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"July 10, 2011 A College Education for All, Free and Online By Kevin Carey All around the world, people have been waiting for someone like Shai Reshef to come along. Reshef is the founder and president of the University of the People, a tuition-free online institution that enrolled its first class of students in 2009. UoPeople strives to serve the vast numbers of students who have no access to traditional higher education. Some can't afford it, or they live in countries where there are simply no good colleges to attend. Others live in rural areas, or identify with a culture, an ethnicity, or a gender that is excluded from public services. UoPeople students pay an application fee of between $10 and $50 and must have a high-school diploma and be proficient in English. There are also small fees for grading final exams. Otherwise, it's free. The university takes advantage of the growing body of free, open-access resources available online. Reshef made his fortune building for-profit higher-education businesses during the rise of the Internet, and he noticed a new culture of collaboration developing among young people who grew up in a wired world. So UoPeople relies heavily on peer-to-peer learning that takes place within a highly structured curriculum developed in part by volunteers. The university plans to award associate and bachelor's degrees, and it is now seeking American accreditation. Rather than deploy the most sophisticated and expensive technology, UoPeople keeps it simple-everything happens asynchronously, in text only. As long as students can connect their laptops or mobile devices to a telecommunications network, somewhere, they can study and learn. For most of humanity, this is the only viable way to get access to higher education. When the university polled students about why they had enrolled, the top answer was, "What other choice do I have?" Some observers have wondered how effective such an unorthodox learning model can be. But UoPeople's tw

I wonder how the University of the People will evolve compared to the fledgling Open Educational Resources University that is being founded by a few key institutions around the world. OERU has its business model roots in Web 2.0 as the foundation for collaboration. A group within OERU is also participating in Ray Schroeder's EduMOOC. For more info on OERU see http://wikieducator.org/images/c/c2/Report_OERU-Final-version.pdf

"February 12, 2012 'Academically Adrift': The News Gets Worse and Worse 'Academically Adrift': The News Gets Worse and Worse 1 Michael Morgenstern for The Chronicle Enlarge Image By Kevin Carey In the last few months of 2010, rumors began circulating among higher-education policy geeks that the University of Chicago Press was about to publish a new book written by a pair of very smart sociologists who were trying to answer a question to which most people thought they already knew the answer: How much do students learn while they're in college? Their findings, one heard, were ... interesting. The book, Academically Adrift, by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, fulfilled that promise-and then some. It was no surprise that The Chronicle gave prominent coverage to the conclusion that "American higher education is characterized by limited or no learning for a large proportion of students," but few people anticipated that the book would become the rare piece of serious academic scholarship that jumps the fence and roams free into the larger culture. Vanity Fair used space normally allotted to Kennedy hagiography to call it a "crushing exposé of the heretofore secret society known as 'college.'" The gossip mavens at Gawker ran the book through their patented Internet cynicism machine and wrote that "To get a college degree, you must go into a soul-crushing amount of debt. And what do you get for all that money? Not learning." The New Yorker featured Academically Adrift in a typically brilliant essay by Louis Menand. In one of her nationally syndicated columns, Kathleen Parker called the book a "dense tome" while opining that the failure of higher education constituted a "dot-connecting exercise for Uncle Shoulda, who someday will say-in Chinese-'How could we have let this happen?'" Her response proved that Kathleen Parker has a gift for phrasing and did not actually read the book, whose main text runs to only 144 concise and well-argued pages. But the definitive

WASHINGTON -- The college "completion agenda" is running behind schedule, at least in substantially boosting the national proportion of degree-holders. But from a policy and public-relations perspective, the foundation-led campaign has been a home run. On Monday the Lumina Foundation released its third annual report tracking progress toward the foundation's goal for 60 percent of Americans to obtain a "high quality" degree or credential by 2025. The report found that 38.3 percent of working-age adults held at least a two-year degree in 2010, which is up from 37.9 in 2008. At that pace, less than 47 percent of Americans will hold a degree by 2025, according to the report, which will leave the workforce short by 23 million needed degree-holders. "We are nowhere near at the pace we need to be," said Jamie Merisotis, Lumina's president and CEO.

