community colleges

The Tyranny of College Admissions: Why It’s So Challenging to Have Real Change in K-12 Education — from gettingsmart.com by Jon Alfuth

Key Points

College admissions policy shapes K-12 practice. If colleges continue to privilege course sequences, seat time, and grades, high schools will remain constrained in how far they can move toward competency-based learning.
States and institutions already offer models for change. Wisconsin, Colorado, Indiana, and pilots like CUNY and Michigan Ross show that admissions can incorporate portfolios, demonstrations of learning, and durable skills.

If we could instead orient K-12 education around skill development and application rather than Carnegie Units and grades, we could create a new paradigm for where, when and how students demonstrate college and career readiness. Competency-based education moves schools and systems towards this desirable future that balances knowledge with skills.

Despite tremendous evidence of its potential, efforts to accelerate this shift have been stymied by the tyranny of college admissions requirements and processes. Parents, teachers, administrators and policymakers end up in a quandary. Anyone attempting to shift away from this traditional course sequence is criticized as trying to lock kids out of higher education and we snap back to the way things have always been done.

Why Students Aren’t All In on AI—And What They Want From Colleges — from insidehighered.com by Colleen Flaherty
New Student Voice data reveal students are embracing AI as a learning tool while worrying about dependence, career disruption and inconsistent institutional responses.

Read on for six takeaways from the survey and additional insights—including how institutions can start to close the gap between students’ optimism about AI as a learning tool and their faith in their colleges’ ability to help them navigate change.

Takeaway 1: More students are using AI than ever for coursework, while a significant share—20 percent—remain resisters.

Takeaway 2: “Worried about dependence” is the most common student stance on AI.

Takeaway 3: A majority of all students expect AI to somewhat (39 percent) or very (16 percent) negatively impact their career prospects.

Takeaway 4: Just one in 10 students says that their institution is handling AI’s rise very well, in a thoughtful and proactive way.

…and more >>

And here’s the link to Robert’s posting on LinkedIn.

How Constructivism Learning Theory Shapes Modern Instructional Design And L&D Strategy — from elearningindustry.com by Christopher Pappas
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Also see:

Microlearning Trends And Strategies In 2026 — from elearningindustry.com by Christopher Pappas

Three items re: AI in our LE’s (involving corporate training, higher ed, and K-12)

On 06/10/2026, in 24x7x365 access, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, attention, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, education, education reform, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, faculty/staff, game-changing environment, generational differences, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, liberal arts, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, training / L&D, United States, universities, youth, by Daniel Christian

Rethinking Learning Design in Elementary Schools — from edcircuit.com
Why K–5 leaders must redesign—not just adopt—technology to restore attention, deepen thinking, and align AI with how children actually learn

Rethinking learning design in elementary schools is critical as screen time and AI reshape attention, thinking, and student engagement.

Designing for Thinking, Not Just Doing
At its core, learning design must shift from task completion to thinking development.

This requires creating environments where students:

Spend time processing ideas
Work through confusion without immediate answers
Build persistence through challenge

It also requires clarity around the role of technology.

Technology should:

Extend thinking
Provide meaningful feedback
Support exploration

It should not:

Replace effort
Short-circuit reasoning
Eliminate productive struggle

The goal is not to reduce technology use.

It is to ensure that students remain the ones doing the thinking.

Should We Integrate AI into Our Teaching?: Evidence-Based Guidelines for Deciding When AI Belongs — from Faculty Focus by Norman Eng, EdD

Four Questions for Deciding Whether to Use AI

Question 1: Will this AI tool help students use, recall, and demonstrate understanding of core disciplinary content?
Question 2: Will this AI tool require students to apply their learning to a new context?
Question 3: Will this AI tool support—not replace—independent, evidence-based reasoning?
Question 4: Will this AI integration preserve meaningful human interaction?

OPINION: If higher education wants to rebuild public trust, start with making college affordable — from hechingerreport.org by John B. King, Jr.
Addressing high tuition, food insecurity and child care needs are important first steps

Higher education is under siege, with many students and parents balking at high costs. In a series of op-eds, university leaders lay out their efforts to keep college affordable. This is the first in the series.

For many people across the country, paying for college is the largest investment they will ever make. Increasingly, it’s one that feels out of reach.

Over the past two decades, tuition and fees at private, national universities have jumped by 112 percent; at some “elite” and highly selective schools the annual cost of attendance now approaches $100,000.

If higher education is to rebuild public trust, affordability can’t be an afterthought. It must be at the center of our strategic focus.

Also from The Hechinger Report, see:

What it’s like to enter the job market in the middle of an AI revolution — from hechingerreport.org by Neal Morton
‘It’s not looking good’: The unemployment rate for recent grads is the highest in five years, but AI is not primarily to blame — at least not yet

Addendum on 6/10/25:

The Real Mission of Higher Education Is Hiding in Plain Sight — from insidehighered.com by John Warner
A guest post laying out a path forward for all institutions.

