Online Learning Update

By Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed
California will soon be the only state not joining an agreement that helps colleges offer online education across state lines. Consumer advocates there, concerned about for-profit colleges, hope it will stay that way. When the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement was established in 2013, few would have imagined that just five years later, almost every state in the U.S. would be involved. Despite initial opposition, Massachusetts is expected to become the 49th state to join the agreement later this year. If that happens, California will be the only state that is not a member of SARA — a regulatory framework that makes it simpler for colleges and universities to gain state-level approval to offer online education across the U.S.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018/02/28/california-holds-out-state-reciprocity-agreement-online

By Audrey Williams June, Chronicle of Higher Ed

Patricia MacCorquodale, a professor of gender and women’s studies at Arizona, alleged in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court that she spent almost two decades trying to persuade administrators to pay her on a par with male deans there. Several less-experienced male deans earned tens of thousands of dollars more than she did in the years before she stepped down as dean of the university’s Honors College in 2016, according to the suit. The pay disparity at the heart of MacCorquodale’s claim has long been a problem for women at nearly every level of the academic workplace, including administration. According to a recent research brief on the gender pay gap among administrators, including deans, women earn about eighty cents on each dollar that men in similar positions do. It’s a disparity that has stayed roughly the same for 15 years, according to the brief produced by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources. The median salary for female deans was $126,057 — $25,000 less than the median for men in the same position.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/2-Lawsuits-Highlight-Pay-Gap/242631

by Kevin Pollock, Celeste Schwartz and David Buck; EDUCAUSE Review

The increased role technology plays on today’s campuses, especially in areas such as data collection, analytics, and predictive modeling, has taken it far beyond a simple support structure. The ability to not only impact student success models but to take leading roles in future success plans requires campus leaders to rethink their IT structures and determine the best ways to maximize IT potential. The ability for IT to be at the forefront of student success models also raises challenges and questions that need to be answered.

https://er.educause.edu/articles/2018/1/information-technology-and-its-future-role-in-student-success

By Melissa Marcello, US News

Depending on your prior education and job field, a second bachelor’s may be less expensive than an online graduate degree.  Deciding what type of online degree or certificate is best for a potential career shift can be challenging. Online education offers a flexible and convenient learning approach for working adults, but there’s still the question of whether to pursue a second bachelor’s degree online or a more advanced online credential. Here are three cases when a second undergraduate degree may make the most sense.

https://www.usnews.com/education/online-learning-lessons/articles/2018-02-23/weigh-earning-a-second-bachelors-degree-online

BY MAURA LERNER, STAR TRIBUNE

At Minnesota state colleges, students spend an average of $1,000 a year on textbooks alone. But in Brainerd, they can earn a two-year degree without paying a penny for books. Central Lakes College has joined a growing national movement to ditch pricey textbooks in favor of material that can be found online for free. This semester, it launched one of the state’s first “Z-degrees,” meaning that all the required readings—in this case, for an associate of arts degree—are available at zero cost to students.

‘Z-degree’ gives students textbooks for free

By Jordan Friedman, US News

Some EMBAs, geared toward experienced professionals, combine online learning with regular on-campus residencies.  I think because you have more senior students, more seasoned students in the room, the conversation is a little bit different in our executive format classes versus our full-time classes – just because people have more life experience and work experience to draw on and to talk about these business cases,” says Brett Twitty, director of admissions for the executive MBA program at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, where the EMBA is about one-third online. Here are four facts prospective students should know about online EMBAs before they start researching and enrolling in programs.

https://www.usnews.com/higher-education/online-education/articles/2018-02-23/4-things-to-know-about-online-executive-mba-programs

By ANNA KURITZKES and CINDY H. ZHANG, Harvard Crimson

Responding to an increased number of virtual learners, the Extension School has grown its online course catalog significantly over the past few years, according to the dean of the Division of Continuing Education. Just four years ago, the Extension School offered 200 online courses, a number that has since tripled to 600, according to Huntington D. Lambert, dean of the Division of Continuing Education. The Extension School offers a total of roughly 900 courses and is part of the Division of Continuing Education, which serves roughly 20,000 students annually. “Online education certainly is here to stay, it’s not going away,” said Harry R. Lewis ’67, a Computer Science professor. “And, it creates great opportunities.”