"January 24, 2012 Colleges Can Take 4 Steps to Assure Quality, Group Says By Dan Berrett Increasing the percentage of college graduates in the United States has become a collective aspiration of policy makers, advocates for higher education, and President Obama. But this push for quantity will mean little if colleges cannot demonstrate the quality of the degrees they confer, says an advocacy group. The group, the New Leadership Alliance for Student Learning and Accountability, released today a set of guidelines it says will help colleges assess and improve student achievement and, in the process, better demonstrate the quality of their offerings. The guidelines are being presented at the Council for Higher Education Accreditation's annual meeting in Washington, with endorsements from 27 organizations, chiefly accreditors and associations. The guidelines stake out four broad principles of assessment and accountability for a college to follow: setting ambitious goals for the outcomes of undergraduate education; gathering evidence about how the institution is faring in pursuit of those outcomes; using that evidence to improve learning; and sharing the results. The essential idea is to clearly articulate and make intentional the objectives that guide student learning, said David C. Paris, executive director of the alliance. "That's our goal," he said, "an evidence-based profession." The alliance was started in 2009 by several higher-education leaders and foundations to respond to growing calls for accountability in the sector. The assumption was that colleges needed to define how they would substantiate student learning-or lawmakers would do it for them. The new guidelines expand on the alliance's previous efforts, including a statement of principles to guide student learning, which were released in 2008, and a pledge by more than 100 college presidents to take steps at their institutions that are largely identical to the ones set out in the new guidelines. O

"June 13, 2010, 08:00 PM ET Pennsylvania's 14-Campus State System to Explore Shared Degrees Pennsylvania's State System of Higher Education is considering pilot distance-learning, collaborative-degree programs across its 14 campuses in fields that are underenrolled on individual campuses, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. System leaders will present a plan to the faculty union on Monday that is expected to recommend such "shared programs" in areas like physics and foreign languages. Karen Ball, the system's vice chancellor for external relations, said officials would not identify the specific programs in the proposal before the faculty briefing."

"Adult education for the 21st century Too many are unable to make the leap from community college to a four-year degree By Susan C. Aldridge July 6, 2010 I have had the pleasure of handing diplomas to some unusual people at commencement. Still, it was startling to see the child walk toward me. He was 9. He looked younger. He wasn't accepting the diploma for himself, of course. It was for his dad, on active duty in Iraq. He'd sent his son, living on a base in Germany, to get it for him. "Congratulations," I said. He and his dad deserved it. At University of Maryland University College (UMUC), our graduates are America's adult learners. Almost all work full time. Half are parents. Their diplomas often reflect the work, sacrifice - and triumph - of an entire family. The personal achievements of our students, though, are the exception rather than the rule. They highlight a national problem. UMUC graduates often begin studying at the "unsung heroes" of higher education: America's community colleges. But each year, thousands of community college students who want to earn a bachelor's degree - particularly those from modest-income or minority families - cannot continue. America's four-year colleges don't accommodate them. This is not just a tragedy for them. It is a tragedy for our nation. Researchers estimate that baby boomer retirements will soon leave our workforce 14 million shy of the number of four-year degree recipients we need. What stands in the way? First, cost. Students paying about $2,500 a year for community college tuition cannot always afford the $7,000 average for public universities, much less the $26,000 average for private institutions. And there are other obstacles. Four-year colleges and universities often reject credits from transfer students. They schedule courses at challenging times for students who work. Sometimes they cannot even provide enough parking spaces for people rushing from work to class. When it comes to higher educat

"While an undergraduate at John Brown University in Siloam Springs, Ark., Caitlin Getchell juggled 18 credit hours each semester. In an attempt to lighten her workload during the school year and still enjoy her summer vacation, Getchell turned to an online class one summer. Luckily for her, the American government class she selected mostly contained information she already knew, and she breezed through it. No research papers were required, and open book tests were allowed; there was also regular posting on a message board by students. But, Getchell says, if the class had been something different, she might not have done as well. "If it had been a subject I didn't know much about - Calculus or Chemistry for example - I think I would have really struggled," she says. Getchell, who received a bachelor's degree in history in 2007, adds that she was glad she took the class online. And she's not alone in finding the benefits of online learning irresistible. Enrollment in online courses is growing rapidly, and several universities are even offering degrees strictly online. In fall 2008, 4.6 million students at degree-granting higher institutions took at least one class online, a nearly 17 percent increase over fall 2007. Online enrollment accounted for 25 percent of total enrollment for fall 2007, according to the Sloan Consortium, which has conducted a survey of online education in the U.S. every year since 2002."

