The legal pursuit of a defunct for-profit college in Florida and its former owner gets wilder with each filing. A new civil suit filed by a U.S. attorney and the state's attorney general, Pam Bondi, alleges that FastTrain College defrauded the federal government with false claims for millions of dollars in financial aid. Read more...
07 décembre 2014
Two-Year Majors
By Matt Reed. Should community colleges have psychology majors? English majors? Poli sci majors?
The trend nationally is against it. The “guided pathways” movement is all about “streamlining,” which means reducing the number of available options to the bare minimum. The theory, and there is some empirical support for it, is that students are easily overwhelmed by too many options. Read more...
College Used Strippers as Student Recruiters, Feds Say
Report Says Four-Year Degrees Are a 'Myth'
A new policy report from Complete College America pushes for a return to "on-time" graduation. The nonprofit group said commonly used graduation rates of 150 percent of on-time program length (six years for bachelor's degrees and three for associates) are "unacceptable, especially when we consider that students and their families are trying desperately to control the skyrocketing costs of higher education." Read more...
5 Ways to Grow Your Digital Fluency
By Eric Stoller. If you've ever tried to define "technology," you know that it can be daunting. A conversation about increasing digital fluency can lead to an epic list of considerations. There are so many different aspects to consider when it comes to things like technology, hardware, software, apps, social media, digital identity, and information systems. When we try to look at the big picture, it can sometimes stop us in our tracks and keep us from picking up new skills to add to our digital toolkit. More...
Connecting Technology Buckets in Student Affairs
By Eric Stoller. The Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS) website lists "44 sets of functional area standards for higher education programs and services." That represents a multitude of departments and services that are present at most colleges and universities. It also means that there are scores of technologies at play within myriad functional areas. More...
Mind the Gap: A Response to Ben Wildavsky
By Matt Reed. Is it fair to offer operating subsidies to public colleges that allow pricing tuition below cost for all students, even the most affluent? Should even the wealthier students get discounts. Read more...
Yeah, We're Really Screwing This Up
By John Warner. I can’t remember when I stopped explicitly punishing the failure to turn in preliminary drafts of assignments, i.e., docking the grade on the final version, but it’s been awhile.
It was sometime after I read Ken Bain’s What the Best College Teachers Do and learned that the most effective teachers tend to cede as much control in the classroom as possible to students. Read more...
“Like a Real College”
By Matt Reed. How do you know a real college when you see one? People in the industry may have some quick answers, drawing on accreditation, reputation, or the presence or absence of (insert hobbyhorse here). Until about 1995, that was pretty much good enough. Read more...
U.S. Will Explore New Loan Servicing Models, Official Says
A recent report from China’s Ministry of Education describes the increasingly fierce job market faced by students returning from overseas, Shanghai Daily reported. The newspaper quoted the deputy director of the Chinese service center for scholarly exchange, Che Weimin, as saying that the income gap between students who earned their bachelor’s degrees abroad and their peers who stayed in China is narrowingThe U.S. Department of Education plans to explore new approaches to how it services federal student loans, a top official said Monday. Undersecretary of Education Ted Mitchell, addressing a Federal Student Aid conference in Atlanta, suggested that the government may move away from its current system -- or at least elements of it -- of contracting with four companies to manage payments for the bulk of its federal student loan portfolio. Read more...
Filtering, Again
By Matt Reed. “Sometimes, the police break the law.” -- Me, to The Girl, this week.
The Girl is ten, and The Boy is thirteen. TB seems in a sort of hurry to grow up; TG is enjoying being ten. But they’re both old enough to notice some of the things going on in the world around them. And they notice when a parent reacts emotionally to a news story. Read more...
