It’s a provocative combination: community colleges and businesses, a federal challenge to better prepare workers, and $474.5 million to do it.
Intended to fuel community colleges’ creativity in restructuring career training paths and timelines, the third round of Labor Department job-training grants is now open. And if community colleges’ track records thus far are any indication, innovative programs and employer partnerships are just ahead.
So your students walk off the stage with a high school diploma. Tasseled caps soar in the breeze, held aloft with aspirations for the future. But just because they graduate, doesn’t necessarily mean they’re ready to fly.
Recently, the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) released the results of a two-year study of the English literacy and mathematics required for success in the first year of community college. It wasn’t pretty.
The concept of project-based learning has been around for a long time, but it is experiencing a resurgence, in part, due to innovative software that is opening new doors that help students collaborate. Until recently, technical support for group projects has fallen short. But that is all changing.
With a little creativity and some customization, institutions are building the tools they need. In the Campus Technology article Tools for Teamwork, David Raths highlights four specialized tools that bolster cooperation among students.
Alicia Medros of the University System of New Hampshire shared the system’s experiences as a beta implementation site for the Ellucian Talent Management Suite.
“The ideas of a manager really working with his or her employees to help them achieve their goals, and linking individual’s goals to the institution’s is a big cultural shift,” said Medros. “The solution is great, but implementing it is just the tip of the iceberg. You need to help people accept the cultural change.”
In a recent article, The Real Digital Change Agent, published in The Chronicle Review, author Jason Mittell wonders why massive open online courses (MOOCs) get so much more media love than open-access policies such as those offered by the Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions (COAPI).
See that kid in the back of the class? The one with Xbox blisters? Follow that kid into the future. Why? Because video games are modeling one of the best ways to engage the next generation of students.
Game-based learning is an educational trend that, according to the NMC Horizon Report, 2012 Higher Education Edition, is a mere two to three years away from widespread adoption.
In response to growing student debt and a lackluster job market, undergraduates are opting for a do-it-yourself education in lieu of a college degree, according to a recently published New York Times article, Saying No to College. Many educators dismiss it as a dangerous trend, but for “hacksters” inspired by billionaire dropouts such as Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, self-directed education is a viable option. Among the pros of “hacking” higher education (which means anything from traveling, volunteer work, or collaborative peer learning groups) are a growing number of alternatives such as apprenticeships and MOOCs, a fast-track to making money, and a global classroom free of groupthink constraints. Proponents ask, “Why spend money, when you can make it?
With tuition costs continuing to climb, funding for public universities continuing to decline and a continual slow recovery out of the five-year recession, some are questioning whether pursuing a postsecondary degree is truly worth it.
Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce researchers asked this very question and the findings from its report The College Advantage: Weathering the Economic Storm delivered a resounding yes.”
In what it calls the U.S. recession’s other victim, a recent Reuters article reported funding for public universities has reached its lowest point in the past 25 years. At the same time, tuition and fees at public four-year universities have skyrocketed by 70 percent in the last 10 years.
The fallout at many public schools includes larger classes taught by part-time faculty, reducing or completely eliminating programs, hiring freezes and even switching to dual-flush toilets to save water.
To contend with ever-increasing tuition costs, students and their families are taking on more debt. Students today are graduating with an average debt of nearly $30,000 according to FinAid.org.
Improving student retention and completion still keep higher education leaders up at night. The recent post on the Online Universities blog examined the issue and highlights nine social engagement ideas.
Facilitating relationships with faculty and staff, ethnicity-specific student centers and, as expected, social media are all good ideas, in our opinion, for any institution.
This list also got us thinking about what our customers are doing to foster student engagement with solutions like Ellucian Degree Works, Banner Relationship Management, Ellucian Course Signals, and Colleague Retention Alert.
What types of social engagement initiatives have worked at your institution that should be added to the list?
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