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"April 3, 2011 A Perfect Storm in Undergraduate Education, Part 2 By Thomas H. Benton What is keeping undergraduates from learning? Last month, I speculated from my perspective as a college teacher about a set of interlocking factors that have contributed to the problem. In that column (The Chronicle, February 25), I referred to the alarming data presented by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa in Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (University of Chicago Press, 2011) in the context of President Obama's call for more students to attend college in order to prepare for the economy of the future. Why, I asked, should we send more students to college-at an ever greater cost-when more than a third of them, according to Arum and Roksa, demonstrate "no improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills" after four years of education? This month I want to speculate on why students (and, to a lesser extent, their parents) are not making choices that support educational success. What could they possibly be thinking? The student as consumer. Surely adolescent expectations of Animal House debaucheries have been with us since the decline of college as preparation for the ministry. But, in the past few generations, the imagery and rhetoric of academic marketing have cultivated a belief that college will be, if not decadent, at least primarily recreational: social activities, sporting events, and travel. Along the way, there may be some elective cultural enrichment and surely some preprofessional training and internships, the result of which will be access to middle-class careers. College brochures and Web sites may mention academic rankings, but students probably won't read anything about expectations of rigor and hard work: On the contrary, "world-renowned professors" will provide you with a "world-class education." Increasingly, students are buying an "experience" instead of earning an education, and, in the competition to attract cu

"Ready for Change.edu? January 11, 2012 - 3:00am By Paul Fain Andrew S. Rosen takes the long view when talking about higher education. As CEO of Kaplan, Inc., he often defends the role of for-profit colleges in an evolving marketplace, peppering versions of his stump speech with tales about the creation of public universities and community colleges. His point is that some skepticism about for-profits is similar to the snobbery those older sectors faced from elite private higher education. Rosen goes further in his debut book, Change.edu: Rebooting for the New Talent Economy, which attempts to paint a picture of higher education's future as well as its history. He also takes a turn as a journalist of sorts - an interesting twist for the former general counsel of the Washington Post Co. - writing about his campus visits to other institutions, a couple of which are Kaplan competitors. The book is ambitious in its scope, particularly for an author with obvious vested interests. But most reviewers have given Rosen high marks. Kirkus Reviews writes: "Incredibly, his argument never comes off as self-serving; the author's thorough exploration of 'Harvard Envy' and the rise of 'resort' campuses is both fascinating and enlightening." Rosen recently answered questions over e-mail about his book, which was released by Kaplan Publishing. Q: The book arrives amid a series of challenges for your industry. What did you hope to accomplish by writing it? A: I've spent most of my life studying or working in education, with students of all ages and preparation levels: top students from America's most elite institutions and working adults and low-income students who have few quality choices to change their lives. I've come to see how the American higher education system (as with K-12) is profoundly tilted in favor of those who already have advantages. Our society keeps investing more and more in the relatively small and unchanging number of students who have the privil

Can You Hear Me Now? August 19, 2010 That is the logic Georgia Gwinnett College employed when it decided to offer its more than 300 full- and part-time faculty members cell phones and encouraged them to respond to any calls or texts from students within 24 hours. Under the program, professors are offered a state-of-the-art smartphone and a Sprint data plan that includes the most sophisticated wireless Internet coverage. It is part of a several-tier effort by Georgia Gwinnett - a public, four-year, noncompetitive-admissions college founded in 2005 - to defy the historically low retention rates typical of colleges that set such a modest bar for admission (Georgia Gwinnett admits any Georgia high school graduate). And so far, they say, it is working. The retention rate for returning sophomores at Georgia Gwinnett stands at 75 percent. That is about double the average rate for noncompetitive-admissions colleges in Georgia, according to Tom Mundie, dean of the school of science and technology at Georgia Gwinnett, and on par with many public institutions that have competitive admissions. In engagement surveys, Mundie says, students have reported "feeling that faculty care about and are accessible to them." These plaudits and retention numbers are not driven solely by invitations to call or text professors and expect a reasonably swift response, Mundie says. Other aspects of the college's retention effort probably contribute as well, including small class sizes and a mentoring program that arranges for professors to advise students on academic, career, and personal matters. But professors and administrators at the college seem to believe there is a substantial correlation between the cell phone program and the young institution's impressive retention numbers -- enough that the college, which has grown its student body and faculty by leaps and bounds since its founding five years ago, is preparing to spend $350,000 on faculty cell phones and data

