changing business models

AI Forces Shaping Work & Learning in 2030 [IFTF and Lumina Foundation]

On 10/18/2018, in 21st century, algorithms, analytics, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning, bots, career development, change, changing business models, colleges, community colleges, competency-based learning/education, computer science, content development, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, education, education technology, emerging technologies, freelancing, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, heutagogy, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, K-12 related, learning, Learning Agents, learning ecosystem, learning from the living [class] room, Lifelong learning, personalized/customized learning, platforms, programming, society, staying relevant, student-related, Technologies for your home, technology (general), tools, training / L&D, trends, United States, universities, vendors, vision, Walmart of Education --> New Amazon.com of Higher Education, by Daniel Christian

In the 2030 and beyond world, employers will no longer be a separate entity from the education establishment. Pressures from both the supply and demand side are so large that employers and learners will end up, by default, co-designing new learning experiences, where all learning counts.

OBJECTIVES FOR CONVENINGS

Identify the skills everyone will need to navigate the changing relationship between machine intelligence and people over the next 10-12 years.
Develop implications for work, workers, students, working learners, employers, and policymakers.
Identify a preliminary set of actions that need to be taken now to best prepare for the changing work + learn ecosystem.

Three key questions guided the discussions:

What are the LEAST and MOST essential skills needed for the future?
Where and how will tomorrow’s workers and learners acquire the skills they really need?
Who is accountable for making sure individuals can thrive in this new economy?

This report summarizes the experts’ views on what skills will likely be needed to navigate the work + learn ecosystem over the next 10–15 years—and their suggested steps for better serving the nation’s future needs.

In a new world of work, driven especially by AI, institutionally-sanctioned curricula could give way to AI-personalized learning. This would drastically change the nature of existing social contracts between employers and employees, teachers and students, and governments and citizens. Traditional social contracts would need to be renegotiated or revamped entirely. In the process, institutional assessment and evaluation could well shift from top-down to new bottom-up tools and processes for developing capacities, valuing skills, and managing performance through new kinds of reputation or accomplishment scores.

…

In October 2017, Chris Wanstrath, CEO of Github, the foremost code-sharing and social networking resource for programmers today, made a bold statement: “The future of coding is no coding at all.” He believes that the writing of code will be automated in the near future, leaving humans to focus on “higher-level strategy and design of software.” Many of the experts at the convenings agreed. Even creating the AI systems of tomorrow, they asserted, will likely require less human coding than is needed today, with graphic interfaces turning AI programming into a drag-and-drop operation.

Digital fluency does not mean knowing coding languages. Experts at both convenings contended that effectively “befriending the machine” will be less about teaching people to code and more about being able to empathize with AIs and machines, understanding how they “see the world” and “think” and “make decisions.” Machines will create languages to talk to one another.

…

Here’s a list of many skills the experts do not expect to see much of—if at all—in the future:

Coding. Systems will be self-programming.
Building AI systems. Graphic interfaces will turn AI programming into drag-and-drop operations.
Calendaring, scheduling, and organizing. There won’t be need for email triage.
Planning and even decision-making. AI assistants will pick this up.
Creating more personalized curricula. Learners may design more of their own personalized learning adventure.
Writing and reviewing resumes. Digital portfolios, personal branding, and performance reputation will replace resumes.
Language translation and localization. This will happen in real time using translator apps.
Legal research and writing. Many of our legal systems will be automated.
Validation skills. Machines will check people’s work to validate their skills.
Driving. Driverless vehicles will replace the need to learn how to drive.

Here’s a list of the most essential skills needed for the future:

Quantitative and algorithmic thinking.
Managing reputation.
Storytelling and interpretive skills.
First principles thinking.
Communicating with machines as machines.
Augmenting high-skilled physical tasks with AI.
Optimization and debugging frame of mind.
Creativity and growth mindset.
Adaptability.
Emotional intelligence.
Truth seeking.
Cybersecurity.

