Gates Foundation gives $9 million in grants to support ‘breakthrough’ education models — from The Chronicle by Jeffrey R. Young
Excerpt:
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is stepping up its investment in innovative delivery models in higher education, announcing $9-million in grants today to support a range of new approaches.
Excerpt:
Is there anything to be done about the rising price of higher education? That was the question posed to John Hennessy, president of Stanford University, and Salman Khan, founder of Khan Academy, a nonprofit online-learning organization. They sat down with The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg to discuss how technology might be part of the solution.
Here are edited excerpts of their conversation.
Addendum on 6/7/12:
Harvard, MIT to partner in $60 million initiative to offer free online classes to all — from Boston.com by Mary Carmichael and Johanna Kaiser, Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent
Excerpt:
CAMBRIDGE — Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said today they will team up to launch a $60 million initiative to offer free, online, college-level courses under a joint superbrand known as edX.
The announcement instantly makes the entity a preeminent player in the burgeoning worldwide online education sector, which has seen several major start-ups — including some affiliated with top-tier universities — in recent months.
Also see:
Excerpt from the preface:
Digital technology has already changed the way colleges and universities function, but no matter how significant those changes feel today, real transformation is just beginning. Every day, a new program in online learning is announced, and on the horizon is the promise of using new adaptive learning technologies —or what we have come to call Interactive Learning Online—to educate more students than ever before at lower cost and with similar or even better learning outcomes.
This Ithaka S+R report is the first in a series that will provide leaders in higher education insight into what has been learned from online learning efforts to date and new research to help them move forward with the development and deployment of more advanced systems in the future.
Many of the lessons in this report can readily be applied locally; that is, they will help leaders make sound decisions for their own institutions. We have also identified two critical issues that if addressed at a system-level, will lead to better outcomes for all: the need for open, shared data on student learning and performance tracked through interactive online learning systems, and the need for investment in the creation of sustainable and customizable platforms for delivering interactive online learning instruction. We hope this report will help to stimulate discussion and planning among leaders on these important topics.
Also see:
Yes, University of Phoenix is disruptive; no, that doesn’t make it the end-all — from Disrupting Class by Michael Horn
Excerpt:
A disruptive innovation is one that transforms a sector by introducing a product or service that is more convenient, simple to use, and/or affordable than the existing products or services in a market. Disruptions tend to start as not as good as the existing products or services as judged by their historical measures of performance, and then, over time, they are able to march up market such that they are able to handle more complicated tasks. Many people flock to the disruptive innovation over time as it becomes good enough, as the customers are delighted by something that carries this new value proposition around convenience, simplicity, and/or affordability. As a result of these dynamics, disruptive innovations first serve nonconsumers (people who previously could not participate in the market) or people who have been overshot by the incumbents in the market. A critical thing to keep in mind is that this process does not occur over night; sometimes it occurs over several decades. And not every incumbent or traditional institution will be wiped away. Some will continue to perform important jobs for which a, relatively speaking, small set of customers are willing to pay.
Lastly, for something to be a disruptive innovation, it has to have two components: a technology enabler and a business model that together allow it to extend a low-cost value proposition up market.
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:
Could the next elite university be online and venture-backed? — from AllThingsD.com by Liz Gannes
Excerpt:
The Minerva Project says it’s planning to launch the first elite American university in a century. Sounds wacky, right?
But the project is starting to gather some heavyweight support: Former Harvard President and U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers will chair its advisory board, and Benchmark Capital has committed $25 million, the VC firm’s largest seed investment ever.
Elite higher education is a stagnant market, argues Minerva CEO Ben Nelson. Far more people are qualified to get into top colleges than are admitted. Meanwhile, college education is too expensive and good teaching is undervalued. How can you address all that? By going online.
Also see:
Also see:
Rethinking higher education business models — from americanprogress.org by Robert Sheets, Stephen Crawford, Louis Soares
Excerpt:
The theory of “disruptive innovation“—the notion that certain innovation can improve a product or service in such a way that it creates new markets that displace existing ones—was developed and advanced by Christensen in the 1990s. According to Christensen, who has studied the evolution of many industries, disruptive innovation occurs when sophisticated technologies are used to create more simplified and more accessible solutions to customers’ problems—solutions that are often less high performing than previous technologies but whose price and convenience attract whole new categories of consumers. The first generations of transistor radios, desktop computers, and MP3 players are examples. These new solutions—innovations to existing technologies deployed through new business models—gradually improved to the point where they displaced the previously dominant solutions. Christensen’s key point, however, is that new technologies like these cannot achieve their transformative potential without compatible changes in their industry’s business models and value networks, which in turn may require shifts in the standards and regulatory environment.
From DSC:
Given the current rumblings of massive changes that are about to take place (if they haven’t already) within the higher education landscape, each person within higher education that has key strategic and leadership responsibilities should be required to read the two books mentioned below. I assert this because these world-class researchers and authors have discovered and documented phenomenon that is affecting all of higher education at this point in time. Understanding the concepts in these books will help your college or university not only survive — but thrive — in the future.
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Also:
From DSC:
That article reminds me of a posting on my archived site from 4/11/09:
Let’s reallocate funds towards course development, and then let’s leverage those learning materials throughout the world!
For students: Bring costs waaaayyyyy down and access waaayyy up!
Plus, no more defaulted loans, students could experience richer content, students wouldn’t have to wait as much on financial aid decisions. There would be fewer financial aid headaches; and the resources devoted to figuring out & processing financial aid could be reduced. The issue will be how an institution can differentiate itself in such a new world…but that issue will have to be dealt with in the future anyway.
From DSC:
Not that this is anything new…but the business model/strategy that FiftyThree, Inc. is following with their Paper app is very intriguing to me (and caused me to reflect, again, on the changing business models within higher ed)
As I was reflecting on this business model, I wondered…will this be a part of our future educational marketplaces/exchanges?
Lynda.com (and many others as well I suppose) already does something similar to this by providing prospective students with a few modules — for free — but then requires a subscription for accessing the rest of the content/modules.
So…what if a student could bop into a “class” to get a feel for what the content was like — and perhaps the instructor/professor as well — before they ante up for additional information/learning opportunities/content?
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.
…
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:
The higher education monopoly is crumbling as we speak — from The New Republic by Kevin Carey
Excerpt:
In the last few months, however, that monopoly has begun to crumble. New organizations are being created to offer new kinds of degrees, in a manner and at a price that could completely disrupt the enduring college business model. The question is: Which colleges and universities will be the G.E. of the twenty-first century, and which will be as forgotten as U.S. Leather?
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:
