An electronic textbook pilot has, once again, reported lukewarm interest among college students -- this time at the University of Iowa. Sponsored by Educause and Internet2, the fall 2012 pilot involved about 600 students across 17 different courses, comparing results of students using e-textbooks from McGraw-Hill Education and Courseload to students in similar courses who used print books. Most students preferred the print books, calling them "easier to access and more useful for learning," and few students used the e-textbooks' bookmarking and note taking features. Read more...

Britain's home office has suspended the administration of English language tests run by the Princeton, N.J.-based Educational Testing Service after the BBC news program, "Panorama," uncovered “systematic fraud” at British test centers. As summarized in this BBC article, Panorama recorded instances of Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) examinees being replaced by “fake-sitters” who completed the test for them, and of a proctor reading the correct answers aloud to test takers. Read more...

The Common Application announced Tuesday that it is keeping the current essay prompts (and word limit of 650 words). When the prompts were introduced last year, they received mix reviews, but the Common Application announcement said that a survey found that 70 percent of member colleges and 90 percent of school counselors approved of the prompts. Read more...

It will take significant cooperation among state and federal policy makers, traditional educational institutions and others to improve American adults' work force and literacy skills, the American Council on Education argues in a new report. The report examines data released last year as part of Survey of Adult Skills from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which showed U.S. adults lagging behind those in many other countries on literacy and numeracy, and asserts that colleges and others will need to adopt new approaches to change that picture. Read more...

By Andrea Watson. The extensive marketing that some for-profit colleges use to woo prospective students and the intense criticism voiced by some Democratic politicians have largely dominated the national discussion about the college sector. A new survey from Public Agenda seeks to insert a set of missing voices into the dialogue -- those of students and alumni -- and their assessment is mixed. Read more...

By Doug Lederman. Everywhere you look, politicians are asserting that the public and taxpayers are questioning the value of higher education – and that their disappointment stems primarily from the fact that increasingly pricey college degrees aren’t leading to jobs. Governors in states such as Florida and North Carolina have asserted that their investments in higher education should be focused like a laser on degrees that lead directly to jobs. Read more...

By Colleen Flaherty. Lectures on “putting first things first” and “beginning with the end in mind” could soon replace those on world civilizations and logic for some students enrolled in San Antonio area community colleges. Bruce Leslie, chancellor of the Alamo Colleges, is hoping that the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board will approve his bid for a course heavily influenced by the popular self-help book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to become part of the core curriculum, in place of a humanities course. Read more...

By Scott Jaschik. The College Board is releasing data today showing sustained growth over the last decade in the number of students taking Advanced Placement exams, with more than 1 million members of the high school class of 2013 taking AP exams.
That's nearly double the 514,000 from the class of 2003. Read more...

By Scott Jaschik. Few educational theories have taken off as quickly in recent years as that of "undermatching." The idea is that many academically talented, low-income students who could succeed at top colleges are not applying to, enrolling in or graduating from them. Research on the topic has attracted widespread attention not only from colleges but from the White House, where administration officials have urged higher education leaders to do more on the issue. Read more...

By Carl Straumsheim. Cornell University and the University of Texas at Austin may have trumpeted their partnerships with -- and pledged millions to -- the massive open online course provider edX, but to no avail: Their students don't seem to understand why.
“A year after UT began rolling out nine Massive Online Open Courses, the results are in,” The Daily Texan wrote in a Jan. 29 editorial, which appears to have been inspired by a recent article in The Texas Tribune. Among the “results” are completion rates ranging from 1 to 13 percent, the lack of credit granting courses and the $150,000 to $300,000 production costs. Read more...