March 13, 2013
By M. Mitchell Waldrop and Nature magazine

Science, engineering and technology courses have been in the vanguard of the massive open online course movement. These classes also are providing fodder for scientific research on learning

When campus president Wallace Loh walked into Juan Uriagereka's office last August, he got right to the point. “We need courses for this thing — yesterday!”

Uriagereka, associate provost for faculty affairs at the University of Maryland in College Park, knew exactly what his boss meant. Campus administrators around the world had been buzzing for months about massive open online courses, or MOOCs: Internet-based teaching programs designed to handle thousands of students simultaneously, in part using the tactics of social-networking websites. To supplement video lectures, much of the learning comes from online comments, questions and discussions. Participants even mark one another's tests.

MOOCs had exploded into the academic consciousness in summer 2011, when a free artificial-intelligence course offered by Stanford University in California attracted 160,000 students from around the world — 23,000 of whom finished it. Now, Coursera in Mountain View, California — one of the three researcher-led start-up companies actively developing MOOCs — was inviting the University of Maryland to submit up to five courses for broadcast on its software platform. Loh wanted in. “He was very clear,” says Uriagereka. “We needed to be a part of this.”

March 12, 2013
By Bruce Guile,president and co-founder of Course Gateway, an online education consultancy.
David Teece, executive director of the Institute of Business Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
Source: Forbes

A revolution is coming to U.S. higher education, one that will sweep away an archaic business model, erase the value of many venerable brands, and enhance the brands of new entrants and nimble incumbents. It will be a tough time for many U.S. colleges and universities but great news for the rest of the world.

In the 1960s the economists William Baumol and William Bowen identified the productivity problem at the root of the rising relative cost of higher education. They identified education as a profession where labor productivity was not amenable to improvement through technological advance. When it comes to teaching, the productivity of a professor in the Middle Ages and that of a professor today are not very different.

This longstanding productivity problem, also known as “Baumol’s cost disease,” is changing dramatically as a bundle of Internet-based technologies involving high-bandwidth communications, content management systems, online courses, e-mentoring platforms, and social and collaborative network software start to take hold in U.S. higher education.

March 17, 2013
The New York Times
By SARA HAMDAN

DUBAI — Leaving the desert behind, a driver to Education City in Doha, the Qatari capital, has the impression of entering another world. It still has the look of the modern Gulf: Huge, shiny buildings sit side by side, and Range Rovers and Audis fill student parking lots. Inside, however, the common areas and cafes look like they could be on any U.S. campus.

Young men and women cluster to talk over a presentation in one corner, while techies crowd around a computer in another.

The difference is that many of the students are Qataris, with women wearing traditional black abayas and men in white kandouras. The Gulf dialect echoes in the corridors. Qatari students, the majority of whom are attending a mixed-gender school environment for the first time, make up about a third of the student body.

The complex, which houses the local campuses of eight Western universities, is spread over 14 square kilometers, or 5.4 square miles. Founded in 2001 by a government rich with oil and natural gas money, it was meant to bring big-name Western education to the Gulf.

But some analysts say the universities, locally financed but serving student bodies that are still dominated by foreigners, seem like bubbles cut off from Gulf culture and society.

March 14, 2013
By Roger Riddell
Source: Education Drive

Dive Summary:

• The explosion of MOOCs comes at a time that traditional campuses are faced with a great deal of financial pressure and an increasing demand for higher education that would require the construction of four new 30,000-student universities a week to serve the number of kids who will be at enrollment age by 2025.
• Roy Pea, head of a Stanford center that studies how people use technology, says MOOCs could be the positive development that higher education needs, as they incorporate decades of research on how students learn best, are capable of freeing faculty from repetitive introductory lectures, and can provide detailed microanalytics for every paper, test and action a student takes in a course.
• Despite their rapid spread, MOOCs are still faced with low completion rates and questions of how to achieve profitability, maintain quality and connect with students.

