Red Balloon Resources

"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

"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'

"Do Cities Need Universities to Survive? Nate Berg Jan 13, 2012 3 Comments Do Cities Need Universities to Survive? Courtesy: UCLA Share Print Email The so-called "town and gown" relationship between cities and universities has become increasingly important in recent years. As universities contribute more and more to the local economy through research, reputation and building, they're seen not only as educational and cultural institutions, but economic development tools. But how much should cities rely on universities? This essentially was the question posed to four university professors at a panel discussion in Los Angeles. Hosted by Zocalo Public Square and moderated by The Chronicle for Higher Education editor Jeff Selingo, the event asked whether universities can save cities. "We really can't believe that universities can save cities," said Gene Block, chancellor at the University of California Los Angeles. He argues that even though universities contribute to a city's culture and economy, they can't be fully relied upon to solve major foundational problems should they arise. And so far they haven't, according to Rice University President David Leebron. "I don't really see it so much as a question of whether universities can save cities. Cities generically aren't really in any danger," Leebron said. "The real question, I think, is can universities make our cities more competitive, and more competitive on a global scale?" Leebron said universities can play a major role in helping cities provide jobs and education that attract people and businesses from all over the world. "That's both in terms of what they can contribute to the economic advancement of the city, but also importantly what the universities contribute to the quality of life in the city and the quality of governance in the city," Leebron said. Arizona State University President Michael Crow said that universities will continue to be a part of ensurin

"Technology Is at Least 3 Years Away From Improving Student Success January 13, 2012, 7:34 am By Josh Fischman Las Vegas-At the very start of the Higher Ed Tech Summit here this week, James Applegate threw out a challenge. Mr. Applegate, vice president for program development at the Lumina Foundation, told an overflow crowd that the United States needed 60 percent of its adults to hold high-quality degrees and credentials by the year 2025. During the rest of the day, technology executives described programs that could improve graduation rates and learning, but won't be able to do so for several years. They collect many points of data on what professors and students do, but can't yet say what results in better grades and graduation rates. "We're beginning to get lots of data on things like time of task, but we don't have the outcomes yet to say what leads to a true learning moment. I think we are three to five years away from being about to do that," said Troy Williams, vice president and general manager of Macmillan New Ventures, which makes the classroom polling system called I-clicker. "These are really early days," agreed Matthew Pittinsky, who runs a digital transcript company called Parchment and was one of the founders of Blackboard. There's lots of technology out there that's outcome-related. For instance, at the meeting, which is part of the international Consumer Electronics Show, the interactive textbook publisher Kno announced a suite of new features. One of them, a performance gauge callled Kno Me, gives students information about how much time they spend on different sections of a book, the results of quizzes, and the kinds of notes they took. "With thousands of students using these books, we can show them which of these variables are related to students-anonymous, of course-who get A's, or B's, or C's, so students learn what kind of activity leads to the best results," said Osman Rashid, the company's chief ex

"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

"January 8, 2012 'Badges' Earned Online Pose Challenge to Traditional College Diplomas 'Badges' Earned Online Pose Challenge to Traditional College Diplomas 1 Photo illustration by Bob McGrath for The Chronicle Enlarge Image By Jeffrey R. Young The spread of a seemingly playful alternative to traditional diplomas, inspired by Boy Scout achievement patches and video-game power-ups, suggests that the standard certification system no longer works in today's fast-changing job market. Educational upstarts across the Web are adopting systems of "badges" to certify skills and abilities. If scouting focuses on outdoorsy skills like tying knots, these badges denote areas employers might look for, like mentorship or digital video editing. Many of the new digital badges are easy to attain-intentionally so-to keep students motivated, while others signal mastery of fine-grained skills that are not formally recognized in a traditional classroom. At the free online-education provider Khan Academy, for instance, students get a "Great Listener" badge for watching 30 minutes of videos from its collection of thousands of short educational clips. With enough of those badges, paired with badges earned for passing standardized tests administered on the site, users can earn the distinction of "Master of Algebra" or other "Challenge Patches." Traditional colleges and universities are considering badges and other alternative credentials as well. In December the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced that it will create MITx, a self-service learning system in which students can take online tests and earn certificates after watching the free lecture materials the university has long posted as part of its OpenCourseWare project. MIT also has an arrangement with a company called OpenStudy, which runs online study groups, to give online badges to students who give consistently useful answers in discussion forums set up around the university's free course materials. But the b

