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"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

"Is Education a Public Good or a Private Good? January 18, 2011, 10:02 am By Sandy Baum and Michael McPherson Advocates for more generous support of students frequently bemoan what they perceive as a social shift from viewing higher education as a "public good" to viewing it as a "private good." What they mean is that the public gets benefits from people going to college and should not be transferring responsibility for the costs of education to students themselves. This conversation would be more constructive if its terms were more clearly defined and its categories less starkly delineated. The concept of public goods is central to economic analysis of the role of government in the allocation of resources. Public goods are defined by two characteristics: 1) Non-excludability: It is not possible to exclude non-payers from consuming the good. 2) Non-rivalry in consumption: Additional people consuming the good do not diminish the benefit to others. National defense and mosquito control are standard examples of public goods. The military cannot exclude from protection individuals who fail to pay their taxes. If the neighborhood is sprayed for mosquitoes, everyone in the area will benefit, whether or not they have paid. Moreover, I am no less safe if you are also protected by our army and get no additional mosquito bites just because you are also free from the pests. Not many goods are perfect public goods. Some have one characteristic or the other. It is difficult to impose tolls on city streets (the streets are for the most part non-excludable), but traffic congestion is obviously a problem (rivalry). On the other hand, it is easy to prevent people who do not pay from entering a half-empty concert hall (excludable) but their presence (assuming they are well-behaved) would not diminish the enjoyment of those who are listening (non-rival). Higher education is not a pure public good. It is clearly possible to exclude people who do not pay. What people who

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

"Wikipedia Aims Higher July 11, 2011 BOSTON - The United States' foremost custodian of public records had advice for professors whose colleagues still turn up their noses at Wikipedia. "If all else fails, you can tell them, 'If it's good enough for the archivist of the United States,' " said David Ferriero, who was appointed to the post in 2009, " 'we should at least take a look at it on campus.' " Five years ago, many professors had pegged Wikipedia as a pariah. Now, four years into its first coordinated effort to recruit professors and students to its cause, Wikipedia's overseers believe they have successfully recast the free, publicly edited encyclopedia as an ally of respectable scholarship. Two dozen universities now have courses where students are working on Wikipedia as part of their formal coursework. Many of those campuses have "Wikipedia ambassadors" tasked with helping professors weave writing and editing Wikipedia entries into the syllabus. Even Ferriero's office at the National Archives and Records Administration now employs a "Wikipedian in residence" in charge of fostering relationships with galleries, libraries, archives and museums. Late last week, the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs the encyclopedia, took another step toward assuming the mantle of an accessory of higher education: it held an academic conference. The first-ever Wikipedia in Higher Education Summit convened professors who had incorporated Wikipedia into their teaching, as well as others who were considering doing so, to talk about pros and cons of assigning students to improve the publicly edited online encyclopedia. The foundation also made it clear that Wikipedia plans to expand its relationship with academe. When the foundation started recruiting professors several years ago for its Public Policy Initiative - an effort to improve articles relating to U.S. public policy - it already had its eye set on developing "mechanisms and systems that would enabl

"January 1, 2012 Tenure's Dirty Little Secret Tenure's Dirty Little Secret 1 Tim Foley for The Chronicle Enlarge Image By Milton Greenberg It seems that tenure is always in the news. Long an article of faith for most faculty members, tenure is being put on the defensive almost everywhere, including within the academy itself. During the past decade, the numbers of tenured and tenure-track professors have sharply declined from nearly one-half of the faculty to about one-third. Most courses in four-year colleges and universities as well as community colleges are now taught by contingent faculty, including part-time adjuncts, graduate students, and holders of full-time nontenure-track positions. Does anyone care? Tenure is rooted in the American Association of University Professors statement on academic freedom and tenure that for many faculty members has become tantamount to religious dogma, impervious to forces of change, regardless of source. The dogma is that the common good is served by the free pursuit of truth under the principles of academic freedom, buttressed by the lifetime job security of tenure. While an individual's tenure may be revoked for cause, this rarely used action is protected by extraordinary and lengthy procedural requirements equivalent to a trial. If tenure is so vital, why is it on the defensive and, in fact, seriously losing ground? Where is the public outrage? There is none outside the confines of higher education, and even there it is hardly universal. Three factors are in play. First, the large expansion of higher education in the United States during the past 50 years has stripped the academy of its mystery as a cloistered monastery. The curtain has been opened, revealing the meaning and consequences of the tenure system. As with any dogma, religious or secular, once its status as truth is questioned and its claims considered dubious, true believers are left with a leap of faith. Second, colleges-public and private-are firmly e