The rise of machine intelligence is just one of the many powerful social, technological, economic, environmental, and political forces that are rapidly and disruptively changing the way everyone will work and learn in the future. Because this largely tech-driven force is so interconnected with other drivers of change, it is nearly impossible to understand the impact of intelligent agents on how we will work and learn without also imagining the ways in which these new tools will reshape how we live.

U.S. students spend more time working paid jobs than going to class — from bloomberg.com by Riley Griffin
Facing mounting debt, U.S. college students spend double the time working paid jobs than in the library.

Excerpts:

Haunted by costly degrees and insurmountable student debt, American college students now spend more time working paid jobs than in lectures, the library or studying at home.

The vast majority of current students—85 percent—work while enrolled, according to an HSBC survey published Thursday. Students spend an average of 4.2 hours a day working paid jobs, which is more than double the time they spend in the library, nearly two hours more than they spend in class and 1.4 hours more time than they spend studying at home.

Haunted by costly degrees and insurmountable student debt, American college students now spend more time working paid jobs than in lectures, the library or studying at home.

“The economics of the debt crisis have become a major distraction to students’ education,” said John Hupalo, founder and chief executive officer of Invite Education, an education financial planner. “Students’ first priority should be to get value out of their education, not squeezing out hours at a job in order to make money to sustain that education.”

From DSC:
Obviously, this could be a major problem for many students — depending upon whether their work experiences are paying off in terms of other kinds of learning/experiences/skills development/obtaining jobs later on. But this need to work to get through school is also why I think online education needs to be more prevalent in higher ed. If students need to work to obtain a degree, then they need the flexibility to make their class schedules jibe with their work schedules. As with healthcare, I’d also like to see us find ways to bring the costs down.

Also see:

One HBCU Hopes Its ‘$10,000 Degree Pathway’ Will Win Over Students Considering For-Profit Alternatives — from edsurge.com by Jeff Young

Excerpt:

A public university in North Carolina has teamed up with six community colleges to offer a program that promises students they will pay no more than $10,000 out of pocket for their four-year degree.

Participating students will attend a two-year college in the state to get their Associate’s degree, then transfer to an online program at Fayetteville State University to finish their bachelor’s. The students will continue to have access to mentors and resources at the local community college to help them stay on track.

Making College Affordable Remains a High Priority in Washington — from campustechnology.com by Sara Friedman
More states are providing free college tuition, but equity concerns remain when it comes to the costs of textbooks, transportation and housing.

American Bar Association doubles online learning hours [National Jurist]

On 10/03/2018, in adult learning, career development, change, changing business models, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, distance education, higher education, Law Schools, legislatures / government / legal, online learning, pace of change, by Daniel Christian

ABA doubles online learning hours — page 6 of 40 from the National Jurist

Excerpt:

Law schools will have the option of offering up to 30 hours of online learning in their J.D. programs, doubling the previous limit of 15, under a new measure approved by the ABA in August. Also, for the first time, first year students will be permitted to take online classes — as many as 10 hours. The ABA has allowed a small number of variances in the past for schools to offer more robust online offerings. Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, Minn., launched the nation’s first hybrid J.D. program in 2015. Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles and Syracuse University College of Law in upstate New York have received ABA approval for similar programs.

Such programs have been applauded because they allow for more non-traditional students to get law school educations. Students are only required to be on campus for short periods of time. That means they don’t have to live near the law school.

From DSC:
In 1998 Davenport University Online began offering 100% online-based courses. I joined them 3 years later, and I was part of a group of people who took DUO to the place where — when I left DUO in March 2007, we were offering ~50% of the total credit hours of the university in a 100% online-based format. Again, that was 15-20 years ago. DUO was joined by many other online-based programs from other community colleges and universities.

So what gives w/ the legal education area?

Well…the American Bar Association (ABA) comes to mind.

The ABA has been very restrictive on the use of online learning. Mounting pressure surely must be on the ABA to allow all kinds of variances in this area. Given the need for legal education to better deal with the exponential pace of technological innovation, the ABA has a responsibility to society to up their game and become far more responsive to the needs of law students.

