News – The Future of Higher Education

The Rise of the Machine — The Future of Higher Ed?

January 25, 2013 Martin Van Der Werf

Feel free to write my discussion post for me (perhaps even with the similar premise) if you wish to gain new skills and impress our editors.

We spend a lot of time imagining what the college of the future will look like and how it will respond to the needs of students. Two recent pieces helped fill in some aspects of the higher education picture I had not yet contemplated. Both are well worth your time. And a third article is vital reading for those in the middle of this meltdown: the faculty. “The future looks like this: Access to college-level education will be free for…

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College Debt Nears a Tipping Point

December 5, 2011 Martin Van Der Werf

Is it beginning to feel like we are at a tipping point on student debt and the cost of college? President Obama is summoning college presidents to the White House today to talk about college costs and what can be done to control them. The Occupy Wall Street movement has turned its attention to the level of college debt, and asking for interest-free loans of debt forgiveness. Its online petition that seeks forgiveness of all student loan debt as a means of stimulating the economy….

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It Won’t be Easy, But We Can Make Accreditation Useful

November 28, 2011 Martin Van Der Werf

If higher education is really to change, barnacle-encrusted traditions like accreditation need to change, too. But this won’t be so easy. The process of becoming accredited should be a rigorous process that should add a stamp of approval to the educational product, and prevent fraud by fly by night operators and taxpayers. But the process also needs to be more transparent and consumer-friendly. If colleges are going to spend so much time and money on the process, can’t they use…

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OpenCloud and Free Learning Management

November 1, 2011 Grant Sabatier

Pearson – the world’s largest provider to educational support materials and textbooks has launched OpenClass, a free, cloud-based, Learning Management System that is tightly integrated with Google Apps. Last week the Pearson OpenClass story spread like wildfire. Is OpenClass really as groundbreaking as it seems? OpenClass is truly a cloud-based service. There is no hardware, licensing or hosting costs for the users. In the same way that free e-mail has become an indispensable part of many peoples lives, Pearson is hoping that a free Learning Management…

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What will The College of 2020 look like? Part 1: Guest Post by Lloyd Armstrong

October 5, 2011 collegeof2020

(This is the first of two posts written by guest writer Lloyd Armstrong, University Professor and Provost Emeritus at the University of Southern California, and author of the blog, Changing Higher Education.) Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future Niels Bohr What will the College of 2020 look like? It probably will be similar in at least one way to the College of 2011 -there isn’t any one archetypal College of 2011 and there won’t be any one archetypal College of…

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Charting the Future of Higher Education

September 30, 2011 Grant Sabatier

Here are a collection of insightful videos from The Charting the Future of Higher Education event in Washington DC on September 15, 2011. Tweet

The Statistics That Matter

September 26, 2011 Martin Van Der Werf

Mark Twain popularized the statement: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.” But anyone who is planning for what a college will need in 2020 needs to start with these statistics. Okay, they are projections, but the carefully researched and methodical look at 2020 by the National Center for Education Statistics needs to be the starting point for planning by most colleges. We have written extensively about this in our report, The College of 2020: Students, but these latest…

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Technology, Data Mining Will Change Higher Ed

September 16, 2011 Martin Van Der Werf

Western Governors University has been somewhat of a sensational success story in higher education. The no-frills provider of online education offers degrees in only four areas — Education, Business, Information Technology, and Health Professions — is growing its enrollment by about 30 percent per year, and has kept its tuition — $6,000 — the same for four consecutive years. How? By emphasizing productivity, and utilizing technology in classes. “If we can increase productivity, there is more learning for less money. It’s a…

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The Higher Ed Bubble

September 14, 2011 Grant Sabatier

At The College of 2020 we love how infographics present data in creative ways. Below is one of the better ones I have seen about higher education and it aggregates a large amount of reputable data. Tweet

Entrepreneurship and Creative Lifestyle Design

September 12, 2011 Grant Sabatier

The students of the future won’t get normal jobs or have normal careers. Instead many will focus on creative lifestyle design – finding ways to craft the type of lifestyle they want with supporting jobs and non-traditional careers. The traditional path of getting an entry-level position, climbing the ranks, and devoting a career to one company has become a thing of the past. Climbing corporate ladders doesn’t look attractive for a number of reasons. Pensions have disappeared and employee loyalty…

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