"January 22, 2012 States Push Even Further to Cut Spending on Colleges By Eric Kelderman For nearly four years, governors and state legislators have focused on little else in higher education but cutting budgets to deal with historic gaps in revenue. Now, with higher-education support at a 25-year low, lawmakers are considering some policy changes that have been off-limits in the past, such as consolidating campuses and eliminating governing boards. Such proposals reflect the reality that, in most states, money for higher education will be constrained for the foreseeable future. Systems in Georgia and New York have already taken the unusual step of combining campuses under a single president. Other states, such as Ohio, are talking about giving institutions more freedom from state regulations, although for college administrators there's a trade-off: They would get more flexibility but even less state money. On the agenda in many statehouses this year will be bills that would tie higher-education appropriations to the completion rates of students at public colleges. Such performance-based models, which have had a mixed record in recent decades, are again popular with lawmakers trying to squeeze the most out of every tax dollar and to reward colleges that are more efficient at producing graduates. Related Content State Support For Higher Education Falls 7.6% in 2012 Fiscal Year Calif. Governor Goes After For-Profits With Limits on Cal Grants Legislators aren't demanding that colleges be more cost-efficient just to reduce spending on higher education, says Travis J. Reindl, a higher-education researcher for the bipartisan National Governors Association. They also want to keep colleges affordable for students. "We'll still be talking about money, money, money," Mr. Reindl says of the legislative sessions ahead. "Governors are increasingly interested in how the money is being spent by higher education ... and how much of that money is going to come out of

"Speeding Toward a Slowdown? November 16, 2010 Online college enrollments grew by 21 percent to 5.6 million last fall, the biggest percentage increase in several years, according to a report released today by the Sloan Consortium and the Babson Survey Research Group. At the same time, the authors say online growth might begin to slow down in the near future, as the biggest drivers of enrollment growth face budget challenges and stricter recruitment oversight from the federal government. Nearly one million more students took an online course in fall 2009 than in the previous year, according to the new survey, which drew responses from 2,583 academic leaders at both nonprofit and for-profit institutions across the country. That is the biggest numerical increase in the eight-year history of the report, and the largest proportional increase (21.1 percent) since 2005. Online enrollments have grown at more than nine times the rate of general enrollment since 2002. Almost a third of all college students in the country take at least one course online. The conventional wisdom has been that the economic crisis has spurred at least some of that growth, as adults looking to increase their job prospects have gone back to school for a new degree. Three-quarters of the institutions surveyed said the recession drove interest in their online programs. In the year since Sloan administered its survey, there has been more talk of online enrollment growth as a strategy for making up for shrinking state allocations at public university systems - especially in places like California, where some think a massive online expansion could lift the state university system out of financial ruin, and Minnesota, where possible Republican presidential challenger Gov. Tim Pawlenty has made the idea of less-expensive online public higher education one of his talking points. But Jeff Seaman, co-director of the Babson Survey Research Group and co-author of the new Sloan survey, says that shrinkin

Press Release from the Wikimedia Foundation Wikimedia Foundation will engage academic experts and students to improve public policy information on Wikipedia $1.2 million grant from the Stanton Foundation to support first initiative of its kind for Wikipedia SAN FRANCISCO May 11, 2010 -- The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization behind Wikipedia, today announced a new project designed to improve the quality of public policy-related articles on Wikipedia. It is the first time the Wikimedia Foundation has launched a project designed to systematically increase the quality of articles in a particular topic area. The project will be funded via a $1.2 million grant from the US-based Stanton Foundation, a long-time funding partner of the Wikimedia Foundation. The Stanton Foundation is the beneficiary foundation created in the name of the US broadcasting industry leader and media innovator, Frank Stanton. Dr. Stanton's commitment to civic education and freedom of speech carries on through his philanthropic legacy, the Stanton Foundation. "Wikipedia is a key informational resource for hundreds of millions of people," said Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. "The Stanton Foundation wants to increase people's understanding of public policy-related issues, and supporting quality on Wikipedia is a great way to accomplish that goal. Meanwhile, the Wikimedia Foundation is keen to experiment with techniques for encouraging subject-matter experts to work alongside our volunteers to improve quality. This funding will enable us to do that, and I am --as always-- very grateful to the Stanton Foundation for its support." Wikipedia is written by hundreds of thousands of volunteers from around the world, and that won't change with this project. The Wikipedia Public Policy Initiative will recruit Wikipedia volunteers to work with public policy professors and students to identify topic areas for improvement, and work to make them better. Some of tha

