"Worth Reading" is a hand-picked weekly collection of new, not-so-new articles and downright old ideas, events and other items for higher education professionals. 1 Got Skills? Retooling Vocational Education (The Economist) "The university bubble is also beginning to burst. Democratising universities has proved an expensive and inefficient way of providing mass higher education. Americans, who led the way, have taken on more than $1 trillion in student debt. But a growing number think that they got poor value for money—taught by PhD students not professors, forced to subsidise expensive research programmes and administrative cadres, and provided, at the end of it all, with a college diploma that no longer automatically brings a desirable job." "Frustration with the status quo is at last leading to a burst of innovation. The internet is well suited to vocational education: it helps reduce costs while making it easier to earn a living while doing some vocational training. Just as important is the birth of a new concept of what is being delivered." 2 Are Universities Going the Way of Record Labels?  "The Internet’s power to unbundle content and increase personal choice transformed the music industry—and it’s doing the same thing to higher education." "Students are the big winners here. Decreased cost of content combined with increased competition among professors, and lower average ROI for universities per professor, will lead to lower tuition costs and greater choice.Great professors with interdisciplinary knowledge—the great curators—will see license and royalty fees go up as they command economies of scale in distribution. Existing institutions with large endowments will become the record labels: platforms that invest in great talent. And distribution platforms that curate content will do well, commanding both economies of scale and scope." 3 Hire Education: Mastery, Modularization, and the Workforce Revolution "This book illuminates the great disruptive potential of online competency- based education. Workforce training, competency-based learning, and online learning are clearly not new phenomena, but online competency-based education is revolutionary because it marks the critical convergence of multiple vectors: the right learning model, the right technologies, the right customers, and the right business model. In contrast to other recent trends in higher education, particularly the tremendous fanfare around massive open online courses (MOOCs), online competency-based education stands out as the innovation most likely to disrupt higher education. As traditional institutions struggle to innovate from within and other education technology vendors attempt to plug and play into the existing system, online competency-based providers release learning from the constraints of the academy. By breaking down learning into competencies—not by courses or even subject matter—these providers can cost-effectively combine modules of learning into pathways that are agile and adaptable to the changing labor market."

"Worth Reading" is a hand-picked weekly collection of new, not-so-new articles and downright old ideas, events and other items for higher education professionals. 1 Rethinking College PBS News Hour 2 The Professor-Less University Times Higher Education "Two radically contrasting emerging models of higher education in the US offer academics a very different deal, says Steven Ward." "Now that massive open online courses appear to have reached the downward slope of the ever-shifting global higher education reform "hype cycle", other models have emerged on the fringes of tertiary education that promise even more "disruptive innovation" - or at least a great deal of build-up and hand-wringing - in years to come. These models may fundamentally change the professoriate and the university as they have come to be known over the past almost 1,000 years. Or they may be relegated to the start-up dustbin and soon forgotten." 3 The Economic Price of Colleges’ Failures New York Times "Academically Adrift" called into question what college students were actually getting for their increasingly expensive educations. But some critics questioned whether collegiate learning could really be measured by a single test. Critical thinking skills are, moreover, only a means to an end. The end itself is making a successful transition to adulthood: getting a good job, finding a partner, engaging with society. The follow-up study, "Aspiring Adults Adrift," found that, in fact, the skills measured by the C.L.A. make a significant difference when it comes to finding and keeping that crucial first job." 4 Why Can’t OER Enjoy the Same Success as Open Source Software? Ed Surge https://www.edsurge.com/n/2014-09-03-opinion-why-can-t-oer-enjoy-the-same-success-as-open-source-software "Whereas "free" largely means "freedom" in the hacker world, for Wiley and many of OER’s strongest advocates, it has come to mean primarily "no cost." When more than 60% of students report forgoing at least some of their textbook purchases because of cost, such a focus is understandable. And undeniably, to this point the "freedom" that’s so central to open software has yet to transfer into large numbers of faculty engaged with open content development. This, then, brings us to the central disagreement: different views regarding OER’s virtue as a means of lowering content costs, which I see as a necessary but insufficient condition for its mainstream use."

