WGU growing 30% annually — from edreformer.com by Tom Vander Ark
Here’s why WGU is cranking: the average time to a bachelor’s degree is 30 months—about twice as fast as a traditional college. Speed to degree results from:
- Willingness to accept transfer credits
- Ability to test out of subjects where students have experience
- The online instruction allows students to move at their own pace
The teachers college is the largest; business, IT, and health are all growing rapidly.
Massive cut in Britain — from InsideHigherEd.com
Government funding for higher education in Britain is to be cut by 40 percent over four years, suggesting that public funding for teaching in the arts, humanities and social sciences may come to an end.
The Comprehensive Spending Review unveiled Wednesday includes a reduction in the higher education budget of £2.9 billion – from £7.1 billion to £4.2 billion – by 2014-5.
The Treasury says in a statement that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, which oversees higher education, will “continue to fund teaching for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects.”
However, no mention is made of other subjects.
The world changed, colleges missed it — from edreformer.com by Tom Vander Ark
A bunch of colleges are going out of business, only they don’t know it. They pretend that trimming costs and jacking tuition is a solution. They haven’t come to terms with a world where anyone can learn anything almost anywhere for free or cheap. Art Levine, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, sees three major change forces: new competition, a convergence of knowledge producers, and changing demographics.
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To Art’s list of three big change forces, add shrinking government support, the press for more accountability, and emerging technology…the next few decades will be marked by a lumpy move to competency-based learning…instant information and the ability to learn anything anywhere.
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The shift to personal digital learning is on. Some colleges get that. Others will seek bailouts until they go out of business. Working adults are getting smart on their own terms.
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From DSC:
Time will tell if Tom’s assertions are too harsh here, but personally, I think he’s right.
I have it that:
Specifically, I have it that we should be experimenting with:
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Increases up to 25 percent proposed for college tuition in Colorado
From DSC:
Given the technological changes occurring (and the higher ed bubble already bursting in some locales), this is a step in the wrong direction.
A review of the postings over at Recession Realities in Higher Education (from Ray Schroeder) will show that while some institutions are cutting budgets and programs, others are increasing tuition. For those increasing tuition — unless the tuition is already very low in comparison to others to begin with — this is a step in the wrong direction.
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As interest in online learning grows, Udemy lands $1 million in angel funding — from ReadWriteWeb.com by Audrey Watters
In that spirit, Udemy is a website that seeks to “democratize online learning” by providing the tools so that educators can easily create their own online courses. Udemy announces today that is has raised $1 million from a number of prominent angel investors, including Keith Rabois, Naval Ravikant, and Dave McClure’s 500 Startups Fund – a successful round that Udemy co-founder Gagan Biyani notes came with help from both the Founder Institute where the startup was incubated and from VentureHacks’ AngelList. The funding will go, in part, to hire more engineers for the site.
Academic Bankruptcy – NY Times Opinion — by Mark Taylor, Chairman of the religion department at Columbia University and the author of the forthcoming “Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities.”
With the academic year about to begin, colleges and universities, as well as students and their parents, are facing an unprecedented financial crisis. What we’ve seen with California’s distinguished state university system — huge cutbacks in spending and a 32 percent rise in tuition — is likely to become the norm at public and private colleges. Government support is being slashed, endowments and charitable giving are down, debts are piling up, expenses are rising and some schools are selling their product for two-thirds of what it costs to produce it. You don’t need an M.B.A. to know this situation is unsustainable.
With unemployment soaring, higher education has never been more important to society or more widely desired. But the collapse of our public education system and the skyrocketing cost of private education threaten to make college unaffordable for millions of young people. If recent trends continue, four years at a top-tier school will cost $330,000 in 2020, $525,000 in 2028 and $785,000 in 2035.
“While I still haven’t given up on state government’s role in supporting public higher education,” [Boise State University President Bob Kustra] said, “with each passing year I see more clearly that the funding of higher education as we experienced it in the past will not be replicated in future years.” Boise State needs to re-examine the business model universities use and construct a new one, according to Kustra.
BlackBerry crumble: Why RIM is in trouble — from cnn.com
After Palm’s Pre phone flopped, the company’s stock took a nasty dive and some feared that it may not have enough cash to make it for the long-term. Hewlett-Packard finally stepped in and agreed to buy the company earlier this year, however.
Chris Bulkey, an analyst with Technology Research Group in Narberth, Pa., said Research in Motion could suffer the same fate. For now, the company’s sales and profits are still growing, but the pace is slowing.
And without a hot product on the horizon, Bulkey, who has a “sell” rating on the stock, said it’s hard to envision a bright future for Research in Motion.
“Research in Motion sells a commoditized product. There is margin pressure and the revenue growth is weak,” Bulkey said. “Over the long-term, they may need someone to bail them out like HP did with Palm if they see value in the technology.”
From DSC:
Along these lines…I recently received a call from a colleague who mentioned that Novell has recently been pushing their new videoconferencing product…hmmm…WAAAAAYYY too late to the game in my opinion. Here is a company who could have dominated the web-based videoconferencing and collaboration space — had they been able to innovate better and to think just a tad outside their normal LAN box.
If what we are offering in higher ed is a commodity…we had better look out! Times ahead will be very rough indeed. That’s why I have been preaching innovation, change, the dangers of the status quo, planning for the “Forthcoming Walmart of Education” and trying to create a strategy whereby we are not a commodity — as we all must bring something unique and compelling to the table.
New private university signals drive to privatise higher education in Britain — from sott.net by Zach Reed
BPP, a private company that possesses 14 sites around the UK providing law and business degrees, was granted “university college” status in July, creating the first private university in the UK for 30 years. The decision signals the coalition government’s drive to privatise higher education.
Massive spending cuts brought forward by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government, combined with rising youth unemployment, has seen 200,000 students denied a university place this year. It is in this context that calls have been made to privatise higher education.
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Two professors examine the American higher education system and explain how students and parents can get the most for their money.
Andrew Hacker
Professor of Political Science at Queens College, New York, and co-author of “Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids – And What We Can Do About It”
Mark Taylor
Chair of the Department of Religion at Columbia University, professor of philosophy of religion at Union Theological Seminary, and professor emeritus of humanities at Williams College. His latest book is titled, “Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming our Colleges and Universities.”
150 nonprofit colleges fail Education Department’s test of financial strength — from The Chronicle by Goldie Blumenstyk and Alex Richards
A total of 150 private nonprofit colleges failed the U.S. Department of Education’s “financial-responsibility test” based on their condition in the 2009 fiscal year, data released on Thursday show. That’s 23 more than the 127 that failed the test in the 2008 fiscal year, and an increase of about 70 percent over the number of degree-granting institutions that failed two years ago.
Professor Tim Kastelle at the University of Queensland talks about business models
for information businesses and identifies three key areas that require leadership attention.
Help for state higher ed — from InsideHigherEd.com by Doug Lederman
WASHINGTON — With state revenues stagnating and unemployment stuck at high levels in most states, the budget outlook for public higher education in the 2011 fiscal year remains rather bleak. But college leaders in most states are poised to get a gift from the nation’s capital this week, in the form, oddly enough, of $16 billion in Medicaid funds.
The money was part of legislation — which was approved by the Senate Thursday, and which Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has called her colleagues back to town to consider next week — that would also provide $10 billion to states to save “education jobs.” While logic might suggest that that would be the portion of the measure with implications for higher education, it really isn’t; that money is set aside to help ward off the elimination of as many as 138,000 elementary and secondary school teaching positions.
