Red Balloon Resources

"Colleges and the Governors' Races August 5, 2010 With state budget shortfalls likely to hit $180 billion in 2011, the incoming governors -- a potentially record-size pool of brand-new state chiefs -- will have a lot to take on when they take office in January. Jobs and the economy have dwarfed all other campaign issues, and higher education -- despite its link to economic development -- is unlikely to be a focal point in this year's elections. "Political candidates are grappling with more immediate solutions for job creation opportunities," says Dan Hurley, director of state relations and policy analysis for the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. "I think we'll see some [newly elected] governors bringing higher education to the top of their political agendas, but right now it's simply not at the top of the list." Four years ago, higher education was one of the top issues in several gubernatorial races. But the economy crashed 13 months after the election, and the recession descended across most of the country, forcing governors to slash funding -- much of it from higher education. According to the most recent State Higher Education Finance report, state funding for higher education fell $2.8 billion in the 2009 fiscal year as a result of the recession. Federal stimulus funds worth $2.3 billion partially offset the costs, but state funding fell another $2.7 billion in 2010 and is likely to continue to fall"

"Congress's 'Secret Shopper' August 3, 2010 WASHINGTON -- A government report detailing the findings of an undercover investigation of for-profit colleges' recruiting tactics reveals admissions and financial aid officers engaged in unethical and sometimes illegal practices, all in the interest of persuading students to enroll and obtain federal financial aid. The report, along with an accompanying video of undercover footage, is the culmination of a three-month effort by the Government Accountability Office, Congress's investigative wing, to determine whether and to what degree for-profit colleges are engaging in "fraudulent, deceptive or otherwise questionable marketing practices." A copy of the report is available here."

"Published Online: July 23, 2010 Education Inventors Get Boost Under New Programs By The Associated Press Premium article access courtesy of Edweek.org. Read more FREE content! Article Tools * PrintPrinter-Friendly * EmailEmail Article * ReprintReprints * CommentsComments * * * Bookmark and Share * Article tools sponsored by: WILL Interactive -- Socially relevant, fully interactive video games for teens -- Advertisement Philadelphia A movement is under way to make it easier for entrepreneurs to navigate the lucrative and sometimes-tricky education market and introduce new technology and products into classrooms. An educator at the University of Pennsylvania wants to create one of the nation's only business incubators dedicated to education entrepreneurs. The U.S. Department of Education is also getting into the act with a $650 million fund to boost education innovation. "Here's this (market) that is huge, that is really important, that needs innovation, and there's just nothing out there to sort of foster it," said Doug Lynch, vice dean of the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education. "Let's create a Silicon Valley around education.""

"Madison, Wis.-At a distance-education conference here, Wired Campus asked a half-dozen professors, technologists, and administrators to share the struggles of teaching online. Here's what they said. In the old days, you might have heard about the difficulty convincing professors of the value of online education. That can still be tough-some resisters, according to one online-training expert, fear they won't be able to display their expertise in online classes. But as acceptance of online education grows, with distance courses getting more popular and mainstream, colleges face new challenges. These run the gamut from coping with stress on student services to navigating the shift from developing courses alone to building them in teams. "

"Despite scandal, for-profit education offers valuable model By Steven Pearlstein Wednesday, August 11, 2010 Last week's revelations about the high prices, uneven performance and shady marketing practices of for-profit universities have now cast a dark cloud over what had been the fastest-growing segment of higher education. Giant companies that pay big bonuses and use high-pressure sales tactics to foist overpriced services on unsophisticated consumers who take on more debt than they can handle -- tell me if this doesn't sound like the educational equivalent of the subprime mortgage scandal. I have two reasons to care about this. The first is that one of the biggest for-profits, Kaplan University, is part of The Washington Post Co., to which it has provided the handsome profits that have helped to cover this newspaper's operating losses. Although we in the Post newsroom have nothing to do with Kaplan, we've all benefited from its financial success. The more important reason is that these revelations are a setback for the only serious challenge to a hidebound higher education establishment caught up in a self-destructive arms race for students, faculty, athletes, research funding and charitable gifts -- a competition that has driven up costs at twice the rate of everything else even as schools lag in meeting the educational needs of students and society. "