To higher ed: When the race track is going 180mph, you can’t walk or jog onto the track. [Christian]

On 09/25/2018, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, accreditation, adult learning, algorithms, analytics, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning, augmented reality, Blockchain, bots, business side of he, career development, change, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, community colleges, competency-based learning/education, content repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, cost of getting a degree, curriculum, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, disruption, distance education, education reform, education technology, emerging technologies, engineering, entrepreneurship, freelancing, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, global / globalization, heutagogy, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), IBM, ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, internet, learning, Learning Agents, learning ecosystem, learning from the living [class] room, Lifelong learning, Mixed reality, more choice more control, network based learning, online learning, organizational change, pace of change, personalized/customized learning, platforms, PLNs, professional development, robotics, science, Smart/Connected TV, social learning / networks, society, staying relevant, student-related, surviving, Technologies for your home, technology (general), tools, training / L&D, universities, vendors, virtual reality / worlds / learning, vision, Walmart of Education --> New Amazon.com of Higher Education, web-based collaboration, XR - extended reality, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
When the race track is going 180mph, you can’t walk or jog onto the track. What do I mean by that?

Consider this quote from an article that Jeanne Meister wrote out at Forbes entitled, “The Future of Work: Three New HR Roles in the Age of Artificial Intelligence:”*

This emphasis on learning new skills in the age of AI is reinforced by the most recent report on the future of work from McKinsey which suggests that as many as 375 million workers around the world may need to switch occupational categories and learn new skills because approximately 60% of jobs will have least one-third of their work activities able to be automated.

Go scan the job openings and you will likely see many that have to do with technology, and increasingly, with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, deep learning, machine learning, virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, big data, cloud-based services, robotics, automation, bots, algorithm development, blockchain, and more.

From Robert Half’s 2019 Technology Salary Guide

How many of us have those kinds of skills? Did we get that training in the community colleges, colleges, and universities that we went to? Highly unlikely — even if you graduated from one of those institutions only 5-10 years ago. And many of those institutions are often moving at the pace of a nice leisurely walk, with some moving at a jog, even fewer are sprinting. But all of them are now being asked to enter a race track that’s moving at 180mph. Higher ed — and society at large — are not used to moving at this pace.

This is why I think that higher education and its regional accrediting organizations are going to either need to up their game hugely — and go through a paradigm shift in the required thinking/programming/curricula/level of responsiveness — or watch while alternatives to institutions of traditional higher education increasingly attract their learners away from them.

This is also, why I think we’ll see an online-based, next generation learning platform take place. It will be much more nimble — able to offer up-to-the minute, in-demand skills and competencies.

The below graphic is from:
Jobs lost, jobs gained: What the future of work will mean for jobs, skills, and wages

* Three New HR Roles To Create Compelling Employee Experiences
These new HR roles include:

IBM: Vice President, Data, AI & Offering Strategy, HR
Kraft Heinz Senior Vice President Global HR, Performance and IT
SunTrust Senior Vice President Employee Wellbeing & Benefits

What do these three roles have in common? All have been created in the last three years and acknowledge the growing importance of a company’s commitment to create a compelling employee experience by using data, research, and predictive analytics to better serve the needs of employees. In each case, the employee assuming the new role also brought a new set of skills and capabilities into HR. And importantly, the new roles created in HR address a common vision: create a compelling employee experience that mirrors a company’s customer experience.

An excerpt from McKinsey Global Institute | Notes from the Frontier | Modeling the Impact of AI on the World Economy

Workers.
A widening gap may also unfold at the level of individual workers. Demand for jobs could shift away from repetitive tasks toward those that are socially and cognitively driven and others that involve activities that are hard to automate and require more digital skills.12 Job profiles characterized by repetitive tasks and activities that require low digital skills may experience the largest decline as a share of total employment, from some 40 percent to near 30 percent by 2030. The largest gain in share may be in nonrepetitive activities and those that require high digital skills, rising from some 40 percent to more than 50 percent. These shifts in employment would have an impact on wages. We simulate that around 13 percent of the total wage bill could shift to categories requiring nonrepetitive and high digital skills, where incomes could rise, while workers in the repetitive and low digital skills categories may potentially experience stagnation or even a cut in their wages. The share of the total wage bill of the latter group could decline from 33 to 20 percent.13 Direct consequences of this widening gap in employment and wages would be an intensifying war for people, particularly those skilled in developing and utilizing AI tools, and structural excess supply for a still relatively high portion of people lacking the digital and cognitive skills necessary to work with machines.

