dangers of the status quo

The $10,000 degree & other items related to the need for higher ed to adapt to a game-changing environment

On 05/13/2014, in 21st century, adult learning, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, digital learning, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, new business models, online learning, by Daniel Christian

A Case for Applied Liberal Arts: Adapting to Disruption — from evollution.com by Michelle Rhee-Weise | Senior Research Fellow, Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation

Excerpt:

This is neither another defense of the liberal arts nor another piece that pits the liberal arts against vocational training. We’ve all grown weary of commentators who ennoble without question the ideal of the liberal arts while denigrating vocation as factory work or corporate training.

In lieu of these tired tropes, I would suggest the notion of applied liberal arts. It’s time we shed vocation of its connotations of career education, corporate training and utility. Vocation does not preclude the liberal arts but can fuse a liberal education with the application of knowledge, effective citizenship, well roundedness and even artistry.

…

The instinct for some institutions might be to give into the “threat rigidity,” or to cease being flexible in the face of such major, systemic shifts. If, however, traditional institutions double down on a static curriculum, then how will they compete with these lower-cost, briefer and targeted programs that lead directly to high-skills opportunities at desirable companies? The oncoming disruption must be viewed as an opportunity to tie education to economic relevance — to offer more than a trajectory, but a well-defined pathway, to employment.

The $10,000 Degree: Fundamentally Changing the Way Universities Do Business — from evollution.com by Jean Floten | Chancellor, Western Governors University Washington

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

The reset button has been pushed in this country. We have the choice to either participate in the reshaping of higher education to help more prospective students reach for their aspirations or live in denial.

Most Americans have changed how they do business and manage their personal finances. We must, too. The recession of the last decade spawned more leery consumers and led far too many to question the value of an investment in education.

That’s the importance of the $10,000-degree challenge. It recognizes the need for fundamental change in higher education. Furthermore, it provides a tangible finish line to which the academy may strive.

It’s time we, the leaders of colleges and universities, raise educational attainment levels — not costs.

MOOCs’ disruption is only beginning — from studentforce.wordpress.com; reposted from The Boston Globe written by Clayton M. Christensen and Michelle R. Weise

Excerpt:

JOURNALISTS, as 2013 ended, were busy declaring the death of MOOCs, more formally known as massive open online courses. Silicon Valley startup Udacity, one of the first to offer the free Web-based college classes, had just announced its pivot to vocational training — a sure sign to some that this much-hyped revolution in higher education had failed. The collective sigh of relief from more traditional colleges and universities was audible.

The news, however, must have also had the companies that had enthusiastically jumped on the MOOC train feeling a bit like Mark Twain. When newspapers confused Twain for his ailing cousin, the writer famously quipped, “The report of my death was an exaggeration.” Undoubtedly pronouncements over MOOCs’ demise are likewise premature. And their potential to disrupt — on price, technology, even pedagogy — in a long-stagnant industry is only just beginning to be seen.

Tuition costs have been ballooning faster than general inflation and even faster than health care. And what do we get in return? Nearly half of all bachelor’s-degree holders do not find employment or are underemployed upon graduation. At the same time, employers have not been satisfied with degree candidates. Two recent Gallup polls showed that although 96 percent of chief academic officers believe they’re doing a good job of preparing students for employment, only 11 percent of business leaders agree that graduates have the requisite skills for success in the workforce. And this is all occurring while higher education leaders were convinced that they were innovating all along.

It was just the wrong kind of innovation.

Education-as-a-Service: 5 ways higher ed must adapt to a changing market — from venturebeat.com by Ryan Craig, University Ventures

Excerpt:

Within a few years, some students will come to higher education with an understanding of their current competencies, the competencies required for their dream job, and the resulting gap. Colleges will need to respond to these students with more than just a course catalog.

For example, for an 18-year-old who wants to start a career in video game design, colleges will offer courses that produce the requisite skills for an entry-level position – in addition to some general education – and will award a meaningful credential at completion of those courses (a process that will be completed likely in less than four years).

Or a laid-off marketing manager, whose time-to-job is six months rather than four years, may come to a university for reskilling in social media marketing, taking four targeted courses and earning a credential that employers can understand.

5 reasons the college student loan debt crisis could top subprime mortgages — from educationdive.com by Keith Button

Excerpt:

As the U.S. higher ed student loan debt continues its ascent, more warnings are sounding about the consequences.

