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.

“This third round of funding will build on the work of earlier grantees by strengthening partnerships between institutions and employers so students develop the skills and attain the credentials they need for jobs in high-need fields now and in the future,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in announcing round three of the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training grants program.

So what can community colleges do with almost a half billion dollars?

According to Inside Higher Ed, some used grant money in rounds one and two to design valuable, sustainable programs that fit employer needs:

• Massachusetts Community Colleges—$20 million for 15 community colleges to improve career services and redesign or create new credentials targeting unemployed and underemployed adults
• Pennsylvania Consortium of Community Colleges—$20 million for 20 community colleges to focus on electronic medical records technology, advanced manufacturing, and renewable energy
• National STEM Consortium—$20 million for 10 community colleges in nine states to work with industry partners to develop one-year certificates in five high-demand fields
• Illinois Green Economy Network Career Pathways—$19 million for 17 community colleges to develop training programs in eight green economy industries

The Massachusetts initiative, dubbed the Transformation Agenda, will eventually develop more than 85 new degree, certificate, and noncredit programs in health care, biotechnology and life sciences, advanced manufacturing, clean energy/sustainability, information technology, and financial services.

The innovative part? Many of the certifications can be earned in one or two semesters, so students can be job-ready in high-demand fields, quickly.

So let’s get creative. Community colleges, businesses, a federal challenge, and millions of dollars. What would you do?

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.

According to What Does It Really Mean to Be College and Work Ready?, high school graduates don’t know enough of the basics to get them through one year at a community college. Think about it. An average of 45 percent of high school graduates attend a community college—with fast-track training that goes directly into the workforce. If the students aren’t ready for college, they most surely are ill-equipped to succeed in a career. The system keeps moving them along at a fairly rapid clip without ever really giving them what they need. Basic English and math skills, for example.

Alarming highlights from the study revealed that many college programs demand little or no mathematics. What students need most is middle school mathematics but their command of those concepts is weak. And the skills needed in many community college programs—mathematical modeling, statistics and probability, complex measurement, schematics and geometric visualization—are not even taught in most schools.

Most high school graduates cannot understand college texts written at 11th–12th grade levels. In many community colleges, the required reading demands little more than searching for basic facts. Most college courses require very little writing and industry training courses rarely ask students to do the kind of writing they will need to do on the job.

“This report shows that our community colleges have shockingly low expectations of the students entering their institutions, because many—perhaps most—of our future nurses, EMTs, and auto mechanics haven’t mastered middle school mathematics and cannot read much of the material in their first year college textbooks—even though they are only written at the 11^th and 12^th grade levels—and a large fraction of our future four-year college students have a very hard time writing a simple report that requires students to make an argument and support it with facts” said Marc Tucker, NCEE president. “If the United States does not fix this fast, its citizens will face a bleak economic future.”

It’s a complex issue with far-reaching implications. How do you think we can teach our students not only what they need to graduate, but what they need to succeed?

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.

Document sharing

M+Box, University of Michigan’s branded version of Box, offers users 50 GB of storage—which works better for large video files and can be accessed from a central location. Resources are available at the same time to all team members, so faculty don’t have to spend time searching YouTube or Vimeo for projects. With one button, faculty can weigh in on student work in a comment box and email all team members. This transparency facilitates valuable interactions, promotes virtual self-expression, and enables collaboration with technology.

Screen sharing

Using Tidebreak ClassSpot PBL, Winona State University redesigned a 25-student classroom into a visual media studio. The studio features five tables with a shared display all connected to a computer, and an 80-inch white board. Students simply sit down, download the software onto their laptops, and in minutes are able to share screens on the monitor at their table. They can easily choose and annotate photos, and then take control and present projects to the entire group from the large interactive touchscreen. The software helps them work in larger, more diverse groups; students from computer science, mass communications, and art classes meet to do group projects involving graphic design, advertising, and mobile app development.