Aligning the business model of college with student needs: How WGU is disrupting higher education [Dunagan]

On 09/15/2018, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adjunct faculty, adult learning, business side of he, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, community colleges, competency-based learning/education, cost of getting a degree, digital learning, disruption, education, education technology, elearning, faculty, higher education, learning, learning ecosystem, learning from the living [class] room, Lifelong learning, more choice more control, online learning, society, staying relevant, student-related, teaching online, tools, United States, universities, Using teams, vision, Walmart of Education --> New Amazon.com of Higher Education, by Daniel Christian

Aligning the business model of college with student needs: How WGU is disrupting higher education — from christenseninstitute.org by Alana Dunagan

Excerpt:

Since its inception, Western Governors University (WGU) has aimed to serve learners otherwise shut out of the traditional system. Now, the groundbreaking institution has both graduated 100,000 students and has over 100,000 students currently enrolled. These milestones demonstrate WGU’s ability to scale its high-quality, low-cost model, signaling a momentous shift in the higher education landscape.

In the mid-1990s, governors of 19 states across the western United States were concerned about bringing accessible college education to rural populations, especially working adults.These governors, led by Utah Governor Mike Leavitt, decided to explore building a new university to address the challenge. As the memorandum of understanding between those governors that officially marked the founding of WGU stated, “The strength and well-being of our states and the nation depend increasingly on a strong higher education system that helps individuals adapt to our rapidly changing economy and society. States must look to telecommunications and information technologies to provide greater access and choice to a population that increasingly must have affordable education and training opportunities and the certification of competency throughout their lives.”

Now in its third decade, WGU has students in every U.S. state and has over 100,000 enrolled students—a 230% increase since 2011.

Excerpts from their paper:

The potential of competency-based education
Competency-based education is an approach to learning that allows students to determine the pace of their learning and move ahead once they demonstrate mastery in a concept. As described by Clayton Christensen and Michelle Weise:

Competency-based programs have no time-based unit. Learning is fixed, and time is variable; pacing is flexible. Students cannot move on until they have demonstrated proficiency and mastery of each competency but are encouraged to try as many times as necessary to demonstrate their proficiency. Although skeptics may question the “rigor” behind an experience that allows students to keep trying until they have mastered a competency, this model is actually far more rigorous than the traditional model, as students are not able to flunk or get away with a merely average understanding of the material; they must demonstrate mastery—and therefore dedicated work toward gaining mastery—in any competency.

Competency-based education first took hold in the K-12 education system, but it is also growing in higher education. As of fall 2015, roughly 600 institutions were using or exploring competency-based programs in higher education.13 However, only a handful of institutions are using competency-based education exclusively and have designed their business models around it.

…

WGU offers programs across four industry areas: education, business, information technology, and healthcare. All of these programs are offered online; unlike most higher education institutions, WGU has no physical campus. Instead, it has invested heavily in a technology platform that allows it to deliver curriculum asynchronously, to wherever students are. In addition to its online platform, another unique aspect of WGU’s resources is its approach to faculty. In traditional institutions, faculty are responsible for academic research, course development, teaching, assessment, and advising students. Alternatively, WGU’s model unbundles the faculty role into component parts, with specialists in each role.

Coursera’s CEO on the Evolving Meaning of ‘MOOC’ [Schaffhauser]

On 09/12/2018, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning, business, business side of he, career development, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, collaboration, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, Content aggregration, content development, content repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, cost of getting a degree, credentialing, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, education technology, faculty, freelancing, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, higher education, learning, Learning Agents, learning ecosystem, learning from the living [class] room, learning hubs, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, Walmart of Education --> New Amazon.com of Higher Education, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

Coursera’s CEO on the Evolving Meaning of ‘MOOC’ — from by Dian Schaffhauser
When you can bring huge numbers of students together with lots of well-branded universities and global enterprises seeking a highly skilled workforce, could those linkages be strong enough to forge a new future for massive open online courses?

