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"Professors Consider Classroom Uses for Google Plus July 8, 2011, 5:43 pm By Jeff Young Google Plus LogoGoogle Plus, the social-networking platform, is so new that most Internet users are not yet able to see it-an invitation is required while the service is in its test phase. But some professors who have tried it say they already see possible uses for teaching and research if the service catches on. The new Google service, announced last week, is similar in many ways to Facebook. It provides a way to share updates, photos, and recommendations with friends and colleagues. One key difference is that Google Plus makes it easier to share information with isolated subgroups of contacts, rather than sending all updates to every online "friend." Facebook's default approach-sharing with everyone in your personal network-has created a dilemma for professors whose students want to be their online friends. Often the students inadvertently share their party pictures and other private material with their instructors on Facebook, giving some faculty members the feeling that they have crossed too far into students' personal space. Professors have also accidentally shared comments with students that they meant only for fellow instructors. Facebook does allow some selective sharing, but doing so is difficult to master. As a result, many professors have decided to reserve Facebook for personal communications rather than use it for teaching and research. "I don't friend my students, because the ability to share is so clunky on Facebook," says Jeremy Littau, an assistant professor of journalism at Lehigh University. "This gives us ways to connect with people that we can't do on Facebook." In Google Plus, users can assign each new contact to a "circle" and can create as many circles as they like. Each time they post an update, they can easily select which circles get to see it. B.J. Fogg, director of Stanford University's Persuasive Technology Lab a

"Cracking Open the Scientific Process Timothy Fadek for The New York Times A GLOBAL FORUM Ijad Madisch, 31, a virologist and computer scientist, founded ResearchGate, a Berlin-based social networking platform for scientists that has more than 1.3 million members. By THOMAS LIN Published: January 16, 2012 Recommend Twitter Linkedin comments (145) E-Mail Print Single Page Reprints Share The New England Journal of Medicine marks its 200th anniversary this year with a timeline celebrating the scientific advances first described in its pages: the stethoscope (1816), the use of ether for anesthesia (1846), and disinfecting hands and instruments before surgery (1867), among others. Science Times Podcast Subscribe This week: Opening science and doing it yourself, plus the malaria medicine of Chairman Mao. Podcast: Science Times Related Wordplay Blog: Open Science, Numberplay style! (January 16, 2012) When Breakthroughs Begin at Home (January 17, 2012) RSS Feed RSS Get Science News From The New York Times » Enlarge This Image Timothy Fadek for The New York Times LIKE, FOLLOW, COLLABORATE A staff meeting at ResearchGate. The networking site, modeled after Silicon Valley startups, houses 350,000 papers. Readers' Comments Readers shared their thoughts on this article. Read All Comments (145) » For centuries, this is how science has operated - through research done in private, then submitted to science and medical journals to be reviewed by peers and published for the benefit of other researchers and the public at large. But to many scientists, the longevity of that process is nothing to celebrate. The system is hidebound, expensive and elitist, they say. Peer review can take months, journal subscriptions can be prohibitively costly, and a handful of gatekeepers limit the flow of information. It is an ideal system for sharing knowledge, said the quantum physicist Michael Nielsen, only "if you're stuck with

"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

"For-Profit Colleges Are Projected to Sharply Increase Their Share of Adult Students By Kelly Truong For-profit universities will have 42 percent of the adult-undergraduate market by 2019, nearly doubling their current share, according to a new study by the consulting company Eduventures. Last year approximately one-quarter of all adult undergraduates were enrolled at for-profit universities. The study projects that, in the next 10 years, for-profit institutions will increase their share of the adult market by 14 percentage points."

"The Extraordinary Value of Great Universities Richard Florida Dec 15, 2011 2 Comments The Extraordinary Value of Great Universities Reuters Share Print Email The United States is home to more than a third of the world's top 400 research universities. But how exactly do universities factor into the wealth, innovation, and economic competitiveness of their host nations? To get at this, my colleague Charlotta Mellander and I looked into the statistical associations between a nation's concentration of leading universities and broader measures of economic competitiveness, innovation, human capital and social well-being. We based our analysis on a statistical technique that enables us to control for the effects of population size. While correlation is not causation (none of these findings prove that anything more than an association exists) the results are nonetheless striking. In fact, they number among the very strongest I have ever seen in this type of analysis. The concentration of great universities in a nation is extraordinarily closely related to its economic competitiveness. It is closely associated with economic output per capita (.74), total factor productivity (.77) and overall competitiveness (.71) based on the Global Competitiveness Index developed by Harvard's Michael Porter. Universities are also a key force in technology. A nation's concentration of leading universities is closely associated with its level of innovation, measured as patents (.78) and its research and development expenditures (.74). While Stanford's role in Silicon Valley-style high-technology entrepreneurship is the stuff of legend, universities are closely associated with the entrepreneurial level of nations. The concentration of world-class universities is closely associated with a nation's level of entrepreneurship as measured on the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (.69). Technology is one key factor in economic competitiveness, but a nation'

