2023 Higher Education Trend Watch — from educause.edu

2023 Higher Education Trend Watch

Also see:

2023 Strategic Trends Glossary — from educause.edu

Excerpts:

  • Closer alignment of higher education with workforce needs and skills-based learning
  • Continuation and normalization of hybrid and online learning
  • Continued adoption and normalization of hybrid and remote work arrangements
  • Continued resignation and migration of leaders and staff from higher education institutions
  • Declining public funding for higher education
  • …and more
 

The Job: Online Certifications #85? DEC 1, 2022 — from getrevue.co by Paul Fain
Growing interest in online training for medical certifications and a private university that’s offering credit for MedCerts and other microcredentials.

Excerpt:

‘Train and Hire’ in Healthcare
The nation’s healthcare system continues to strain amid a severe staffing crisis. And the mounting desperation is prodding some employers to get more creative about how they hire, train, and retain healthcare workers.

MedCerts has seen growing demand for its online certification training, with strong interest in the 28-week medical assistant and 12-week phlebotomy technician programs.

The company has enrolled 55K students and roughly doubled its offerings during the last two years. Its fastest-growing segment is the train-and-hire model, where employers cover the full tuition and training costs for students.

“We are now helping several hundred people every month move from education to high-demand careers, and our pace and scale are still growing,” says Rafael Castaneda, MedCerts’ vice president of workforce development.

Stride Inc., a large online K-12 education provider, acquired MedCerts in 2020 for roughly $80M. The company’s 50+ self-paced career training programs in healthcare, IT, and professional development typically cost $4K in tuition and other fees. Most can be completed in six months, and the company offers on-demand support to all students for a year regardless of their program’s length.

 

Accelerated Learning — Schools’ Answer for ‘Learning Loss’ — Hits Some Speed Bumps — from edsurge.com by Nadia Tamez-Robledo

The main finding? Accelerated learning simply requires more. More staff, more resources, more energy, more buy-in from teachers.

As district leaders talked about their day-to-day realities, they shared how those things were all tough to come by when everyone in the system was already stretched thin.

Not necessarily related to the above item, but I wanted to pass this one along to you as well:

QAA Report on Badging and Micro-Credentialing: How Education and Employment Can Benefit from Using Skills Profiles  — from gettingsmart.com by Rupert Ward

Key Points

  • Skills profiles make it easier for educators and employers to understand how skills gained in learning can be transferred to those required in earning.
  • This QAA Collaborative Enhancement Project Report demonstrates both how badges and microcredentials can be incorporated into a range of higher education courses and, through doing this, how we can ultimately personalise learning and earning.
 

Are Microcredentials Finally Gaining Traction? — from insidehighered.com by Joshua Kim

Excerpt:

This month, the London School of Economics expanded its degree partnership with 2U to launch a series of edX microcredentials that provide learners with a flexible, stackable pathway towards pursuing a fully online undergraduate education. Wim Van der Stede, LSE’s new academic dean for extended education, graciously agreed to answer my questions about these new programs.

In that time, we’ve seen the power that online learning has to meet learners’ needs at every stage of their lives and careers.

The world around us is changing, rapidly, and we need to support professionals, alumni and students in refreshing and adapting their knowledge and skills, as and when they need, through evolving lives and careers. This is at the heart of LSE’s mission as a global social science hub of research and education, and plays a key role in achieving our mission to educate for impact by empowering students to develop the skills to solve society’s most pressing issues in an ever-changing world.


A side thought from DSC:
Speaking of Economics, I wonder if and how Artificial Intelligence (AI) will impact the field of Economics?


 

With Google’s latest push, a blending of industry and higher ed — from workshift.opencampusmedia.org by Elyse Ashburn
Google’s new industry specializations were co-built by its experts and faculty at four top universities—part of a larger push to combine forces with higher education to drive economic mobility.

Excerpt:

Google is making a bigger push into higher education, partnering with name-brand universities to offer more advanced credentials that build on its signature Career Certificates program. The four new industry specializations—for fields like construction management and financial analysis—were co-designed by Google’s technical experts and university faculty with subject matter expertise.

