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"Despite the court cases being filed in New York's Southern District, the institutions targeted are located all over the country. All are private colleges, universities or conservatories, and include large research universities such as Northeastern University and Drexel University. Both institutions said they do not comment on ongoing legal matters. Also being sued are Cornell University, Vanderbilt University, the California Institute of the Arts, Oberlin College, Loyola University New Orleans, the Savannah College of Art and Design, and many others."

Antioch University is the first US institution to receive approval from Coursera to offer college credit for specified Coursera MOOCs (massive open online courses). Through this new partnership, Antioch University and the Antioch University Los Angeles campus can reduce student costs to complete a four-year degree and expand course offerings through free online courses offered by the highly respected universities that have partnered with Coursera.

Very cool! Maybe college debt will start to go down for students of the future. Higher levels of education for less money :) I know I will paying back my school loans until I am dead.

University professors need to accept the fact that like most fields, education is constantly evolving due to technological advancements. The traditional classroom is changing, but the refusal of many tenured professors to change with it hinders the efficiency of education to improve. The university not only needs to provide incentives for professors to utilize these online resources, but also mandate that they at least be offered. In the next few years, it is unavoidable that some people will prefer and continue to use traditional methods of education. Yet, at the bare minimum, cheaper alternatives to over-priced textbooks and online resources need to be offered and available to university students.

"Although there have been many claims that technology might enhance university teaching, there are wide variations in how technology is actually used by lecturers. This paper presents a survey of 795 university lecturers' perceptions of the use of technology in their teaching, showing how their responses were patterned by institutional and subject differences. There were positive attitudes towards technology across institutions and subjects but also large variations between different technologies. Two groups of technology were identified-"core" technologies, such as Powerpoint, that were used frequently, even when lecturers felt that they were not having a positive impact on learning, and "marginal" technologies, such as blogs, that were used much less frequently and only where they fitted the pedagogic approach or context. Rather than there being "leading" universities that were the highest users of all technologies, institutions tended to be heavier users of some technologies than others. Similarly, subjects could be associated with particular technologies rather than being consistent users of technology in general. The study suggests that university technology policy should reflect different disciplines and contexts rather than "one size fits all" directives."

"A growing number of Fortune 500 companies, like Walmart, have grown tired of waiting for colleges and universities to produce the skilled workers they need and have started offering their own classes instead. And as an added bonus for employees: Many of these courses -- from Starbucks' Barista Basics to Jiffy Lube's finance fundamentals -- are eligible for college credit. "What companies like is just-in-time learning that gives somebody a skill they need at the time they need it," says Mark Allen, a Pepperdine University business professor and author of The Next Generation of Corporate Universities. "What traditional universities do to a large extent is just-in-case learning.""

The proficiency-based approach university officials described shares much in common with competency-based programs offered by institutions like Western Governors University, Southern New Hampshire's College for America and the new "Flexible Option" from the University of Wisconsin System.

"The program kicks off today with two curriculums, Business or Supply Chain Management for associate and bachelor's degrees with additional curriculums to follow at three non-profit universities: University of Florida which is ranked #17 in the nation for its business school by U.S. News and World Report, Brandman University and Bellevue University. The five-year long program will include what Carlson calls "having a personal coach for education" from the application process up through graduation."

University of Baltimore students won't have to pay for their last semester of school anymore, under one condition: They must finish on time. The program, called Finish4Free, is more than a nice gesture to cut students a break on their school debt. The university thinks that letting students finish their last semester for free will encourage more to finish on time.

"To be top 10, you have got to be global," Elias Eldayrie, UF's vice president and CIO for Information Technologies, recently told the board of trustees. "You need to connect." Creating Unizin with Indiana University, the University of Michigan and Colorado State University was a year in the making, Eldayrie said.

"Although the open-source textbook concept has been embraced by student groups such as the Student Government Association in College Park, university officials say the challenges include connecting professors with the materials they need for the textbooks and creating a system to assess the quality of the books. Another complication: Many universities are bound to contracts with private companies to run campus bookstores, where many students purchase their textbooks. University System of Maryland financial records show that the bookstore contracts are not always lucrative, however - last year the system lost about $1 million."

At Monday's meeting, Harker will discuss his vision in an address titled, "University of Delaware and the Future of Higher Education." Faculty will also be able to ask questions and share concerns. "One of my responsibilities as president is to anticipate the opportunities and threats facing us and higher education, with an eye toward continuing UD's role as an outstanding university," Harker wrote. "The University of Delaware has already made incredible progress. But we still have much work to do."

"The National University System, for example, is developing  a variety of initiatives aimed at bringing down the cost of a degree, including through FlexCourse?, a teaching and learning platform that offers faculty-supported, variably-paced online degree programs at an affordable price point of $8,500 annual tuition. The platform is initially being offered in conjunction with John F. Kennedy University, through JFKU Online --  both part of the National University System."

"More than six million students are currently enrolled in online courses. There are now massive open online courses (MOOCs), in which universities and technology companies partner to design courses for thousands of students. Selingo also discusses how two colleges, the traditional Southern New Hampshire University and the newly developed Western Governors University (see John Gravois, "The College For-profits Should Fear," Washington Monthly, September/October 2011), are experimenting with competency-based online associate's degree programs, in which students are credited as soon as they show mastery of a subject rather than having to spend a set number of hours in class."

At one session here at Davos, the presidents of Harvard, Stanford and MIT all readily acknowledged that the experiments in new models of online learning will soon radically disrupt higher learning. One expert suggested many universities are facing the early days of bankruptcy. Another predicted there may only be 10 universities that survive this transition.

"During the webinar, one of the participants shared a link for a report from Duke University on their first MOOC, Bioelectricity: A Quantitative Approach, delivered through Coursera in fall 2012. And what a find that was - this is the most thorough description I have yet seen from a university about their experience selecting, development, delivering and analyzing a MOOC. Kudos to Yvonne Belanger and Jessica Thornton, the authors."

"State disinvestment in public higher education compels public universities to behave like private universities by focusing on attracting paying customers," concluded Ozan Jaquette, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles who studies college pricing, in a study of flagship state institutions he co-authored last year.

Howard University announced "Howard University Online," part of a comprehensive initiative that will expand the flagship research University's array of blended/online courses and programs in partnership with Pearson.

"Ivory Tower takes a look at universities and their transformation from providers of education to business ventures that strive to be the biggest and the best providers of the "college experience". The competition among these institutions of higher learning has had an adverse effect on those they are suppose to serve. From less rigorous curriculums to higher tuition prices, the universities have changed the way Americans think of educations. Students are now consumers and university presidents are CEOs overseeing multiplexes of the college experience. In order to pay for that experience, students are taking out an average of about $30,000 in student loans. The overall student debt in the US has now surpassed $1tn."

Stacy Zemke has been named the Open Educational Resources (OER) Coordinator for the University of Oklahoma Libraries. As the OER Coordinator, Zemke will assist in the creation, promotion and utilization of open educational resources and open access content in support of OU's goal to reduce textbook costs through the development of open access educational resources for both students and faculty.

"ProQuest SIPX, provider of the most complete digital course materials solutions in higher education, has signed a three-year deal with Arizona State University (ASU), the largest public university in the U.S. with over 90,000 students. ASU will integrate the SIPX Central service-a scalable, self-service configuration that enables anyone at the school to set up course readings-into the campus' Blackboard learning management system. The technology is unique, sophisticated, yet user-friendly and helps get more library resources and open access content into the hands of instructors. The service will reduce the cost of course materials for students and simplify sharing of the course readings between instructors and students."