"Rare Sharing of Data Leads to Progress on Alzheimer's By GINA KOLATA In 2003, a group of scientists and executives from the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the drug and medical-imaging industries, universities and nonprofit groups joined in a project that experts say had no precedent: a collaborative effort to find the biological markers that show the progression of Alzheimer's disease in the human brain. Now, the effort is bearing fruit with a wealth of recent scientific papers on the early diagnosis of Alzheimer's using methods like PET scans and tests of spinal fluid. More than 100 studies are under way to test drugs that might slow or stop the disease. The key to the Alzheimer's project was an agreement as ambitious as its goal: not just to raise money, not just to do research on a vast scale, but also to share all the data, making every single finding public immediately, available to anyone with a computer anywhere in the world. No one would own the data. No one could submit patent applications, though private companies would ultimately profit from any drugs or imaging tests developed as a result of the effort. "The problem in the field was that you had many different scientists in many different universities doing their own research with their own patients and with their own methods," said Dr. Michael W. Weiner of the San Francisco Department of Veterans Affairs, who directs ADNI. "Different people using different methods on different subjects in different places were getting different results, which is not surprising. What was needed was to get everyone together and to get a common data set." But that would require a huge effort. No company could do it alone, and neither could individual researchers. The project would require 800 subjects, some with normal memories, some with memory impairment, some with Alzheimer's, who would be tested for possible biomarkers and followed for years to see whether thes

"November 28, 2010 New Social Software Tries to Make Studying Feel Like Facebook Brittany Robertson, a junior at Purdue U., uses Mixable, note-and-coursework-sharing software that works with Facebook, because it easily lets her shift from socializing to studying. By Marc Parry and Jeffrey R. Young Students live on Facebook. So study tools that act like social networks should be student magnets-and maybe even have an academic benefit. At least that's the idea behind a new crop of Web services sprouting up across higher education. Colleges, entrepreneurs, and publishers, all drawn by the buzz of social media, are competing to market software that makes sharing class notes or collaborating on calculus problems as simple as updating your Facebook status. "Our mission is to make the world one big study group," says Phil Hill, chief executive of OpenStudy, a social-learning site that started as a project of Emory University and Georgia Tech. It opened to the public in September. Many of the social-learning sites are, like OpenStudy, for-profit companies-or at least they aspire to be once their services take off. And some of their business plans rely on a controversial practice: paying students for their notes. The big question facing all of these sites-a group that includes Mixable, from Purdue University, and GradeGuru, from McGraw-Hill-is whether students are really interested in social learning online. Another quandary: If students profit from selling their notes, are they infringing on a college's or a professor's copyright? And while the sites are not part of the seamy world of exam or term-paper vendors, what happens if some users post answers to tests? One service has already failed to mix Facebook with studies. In 2008 a company called Inigral closed its Facebook "Courses" application, which had allowed students to view who was in their classes, start discussions, and get notified of assignments. "We found that Facebook was not a popular place to e

"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."

"Annals of Higher Education Get Rich U. There are no walls between Stanford and Silicon Valley. Should there be? by Ken Auletta April 30, 2012 Students at the Institute of Design at Stanford, or d.school, work this spring on an irrigation project for farmers in Burma. The work is part of the university Students at the Institute of Design at Stanford, or d.school, work this spring on an irrigation project for farmers in Burma. The work is part of the university's focus on interdisciplinary education. Photograph by Aaron Huey. inShare214 Print E-Mail Single Page Related Links Audio: Ken Auletta on Silicon Valley and Stanford University. Keywords Stanford University; Silicon Valley; John Hennessy; Education; Entrepreneurs; Distance Learning; Technology Stanford University is so startlingly paradisial, so fragrant and sunny, it's as if you could eat from the trees and live happily forever. Students ride their bikes through manicured quads, past blooming flowers and statues by Rodin, to buildings named for benefactors like Gates, Hewlett, and Packard. Everyone seems happy, though there is a well-known phenomenon called the "Stanford duck syndrome": students seem cheerful, but all the while they are furiously paddling their legs to stay afloat. What they are generally paddling toward are careers of the sort that could get their names on those buildings. The campus has its jocks, stoners, and poets, but what it is famous for are budding entrepreneurs, engineers, and computer aces hoping to make their fortune in one crevasse or another of Silicon Valley. Innovation comes from myriad sources, including the bastions of East Coast learning, but Stanford has established itself as the intellectual nexus of the information economy. In early April, Facebook acquired the photo-sharing service Instagram, for a billion dollars; naturally, the co-founders of the two-year-old company are Stanford graduates in their late twe

