Northeastern CPS Blog A blog about the present and future of higher education

Some MOOC-based educators, eager to hold their student’s attention as news unfolds about completion rates sinking to as low as 4 percent, have begun moderating class formats and lesson plans to find ways to engage students. And it doesn’t just include having celebrity instructors or opening up in-person learning centers. Pop Culture Connection Education company Instructure, which has partnered with faculty at the University of ... Read More »

Thanks to a recent post by Scott Morrison, a student in the Doctor of Education program at Northeastern University’s College of Professional Studies, we learned this week that effective leaders need to have high levels of emotional intelligence. It’s those soft skills, which are especially hard to measure, that can really set a leader apart, Morrison says. “Successful leaders need to be self-aware ... Read More »

What will the future of higher education look like? How about safer, more environmentally conscious, and more fun? That’s the prediction according to a new infographic published in Edudemic that looks at five degrees that haven’t been around that long, but will make a big impact on our lives in the future. The degrees listed reflect new, emerging and growing ... Read More »

Here at Aspire, we dedicated much of this past year’s posts to the ins and outs of people considering going back to school. More adults are returning to college, are you one of them? By 2025, employers are expected to need 23 million more college graduates than the nation’s colleges and universities will have produced at the current rate. In ... Read More »

Online education continued to grow, change and define itself in 2013. Here’s what we’ve seen in 2013, as told through Aspire blog posts throughout the year. What’s missing from a lot of online education? The education. For years we’ve heard about the capacity of online learning to level the playing field, reduce costs and give people around the world access ... Read More »

Flying in the face of a separate college performance ranking system announced earlier this year by the Obama administration, Gallup and Purdue university announced their own plans to measure colleges’ effectiveness. The new ranking system seeks to go beyond these traditional measures like how many graduates are employed and making big salaries. It attempts to figure out which colleges provide their students the best chance ... Read More »

Thanks to a poll by Gallup and insight from Inside Higher Ed, we learned this week that a significant number of American college and university presidents are doubtful that President Barack Obama’s plan to lower the cost of higher education while increasing quality will accomplish its goals. The basis of the President’s plan is to tie federal grant dollars to a new rating system for ... Read More »

Could competency-based education reduce U.S. student loan debt? That’s what the Obama administration wants to know. In August, President Obama began encouraging U.S. universities and colleges to innovate around higher education, including challenging colleges to offer a greater range of affordable options, giving consumers clear and transparent information on college performance, and stripping away unnecessary regulations. Now, according to Insider ... Read More »

With advances in technology, workflow and business priorities, the pace of the workplace is faster than ever—and so is the need for employees to get new skills to keep pace. This is part of the reason why someone considering going back to school may opt to earn a graduate certificate instead of committing to a two-to-four-year degree program. With a ... Read More »

Struggling with low completion rates, some providers of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have launched a new strategy to increase student motivation. And it’s social. Social media platform LinkedIn announced this week it would begin a pilot program to allow students to display online courses they have completed on their LinkedIn profile. That way, students may be able to market themselves ... Read More »