By Joshua Kim. High Quality Online Learning: A Discussion with USC's Karen Gallagher
Karen Symms Gallagher, Dean of USC Rossier School of Education, caught my eye for two reasons.   
First, I read a couple of opinion pieces in which she argued that we need to look beyond MOOCs to the potential of providing extremely high quality and intimate for-credit degree programs that leverage new options in technology and new opportunities in non-profit / for-profit partnerships.   These columns, including Higher Ed Leaders Must Lead Online and Rethinking Higher Ed Open Online Learning stand apart for their combination of a progressive call for innovation in online education and skepticism that the locus of this innovation is limited to the world of MOOCs.
The second reason that Karen ended up on my radar screen was her designation as a  Pahara-Aspen Education Fellow.   This prestigious fellowship, which is given to only two dozen educators a year, is designed to "support extraordinary entrepreneurial leaders who are committed to transforming public education." Read more...

Journée pour l'emploi des docteurs. Quelles compétences pour quels métiers ?
JED SHS 4 avril 2013 - Journée organisée en collaboration avec l'université Lumière Lyon 2, l'université Jean Moulin Lyon 3 et les associations de doctorants "Les Têtes chercheuses" et "Enthèse", à l'Université Jean Moulin 3, 15 quai Claude Bernard, Lyon.
Tables-rondes, témoignages et ateliers  pour répondre à la question: "Quelles compétences pour quels métiers?"
Ecoles doctorales présentes:
Sciences sociales (ScSo) - Lettres, Linguistique, Arts (3LA) - Sciences de l'éducation, Psychologie, InfoCom (EPIC) - Sciences économiques et de Gestion (SEG) - Philosophie: histoire, représentation, création (Philo) - Droit.
Lire le compte-rendu des interventions de la JED 2012.
Programme provisionnel de la journée
8H30 - Ouverture: Que sont devenus les docteurs de l'Université de Lyon de 2009 par Pr. Christelle Goutaudier, Directrice du Collège doctoral de l’Université de Lyon.
9H00 - Parcours de Docteurs
11H00 - Les métiers de la fonction publique non académique
13H40- Pourquoi nous recrutons des Docteurs?
Ateliers: de 10H30 à 12H30 et de 15H à 16H30.
Thèmes:
    Simulations d'entretiens de recrutement,
    Déceler et valoriser ses compétences,
    Créer son activité,
    Jeunes chercheurs: soignez votre visibilité.
Etudes APEC/Deloitte
► Les besoins en compétences dans les métiers de la recherche à l'horizon 2020.
► Les besoins en compétences dans les métiers de la recherche à l'horizon 2020. Regards croisés entre employeurs et formateurs.
► Lire le compte-rendu des interventions de la JED 2012:
CONCLUSION
De toutes ces interventions, émerge un large consensus sur les capacités des Docteurs en sciences humaines et sociales à tracer leur voie professionnelle hors des sentiers académiques.
► En premier lieu, une expérience doctorale n’apporte pas seulement les connaissances scientifiques que le doctorant a l’habitude et le devoir de mobiliser. Le doctorat est un parcours professionnel qui apporte des savoirs faire et des savoirs être, sans cesse rappelés par les intervenants de cette journée comme des atouts qu’il faut apprendre à valoriser.
Un jeune Docteur:
- maîtrise la langue française et peut formuler clairement des choses complexes,

- a de l’aisance dans la prise de parole en public,

- sait analyser un corpus de données, quelles que soient les données, collecter et classer des informations, les rendre exploitables,

- peut gérer un projet de A à Z et des tâches multiples,

- apporter un regard neuf et aiguisé sur une situation,

- être une force de proposition,

- est capable de s’adapter à un nouvel environnement et aux autres,

- d’être réactif et de rebondir.
► Ensuite, le diplôme de Doctorat possède une valeur en tant que tel. C’est une valeur ajoutée pour l’entreprise qui fait le choix du long terme et celui de se distinguer de ses concurrents en employant un Docteur.
► Enfin, les intervenants ont prodigué de nombreux conseils utiles, et vécus,
pour s’insérer et évoluer dans le marché du travail:

- Créer et entretenir son réseau: carte de visite et profil sur un (des) réseau(x) professionnel(s)

- Identifier et nommer ses compétences

- Adapter la formalisation des compétences à l’employeur visé

- Persévérer.

