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Why Are Hundreds of Harvard Students Studying Ancient Chinese Philosophy? - Christine Gross-Loh. Picture a world where human relationships are challenging, narcissism and self-centeredness are on the rise, and there is disagreement on the best way for people to live harmoniously together.

Why Are Hundreds of Harvard Students Studying Ancient Chinese Philosophy? - Christine Gross-Loh

It sounds like 21st-century America. But the society that Michael Puett, a tall, 48-year-old bespectacled professor of Chinese history at Harvard University, is describing to more than 700 rapt undergraduates is China, 2,500 years ago. Puett's course Classical Chinese Ethical and Political Theory has become the third most popular course at the university. The only classes with higher enrollment are Intro to Economics and Intro to Computer Science. Challenging (but promising) moment for America's religious colleges (essay) As a new academic year gets under way, the writing is on the wall: higher education might well be lurching toward a period of creative destruction of the sort that has affected many other sectors of the economy in recent decades.

Challenging (but promising) moment for America's religious colleges (essay)

Mention of “the University of Phoenix” or “MOOCs” or “the Minerva Project” strikes fear in the hearts of the tweed-wearing set, just as hand-loom weavers once trembled at the sight of textile mills. But the present moment offers religious college and universities a propitious opportunity. In fact, many have been quietly keeping aloof from the very things that have soured so many on the state of higher education.

Liberal-Arts Colleges Reach Minds Behind Bars - Students. February 6, 2011.

Liberal-Arts Colleges Reach Minds Behind Bars - Students

MOOCs could be disastrous for students and professors. Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

MOOCs could be disastrous for students and professors

MOOCs could be disastrous for students and professors. Georgia Tech’s Computer Science MOOC: The super-cheap master’s degree that could change American higher education. Photo by John Tlumacki/Boston Globe via Getty Images Georgia Institute of Technology is about to take a step that could set off a broad disruption in higher education: It’s offering a new master’s degree in computer science, delivered through a series of massive open online courses, or MOOCs, for $6,600.

Georgia Tech’s Computer Science MOOC: The super-cheap master’s degree that could change American higher education

The school’s traditional on-campus computer science master’s degree costs about $45,000 in tuition alone for out-of-state students (the majority) and $21,000 for Georgia residents. But in a few years, Georgia Tech believes that thousands of students from all over the world will enroll in the new program. The $6,600 master’s degree marks an attempt to realize the tantalizing promise of the MOOC movement: a great education, scaled up to the point where it can be delivered for a rock-bottom price. Until now, the nation’s top universities have adopted a polite but distant approach toward MOOCs. College Graduates Fare Well in Jobs Market, Even Through Recession. It's More Than Just the Degree, Graduates Say - Surveys of the Public and Presidents. By Eric Hoover Scholastic skepticism is contagious.

It's More Than Just the Degree, Graduates Say - Surveys of the Public and Presidents

Pundits and parents alike continue to second-guess the value of a college degree. After all, the recession has changed the way many Americans look at big-ticket purchases; plenty of families worry that today's expenses will not pay off tomorrow. Not surprisingly, today's cost-conscious public views college price tags with a wary eye. According to the Pew Research Center survey of the American public, only 35 percent said colleges were doing a "good" job in terms of providing value to students and parents; 42 percent said "only fair," and 15 percent said "poor. "

Capstone

‘Bill of Rights’ wants to keep massive online classes from being ‘Instagram of higher ed’ Remember all the hubbub last month when Instagram changed its Terms of Service, outraging users who were concerned that they had become the product?

‘Bill of Rights’ wants to keep massive online classes from being ‘Instagram of higher ed’

Well, to keep that from happening to the new wave of massive open online courses (MOOCs), a group of 12 educators, including MOOC-provider Udacity, has released what it calls a “Bill of Rights and Principles for Learning in the Digital Age.” Apparently created at a “MOOC Summit,” which Udacity founder and Stanford Professor Sebastian Thrun helped organize, the point of the document is to lay out a framework for protecting the rights of online students. The Déjà Vu of Today's Application Files - Manage Your Career. By Thomas J.

The Déjà Vu of Today's Application Files - Manage Your Career

Straka Not long ago, I spent a weekend with 28 application files from candidates for two tenure-track positions in agribusiness and applied economics. It wasn't pretty. The positions were standard assistant professorships at a land-grant university with the typical teaching, research, and service requirements. Liberal education and civic education need not go together (essay) Socrates, the patron saint of liberal education, is not a patron saint of civic engagement.

Liberal education and civic education need not go together (essay)

Although he claims to benefit Athens, he also admits to neglecting the duties -- from taking care of his family to concerning himself with politics -- that Athenians took to be conditions of good citizenship. Nonetheless, colleges have long pursued both liberal education and civic engagement missions. And in the recent past, Cathy Davidson of Duke University and Eileen McCulloch-Lovell, president of Marlborough College, have called on liberal arts colleges and universities to tighten their embrace of civic engagement in order to prove their worth to a skeptical public. College Graduates Deserve Much More Than Transcripts - Commentary. By Kevin Carey College transcripts are horrible.

College Graduates Deserve Much More Than Transcripts - Commentary

I say this not as a columnist but as an employer. Whenever my nonprofit policy group advertises a position, we get hundreds of résumés. Every applicant is a college graduate. But when it comes to winnowing the field to 10 or 15 semifinalists, we have almost no useful information about what they learned in school. Their résumés tell us if they attended a selective institution, which provides some insight into what they were like at age 17. I could request transcripts, but I never do. At a time when colleges are struggling to maintain enrollment and make the case for public financing, this is a big missed opportunity.

Indeed, colleges themselves don't trust college transcripts. Readers and Scholars Point to the Ways They Use Mapping for the Humanities. Google leads search for humanities PhD graduates. Stuck in the 'valley of death'? There's always a place at Silicon Valley. Matthew Reisz reports Credit: Getty Our door is always open: Google bigwigs do not doubt the utility of the humanities to the company's work Those worried about the value of studying the arts and humanities, particularly at the postgraduate level, take heart: Google wants you. A moment of dreaming about higher education. What would a better system of higher education look like? “Thy life is a flitting state, a tent for the night.” Our political vocabulary has never been geared towards this kinds of discussion; in the long, excruciating age of Reagan, anything not directly conducive to the accumulation of profits will slowly or quickly be changed into a version of itself that more effectively serves the interest of finance capital.

It’s hard not to become a certain kind of conservative, then, to defend what is or what was because what threatens to be in the future seems likely to be much worse. The Fact That Changed Everything: Skillshare's Approach to Learning. This content is brought to you by GOOD, with support from IBM. Click here to read more stories from The Fact That Changed Everything series and here to read about other Figures of Progress.

In America, college graduation is usually a momentous occasion, an initial step towards achieving various life goals. How Washington Could Make College Tuition Free (Without Spending a Penny More on Education) - Jordan Weissmann. The federal government already spends enough on student aid to cover tuition for every public college student in America. Maybe it's time to try. (Reuters) It's been a glum few weeks in the world of higher education. We officially learned that states kept slashing their funding for colleges and universities in 2012, and tuition in turn kept on rising.

Student loan debt expanded over the year, and more borrowers are falling behind on their debt.