"University Ventures Letter Volume II, #2 Announcing University Ventures Thirty years ago America was an economic basket case. The official unemployment rate in 1982 exceeded 10%, but apples-to-apples unemployment (counting it the way we do today) was over 16%. Inflation was north of 6% and the prime interest rate reached 21.5% in June 1982. Things weren't much better in the UK where deindustrialization had resulted in unemployment over 20% in many regions, and where the 'workshop of the world' became a net importer of goods for the first time ever. It's always darkest before the dawn. So few recognized we were on the verge of a revolution in information technology that would drive productivity increases across almost all industries and create new ones over the next two decades. If there's any consensus at all in today's debate about how to rekindle economic growth, it's the importance of education, and particularly higher education. We need more educated workers to innovate and increase productivity. Not coincidentally, the largest industry that has not seen much in the way of productivity improvements since 1982 is education. All but a handful of the 170 million students currently enrolled at tertiary institutions around the world are learning the way their parents and grandparents learned (often learning virtually the same curriculum). The 'sage on a stage' model remains unchanged, and the well over $1 trillion in annual spending on higher education continues to be directed to the same functions. And so the stage (if not the sage) is set for the world to focus on higher education as it never has before, and for dramatic changes in programs, delivery models, costs and learning outcomes. While the private sector will play a key role in this next revolution, it cannot succeed alone. Traditional universities and colleges - public and private -- will be the crucibles of change, in partnership with entrepreneurs and companies. The

"January 17, 2012 Investors Backed by Publishing Giant Team Up With Calif. University to Start a Bilingual College By Goldie Blumenstyk A $100-million investment fund backed by the German publishing and media giant Bertelsmann and the endowment for two Texas public university systems is jumping into higher education with two ventures aimed key markets. One is a new bilingual college aimed at Hispanic students, in partnership with an affiliate of Chapman University. The other is a new London-based distance-education company that will assist European universities in creating, marketing, and managing online courses and degree programs. For the yet-to-be-named Hispanic-serving college, the new fund, called University Ventures, will form a partnership with Brandman University, an 11,000-student nonprofit institution now known for serving working adult students at its 25 campuses in California (plus one in Washington State) through online and face-to-face courses. Once known as Chapman University College, it was separately accredited from Chapman three years ago and renamed for a benefactor, the Brandman Foundation, in April. Gary Brahm, Brandman's chancellor, said his institution has a good record in serving and graduating Hispanic students, who make up more than a quarter of Brandman's enrollment. (It claims a six-year graduation rate for students, all of whom now enter with at least 12 credits, of 68 percent.) The new partnership with University Ventures presents a chance "to do something very significant in higher education and to do something very significant in California," he said in an interview on Monday. The program will be aimed at the many students from Spanish-speaking homes who have learned enough English to graduate from high school but either are too intimidated or too inadequately prepared to get through traditional college programs taught fully in English. "This has the opportunity to significantly improve their success," he said. Together, Unive

"January 23, 2012 Invisible Gorillas Are Everywhere By William Pannapacker By now most everyone has heard about an experiment that goes something like this: Students dressed in black or white bounce a ball back and forth, and observers are asked to keep track of the bounces to team members in white shirts. While that's happening, another student dressed in a gorilla suit wanders into their midst, looks around, thumps his chest, then walks off, apparently unseen by most observers because they were so focused on the bouncing ball. Voilà: attention blindness. The invisible-gorilla experiment is featured in Cathy Davidson's new book, Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn (Viking, 2011). Davidson is a founder of a nearly 7,000-member organization called Hastac, or the Humanities, Arts, Sciences, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory, that was started in 2002 to promote the use of digital technology in academe. It is closely affiliated with the digital humanities and reflects that movement's emphasis on collaboration among academics, technologists, publishers, and librarians. Last month I attended Hastac's fifth conference, held at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Davidson's keynote lecture emphasized that many of our educational practices are not supported by what we know about human cognition. At one point, she asked members of the audience to answer a question: "What three things do students need to know in this century?" Without further prompting, everyone started writing down answers, as if taking a test. While we listed familiar concepts such as "information literacy" and "creativity," no one questioned the process of working silently and alone. And noticing that invisible gorilla was the real point of the exercise. Most of us are, presumably, the products of compulsory educational practices that were developed during the Industrial Revolution. And the way most of us teach is a relic of the s

