Due in part to the Post-9/11 GI Bill—which offers expanded benefits to military students, including those interested in online learning—there are more current and former military members looking to get higher education degrees and prepare themselves for a job market that often doesn’t know how to take advantage of their unique skill sets. This brings up the questions: What is ... Read More »
You hear the word “employability” everywhere you go these days, which is no surprise when domestic and international unemployment rates are what they are. Inevitably, the discussion about workers’ readiness for real and beneficial work inevitably turns to the relationship between education and economic development. And although this relationship gets periodically debated, most of the developed and developing world has ... Read More »
It’s that time of year again—the sun is shining, the flowers are blooming and people are dressing up to sit outside and watch their friends and family receive hard-won and well-earned diplomas. For this year’s CPS commencement ceremonies, the keynote speaker was Karen Kaplan, CEO of the Hill Holliday advertising agency. Ms. Kaplan’s speech posed the question, “What makes a ... Read More »
It’s the best of times and the worst of times to be a student. On the one hand, technological advances have made online education more accessible and credible. Along with MOOCs, this represents a huge step forward in making higher education available and affordable to an exponentially wider student base than its traditional counterparts. On the other hand, those traditional ... Read More »
What motivates higher education faculty members to teach online courses? This has been an interest of mine for a number of years, and is particularly salient given my own institution’s decision to launch a fully online Masters in Strategic Leadership. In fact, this topic interested me so much that I decided to make it the basis for my dissertation, which I recently ... Read More »
In some tenuous but bold steps, Vermont and Hawaii have been working legislation through their state houses that would require the labeling of foods containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Long a source of controversy, GMOs are animals and plants (mainly fruits and vegetables) grown using bio-technological gene splicing. GMO strains of popular produce items are often developed to bolster crop ... Read More »
Higher ed ROI has been in the news a lot lately, including when former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett made news by proclaiming that only a fraction of American colleges measured up to their price tags. But the problem isn’t necessarily the quality of the education. The problem, Bennett says, is people going to second-tier schools, majoring in less-marketable liberal ... Read More »
Pauline Demetrius, 46, grew up on the northern coast of South America, in a remote area in the Guyana countryside. She spent her formative years in a house with her mother, sisters and an abusive alcoholic father who regularly told her that education wasn’t for girls. “We were supposed to stay at home and cook and wash the dishes,” she ... Read More »
Daphne Koller makes a compelling case that her company Coursera (which partners with universities to offer free online courses open to anyone) and its massive open online course (MOOC) counterparts have the potential to transform lives. During a recent presentation at Northeastern University, Koller shared rich anecdotes about learners who live far from their U.S.-based courses of study who have ... Read More »
There are moments that shape us. Indelible in their mark, perhaps mostly because they juxtapose all the greatness and fallibility inherent in the human condition. We are a work in progress, a collective community, driven by division, in a journey better served by the celebration of inclusion. There are heroes among us that engage us in a conversation to be ... Read More »