No Time to Waste A publication of the SREB 4 Imperatives for States: 1. Set statewide priority and direction, with specific goals, for increasing the numbers of degrees and certificates - including raising accountability for system and institutional leaders and setting measures to assess credential completion, among other actions. 2. Increase access and enrollment in postsecondary education even more, by improving college affordability, students' college readiness, and drawing more adults to postsecondary study. 3. Increase the numbers of credentials earned by students in all colleges and universities through targeted institutional actions- building campus cultures that make completion the first priority and institutionalizing a series of actions that guide students more directly to a credential. 4. Increase productivity and cost-efficiency in degree completion ─ by introducing strategies that reduce excess credits, streamline college-transfer systems, and expect timely degree completion at lower costs.

"October 6, 2010 How to Help Students Complete a Degree on Time By Jennifer Gonzalez Speakers at a conference that opened here (Baltimore) on Wednesday discussed policies and practices that states and colleges are using or considering to help more students complete an undergraduate degree or credential in a timely way. The conference, "Time to Completion: How States and Systems Are Tackling the Time Dilemma," was organized by two nonprofit organizations, Jobs for the Future and the Southern Regional Education Board, whose goals include broadening college access and making higher education more affordable. At the opening of the two-day event on Wednesday, officials with the Southern Regional Educational Board said they planned to start tracking the length of time it takes students in the organization's 16 member states to earn credits toward graduation. Officials with Jobs for the Future announced new online tools the group is putting together to help institutions, system officers, and policy makers better understand different aspects of time-to-completion issues."

"StraighterLine's challenge to the rising cost of college Baltimore startup offers 'first year of college' online for $999 By Gus G. Sentementes, The Baltimore Sun October 31, 2010 After putting off finishing her college degree for more than two decades, Elizabeth Smith this year needed just one more class - an algebra course - to earn her bachelor's degree in theater arts. The full-time worker and single mother of two didn't have time or money to spare, so she signed up for a course offered by Baltimore-based StraighterLine Inc. She finished the course in seven days over the summer, working on her laptop as her kids frolicked in a pool. And the course cost only $138 - a fraction of the price for a similar course at a four-year or community college. At a time when a year of college can cost as much as a luxury car, StraighterLine Inc. offers a cheap alternative: online courses starting at $138 a month, or $999 for a year of "101"-style classes typically taken by freshmen, ranging from mathematics to English to business statistics. The startup has high hopes of altering the economics of higher education by solely offering online courses a la carte - and no degrees. It joins other for-profit companies that offer online education to students seeking lower prices and flexibility in course schedules. "

"January 11, 2011, 7:05 am By Peter Wood Does American higher education need a robust for-profit sector? What are the benefits of preserving it? In the last of this four-part series on the current regulatory assault on for-profit colleges and universities, I argue that for-profit higher education adds a vital element of versatility to our system. The for-profit sector right now provides some examples of egregious misbehavior. The companies that are engaged in mischief need to be reined in, but we should do that in a manner that preserves the very real potential of this sector to serve the public good. Reprise At the end of part 3 of this series, I quoted one of the more eloquent defenders of for-profit higher education, Diane Auer Jones. She makes the case that the for-profits, such as her employer, Career Education Corporation, fill an important gap by offering a college education to students whose academic records and financial situations are likely to prevent them from attending (or completing) a mainstream college. Jones acknowledges the student-loan debt problem (and high default rates) but counters that (1) the public costs of for-profits are actually lower on a per student basis than the nonprofits, once all the hidden subsides are added to the non-profit side of the ledger; and (2) the real problem with excessive student-loan debt arises from Congressional rules that allow individuals to take out federal loans to cover all sorts of expenses (phones, cars, day care) beyond tuition, room, and board. That's one way to defend the for-profit sector. Or more precisely, the for-profit sub-sector that focuses on serving the "under-served." But it is not the argument I make here. The for-profit universities have identified a very lucrative market niche in going after these left-behind students, but it is a niche that lasts only so long as there are large amounts of loose federal dollars available through our student-loan system for individuals who have a co