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/2/23/virtual-education-expands/

By Nicole Freeling, UC

Funded with $4 million from the state, UC Scout has recently expanded its course offerings. It now offers 65 state-of-the-art classes, including a complete catalog of all the “a-g” requirement courses that students need for UC and CSU admission, as well as 26 advanced placement classes.  New additions include an array of lab classes like oceanography and AP physics, and an arts curriculum that includes 3-D design.  Students can access the courses anywhere with an Internet connection — from the school computer lab or local library, to their smart phone, tablet or home computer.

https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/free-online-courses-are-putting-college-reach

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Artificial intelligence will disrupt higher education; there’s no doubt of that. Already AI has been assuming some of the more basics tasks in academia, such as grading, data analysis and seeking correlations.  So far these automatic tasks have been within a single university system, but there’s no reason to believe that AI will continue to function in the isolation of the ivory tower. AI will connect academia to other industries, performing elaborate cognitive processes that search for connections between a variety of fields. Think transformation, not disruption!  Change is never easy for anyone, but universities who choose not change may be left behind.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/will-artificial-intelligence-disrupt-higher-education/

by Paul Fain, Inside Higher Ed

Purdue University Global has cleared its third and final regulatory hurdle, with the Higher Learning Commission following state and federal agencies in backing Purdue’s acquisition of the for-profit Kaplan University. Yet questions remain about the final structure of the boundary-pushing Purdue Global, which has drawn both strong praise and criticism. The online university will combine aspects of public, private nonprofit and for-profit higher education after its anticipated launch in April. Also this week, Grand Canyon University, a publicly traded for-profit that enrolls roughly 70,000 students online and has a growing physical location in Phoenix, got a green light from the Higher Learning Commission to convert to a nonprofit. It’s the second attempt for the university, which still needs approval from the feds and state regulators.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/03/07/accreditor-backs-purdue-university-global-more-profits-seek-convert-or-sell

By Emily Wangen, Daily Iowan

With the expansion of distance education at Iowa’s universities, student have more opportunities for flexibility in their education. Increasing reliance on technology has resulted in the evolution of delivery mechanisms, making distance education “a fast-moving aspect of the postsecondary education sector,” according to a report from the state Board of Regents. Over the last five years, enrollment in distance-education courses at the three regent universities has increased by 31.6 percent, rising from 59,542 in 2013-14 to 78,383 in 2016-17. At the University of Iowa, the fall 2016 headcount of students enrolled in these courses was 2,859, up from 2,343 in fall 2014.

http://daily-iowan.com/2018/02/22/university-of-iowa-sees-growth-in-distance-education/

by Danielle Wallace, eLearning Brothers

It’s not surprising, given the benefits associated with micro-learning, that it’s rapidly becoming the best way to offer your team necessary data to do their jobs properly. Whether your goal is to retrain people on your team, streamline the management process or ensure a level of retention, micro-learning can help make a difference. It is all about offering more to your company for less.

Micro-Learning: Why Aren’t You on the Bandwagon?

by Shalina Chatlani, Education Dive
Though 73% of Americans believe the growth of artificial intelligence will lead to net job loss, only 23% believe their jobs will be at risk, according to a survey of 3,297 U.S. citizens by Gallup and Northeastern University. But while most Americans do not fear losing work, only 22% of survey respondents with a bachelor’s degree said their education left them “well” or “very well prepared” to use AI as it becomes more widespread in their jobs.  Americans are uncertain whether institutions can provide them with the skills needed to use AI. While 51% of employed U.S. adults believe they would need additional education to obtain a new job should they lose their current one to technology, only 18% are “extremely confident” they could obtain the necessary education.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/survey-americans-not-confident-colleges-can-prepare-them-for-ai-driven-wor/

by Wiley
The adult learner market is growing, but does your institution know who this audience is and what they want? Click on the infographic below to learn about the behaviors, motivations, and needs of the four different populations of adult learners so your institution can develop more effective recruitment strategies.

https://edservices.wiley.com/4-kinds-of-adult-learners-infographic/

BY JEFF KING, eCampus News

Consider academia’s approach to measurement: Academic transcripts can depict students’ achievements within courses and majors, but they often overlook opportunities to track and validate their growth across courses and fields, where critical interdisciplinary skills are forged. If we are to close looming gaps in our workforce, postsecondary leaders must embrace a shift that measures learning in a more holistic and granular fashion. The first step in this shift is embracing a unit of measurement that is both more precise and more comprehensive, as well as being evidence-based. Here’s how we’re already doing that at the University of Central Oklahoma (UCO).

