European Educators Discuss Changes in Higher Ed

Some familiar themes, some new takes on them, at recent meeting of European University Association

...post-Bologna Process...new teaching tools...changes student body...alter university landscape...changes in technology and learning expectations...universities have to change...important to push student learning...learning in more individual way...digital learning moving to tablets and smartphones...MOOCs...MOOCs help bridge school-university gap by opening courses to high school students...rise in lifelong learners..new demographic mix...teaching is changing...globalization... attract international students...curriculum changes and training in cultural differences needed...prepare them for a globally functioning world.

The New York Times

EUROPE | INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION
Adapting for the Future at European University Conference

by CHRISTOPHER F. SCHUETZE APRIL27, 2014

BRUSSELS — Senior European academics, university officers and policy makers met this month at the European University Association’s annual conference in Brussels to discuss the rapidly changing European higher education market.

European Union member states have increasingly standardized their degrees and courses under agreements known as the Bologna Process. Now, policy makers are looking to a future in which new teaching tools and changes in the student body could significantly alter the university landscape.

Continue reading at the NYT online

The "Seven Sisters" Class of 1968

The New York Times is "celebrating" its digitization of its 1964 issues with the occasional article from "50 years ago this week." This piece from when admissions to selective east coast women's colleges was a news item.  Note that acceptance rates at half the schools have gone down but half remain at about the same levels they were 50 years ago.

Experimenting with Price Cuts in Higher Education

I've long been an advocate of cutting tuition and getting away from the wrong-headed "luxury-price signals quality product" logic so common in lower and middle tier higher education. There are many reasons not to "just do it," but more than a few things in favor of the idea should at least motivate serious discussion:

• honesty in pricing might better reflect institutional values;
• some prospective students never consider a school, knowing sticker price is out of their reach; the current system discriminates against such "humble realists";
• institutions should grapple with the fact that full-pay families might not be willing to participate in the institution's redistribution scheme if they thought (knew) about it;
• it is not clear there is any dis-interested, scientifically valid research on the implications;
• revenue models rarely take into account the cost of administering Byzantine financial aid schemes;
• some institutions are unfairly labeled "elitist" based on sticker price alienating people to whom their mission otherwise would appeal;
• tuition discounting is one of many opacity practices that undermine administrators', board members', and faculty members' capacity to effectively monitor the economics of their institutions.

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See also

• Ry Rivard. Paper (Tuition) Cuts."  Inside Higher Ed September 16, 2013
• Ellen Berman. "Higher education faces tuition disruption: Experimenting with price at a time when higher education is being viewed as a commodity." University Business, November 2013
• Ruth Simon Connect. "Colleges Cut Prices by Providing More Financial Aid." Wall Street Journal May 6, 2013

Education Resources from NYT

A list of resources from around the Web about education as selected by researchers and editors of The New York Times.

General

• Education Department
• National Center for Education Statistics
• The Nation's Report Card, From the N.C.E.S.
• World Education Trends, O.E.C.D., 2005

News

• Education News, Daily digest of media reports.
• Education Week , Daily articles; some content by subscription only.
• Chronicle of Higher Education , Daily articles; in-depth coverage and data by subscription only.
• Almanac of Higher Education, From the Chronicle of Higher Education.
• Inside Higher Ed, News and commentary.
• Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education , Policy news, emphasizing Western states.
• Arts & Letters Daily
• College newspapers online

Policy Groups

• Center on Education Policy
• Education Trust
• Alliance for Excellent Education
• Fair Test, Opposes over-reliance on standardized testing.
• Center for Educational Freedom , Cato Institute
• Thomas B. Fordham Foundation

Associations

• American Council on Education , Higher education.
• Association of American Universities
• American Association of Community Colleges

Education Unions

• National Education Association
• American Federation of Teachers
• United Federation of Teachers, Represents New York City teachers.
• Coalition of Graduate Employee Unions

Philanthropies

• Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
• Council for Advancement and Support of Education
• Ford Foundation
• Lumina Foundation for Education
• William and Flora Hewitt Foundation

Teaching

• Teach for America
• American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education
• National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education
• National Center for Alternative Teacher Certification

College Admissions

• AdmissionsAdvice.com, Tips, reviews, links and a blog from a college counselor.
• CollegeConfidential.com, Advice and reviews.
• College Board, Advice on finding a college, applications and financial aid.
• College Bound
• National Association for College Admissions Counseling, Student resources.
• Common college application , Used by about 300 schools.

College Rankings

• U.S. News & World Report
• Princeton Review, Based on student surveys.
• Kiplinger's Personal Finance, "Best values in education."
• Washington Monthly, Schools that promote social mobility.
• Journal of Blacks in Higher Education
• Hispanic Magazine
• John Templeton Foundation , Evaluating character development.
• Graduate school rankings
• Business Week , Business school rankings.
• Wall Street Journal, Business school rankings.

Financial Aid and Loans

• Federal Education Department, Portal for Information on student loans and aid.
• Online TutorialFrom Kiplinger, a financial advice magazine.
• The Government's Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), Most students interested in financial aid for college will need to complete this.
• College Board's Aid Calculator For comparing financial aid offers.