"Big Data's Arrival February 1, 2012 - 3:00am By Paul Fain New students are more likely to drop out of online colleges if they take full courseloads than if they enroll part time, according to findings from a research project that is challenging conventional wisdom about student success. But perhaps more important than that potentially game-changing nugget, researchers said, is how the project has chipped away at skepticism in higher education about the power of "big data." Researchers have created a database that measures 33 variables for the online coursework of 640,000 students - a whopping 3 million course-level records. While the work is far from complete, the variables help track student performance and retention across a broad range of demographic factors. The data can show what works at a specific type of institution, and what doesn't. That sort of predictive analytics has long been embraced by corporations, but not so much by the academy. The ongoing data-mining effort, which was kicked off last year with a $1 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is being led by WCET, the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies. Project Participants American Public University System Community College System of Colorado Rio Salado College University of Hawaii System University of Illinois-Springfield University of Phoenix A broad range of institutions (see factbox) are participating. Six major for-profits, research universities and community colleges -- the sort of group that doesn't always play nice -- are sharing the vault of information and tips on how to put the data to work. "Having the University of Phoenix and American Public University, it's huge," said Dan Huston, coordinator of strategic systems at Rio Salado College, a participant. According to early findings from the research, at-risk students do better if they ease into online education with a small number of courses, which flies in the face of widely-he

Washington Post Change.org emerges as influential advocate on issues from bullying to bank fees By Ylan Q. Mui, Published: January 23 Ben Rattray knows that revolution does not always happen spontaneously. The 31-year-old entrepreneur rattles off a list of populist actions over the past year: the consumer revolts against Bank of America's and Verizon's unpopular fees, a drive to enlist the San Francisco Giants to speak out against anti-gay bullying, a petition forcing the South African government to address the rape of lesbians. Each campaign won thousands of supporters, inflamed public opinion, and drew the ire of corporate executives and political leaders. But these were not impromptu rebellions that chanced upon success. They were carefully nurtured by Rattray's fledgling company, a social media site called Change.org that has emerged as one of the most influential channels for activism in the country. "We're in the business of amplifying," Rattray said in an interview. "We're trying to change the balance of power between individuals and large organizations." Rattray said his firm is profitable and hopes to bring in tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue within a few years. It makes money by running campaigns for advocacy groups such as Amnesty International in exchange for a fee. Ordinary users can create an online petition for free. The company, which has headquarters in the District and in San Francisco, has exploded over the past year, growing from a staff of 20 to about 100, with offices around the world. Though originally conceived as a nonprofit, Change.org is now part of an emerging group of "social benefit corporations," such as Patagonia, that seek to both make money and do good. Fueling Change.org's rise is the wave of global unrest that has given birth to other viral movements such as Occupy Wall Street. But Rattray calls these movements "radically under- optimized." They have no leaders and no coordinated mi

"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

"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

"The Solution They Won't Try June 4, 2010 By Bob Samuels If public universities are really committed to promoting access, affordability, and quality, they should consider increasing their funding by accepting more undergraduate students instead of raising tuition and restricting enrollments. While many would argue that higher education institutions are already unable to deal with the students they currently enroll, in reality, it costs most public research universities very little to educate each additional student, and the main reason why institutions claim that they do not get enough money from state funds and student dollars is that they make the students and the state pay for activities that are not directly related to instruction and research. To calculate how much public research universities spend on educating each undergraduate student, we can look at national statistics regarding faculty salaries and how much it costs a university to staff undergraduate courses. According to a recent study by the American Federation of Teachers, "Reversing Course," the average salary cost per class for a tenured professor at a public research university is $20,000 (4 classes at $80,000), and it costs $9,000 for a full-time non-tenure-track teacher and $4,500 for a part-time instructor to teach the same course."