"December 31, 2011 Let's Improve Learning. OK, but How? By W. Robert Connor Does American higher education have a systematic way of thinking about how to improve student learning? It would certainly be useful, especially at a time when budgets are tight and the pressure is on to demonstrate better results. Oh, there's plenty of discussion-bright ideas, old certainties, and new approaches-and a rich discourse about innovation, reinvention, and transformation. But the most powerful ideas about improving learning are often unspoken. Amid all the talk about change, old assumptions exert their continuing grasp. For example, most of us assume that expanding the number of fields and specialties in the curriculum (and of faculty to teach them), providing more small classes, and lowering teaching loads (and, hence, lowering student-faculty ratios) are inherently good things. But while many of those ideas are plausible, few have been rigorously evaluated. So maybe it's time to stop relying on assumptions about improving learning and start finding out what really works best. A genuine theory of change, as such a systematic evaluation of effectiveness is sometimes called, would be grounded in knowledge about how students learn, and in the best way to put that knowledge to work. The theory should also be educationally robust; that is, it should not just help colleges expose students to certain subject matter, but also challenge institutions to help students develop the long-lasting survival skills needed in a time of radical and often unpredictable change. And it must also have its feet on the ground, with a sure footing in financial realities. Above all, those who would develop a truly systematic way of thinking about and creating change must be able to articulate their purpose. Given the great diversity of institutional types, student demographics, history, and mission among American colleges and universities, it's hard to discern a shared sense of purpose. But when f

"Why Pay for Intro Textbooks? February 7, 2012 - 3:00am By Mitch Smith If ramen noodle sales spike at the start of every semester, here's one possible reason: textbooks can cost as much as a class itself; materials for an introductory physics course can easily top $300. Cost-conscious students can of course save money with used or online books and recoup some of their cash come buyback time. Still, it's a steep price for most 18-year-olds. But soon, introductory physics texts will have a new competitor, developed at Rice University. A free online physics book, peer-reviewed and designed to compete with major publishers' offerings, will debut next month through the non-profit publisher OpenStax College. Using Rice's Connexions platform, OpenStax will offer free course materials for five common introductory classes. The textbooks are open to classes anywhere and organizers believe the programs could save students $90 million in the next five years if the books capture 10 percent of the national market. OpenStax is funded by grants from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the 20 Million Minds Foundation and the Maxfield Foundation. Traditional publishers are quick to note that the new offerings will face competition. J. Bruce Hildebrand, executive director for higher education of the Association of American Publishers, said any textbook's use is ultimately determined by its academic value. "Free would appear to be difficult to compete with," Hildebrand said. "The issue always, however, is the quality of the materials and whether they enable students to learn, pass their course and get their degree. Nothing else really counts." In the past, open-source materials have failed to gain traction among some professors; their accuracy could be difficult to confirm because they hadn't been peer-reviewed, and supplementary materials were often nonexistent or lacking because they weren't organized for large-scale

"July 19, 2012 Inside the Coursera Contract: How an Upstart Company Might Profit From Free Courses How an Upstart Company Might Profit From Free Courses 1 Jim Wilson, The New York Times, Redux Andrew Ng, a co-founder of the company and a professor of computer science at Stanford U.: "We have a lot of white boards up around the office where these ideas are being written down and erased and written down and erased." Enlarge Image By Jeffrey R. Young Coursera has been operating for only a few months, but the company has already persuaded some of the world's best-known universities to offer free courses through its online platform. Colleges that usually move at a glacial pace are rushing into deals with the upstart company. But what exactly have they signed up for? And if the courses are free, how will the company-and the universities involved-make money to sustain them? Some clues can be found in the contract the institutions signed. The Chronicle obtained the agreement between Coursera and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, the first public university to make such a deal, under a Freedom of Information Act request, and Coursera officials say that the arrangement is similar to those with the other partners. The contract reveals that even Coursera isn't yet sure how it will bring in revenue. A section at the end of the agreement, titled "Possible Company Monetization Strategies," lists eight potential business models, including having companies sponsor courses. That means students taking a free course from Stanford University may eventually be barraged by banner ads or promotional messages. But the universities have the opportunity to veto any revenue-generating idea on a course-by-course basis, so very little is set in stone. Andrew Ng, a co-founder of the company and a professor of computer science at Stanford, describes the list as an act of "brainstorming" rather than a set plan. "We have a lot of white boards up around the office where these ideas

