Excerpt:
What’s our agenda? It’s basically in three parts:
Also see:
From DSC:
I’m a member of the team working at Calvin College to get online learning implemented for the College. I’m grateful for — and proud of — our team and what we’ve been able to accomplish thus far. (BTW, I use the word pride knowingly but carefully.) My hope/dream/vision is that people from all over the world will be able to get a solid, Christian-based education at a significantly-reduced price!
Public university becomes first to endorse untraditional online model — from by Denny Carter
Some UW faculty members, after political clashes with Gov. Scott Walker, remain skeptical of UW Flexible Degree
Excerpt:
Students at the University of Wisconsin (UW) can earn college degrees based on proven competency in a subject, making UW the first publicly-funded school to launch a competency-based degree program.
Led by officials at UW-Extension, a continued learning program with offices located across Wisconsin, the UW Flexible Degree will let incoming students demonstrate their knowledge and cut down on the time it takes to earn a degree.
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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:
My thanks to Academic Impressions who sent out the above item and the interactive graphic below.
From DSC:
I am not posting these to put down liberal arts colleges/universities/programs. In fact, I went through a liberal arts program in college and I’m currently working at a liberal arts college. Rather, I’m posting them to say, “Houston, we have a problem.” And to then prompt us all to ask, “What are we going to do about it?”
Which reminds me again of a graphic I created a while back:
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Addendum on 5/15/12:
E. Gordon Gee, the president of The Ohio State University, says that public colleges and universities need to devise a new business model to pay for the costs of education, beyond sticking students with higher tuition and greater debt.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — In a wood-paneled office lined with books, sports memorabilia and framed posters (including John Belushi in “Animal House”), E. Gordon Gee, the president of Ohio State University, keeps a framed quotation that reads, “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”
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:
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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:
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.