"Students finding cheaper ways to get college degrees By Christopher Magan, Staff Writer Updated 8:49 PM Sunday, November 28, 2010 Ohio students pursuing alternative paths to obtaining degrees saved millions of dollars last year while helping colleges and universities across the state increase enrollment 3.9 percent. A study by the Ohio Board of Regents found that the number of transfer students and online enrollments significantly increased last year, with a 21 percent growth in transfers between state schools and a 25 percent increase in "distance learning" - students attending classes online or outside the traditional classroom. More than half of new students enrolled last year in Ohio - a total of 263,116 - attend community colleges and branch campuses. By transferring credits from these less expensive institutions to four-year universities, Ohio students and their families saved $20 million last year, or an average of more than $550 per student. Eric Fingerhut, chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents, said committing to more low-cost college pathways is key to the state's strategic plan. Most local colleges saw gains in one or both types of students. "

"June 12, 2011 In Follow-Up, 'Academically Adrift' Students Show Worrisome Levels of Debt and Joblessness, Author Says By Scott Carlson Some people have been talking about a bubble in higher education. Richard Arum, a professor of sociology and education at New York University, doesn't quite buy it. But he did tell a room of college administrators here that higher education was going through a sea change: Once upon a time, if you took the financial risk of getting a college degree, no matter your major, you would do extremely well in life, compared to someone with only a high-school degree. Times have changed, he said. "It's not that college degrees aren't worthwhile," but the returns are diminished, he said. "After 2008, "you can't be so sure that the college credential, waving that paper in the air, is enough to give you the job that is going to pay enough that it didn't matter how many loans you took out." Mr. Arum appeared here at the Summer Seminar, a conference put on by the Lawlor Group and Hardwick-Day, two higher-education consulting firms based in the Twin Cities, to discuss the book he wrote with Josipa Roksa, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (University of Chicago Press, 2011). By now, most academics are familiar with the book and its provocative thesis: Students, the authors contend, spend a great deal of time socializing and relatively less time studying effectively. As a result, they don't seem to be learning as much as we might like to think they are, despite the high grades many have. "They might not hand out A's on college campuses like they're candy," he said, "but we hand out B's like they are candy. You've got to really work today to get something below a B." The book represents the work the researchers did in tracking through their first two years of college 2,300 students who entered 24 representative four-year institutions in the fall of 2005. "By the time the book came out, we had data not just on the first tw

"If Engineers Were to Rethink Higher Ed's Future September 27, 2011, 10:27 pm By Jeffrey Selingo Atlanta - Walk into a college president's office these days, and you'll probably find a degree hanging on the wall from one of three academic disciplines: education, social sciences, or the humanities and fine arts. Some 70 percent of college leaders completed their studies in one of those fields, according to the American Council on Education. You're unlikely to discover many engineering degrees. Just 2 percent of college presidents are engineers. Yet, when we think of solving complex problems, we normally turn to engineers to help us figure out solutions. And higher education right now is facing some tough issues: rising costs; low completion rates; and delivery systems, curricula, and teaching methods that show their age. So what if engineers tackled those problems using their reasoning skills and tested various solutions through simulations? Perhaps then we would truly design a university of the future. That's the basic idea behind Georgia Tech's new Center for 21st Century Universities. The center is officially described as a "living laboratory for fundamental change in higher education," but its director, Rich DeMillo, describes it in terms we can all understand: higher education's version of the Silicon Valley "garage." DeMillo knows that concept well, having come from Hewlett-Packard, where he was chief technology officer (he's also a former Georgia Tech dean). Applying the garage mentality to innovation in higher ed is an intriguing concept, and as DeMillo described it to me over breakfast on Georgia Tech's Atlanta campus on Tuesday, I realized how few college leaders adopt its principles. Take, for example, a university's strategic plan. Such documents come and go with presidents, and the proposals in every new one are rarely tested in small ways before leaders try to scale them across the campus. After all, presidents have l

