students from around the world with university faculty for high-quality courses online.
Unified opens an online university for social media marketers — from TechCruch.com by Anthony Ha
The social media landscape is complex and constantly evolving, leaving top global brands and agencies with the challenge of staying on top of the latest trends and best practices. Unified University is a first of its kind – an all-encompassing training, continuing education and certification program, complete with access to the industry leading best practices knowledge base. Unified University is designed to help marketing and agency executives become experts and internal thought leaders on social strategies, platform insights, earned media measurement, and more.
Through Unified University’s comprehensive training program, a social team can get certified on the Unified Social Operating Platform and learn about the latest advances in social advertising. Certification ensures that a team is up to date on the latest options within the social web, including the benefits of advertising across social ecosystems including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, StumbleUpon and more.
Teams learn that brands may require very different strategies to ultimately achieve similar results. Unified University assures that teams know how to strategically represent brands across all social options while delivering high quality results and maximum ROI.
From DSC:
Is this a part of the future? If higher ed doesn’t respond more forcefully, I’d say so.
Along these lines, from page 408 of the Steve Jobs book:
One of Job’s business rules was to never be afraid of cannibalizing yourself. “If you can’t cannibalize yourself, someone else will,” he said.
Innovate. Reinvent. Staying relevant. This goes for the accreditation agencies as well.
Also see:
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Pentagon: You know what’s cool? A trillion-dollar fighter — from cnet.com by D. Terdiman
From DSC:
Cool? Seriously?! Is this where we want to spend a trillion $$? On more instruments of death? Geez…
Instead, I wonder what the United States could contribute to the world by building multimedia-based, high-end, interactive, engaging, personalized/customized, online-based learning materials that are expensive to build, but inexpensive to access?
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Also see:
Cap and gown learning on a shoestring budget — from timeshighereducation.co.uk by Jon Marcus
Excerpt:
With novel credentials being developed and employers seeing the value of low-cost study based on open courseware, Jon Marcus asks if the bricks-and-mortar elite will end up on the wrong side of history
