By Kris Olds. Who is troubled by this week's Sebastian Thrun hagiography ('Udacity's Sebastian Thrun, Godfather Of Free Online Education, Changes Course') in Fast Company, as well as this announcement ('Launching our Data Science & Big Data Track built with Leading Industry Partners') via the Udacity blog (both posted on 14 November 2013)? A lot of committed open education thinkers and practitioners, so it seems, and not merely because of the hype machine Thrun so evidently cultivates (I'll leave aside the possible negative reaction to Thrun getting photographed in Lycra tights through a filter borrowed from a 1970s Swedish cinematographer, or the journalist's attempt to throw in a clichéd Matrix reference). Read more...16 novembre 2013
Briefly Noted
By Kris Olds. Who is troubled by this week's Sebastian Thrun hagiography ('Udacity's Sebastian Thrun, Godfather Of Free Online Education, Changes Course') in Fast Company, as well as this announcement ('Launching our Data Science & Big Data Track built with Leading Industry Partners') via the Udacity blog (both posted on 14 November 2013)? A lot of committed open education thinkers and practitioners, so it seems, and not merely because of the hype machine Thrun so evidently cultivates (I'll leave aside the possible negative reaction to Thrun getting photographed in Lycra tights through a filter borrowed from a 1970s Swedish cinematographer, or the journalist's attempt to throw in a clichéd Matrix reference). Read more...Obama Nominates Advocacy Group Official to Federal Higher Ed Post
President Obama on Thursday nominated Ericka M. Miller, vice president for operations and strategic leadership at the Education Trust, to be assistant secretary for postsecondary education. If Miller is confirmed by the Senate, she would largely complete the team of political leaders who will guide the Education Department's higher ed agenda in the president's second term. Read more...
EdX Spawns Arabic Language Platform
The massive open online course provider edX announced a new open-source platform on Friday: Edraak, an online education platform for Arabic-speaking students. The Queen Rania Foundation for Education and Development, which promotes efforts to strengthen education in Jordan, will use Open edX, the MOOC provider's open-source platform, to feature select courses translated into Arabic. As the platform grows, faculty members in Arabic-speaking countries will contribute their own courses. The creation of Edraak follows expansion initiatives in France and China. Read more...
Rich Harvard, Poor Harvard
Harvard University recently announced an 11.3 percent return on its endowment, which was valued at $32.7 billion on June 30. That's the largest endowment in higher education. The university also recently announced a $6.5 billion fund-raising campaign -- the largest ever in higher education. But an interview released by the university Friday with its chief financial officer, Dan Shore, he focused on financial pressures on the university. He said that the university has a $34 million deficit. And while that's small in the context of the university's $4.2 billion budget, he said that "the path toward our ability to thrive in the future requires that we not wait until the deficit gets even bigger before we start to act, because then it will require us to be in a much more reactive position." He also noted uncertainty about federal support, on which Harvard relies for research. Read more...
Senators Introduce Bill to Fund Open Education Resources
A new bill introduced in the U.S. Senate seeks to tackle the rising cost of textbooks by giving states an incentive to experiment with open educational resources. The Affordable College Textbook Act, introduced by U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Al Franken, Democrats of Illinois and Minnesota, respectively, would create a grant program that would fund the creation of new textbooks -- as long as they are made available for free online. Read more...
You Need a Website
By Eszter Hargittai and Brayden King. This week, the U.S. Department of Education announced changes to the PLUS loan underwriting standards that may help previously denied PLUS loan applicants obtain loans. This will be welcome news to previously approved loan applicants who found themselves unexpectedly denied last year. But federal PLUS loans can be risky business for graduate students and parents of undergraduates who can use them to borrow up to the full cost of attendance at college. Much more can be done to protect consumers from getting too deeply into debt. The Department of Education recently added PLUS loan underwriting standards to its list of items to potentially consider during negotiated rule-making, the process where students, advocates and colleges work with the federal government to hash out new regulations. Read more...
Academic Roadkill
By Martin H. Krieger. Stephen Spielberg's "Duel" (1971), one of his first films, is about a truck that keeps coming. You really don't want to be the character, played by Dennis Weaver driving a red Plymouth Valiant, who is being pursued by an actual truck.
1. I often say, in my new book The Scholar's Survival Manual and in everyday discourse: A truck is coming, and you better not say: What truck? Trucks are real and if they are coming, you had better get out of the way. Otherwise you will become academic roadkill. Read more...
Capturing Institutional Knowledge
By Andrew M. Pena. What happens to an organization when its best, brightest, most experienced and knowledgeable employees are walking out the door? What do they take with them, and what do we lose? Part of it is the organization’s institutional knowledge or history. Obviously not all employee turnover is “bad” turnover; there are some employees that we’d like to leave sooner rather than later. Read more...
Third Try Isn't the Charm
By Paul Fain. Community college students face long odds of eventually earning a bachelor’s degree. And those odds get worse if they leave college more than once along the way. That is the central finding of a new study that tracked the progress of 38,000 community college students in Texas. Toby J. Park, an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy at Florida State University, conducted the research. His working paper was presented Thursday at the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education in St. Louis. Read more...
Acquisition in Australia
By Elizabeth Redden. Indiana Wesleyan University has an entrepreneurial bent: the evangelical Christian institution is well-known for having expanded beyond its 3,000-student residential undergraduate campus to develop online programs and a network of 17 regional centers for adult and graduate education throughout Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio. Now the university is eyeing an expansion Down Under through the planned acquisition of the Wesley Institute, a Christian performing arts-focused college in Sydney that also offers programs in education and counseling. Read more...