Social bookmarking

A cross-disciplinary team hunkered down at the Rochester Institute of Technology campus to create RIT BookBag. This web-based tool allows faculty to integrate a wide array of digital research materials as well as RIT’s library resources into a course curriculum and share with students. Faculty simply search for resources, then use RIT BookBag to populate syllabus content, add required material, and include pertinent links. Students can also share links to relevant material. Because a classroom includes different learning styles, some students learn more from each other’s research and the resources they found. It also gives students who would otherwise be too shy to speak up in class the opportunity to make valuable contributions and participate in virtual conversations.

Polling software

It can be tough to get students participate in large classes and even tougher to gather their responses. Institutions across the nation are ditching clicker hardware in favor of Poll Everywhere, software that allows students to talk with each other in small groups—via Twitter, text, or the web—and then share replies with other groups. Another option is Learning Catalytics which is now used in classes at the US Air Force Academy and Yale University for peer instruction and to encourage conversation. With Learning Catalytics, faculty can see how each individual responded and then group students based on their responses. After grouping students and letting them work together, instructors use the tool to measure the number of correct answers, which in most cases, improves as a result of peer interaction.

There’s no more, sit, stay. Your students are ready to play. How are you using software to support your project-based learning strategies?

“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.”

USNH’s implementation was driven by new objectives from the Board of Trustees, calling for:

• Performance-based culture
• Rewards consistent with mission, vision, and values
• Employees and managers have shared responsibility to achieve goals
• Learning and work environment serve as differentiators

To help employees, the system brought in outside consultants to do training on the cultural change. After that, the institution introduced everyone to the software solution. Medros also said it is important to have a clear plan and processes in place and documented before using the solution itself, otherwise some people get overwhelmed by the functionality. USNH is rolling out limited functionality at a time, with a plan to introduce more each year. “There are so many bells and whistles in the software that users can get overwhelmed. We think it is important to simplify at first as they adjust to the cultural change.”

“I am fascinated by the contrasting rhetoric between the rapid-boil fervor over MOOCs and the barely simmering apathy for open-access policies, especially at the institutional level. MOOCs are often touted in university news releases as being motivated by the desire to increase access to work of faculty freely across the globe,” writes Mittell. “The MOOC leader Coursera’s own mission is to ‘empower people with education that will improve their lives, the lives of their families, and the communities they live in.’ But fewer than 20 percent of the American institutions that have formed partnerships with Coursera are also members of COAPI.”

So why are folks focused on the benefits of making courses available online but not faculty research? According to Mittell, the answer is money. Those enamored with MOOCs think they represent a new revenue model by providing widespread access to education, lowering administrative costs for generic courses, and improving student success rates through community learning. Critics disagree, arguing that for public universities already stuck in a spiral of inadequate budgets and underprepared students, MOOCs could easily disrupt the tuition-revenue stream. And many predict monetization in the future.

Under open access policies, any scholarly writing a salaried researcher from a participating institution publishes must be made freely available. Mittell argues that this measured reform would serve the same purpose as MOOCs but would also help institutions save money, because institutions would no longer have to pay high subscription fees to the same commercial publications they paid their faculty to write for. According to the Harvard University Library, research has repeatedly shown that articles available freely online are more often cited and have greater impact than those not freely available.

Even though open access to faculty research may increase faculty visibility and facilitate broader dissemination with less financial risk, it’s not that black and white. Critics of open access argue that the revenue model favors quantity over quality because the more the journals publish, the more money they make. And many worry that the traditional peer review model will be abandoned, resulting in low quality research posted to the web without critical assessment.

Free and open access to faculty journal articles, important or disruptive? Weigh in.

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.

It makes a lot of sense. To students that have already accrued thousands of hours playing digital games, this is a chance to complete the next quest, not just pass a class. See, in a learning game, spectacular success isn’t a pipedream, it’s a possibility. There are complex problems that a group of people must collaborate on to solve. This supports peer-to-peer learning and interaction and cultivates a nice mix of skills. There’s an engaging story line, characters, and nuanced visuals. And, there’s an ideal way to measure a student’s comprehension—you win or lose based on how well you explore the solution space. Getting immediate performance feedback motivates students to bring their A-game and get to the next level.