Study Abroad

• Institute for International Education
• Institute for the International Education of Students

Higher Education Studies

• Trends in college prices and aid, From the College Board.
• State by state "report card'', From the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.
• College graduation rates, From the Education Trust
• The American Freshman, Annual survey by UCLA.
• The State of College Admission , Annual survey by NACA.
• Community College Research Center
• The Center for Studies in Higher Education

Documents

• “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform” , The 1983 white paper that triggered the standards movement, written by the National Commission on Excellence in Education.
• “Answers in the Tool Box: Academic Intensity, Attendance Patterns, and Bachelor's Degree Completion” A 1999 U.S. Department of Education study that describes and assesses the high school curriculum, based on a study of student transcripts.
• Racial segregation in schools and inequities in the quality of public education, Analysis from the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University.
• “Growing By Degrees: Online Education in the United States, 2005”
• “The American Freshman” Annual survey of entering freshmen at nearly 400 four-year colleges and universities.
• “A Matter of Degrees: Improving Graduation Rates in Four-Year Colleges and Universities” (2004) The Education Trust’s analysis of graduation rates at four-year colleges and universities.
• “The Expectations Gap: A 50-State Review of High School Graduation Requirements” (2004)
  
• “The State of College Admission”
The National Association for College Admission Counseling’s annual report
• “Federal Student Loan Debt: 1993 to 2004”
  Issue brief from the American Council on Education.
• “Cracks in the Education Pipeline: A Business Leader’s Guide to Higher Education Reform” (2005) By the Committee on Economic Development, a business group with longstanding focus on education issues.
• “Pathways to College Access and Success” (2005), Case studies of alternate paths through high school, by the U.S. Department of Education.

Two More Ways to Measure Educational Outcomes

So, here's a sorta cynical question: do we have anybody working on how we can look good in these ratings?  Or at least anticipating how we will look?  Or, less cynically, can we have a conversation about the relative importance of these outcomes (and others) to us and to our students? And what do we think that the logic of outcomes, rankings, and accountability? Should we just put our faith in tradition?  Or should we tolerate bad measurements rather than wasting valuable time coming up with sound ones?

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Read more at NYT.com

Read more at Inside Higher Education

After Setbacks, Online Courses Are Rethought

The latest swing of the MOOC headline pendulum is way over on the "complete bust" end of the evaluation spectrum but they represent a very big solution in search of a problem and as such are not likely to disappear as fast as they emerged.

I stand by most of the points I made in my 2012 talk on MOOCs and small liberal arts colleges.  The main one was that we should we should avoid the urge to imitate and compete but embrace the opportunity to borrow and adapt the tools being developed in connection with MOOCs.

In today's NYT we read about several high-profile flops in MOOC-land and evaluation research that suggests that MOOCs so far have been reaching "already educated" folks rather than those without access to higher education, undermining one of their primary public selling points. I would caution against over-embracing: as I said in the 2012 talk, the bandwagon is a hand-basket.

Read the rest of the article...

Other recent MOOC-related articles in the NYT...

Lists That Rank Colleges’ Value Are on the Rise

Rankings that privilege affordability and "return on investment" are becoming more common.  They tend to look very different from more conventional lists.  It becomes problematic if one falls into the false dichotomy trap: either you care about ROI or you care about "intellectual, social and civic value of education."  One advantage of a liberal arts education is that it teaches you "both/and" as well as "either/or" thinking.  We need to recognize that paying attention to cost and career value does not mean abandoning other education fundamentals.

From The New York Times

By ARIEL KAMINER
Published: October 27, 2013

Looking out over the quadrangle before him as students dashed from one class to the next, James Muyskens was feeling proud one recent afternoon, and why not?

The college he had led for the past 11 years had just been awarded second place in a new ranking of American higher education — ahead of flagship state universities, ahead of elite liberal arts colleges, even ahead of all eight Ivy League universities.

The college is Queens College, a part of the City University of New York with an annual tuition of $5,730, and a view of the Long Island Expressway.

Catering to working-class students, more than half of whom were born in other countries, Queens does not typically find itself at the top of national rankings. Then again, this was not a typical ranking. It was a list of colleges that offer the “best bang for the buck.”

“Elation,” said Dr. Muyskens, recalling his delight when he learned of the honor. “Thrilled!”

Purists might regard such bottom-line calculations as an insult to the intellectual, social and civic value of education. But dollars-and-cents tabulations like that one (which was compiled by Washington Monthly), are the fastest-growing sector of the college rankings industry, with ever more analyses vying for the attention of high school students and their parents who are anxious about finances.

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Porter on Skills Gap

ECONOMIC SCENE

Stubborn Skills Gap in America’s Work Force

By EDUARDO PORTER

Published: October 8, 2013

One of the few things that nearly everyone in Washington agrees on is that American workers are the best. More productive than any on earth,” President Obama has said of them. They “build better products than anybody else.