The specializations are open to anybody on Coursera’s platform, and typically cost several hundred dollars to complete.

It’s a blending of industry and academic expertise—with an eye toward helping more Americans get high-demand jobs—that Gevelber calls a tipping point for higher education.

 

2022 EDUCAUSE Horizon Action Plan: Hybrid Learning — from library.educause.edu

Excerpts:

Building on the trends, technologies, and practices described in the 2022 Horizon Report: Teaching and Learning Edition, the panel crafted its vision of the future along with practical action items the teaching and learning community can employ to make this future a reality. Any stakeholder in higher education who teaches in or supports hybrid learning modalities will find this report helpful in preparing for the future of hybrid learning. The future we want is within reach, but only if we work together.

Asked to describe the goals and elements of hybrid learning that they would like to see 10 years from now, panelists collaboratively constructed their preferred future for institutions, students, instructors, and staff.

Institutions

  • Higher education is available on demand.
  • Learning is not measured by seat time.
  • Collaboration across institutions facilitates advancement.
  • College and university campuses are not the sole locations for learning spaces.

Students, Instructors, and Staff

  • Everything is hybrid.
  • Student equity is centered in all modalities.
  • Professional development is ongoing, integrated, and valued.
 

U-M partners with Google to offer job-ready tech skills program — from record.umich.edu by Sean Corp

Excerpt:

A new flexible online training program on data science will prepare job-seekers in Michigan and beyond to quickly enter one of the fastest-growing labor markets and advance their careers.

The Center for Academic Innovation created the program, “Data Analytics in the Public Sector with R,” for data science and other professionals interested in how public data sets can drive decisions and policymaking in the public sector. The course complements current Google career certificates, flexible online “Grow with Google” job-training programs for high-demand fields.

Also relevant/see:

Google Cloud and edX Partner to Launch Cloud Computing Professional Certificate — from prnewswire.com 2U, Inc.

Excerpt:

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. and CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 12, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Google Cloud and edX, a leading global online learning platform from 2U, Inc. (Nasdaq: TWOU), today announced the launch of a Professional Certificate program in Google Cloud Computing Foundations. The certificate will bring edX’s global community of 45 million learners access to skills that are central to cloud basics, big data, machine learning, and where and how Google Cloud fits in. Registration is open today at www.edx.org, with courses beginning November 2022.

“We are excited to launch our Google Cloud training content on the edX platform,” said Chris Pirie, Director of Google Cloud Learning Profile and Partnerships. “This partnership presents a fantastic opportunity for learners around the world to build in-demand cloud skills on a proven learning platform.”

 

Amazon ups its cloud training investments — from workshift.opencampusmedia.org by Byelyse Ashburn
Amazon Web Services just launched a new skills center near D.C. and is expanding both its in-person and online training programs for cloud careers.

Excerpt:

The big idea: The skills center is just one part of AWS’ plan to spend hundreds of millions of dollars providing free training in cloud computing to 29 million people globally by 2025. In the past year, the company has dramatically increased its free cloud skills offerings, adding AWS Skill Builder, an online library of 500-plus self-paced courses. It’s also twice expanded re/Start, its cohort-based training program for workers who are unemployed or underemployed.

Thus far, the company has helped more than 13 million people gain cloud skills for free through its various offerings—seven million more than this time last year.

 

New Mexico College Publishes Report to Advance a National Learning and Employment Record for Skills-based Credentialing and Hiring — from prnewswire.com by Central New Mexico Community College

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.Oct. 11, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — In the current job market, applicants are usually asked to provide a broad résumé that lists the basics of their qualifications including college degrees and past work experience. It’s an outdated and inefficient system and one that Central New Mexico Community College (CNM) is now helping to improve.

Thanks to a grant from Walmart, CNM produced a comprehensive report that researches several independent efforts underway in order to build a model for creating a national Learner and Employment Records (LER) infrastructure. An LER enables the exchange of skills-based digital records that facilitate more efficient pathways from learning to earning.

