BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL As colleges lay out their strategies to become more sustainable over the long term, there are uncertainties that can dramatically affect their abilities to do so. Some are programmatic, based upon unpredictable market conditions. Others rely on personnel decisions that shape an institution’s ability to be both flexible and creative. A…
A recent international study has thrown a bucket of cold water on the heated frenzy for computer-assisted and online education. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which has an authoritative program for assessing school education quality in its 34 member countries, has published a report demonstrating that increased computer use in classrooms may…
George Siemens first gained prominence in 2008 when he helped invent the massive, open, online course, better known by its acronym, the MOOC. MOOCs quickly evolved into something rather different from what Siemens had imagined, but that didn’t stop him from agreeing to head up the Gates-funded MOOC Research Initiative, which seeks to bring hard…
In a review titled “The End of College? Not So Fast,” published by the Chronicle of Higher Education yesterday, Donald E. Heller provides a very thoughtful and substantive critique of Kevin Carey’s The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere. You may recall that I discussed Blaine Grateman’s review…
Corinthian Colleges have been forced to close their “doors.” As I reported in this blog several years ago, the Washington Post Corporation, which had derived between 50% and 60% of its annual profits from its ownership share of Kaplan University quietly sold off its stock just ahead of the formal release of the Harkin Report…
Writing for New Republic, Blaine Grateman has written a very perceptive review of Kevin Carey’s The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere. Carey is a propagandist for the technocracy, that new class of the ultra-wealthy characterized by its unflinching willingness to promote digital technologies as an unmitigated blessing,…
As far as I can determine, Digital Learning Day is an invention of Arne Duncan’s Department of Education. Whether appropriately or ironically, or both, it occurred on Friday, March 13. If you go to the section of the Department of Education website devoted to this special day [http://www.digitallearningday.org/site/default.aspx?PageID=11], you will find links to Online Resources,…