- Garder une cohérence de projet sur le long terme

- Etre sensible et à l’écoute de ce qui se passe autour de soi

- Créer et saisir des opportunités en rapport avec la thèse.
Les intervenants ont conseillé aux doctorants et aux jeunes Docteurs d’être fiers de leur parcours et du travail accompli, et d’oser les mettre en valeur auprès de futurs employeurs.
Ils ont rappelé que mener un doctorat, c’est aussi être capable d’envisager et de créer les métiers de demain!

By Doug Lederman. There is nothing subtle about the home page of a new venture unveiled Thursday. "$1 Trillion U.S. Student Loan Debt" it screams, with the dollar figure in large yellow type. It then displays the average price of four years at public and private colleges ($71,000 and $158,000, respectively), and follows with data showing that more than a quarter of all bachelor's degree-holders start out at a community college.
The latest bare-knuckled promotional campaign for the nation's two-year colleges? Not exactly, but not wildly off, either. A new investor-backed company, Quad Learning, is teaming up with community colleges to build a national network of honors programs with a collaborative curriculum that they envision giving students an affordable, high-quality associate degree and helping them transfer to topnotch colleges and universities. Read more...

By Margaret Andrews. Yesterday I got a peek behind the curtain.
Previous StratEDgy posts have addressed the rise of MOOCS and MOCCs (our own term for Mid-sized Online Closed Courses) and edX  – and today about HarvardX.
Yesterday afternoon I had the opportunity to attend a HarvardX Town Hall meeting, run by HarvardX faculty director Rob Lue, for Harvard faculty members and instructors to learn more about HarvardX.  And now I get it. We’ve all heard how online education has the ability to fundamentally change how higher education is perceived and delivered, as well as how it will change the world through expanding access, decreasing costs, and creating a host of new materials that can be experienced in new ways. And I’ve even taken a MOOC. Read more...

By Pamela Tate. With great interest, I read the recent news announcing that the American Council on Education (ACE) had evaluated five Coursera MOOCs and recommended them for credit. But I had hoped for something different.
Having traditional prestigious institutions making their online content open to the world – of course without their prestigious credit attached – was an exciting development. A race to post courses ensued. On the surface, it’s an altruistic move to make learning available to anyone, anywhere for free. Dig deeper and we are left to ask, how many MOOC courses will really be worth college credit, where will the credits be accepted, and for how long will college credits even be the primary measurement of learning?
Now that ACE has evaluated a few courses, MOOC providers will see how their process goes as students start actually finding proctors and taking tests -- or finding other methods of assessment -- to prove they learned the material. But a few courses will not be enough to really help students earn degrees, and with MOOC courses and providers continuing to proliferate, this does not seem like a viable way to keep up with demand. Read more...

For the last two days UD has been in Washington DC, at a high-level gathering of federal government, Gates Foundation, and university people, all of whom convened to talk about how to use online technology to improve education for American students, from elementary to graduate school.
The meeting took place in a gorgeous multilevel hotel where grand pianos hovered over shallow pools and jazz with a perk up! beat filled the air.
It was the sort of place that lifts your game.  Everyone looked sharp, bright, perked up.
Four other groups met at the same time among the immense soft-lit halls of the lower level.  Behind the walls of the halls, immense Ladies' Rooms went on and on in the half-light, their vast handicapped stalls beckoning. Outside the Ladies', buffets appeared everywhere, and these also went on and on, spicing the atmosphere with cinnamon teas. Read more...

By Jason B. Jones. This week the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education launched an important new paper series on funding higher education. Rejecting the premise that one of the richest nations in history can’t afford to educate its citizens, and strongly defending the idea that education is public good, the series offers pragmatic steps toward an ambitious goal: seriously funding higher education so that a quality education is accessible to all who would benefit from it.
In the series, Bob Samuels explicitly calls for “Making All Public Higher Education Free”, Stanton A. Glantz and Eric Hays explore “Financial Options for Restoring Quality and Access to Public Higher Education in California”, and AAUP president Rudy Fichtenbaum explains “How to Invest in Higher Education: A Financial Speculation Tax.” They’re well worth careful attention. Read more...