An LER is more efficient and secure for both employers and job-seekers because it uses blockchain technology to provide security, trust, and transparency.

From DSC:
I still am learning about how secure blockchain-based applications are — or aren’t. But this idea of a Learner and Employment Record — which I’ve referred to on this blog as a “cloud-based learner profile” — seems to hold a lot of potential as we move into the future. Especially when the focus is increasingly on which skills a position needs and which skills an individual has.

I have used the term cloud-based learner profiles instead of LERs but the idea is the same

 

The Key To Becoming A Lifelong Learner, With Amrit Ahluwalia Editor In Chief At The EvoLLLution Episode 79 — from thefutureofwork.libsyn.com

From Pasadena City College:
We are leading the conversation of how to begin closing the gap between what our students are learning and what the demands of the workforce will be once they enter. Listen Now.

 

The Public’s Growing Doubts About College ‘Value’ — from insidehighered.com by Doug Lederman
Americans aren’t questioning the importance of higher education, but they’re concerned it is unaffordable and unavailable for too many people. Experts dig into the data.

Excerpt:

After decades of almost unquestioned public support as some of America’s most valued institutions, colleges and universities are facing growing questions—not about whether higher education remains important but whether it’s available, affordable and valuable enough.

An episode of Inside Higher Ed’s The Key podcast recently explored the public’s evolving attitudes toward higher education, part of a three-part series on the concept of “value” in higher education…

Thousands of Students Take Courses Through Unaccredited Private Companies. Here’s a Look Into One of Them. — from chronicle.com by  Taylor Swaak

Excerpts:

A growing number of students are taking courses offered by unaccredited private companies and completing them in a matter of days or weeks — often for less than $200 — and then transferring the credits to colleges.

That growth comes in response to a perfect storm of skyrocketing higher-education costs, more adult learners seeking flexibility, and drops in enrollment that have spurred colleges to beef up retention and re-engagement efforts with “stopped-out” students.

 

Ed tech leaders just predicted these 3 trends will unfold in higher education — from highereddive.com by Natalie Schwartz
Ed tech leaders gathered in New York on Thursday to discuss trends in the sector. Here’s what they had to say.

Excerpt:

NEW YORK — It’s a brutal moment for ed tech companies.

The stock market has been battered over the past few months, and the technology sector has been particularly hard hit. Meanwhile, colleges are experiencing enrollment declines at the same time their coronavirus relief funds are drying up, potentially constraining how much they can spend with vendors.

Still, ed tech CEOs and investors remained bullish about their own sector’s future during a conference in New York on Thursday held by HolonIQ, a market analysis firm. Here are three trends they say are coming down the pike.

 

Online Learning Pioneer Acquires Leading Training Provider for the Early Childhood Education Workforce — from prnewswire.com by StraighterLine

Excerpt:

BALTIMORE and WASHINGTON, Sept. 20, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — StraighterLine, a creator of affordable, flexible and career-aligned postsecondary courses, today announced the acquisition of ChildCare Education Institute (CCEI), one of the largest online training providers for early childhood education professionals. The addition of the early childhood education learning platform, which served more than 87,000 teachers and staff across more than 6,200 childcare centers in 2021, reflects StraighterLine’s commitment to expanding access to training that closes persistent talent gaps and creates pathways to economic mobility.

“There is an urgent need for qualified early care and education workers across the nation,” said Maria Taylor, president of CCEI. “This acquisition is about building more lifelong learning opportunities that give passionate individuals flexible pathways to careers. We are excited to join the StraighterLine family and further expand the potential entry points into this meaningful profession.”

 

New Directory of Innovative School Models Aims to Encourage Experimentation — from edsurge.com by Daniel Mollenkamp

Excerpt:

A new online library called the “Innovative Models Exchange,” unveiled Monday, hopes to give educators an easy place to quickly consider some possibilities. The exchange—developed by the nonprofit Transcend Education with funding from the Gates Foundation—allows schools to search through a database of “innovative” models that Transcend says are ready to be adopted by schools.

The nonprofit hopes that the database will shake up the education system.

 

 
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