"Publishing, Education and "How A Book Is Born" January 9, 2012 - 8:30pm By Joshua Kim If you work in higher ed, you fall asleep every night asking yourself the following questions: Will we suffer the same fate as the record industry, the bookstores and the newspaper business? Is higher ed another example of a physical, as opposed to a digital, information industry - and therefore ripe for disruption? If the core business model of education is built on scarcity, will we survive this transition to information abundance? I imagine that these questions also haunt the dreams of people who work in publishing? All these questions, and more, make reading How a Book is Born: The Making of The Art of Fielding a worthwhile investment of our time. The barriers to reading this book are actually amazingly low. This Kindle Single is only $1.99. At 62 pages, it will not take much time. And if you have read Harbach's The Art of Fielding (a terrific campus novel), then description this backstory is probably irresistible. One thing we learn from How A Book Is Born is that publishing is very big business: "……total book sales in the United States last year were $13.9 billion - and twice that if you include textbooks and other educational materials. Random House, the biggest of the so-called Big Six publishers, brings in about $2.5 billion a year in revenue; Hachette Book Group, at the smaller end of the Big Six, brings in about $700 million. Michael Pietsch's Little, Brown, which sold 21 million books in 2010, accounted for more than a quarter of that. The vast majority of publishers' revenue (100 percent, in the case of Little, Brown) is from the sale of books and subsidiary rights to books; for the moment, publishers really have no other way to make money." The question is, will e-books change not only how books are read, but how they are published? Traditionally, one of the major roles of the publisher has been to place books in bookstores. Will

"What Does It Mean To Be an Academic? January 6, 2012, 4:21 pm By Nigel Thrift There is a fascinating moment when academics reflect upon their practices in ways that are not just emblematic but are clearly leading to real change in what the practice of being an academic actually means. I have been reminded of this fact twice recently as I have considered practices of teaching and research at a number of universities around the world. First, in the case of teaching, there was seeing some of the new educational technology which is coming into operation. I am not just talking about remarkable educational sites like the interactive simulation site for the physical sciences, PhET, which is used by so many science professors. As good as these undoubtedly can be at allowing students to reach a level of competence in particular problems before they come near a lecture, there is also the new software which allows real interaction in the classroom and the tracking of the reaction to that interaction in order to enable new rounds of inquiry. The consequences are only just being worked through but in time, I am now pretty sure, the lecture in its old form, understood as a direct oral presentation intended to present information or to teach students about a particular subject and delivered by a lecturer standing at the front of the room and giving out information and judgments, will become a minority teaching method. Instead, what were lectures will be recorded for students to consult-many universities have already produced a library of such presentations-and the time previously put by for lectures will be used as a surgery, as a time for problem-solving, clarification, and the like. This is a no less time-consuming method of teaching-indeed, it may involve more work. But I think it is likely to become the norm in many disciplines. Second, in the case of research, there has been reading Paul Rabinow's latest book, The Accompaniment, which includes a fascinating cha

"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 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

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

"Letting Go of Lecture December 23, 2011 - 3:00am By Paul Fain ROCKVILLE, Md. -- The remedial math class at Montgomery College thrums with the sounds of clicking keyboards and low murmurs. Students pack the room and stare intently at computer terminals. Missing, however, is the voice of a professor lecturing to the class. This modular classroom is a computer lab, not a lecture hall. There is no podium or other central spot for a professor. Several instructors are here, however, hovering around the room and helping students one at a time. Their role looks more like that of tutors than professors. Welcome to the "emporium" approach to remedial mathematics, a major change in teaching style. Remedial math is perhaps the biggest stumbling block in higher education. Roughly 60 percent of incoming community college students are unprepared for college-level work, typically in math and English, and place into developmental courses (the preferred term among academics). Success rates are the worst for math, and only a small portion of remedial math students ever complete a single college-level math course. Many get frustrated at their lack of progress and drop out, a major impediment in the push to get more Americans into and out of higher education with a credential. "The issue of remedial math is the key for the completion agenda," says Louis Soares, director of the postsecondary education program at the Center for American Progress. The problem was severe even at Montgomery College, which is widely considered to be a top two-year institution. Prior to the college's developmental math redesign, which went into effect this year, about half of the students who needed remedial math placed into the lowest levels of the developmental program. Of that group, just 15 percent successfully completed a college-level math course within 3.5 years of entry, according to college officials. Those numbers are hardly unusual in higher education, experts say. They may even be

"Open-Textbook Idea Is Gaining Steam December 19, 2011, 4:01 pm By Alexandra Rice Colleges across the country took note when Washington State announced its Open Course Library initiative in October, offering community-college students affordable online resources for some of the most popular courses. Now other states and colleges are exploring similar options. The University of Massachusetts at Amherst awarded 10 teaching faculty $1,000 grants this spring as a part of its Open Education Initiative. The faculty members submitted proposals for developing free or low-cost digital resources as an alternative to students purchasing commercial textbooks. The university estimates the effort will save 700 students $72,000 over the 2011-12 academic year. On the West Coast, Darrell Steinberg, the leader of California's Senate, proposed a bill to establish the online California Digital Open Source Library, MindShift's Tina Barseghian reported. If passed, the bill will allocate $25-million in state funds to create 50 free online college textbooks. If you've heard of any other similar projects, tell us about them in the comments below."

