Uncategorized – Page 2 – The Future of Higher Education

A.I. Replacing the College Professor?

December 9, 2011 Martin Van Der Werf Comments 3 comments

The end of face-to-face college instruction! That is the startling scenario that a panel contemplated Thursday night as a forum opened on The Future of Higher Education at The New School University in New York. Looking 20 to 30 years out, “The wealthiest institutions will continue to provide face to face instruction. Other universities will not be able to afford to deliver instruction face-to-face any longer,” said Neil Grabois, former provost of Williams College and president of Colgate University. He is now dean of the…

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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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College Accreditation is Needlessly Mysterious

November 21, 2011 Martin Van Der Werf

Higher education in America has become so large, so complex, and so rigid, that there are many functions at its heart that few understand. One of the most important is accreditation. Without accreditation from a recognized body, a college or university cannot get federal loans or other financial aid for its students. Given the importance of federal financial aid — the total of outstanding student loans is now greater than outstanding credit-card loans — one might think that the accreditation…

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The College Experience: Preserving Culture

November 16, 2011 Grant Sabatier

I remember the snow falling on the quad and my friend Allen muttering “The only people for me are the mad ones.” He had recently read Kerouac’s On The Road and was convinced that people around him weren’t really living… “like really living, man,” he said. It was the middle of the night and The University of Chicago campus, with its ivy, and benches, Gothic towers, and sidewalks – was like a turn of the century movie set. We were…

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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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The Future of Mobile Learning

October 29, 2011 Martin Van Der Werf

I was inspired just reading these visions of mobile learning, collected by T.H.E. Journal, which is all about transforming education through technology. Some of them make our current modes of learning seem quaint by comparison. Hang on to your memories of text books and pop quizzes at wooden desks — they’ll be as outdated as your VCR. These are some of my favorites: The mobile learning device of the future won’t be a separate piece of equipment. Rather, mobile learning…

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Liberal Arts Colleges: the Tsunami is Coming

October 22, 2011 Martin Van Der Werf

Of all the colleges that stand to face difficulties in the coming decade, liberal-arts colleges are at the top of the list. This is not news to anyone who follows higher education, but this thoughtful interview with Victor E. Ferrall, the former president of Beloit College, brings a lot of the points home. One of the points of pride of the many liberal-arts colleges in this country is that each one is different: in culture, in appeal, in teaching style. All…

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How Escalating Cost Pressures Will Change the College of 2020: Guest Post by Lloyd Armstrong

October 10, 2011 collegeof2020

(This is the second of two guest blogs by Lloyd Armstrong, University Professor and Provost Emeritus at the University of Southern California, and author of the blog, Changing Higher Education.) Previously, I wrote about why the cost of higher education keeps spiraling upward beyond the willingness of most colleges to support and the willingness by most to pay for it. Today, I will look at how the response to those costs will change colleges by 2020. Different institutions will begin to respond…

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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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