By Mary Alice McCarthy.Yesterday, the OECD released its long-awaited Survey of Adult Skills, also known as PIAAC. To no one’s surprise, the United States failed to score above the cross-country average on any of the three assessed skills. On numeracy, the US found itself near the bottom of the pack, alongside Italy and Spain, and ranking well below competitors like Japan and Germany. On the literacy front we eked out a spot in the middle, but only because older Americans made up for the relatively poor scores of younger adults – not exactly a harbinger of future prowess. The US did manage to finish above average in one category – the percentage of our population that is low-skilled. Thirty six million Americans, one in six adults, lack basic literacy and numeracy skills, compared with one in twenty adults in Japan. More...

By Rachel Fishman. This blog post is the fourth part in a series that takes a look at recent changes to the credit criteria for Parent PLUS loans and the subsequent effect on colleges and universities. You can find the rest of the series here.
Since making relatively minor changes to the credit check requirements for Parent PLUS loans last year, the Department of Education has been under a firestorm of criticism from historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and their lobbying organization, the National Association for Equal Opportunity (NAFEO). According to HBCUs, the impact of the policy change caused a significant decline in enrollments and a huge loss in revenue for their institutions. In an effort to ease tensions, Education Secretary Arne Duncan recently apologized to HBCU leaders at their annual meeting saying, “I am not satisfied with the way we handled the updating and changes to the PLUS loan program. Communication internally and externally was poor. I apologize for that, and the real impact it had.” More...

By Jon Erickson. MOOCs offer a number of potential benefits. Once developed and delivered at scale, the MOOC model is a much less labor-intensive approach to college education. MOOCs enable professors to spread their knowledge to vastly larger audiences, requiring fewer faculty than the traditional model. That can help alleviate instructional needs that will be created by the impending wave of faculty retirements as well as reduce the rising costs of a college education.
Read the related article.