" MIT Expands 'Open' Courses, Adds Completion Certificates December 19, 2011 - 4:28am The Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- which pioneered the idea of making course materials free online -- today announced a major expansion of the idea, with the creation of MITx, which will provide for interaction among students, assessment and the awarding of certificates of completion to students who have no connection to MIT. MIT is also starting a major initiative -- led by Provost L. Rafael Reif -- to study online teaching and learning. The first course through MITx is expected this spring. While the institute will not charge for the courses, it will charge what it calls "a modest fee" for the assessment that would lead to a credential. The credential will be awarded by MITx and will not constitute MIT credit. The university also plans to continue MIT OpenCourseWare, the program through which it makes course materials available online. An FAQ from MIT offers more details on the new program. While MIT has been widely praised for OpenCourseWare, much of the attention in the last year from the "open" educational movement has shifted to programs like the Khan Academy (through which there is direct instruction provided, if not yet assessment) and an initiative at Stanford University that makes courses available -- courses for which some German universities are providing academic credit. The new initiative would appear to provide some of the features (instruction such as offered by Khan, and certification that some are creating for the Stanford courses) that have been lacking in OpenCourseWare. 35 Disqus Like Dislike Login Add New Comment Image Real-time updating is enabled. (Pause) Showing 1 comment william czander In 1997, Peter Drucker made a profound prediction he predicted that in 30 years the mortar and brick university campuses would be driven out of existence by their inexorable tuition, He did not predict the financi

"January 8, 2012 'Badges' Earned Online Pose Challenge to Traditional College Diplomas 'Badges' Earned Online Pose Challenge to Traditional College Diplomas 1 Photo illustration by Bob McGrath for The Chronicle Enlarge Image By Jeffrey R. Young The spread of a seemingly playful alternative to traditional diplomas, inspired by Boy Scout achievement patches and video-game power-ups, suggests that the standard certification system no longer works in today's fast-changing job market. Educational upstarts across the Web are adopting systems of "badges" to certify skills and abilities. If scouting focuses on outdoorsy skills like tying knots, these badges denote areas employers might look for, like mentorship or digital video editing. Many of the new digital badges are easy to attain-intentionally so-to keep students motivated, while others signal mastery of fine-grained skills that are not formally recognized in a traditional classroom. At the free online-education provider Khan Academy, for instance, students get a "Great Listener" badge for watching 30 minutes of videos from its collection of thousands of short educational clips. With enough of those badges, paired with badges earned for passing standardized tests administered on the site, users can earn the distinction of "Master of Algebra" or other "Challenge Patches." Traditional colleges and universities are considering badges and other alternative credentials as well. In December the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced that it will create MITx, a self-service learning system in which students can take online tests and earn certificates after watching the free lecture materials the university has long posted as part of its OpenCourseWare project. MIT also has an arrangement with a company called OpenStudy, which runs online study groups, to give online badges to students who give consistently useful answers in discussion forums set up around the university's free course materials. But the b

"Credentials, Good Will Hunting & MITx It's no secret that the authority to bestow credentials is a core source of value for higher education institutions; it's also a key means by which the institution protects itself from unwanted competition from non-sanctioned education providers. The importance of credentials to higher education is what makes the recent announcement from MIT particularly interesting. MIT has received a great deal of positive attention in response to the MITx announcement - a "game changer", argued Forbes. It may well turn out to be just that, but I think it's useful to see this initiative as part of a broader trend that began in earnest six or seven years ago: the creation and (slow) legitimization of new types of learning providers, ways of learning, and credentials. As soon as access to the Net became commonplace, innovators saw the potential to offer learners educational opportunities outside of established educational institutions. (You might recall oft-repeated quote from John Chambers, CEO of Cisco: "the next killer app is education over the internet (New York Times, Nov 17, 1999). The innovations took a number of forms, but for those of us in higher education, possibly the most interesting of the bunch were those that were presented as direct challenges to higher education. Here are a few of the more interesting examples: - "UnCollege" was started by college dropout, Dale Stephens, who declared there are better ways to learn than what is being offered by US colleges and universities. - The "Personal MBA" argued that spending 80k (plus lost wages) on an MBA was unnecessary, and set up an online community to allow people to learn outside of institutions. - Peter Thiel offered 100,000 per year to 20 students that would drop out of college to launch a business. - And possibly most significant is the creation of "badges" that allow people to demonstrate mastery of subjects in a variety of ways. These initiatives have a fascinati

