By Dror Ben-Naim. One of the great ironies of online learning is that a tool created to foster personalized learning is actually quite impersonal, in practice. It doesn’t have to be that way.
MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course) are based on a simple premise: deliver free content from the world’s greatest professors to the masses, and a global community of students could take the same courses as students attending elite colleges and universities. The hope was that broad-based access to higher education would enable unprecedented numbers of learners to fulfill the democratic promise of higher education, social mobility and professional attainment. More...

By Ashlea Ebeling. Would you rather get cash for college or a silver spoon? One of four new ads for Virginia’s 529 college savings plans debuting next month on YouTube and Facebook (and tv) is set at a baby shower. The coveted gift: a check made out to baby’s college savings account.
The ads are meant to appeal to Millennials who are new parents. It’s the generation with a savings ethos, student loan debt worries of their own, who want their kids to get off to a easier start. They’re not shy about asking friends and family for cash to help pay for their progeny’s future college costs. More...

By Betsy Hammond. Members of the public routinely question Oregon's official goal that 80 percent of its young people should earn college credentials -- at least half of them four-year degrees and the rest either two-year degrees or industry certification.
That's nuts, some people complain. College is not for everyone, they say. A liberal arts degree carries no guarantee you'll get a good job. People who work with their hands, including electricians and plumbers, make good money without a college degree, they point out. More...

The cost of a college education in Virginia is going up … again.
According to the State Council of Higher Education, undergraduates at the state’s public four-year universities will pay 5.2 percent more in tuition and mandatory fees in 2015 than they did a year ago. This year’s increase is up from 4.3 percent last year and 4.1 in the 2012-2013 academic year. Between 2008 and 2012, state tuition increases averaged 8.4 percent, with a high-water mark of 10.6 percent in 2011. More...

U.S. President Barack Obama says he wants to make sure that obtaining a higher education is affordable.
The U.S. leader said Saturday in his weekly address that paying for a higher education is a "constant struggle" for too many families and he wants to reverse that with new initiatives. More...

By Patricia A. Gentile. Derrick Z. Jackson got it half right — Massachusetts is not a two-tiered public higher education state (“Pricing out state university students”). It has three tiers, and they include community colleges, where the most at-risk, lowest-income, greatest-minority students receive the least amount of public support and shoulder the highest percentage of financial burden to pursue their dreams. The 15 Massachusetts community colleges enroll 57 percent of the total undergraduates in public higher education, more than UMass and state colleges and universities combined. Yet our sector only receives 25 percent of the total higher-education pie. UMass student support is three times higher per student, with public colleges and universities two times higher. More...

By Scott D. Gerber. A new academic year is upon us. Students, parents, and faculty are excited. But they are also nervous. These are difficult times for higher education in America. At all but the nation's top colleges and universities, enrollments are down and budgets are strapped. Many explanations have been offered about why higher education is floundering: wasteful administrative bloat and a reckless construction frenzy make almost every critics' list. Rightly so. After all, how many assistant deans and new athletic fields does a college really need? Far fewer than academic bureaucrats seem to think, in my humble opinion. More...

By Eric Schulzke. Only 5 percent of people who start a free online "massive open enrollment course," or MOOC, finish the course. This a fact often cited as an indictment of MOOCs. But is that really the measure of success?
MOOCs are courses provided by some of the world's best universities free online to anyone who wants to sign up, watch the lectures, read the materials and participate in online forums. Some classes provide completion certificates to participants who pay a small fee and complete all the assigments. More...

By Matt Krupnick. An increasing number of schools are unable to balance their books. Make sure yours is not one of them.
When Corinthian Colleges Inc. agreed in July to sell off or close nearly all of its 107 campuses, it left 72,000 students wondering about their futures—and whether they should have seen the writing on the wall. More...