Excerpts:

Campus Technology: Coursera used to be a MOOC operator, but now it’s a tech company, an LMS company, a virtual bootcamp and more. So how are you describing Coursera these days?

Maggioncalda: As a learning platform. We like to say to our universities, “Coursera is a platform for your global campus.”

You have [traditional universities] teaching with some of the world’s best professors, with some of the most cutting-edge research, to a population of people who have sat right here in front of you, on a small parcel of land, and who pay a lot of money to do that. It’s been very high quality that’s been available to the very few.

What we’re interested in doing is taking that quality of education and making it available to a vast group of people. When you think about our business model, I like to think about it as an ecosystem of learners, educators and employers. What we do is we link them together. We have 34 million learners from around the world. Our biggest country represented is the United States, followed by India, followed by China, followed by Mexico, followed by Brazil. A lot of the emerging markets and the learners there are coming to Coursera to learn and prosper.

…

[Editor’s note: Coursera currently hosts 10 online degree programs. And most recently, in July 2018, the University of Pennsylvania announced that it was launching its first fully online master’s degree, delivered through Coursera and priced at about a third of the cost of its on-campus equivalent.]…

…

CT: Let’s talk about the University of Pennsylvania deal. Do you think that’s going to put some competitive pressure on the other Tier 1 schools to jump into the fray?

Maggioncalda: This is a very well-regarded program. The University of Pennsylvania is a very well-regarded university. I think it’s causing a lot of people to re-evaluate what they were imagining their future might look like: Maybe learners really do want to have access that’s more convenient and lower cost and they don’t have to quit their jobs to take. And maybe there is literally a world of learners who can’t come to campus, in India and Europe and Latin America and Russia and Asia Pacific and China.

As a learning platform. We like to say to our universities, “Coursera is a platform for your global campus.”

Jeff Maggioncalda, Coursera CEO

In two years we’ve had over 1,400 companies hire Coursera to deliver university courses at work to their employees.

Now we’re starting to link the 34 million learners out there to the employers who are looking for people who have certain skills, saying, “Look, if you’re on Coursera learning about this thing, there might be companies who want to hire people that know the thing that you just learned.”

Jeff Maggioncalda, Coursera CEO

Learning from the Living [Class] Room:
A global, powerful, next generation learning platform — meant to help people
reinvent themselves quickly, cost-effectively, conveniently, & consistently

A new, global, collaborative learning platform that offers more choice, more control to learners of all ages – 24×7 – and could become the organization that futurist Thomas Frey discusses here with Business Insider:
- “I’ve been predicting that by 2030 the largest company on the internet is going to be an education-based company that we haven’t heard of yet,” Frey, the senior futurist at the DaVinci Institute think tank, tells Business Insider.
A learner-centered platform that is enabled by – and reliant upon – human beings but is backed up by a powerful suite of technologies that work together in order to help people reinvent themselves quickly, conveniently, and extremely cost-effectively
A customizable learning environment that will offer up-to-date streams of regularly curated content (i.e., microlearning) as well as engaging learning experiences
Along these lines, a lifelong learner can opt to receive an RSS feed on a particular topic until they master that concept; periodic quizzes (i.e., spaced repetition) determine that mastery. Once mastered, the system will ask the learner as to whether they still want to receive that particular stream of content or not.
A Netflix-like interface to peruse and select plugins to extend the functionality of the core product
An AI-backed system of analyzing employment trends and opportunities will highlight those courses and “streams of content” that will help someone obtain the most in-demand skills
A system that tracks learning and, via Blockchain-based technologies, feeds all completed learning modules/courses into learners’ web-based learner profiles
A learning platform that provides customized, personalized recommendation lists – based upon the learner’s goals
A platform that delivers customized, personalized learning within a self-directed course (meant for those content creators who want to deliver more sophisticated courses/modules while moving people through the relevant Zones of Proximal Development)
Notifications and/or inspirational quotes will be available upon request to help provide motivation, encouragement, and accountability – helping learners establish habits of continual, lifelong-based learning
(Potentially) An online-based marketplace, matching learners with teachers, professors, and other such Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
(Potentially) Direct access to popular job search sites
(Potentially) Direct access to resources that describe what other companies do/provide and descriptions of any particular company’s culture (as described by current and former employees and freelancers)
(Potentially) Integration with one-on-one tutoring services

