Red Balloon Resources

"Find a Niche or Vanish October 7, 2010 Too many universities lack a distinctive mission and risk being eaten up in the "bloody" competition that may follow a review of British higher education. That warning comes from Julian Beer, pro vice-chancellor for regional research and enterprise at the University of Plymouth, who is leading a sector-wide project on university strategy. Speaking to Times Higher Education just days before Lord Browne of Madingley was due to report his findings to the government, Beer said that an analysis of every institution's mission statement shows that about 70 are trying to cover too many bases and are spreading themselves too thinly. Too many universities simply state a desire to "achieve excellence in teaching and research" and ­appear unable to carve out a market niche, Beer said. Although elite institutions would flourish if an unregulated tuition-fee market was unleashed, thanks in part to their history and reputation, 30 to 40 institutions -- about a quarter of the sector -- could struggle. It would be "inevitable" that some would disappear, he added. "

"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

"Is Higher Ed Ready to Change? November 17, 2010 INDIANAPOLIS -- One's perception of how widely colleges and universities have embraced the necessity and inevitability of fundamental transformative change -- in how the institutions educate students, how they finance themselves, etc. -- is likely to depend on which sorts of higher education conferences he or she attends. Meetings like the higher education productivity conference sponsored here this week by the Lumina Foundation for Education are filled with true believers -- state legislators and governors' aides staring at massive budget deficits, higher education system officials charged with increasing the number of graduates their institutions produce, and the legions of policy analysts and foundation officials who beat the drum about college completion and efficiency. Far more skepticism is in evidence at conferences held by faculty groups, where professors are increasingly distressed by the (non-collaborative, they say) ways in which their institutions are going about making hard budget decisions, such as cutting academic programs or personnel benefits."

For a second there, I thought you were at the ASHE conference George...

Editorial from the book DIY U: Edupreneurs and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education. She cites 4 trends: 1. 80/20 rule 2. Great Unbundling 3. Techno-hybridixzation 4. Personal Learning Networks and Paths

"With Curriculum, the Medium is the Message By Joshua Kim May 4, 2010 9:45 pm Three predictions about how changes in the curricular mediums will alter the learning process. Prediction 1: Curricular content will be consumed in shorter chunks, across more diffuse times, and in multiple places. Prediction 2: The amount of time any given individual (student) spends consuming curricular content will decrease. Prediction 3: The total amount of curricular content consumed will increase, as prior "non-students" and "student non-consumers" evolve into curricular consumers. All of these predictions of course follow Marshall McLuhan's statement that "the medium is the message," and were inspired by Monday's NYTimes story "Audiences, and Hollywood, Flock to Smartphones.""

"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?

"Wal-Mart to Offer Its Workers a College Program By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD and STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM Published: June 3, 2010 FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - Now on sale at Wal-Mart: college degrees for its employees. The purveyor of inexpensive jeans and lawnmowers is dipping its toe into the online-education waters, working with a Web-based university to offer its employees in the United States affordable college degrees. The partnership with American Public University, a for-profit school with about 70,000 online students, will allow some Wal-Mart and Sam's Club employees to earn credits in areas like retail management and logistics for performing their regular jobs. The university will offer eligible employees 15 percent price reductions on tuition, and Wal-Mart will invest $50 million over three years in other tuition assistance for the employees who participate. "

"The Internal Revenue Service's 79-page report on colleges' tax compliance was a thorough reminder of just how big and complex higher education has become. That complexity affirms the concerns of some higher-education experts that many large research universities are placing too much priority on activities that raise the profile and prestige of their institutions but do little to improve undergraduate education. Such activities include contracts for private research and public-private partnerships to market new patents. "In some of these places, undergraduate education has never been a top priority," says Jane V. Wellman, executive director of the Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity, and Accountability. The issue is whether the increasing amount of support coming from sources outside state tax dollars "is causing these institutions ... to move away from their public mission. The answer in too many cases is, unfortunately, yes.""

"the Princeton University Policy Research Institute for the Region co-sponsored a forum on state-supported higher education with the New Jersey Association of State Colleges and Universities. I attended, along with one other Princeton faculty colleague (though others may have escaped my notice), but most of the audience was composed of officials of New Jersey's state colleges. The topic was "How to Fix a Broken System: Funding Public Higher Education and Making it More Productive." The speakers and panelists were well chosen and quite helpful. They included Rich Novak (Association of Governing Boards), John Cavanaugh (chancellor, Pennsylvania State system), Dennis Jones (president, National Center for Higher Education Management Systems), David Carter (chancellor, Connecticut State University system), Jane Wellman (Delta Project on Postsecondary Costs, Productivity and Accountability), and the presidents or chancellors of three of New Jersey's best state colleges. The focus was on the plight of the public four-year colleges of New Jersey, although the speakers made clear the extent to which our state problems mirrored those of most other states. The picture that was drawn for us Friday was not pretty, and it is not likely that we will see a prettier picture for many years. Everyone agreed that the next few years will be worse than the past couple of years-the federal stimulus money will be spent, state budget deficits will continue to grow, the easiest savings from cost-cutting will have already been taken."