Student debt currently amounts to $1.08 trillion owed by nearly 37 million borrowers. Richard Cordray, president of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has warned that the student loan problem is comparable to the home mortgage market prior to the Great Recession that began in 2008.

Could the economic impact of the student debt crisis one day match (or even exceed) the credit crunch created by subprime mortgages? Here are five reasons for concern…

Taking the Liberal Arts Online in the Summer — from chronicle.com by William Pannapacker
New ways of delivering courses can be compatible with small-college values

Excerpt:

A major reason we created the program was to assist students in completing their degrees within four years. Several of our preprofessional programs have demanding sequences that do not mesh easily with the schedules of courses in our core curriculum. In addition, a growing proportion of our students want to spend a semester off-campus, which places even greater constraints on their academic schedules.

…

Adopted cautiously, in a critical, evolutionary, decentralized way, a variety of online approaches to learning—beyond what we already have—can allow faculty members to improve their teaching by placing lecture content online and using classes for high-impact experiences, allowing professors and students to become more interactive with each other. And—by making it less necessary for students to transfer credit for entire courses from outside parties—online courses developed within an institutional context can preserve rather than undermine our unique missions as liberal-arts colleges.

Also see:

.

Created by Knewton and Column Five Media

If change is inevitable– is progress optional? Four education institutions opting for progress [Morrison]

On 04/17/2014, in business side of he, change, changing business models, colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, dangers of the status quo, experimentation, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, innovation, leadership, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, strategy, vision/possibilities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

If change is inevitable– is progress optional? Four education institutions opting for progress — from onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com by Debbie Morrison

Excerpts:

Corporate Sponsored Degree Program: University of Maryland, Cybersecurity
Strategic Planning Initiative: Beyond Forward, Dartmouth University
Institutional Mergers. University System of Georgia
MOOC-Inspired Initiatives. Penn State, flex-MOOC and Georgia Tech Institute.

From DSC:
As I was watching “The Future of Higher Education: MOOCs and Disruptive Innovation,” a video recorded last August, (GW’s School of Business) Dean Doug Guthrie mentioned a company named In the Telling. The name of that company piqued my curiosity, so I went to look at that company, and what instantly struck me about their offerings were the use of:

A team-based approach to education
The use of digital storytelling
Software as a Service

Dean Guthrie’s comments on interaction, community building, and customization rang true for me, but it was the customization part that really grabbed me. And there too, most likely it will take a team of people to understand and use the data, to build the algorithms that Doug was talking about to deliver the learning trees of the future (and I would add the phrases/terms learning paths and learning playlists).

I have it that as MOOCs continue to morph and as the perfect storm in higher education continues to amass, those institutions who implement a team-based approach to content creation, delivery, and assessment will be the ones who thrive in the future.

This thought was further brought home when I viewed Phil Hill and Michael Feldstein discussing “Online Learning – What Is It Good For?” Consider the appearance of the word TEAM in the following graphics:

Major questions need to be asked — and addressed — due to these shifts [Christian]

On 03/17/2014, in 21st century, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, career development, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, emerging technologies, engineering, entrepreneurship, experimentation, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, heutagogy, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, informal learning, K-12 related, leadership, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, lifelong learning, marketplaces, new business models, pace of change, professional development, reinvent, robotics, staying relevant, strategy, surviving, the downsides of how people use tech, training / L&D, trends, vision/possibilities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Excerpts:

If Daniel Nadler is right, a generation of college graduates with well-paid positions as junior researchers and analysts in the banking industry should be worried about their jobs. Very worried.

Mr Nadler’s start-up, staffed with ex-Google engineers and backed partly by money from Google’s venture capital arm, is trying to put them out of work.

…

The threat to jobs stretches beyond the white-collar world. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) also make possible more versatile robots capable of taking over many types of manual work. “It’s going to decimate jobs at the low end,” predicts Jerry Kaplan, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who teaches a class about AI at Stanford University. Like others working in the field, he says he is surprised by the speed at which the new technologies are moving out of the research labs.

