Printer-friendly versionSome of the News Fit to Print
ABOUT HIGHER ED
PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE LIKELY TO FOCUS ON COLLEGE COST
In anticipation of President Barack Obama's third State of the Union address, education experts expect the president's address to hit on college affordability, an issue Obama has made a central prong of his re-election campaign's middle-class message -- despite questions about the administration's ability to tangibly help students. The article is from the Huffington Post.
COLLEGE AFFORDABILITY: DAMNED IF YOU DO, DAMNED IF YOU DON’T
Education Trust’s Jose Cruz writes in the Huffington Post: Higher education has long been heralded as an engine of opportunity in America. Now, more than ever, economic demands are making a post-secondary degree the surest way into the middle class. Indeed, we'll likely hear about it in Tuesday's State of the Union address, since the Obama administration has taken a number of steps to try to make college more affordable. But skyrocketing tuition rates, plus policies that shift more and more financial aid away from those who need it most, are rendering the decision to go to college a damned if you go, damned if you don't proposition for too many hard-working students.
MASSIVE COURSES, SANS STANFORD
For students looking to learn skills and land jobs, might the good word of a highly regarded instructor count as much as the imprimatur of a highly regarded institution? The question arose in the fall, when a handful of professors at Stanford University decided to teach free courses online to tens of thousands of students who were not enrolled at the elite California university. The students would receive no Stanford credit; only a signed letter by the instructor, acting apart from the university. The pair of part-time Stanford instructors who co-taught the most successful of the open courses, on artificial intelligence, now intend to put the importance of the institutional brand to the test. They are co-founders of a company that will offer two similarly “open” courses beginning in February, this time independently of the Stanford name. The article is in Inside Higher Ed.
MIT MINTS A VALUABLE NEW FORM OF ACADEMIC CURRENCY
MIT has decided to put free content and sophisticated online pedagogy together and add a third, crucial ingredient: credentials. Beginning this spring, students will be able to take free, online courses offered through the MITx initiative. If they prove they've learned the materi¬al, MITx will, for a small fee, give them a credential certifying as much. The article is in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
ABOUT K-12
NEGOTIATORS DEBATE TEACHER PREP REPORTING RULES
A panel of negotiators convened by the U.S. Department of Education had some lively exchanges last week over ways to make federally required teacher education "report cards" a more useful and accurate gauge of program quality for states, teacher programs themselves, and the public—and to set guidelines for identifying the weakest programs. The article is in Education Week.
Post new comment