Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor, Studies Show - NYTimes.com. Why College Is Still Relevant in the Age of Free Information. Hansoo Lee is co-founder and CEO of Magoosh, an online test prep company with products for the SAT, GRE, and GMAT. The rising cost of higher education has driven student debt to worrisome levels. With the advancements in digital and online education, more and more would-be college students are seeking the inexpensive, individualized alternatives online. However, the benefits of higher education are still immense. Given the debate around the value of a college degree, it’s important tease out the exact benefits that you’d get out a college experience, especially because many of them impact your digital presence. 1.
The Network Your real life social networks are largely tied to the institutions at which you’ve spent time: high school, college, graduate school, the companies at which you’ve worked, church, sports teams, etc. One major benefit of college is the ready-made network you will have upon graduation. 2. 3. 4. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, jbrizendine. Change.edu: Rebooting for the New Talent Economy. Theodore Hesburgh, the former president of the University of Notre Dame, used to joke that education was one of the few things people were willing to pay for and not get.
While that may still be true for some students whose parents are picking up the tab, for many others eager to land a decent job with a future, society needs to do more to ensure that all students get the education and training they need to keep pace with the evolving demands of employers. In Change.edu, Andrew Rosen calls for greater relevance, access, accountability and transparency in higher education.
He builds a persuasive case that many non-traditional students — such as working adults, parents and those at risk of dropping out — are not well served by traditional institutions. New approaches, he argues, are critical to ensure that more people have the opportunity to obtain college degrees. The United States used to lead the world in the percentage of adults with college degrees, but has now fallen to 10th place. YouTube for Schools: All the TED Talks, None of the Cat Videos.
YouTube has launched a new initiative called YouTube for Schools, which will enable educators to open up classrooms to the wide world of educational content on YouTube without all the junk. Open Internet access in schools is tricky, with all the distractions and time-wasters out there, so Google is taking this step to make educators’ lives easier. Network administrators can turn on YouTube for Schools to give school computers access to the vast library of YouTube EDU content from partners such as the Smithsonian and TED.
The content is organized into topical and grade-level playlists. You can view the lists at youtube.com/teachers. YouTube for Schools allows unfettered access to educational videos without any of the YouTube stuff that’s inappropriate for school. In 2010, Google’s launch of encrypted search ran afoul of school network administrators by clashing with the Children’s Internet Protection Act, a federal law that would have required schools to block Google. Work_Trends_May_2011. Chart of the Day: Unemployment by Major « Kay Steiger. Study: Underutilized Young Adults Cost Society Trillions - Inside School Research. Could Apprenticeships Replace the College Degree? - Education - GOOD.
With college costs skyrocketing and the number of jobs for new grads on the decline, it’s no wonder that students are questioning whether a degree is worth the investment. But given that the jobs of the future are projected to require some form of post-secondary education, a key question is how to provide academic knowledge and industry-specific training that will prepare students for the future. The answer might come from a throwback to the Middle Ages: apprenticeships. Traditionally, we think of interning as the way for students to get on-the-job experience. But internships vary in quality and often aren’t paid, which means that students from low-income backgrounds are unable to take advantage of the opportunity.
The demand for apprenticeships is particularly acute in the United Kingdom, where a recent BBC survey of high schoolers revealed that two-thirds say they'd forgo attending college in favor of entering an apprenticeship. Photo via Wikimedia Commons. Mozilla Aims to 'Iconize' Skills with Standardized 'Merit Badges' In a world where eligible candidates for Web-related positions range from 14 to 81 years of age, and thousands worldwide may compete for an open position or contract, how can an employer expect to screen them all? In the old days, people used degrees; but in an environment where today's skills become tomorrow's bird cage liners, major players in Web development are suggesting the old system may already be outmoded. A system proposed earlier this year by the Mozilla Foundation will be the basis of a global competition.
As much as $2 million in grants from Mozilla and the MacArthur Foundation will be awarded to interested parties, in amounts ranging up to $200,000 apiece, who can propose a technical infrastructure and/or physical appearance for what Mozilla describes as a standard system of verified icons for representing individuals' Web developmental skills. As a Mozilla spokesperson told RWW this afternoon, "the badge itself is more than a static image or button. You Can't Do It Alone: A New Guide to Creating Sustainable Change in Education Reform. Teach Plus: Whither the District: Leaders Must Lead on School Reform. By Michelle Morrissey In my 12th grade Civics class, my students and I just finished an in-depth study of the desegregation in the Boston Public Schools that began in 1974.
The Boston "busing crisis," as it's referred to here, began when the Boston Public Schools were desegregated under federal court order, after years of resistance and outright hostility towards the claims of black parents by the democratically-elected school committee. It's easy to get caught up in the images of horrific racism and racial violence that followed Boston's order to desegregate, but this year, as I read and discussed the events of the 1970s with my students, I found myself wondering about the history and governance of the public schools here in Boston: how had the schools changed since the days when a member of the school committee could publicly declare, in response to black parents' complaints about the quality of their children's schools, "We don't have inferior schools.