From DSC:
After reading the above article — and seeing presentations about these trends (example) — I have some major questions to ask:

What changes do those of us working within higher education need to make due to these shifts? How should we modify our curricula? Which skills need to be reinforced/developed?
What changes do Learning & Development groups and Training Departments need to make within the corporate world?
How should we be developing our K-12 students to deal with such a volatile workplace?
What changes do adult learners need to make to stay marketable/employable? How can they reinvent themselves (and know what that reinvention should look like)?
How can each of us know if our job is next on the chopping block and if it is, what should we do about it?
What kind of future do we want?

These changes are for real. The work of Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee further addresses some of these trends and changes. See:

Addendum:

Also see:

Bill Gates: Yes, robots really are about to take your jobs — from bgr.com by Brad Reed

Bill Gates Interview Robots

Excerpt:

Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates isn’t going to sugarcoat things: The increasing power of automation technology is going to put a lot of people out of work. Business Insider reports that Gates gave a talk at the American Enterprise Institute think tank in Washington, DC this week and said that both governments and businesses need to start preparing for a future where lots of people will be put out of work by software and robots.

Also see:

Make Work More Human — from Harold Jarche

A highly recommended presentation for anyone who is working in higher education!!! [Pres by Prof Steven Van Belleghem]

On 02/15/2014, in 21st century, business, business side of he, career development, change, changing business models, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, disruption, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, new business models, organizational change, pace of change, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Reinvent the future –– an excellent presentation by Professor Steven Van Belleghem

From DSC:
Though this presentation is aimed at the corporate world, there are NUMEROUS lessons here for those of us working within the world of higher education.

Sample slides:

From DSC:
This type of presentation prompts me to ask why there isn’t more coursework being offered involving futurism…?

And within our current business offerings, are we applying enough emphasis on freelancing, entrepreneurship, innovation, and in pulse-checking a variety of landscapes?

Along these lines, see:

Need a job? Invent it — from nytimes.com by Thomas Friedman

Excerpts:

Every middle-class job today is being pulled up, out or down faster than ever. That is, it either requires more skill or can be done by more people around the world or is being buried — made obsolete — faster than ever. Which is why the goal of education today, argues Wagner, should not be to make every child “college ready” but “innovation ready” — ready to add value to whatever they do.

So what should be the focus of education reform today?
…
We need to focus more on teaching the skill and will to learn and to make a difference and bring the three most powerful ingredients of intrinsic motivation into the classroom: play, passion and purpose.”

Free online university receives accreditation, in time for graduating class of 7 — from nytimes.com by Tamar Lewin

Excerpt:

Just in time for its first graduates, the University of the People, a tuition-free four-year-old online institution built to reach underserved students around the world, announced Thursday that it had received accreditation.

“This is every exciting, especially for the students who will graduate in April, with a degree from an accredited institution,” said Shai Reshef, the Israeli entrepreneur who invested millions of dollars to create the nonprofit university. “This has been the big question for anyone who thought about enrolling. We have 1.2 million supporters on Facebook, I think second only to Harvard, and every day, there is discussion about when we will be accredited.”

Now, with accreditation from the Distance Education and Training Council, a national accrediting group, Mr. Reshef said, the university will expand significantly. He expects to have 5,000 students by 2016.

Also see:

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

Two big forces underpin a university’s costs. The first is the need for physical proximity. Adding students is expensive—they require more buildings and instructors—and so a university’s marginal cost of production is high. That means that even in a competitive market, where price converges towards marginal cost, modern education is dear.

…

MOOCs work completely differently. Alex Tabarrok, an economist at George Mason University and co-founder of an online-education site, Marginal Revolution University, reckons the most salient feature of the online course is its rock-bottom marginal cost: teaching additional students is virtually free.

“The End of Higher Education’s Golden Age” [Shirky] — & other curated items re: the pressures for change in HE

On 02/01/2014, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business side of he, changing business models, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, education reform, education technology, experimentation, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, IBM, more voice more choice more control, new business models, online learning, publishing, vendors, by Daniel Christian

The End of Higher Education’s Golden Age — from Clay Shirky

Excerpts:

Interest in using the internet to slash the price of higher education is being driven in part by hope for new methods of teaching, but also by frustration with the existing system. The biggest threat those of us working in colleges and universities face isn’t video lectures or online tests. It’s the fact that we live in institutions perfectly adapted to an environment that no longer exists.

…

Our current difficulties are not the result of current problems. They are the bill coming due for 40 years of trying to preserve a set of practices that have outlived the economics that made them possible.