"Public Holds Mixed Views of Higher Ed A majority of Americans (57 percent) believe that the higher education system in the country fails to provide students with good value for the money they and their families spend, according to a survey released Sunday by the Pew Research Center. Three-quarters of those polled said that college is too expensive for most Americans. But among Americans who are college graduates, 86 percent said that college had been a good investment for them personally. Pew also released a survey, in conjunction with The Chronicle of Higher Education, of college presidents. (Inside Higher Ed released a survey of college presidents in March.) The Pew survey is the latest to find public ambivalence about higher education -- with majorities seeing the importance of a college education, but much skepticism about college pricing and access. A survey by Public Agenda and the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education last year found that a majority of Americans believe that colleges mainly care about their own bottom lines instead of making sure that students have a good educational experience. But the survey also found that a majority of Americans believe a college education is essential for success."

May 15, 2011 Crisis of Confidence Threatens Colleges By Karin Fischer The American higher-education system has long been seen as a leader in the world, but confidence in its future and its enduring value may be beginning to crack along economic lines, according to two major surveys of the American public and college presidents conducted this spring. Public anxiety over college costs is at an all-time high. And low-income college graduates or those burdened by student-loan debt are questioning the value of their degrees, or saying the cost of college has delayed other life decisions. Among college presidents, the rising price of college is not the only worry. They're concerned about growing international competition and declining student quality, with presidents from the least selective, and thus sometimes the least financially stable institutions, the most pessimistic. But perhaps the most troublesome finding from the surveys is this: More than a third of presidents think the industry they lead is heading in the wrong direction. Related Content It's More Than Just the Degree, Graduates Say Presidents Don't Agree on What Signifies Quality Most Presidents Prefer No Tenure for Majority of Faculty Commentary: College Presidents Are Too Complacent Data and Complete Results of the Surveys Without a change in course, presidents fear, American higher education's standing around the globe could erode. Although seven in 10 college chief executives rated the American system today as the best or one of the best in the world, barely half predicted that a decade from now the United States would be among the top globally. "We should be worried," said Nancy L. Zimpher, chancellor of the State University of New York system. "We are in a flat world. We are going to have to evolve." American higher education has never been a monolith, of course, but the findings of the survey of more than 1,000 presidents, conducted March 10 to April 25 by the Pew Research

" 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

"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 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 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

"Tue, Jan. 31, 2012, 3:01 AM Global contest will lead to help during heart attacks By Marie McCullough Inquirer Staff Writer SEPTA station manager Garry Deans saved a man´s life this month because he knew the location of an AED. MICHAEL S. WIRTZ / Staff Photographer SEPTA station manager Garry Deans saved a man's life this month because he knew the location of an AED. Do you know where the nearest defibrillator is located? Yes No View results Post a comment RELATED STORIES Join the MyHeartMap challenge PHILLY.COM's TOP FIVE PICKS Mayor Nutter outraged at suspect's bail Media misled about whereabouts of Santorum daughter Parents: Disabled daughter's transplant could happen Where's the school choice, Chaput? Contest's 1st clue: Find the pig Around the world, the hunt is on for thousands of lifesaving portable medical devices that are hanging in public places - in Philadelphia. Why would someone in, say, Abu Dhabi care about finding devices in Philadelphia? Because a University of Pennsylvania project to map the locations of automated external defibrillators (AEDs) throughout the city has mushroomed into a global "crowdsourcing" competition fueled by the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, smartphones - and the chance to win cash prizes up to $10,000. The ultimate prize, of course, will be saving the lives of cardiac-arrest victims. Penn plans to create an interactive online AED registry that will, for the first time, enable the city's 911 system, emergency responders - and any bystander with a phone - to quickly locate an AED. Beginning Tuesday, participants in Philadelphia will use a free app downloaded to their phones to transmit photos and locations of the city's estimated 5,000 AEDs. These backpack-size machines can assess a cardiac-arrest victim and, if appropriate, deliver an electric shock to restart the heart. Studies show even sixth graders can follow an AED's step-by-step audio directions. But in this age of cyber collaboration, the contest, called "