Try before you buy: “Education Up” colleges & universities are ill-prepared for the coming of “Employer Down”

On 09/07/2018, in 21st century, business, career development, changing business models, collaboration, colleges, community colleges, future of higher education, higher education, staying relevant, student-related, surviving, trends, universities, vendors, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

Try before you buy — from universityventures.com

Excerpts:

There are two reasons why the skills gap persists in a full-employment economy. On the student or candidate side, there is “Education Friction.” Education Friction is why individuals fail to upskill themselves with the skills demanded by employers. This is a result of the time required to upskill, the cost, and – most important – the uncertainty of a positive employment outcome. The second and often overlooked contributor to the skills gap is “Hiring Friction” on the part of employers; employers are increasingly reluctant to hire candidates without exact relevant experience. The cost of a bad hire is higher than ever, as is employee churn, as is the cost of replacing terminated employees – all of which have contributed to an increase in experience requirements for positions that should be (and once were) entry level.

…

From time immemorial, all serious education, training, and workforce efforts to close the skills gap have started by identifying missing skills, developing curriculum, and delivering programs. These “Education Up” models are logical, but also easy. The hardest part of the skills gap is not identifying skills or skill building, but rather building the bridge to employers.

…

The urgent need to reduce Hiring Friction, coupled with the regulatory barrier to utilizing assessments at the top of the hiring funnel, is giving rise to new models that are the antithesis of “Education Up.” These new “Employer Down” models start with employers and the entry-level positions they need to fill, and eliminate Hiring Friction by allowing employers to try before they buy. Staffing and business services companies are hiring candidates themselves, providing Last-Mile Training, and placing newly-trained talent at the service of employers so they can try before they buy. Some Employer Down models add a new “emerging talent” product to an existing talent business (i.e., staffing or placement). Others establish outsourced apprenticeship programs to add a talent dimension to an existing business service, which can boost pricing power, increase market share, and accelerate growth. What they have in common is that candidates are hired and trained by the provider and then, while remaining employed by the provider, perform work for clients; clients convert candidates to full-time employees only when they’re good and ready. Here’s what else they have in common: scalable business models built around the provision of proven entry-level talent.

“Education Up” colleges and universities are ill-prepared for the coming of “Employer Down.”

Despite increase in Instructional Designers, there is no ‘universal profile’ for the role [Schaffhauser]

On 08/26/2018, in adjunct faculty, blended learning, changing business models, Christian education, colleges, community colleges, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, education technology, face-to-face, faculty, higher education, instructional design, United States, universities, user experience (UX), Using teams, by Daniel Christian

Despite increase in Instructional Designers, there is no ‘universal profile’ for the role — from campustechnology.com by Dian Schaffhauser

Excerpt:

In higher education, one 2016 estimate pegged the “minimum” number of instructional designers employed by colleges and universities at some 13,000. But, as a new report from the Online Learning Consortium pointed out, “There is still a certain mystery surrounding who instructional designers are.”

“Instructional Design in Higher Education: Defining an Evolving Field“ seeks to clear up the mystery. The report is the second in a series to examine aspects of the digital learning landscape by doing a literature survey of existing research. The first report looked at accessibility. The series is being produced by OLC’s Research Center for Digital Learning & Leadership.