…

Of the twenty million or so students in the US, only about one in ten lives on a campus. The remaining eighteen million—the ones who don’t have the grades for Swarthmore, or tens of thousands of dollars in free cash flow, or four years free of adult responsibility—are relying on education after high school not as a voyage of self-discovery but as a way to acquire training and a certificate of hireability.

…

It will also require us to abandon any hope of restoring the Golden Age. It was a nice time, but it wasn’t stable, and it didn’t last, and it’s not coming back. It’s been gone ten years more than it lasted, in fact, and in the time since it ended, we’ve done more damage to our institutions, and our students, and our junior colleagues, by trying to preserve it than we would have by trying to adapt. Arguing that we need to keep the current system going just long enough to get the subsidy the world owes us is really just a way of preserving an arrangement that works well for elites—tenured professors, rich students, endowed institutions—but increasingly badly for everyone else.

4 platforms that will disrupt higher education — from hastac.org by Kevin Browne

Excerpts:

Straighterline
Udemy
Mozilla’s Open Badges Project
Pearson
The textbook publisher Pearson is now able to offer degrees of its own in the UK. If their venture is a success it will certainly inspire others to petition to do this and it will certainly spread to other countries.

The rise of alternatives to university continuing education (part 1) — from higheredmanagement.net by Keith Hampson

Excerpt:

Let’s be clear, we need these new learning providers. We are living through what appears to be a “jobless” economic recovery and people need a way range of options – at different price points – in order to quickly retrain themselves for a rapidly changing job market. A robust and diverse continuing education market is a priority for the 21st century and our government leaders and regulators should be crafting policy to make it happen.

Higher education technology predictions for 2014 — from masmithers.com by Mark Smithers

Excerpt:

In summary, we’ll have another contentious year. We’ll see big growth in higher education services from outside of the university sector, a continued gnashing of teeth from established providers. Some new services and platforms will emerge to cater for different forms of learning, MOOCs will evolve and improve and open badges will be hot. Look out for rhizomatic learning.

The New Normal isn’t what you think — from nextberlin.eu by Adam Tinworth (the quote below, though targeting at the corporate world, applies to higher ed as well)

Their yearning is doomed. There will be no return to business as usual. We have begun a process of continuous change that will last decades – perhaps for much of the rest of our lifetimes.

Related items:

Watson is coming for your (professional) jobs — from IEEE.org by John Niman
Excerpt:

Published on Jan 17, 2014 IEET Affiliate Scholar John Niman talks about IBM’s computer system, Watson and how AI may be able to take “Professional” Jobs.

Mass unemployment fears over Google artificial intelligence plans — from telegraph.co.uk by Miranda Prynne
The development of artificial intelligence – thrown into spotlight this week after Google spent hundreds of millions on new technology – could mean computers take over human jobs at a faster rate than new roles can be created, experts have warned

Addendum:

Transformational Change: The New Face of Higher Education — from cgi.stanford.edu by Irene Hecht

Excerpt:

Higher education is in the midst of a process of transformational change. For the department chair, leadership today must include breadth of vision and the skill to bring the single individuals who make up a department into a group that can think collaboratively about the questions facing their discipline, department, and institution. Chair leadership now depends heavily on the ability to create collaborative habits of thought and dialogue among a group of individuals, none of whom may have had experience in effective teamwork. Skill in this area will derive in large part from the chair’s ability to structure the department’s dialogue to be conscious of the connections among its members and the links between the department’s work and the institution’s goals. Ultimately, the habits of dialogue must also include consciousness of the transformational
currents in higher education as an enterprise. Subsequent articles will examine these issues as they pertain to faculty, students, pedagogy, and other key topics being remodeled in the transformational process.

Speeding up on curves — from educause.com by Bradley Wheeler

Excerpt:

Higher education faces a number of important curves, but I’ll focus first on just two:

1) The finance of higher education is increasingly moving from a public to a private good, leading to increasing cost and price pressures (particularly for state-supported institutions).
2) The increasing digitization of education and research favors greater scale while it also enables potential new substitutes for colleges and universities.

Coursera comes of age, announces Specializations [Lapowsky]

On 01/21/2014, in business side of he, changing business models, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, disruption, innovation, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, more voice more choice more control, new business models, online learning, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Coursera comes of age, announces Specializations — from inc.com by Issie Lapowsky
With a new feature that resembles the college major, Coursera gets a new revenue stream–and becomes an increasingly attractive education alternative.