"The Problem of Learning in the Post-Course Era by Randy Bass"

"For-profit colleges are facing increasingly stiff online competition from regional public universities. Those revenue-hungry campuses are using the degree programs to attract both local students and those hailing from beyond state and national borders. The University of Massachusetts at Lowell got into the game early, with deep distance-education programs that the university began 13 years ago. A more recent entrant is the State University of New York's Delhi campus, which has a new online nursing program that is competing with for-profits. Both universities are attracting students who might have gone to, or were attending, online programs at for-profit colleges."

College tuitions are rising. Seat space-especially in community colleges-is often scarce. University endowments are shrinking. State institutions are facing enormous cuts in state funding. While colleges have fewer resources, they are admitting students who present greater challenges. Increasing numbers of students arrive on campus without the preparation to do college-level work. An estimated 42 percent of students at public two-year institutions and 28 percent of all students nationally take at least one remedial class. Yet at too many universities, classes are taught in much the same way as they were 50-or even 500-years ago. Students crowd into lecture halls to hear long uninterrupted lectures. Later, they discuss the course material in smaller sections taught by faculty or graduate assistants. Some institutions, however, are finding new ways to teach all students. A new Education Sector report, The Course of Innovation: Using Technology to Transform Higher Education, highlights the ways that colleges and universities are using technology to simultaneously improve student learning and reduce skyrocketing higher education costs.

Bill Graves writes about the "Learning Assurance Commons" (LAC). It draws on his recent monograph (published online in conjunction with the "future-of-higher-education" Jan./Feb. 2010 EDUCAUSE Review). The paper proposes a construct that he now call the "learning assurance commons" (LAC). The paper describes more clearly what the LAC is and how it might become a means to balance rights and responsibilities among education providers and their external investors - students, families, donors, employers, and governments. A key leverage point for such rebalancing would be government vouchers earned by students. The vouchers would flow to students who earn them via assessments and then to the education providers who, along with those students, have agreed to a set of accountability protocols governed by the LAC. The paper extends the idea of the interoperability of the technologies used in education to the interoperability of inter-institution educational processes, such as transfer of credits.

"A highly engaged set of respondents that included 895 technology stakeholders and critics participated in the online, opt-in survey. In this canvassing of a diverse number of experts, 72% agreed with the statement: "By 2020, innovative forms of online cooperation will result in significantly more efficient and responsive governments, business, non-profits, and other mainstream institutions.""

Online Education vs. Traditional Learning: Time to End the Family Feud By Mark David Milliron Online learning tools and techniques-including fully online courses, blended learning, mobile learning, game-based learning, and social networking-are some of the newest and rowdiest children in the family of higher-education resources. They hold the promise of expanding, improving, and deepening learning for our students. A quick exploration of Carnegie Mellon's Open Learning Initiative, or the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education's National Repository of Online Courses, or Florida Virtual School's Conspiracy Code (a history course in a game) gives you sense of what's possible and what's coming."

Overview of Economic and Fiscal Dynamics 1. Tepid U.S. Growth for 2011 2. The great Recession's Corrosive Effects 3. A Turnaround in State Revenues But a Long Climb Back 4. State Budget Planning in a Pressure Cooker 5. No relief in the Fight Against the Cost-Shift in Who Pays for College 6. Moving Forward in the National Interest

"Not Just a Foot in the Door August 12, 2010 When the first community colleges sought permission to offer four-year degrees, they generally said that it would only be one or two programs - nothing dramatic. But in Florida, where the community college baccalaureate movement is strongest, community colleges now offer more than 100 four-year degrees, and the figure could be about to jump significantly. Though a handful of Florida community colleges had won approval to offer select four-year degrees around 2001, the rest of the state took hold of the idea in 2008, when Gov. Charlie Crist signed a controversial bill rebranding the state's community college system so that its institutions could more readily offer baccalaureate degrees. The four-year degrees authorized were those in disciplines such as nursing and education, where local four-year institutions could not meet the high demand, and in the career-specific concentrations of the applied sciences. Despite strict state rules keeping the growth of these community college baccalaureate degrees in check, ensuring that they would not adversely affect existing associate degree programs or compete in an unhealthy way with nearby offerings at four-year institutions, some critics remained concerned about the move. As it turned out, growth proved rapid. In 2008, 10 of the state's 28 community colleges offered 70 baccalaureate degrees. Now, 18 community colleges offer 111 four-year degrees. Most of the degrees are still in nursing and education; however, growth in the variety of applied science programs has introduced a range of concentrations, from homeland security to fire science management; from interior design to international business. With 24 baccalaureate degrees to choose from, St. Petersburg College offers the most of any community college in the state."

"Transforming Course Design is a process to improve student learning while simultaneously addressing the issue of instructional costs. Faculty from a variety of disciplines and institutions describe the steps they took to redesign their course structures to meet these goals, and the impact on their students and on their own perspectives on instruction. [more on Course Redesign] "