“There is a lot of difference between a kid sitting in a classroom early in the morning because he had to be there at 8:30, trying to soak in the information, and a kid sitting in front of a computer, responsible for the next action that’s going to happen, operating at twitch speed,” says Randy Hinrichs, Microsoft Research Group Research Manager for Learning Science and Technology in the article, Game-Based Learning: How to Delight and Instruct in the 21st Century. “The fire that motivates self-directed learning is just turned on.”

Because games offer authentic contexts, a variety of perspectives, and plenty of opportunities to resolve conflicts, they are highly effective in teaching students how to cope with problems, quickly. Learning games require critical thinking and frequent decisions which result in immediate reactions, so students learn how to create real solutions to real issues. Or, in other words, they learn how to affect change in the world—the ultimate goal of college.

Consider the applications. Military schools already use games to simulate skills training and teach strategy. In the medical field there is “Emergency Room: Code Red” which trains graduate students in specific skills, and “Septris” which teaches physicians and nurses how to identify, triage, and manage patients with sepsis as their health deteriorates. Game-based learning seems highly suited for natural, physical, and social science; “Ikariam” simulates life in ancient civilizations and teaches students about economics and civic responsibility. Then there’s the issue of vocabulary. In game-based learning, a word is introduced in context, so students can see how it applies in the real world and use it very soon after its introduction, which supports retention.

“One of the most important benefits of games, and especially simulation games, is the manner in which productive failure and creative adaptability is encouraged,” says Jane McGonical, game designer and author of Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. “Fear of punishment, either formally or socially, is typically low in social games, encouraging experimentation and creative workarounds to reach mutual goals.” Imagine the possibilities if students were allowed to experiment without fear of failure.

Whether you are for or against the gamification of education, it might be worth picking up a controller. Because like it or not, when it comes to integrating technology into higher education, it’s game on.

As you can imagine, this argument has been divisive. So then we look at the cons in a speedy Time rebuttal that pokes holes in this reasoning, Top Three Flawed Arguments of the Anti-College Crowd. According to author Zac Bissonnette, the New York Times article glosses over its icons’ college experience; Bill Gates and Zuckerberg both attended college and their experience was key to their success. It exaggerates the cost of higher education (almost doubling it), doesn’t take into account the fact that nearly one-third of students leave college with no debt, and fails to acknowledge that the average debt is about $27,000. Finally, it minimizes the enduring earning power of a degree. You’re still better off with a degree—some future employers won’t even consider an application without one. And, those with a degree tend to significantly out-earn those without one, which helps folks pay off student debt. It’s a heated debate, read the pros and cons and weigh in.

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.”

Researchers found those with only a high school education held four out of every five jobs lost over the past five years. Furthermore, of the 3.4 million jobs gained since the beginning of the economic recovery, the report found that workers with even some college fared better than those with none.

Additional interesting findings of the report:

• The number of individuals earning a Bachelor’s or graduate degree has nearly doubled over the past 20+ years.
• Employers paid workers with a postsecondary degree a higher wage for the same position compared to workers with only a high school education.

Conclusively, the value and worth of a postsecondary degree cannot be disputed. Beyond the numbers, higher education is the platform for moving new ideas and discoveries forward and helps create a bright future for all of us.

What studies, reports or anecdotes about proving the worth of a postsecondary degree have you encountered recently?

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.

In addition to the extra cost, another hurdle is increased competition for admission. With a big gap in the coffers to fill, recruiting out-of-state and overseas students is all the more attractive.

The takeaway the author found: “It’s just a sign of the times, say those who have remained in public education.”

We’re interested to learn your institutions’ strategies for responding to funding shortfalls.

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?

The causes for uncertainty are varied: reduced federal and state funding, eroding endowments, global competition, and increasingly complex compliance and reporting requirements. These factors have combined to create a perfect storm that has battered public and political confidence and devalued the perceived importance of university-based research. However, this doubt is juxtaposed by an equal expectation for universities to produce research products that address “a growing list of complex problems,” according to the Consortium.