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Coursera, the Mountain View, California-based provider of free, massively open online courses, or MOOCs, is launching a new feature called Specializations, the MOOC equivalent of majors. Rather than taking one isolated course for free, students can now select a sequence of courses, which they take in order, for a fee, albeit, a small one. Then, if they pass, students receive a certificate of completion.

“We heard from many students that they wanted help sequencing together courses in order to form more substantive programs of study than can be represented by a single course. On the flip side, we also heard significant interest from our university partners in offering course sequences,” Coursera co-founder Andrew Ng told me by email. “After discussions with our partners and several student surveys, we decided to proceed with this program, which we believe is the next stage in the development of MOOCs.”

…

Meanwhile, Specializations solve an equally big pain point for Coursera, namely that revenue’s hard to come by when you’re giving a premium product away for free. This way, students will sign up to get their identities verified, a service for which Coursera charges for each class, meaning Specializations will run students about $200 to $500. It’s substantially cheaper than a degree from a traditional university, and for those who can’t afford it, true to its mission, Coursera is offering students financial aid.

Also see:

Coursera Specializations: Focused Programs in Popular Fields — from blog.coursera.org

This vision is now reality.

Addendums on 1/22/14:

Georgia Tech MOOC-Based Degree Program Turns Away Nearly 2,000 Applicants — from campustechnology.com by Dian Schaffhauser

Excerpt:

A totally MOOC-based master’s degree in computer science announced last spring has opened for business with about 375 students. The new program, being delivered by Georgia Institute of Technology’s College of Computing, claims to be the “first and only” one from an accredited university that operates entirely through a massive open online course format.

The degree program received 2,360 applications during a three-week period in October, about 75 percent more applications than are typically received for the on-campus program during an entire year. Of those, 401 students were offered admission, and 94 percent enrolled for the Spring 2014 semester. According to Georgia Tech, a couple of differences distinguish MOOC enrollment from on-campus enrollment. Whereas 88 percent of the MOOC students are United States citizens or permanent residents, about 90 percent are international in the on-campus program. Also, the average age of the MOOC students is 34.8, about 11 years older than their on-campus counterparts.

More Competition for Online Certificate Students — from insidehighered.com by Carl Straumsheim

Excerpt:

An online course provider will this spring introduce bundles of courses created by top-tier universities that can be completed for certificates. That description fits both Academic Partnerships and Coursera, and both programs are called “Specializations.”

The similarities are more than mere coincidence, as the two companies have since last summer discussed a partnership proposed by Academic Partnerships for its platform to use Coursera’s university course offerings. Yet Coursera’s Specializations, announced Tuesday morning, took Academic Partnerships CEO Randy Best by surprise. When the parties spoke last week, Best said Coursera “expressed that they were going to defer for now the idea of Specializations.”

Some challenges, strategies, & opportunities within higher ed — distilled into several key graphics.

On 01/17/2014, in business side of he, changing business models, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, economics, lifelong learning, reinvent, society, staying relevant, strategy, student-related, surviving, trends, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

DanielChristian-MiddleClassIncomesDown-TuitionUp

DanielChristian-No-longer-running-sprints--but-marathons

TheTrimtabInHigherEducation-DanielChristian

ThinkBiggerYet-DanielChristian-August282013

True…or false? “Education is holding Millennials back” [Harris]

On 01/16/2014, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, change, dangers of the status quo, education, education reform, entrepreneurship, experimentation, global / globalization, higher education, K-12 related, leadership, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, reinvent, staying relevant, strategy, student-related, by Daniel Christian

Education is holding Millennials back — from blog.clomedia.com, interview with Donna Harris

Excerpt:

If you ask employers whether millenials are prepared for the workforce, there is no shortage of concern.
…
Being able to take charge of one’s own career, question the status quo, initiate change, be creative, solve problems, operate independently and be entrepreneurial will become increasingly crucial for career success.
…
Today’s workers will have dozens of jobs in their lifetimes and need a vastly different toolkit to be successful — the ability to question the status quo, initiate change, be creative, solve problems, operate independently and be entrepreneurial become crucial.
…
This massive change from a transactional, hierarchical, closed economy to one that is global, networked, transparent and entrepreneurial is a major challenge to our overall education system. We have large institutions, degrees take years to complete, students invest tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars, and yet employers are still saying that graduates are not well-suited for their needs. We have to rethink what we’re teaching and how we’re teaching it, with a fundamental understanding of the global economic shift we’re in the midst of.

