Population of needy college students is exploding — from The Washington Post by Daniel de Vise

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

A higher education official from Wisconsin who attended the recent Council of Independent Colleges conference in Florida made a remarkable statement during a question-and-answer session.

There is a group of students who enter college with such dire financial need that the amount the federal government expects their families to contribute to college is effectively zero. In Wisconsin, that zero-pay population has grown by half in a single year: from 42,641 students in the 2008-09 academic year to 65,800 in 2009-10.

The data come from Rolf Wegenke, president of the Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, and surely they mirror a national trend.

Incoming college students have grown markedly more needy since the 2008 economic downturn.

From DSC:
This perfect storm that continues to amass must be addressed.

How can all institutions of higher education — across the board — cut tuition costs by 50% or more?

That should be the #1 question boards are asking themselves throughout 2012 until they have some ideas/answers — then begin experimenting with implementing those pilots/ideas/potential directions.  If not, the conversation will continue to move outside of academia and fewer people will even care what those of us inside higher ed think.  The development of a Walmart of Education has become a sure thing in my mind — it will happen. In fact, it’s already started.

 

 

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The Evolving Digital Ecosystem - from Moxie's Trends for 2012

  • The Always On Web
  • Web of Things
  • Big Data
  • Next Gen Search
  • Mobile Sharing
  • Mobile Social Activism
  • Impulse Commerce
  • Brands As Partners
  • The New Living Room  <– From DSC: This is one of those key areas that I’m trying to keep a pulse check on for re: our learning ecosystems of the future 
  • Personal Data Security

 

Also see:

 

Global Smart TV market worth $265 billion by 2016 — from appmarket.tv by Richard Kastelein

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From DSC:
You can bet educational apps will be part of these emerging technologies. My take on this is that:

  • The scope of our learning ecosystems will expand rapidly.
  • We will be able to participate in them as much or as little as we want to. I call it, Learning from the Living Room.
  • Such trends will likely go hand-in-hand with innovations involving social-based learning, mobile learning, personalized/customized learning, and will take advantage of cheaper ways of learning that will help one gain mastery over a particular subject/discipline 24x7x365 (and will be a piece of something I call The Walmart of Education) .

 

Also relevant/see:


 

 

From DSC:
I read the following quote from Codecademy signs up 97,000 people for its New Year’s resolution coding class (emphasis mine):

Codecademy, a startup that uses interactive online lessons to turn anyone into a computer programmer, has signed up 97,000 students in less than 48 hours for its New Year’s resolution class Code Year.  That’s more than twice as many students as were enrolled in the 150 U.S. computer science undergraduate programs that the Computer Research Association surveyed last year.

This is both positive and troubling to me. Positive in that more people will learn how to program across the world, and thus (hopefully) becoming qualified to fill many of the open programming-related positions out there.  It’s troubling in that the quote mentions that within 48 hours, the number of students signed up was already more than twice the number of students enrolled in Computer Science programs at the undergraduate level in the entire United States.

What does that statement tell us?

  • Are there a lot more people interested in programming out there but can’t afford to pay their way through an undergraduate program?
  • That many people aren’t qualified to get into an undergraduate program but are hoping to gain skills anyway?
  • Perhaps people are just trying it out and many won’t actually pursue this route…
  • Perhaps there’s some duplication here, as some of the same undergrads are also enrolled in Codeacademy…
  • Perhaps the people taking these courses won’t be qualified…but perhaps they will be qualified…
  • Perhaps a student-teaching-student model will unfold here with massive FAQ’s and examples being developed over time…

Hmmm…regardless, this is an excellent example of the disruption being caused by technology and the Internet. I expect many more examples in 2012. Perhaps the “Walmart of Education” that I’ve been tracking over the years will have different components to it, with one major piece of it coming from the Codeacademy’s of the world.

Some of the questions that come to my mind for those of us working within higher education are:

  • How do we help educate the world at more reasonable prices?
  • What opportunities does the Internet offer us?
  • What new business models and transformations should we be pursuing that use the Internet?
  • Are there things that we can do to better address why all of these people are not enrolling in our undergraduate CS programs?

 

Will your college survive?– from TechCrunch.com by John Katzman

college

 

Editor’s note: Guest contributor John Katzman is the founder and CEO of 2tor, an education startup that partners with universities to deliver selective degree programs online to students across the world. Katzman also founded the Princeton Review where he served as president and CEO from 1981-2007.

The Internet will save higher education, but it may kill your alma mater.

Peter Thiel believes smart people don’t need college, and he’s right: There have always been autodidacts who can learn without assistance. Of course, we don’t really need supermarkets and restaurants either; we could all grow and cook our own food.