Most colleges and universities are not actually organized around learning. They’re organized around teaching, research productivity, rankings, revenue, and the preservation of institutional prestige. Students sense this, even when they can’t articulate it. The public senses it, too. Academic researchers themselves have been making this argument for decades, but it has rarely felt more urgent than it does right now.

The Yale report says, wisely, that “trust is earned by doing what you say you’re going to do.” Universities say they’re about learning. The way to rebuild trust is to actually mean it and to build institutions that prove it.

The Yale committee is right that trust must be rebuilt through action over messaging. The most fundamental action, and the one most often overlooked, is this: Get learning right.

Pinpoint, Explained | A guide to Google’s free tool, now open to all [Caplan]

On 06/05/2026, in adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, data related items, digital audio, digital learning, digital video, education, education technology, faculty/staff, Google, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, IT in HE, journalism, K-12 related, languages and translation, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, liberal arts, library / librarians, research, teaching & learning, tools, United States, universities, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Pinpoint, Explained — from wondertools.substack.com by Jeremy Caplan
A guide to Google’s free tool, now open to all

.Jeremy prompted ChatGPT to generate illustrations in his post.

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Learn about Pinpoint— from support.google.com

Pinpoint is an AI-powered research platform designed to help journalists and academics analyze large collections of documents. With Pinpoint, you can:

Analyze massive collections: Easily search, filter, transcribe and organize thousands of documents, including PDFs, images, and audio files.
Leverage generative AI: Use Gemini’s capabilities to answer research questions together with supporting evidence found in your documents.
Foster collaborative research: share your work with colleagues and tackle large scale projects as a team. You can also publicly share – supporting community-driven research.

For assistance with Pinpoint, please consult our Community Forum or you can contact our support team.

Addendum:

AI Budgets in Education Show No Sign of Decline — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly

Key Takeaways

Education AI budgets are holding steady or increasing: Wasabi found that 98% of education organizations expect AI infrastructure budgets to increase or remain steady, with 46% planning increases.
Storage costs are the top AI implementation challenge: Half of education respondents cited data storage issues, including storage and access costs, as the No. 1 challenge for AI projects.
Cloud security and ROI remain pressure points: Only 47% feel confident keeping data unaltered and operational after a cyberattack, 44% lost access to public cloud data after an attack, and 37% of AI projects currently show positive ROI.

Former foster youth face very low odds of college or workforce success. Some people are trying to change that [Sanchez]

On 06/04/2026, in colleges, community colleges, Emotion, funding / grants, higher education, learning ecosystem, policy, student-related, United States, universities, youth, by Daniel Christian

Former foster youth face very low odds of college or workforce success. Some people are trying to change that — from hechingerreport.org by Olivia Sanchez
College-based programs connect students with each other and with basic needs resources

The Guardian Scholars Program at Sacramento State is one of hundreds around the country designed to help students who are former foster youth stay enrolled, thrive academically and graduate with plans to build stable careers. It offers a window into policies that work — from scholarships to housing help to social connections for emotional support — at a time when the federal government has begun focusing renewed attention on these students and holding out the promise of more investment in them.

Former foster youth — a term that includes anyone who has spent time in the child welfare system, typically due to abuse or neglect — have some of the worst college graduation rates of any demographic group. An estimated 8 to 11 percent of former foster youth go on to earn any college degree, compared to 49 percent of adults overall, according to one analysis. They also typically have lower rates of employment and lower earnings than their peers with similar levels of education.

4 Strategies For Teaching With AI Effectively — from techlearning.com by Erik Ofgang
Health sciences professor Humberto López Castillo urges students to use AI to help with science research, but never to lose sight of the human element.

Castillo, a trained pediatrician and professor in the Department of Health Sciences, has also seen students use AI in creative ways to promote public health understanding, and as a research tool. For one project, Castillo asks students to explain health concepts from class to non-experts, and since he started encouraging students to use AI, he’s seen the projects get better. Students have created health-themed board games and Hamilton-style rap songs. Others have designed AI to aid in health research in ways that wouldn’t be possible without the technology.

This compassionate and student-centered approach to AI use is part of why Castillo was named Superhuman (formerly Grammarly’s) 2026 Educator of the Year.
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“You are the one who’s responsible for that writing,” Castillo tells his students. “Your name is the only name that’s going to be among the published authors, so you are the one who needs to verify those sources.”

He adds that rather than being a drawback, allowing students to make these types of mistakes with AI use in the college setting has value.

“It is a teaching opportunity,” Castillo says. “This is the moment to make those mistakes.”

