By - . About one in four college students took at least one online class in 2012 — the most recent year for which those stats are available — with 12.5 percent of U.S. college students taking their classes exclusively online, according to a study published by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). More...
By Elise Stolte. Faculty and staff celebrated a new graduation of sorts Wednesday as five university colleges were given provincial permission to call themselves universities.
In Edmonton, what can now be called Concordia University and The King’s University started making plans to change billboards and letterhead.
“It’s awesome. It’s a good step for King’s,” said Tom Doerksen, fourth-year chemistry student at King’s. More...
By Dan Horch. Higher education in Brazil is increasingly in the hands of profit-seeking entrepreneurs.
Although for-profit colleges have faced scrutiny in the United States, the industry is finding a warm welcome here as the government tries to meet the demand for affordable higher education.
From 2002 to 2012, the number of students attending college in Brazil doubled to seven million. Still, with only 17 percent of Brazilians aged 18 to 24 in college, there is a gap that needs to be served. The government has pledged to raise that percentage to 33 percent by 2020. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Bad Day for Bad Patents: Supreme Court Unanimously Strikes Down Abstract Software Patent
Daniel Nazer, Vera Ranieri, Electronic Frontier Foundation, June 22, 2014
Nice news on the patent front. "Essentially, the Court ruled that adding “on a computer” to an abstract idea does not make it patentable. Many thousands of software patents—particularly the vague and overbroad patents so beloved by patent trolls—should be struck down under this standard." More...
By Phil Hill. One of the policies that we’re tracking at e-Literate is the proposed State Authorization regulation that the US Department of Education (DOE) has been pushing. The latest DOE language represents a dramatic increase in federal control of distance education and in bureaucratic compliance required of institutions and states. In the most recent post we shared a letter from WCET, UPCEA and Sloan-C to Secretary Duncan at the DOE. Read more...By Jonathan Rees - Chronicle Vitae. The last episode of Radiolab that I heard began with an argument between co-host Robert Krulwich and his wife, Tamar Lewin, who just happens to be the higher education reporter for The New York Times. Walking through The Explorers Club in New York City, Krulwich felt a little bit of historical energy every time he touched a physical manifestation of history—like an Explorer’s Club flag that had gone to the moon and back. Lewin was less impressed. The historic objects were very cool, she pronounced, but she didn’t feel the same magic. See more...
By . The U.S. Department of Education has once more pushed back the deadline for compliance with a requirement that colleges be properly authorized by state governments, according to a notice to be published in Tuesday’s Federal Register. In 2010 the department issued rules containing a provision requiring colleges to seek approval from each state where they enroll students online. More...
By Eric Hoover. College-entrance examinations give students a score—bravo, kid, you got a 1400!—and not much else. But a new wave of low-stakes assessments offers them guidance.
“Actionable information,” says Ross E. Markle, one of several representatives of the Educational Testing Service who visited The Chronicle on Thursday. More...
College and university leaders have been up in arms since President Obama announced last year that the administration would soon deploy a rating system that evaluates schools based on factors like affordability, graduation rates, student earnings and how well institutions serve low-income students. Mr. Obama wants Congress to use the ratings to help guide the allocation of federal student loans and grants. More...
By Michael Horn. It’s time for some new ideas in Washington, D.C. to curb what is a very real problem. The new documentary Ivory Tower does a good job of outlining that problem. Higher education tuition continues to rise. According to the White House, “Over the past three decades, the average tuition at a public four-year college has more than tripled, while a typical family’s income has barely budged.” Debt for college graduates is spiraling upward. The challenge of repaying the loans is growing. More...
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