"August 8, 2010 Mass Video Courses May Free Up Professors for More Personalized Teaching By Marc Parry New York University plans to join the growing movement to publish academic material online as free, open courseware. But in addition to giving away content-something other colleges have done-NYU plans a more ambitious experiment. The university wants to explore ways to reprogram the roles of professors in large undergraduate classes, using technology to free them up for more personal instruction. This fall NYU will start publishing free online videos for every lecture in as many as 10 courses. They include classes on New York City history, the biology of the human body, introductory sociology, and statistics. Previous open-courseware projects tended to be text-based, with content like syllabi and lecture notes. NYU's site would expand the online library of academic videos available to the general public. What's more unusual, though, is the vision to build souped-up versions of the material for NYU students only. Freed from the copyright restrictions of publishing on the open Web, these video courses would have live links to sources discussed by professors in passing, as well as pop-up definitions and interactive quizzes."

"Reports Highlight Disparities in Graduation Rates Among White and Minority Students By Jennifer Gonzalez A pair of reports released on Monday by the Education Trust seek to reveal how disparate graduation rates are among white, black, and Hispanic students at hundreds of public and private universities, and call attention to individual institutions where the gaps are particularly large or small. Fifty-seven percent of all students who enroll in four-year, nonprofit colleges earn diplomas within six years, but the graduation rates for different groups of students vary vastly. On average, 60 percent of white students who start college have earned bachelor's degrees six years later. But only 49 percent of Hispanic students and 40 percent of black students do. The two reports, which deal separately with Hispanic and black students as compared to their white peers, seek to look beneath the averages, highlighting individual colleges that are doing well and also focusing on those that are missing the mark on graduation equity. The findings are based on several years of data from College Results Online, a Web-based tool developed by the Education Trust that allows comparisons of college graduation rates by race, ethnicity, and gender for four-year institutions across the country."

"Bill Gates Predicts Technology Will Make 'Place-Based' Colleges Less Important in 5 Years By Jeff Young 'Place-based colleges' are good for parties, but are becoming less crucial for learning thanks to the Internet, said the Microsoft founder Bill Gates at a conference on Friday. "Five years from now on the Web for free you'll be able to find the best lectures in the world. It will be better than any single university," he argued at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, Calif. "College, except for the parties, needs to be less place-based." An attendee captured the remarks with a shaky hand-held camera and posted the clip on YouTube. "After all, what are we trying to do? We're trying to take education that today the tuition is, say, $50,000 a year so over four years-a $200,000 education-that is increasingly hard to get because there's less money for it because it's not there, and we're trying to provide it to every kid who wants it," Mr. Gates said. "And only technology can bring that down, not just to $20,000 but to $2,000. So yes, place-based activiy in that college thing will be five times less important than it is today.""

"Mass Video Courses May Free Up Professors for More Personalized Teaching By Marc Parry New York University plans to join the growing movement to publish academic material online as free, open courseware. But in addition to giving away content-something other colleges have done-NYU plans a more ambitious experiment. The university wants to explore ways to reprogram the roles of professors in large undergraduate classes, using technology to free them up for more personal instruction. This fall NYU will start publishing free online videos for every lecture in as many as 10 courses. They include classes on New York City history, the biology of the human body, introductory sociology, and statistics. Previous open-courseware projects tended to be text-based, with content like syllabi and lecture notes. NYU's site would expand the online library of academic videos available to the general public. What's more unusual, though, is the vision to build souped-up versions of the material for NYU students only. Freed from the copyright restrictions of publishing on the open Web, these video courses would have live links to sources discussed by professors in passing, as well as pop-up definitions and interactive quizzes."

For decades IT has been a major driver of efficiency. In the future it may be a major driver of growth as well. That fundamental shift means that IT organizations will be central to change, but they also will undergo significant changes themselves. They will be called upon to innovate and experiment to drive incremental growth, to bridge intellectual resources in unusual ways and to facilitate broad-based changes that extend well beyond just IT.