In response, the Consortium embarked on this study to examine from the “bottom up” the current health of the American research university and identify the specific hurdles that should be addressed. Information for this study came from a combination of both public and private universities. The findings emphasized six core areas:

1. Scarcity of resources.
2. Increasing government regulation refocusing efforts on compliance rather than research activities.
3. Ongoing collaboration between the academic research community and key stakeholders to react to societal expectations and develop the performance standards that help determine what is innovative and what is not.
4. Working within resource constraints that can limit access to vital current and predictive data required for analysis, evaluation and recommendations.
5. Effectively communicating the positive contribution and impact of university-based research for public good.
6. Preserving the integrity of skilled administrators to steward research programs.

With these areas defined, the Consortium is looking to move the study to the next phase of developing a national strategy that will address the identified concerns and, ultimately, “sustain and enhance the ability of the nation’s research universities to fulfill their mission of creating new knowledge and applying it innovatively to address current and future needs and challenges.”

Giving to education remains on the rise, according to the recently released Giving USA: The Annual Report on Philanthropy for the year 2011 (2012). Chicago: Giving USA Foundation. While giving to educational organizations is on the upswing, the increase in charitable giving from 2010 to 2011 overall marked the second slowest increase of any two-year span following a recession since the 70s. However, according to the report, giving to education showed a modest increase in the 2010-2011 fiscal year.

In February, the Counsel for Aid to Education published the 20 universities that netted the most donations. The top five: Stanford, Harvard, Yale, MIT and Columbia.

In addition to education, other charitable sectors showing improvement in giving rates included human services, health, and public-society benefit organizations. Conversely, giving to foundations and to religion showed a decline.

At Ellucian, we’re keenly aware that competition for these valuable dollars is intense. We are interested to hear if and how your strategies for securing gifts for the remainder of this year and into 2013 may change based on the findings of the Giving USA report.

Recognizing that accreditation as a measure of quality is a complex undertaking, ACE created the National Task Force on Institutional Accreditation to support institutions searching for the best ways to assure quality. The initial project of the task force is to evaluate the current state of self-regulated accreditation—its effectiveness and value—and to make recommendations to further preserve and guarantee an environment of academic quality.

The full report, Assuring Academic Quality in the 21^st Century: Self-Regulation in a New Era, examines the changing higher education environment and recent critiques of accreditation, examining the expanded role of accountability and quality assurance in higher education institutions.

The report makes six recommendations to help ensure accreditation meets its public responsibilities:

• Increase accreditation transparency and communicate results clearly and often.
• Increase the centrality of evidence about student success and educational quality.
• Initiate quick and public action against substandard institutions.
• Adopt a more “risk-sensitive” approach to regional accreditation.
• Use common terminology and improve collaboration, cooperation, and participation among institutions.
• Make accreditation more cost effective.

The task force plans to issue a follow-up report in 2014 evaluating how effective these recommendations turn out to be.

The U.S. Department of Education published its annual College Affordability and Transparency lists this month and year-over-year climbing costs remain the norm.

As reported by the Associated Press in USA Today, on average, in-state tuition at public four-year institutions has increased at a rate of 5.6 percent per year in the last decade. The AP additionally reported that, by comparison, community college increases averaged less than one percent.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan summarized the situation this way: “As a nation, we need more college graduates in order to stay competitive in the global economy. But if the costs keep on rising, especially at a time when family incomes are hurting, college will become increasingly unaffordable for the middle class.”

Ellucian works every day with customer institutions seeking new ways to keep education accessible and affordable. If you have ideas about how we can help you help people everywhere discover their futures through learning, please leave us a comment.

Related Stories:

• San Francisco Chronicle: College Tuition in Calif. Rising Fastest In Nation
• The Chronicle of Higher Education: Education Dept. Lists Cheapest and Costliest Colleges
• The Chronicle of Higher Education: Nation’s Research Universities Are Offered Hope of Fatter Budgets—at a Price
• Inside Higher Ed:  How to Stay on Top