"The Year Ahead in IT, 2012 January 6, 2012 - 3:00am By Lev Gonick This series of annual Year Ahead articles on technology and education began on the eve of what we now know is one of the profound downturns in modern capitalism. When history is written, the impact of the deep economic recession of 2008-2012 will have been pivotal in the shifting balance of economic and political power around the world. Clear, too, is the reality that innovation and technology as it is applied to education is moving rapidly from its Anglo-American-centered roots to a now globally distributed dynamic generating disruptive activities that affect learners and institutions the world over. Seventy years ago, the Austrian-born Harvard lecturer and conservative political economist Joseph Schumpeter popularized the now famous description of the logic of capitalism, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. The opening of new markets, foreign or domestic … illustrate(s) the same process of industrial mutation - if I may use that biological term - that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. Our colleges and universities, especially those in the United States, are among the most conservative institutions in the world. The rollback of public investment in, pressure for access to, and indeterminate impact of globalization on postsecondary education all contribute to significant disorientation in our thinking about the future of the university. And then there are the disruptive impacts of information technology that only exacerbate the general set of contradictions that we associate with higher education. The faculty are autonomous and constrained, powerful and vulnerable, innovative at the margins yet conservative at the core, dedicated to education while demeaning teaching devoted to liberal arts and yet powerfully vocatio

"January 23, 2012 Outlook for Higher Education Remains Mixed, Moody's Says By Scott Carlson In a report released on Monday, Moody's Investors Service sticks with the mixed outlook for higher education that it established last year: For leading colleges that are well managed and diversified, the market is looking stable. For the rest, not so much. The outlook report, which is released annually at the beginning of the year, says that a majority of colleges-those dependent on tuition or state money-will continue to face challenges in the next 12 to 18 months. Those challenges will, in part, stem from the public's scrutiny of rising tuition and from pressures to keep it down. Analysts at the credit-rating agency also expect demand to rise for admission to the largest and highest-rated institutions, while other colleges may struggle to attract students. The Occupy protests and other events have put intense focus on college tuition. "Tuition levels are at a tipping point, and the cost of college will be a critical credit factor for universities to manage long-term," the report says. "We expect that the pace of future net tuition revenue growth, both on a total and a per-student basis, will be much lower than the strong growth experienced over the past 10 years." A declining yield in admissions is troubling trend, the report notes. Many colleges may appear more selective, but only because more students are applying to more colleges. "Median freshman yield rates (percentage of accepted freshmen who chose to enroll) at both private and public universities have steadily declined over the past five years, highlighting increased competition," the report says. "The trend of declining yield is particularly notable for the lower-rated private colleges, which are increasingly competing with lower-cost public colleges and feeling the most pressure to slow tuition increases and offer more tuition discounting." Demand for some graduate and professional programs, particularly

The Chronicle of Higher Education February 19, 2012 How 'Flipping' the Classroom Can Improve the Traditional Lecture By Dan Berrett Andrew P. Martin loves it when his lectures break out in chaos. It happens frequently, when he asks the 80 students in his evolutionary-biology class at the University of Colorado at Boulder to work in small groups to solve a problem, or when he asks them to persuade one another that the answer they arrived at before class is correct. When they start working together, his students rarely stay in their seats, which are bolted to the floor. Instead they gather in the hallway or in the aisles, or spill toward the front of the room, where the professor typically stands. Mr. Martin, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, drops in on the discussions, asking and answering questions, and hearing where students are stumped. "Students are effectively educating each other," he says of the din that overtakes his room. "It means they're in control, and not me." Enlarge Image How 'Flipping' the Classroom Can Improve the Traditional Lecture 2 Benjamin Rasmussen for The Chronicle Students discuss the relationship between finches' beak sizes and survival rates during Andrew Martin's evolutionary-biology class at the U. of Colorado at Boulder. Such moments of chaos are embraced by advocates of a teaching technique called "flipping." As its name suggests, flipping describes the inversion of expectations in the traditional college lecture. It takes many forms, including interactive engagement, just-in-time teaching (in which students respond to Web-based questions before class, and the professor uses this feedback to inform his or her teaching), and peer instruction. But the techniques all share the same underlying imperative: Students cannot passively receive material in class, which is one reason some students dislike flipping. Instead they gather the information largely outside of class, by reading, watching recorded lectures, or list

