There are a few rays of sunshine while the current ‘education bubble’ debate goes on. While there are certainly a large number of college majors are nearly worth their price (nearly $200,000 for an Ivy League undergraduate degree…at least that is the list price…), the chance to gain the requisite skills for getting into college, as well as being able to pass various post graduation certifications has become much less expensive (for those who have a bit of an entrepreneurial spirit.
DIY U: The Future of learning
http://www.fastcompany.com/1758162/diy-u-video-premiere-the-future-of-learning
The future of learning is open–and it’s in your hands. This video series, based in part on my book DIY U, explains that while the higher education bubble may be overblown, there is an explosion happening in the edu-world, with technology and openness transforming content, social learning, and accreditation all at once. Part one explains what’s happening and why the old models no longer apply.
Can You Have a Viable Education Outside of School?
http://mindshift.kqed.org/2011/05/can-you-have-a-viable-education-outside-of-school
Lisa Nielsen works to support public schools in New York City and while she understands school is a viable option for some students, she doesn’t believe it is for everyone.
The author of the Innovative Educator blog has written a free, online book called The Teenager’s Guide to Opting Out (Not Dropping Out) of Outdated and Traditional School.
Nielsen, who helps educators find innovative ways of engaging learners, works at a fairly progressive, forward-thinking public school system that’s experimenting with technology in inventive ways and a push towards personalized learning with the iSchool and Innovation Zone. Still, she believes the traditional school setting may not be “fixable.”
“While students are doing better in a more innovative climate, ultimately, we are just using updated tools to meet narrow and outdated measures on which our students, teachers, and school leaders are judged,” she writes on her blog. “It is not enough to personalize learning for everyone to go down the same path — to college, without consideration of what comes next.”
Q. How is “opting out” different from home schooling?
A. Homeschooling is a broad term that is often misunderstood. Laureate Lynn, who wrote the intro for the guide, suggests terms like ‘independent learning’ or ‘home educating’ paint a more accurate picture of the concept. A home educator herself, “It’s not about schooling” she says “It’s about learning.” And that is what opting out is about. The interesting thing is that most teens don’t want or need someone to “school” them. While they probably have the desire to learn, it looks very different from being “schooled.” Their interests guide them and they are well equipped with the know-how to learn what they need to learn in order to accomplish their goals. What’s more, the rich technological resources available today make it that much easier for teens to experience whatever they want to learn.
When we look at the idea of opting out, from the perspective of this book, we’re looking into the idea of teens taking ownership for their learning and living. This means learning with choice rather than coercion. In the guide we share many alternatives. These include online learning, alternative learning centers/environments that follow a democracy education approach like Summerhill and Sudbury, pursuing an educational path with open education resources (OER), taking college classes that the student is actually interested in, and/or pursuing apprenticeship/ internship opportunities. What is most important at the start of this journey is that the teen has a well designed plan for their future and we feature an example of one teen that did just that in the guide.
Q. How do you respond to parents who fear that, without the formal structure a school provides their kids could miss out on the opportunity of going to college?
I explain in detail how You Don’t Have to Go to School or Take the SAT/ACT to Get Into A Good College and then I give them an example of a friend who did that
Getting into College Without Going to School and then I give them a whole bunch more examples.
University of the People: Tuition-free higher education
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/college-inc/post/university-of-the-people-tuition-free-higher-education/2011/06/14/AGRBFqUH_blog.html
At a time when top national universities charge $50,000 a year in tuition and living expenses, University of the People represents quite an anomaly.
The Pasadena, Calif., nonprofit university offers college coursework to about 1,000 students worldwide essentially for free. The only charge is a one-time application fee of $10 to $50, which varies according to the comparative wealth of the student’s home nation.
Professors and deans donate their labors. Founder Shai Reshef has just two paid academic employees. Students access and download assignments online. Class discussions take place in old-fashioned text-based chat rooms, which enable students to participate on the most marginal of computers.
“The idea is to open the gate for anyone who wants to study,” Reshef said during a visit to The Washington Post.
Founded in 2009, University of the People claims to be the world’s first tuition-free online university “dedicated to the global advancement and democratization of higher education.” The institution exploits the growing reach and falling cost of online study.
Some volunteer administrators and faculty come from Columbia, NYU and other prestigious universities, drawn, Reshef said, by the potentially transformational power of a free, online, global university. Formal partners include Yale Law School; NYU plans to offer some of Reshef’s students transfer to its campus in Abu Dhabi.
The biggest drawback to Reshef’s school is that it lacks accreditation. There’s little hope for his students to transfer their credits to any other university until it gains accreditation. Reshef says he’s working with an as-yet-unnamed accreditor.
The potential customer base is vast: students around the world who lack the funds for university study, or from places where there are no universities, as well as women who are barred from higher education for cultural reasons.
To date, about 30,000 people have applied to the school, Reshef said. Only 1,000 have been met the school’s two comparatively modest admission criteria: every student must have a high school diploma and English proficiency.
Current students come from 115 nations. The United States and Indonesia are best represented (being the third and fourth most populous nations), along with parts of the Middle East and Africa.
Reshef says he has a corps of more than 2,000 volunteer professors, most of whom don’t yet have anything to do. Faculty who teach courses are paid a token honorarium of a few hundred dollars per course. Reshef says he is eager to enroll more students.
The university offers courses in just two areas, business administration, and computer science, chosen because they are in the most demand globally and because they are “culturally neutral,” taught in essentially the same way everywhere, he said.
Educating students is only half of the school’s mission, he said: just as important is “broadening their mind, opening them up to the world,” by enabling interaction among students from several different nations in a single chat group.
Reshef, an Israeli entrepreneur, says he draws no salary and is, in fact, among the university’s major donors, giving back some of the wealth he amassed as a for-profit higher education executive in previous decades. He sold his Kidum Group in 2005 to Kaplan, part of The Washington Post Co.
He plans to phase in a nominal fee next year to cover the cost of processing course exams. This, too, will be on a sliding scale according to each student’s ability to pay. It will bring the total expense for a four-year education to about $350 for someone in a developing nation, and to something under $4,000 for more prosperous students.
Reshef contends there is no potential limit on enrollment.
“We have 2,000 volunteers,” he said. “We don’t know what to do with them.”
Traditional Higher Ed Opens Doors for Tuition-Free Online University
http://mashable.com/2011/06/29/university-of-the-people-hp-nyu
The University is completely tuition free. Its mission is not to turn a profit, but rather to create a truly global opportunity for education. A thousand students who live in 115 different countries are taught by members of the university’s core of 2,000 volunteers. Traditional universities are starting to open their doors to People’s free, nontraditional counterpart.
In May, New York University announced it would accept students from University of the People at its Abu Dhabi campus. On Tuesday, HP invited the free university’s students to become virtual interns with its Catalyst Initiative — global consortia of 56 organizations, most of them universities, that focuses on projects related to improving STEM education.
“I think it’s important to support collaboration between the formal and informal education space,” says Jeannette Weisschuh, HP’s director of education initiative. “We believe educators from the formal space can learn from the informal space. … I wouldn’t say it’s a revolution, but it’s an evolution of the existing education space.”
The consortium will select qualified interns who apply through University of the People to work virtually with its partners on projects that could include setting up webinars and developing some software elements.
University of the People offers two degree programs, one in business administration, and one in computer science. Working with HP’s consortium partners gives students a virtual equivalent to the internships that many students at physical universities get during summer internships. But they can have the opportunity even if they’re working from an Internet cafe in a remote area of the world, as many of them are.