Republicans, somewhat less exuberant, are nonetheless sure that American workers “can surpass the competition” on any level playing field. Even the United States Chamber of Commerce — not always a worker’s best friend — asserts that, along with the nation’s entrepreneurs and companies, America’s workers “are the best in the world.”

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Friedman on MOOCs (2013)

OP-ED COLUMNIST

The Professors’ Big Stage

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: March 5, 2013

I just spent the last two days at a great conference convened by M.I.T. and Harvard on “Online Learning and the Future of Residential Education” — a k a “How can colleges charge $50,000 a year if my kid can learn it all free from massive open online courses?”

You may think this MOOCs revolution is hyped, but my driver in Boston disagrees. You see, I was picked up at Logan Airport by my old friend Michael Sandel, who teaches the famous Socratic, 1,000-student “Justice” course at Harvard, which is launching March 12 as the first humanities offering on the M.I.T.-Harvard edX online learning platform. When he met me at the airport I saw he was wearing some very colorful sneakers.

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Online Classes and Degree Programs (2013)

from New York Times

NATIONAL BRIEFING | EDUCATION
Online Classes Move Closer to Degree Programs
By TAMAR LEWINPublished: September 17, 2013

Coursera and edX, the two largest providers of massive open online courses, or MOOCs, are inching closer to offering degree programs, although the courses so far carry no academic credit. Coursera is now offering courses from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, covering most of its MBA program’s first year curriculum. And Edx is starting two “sequences,” linked courses in a particular discipline. Both are from MIT: Foundations of Computer Science, a set of undergraduate courses that will begin this fall, and Supply Chain and Logistics Management, a set of graduate level courses that will begin in fall 2014.

How to Get a Job With a Philosophy Degree: Career Services and the Liberal Arts

From New York Times Magazine.  

Ostensibly a profile of Andy Chan, Wake Forest's VP for "Personal and Career Development," this article suggests a conversation about the role of career services in the context of liberal arts education. On the one side is the idea that pairing vigorous career services with liberal arts has three results: 1) students DO major in liberal arts subjects, 2) they get jobs, 3) donors (especially parents) love it. On the other is the concern that "[i]t reduces an education to the marketplace."  The comments on the article make for interesting reading.

How to Get a Job With a Philosophy Degree 

By SUSAN DOMINUS  

Published: September 13, 2013 

On a Friday in late August, parents of freshmen starting at Wake Forest University, a small, prestigious liberal-arts school in Winston-Salem, N.C., attended orientation sessions that coached them on how to separate, discouraged them from contacting their children’s professors and assured them about student safety. Finally, as their portion of orientation drew to a close, the parents joined their students in learning the school song and then were instructed to form a huge ring around the collective freshman class, in a show of support. 

... 

For years, most liberal-arts schools seemed to put career-services offices “somewhere just below parking” as a matter of administrative priority, in the words of Wake Forest’s president, Nathan Hatch. But increasingly, even elite, decidedly non-career-oriented schools are starting to promote their career services during the freshman year, in response to fears about the economy, an ongoing discussion about college accountability and, in no small part, the concerns of parents, many of whom want to ensure a return on their exorbitant investment.

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See Also

Website of the Office of Career and Personal Development at Wake Forest

NYT 9/2013 Study Sees Benefit in Courses With Nontenured Instructors

National Bureau of Economic Research study based on data from more than 15,000 students who arrived at Northwestern University from 2001 to 2008.

Study Sees Benefit in Courses With Nontenured Instructors 
By TAMAR LEWIN
Published: September 9, 2013  

While many higher education experts — and parents — bemoan the fact that tenured professors are a shrinking presence, now making up less than a quarter of the academic work force, a study released Monday found, surprisingly, that students in introductory classes learned more from outside instructors than from tenured or tenure-track professors.

Students taught by untenured faculty were more likely to take a second course in the discipline and more likely to earn a better grade in the next course than those whose first course was taught by a tenured or tenure-track instructor, the report said.

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See Also

1. Berrett, Dan. "Ad­juncts Are Bet­ter Teachers Than Tenured Professors, Study Finds." Chronicle of Higher Education September 9, 2013.
2. Figlio at SSRN
3. Jaschik Scott. "The Adjunct Advantage." Inside Higher Ed September 9, 2013
4. Safdar, Khadeeja. "Students Learn Better From Professors Outside Tenure System." Wall Street Journal Blog
5. Schapiro President of Northwestern Page 

NYT 9/13 "New Metric for Colleges: Graduates’ Salaries"

PayScale.com ranks over 1000 institutions in terms of what their graduates earn and what kinds of jobs they get.

COMMON SENSE
New Metric for Colleges: Graduates’ Salaries
By JAMES B. STEWART
Published: September 13, 2013 

U.S. News & World Report released its eagerly anticipated annual rankings of universities and colleges this week, and two of the usual suspects — Princeton University and Williams College — came out on top. Prospective students and their parents can evaluate these institutions on a variety of measures deemed important by U.S. News.

What they won’t find is any way to assess what some consider the most important issue in this still-tough economy: How much can graduates of these schools expect to earn?

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