"Wal-Mart to Offer Its Workers a College Program By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD and STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM Published: June 3, 2010 FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - Now on sale at Wal-Mart: college degrees for its employees. The purveyor of inexpensive jeans and lawnmowers is dipping its toe into the online-education waters, working with a Web-based university to offer its employees in the United States affordable college degrees. The partnership with American Public University, a for-profit school with about 70,000 online students, will allow some Wal-Mart and Sam's Club employees to earn credits in areas like retail management and logistics for performing their regular jobs. The university will offer eligible employees 15 percent price reductions on tuition, and Wal-Mart will invest $50 million over three years in other tuition assistance for the employees who participate. "

"Reframing College Completion October 28, 2010 The bigger and broader the objective, the more diffused the responsibility for achieving it can be. For instance, with a mammoth undertaking like the college completion goal that President Obama and like-minded foundations and associations have laid out for the United States over the next 10-15 years, saying that "the country" needs to increase its college-going rate to 60 percent is so general that it makes both everyone and no one responsible for doing the heavy lifting. To combat that vagueness, policy makers and politicians have tended to break down the job into discrete units, with a focus on states (where various sectors of public higher education can work together, with the guidance of governors and chancellors) and individual colleges (which can be held accountable for their own performance and improvement). But in a pair of reports to be released today, the postsecondary education program at the Center for American Progress -- which takes pride in reframing existing policy discussions -- points out that both of those approaches have inherent problems. Focusing on the states creates difficulties in those metropolitan areas where multiple states intersect, putting up unnecessary barriers (in the form of financial aid, tuition and credit transfer policies) that inhibit the flow of students. And viewing higher education completion through the prism of individual institutions' productivity -- judging them on how many graduates they produce -- ignores the rapidly increasing numbers of students who attend multiple colleges. "[A]n institution's graduation rate is not what we truly care about," three of the center's staff members write. "What matters more is whether a student completes a degree anywhere in the system -- regardless of that student's pattern of mobility." In the two papers, the center offers alternatives -- to complement, not replace, the existing approaches. In "Easy Come, EZ-GO," three research

"Online Course Provider, StraighterLine, to Offer Critical-Thinking Tests to Students January 19, 2012, 12:29 pm By Jeff Selingo As alternatives to the college diploma have been bandied about recently, one question always seems to emerge: How do you validate badges or individual classes as a credential in the absence of a degree? One company that has been hailed by some as revolutionizing introductory courses might have an answer. The company, StraighterLine, announced on Thursday that beginning this fall it will offer students access to three leading critical-thinking tests, allowing them to take their results to employers or colleges to demonstrate their proficiency in certain academic areas. The tests-the Collegiate Learning Assessment, sponsored by the Council for Aid to Education, and the Proficiency Profile, from the Educational Testing Service-each measure critical thinking and writing, among other academic areas. The iSkills test, also from ETS, measures the ability of a student to navigate and critically evaluate information from digital technology. Until now, the tests were largely used by colleges to measure student learning, but students did not receive their scores. That's one reason that critics of the tests have questioned their effectiveness since students have little incentive to do well. Burck Smith, the founder and chief executive of StraighterLine, which offers online, self-paced introductory courses, said on Thursday that students would not need to take classes with StraighterLine in order to sit for the tests. But he hopes that, for students who do take both classes and tests, the scores on the test will help validate StraighterLine courses. StraighterLine doesn't grant degrees and so can't be accredited. It depends on accredited institutions to accept its credits, which has not always been an easy task for the company. "For students looking to get a leg up in the job market or getting into college," Mr. Smith said, "t