"Project Win-Win Project Win-Win involves 35 community colleges and colleges in six states-Louisiana, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin-in finding former students, no longer enrolled anywhere and never awarded any degree, whose records qualify them for associate's degrees, and get those degrees awarded retroactively. Simultaneously, this effort will identify former students who are "academically short" of an associate's degree by no more than nine credits, find them, and seek to bring them back to complete their degree. Project Win-Win, undertaken in a partnership of IHEP and the State Higher Education Executive Officers, and funded by Lumina Foundation for Education, is a major expansion of a pilot program conducted in the fall and spring terms of 2009-10 in nine of the 35 institutions and under the sponsorship of the Education Trust. The pilot schools (six community colleges in Louisiana, New York, and Ohio and three four-year colleges in Louisiana that award associate's degrees) discovered that finding the students and awarding these degrees is neither a simple nor an instant matter. However, by the end of their seven-month pilot, these institutions had already awarded or certified for award nearly 600 associate's degrees, and had lined up almost 1,600 students who were short by nine or fewer credits, hence "potential" degree recipients. The pilot schools will continue in the expanded version of Project Win-Win for one year, by the end of which IHEP expects to see them award about 1,000 associate's degrees, and have at least 2,000 students in line to complete their degree in a timely manner. Projecting those numbers out across both U.S. community colleges and four-year colleges that award associate's degrees would yield, at a minimum, an expected 12 percent increase in the number of associate's degrees awarded. Adding in four-year colleges that do not award associate's degrees themselves but can target students who

"Fixing the Broken Financing Model October 4, 2010 By Darryl G. Greer and Michael W. Klein In the title of a recent paper, David Breneman, a regarded higher education economist, asks: "Is the Business Model of Higher Education Broken?" While he objectively weighs the pros and cons of his question, we answer emphatically, yes! Put simply, the way in which America finances public colleges and universities, which serve over 70 percent of college students nationally, is severely and irreparably broken and needs to be changed. Without a new model, public higher education will fail its principal purpose of providing broad college opportunity, especially to low- and middle-income students and an emerging population of new Americans. Moreover, without a new funding rationale that has transparency and predictability for all funding partners, these colleges will lose the public trust - a critical element in sustaining the American democratic experience through education. Public colleges can achieve the dual goals of public and private benefits only by demonstrating equity and fairness regarding who goes to college; legitimacy for who pays and how; and responsibility for how colleges account for educational outcomes and sustaining the public trust. The solution as we see it should include a new public service corporation model that creates private partnerships; produces new revenue to replace lost public financing; protects and enhances the core educational enterprise; and, thereby, generates greater transparency, accountability and public trust that will support a sustained investment in public colleges. The Problem There is widespread evidence, in addition to opinion, that the longstanding model for financing public colleges that has seemed to work so well in many states for decades, now seems, even with an expected economic recovery, to need radical change. (See the soon-to-be-published "A New Model of Financing Public Colleges and Universities," in On the H

'Academically Adrift' January 18, 2011 If the purpose of a college education is for students to learn, academe is failing, according to Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, a book being released today by University of Chicago Press. The book cites data from student surveys and transcript analysis to show that many college students have minimal classwork expectations -- and then it tracks the academic gains (or stagnation) of 2,300 students of traditional college age enrolled at a range of four-year colleges and universities. The students took the Collegiate Learning Assessment (which is designed to measure gains in critical thinking, analytic reasoning and other "higher level" skills taught at college) at various points before and during their college educations, and the results are not encouraging: * 45 percent of students "did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning" during the first two years of college. * 36 percent of students "did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning" over four years of college. * Those students who do show improvements tend to show only modest improvements. Students improved on average only 0.18 standard deviations over the first two years of college and 0.47 over four years. What this means is that a student who entered college in the 50th percentile of students in his or her cohort would move up to the 68th percentile four years later -- but that's the 68th percentile of a new group of freshmen who haven't experienced any college learning. "How much are students actually learning in contemporary higher education? The answer for many undergraduates, we have concluded, is not much," write the authors, Richard Arum, professor of sociology and education at New York University, and Josipa Roksa, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia. For many undergraduates, they write, "drifting through college without a clear sense of purpose is readily apparent."