Yet having professionals help us has always been a cost-benefit decision. What are the costs of a great education, including the opportunity cost of four years of work, and how do these costs balance against the impact of that education on your life?

The Internet is the first technology since the printing press, which could lower the cost of a great education and, in doing so, make that cost-benefit analysis much easier for most students. It could allow American schools to service twice as many students as they do now, and in ways that are both effective and cost-effective. For reasons that will be outlined below, however, it will probably end up doing this with half as many schools. And your school, even if it’s bumper-sticker worthy, might not make the cut.

..

Evolve or Else

Like any other disruptive transition, the move to online and blended universities will bring tremendous benefit to students—better education in more places at lower tuition. However, these changes will be painful for many schools. Most bookstores and travel agencies found themselves on the wrong side of a steadily growing force; the schools that thrive over the next two decades will do so only because they have carefully harnessed that very same force: the Internet.

 

Also see:

  • Mary Sue Coleman’s (President of the University of Michigan) Open Letter to President Obama
    Mary Sue Coleman is president of the University of Michigan and chair of the Association of American Universities.
    Excerpt:
    And yet college is costly – too costly for some families. To meet the myriad needs of students and society, we absolutely must find ways to provide a college education at a cost that is sustainable. President Thomas Jefferson was rightfully adamant that a cornerstone of democracy is education for all, “from the richest to the poorest.”

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/ImageGallery/Images/Products/Xbox/12-05TVEvolution-Infographic_web.jpg

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From DSC:
What if educationally-related apps and services were driven by such a platform as
actv8.me? If you want to leapfrog everyone else, then explore this direction.

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actv8.me/platform.html


 

Do not underestimate or discount the disruptive power of technology! Daniel S. Christian -- June 2009

 

From DSC:
The tidal wave of technological change swept over Blockbuster and the article below shows how it drowned Kodak as well. These players were once at THEE top of their games…now they are either bankrupt or soon to be bankrupt (if things don’t change fast).

This relates to higher education as well, but I don’t think that we’ve seen anything yet (though 2012 may change that). Higher ed may have a limited window of time left before the conversation moves completely out of academia and higher ed as we know it gets left behind. The word “reinvent” and the phrases “staying relevant” as well as “lowering the price” should be at the top of the agendas for boards at most academic institutions of higher education throughout America (and other nations as well). I use the word most here because some folks will likely continue to pay enormous prices to get the name brands that they’ve been paying $50,000+ per year for.

If companies eventually don’t care who accredited your degree but rather what you can DO for them, watch out. The barriers to entry will plummet.

 

You Press the Button. Kodak Used to Do the Rest. — from technologyreview.com
Kodak saw the shift from analog to digital photography coming. Here’s why it couldn’t win.

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Excerpt (emphasis from DSC):

But the industry landscape was completely different in the digital era. Barriers to entry were significantly lowered and the industry was flooded by entrants with a background in consumer electronics, such as Casio, Samsung, and Hewlett-Packard, not to mention Japanese camera manufacturers including Canon, Nikon, and Olympus. Large parts of Kodak’s competence base related to chemistry and film manufacturing were rendered obsolete. The vertical integration that had previously been a core asset to Kodak lost its value. Digital cameras became a commodity business with low margins. The problem facing Kodak wasn’t just that film profits had died but that those revenues could not be replaced.

Once images became digital, Kodak’s business model of “doing the rest” was effectively destroyed. Doing the rest used to entail a large and complex process that only a couple of companies in the world could master. Today, it is done by the click of a button.

Related graphic from DSC:

From Daniel S. ChristianAlso see:

 

12/15/11 addendum re: the conversation moving away from higher ed:

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

No single blog can adequately capture or represent what was going on at Learning 2011. But if you are intrigued, I suggest you go to www.Learning2011and see what the agenda and the presentations looked like for yourself.
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What I sensed, and what I am trying to describe here, was an accelerating transition in workforce education from a higher education-centric model to a learner-workplace-centric model. In a world where higher education institutions have dominated, controlled, and driven the conversation about quality, content, access, and results; the balance of power is shifting away from that more monolithic tendency to a far more disaggregated power structure where good information, metrics, and results that can be validated against third party standards are the “coin of the realm”.

 

Count on Apple iTV in 2012, analyst says — from technewsdaily.com by Leslie Meredith

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apple+tv-100604-02

 

Excerpt:

  • The rumors that Apple will launch an actual TV have hit the headlines again following comments made today (Nov. 30) by analyst Gene Munster at an industry conference. Munster went so far as to tell his audience at the Ignition: Future of Media conference in New York City to wait to buy a new TV, because Apple’s TV is “going to be awesome.”

