In the first couple weeks of any survey course in the principles of economics, students are taught that prices are determined by the interactions of consumers (demand) and producers (supply). Prices for many things, such as oil, or of common stocks, constantly change with the frequent shifts in the willingness of consumers and producers to […]
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I recently wrote here about the unwarranted optimism that the dawn of distance learning brought to higher education in the 1990s. That trip down memory lane might–and probably should–throw cold water on the enthusiasm about online education today. Arguably, the troubles with online education now are no different from those of the old distance learning […]
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Think back. What was the revolutionary technological advance of the 1990s that we thought pointed the way to the future of higher education? It was “interactive television,” of course! Interactive television was at the center of the revolution in education called “distance learning.” It would connect classrooms within a city, state, or even (with some […]
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By any ordinary standard, Teresa Sullivan is the kind of university president conservatives love to hate. In 2010, after the Board of Visitors unanimously elected her the first female president of the University of Virginia, one of her first acts was to endorse and publish the UVA Diversity Council’s statement expressing commitment in–what else?–diversity. Sullivan […]
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We have entered a new digital era that appears to have made the traditional trappings of higher education–e.g., fixed curricula, going to lectures, even physically attending a college or university–about as necessary to getting a college degree as the telegraph is for sending messages. Out with hierarchy, structure, and the top-down approach to higher education. […]
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Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced yesterday that they will partner in a collaborative new higher-education venture, to be called EdX, that will offer a range of online courses to potentially tens of thousands of student worldwide, most of whom will not be enrolled at either Harvard or MIT. The EdX courses, […]
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http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2011/12/the_many_problems_of_online_ed.html
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Last week, voters in my home state of Maine overturned a law passed by the GOP-led state legislature to end Maine’s same-day voter registration, which had been the practice in Maine for nearly four decades. Though polls suggested a close race, the law went down to a nearly 20-point defeat, the margin seemingly fueled by […]
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The New York Times proclaimed recently that science educators and others are vitally concerned that high dropout rates of students studying math, science, and engineering (the “STEM” disciplines) will imperil our nation’s technological leadership. There is a shortage of people in these fields, it is argued, and efforts to increase numbers are thwarted by dropout rates […]
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Another day, another bunch of dollars thrown at studies lamenting “the gender gap in science and technology fields.” The most recent comes from the U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Women in STEM: A Gender Gap to Innovation. From its Executive Summary: Our science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) workforce is crucial to America’s innovative capacity and […]
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The Innovative University: Changing the DNA of Higher Education from the Inside Out, by Clayton M. Christensen and Henry J. Eyring, $32.95, Jossey-Bass, 475 pages. Online college courses are a “disruptive technology” destined to drive profound changes in higher education in the United States and around the world. This is not an especially new idea. […]
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Are you a female STEM student (or wannabe STEM student) suffering from a stereotype infection? Then, according to new research recently described in Inside Higher Ed (“Inoculation Against Stereotype”), you should take a course from a female instructor to inoculate yourself. The research, based on a study at U Mass Amherst by Nilanjana Dasgupta, associate professor of […]
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——————————————- This piece appeared originally in the June 2010 issue of Liberty ——————————————— Women can’t get any satisfaction these days. Yet another report, this by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), asks why there are so few women in the STEM professions. (For those outside the education community, this acronym refers to the prestigious […]
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If only Carole Carrier and her peers felt more aggrieved, the new report released by the American Association of University Women on women in science would make more sense. On the day the AAUW report was released, Carrier, a 34 year-old mechanical engineer who works part-time, was walking down the street in early spring with […]
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Sometimes it seems as though the most heavily researched, richly funded area of American science today involves studies of why there aren’t more women in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) and efforts to induce, recruit, and retain more of them. In her article for Minding the Campus, Susan Pinker deftly punctures the omissions […]
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Here’s a letter from a reader addressing some of the travails of technology at her college and the role that they seem to play in the dropout rate: I went back to college this semester after dropping out 18 years ago for a family obligation. I came from a wealthy family. My entire family were […]
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At a recent conference on higher education organized by the National Association of Scholars there were several references to Schumpeter’s famous expression “creative destruction”. It was argued that technology was fomenting a change in pedagogy and the delivery of knowledge. Presumably in an environment of tightening resources, the university as we known it will change […]
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