Is higher ed shooting itself in the foot? [Christian]

On 08/22/2018, in 21st century, adult learning, business, business side of he, career development, change, changing business models, Christian education, colleges, community colleges, cost of getting a degree, credentialing, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, disruption, education technology, elearning, emerging technologies, face-to-face, for-profits, formal learning, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, Google, heutagogy, higher education, ideas, informal learning, learning, learning ecosystem, learning from the living [class] room, liberal arts, Lifelong learning, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, more choice more control, new business models, online learning, pace of change, perfect storm, platforms, real-world assignments, society, staying relevant, strategy, student-related, surviving, training / L&D, trends, universities, Walmart of Education --> New Amazon.com of Higher Education, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

15 more companies that no longer require a degree — apply now — from glassdoor.com

Excerpt:

With college tuition soaring nationwide, many Americans don’t have the time or money to earn a college degree. However, that doesn’t mean your job prospects are diminished. Increasingly, there are many companies offering well-paying jobs to those with non-traditional education or a high-school diploma.
…
Google and Ernest & Young are just two of the champion companies who realize that book smarts don’t necessarily equal strong work ethic, grit and talent. Whether you have your GED and are looking for a new opportunity or charting your own path beyond the traditional four-year college route, here are 15 companies that have said they do not require a college diploma for some of their top jobs.

From DSC:
Several years ago when gas prices were sky high, I couldn’t help but think that some industries — though they were able to grab some significant profits in the short term — were actually shooting themselves in the foot for the longer term. Sure enough, as time went by, people started looking for less expensive alternatives. For example, they started buying more hybrid vehicles, more electric cars, and the sales of smaller cars and lighter trucks increased. The average fuel economy of vehicles went up (example). The goal was to reduce or outright eliminate the number of trips to the gas station that people were required to make.

These days…I wonder if the same kind of thing is happening — or about to happen — with traditional institutions of higher education*? Are we shooting ourselves in the foot?

Traditional institutions of higher education better find ways to adapt, and to change their game (so to speak), before the alternatives to those organizations gain some major steam. There is danger in the status quo. Count on it. The saying, “Adapt or die” has now come to apply to higher ed as well.

Faculty, staff, and administrators within higher ed are beginning to experience what the corporate world has been experiencing for decades.

Faculty can’t just teach what they want to teach. They can’t just develop courses that they are interested in. The demand for courses that aren’t attractive career-wise will likely continue to decrease. Sure, it can be argued that many of those same courses — especially from the liberal arts colleges — are still valuable…and I would agree with some of those arguments. But the burden of proof continues to be shifted to the shoulders of those proposing such curricula.

Also, the costs of obtaining a degree needs to come down or:

The gorillas of debt on peoples’ backs will become a negative word of mouth that will be hard to compete against or adequately address as time goes by
The angst towards higher ed will continue to build
People will bolt for those promising alternatives to traditional higher ed where the graduates (badge earners, or whatever they’re going to be called) of those programs are hired and shown to be effective employees
I hope that this isn’t the case and that it’s not too late to change…but history will likely show that higher ed shot itself in the foot. The warning signs were all over the place.

The current trends are paving the way for a next generation learning platform that will serve someone from cradle to grave.

* I realize that many in higher ed would immediately dispute that their organizations are out to grab short term profits, that they don’t operate like a business, that they don’t operate under the same motivations as the corporate world, etc. And I can see some of these folks’ points, no doubt. I may even agree with some of the folks who represent organizations who freely share information with other organizations and have motivations other than making tons of money. But for those folks who staunchly hold to the belief that higher ed isn’t a business at all — well, for me, that’s taking things way too far. I do not agree with that perspective at all. One has to have their eyes (and minds) closed to cling to that perspective anymore. Just don’t ask those folks to tell you how much their presidents make (along with other higher-level members of their administrations), the salaries of the top football coaches, or how many millions of dollars many universities’ receive for their television contracts and/or their ticket sales, or how much revenue research universities bring in from patents and so on and so forth.