"July 25, 2010 Why Do You Think They're Called For-Profit Colleges? By Kevin Carey Michael Clifford believes that education is the only path to world peace. He never went to college, but sometimes he calls himself "Doctor." Jerry Falwell is one of his heroes. Clifford has made millions of dollars from government programs but doesn't seem to see the windfall that way. Improbably, he has come to symbolize the contradictions at the heart of the growing national debate over for-profit higher education. Until recently, for-profits were mostly mom-and-pop trade schools. Twenty years ago, a series of high-profile Congressional hearings, led by Senator Sam Nunn, revealed widespread fraud in the industry, and the resulting reforms almost wiped the schools out. But they hung on and returned with a vengeance in the form of publicly traded giants like the University of Phoenix."

July 22, 2010 The Four Quadrants of Administrative Effectiveness Leadership Careers Illustration By Rob Jenkins First, a confession: I ripped off the basic premise for this column from an essay called "The Right Kind of Nothing," by Michael C. Munger, a professor of political science and chair of the department at Duke University. Munger argued in that January column that the best administrators are those who accept a high degree of responsibility for what goes on in their territory but don't feel the need to control everything. They know, that is, when to do "the right kind of nothing." After 18 years as a midlevel administrator at three different community colleges, I heartily concur. And, having obtained Munger's gracious permission, I would like to expand on his ideas. In doing so here, I borrow also from Stephen R. Covey, who in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, designs a memorable matrix around the concepts of "important" and "urgent." By placing those two concepts on X and Y axes, he creates four quadrants: urgent but not important, important but not urgent, both urgent and important, and neither urgent nor important. Following Covey's model, I've placed Munger's concepts of responsibility and control on similar X and Y axes to create what I call the four quadrants of administrative effectiveness. Each one represents a certain type of administrator. High responsibility, low control. High responsibility, high control. Low responsibility, low control. Low responsibility, high control.

"U.S. goes from leading to lagging in young college graduates By Daniel de Vise Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, July 22, 2010; 6:07 AM The United States has fallen from first to 12th in the share of adults ages 25 to 34 with postsecondary degrees, according to a new report from the College Board. Canada is now the global leader in higher education among young adults, with 55.8 percent of that population holding an associate degree or better as of 2007, the year of the latest international ranking. The United States sits 11 places back, with 40.4 percent of young adults holding postsecondary credentials. The report, to be presented Thursday to Capitol Hill policymakers, is backed by a commission of highly placed educators who have set a goal for the United States to reclaim world leadership in college completion -- and attain a 55 percent completion rate -- by 2025. "

"Buying Local, Online July 23, 2010 That online education knows no geographical limitations is considered one of the platform's more disruptive qualities. To entrepreneurs, it means that for-profit educational companies, such as the University of Phoenix or Kaplan University, can grow very large and make a lot of money, very quickly. To regulators, it means headaches. To highly visible traditional universities, such as Pennsylvania State University or the University of Massachusetts, it means an opportunity to take cues from the for-profits and create new revenue streams. To smaller universities with less national cachet, it might mean an opportunity to grow the brand and enroll students from across the country, even the globe. But it also might mean they need to fight for their lives. Online education has been seen as a godsend by many students, particularly adult learners, who need more college in order to boost their professional prospects but whose many responsibilities -- to jobs, families, etc. -- make it difficult to enroll in courses at a brick-and-mortar institution, even a nearby one. "You could be three blocks from the campus," says Carol Aslanian, a senior vice president of market research at Education Dynamics, a consulting firm, "but because of work and children, you could [feel] barred from the campus.""