Why academic assessment is poised for a scientific revolution

by Michael Bernick, Forbes

The ominous “future of work” continues to dominate headlines this year. We are told to prepare for the technological change that is rendering many current skills and job duties obsolete. To help us prepare, an industry of workforce degrees, certifications, badges and other training is rapidly expanding. Our public education institutions–universities, community colleges, adult education schools—are developing workforce certificates, and “stackable” workforce certificates, to add to their degree programs. Over the past year, they have been joined in upskilling products by the online training giants, the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), including Udacity, Udemy, and most of all Coursera.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelbernick/2018/02/21/courseras-bet-on-the-upskilling-of-american-workers/#490a92d05eb2

By Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed

Faculty members earn 15 percent less than others with advanced degrees, study finds. They work equally long hours. Professors earn about 15 percent less than others with advanced degrees, finds a study published Tuesday by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The study, “Why Are Professors ‘Poorly Paid’?,” uses data from the Current Population Survey to compare the salaries and other characteristics of those with Ph.D., Ed.D., J.D. or M.D. degrees. Those who reported their profession as “postsecondary teacher” were compared to everyone else. The study was conducted by Daniel S. Hamermesh, an economist at Barnard College.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/02/21/new-data-show-wage-gap-between-professors-and-other-advanced-degree-holders

By Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher ED
Community colleges are increasingly unsure whether their online courses meet federal accessibility requirements, survey finds. Confidence in the accessibility of online courses at community colleges has fallen dramatically in the last decade, a survey from the Instructional Technology Council reveals. Training is now mandatory for three-fourths of faculty members prior to teaching online, the survey found. Lokken said this is a “significant improvement” over previous years, but he notes that a quarter of colleges still lack any training requirements for online instructors. This year, the top five faculty-related issues administrators faced challenges with were: (1) Engaging the faculty in development of online pedagogy; (2) evaluation of faculty members; (3) training; (4) workload issues and (5) compensation.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018/02/21/community-colleges-question-whether-online-courses-meet

by Dom Galeon, Futurism

Cybersecurity has become one of today’s more pressing issues, and it’s likely to get worse in the future. That’s why the secretary-general of the U.N. is now calling for nations to come up with clearer rules to protect civilians from hacking. Cyber warfare could simply end up becoming a race for a better technology. Guterres’ plea becomes all the more urgent when viewed with an eye for the future: “I am absolutely convinced that, differently from the great battles of the past, which opened with a barrage of artillery or aerial bombardment, the next war will begin with a massive cyber attack to destroy military capacity… and paralyze basic infrastructure,” the U.N. Secretary-General warned.

Cyber Warfare Is Growing. We Need Rules to Protect Ourselves.

by Michael Horn, Forbes

For nearly two decades, Clayton Christensen of the Harvard Business School has been predicting that disruptive innovations would impact management education—and that even the likes of the Harvard Business School would feel their might. As recent headlines attest, that no longer feels so far away or like a crazy prediction. Wake Forest halted its two-year full-time program in 2014. In August, the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business announced it was shuttering its full-time MBA program. And in October, the University of Wisconsin—one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious public business schools—suggested it might as well.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelhorn/2018/02/14/the-demise-of-the-full-time-mba/

by Adam Looney, Brookings

In a new Brookings paper that uses administrative data to look at “large-balance borrowers,” New York University’s Constantine Yannelis and I find that the share of students graduating with more than $50,000 in student debt has more than tripled since 2000, increasing from 5 percent of borrowers in 2000 to 17 percent of student borrowers in 2014. That group now holds the majority of outstanding student debt owed to the government—about $790 billion of the $1.4 trillion total at the end of 2017. Among these borrowers, we’re seeing a troubling trend: They’re repaying their loans more slowly, if at all. In a country where education is still the doorway to opportunity, we should be wary of changes to our student lending system that prevent low-income students from obtaining the quality education their high-income peers can more easily afford.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2018/02/16/more-students-are-taking-on-crippling-debt-they-cant-repay-its-time-for-higher-education-to-share-the-risks/