"July 1, 2011 As Costs of New Rule Are Felt, Colleges Rethink Online Course Offerings in Other States By Kelly Field Bismarck State College, a two-year institution located in the capital of North Dakota, offers something few colleges do: online degrees in power-plant technology. Utilities across the country send workers to the community college for specialized training in electric power, nuclear power, and other fields. "We're pretty darn unique," said Larry C. Skogen, the college's president. "I don't think we have any competition out there." Though other colleges offer similar programs on campus, "we deliver nationwide online," he said, with students in all 50 states. That could change soon. Under federal rules that take effect on July 1, Bismarck State will have to seek approval to operate in every state where it enrolls students, or forgo those students' federal aid. With some states charging thousands of dollars per application, the college is weighing whether it can afford to remain in states where the cost of doing business outweighs the benefits, in tuition terms. Though the college hasn't made any decisions yet, "the reality is that if we run into a state where we have few students and it's expensive [to get approval], it's probably not going to be cost-effective to continue," Mr. Skogen said. Such cost-benefit calculations are being conducted on campuses across the country, as college leaders struggle to make sense of a patchwork of state rules that were written in an era when "college" was synonymous with "campus" and online learning was in its infancy. Gregory Ferenbach, a lawyer who advises colleges on regulatory compliance, said he has heard from a "couple dozen" colleges, most of them nonprofits, that are considering withdrawing from some states because of the cost or burden of obtaining approval. Their decisions could have a significant effect on college access. If enough colleges steer clear of states with expensive approval processes, or s

Breaking Bad Habits: Navigating the Financial Crisis by Dennis Jones and Jane Wellman The "Great Recession" of 2009 has brought an unprecedented level of financial chaos to public higher education in America. Programs are being reduced, furloughs and layoffs are widespread, class sizes are increasing, sections are being cut, and students can't get into classes needed for graduation. Enrollment losses upwards of several hundred thousand are being reported-and only time will tell whether the situation is even worse. Reports of budget cuts in public institutions in the neighborhood of 15 to 20 percent (Pennsylvania, Virginia, New York, Florida, and California) are becoming common. Halfway through the 2009-2010 fiscal year, 48 states were projecting deficits for 2011 and 2012 (NASBO, 2009). Although states are reluctant to raise taxes, they evidently have less of a problem letting tuitions go up. And up they are going-California, Oregon, Washington, New York, Wisconsin, and Florida announced increases ranging from 10 to 33 percent. The normally tuition-resistant Florida legislature has authorized annual increases in undergraduate tuitions of 15 percent per year until they reach national averages for public four-year institutions. Around the country, the increases are setting off student protests reminiscent of the 1960's, variously directed at campuses, system boards, legislatures, and governors-complete with reports of violence and arrests. The New Normal Higher education has been through tough times before. The pattern of the last two decades has been a zigzag of reductions in state funds for higher education during times of recession, followed by a return to revenue growth about two years after the state coffers refill. But resources have not returned to pre-recession levels. So the overall pattern has been a modest but continuous decline in state revenues. Caption: Percent Change in Appropriations for Higher Education, 1960-2006

" 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 22, 2012 MIT Mints a Valuable New Form of Academic Currency James Yang for The Chronicle By Kevin Carey The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has invented or improved many world-changing things-radar, information theory, and synthetic self-replicating molecules, to name a few. Last month the university announced, to mild fanfare, an invention that could be similarly transformative, this time for higher education itself. It's called MITx. In that small lowercase letter, a great deal is contained. MITx is the next big step in the open-educational-resources movement that MIT helped start in 2001, when it began putting its course lecture notes, videos, and exams online, where anyone in the world could use them at no cost. The project exceeded all expectations-more than 100 million unique visitors have accessed the courses so far. Meanwhile, the university experimented with using online tools to help improve the learning experience for its own students in Cambridge, Mass. Now MIT has decided to put the two together-free content and sophisticated online pedagogy­-and add a third, crucial ingredient: credentials. Beginning this spring, students will be able to take free, online courses offered through the MITx initiative. If they prove they've learned the materi­al, MITx will, for a small fee, give them a credential certifying as much. In doing this, MIT has cracked one of the fundamental problems retarding the growth of free online higher education as a force for human progress. The Internet is a very different environment than the traditional on-campus classroom. Students and employers are rightly wary of the quality of online courses. And even if the courses are great, they have limited value without some kind of credential to back them up. It's not enough to learn something-you have to be able to prove to other people that you've learned it. The best way to solve that problem is for a world-famous university with an unimpeachable reputat