Addendum on 8/24, per University Ventures e-newsletter

2. Facebook Goes Back to College (emphasis DSC)
TechCrunch report on how digital giants are buying into Last-Mile Training by partnering with Pathstream to deliver necessary digital skills to community college students.
Most good first jobs specifically require one or more technologies like Facebook or Unity — technologies that colleges and universities aren’t teaching. If Pathstream is able to realize its vision of integrating industry-relevant software training into degree programs in a big way, colleges and universities have a shot at maintaining their stranglehold as the sole pathway to successful careers. If Pathstream’s impact is more limited, watch for millions of students to sidestep traditional colleges, and enroll in emerging faster and cheaper alternative pathways to good first jobs — alternative pathways that will almost certainly integrate the kind of last-mile training being pioneered by Pathstream.

America’s colleges and universities could learn a thing or two from Leo, because they continue to resist teaching students the practical things they’ll need to know as soon as they graduate; for instance, to get jobs that will allow them to make student loan payments. Digital skills head this list, specifically experience with the high-powered software they’ll be required to use every day in entry-level positions.

But talk to a college president or provost about the importance of Marketo, HubSpot, Pardot, Tableau, Adobe and Autodesk for their graduates, and they’re at a loss for how to integrate last-mile training into their degree programs in order prepare students to work on these essential software platforms.

Enter a new company, Pathstream, which just announced a partnership with tech leader Unity and previously partnered with Facebook. Pathstream supports the delivery of career-critical software skill training in VR/AR and digital marketing at colleges and universities.

Addendum on 8/24, per University Ventures e-newsletter
3. Faster + Cheaper Alternatives to College
Inside Higher Education Q&A on upcoming book A New U: Faster + Cheaper Alternatives to College.
Last-mile training is the inevitable by-product of two crises, one generally understood, the other less so. The crisis everyone understands is affordability and unsustainable levels of student loan debt. The other crisis is employability. Nearly half of all college graduates are underemployed in their first job. And we know that underemployment is pernicious and lasting. According to the recent report from Strada’s Institute for the Future of Work, two-thirds of underemployed graduates remain underemployed five years later, and half remain underemployed a decade later. So today’s students no longer buy that tired college line that “we prepare you for your fifth job, not your first job.” They know that if they don’t get a good first job, they’re probably not going to get a good fifth job. As a result, today’s students are laser-focused on getting a good first job in a growing sector of the economy.

How blockbuster MOOCs could shape the future of teaching [Young]

On 06/22/2018, in 21st century, adjunct faculty, career development, change, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, CMS/LMS, collaboration, colleges, community colleges, computer science, content development, content repositories, corporate universities / corporate training, cost of getting a degree, credentialing, digital learning, distance education, education, education technology, elearning, experimentation, faculty, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, ideas, innovation, learning, learning ecosystem, Lifelong learning, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, online learning, online media, platforms, teaching & learning, teaching online, tools, universities, Using teams, vendors, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

How blockbuster MOOCs could shape the future of teaching — from edsurge.com by Jeff Young

Excerpt:

There isn’t a New York Times bestseller list for online courses, but perhaps there should be. After all, so-called MOOCs, or massive open online courses, were meant to open education to as many learners as possible, and in many ways they are more like books (digital ones, packed with videos and interactive quizzes) than courses.

The colleges and companies offering MOOCs can be pretty guarded these days about releasing specific numbers on how many people enroll or pay for a “verified certificate” or microcredential showing they took the course. But both Coursera and EdX, two of the largest providers, do release lists of their most popular courses. And those lists offer a telling snapshot of how MOOCs are evolving and what their impact is on the instructors and institutions offering them.

Here are the top 10 most popular courses for each provider:

Coursera Top 10 Most Popular Courses (over past 12 months)

edX Top 10 Most Popular Courses (all time)

So what are these blockbuster MOOCs, then? Experiential textbooks? Gateways to more rigorous college courses? A new kind of entertainment program?

Maybe the answer is: all of the above.

Previous Entries

Learning Ecosystems

American Bar Association doubles online learning hours [National Jurist]

Coursera’s CEO on the Evolving Meaning of ‘MOOC’ [Schaffhauser]

Despite increase in Instructional Designers, there is no ‘universal profile’ for the role [Schaffhauser]

How blockbuster MOOCs could shape the future of teaching [Young]

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