"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

"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

"Whither the Wikis? July 14, 2010 Of all the Web 2.0 tools that have become de rigueur on college campuses, wikis fundamentally embody the Internet's original promise of pooling the world's knowledge - a promise that resonates loudly in academe. And yet higher education's relationship with wikis - Web sites that allow users to collectively create and edit content - has been somewhat hot-and-cold. Wikipedia, the do-it-yourself online encyclopedia, vexed academics early on because of its wild-west content policies and the perception that students were using it as a shortcut to avoid the tedium of combing through more reliable sources. This frustration has been compounded by the fact that attempts to create scholarly equivalents have not been nearly as successful. Share This Story * Bookmark and Share * E-mail * Print Related Stories * Google and the Digital Humanities July 14, 2010 * The iPad for Academics July 12, 2010 * Blackboard's Big Buy July 8, 2010 * Driving Home the Point on Accessibility June 30, 2010 * Honorable Technology June 28, 2010 FREE Daily News Alerts Advertisement However, academe's disdain for the anarchical site has since softened; a number of professors have preached tolerance, even appreciation, of Wikipedia as a useful starting point for research. As the relationship between higher education and wikis matures, it is becoming clearer where wikis are jibing with the culture of academe, and where they are not. In most cases, using wikis to pool human knowledge of various topics into single, authoritative accounts falls into the "not" category. Academic culture abhors mass authorship. This is not only because many disciplines are given to disagreement and conflicting interpretations, but because scholars tend to chafe at the notion of not getting credit for their work, or having it fussed with by others. "Literature reviews and summaries of articles are never

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

"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

"ST. PAUL, MINN. -- Pockets of experimentation and potential change are cropping up all over the place in higher education. Here, it's the OpenCourseWare movement. There, colleges are adopting "just in time" remediation. And over here, some states are changing funding formulas to reward institutions for graduating students rather than merely enrolling them. But what do the individual innovations amount to? Do they point the way to the sort of transformative change that, given the likelihood of constrained budgets going forward, is probably necessary if higher education is to not only sustain the current level of postsecondary attainment in the country, but increase it in the way many policy experts believe is needed? Share This Story * Bookmark and Share * E-mail * Print Related Stories * Community Colleges' Unfunded Mandate May 17, 2010 * The Accountability/Improvement Paradox April 30, 2010 * Looking Before They Leap April 27, 2010 * Retention, From Beginning to End April 26, 2010 * What the Pledge Means April 21, 2010 FREE Daily News Alerts Advertisement Even longtime advocates of higher education appear to be coming around to the conclusion that the status quo won't suffice. But acknowledging that fact is a far cry from identifying a framework that might lead to such a transformed future. It was in recognition of the latter goal that an unusually diverse group of college administrators and professors, higher education analysts, state officials, and others gathered here last week to talk about how to use data to provoke change and improve performance in higher education"

"Another College Is Sold to a For-Profit May 24, 2010 Lambuth University, a Methodist institution in Tennessee, announced Friday that it has agreed to be sold to private investors, but declined to name the group that is taking over the institution. A week ago, the university said that if it failed to reach a deal by Friday, there was a danger of closure and of failing to meet payroll. Assuming the deal goes through, Lambuth will be the latest example of a financially struggling private college agreeing to be bought out by a for-profit group. Just two months ago, a new for-profit company bought Dana College, a Lutheran liberal arts institution in Nebraska. Share This Story * Bookmark and Share * E-mail * Print Related Stories * Union Push in For-Profit Higher Ed May 24, 2010 * Comparing Higher Ed to Wall Street April 29, 2010 * Pushback on Gainful Employment April 22, 2010 * Going Ahead With Gainful Employment April 21, 2010 * Unnatural Acts April 8, 2010 FREE Daily News Alerts Advertisement The statement announcing the sale said that "President Bill Seymour told the board that this was the best proposal Lambuth has received throughout its year-long process of searching for a suitable partner." The statement also said that the university should be able to submit documents about the shift to its accreditor, the Southern Association of Schools and Colleges, in time for a June review of the change in ownership. Transfer of accreditation from a regional accreditor such as SACS is typically a key enticement for for-profit entities considering the purchase of a private nonprofit college. While changes in ownership subject colleges to an additional accreditation review, such a shift is generally considered far easier than starting from scratch to earn initial accreditation. Some critics charge that these accreditation shifts are a serious loophole in oversight of higher education and that a purchase of a