Addendum on 12/2/11: 

Official calls for urgency on college costs— from the New York Times by Tamar Lewin

Excerpts:

As Occupy movement protests helped push spiraling college costs into the national spotlight, Education Secretary Arne Duncan urged higher-education officials Tuesday to “think more creatively — and with much greater urgency” about ways to contain costs and reduce student debt.

“Three in four Americans now say that college is too expensive for most people to afford,” Mr. Duncan said. “That belief is even stronger among young adults — three-fourths of whom believe that graduates today have more debt than they can manage.”

Also see:

Addendum later on 11/30/11:

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(Official Department of Education Photo by Joshua Hoover)

“My chief message today is a sobering one,” said Secretary Duncan yesterday at the annual Federal Student Aid conference in Las Vegas, Nev. “I want to ask you, and the entire higher education community, to look ahead and start thinking more creatively—and with much greater urgency—about how to contain the spiraling costs of college and reduce the burden of student debt on our nation’s students.”

Deficit Supercommittee’s failure triggers steep cuts for education and research — from The Chronicle by Kelly Field

Excerpt:

The Congressional supercommittee charged with cutting $1.2-trillion from the federal budget conceded defeat Monday, after its members reached an impasse over taxes and entitlement spending.

The panel’s failure to produce a deficit-reduction plan triggers across-the-board cuts of roughly $1-trillion in discretionary spending over nine years, starting in the 2013 fiscal year. Unless Congress finds a way around the process, the Education Department’s budget will be slashed by $3.54-billion in 2013, according to the Committee for Education Funding, an advocacy group.

While the Pell Grant program is exempt from cuts in the first year, the other student-aid programs will lose $134-million, reducing aid to at least 1.3 million students. Career, technical, and adult education will lose $136-million, affecting 1.4 million students, says the committee.

As of 11/20/11 (~2:00pm EST)

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As of 8/24/11:

usdebtclock.org

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From DSC:
With the increase in globalization — and from what I’ve seen happening in the financial systems (i.e. how what happens in Europe affects the financial systems in the U.S./Asia/other and vice versa) — it seems clear that we are all in this boat together.  If that’s true, what does that mean for:

  • Businesses and economies around the world?
  • The ability of families and individuals to afford the increasing cost of getting a degree?
  • Higher educational systems — and business models — around the world?
  • How do we resolve such massive problems?
  • What does all of this mean for how we should be educating our students?

 

Addendum on 11/21/11:

  • Debt committee: Why $1.2 trillion isn’t enough — from money.cnn.com by Jeanne Sahadi
    Excerpts:
    That’s because under the most likely scenario, reducing deficits by $1.2 trillion won’t stop the accumulated debt from growing faster than the economy.

    Thus, to stabilize the debt, Congress would need to pass a debt-reduction plan worth $4 trillion to $6 trillion, budget experts say.

Cloud Learning as Universal Primary Education — from Teemu Arina

Excerpts:

The internet is lowering the transaction costs of learning. This leads to a situation where learning happens more and more in the open markets, in a distributed and decentralized manner. It is obvious that the primary interface will be based on mobile, cloud-based devices. Some principles…

There are effectively three levels of certification: 1st hand, 2nd hand and 3rd hand certification.

  • 1st hand certification is what you say you know.
    In the old world you would describe your skills in a resume and leave it to the employer to evaluate if that holds true. In the new world you can make your work and learning processes visible as it happens, demonstrating progress and increasing the believability of your 1st hand descriptions. A simple blog (a log of thoughts) makes reflection visible  and demonstrates the evolution and iteration of thinking as it happens.
  • 2nd hand certification is what others say about you.
    In the old world you would describe your references in a resume and leave it to the employer to call these references to evaluate if these people really value your work and learning. In the new world people accumulate links, likes and comments to the resources you produce on social networks. A Klout score on social media or a personal stock price based on social media activity on EmpireAvenue demonstrate your social capital through a simple metric. The question is, are you making an impact with your progress, enabling other people to build on top of your work through reflection and co-creation, or are you effectively invisible to others?
  • 3rd hand certification is what an authority says about you.
    In the old world you would get a certificate on hand to add in your resume that you have demonstrated the ability to pass a specific rat test (a school). This doesn’t necessarily mean you have mastered all the topics involved, but it demonstrates that you have been capable of passing such tests under the supervision of an authority. In the new world a single test in isolation is not enough but your ability to solve problems in connection with others.

Michigan universities, state lawmakers look for ways to bring down price of higher education — from mlive.com by Lindsay Knake | The Saginaw News

Also:

© 2024 | Daniel Christian