GenAI practice blossoms through the open exchange of insights — from timeshighereducation.com by Samuel Doherty, who is the education and innovation coordinator at the University of Newcastle in Australia
How a structured GenAI professional development series, built around practice, peer voices and multiple entry points, fosters open exchange among colleagues, universities and industry

Connect internal practice to sector-wide thinking
Whatever is happening within any single institution is only part of the picture. Effective GenAI practice grows through open exchange of insights among colleagues, universities, professional bodies and industry, and a development programme that is entirely inward-looking risks missing both useful knowledge and important shifts in expectation.

Our AI sector voices sessions aim to bring external contributors into the programme: researchers, practitioners and sector representatives working at the intersection of GenAI and higher education. The aim is to situate institutional practice within the wider conversation and to signal to staff that the institution is genuinely engaged with that conversation, not just managing it internally.

In the Australian context, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (Teqsa) people pillar positions staff as drivers, enablers, users and innovators of GenAI practice, and identifies a lack of information or understanding as one of the primary barriers to ethical and effective engagement. That framing is useful regardless of regulatory context: institutions that treat their people as active participants in shaping practice, rather than recipients of policy, are likely to develop more durable capability.

Regular, lightweight communications, a weekly community of practice update and a monthly all-staff digest can maintain momentum between sessions without adding significantly to anyone’s workload.

What AI-Enabled Education Actually Looks Like When It’s Working for Workforce Students — from gettingsmart.com by Stephen Griffin

Key Points

Institutions can use AI to make skills, pathways, and job outcomes visible to students and employers in ways traditional transcripts cannot.
Academic affairs, workforce development, career services, and employers need a shared definition of readiness and competency before tools can deliver meaningful value.

The second is portable competency records. Learning and employment records — AI-enabled documentation of what a student knows and can do, expressed in language employers recognize — are the infrastructure that makes credentials legible across the education-to-employment continuum. When a student can show an employer not just “completed Supply Chain Management 101” but “demonstrated proficiency in inventory optimization, route planning, and logistics software at the industry-recognized level,” the credential stops being abstract. It becomes evidence. Building these records requires investment in tools, yes — but more importantly, it requires faculty, workforce development staff, and employer partners to agree on what competency actually looks like before the technology is ever purchased.

Workplace Readiness: Can Higher Education Develop AI-Ready Students? — from learningguild.com by Eddie Lin and Roshan Bharwaney

For higher education to remain relevant, curricula must evolve. Here are some overarching recommendations for directions in higher education to bridge the skills gaps between universities and workplaces:

AI ethics and safety: Prepare students to navigate issues of fairness, bias, privacy, and societal impact.
Tackling complex questions: Emphasize open-ended challenges that blend structured and unstructured skills and reduce reliance on standardized tests and repetitive drills.
Critical thinking: Develop new assessments for judgment, creativity, and metacognition—essential to supervise AI outputs.
Human-AI synergy: Embed AI fluency across all disciplines, encouraging students to find the niches where human value is maximized.
Industry connection: Maintain close industry partnerships and collaborations including open innovation opportunities and collective intelligence approaches (Bharwaney & Sleeva, 2024).

Experiential learning and communities of practice are central to this vision. Internships, simulations, and cross-disciplinary projects can help students practice human-AI collaboration, resilience, and decision-making in environments that mirror the workplace’s ambiguity and complexity.

Universities that condemn the use of AI by students risk isolating themselves from the realities of today’s workplace, where interns and new hires are expected to be or quickly become adept at using AI for routine tasks and complex projects.

Can colleges still deliver in the age of AI? One Ivy League school is investing $30 million to improve career outcomes — from cnbc.com by Jessica Dickler

Key Points

College students are increasingly worried about what an AI-driven jobs apocalypse could mean for their employment prospects.
To that end, many colleges and universities are racing to recalibrate.
Even at nation’s most elite schools, the focus is shifting to career readiness.

Autistic students who make it through college face a bigger challenge: getting jobs [Field]

On 05/29/2026, in career development, colleges, community colleges, corporate / business world, ideas, Microsoft, neurodivergent/special needs, student-related, United States, universities, vocational / trades, youth, by Daniel Christian

Autistic students who make it through college face a bigger challenge: getting jobs — from hechingerreport.org by Kelly Field
Colleges now offer career readiness classes and one-on-one coaching for students with autism

Recognizing these strengths, some major companies — including tech giants SAP and Microsoft, and financial institutions Wells Fargo and J.P. Morgan Chase — began building neurodiverse hiring programs roughly a decade ago.

Those efforts have yielded significant revenue for companies, some of them say, with EY, one of the big four accounting firms, reporting in 2023 that its neurodiverse employees have generated nearly $1 billion in business value. A study by J.P. Morgan Chase found that its autistic employees were much more productive than its neurotypical ones.

Consumer finance company Synchrony, which plans to hire 15 neurodivergent interns this year, says the program has changed how teams work across the company.

Also on a somewhat-related note and also from Kelly Field at The Hechinger Report, see:

Many boys aren’t interested in school. Can opening more career-focused high schools help?
Some research suggests that career and technical schools keep boys on track to graduation — but seats are limited

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