http://www.forbes.com/sites/ccap/2012/08/23/walmart-state-college/
The primary factors driving the cost of education have to do with an increase in the cost of basic, essential operations. Everyone has been struggling with rising health-care costs over the last decade or two. For a while, the cost of energy was going up double digits every year, but we’ve taken steps to reduce it with conservation and green initiatives. But I think the biggest piece of all is financial aid. Financial aid has become even more challenging in recent years, with the recession driving more requests for assistance. Read more at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/college-inc/post/no-magic-solution-to-college-affordability/2012/07/25/gJQA3d0G9W_blog.html?wprss=rss_college-inc
But can online education ever be education of the very best sort? It’s here that the notion of students teaching teachers is illuminating. With every class we teach, we need to learn who the people in front of us are. We need to know where they are intellectually, who they are as people and what we can do to help them grow. Online education is a one-size-fits-all endeavor. It tends to be a monologue and not a real dialogue. The Internet teacher, even one who responds to students via e-mail, can never have the immediacy of contact that the teacher on the scene can. Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/20/opinion/the-trouble-with-online-education.html
Glenn Reynolds, the professor and pundit who runs the influential site Instapundit, has popularized the term “higher education bubble,” Some dark scenarios see several hundred colleges disappearing as students turn to online education or skip higher education altogether. Pundits like George Will have embraced the bubble theory. Employers, because they realize that many college graduates aren’t really educated, now routinely quiz job seekers on what they majored in and what courses they took, a practice virtually unknown a generation ago. Good luck if you majored in gender studies, communications, art history, pop culture, or (really) the history of dancing in Montana in the 1850s. Read more at:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/18/janitors-with-college-degrees-and-the-higher-education-bubble.html
Cheating was, is and probably always will be a fact of life. Recently, technology has provided new ways to cheat, but advanced electronics can't be blamed for our increasing willingness to tolerate it. Compounding the problem is the fact that many students aren't fully aware of what constitutes cheating. While teaching at a university a few years ago, I was surprised when a student I had accused of plagiarizing by cutting and pasting text from a website denied having cheated. He indignantly argued that he would never cut and paste — he had retyped the entire thing. Read more at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-dorff-cheating-20120717,0,6524981.story
The problem is that we write too many words. We simply make too much Content, and that starts with "C" which rhymes with "E" which stands for Education. As a teacher I've witnessed how we imply that an increase in word count equals an advancement in learning. In elementary school, we identify "key sentences" and write one- or two-page essays, which is wonderful, but then it all goes wrong. By junior high we're on to 10-page papers, by high school we're up to 25 pages, in college, the triumph is a 50-page thesis, and then the Ph.D. produces 100-plus pages to prove their smarts. Read more at:
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/yes_college_essays_are_ruining.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29
There is no question that the web will change the way people learn. And the increasing cost of a college is public policy problem we desperately need to solve. But the web is simply not about to end higher-ed as we know it. The simple truth is that nobody has figured out how to build a cheap, high-quality online university. Not even close. What's more likely to happen is that colleges will learn how to adapt online technology to cut costs as they come under increasing budget pressure. They'll do it slowly, but eventually. Read more at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/07/why-the-internet-isnt-going-to-end-college-as-we-know-it/259378/#.T_bZ3BBr57c.twitter
Higher education as we know it is about to come to an end. After all, there are no jobs for college graduates, certainly not for liberal arts students. Moreover, even were such students employable, they come out of school so burdened with debt that they will never dig their way out. As college presidents who hear such proclamations over and over again, we find ourselves suppressing the urge to yawn. We take comfort in the fact that for more than a century predictions about the impending demise of classic higher education have met the same fate: They have been utterly wrong. Read more at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-adv-glassnerschapiro-education-college-20120703,0,5206719.story
On July 2, 1862, Abraham Lincoln signed a bill designed to change that: the Morrill Land-Grant College Act, which offered federal financing to colleges that taught military tactics. When the next war began, its supporters believed, alumni of those colleges would be ready for battle. The law also required funded colleges to teach agriculture and engineering, thus preparing young men to serve their nation in both war and peace. Now, in the midst of the Civil War, the federal government began to play a major educational role. Indeed, while its requirements were responses to the country’s security and economic needs, the act proved to be one of the most transformative pieces of legislation in American history, seeding the ground for scores of high-quality public colleges and universities around the country. Read more at:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/schools-for-soldiers/?ref=opinion
At some point, discussions about the quality of higher education in the U.S. come around to the subject of tenure. And the disagreement could hardly be more stark. Critics of tenure for college professors say it is ruining the education of millions of students. Proponents of tenure say it's the only way to preserve the quality of higher education in this country. Naomi Schaefer Riley, a writer and the author of "The Faculty Lounges and Other Reasons Why You Won't Get the College Education You Paid For," argues that tenure for college professors should be abolished. Cary Nelson, a professor of English at the University of Illinois and president of the American Association of University Professors, counters that tenure should be retained. Read more at:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303610504577418293114042070.html
I am the Associate University Librarian for Research and Instructional Services at Temple University.
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