TheTrimtabInHigherEducation-DanielChristian

Higher education is now ground zero for disruption [Hixon]

On 01/08/2014, in 21st century, business side of he, change, changing business models, colleges, community colleges, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, disruption, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, online learning, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Higher education is now ground zero for disruption — from forbes.com by Todd Hixon

Excerpt:

Why? US Higher Ed has a product that does not work, ridiculous costs, and an antiquated business model. For many years we accepted this because we see extraordinary value in education. Now, most middle and upper-middle class parents find they cannot give their children the education they enjoyed. Technology has recently put a spark to this fuel: on-line education works and dramatically improves costs and access. This is a big opportunity for entrepreneurs and investors. Many new companies and programs will emerge in 2014.

Also see:

What the flattening industry means for higher education — from evoLLLution.com by Mark Greenfield

Excerpt:

Higher education is getting flattened. Flattening happens “when the impact of the Internet and globalization render an industry unrecognizable, and in many cases, obsolete.”[1] The term is taken from “The World Is Flat,” the seminal book written by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Thomas Friedman.

So, do I think higher education will become obsolete? No. But do I think higher education will become unrecognizable? Absolutely.

Why 6 colleges are cutting tuition — from educationdive.com by Daniel Shumski

Excerpt:

Amid news that the “sticker price” for college tuition is often a work of fiction — there are at least 200 colleges where no one pays full price for their education — some schools have been striking out in a different direction. They’re lowering their prices across the board in a practice sometimes called a “tuition reset.”

The idea is simple: Rather than tempting students with big discounts, administrators are hoping that applying a lower tuition more consistently will help them stand out. In most cases, the schools maintain that it’s not about taking in less money in the aggregate and that their programs will not suffer.

So what kinds of numbers are we talking about? Here are six schools that cut their tuition drastically, along with a look at the hard numbers and what the school had to say about the price drop.

The Amazon of higher education — from slate.com by Gabriel Kahn
How tiny, struggling Southern New Hampshire University has become a behemoth.

Excerpt:

Five years ago, Southern New Hampshire University was a 2,000-student private school struggling against declining enrollment, poor name recognition, and teetering finances.

Today, it’s the Amazon.com of higher education. The school’s burgeoning online division has 180 different programs with an enrollment of 34,000. Students are referred to as “customers.” It undercuts competitors on tuition. And it deploys data analytics for everything from anticipating future demand to figuring out which students are most likely to stumble.

“We are super-focused on customer service, which is a phrase that most universities can’t even use,” says Paul LeBlanc, SNHU’s president.

Addendum on 1/9/14:

MOOCs ain’t over — from christenseninstitute.org by Michelle Rhee-Weise

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Over the last month, journal headlines have been heralding the death of massive online open courses (MOOCs). You could almost hear the sigh of relief from the academy. With Sebastian Thrun himself acknowledging the “lousy” quality of the MOOC product, told-you-so skeptics have been giddily pointing out that Udacity, in its failure to disrupt higher education, is now moving on to vocational training.

Sadly, what audiences are missing is that Thrun’s shift to workforce training is precisely what has the potential to disrupt and severely impact traditional postsecondary education. We at the Christensen Institute have already written extensively about how MOOCs were not displaying the right markers for disruption (see here, here, here, and here), but we became more hopeful as they started to offer clusters of courses. Coursera announced Foundations of Business with Wharton, while edX and MITX introduced the Xseries in Computer Science as well as Supply Chain & Logistics. These moves appeared to map better to employer needs and what we describe as areas of nonconsumption. In their turn away from career-oriented training, colleges and universities have unwittingly left unattended a niche of nonconsumers—people over-served by traditional forms of higher education, underprepared for the workforce, and seeking lifelong learning pathways.

Can we “THINK BIG” within the industry of higher education?

On 12/18/2013, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, education reform, experimentation, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, ideas, innovation, reinvent, staying relevant, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
Can we THINK BIG?

