By Peter Stokes. They said 2012 was the Year of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). It’s little surprise, then, that 2013 turned out to be the Year of the Backlash.
If last year was a tough one for MOOCs and their various stakeholders — the platform companies, faculty members and sundry market cheerleaders — it can only have been a consequence of the absurd expectations for MOOCs, both as an agent of change and as a harbinger of educational doom. More...

By Chris Good. It would be a cultural shift, but the Obama administration is hoping to change the perception of two- and four-year universities and what is needed for success. Through two new skills-training programs, utilizing grant money announced in 2010, the administration is encouraging a competition to foster courses developed by industry at the community college level and an apprentice job scholarship program. President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden appeared at a community college in Pittsburgh today to announce $500 million in grant funding for community college job-training programs and $100 million in funding for apprenticeship grants. More...

By Jennifer Conlin. In January, residents here learned the news that the senior place-kicker for the University of Michigan’s football team had been permanently “separated” from the college for violating its student sexual misconduct policy. In addition, the violation, what the authorities said was a sexual assault, occurred in 2009, when the kicker was a freshman, and his punishment was not determined until his athletic career had ended this past winter.
The article describing all of this, based on documents reviewed by two reporters, stated, “It’s unclear why sanctions were not decided in this matter until recently.” More...

By Rebecca Schuman. First I have to figure out what it is. It’s no secret that the humanities—literature, history, philosophy, the foreign languages— are suffering from a precipitous plummet in higher education. But hark! Digital humanities are here to rescue the field—or maybe just kill it off for good. More...

By Carl Soder. Methods of handling student cost of enrollment, faculty compensation and new sources of revenue, among other concerns, were addressed at an open forum led by Ohio University budget executives Tuesday in Baker University Ballroom. With the audience comprised mostly of faculty and budget executives, OU budget director Chad Mitchell detailed different budget scenarios varying in percent of tuition growth. Associate Provost for Budget and Academic Planning John Day summarized investment choices as well as future budget estimations on debt and compensation. More...

The public colleges and universities that educate more than 70 percent of this country’s students were burdened by rising costs and dwindling state revenues long before the recession. They reacted by raising tuition, slashing course offerings and, sometimes, by cutting enrollment.
They also cut labor costs by replacing full-time professors who retired with part-time instructors, who typically have no health or pension benefits and are often abysmally paid, earning in the vicinity of $3,000 per course. More...

By Sharyn Jackson. In the pivotal final months before he finishes his doctorate, Jose Clavijo has found himself too distracted to work.
The 31-year-old University of Florida student is one of more than 6,000 Venezuelans now studying at a university in the United States. As his home country has erupted with anti-government protests that have turned violent, his mind is sometimes more focused on unrest than agronomy. More...

When Paul Vaughn, an economics major, was in his third year at George Mason University, he decided to save money by moving off campus. He figured that skipping the basic campus meal plan, which costs $1,575 for 10 meals a week each semester, and buying his own food, would make life easier.
But he had trouble affording the $50 a week he had budgeted for food and ended up having to get two jobs to pay for it. “Almost as bad as the hunger itself is the stress that you’re going to be hungry,” said Vaughn, 22, now in his fifth year at GMU in Fairfax. More...