Blog Roll

This week, professional networking site LinkedIn unveiled their newest product, University Pages (having paved the way for the launch by lowering their minimum age of admission to 14). University Pages is a lot like an education-focused version of LinkedIn itself, with a dash of the original version of Facebook (remember when that was just for college kids?). Grads can connect ... Read More »

Here’s an infographic that highlights some key benefits of earning a college degree. It’s not a comprehensive picture, but its broad strokes do provide useful food for thought. The salary distinctions it depicts between undergrad and master’s, doctoral and professional degrees make an appealing case in themselves, while the back-to-school component provides perspective from the other end of the employment ... Read More »

At Information Week, education section editor and columnist David F. Carr recently posted a column that outlines the results of a survey of newly-enrolled MOOC students and students with existing MOOC experience. This survey found that the primary reason that students enroll in a MOOC is an interest in the class’s core topic. Its findings are helpful benchmarks for any ... Read More »

In recent days and weeks, more than 20 American embassies and consulates across the Middle East and North Africa have been closed, due to security concerns and intercepted intelligence indicating an imminent threat. Dr. Mary Thompson-Jones, director and faculty member of the MS in Global Studies and International Affairs program at Northeastern University College of Professional Studies (CPS), was an ... Read More »

The Boston Globe on Sunday highlighted a unique partnership between Northeastern University College of Professional Studies (CPS) and Boston Ballet that helps dancers prepare themselves for their post-dancing careers—careers that end all too soon, given the rigors and challenges of professional dancing. The partnership provides flexible and customized opportunities for dancers to earn undergraduate and graduate degrees and take advantage of ... Read More »

Over at the Reuters blog, political commentator and senior fellow at the Libertarian-inclined R Street Institute Reihan Salam has posted a column in which he contends (to quote his title) that “Online education can be good or cheap, but not both.” Salam cites the recent San Jose State partnership with Udacity; he observes that the initiative, intended “to create courses ... Read More »

Inside Higher Ed published an article by Paul Fein last week that focuses on an unappreciated benefit that community colleges have found in the much-debated MOOC concept; that of remedial education. Fein relates that community colleges aren’t replacing their curricula with MOOCs, but some are starting to employ third-party online ed programs, and even creating online content of their own, ... Read More »

Today’s Inside Higher Ed post by NU VP of global strategy and business development, Peter Stokes, touches on some topics we’ve been discussing recently at Aspire, such as the importance of widening the scope of experiential learning (and how it’s happening at NU) and the merit in incorporating employer needs (and input) into the development of academic curricula. Stokes states ... Read More »

In a recent post at The Hill, top-level college administrators Bruce Leslie, Ed Klonoski, Patricia A. Ladewig, Scott Kinney and Thomas Babel describe the need to “build a holistic system of metrics around the issues that matter the most for student success,” in order to better equip legislators to make decisions and develop policy regarding education. The group represents schools ... Read More »

  Sebastian Thrun, the co-founder and CEO of online education provider Udacity, recently granted an interview to MIT’s Technology Review, in which he addressed, among other things, the recent hubbub at San Jose State (which we also touched on here). Thrun also made some pretty intriguing observations—among them were the possibility that, within a year, artificial intelligence (AI) technology might ... Read More »