"MITx: The Next Chapter for University Credentialing? December 19, 2011 - 3:36pm By Audrey Watters A big announcement from MIT today: the university is launching a new online learning initiative, MITx, one that will allow non-enrolled students to take online courses and receive certification if they successfully complete them. MIT has long been known for being on the leading edge of higher education experimentation, most notably with MIT OpenCourseware. The decision by MIT faculty to make all of their course materials freely and openly available online is now a decade old, and some 100 million people have downloaded and accessed that content. But even with a catalog that boasts over 2,000 courses, MIT OCW has always been just that: courseware. All the syllabi, handouts, and quizzes, but no interaction with professors, no interaction with fellow learners, no grades, no college credit. MITx will act as a middle tier, of sorts, something between the traditional, on-campus experience of formally enrolled MIT students and the open and informal learning opportunities afforded by open courseware. But "this is not MIT light," insists Provost L. Rafael Reif. What MITx is is still very much under construction. The first class should be available in the spring of 2012, and it's not clear what course(s) will be offered (although it's a probably a safe bet that it's a science or engineering class). MIT describes MITx as a self-paced course, one with "interactivity, online laboratories and student-to-student communication." While the course itself will be free (and the custom-created course materials will be openly licensed, as with all MIT courses), students who wish to be graded will be able to pay for certification. There's no indication yet of what that fee will be. Nor is it clear how assessment for MITx will work -- will all students take quizzes and submit homework or just those who are paying for certification? Will students have access to instructors? If so, how?

"MITx: 3 Cheers and 3 Questions December 19, 2011 - 8:00pm By Joshua Kim MITx is very big news. For a great overview of MIT's plans, check out Audrey Watters' excellent writeup MITx: The Next Chapter for University Credentialing? The MIT student paper The Tech also has a great article. The MIT press release and accompanying FAQ also go into detail about MITx. 3 Cheers and 3 Questions for MITx: Cheer 1 - Leadership: All of us in higher ed should take a moment to recognize and commend MIT for the institutions continued bold leadership in higher education and the open education movement. The wonderful thing about higher ed is that when one institution innovates it grows the pie for all of us - we all benefit. Cheer 2 - Risk Taking: What I love most about MITx is MIT leaders' willingness to learn as they go. Rather than endlessly talk about the next innovation that will make it possible to offer high quality postsecondary education to large numbers of people at affordable prices, MIT is actually doing something. I have no doubt that the MITx model will change and morph over time, but the only way to figure this out is to run lots of experiments and be willing to fail, learn, and evolve. Cheer 3 - Recruiting: A program like MITx raises my opinion of MIT as a parent (my kids launch in 2015 and 2017), potential donor and even a potential employee. The market for higher ed talent is worldwide, and the best people are motivated by mission and culture. MITx is a clear stake in the ground about MIT's values. Question 1 - Platform?: From what I understand from the articles, MITx will run on a new platform that MIT is developing on its own, and that will be made open source. Is this a totally new platform? Are existing open source LMS platforms like Sakai or Moodle utilized at all? What platforms will be utilized for course videos? Again, a new platform, or an existing open source lecture capture and video management platform like OpenCast? Question 2 - Partnersh

" 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

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.

"The Disruption Is Here September 15, 2011 - 3:00am Michael Staton A recent essay here by Robert Archibald and David Feldman challenged the idea of a "higher education bubble." They argued that a degree, even an expensive degree, is still worth it. They correctly pointed out that a degree is not an asset that responds to supply and demand like other markets. Their point that "on average most of us are average, and the data show that college is a very good investment for the average person," is true enough. But their real message was: there's no need to panic, the status quo is still working. I disagree. Said essay is part of a broader continuing discussion, this round set off by Peter Thiel's statements surrounding his 20 Under 20 Program encouraging students to "stop out" of college - with the idea that they are more likely to achieve entrepreneurial breakthroughs on their own than with more formal education. Thiel is a managing partner at one of the venture investors, Founders Fund, in my company, Inigral. Ironically, Inigral serves educational institutions with our Schools App, and most of our clients are traditional colleges and universities. (Schools App is a community platform inside Facebook and on mobile devices that helps to welcome the incoming class during the admissions, orientation, and first-year experience, making sure students find their "fit" and get off on the right foot.) So my company helps keep students in college while Thiel is going around talking about the potential value of "stopping out." Given this irony, people often ask me what I think about Thiel's comments suggesting that higher education is in a bubble. Here's what I think: He is mostly right, but the future prospects for education are more optimistic than Thiel suggests for two primary reasons: 1) Though it looks like an economic bubble, it's unlikely that there will be a precise moment in which the market crashes. Instead, there will be a slow market shift towards amor