Five Trends to Watch in Higher Education

Leaders of U.S. universities and colleges are navigating a challenging economic environment. Revenues from enrollment, government, and other sources have fallen, leading many institutions to raise tuition to unsustainable levels and putting a number of the weakest schools at risk of failing.

This is an unfortunate effect of subsidizing public education, making it more expensive in the long-term.

Meanwhile, the return on investment of a degree is increasingly subject to debate. After years of low graduation levels and high unemployment rates for those students who do complete college, the spotlight has shifted firmly toward improving outcomes.

One thing to note, that the article could have done, would have been to look at long-term trends in the student success rates and spending levels to see if a tenfold increase in spending led to any significant increase in student success.  

Additionally, college as we know it—what it looks like, how it gets delivered, and who it serves—is being altered.

And this is a good thing. The world has change, so should the way we learn and teach.

These and other forces are transforming the U.S. higher-education system. The fundamental model of universities and colleges has been called into question. Experiments large and small across the nation point to a multitude of paths forward.

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Results from the SRI Study of Khan Academy

I'm a fan of the Khan Academy, both for myself and for my daughter. I use the site to learn new skills and refresh old ones, from economics to math, astronomy and more. I use it to help my daughter with her studies, mostly math, but I try to encourage her to explore and try new things. We both end up learning something when I help her, and despite the lack of cost, I feel there is a tangible value in the service. 

Overall, the study identified many positive findings relevant to educators, developers, and education leaders, and shows that the schools serving diverse student populations can make use of Khan Academy as a component in their mathematics instruction. Teachers in the pilot schools reported that they found value in using Khan Academy to support their instruction, that it helped their students, and that they planned to continue to experiment with different models for integrating Khan Academy into their math curricula. Students also indicated in focus groups and on surveys that they liked using Khan Academy. In addition, early evidence from one site suggests that a math instruction approach using Khan Academy in combination with close teacher monitoring and extended periods for math instruction can improve student learning. For now, these preliminary findings should be interpreted cautiously and should not be over-generalized. No single implementation model was used across all the sites, and Khan Academy was not used as the sole, or even primary source of math instruction at most sites, making it difficult to isolate its effects. 

Teachers and schools leaders are attracted to using Khan Academy because it is available for free, offers a modular set of resources, engages students, provides immediate feedback, and offers opportunities for students to direct their own learning. At the same time, fundamental challenges remain that constrain how schools use Khan Academy. These challenges include accountability pressures, restrictions on instructional time, and limited access to one-to-one computing.

More:

Research on the Use of Khan Academy in Schools | SRI International

What I appreciate most about these types of resources is that it recognizes that all students are different. Everyone learns at a unique pace. Some of us fly through some subjects while others need a bit of extra time to absorb the material and concepts. Sal Khan's videos are great in this regard; he doesn't assume that the viewer is a certain age, only at a certain skill level. Grouping students by age may be efficient in volume, akin to mass production, but is hardly the most effective way to teach. 

Favorable Findings: Khan Academy was generally well-liked by both students and teachers. Student engagement seemed high and teachers liked the modular nature of the materials, which made it easy to use as a supplement for the regular curriculum. At two research sites, increased time spent on Khan Academy was associated with better-than-expected test scores, decreased math anxiety, and increased confidence in math ability.Again, don't jump to conclusions — this represents just some of the students and the methods weren't rigorous. Increased time on something leading to improvement isn't all that surprising, and we should want to see further study.

More:
MathEd.net: Results from the SRI Study of Khan Academy

Resources like these put the power and pace to learn in the student's hands where it belongs. Integrating solutions like these into educational institutions helps us move away from a homogenized, one-size-fits-all school system toward individualized learning processes. These studies are encouraging, and I am sure that more refinement is necessary to take these resources into the classroom as integrated components of the schooling system, but I am optimistic that these technologies will help us get there from here.

“Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.”
― Isaac Asimov

Give up and Live

You have to give up. You have to accept that someday you will die, and until you do, you are useless. What you do in life might not matter, and you might not leave evidence of your existence when you go. Or maybe you might. Either way, make your mark on the world and on time. Say something worth saying, do something worth following. Champion logic and morality at once. Seek truth. Be an inspiration to our children.

Classical vs Modern Liberal Arts Education

Recently, the question of the practicality of a liberal arts education as a guarantee for employment opportunity was raised. Are liberal arts majors doomed to unemployment throughout their careers? In an era of economic uncertainty, it could mean that liberal arts majors need to simply find practical applications for their education. It could also mean that those who specialize in a specific field with demand for workers will find success in their careers a bit earlier than those that do not specialize.

The classical method of liberal arts is intended to first teach students how to learn (the trivium), to enable them to later take on the subjects themselves (the quadrivium, or hard sciences). By building a strong base of experience using the tools of learning (grammar, logic, rhetoric), a student with a successful mastery of the seven liberal arts should see open doors to any desired field later in life.

Unfortunately, today's liberal arts programs are more focused on the humanities and social sciences, rather than the classical method of learning itself, which needs to start at a much younger age than college, a result of gradualism of language and lost focus. These nearly lost tools of learning are seeing renewed interest as a way to promote lifelong learning. Today's liberal arts do not go far enough to enable the student to teach themselves. The classical liberal arts method enables the student to learn anything, in time. There is no quick fix.

The Language of Asimov

Literature gives us an ability to travel through time to years gone by, when words held different views and meaning than our own. Here is an example I was surprised to find in Isaac Asimov's fine collection of robot short stories, as I am working my way toward Foundation. Is the author though of any less for his colorful language common for the time?

"It wasn't much of a hobby, but sometimes someone would bring out a radio or an alarm clock and the money he would get paid for juggling its insides was the only money he ever got that didn't pass in driblets through his spouse's niggardly hands."

Short Story Podcasts

For fiction fans, here is a short list of good audio fiction, from science fiction to fantasy and even some occasional horror, in podcast format.

• StarShipSofa
• Lightspeed Magazine Podcast
• Escape Pod
• Strange Horizons
• PodCastle
• Clarkesworld Magazine
• Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Chess

Teaching my eight year old chess, she wipes the floor with me her first time out. I'm impressed, but I did handicap myself with libations. I didn't let her win, the porter distracted me.