March 12, 2013
By Nicole Raz
Source: Education Drive

For high school students looking to plan ahead, dual enrollment programs can offer tempting alternatives to Advanced Placement courses. Around 4,410 two- and four-year degree-granting postsecondary institutions in the U.S. are offering dual enrollment, and teens taking advantage can shave time off their quest for a degree and often save some tuition money in the process.

Many dual enrollment programs may have eligibility requirements, funding, extra academic support and credit limits. However, many high schoolers choose to take on college courses outside of a dual enrollment program.

The National Center for Education Statistics released a new report, titled "Dual Enrollment Programs and Courses for High School Students at Postsecondary Institutions: 2010-11," and its findings include lots of data about what colleges and universities are doing. The results, which are based on responses from 1,520 institutions in the U.S., show how students are using dual enrollment programs, in addition to how schools are offering them.

Here are the key findings that caught our attention:

March 11, 2013
By Eric Hoover and Sara Lipka
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education

Inside a semester of remedial English

Nobody wants to be here. In remedial English, earning no credit, stuck. Now—after months of commas, clauses, and four-paragraph essays—students have one last chance to write their way out.

Twenty students sit at computers, poised to start the final in-class essay for English 002 at Montgomery College. Just outside Washington, this suburban community college is tucked in a neighborhood between two Metro stations. Anybody can enroll here, and all kinds do.

The professor, Greg Wahl, walks around the room. On every blank screen, a cursor blinks.

In 85 minutes the students must craft a thesis and clear topic sentences, using evidence to support their opinions. They have to answer one of three questions, about their assigned book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie, or their difficulty in mastering goals for the course, such as "Write and edit sentences that observe the conventions of standard American English."

March 11, 2013, 2:52 pm
By Jake New
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education

March 7, 2013
By Matthew M. Chingos
Source: Brookings

Affirmative action is back in the news this year with a major Supreme Court case, Fisher v. Texas. The question before the Court is whether the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause permits the University of Texas at Austin’s use of race in its undergraduate admissions process. The Court may declare the use of racial preferences in university admissions unconstitutional when it decides the case in the coming months, potentially overturning its decision in the landmark Grutter case decided a decade ago.

Accompanying the general subject of affirmative action in the spotlight is the “mismatch” hypothesis, which posits that minority students are harmed by the very policies designed to help them. Justice Clarence Thomas made this argument in his dissent in the Grutter case: “The Law School tantalizes unprepared students with the promise of a University of Michigan degree and all of the opportunities that it offers. These overmatched students take the bait, only to find that they cannot succeed in the cauldron of competition. And this mismatch crisis is not restricted to elite institutions.”

March 4, 2013
By Steve Kolowich
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education

Online education may have arrived at the upper echelons of higher education, but it's not going to make elite colleges any cheaper to attend.

Massive open online courses and other online tools, however, may change many aspects of top undergraduate campuses. That was the conclusion of a private summit, held here on Monday and sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, at which many of online education's heaviest hitters discussed the future of residential higher education, particularly at elite institutions, in a digital age.

After years of standing by while the online wave gathered momentum at lower-tier institutions, MIT and Harvard last year gave online education a $60-million bear hug by collaborating to found edX, a nonprofit MOOC provider that could also serve as a laboratory for studying the dynamics of virtual classrooms.

The universities made it clear then that they intended to use their MOOCs to improve, not supplant, traditional courses.

Monday 28 January 2013
By Aldwyn Cooper
Source: The Guardian

For institutions that value student experience and its impact on employability in a global market, internationalisation means more than overseas recruitment, says Aldwyn Cooper.

In an era of international league tables and the emergence of new institutions in rapidly developing countries, higher education is viewed as an increasingly competitive sector. Many institutions now recognise that they cannot afford to operate at only a national level to gain the optimal outcomes. The direct economic contribution of higher education as an export business is substantial – as much as £10bn for the UK – and the long-term benefits in business and socio-political relations are enormous.