"July 23, 2010 Education Department Takes Aim at For-Profits With Student-Debt Rule By Kelly Field After a five-week delay, the Education Department will release a rule Friday that would penalize for-profit colleges that saddle students with unmanageable amounts of debt. The proposed "gainful employment" rule, which has been anticipated by for-profit colleges and short-sellers alike, would cut off federal aid to programs whose students have the highest debt burdens and lowest loan-repayment rates, while limiting enrollment growth at hundreds of other programs. For-profit lobbyists are calling the rule "unwise and unnecessary." In a conference call with reporters, the Education Department said it was seeking to protect students and taxpayers from the high costs of student-loan defaults. "While career colleges play a vital role in training our work force to be globally competitive, some of them are saddling students with debt they cannot afford in exchange for degrees and certificates they cannot use," said Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in a written statement. Department officials estimated that 5 percent of programs would become ineligible for student aid under the rule, while 55 percent would be subject to growth restrictions and required to warn consumers and current students about the dangers of excessive borrowing."

"July 22, 2010 How Social Networking Helps Teaching (and Worries Some Professors) By Jeffrey R. Young San Jose, Calif. Professors crowded into conference rooms here this week to learn how to use Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube in their classrooms, though some attendees raised privacy issues related to the hypersocial technologies. About 750 professors and administrators attended the conference on "Emerging Technologies for Online Learning," run jointly by the Sloan Consortium, a nonprofit group to support teaching with technology, and two other educational software and resource providers."

"July 22, 2010, 06:01 AM ET A National Look at College Completion By Eric Hoover If you like data, then today's your day. The College Board has released two reports, both full of data pertaining to college completion. The first, The College Completion Agenda: 2010 Progress Report, comes from the College Board's Commission on Access, Admissions and Success in Higher Education, which measures state-by-state progress on 10 recommendations for raising the percentage of adults with an associate degree or higher to 55 percent by 2025. One of those recommendations is to "clarify and simplify the admission process," a task that sounds easy, but isn't. What's simple for one applicant is complicated for another; it all depends on many variables, such as family income, that define admissions know-how. Technology has helped "streamline" the admissions process, the report says. As of 2008, 73.4 percent of four-year colleges allow students to apply online, up from 38 percent in 2001. In the 2008-9 academic year, 20.4 percent of four-year colleges participated in a "national" application system, such as the Common Application, that allows students to apply to multiple colleges. "Perhaps the greatest issue is that of access to information and resources," the report says, "knowing that the above options exist, having the ability to pay application fees or the knowledge to seek fee waivers, and subsequently having access to the technology with which to complete one of the above options." The College Board and the National Conference of State Legislatures also released the College Completion Agenda: State Policy Guide on Wednesday."

"July 20, 2010, 10:00 PM ET The Wasted Resources of the Summer Academic Break By Diane Auer Jones Once upon a time, a long time ago, the city of Washington cleared out for the summer. In part this was because Members of Congress had to go home at that time to tend to their fields. Perhaps even more importantly, the swamp upon which Washington was built served as the perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes that carried malaria to those who dared to summer-over in the Federal City. But, as the mosquitoes were controlled, as jobs migrated from field to city, and as electricity enabled indoor temperature control, Washington adjusted and Congress extended the legislative session well into the summer months. In other words, when the conditions and circumstances that once necessitated a lengthy summer recess were eliminated, the congressional schedule changed and summer became a time of year, like most others, when people race around at breakneck pace and are expected to perform no differently than they do in September or March. Why, then, do academic institutions in non-agricultural communities continue to operate on an archaic schedule that leaves facilities and resources underutilized during the summer months?

"Continuing Debate Over Online Education July 16, 2010 Online education has become a hot topic recently, with more and more institutions wanting to expand offerings. And that makes studies of the quality of online education important -- and controversial. A new paper by the Community College Research Center re-examined and challenged the studies that the Department of Education used in a meta-analysis that stated "on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction" - a conclusion that received much attention and applause among advocates for online education. But the Education Department's analysis was flawed, according to Shanna Smith Jaggars, lead author of the CCRC paper and a senior research associate at the Columbia University center. Based on its review of the data, the CCRC concluded that online learning in higher education is no more effective than face-to-face learning. The Education Department study "continues to be cited frequently by people as evidence that online learning can be superior," Jaggars said. "We just wanted to make sure that we were injecting a note of caution into how people were interpreting what they were seeing.""

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