"Asking Too Much (and Too Little) of Accreditors November 12, 2010 By Anne D. Neal When it comes to accreditation, what hath Congress wrought? Does even Congress know? These questions come to mind as Senators prepare for more hearings on the for-profit higher education sector. According to news reports, they are enraged by for-profit colleges' abusive business practices. They blame accreditors for allowing fraud to flourish and for permitting institutions to persuade unprepared students to take out federally financed student loans. These students then predictably drop out, burdened by debt. Share This Story * Bookmark and Share * E-mail * Print Related Stories * Misrepresenting the GAO December 20, 2010 * Sweating Bullets at the GAO December 17, 2010 * Gunfight at the For-Profit Corral December 10, 2010 * Accreditation Revoked December 8, 2010 * Looking Ahead to 2013 December 3, 2010 FREE Daily News Alerts Advertisement Senators want to know why accreditors haven't protected the public interest. And their frustration is hardly surprising, given some of what we've seen. But are the accreditors to blame? Hardly. Congress shouldn't blame accreditors: it should blame itself. The existing accreditation system has neither ensured quality nor ferreted out fraud. Why? Because Congress didn't want it to. If Congress truly wants to protect the public interest, it needs to create a system that ensures real accountability."

"February 6, 2011 Fast-Growing U. of Phoenix Calculates a More Careful Course By Goldie Blumenstyk In the fall of 2009, after closing the books on yet another banner year of enrollment growth, and with its parent company's stock climbing toward a five-year high of $90 per share, the University of Phoenix began to question fundamental pieces of the very formula that had fueled its years of success. Even as its executives celebrated, recalls one, they were uneasy. A feeling was building "in the pit of everyone's stomach: That felt too good." From that "moment of truth," as that executive, Robert W. Wrubel now describes it, Phoenix quietly began what it calls a major change of direction. Out of the public eye, North America's largest private university not only put in motion an overhaul of what had come to be seen as its grow-at-any-cost admissions practices. It also ended a compensation schedule tied to enrollment, began a required orientation program for inexperienced students, and instituted a host of other reforms in marketing and nearly every other important facet of this 438,000-student institution. The moves, orchestrated from its headquarters here, and from corporate outposts like San Francisco, where the university has assembled a team of Silicon Valley veterans and computer scientists to create a cutting-edge electronic course platform, are part of a top-down campaign led by a team of a half-dozen executives, all of whom have joined its $5-billion parent company within the past four years. excited about an education. "We are investing in academics like no other higher-education company can do," says Joseph L. D'Amico, who as president of Apollo Group Inc. oversees the campaign it calls "Reinventing education, again." The goal, he says, "is to take our business to a new level." Last month Apollo provided The Chronicle a behind-the-scenes (but by no means unfettered) look at some of the new recruiting techniques, educational moves, and marketing tactics

"Beware: Alternative Certification Is Coming January 23, 2012, 4:42 pm By Richard Vedder The announcement of agreements between Burck Smith's StraighterLine and the Education Testing Service (ETS) and the Council on Aid to Education (CAE) to provide competency test materials to students online is potentially very important, along with several other recent developments. A little economics explains why this is so. In the first week of beginning economics courses, professors usually make this fundamental point: If the price of something rises a lot, people look for substitutes. Resources (dollars) are scarce, and individuals want to make the best use of them. They "maximize their utility" by shifting away from high-priced good or service A to lower-priced good B. With regards to colleges, consumers typically have believed that there are no good substitutes-the only way a person can certify to potential employers that she/he is pretty bright, well educated, good at communicating, disciplined, etc., is by presenting a bachelor's degree diploma. College graduates typically have these positive attributes more than others, so degrees serve as an important signaling device to employers, lowering the costs of learning about the traits of the applicant. Because of the lack of good substitutes, colleges face little outside competition and can raise prices more, given their quasi-monopoly status. As college costs rise, however, people are asking: Aren't there cheaper ways of certifying competence and skills to employers? Employers like the current system, because the huge (often over $100,000) cost of demonstrating competency is borne by the student, not by them. Employers seemingly have little incentive to look for alternative certification. That is why reformers like me cannot get employer organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to take alternative certification seriously. But if companies can find good employees with high-school diplomas who have dem

The recent bankruptcy declaration by Kodak, one of the nation's most trusted brands for consumers, which once held a market share in excess of 90 percent, is stunning. Kodak mistook America's century-long love affair with its products as a sign of market permanency, missing the fact that camera phones, flip cameras and online sharing would erode its brand and render it irrelevant.American higher education should take heed because it is facing a similar challenge, with implications far more important than the loss of a major corporation