Executive Summary of the First Paper in the CFHE Series on Online Education and MOOCs

FutureofHigherEd.org • #futureofHE • facebook.com/FutureofHigherEd _________________________ The “Promises” of Online Higher Education: Profits  With so much national focus on the “promises” of online higher education to expand access and to reduce costs, one truth about online higher education rarely mentioned is that it is big—Very Big—business.   Understanding and assessing developments in online higher education require…

Dear Editor/ Dear Diary: Sorry, I’m Blogging

Here is the September report from WordPress to its bloggers. I find some of the numbers absolutely astonishing. After digesting the report, I am all the more appreciative of all of you who have been reading my posts. Since so many people are blogging, it’s very encouraging to know that there are still so many…

Wisconsin-LaCrosse Bans Criticizing Republicans

In a grotesque violation of academic freedom, University of Wisconsin at LaCrosse Chancellor Joe Gow has banned faculty from criticizing Republican Party policies. Rachel Slocum, assistant professor of geography, sent an email to her students explaining that they were unable to use the Census Bureau website because of the government shutdown by “Republican/Tea-Party controlled House of Representatives.” Gow called…

A Forthcoming Series of Papers from CFHE: The ‘Promises’ of Online Higher Education: Overview

Promoters of MOOCs and online courses make big promises about the value of this latest trend in higher education. MOOCs and online courses, we are told, will both expand access to higher education and reduce its costs for just about every “stakeholder”–for institutions lacking the resources to provide needed courses, for governments hard-pressed to provide…

The Problem With Being a Transfer Student

It has been well established that two-year students face enormous problems when they decide to complete a four-year degree. By one estimate, only 11 percent of those who indicate their intention to acquire a degree on the day they start in a two-year program actually do so. There are many reasons for this failure. Certainly,…

Oh Crap, If We Have Lost Rob Schneider, How Can We Ever Win?

This week, several Far Right media outlets have reported that actor/comedian Rob Schneider had declared himself a Republican. Yes, Schneider, the star of Big Stan, The Animal, The Hot Chick, Deuce Bigelow: Male Gigolo, and Deuce Bigelow: European Gigolo, has decided to endorse Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Donnelly. Said Schneider, “The more I am with…

How about Some Good News—Any Good News

I don’t expect the sources from which I get my news to sugarcoat it or to avoid the unsavory aspects of life for uplifting human-interest stories. But sometimes the bad news does seem to have almost completely crowded out any good news. Consider the following headlines from a late August news summary from Channel 10,…

Big Data and Writing Studies

Here’s a visual representation of some of our work related to big data and writing studies, which is based on our observations of teachers’ comments on approximately 120,000 student essays over the past three years:

A Visual Demonstration of the Absurdity of Gerrymandering

Most Progressives, especially in the “Rust Belt” states, have had much reason to regret the failure of the national Democratic Party to generate voter turnout in 2010. During that census year, Republicans secured the governorships and large legislative majorities in many of those states and then gerrymandered districts that have allowed them to maintain 2:1…