ThinkBiggerYet-DanielChristian-August282013

Also see:

Moonshot Thinking
Moonshots live in the gray area between audacious technology and pure science fiction. Instead of a mere 10% gain, a moonshot aims for a 10x improvement over what currently exists. The combination of a huge problem, a radical solution to that problem, and the breakthrough technology that just might make that solution possible, is the essence of a moonshot.
.
SolveForX.com

Reflections on “Is it too late to reinvent our universities?” [Maddock]

On 12/16/2013, in colleges, community colleges, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, innovation, reinvent, staying relevant, universities, by Daniel Christian

Is it too late to reinvent our universities? — from forbes.com by Mike Maddock

Excerpt (most emphasis from DSC):

A new survey by Moody’s Investor Service reports that more than 40% of U.S. colleges and universities face stagnant or falling tuition revenue and enrollment.

That’s four in 10!

It isn’t a misprint. For you data heads, let me quote from the news release that accompanied the research report.

“Moody’s key findings include net tuition revenue declines at a projected 28% of public and 19% of private universities, with net tuition revenue growth below inflation projected for 44% of public and 42% of private universities and total enrollment declines at nearly half of public and private universities. In our prior survey, 15% of public and 18% of private universities projected net tuition revenue declines.”

From DSC:
Back in February of 2009, I publicly asked whether there was a bubble in higher education (see 2/16/09 entry) — being pretty sure there was one developing even before 2009.

A year or two later, there wasn’t any doubt in my mind that there was a bubble in higher ed. Then for me, the question became…”Has it popped yet?”

Fast forward to 2013 and it seems I have my answer. It’s a definite one; there’s no mistaking it. The bubble has popped.

For those of us working within higher education, time is no longer on our side. We have been too slow to adapt and not innovative enough with our experiments. If we keep this up, I can’t help but think that the answer to Maddock’s question is a “Yes.”

But we can change. We need to be willing to experiment, innovate, fail, pivot, try things again. It would be good to model this for our students — as most likely, many of them are going to be doing this sort of thing throughout their lifetimes.

Along these lines…this addendum concerns me:

Millennials view education as least satisfying segment for empowerment, workplace collaboration — from thejournal.com by Dian Schaffhauser

Average student debt for the Class of 2012: $29,400 [The Project on Student Debt, Dec 2013]

On 12/06/2013, in change, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, by Daniel Christian

Average student debt for the Class of 2012: $29,400

Excerpt from overview (emphasis DSC):

Student Debt and the Class of 2012 is our eighth annual report on the cumulative student loan debt of recent graduates from four-year colleges. Our analysis finds that the debt levels of students who graduate with loans continue to rise, with considerable variation among states as well as among colleges.

Seven in 10 college seniors who graduated in 2012 had student loan debt, with an average of $29,400 for those with loans. The national share of seniors graduating with loans rose in recent years, from 68 percent in 2008 to 71 percent in 2012, while their debt at graduation increased by an average of six percent per year. Even though the financial crisis caused a substantial decline in private education lending while these borrowers were in school, about one-fifth (20%) of their debt is comprised of private loans, which are typically more costly and provide fewer consumer protections and repayment options than safer federal loans.

From DSC:
I think this speaks for itself…so I won’t elaborate much. I just wanted to use this new piece of data/evidence to say that:

1) This illustrates why there is such intense interest in MOOCs and other means of obtaining a credential, a certification, and/or any other means to make a living without having to go into a massive amount of debt.

2) There is danger in the status quo; I can’t help but wonder if the bubble has popped already at many colleges and universities — as seen by the increased amount of aid being given and the declining revenue per student that’s often the case these days.

Learning Ecosystems

The $10,000 degree & other items related to the need for higher ed to adapt to a game-changing environment

If change is inevitable– is progress optional? Four education institutions opting for progress [Morrison]

Reflections on “In the Telling” — it’s going to take a team-based approach to compete in the future

A highly recommended presentation for anyone who is working in higher education!!! [Pres by Prof Steven Van Belleghem]

Free online university receives accreditation, in time for graduating class of 7 [Lewin]

Coursera comes of age, announces Specializations [Lapowsky]

The need for “Trimtab Groups” in higher education

Higher education is now ground zero for disruption [Hixon]

Can we “THINK BIG” within the industry of higher education?

Reflections on “Is it too late to reinvent our universities?” [Maddock]

Average student debt for the Class of 2012: $29,400 [The Project on Student Debt, Dec 2013]

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