Those innocent-seeming brochures imploring students to find their passions and express themselves may be helping to widen the socioeconomic achievement gap, a new study finds. A team of researchers led by Northwestern University assistant professor Nicole M. Stephens argues that American academic institutions expect a level of independence that is uncomfortable for many first-generation college students, who researchers say are more likely to come from poorer backgrounds that emphasize collaboration and interdependence. "They experience more of a culture shock," Stephens said. "The experiences and norms can be different than what they're used to." By making small changes in how expectations are presented to students and how classes are taught, the researchers said, colleges can help level the playing field for first-generation students. The study will appear in a forthcoming edition of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

A growing body of evidence from the classroom, coupled with emerging research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, is lending insight into how people learn, but teaching on most college campuses has not changed much, several speakers said here at Harvard University at a daylong conference dedicated to teaching and learning. Too often, faculty members teach according to habits and hunches, said Carl E. Wieman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and associate director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, who has extensively studied how to improve science education. In large part, the problem is that graduate students pursuing their doctorates get little or no training in how students learn. When these graduate students become faculty members, he said, they might think about the content they want students to learn, but not the cognitive capabilities they want them to develop. "It really requires someone to be doubly expert," Mr. Wieman said. As sometimes happens in some disciplines and departments, a few people develop deeper knowledge of pedagogy. These doubly expert faculty members, he said, can show colleagues how to apply new approaches to teaching the discipline.

The per-pupil cost of educating a student through virtual education is significantly less, on average, than the national average for brick-and-mortar schools, a paper from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute says. The report also says that fully virtual programs are less expensive, on average, than blended-learning programs, which combine face-to-face and online learning, but the paper does not address whether student outcomes are equal.

This is the season when many high school seniors are applying to and awaiting decisions from colleges and universities. It's an exciting time for those of us in higher education. We are reminded that learning is a lifelong pursuit. We are energized by the ideas and ambitions of our students. While we are excited about the prospects of a new freshman class, the economic downturn of the last three years has exposed and amplified our society's skepticism about the value of higher education. Yes, people still want to go to college, but there are growing concerns about student debt and unemployment after graduation. Students worry about their return on investment. Institutional leaders worry about hiring and retaining effective faculty and administrators, and about the constant cost of maintaining physical and technological infrastructures. Like the auto and newspaper industries, American higher education needs to innovate and reinvent itself if it's going to survive, thrive, and recapture its earlier glory. Industries that do not recognize the need for transition-or that do not manage that transition with agility-are likely to fail.

During one of the most tumultuous periods of higher education transformation, some of the individuals most responsible for governing universities appear content to sit back and let others call the plays, a new report finds. In "Still On The Sidelines," released Wednesday by Public Agenda, a New York-based nonprofit research organization, researchers -- through a series of anonymous interviews with 39 trustees -- concluded that the majority of board members believe their role is to select and support good institutional leaders, rather than to directly question university administrators and initiate reforms, even as they recognize that higher education faces unprecedented challenges. "We are a policy board," the report quoted one anonymous chairman of a two-year public college board as saying. "We don't get involved in the day-to-day operations. Our president comes to us with different proposals and ideas, which we discuss and, if appropriate, approve or deny." "I think the primary ideas have to come from your executive with support from your trustees, and with ideas coming from the trustees," another community college board chairman said. "Frankly, I can't think of too many ideas that have come from the trustees that were not first proposed by the administration." At a time when many in higher education are questioning whether traditional models of financing a university and educating students need to be revamped, the Public Agenda report indicates that most trustees are not willing to broach such issues on campus or engage in the wider debate. The report's findings also raise questions about the breakdown of responsibility between institutional administrators and governing boards, as well as how involved trustees should be in managing the daily operations of campus and shaping an institution's strategic vision. The major division that emerges from the report involves who is responsible for the problems facing higher educati

WASHINGTON -- For-profit colleges should be leaders in measuring student learning and making the data public, said a panel of experts at the annual meeting of the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, held here today. Federal scrutiny of higher education won't stop at for-profits, the speakers said, in a discussion that included a few surprising moments, such as praise for a community college and a nuanced compliment for federal regulations on "gainful employment." "We are moving toward some kind of general accountability," said Michael B. Goldstein, a lawyer who heads the higher education practice at the Washington law firm Dow Lohnes and who moderated the panel. "Something has to happen in terms of measuring value." Peter P. Smith agreed, and told the audience of for-profit college leaders that it would be a smart tactical move to stay a step ahead of the accountability push. "They're going to run you out of town anyway," said Smith, who is senior vice president of academic strategies and development for Kaplan Higher Education. "Get in front and make it look like a parade."

YouTube can be used as a valuable teaching tool in the classroom, but while it is chockfull of educational content and useful knowledge - it is also filled to the brim with distracting videos. Cute kittens, people "failing", music videos, cartoon series, and more - content that distracts kids from using YouTube as a learning channel. Fortunately Google recognized this problem and has launched a solution called YouTube for Schools. YouTube for Schools is a network setting that school administrators can turn on to grant access only to the educational content from YouTube EDU. This means videos from over 600 of YouTube's education partners like the Smithsonian, TED, Steve Spangler Science and Numberphile. In addition to limiting access to specific videos, Google has also worked together with teachers to put together over 300 playlists broken out by subject and by grade level. Sounds like a great idea for teachers who have trouble keeping their kids focused in the classroom.

Delivering courses in cyberclassrooms has gained broad acceptance among top college leaders, but the general public is far less convinced of online education's quality, according to new survey data released this week by the Pew Research Center, in association with The Chronicle. Just over half of the 1,055 college presidents queried believe that online courses offer a value to students that equals a traditional classroom's. By contrast, only 29 percent of 2,142 adult Americans thought online education measured up to traditional teaching. The presidents' survey included leaders of two-year and four-year private, public, and for-profit colleges and was conducted online. The public survey was conducted by telephone. The gauge of differing perceptions comes at a critical moment for online education. Just 10 years ago, few colleges took teaching onto the Internet, and skepticism about the practice was the norm among professors and university leaders.