The second post on the subject of online consortia can be found here.) :: We heard a couple of months back about Unizin launching a consortium of large state universities to share course content, content systems, and analytics. More recently we learnt about Cal State Online’s decision to slow down its already tepid push into a system-wide collaboration to offer online courses. These initiatives join a long list of efforts to expand online education by sharing resources across institutions. The logic of building collaborations is infallible: joining forces can potentially bring down costs, reduce risk, access to better resources, stimulate innovation, ward off competition, and more. But there are more a few failed efforts to ward off any naive assumptions that academic collaborations — particularly those that concern shared courses — are fool proof. There are more than 50 consortia in North America and almost as many types. There are right ways to do it and wrong. Having had a chance to review online consortia recently for a client, I want now to share a few observations in a handful of posts, beginning with "known obstacles" of course sharing initiatives. These obstacles are not insurmountable. But like any undertaking, it helps to know where the potholes are before you set on your journey. one . . . Most online consortia that include course sharing agreements were created in the 1990s; a time when many institutions had yet to make substantial investments in online learning  (e.g. technology, student support systems, professional development for faculty) and/or had yet to develop a sufficient level of confidence to carry out the functions required. As of 2014, the vast majority of universities have internal resources in place to support online education. The capacity to scale-back these investments is often difficult, owing to labor agreements and established practices. Nor do I suspect many institutions would chose to scale back at this point — given the growing strategic importance of online education to institutions. This, possibly more than any other factor,  could dampen enthusiasm among institutions for participation in shared course delivery models. two . . . Many course sharing initiatives target large enrollment, foundational courses because, first, these courses appear to offer the greatest possible savings and, second, because the curriculum is thought to be relatively generic. But of course these high enrollment courses also often generate higher net revenue for universities than other courses and activities. Revenue from these courses is regularly redirected to other university activities and program areas that are less "profitable" (i.e. "cost-shifting"). Consequently, initiatives that facilitate students enrolling in foundational courses at other institutions may appear to administrators as a threat to a strong and stable source of revenue. three . . . Owing to concerns about intellectual property, some university faculty and instructors have voiced concern about distributing their instructional content outside of their home institution. While open educational resources is often presented as a solution, in practice this approach continues to face opposition, and seems to have greater traction for the distribution of academic research papers (e.g. open journals) than instructional resources. four . . . Course sharing initiatives typically involve moving students between institutions (rather than the courses moving between institutions). In these cases, institutions may question whether courses offered by other institutions are inconsistent with, or inferior to, the instructional practices and academic standards of their own institution. Education is a positional good; it’s used to define the status of the student (and the faculty and institution). Not surprisingly, my review identified cases in which more prestigious institutions refused to participate in course sharing programs with less prestigious institutions. Initiatives that bring together institutions of similar status may produce higher rates of buy-in. five . . . Institutions with more robust and successful online learning operations tend to less interested in participating in consortia. As a result, the consortia will fail to benefit from the participation of institutions with the greatest capacity and interest in online education. Next Up: Common Motivations and Objectives of Consortia Dr. Keith Hampson is Managing Director, Client Innovation at Acrobatiq, a Carnegie Mellon University venture born out of CMU’s long history in cognitive science, human-computer interaction, and software engineering. @Acrobatiq

"Worth Reading" is a hand-picked weekly collection of new, not-so-new articles and downright old ideas, events and other items for higher education professionals. 1 UMUC: The Future of Learning An animated promotional video from UMUC outlines what its vision of the future of online higher education. The vision includes, notably, competency-based assessment use of mentors as the primary contact for the student direct assessment prior learning assessment student portfolios open educational resources mixed with university licensed materials; extensive predictive analytics 2 So Bill Gates Has This Idea for a History Class … New York Times Magazine cover story (no less) on the "Big History Project". "As Gates was working his way through the series, he stumbled upon a set of DVDs titled "Big History" — an unusual college course taught by a jovial, gesticulating professor from Australia named David Christian. Unlike the previous DVDs, "Big History" did not confine itself to any particular topic, or even to a single academic discipline. Instead, it put forward a synthesis of history, biology, chemistry, astronomy and other disparate fields, which Christian wove together into nothing less than a unifying narrative of life on earth." 3 Daniels awards prize for competency-based degree to Purdue Polytechnic Institute Not insignificant news. A major university, Purdue, is interesting a competency-based program. "The national interest in competency-based education, also called direct assessment, comes on the heels of U.S Department of Education guidelines released last year for institutions wanting to provide federal student aid to enrollees in such programs. In July, the U.S. House of Representatives also passed legislation that further enables institutions offering competency-based degrees to participate in federal student aid programs." 4 The Real Value of Online Education: Why low completion rates may not matter Article in The Atlantic that encourages us to look past the low completion rates of MOOCs, and to focus on the significant volume of learning taking place. " . . . focusing on the tiny fraction of students who complete a MOOC is misguided. The more important number is the 60 percent engagement rate. Students may not finish a MOOC with a certificate of accomplishment, but the courses nonetheless meet the educational goals of millions." 5 9 MOOCs in Norwegian higher education A Norwegian government policy document that outlines the use of MOOCs for credit. Thin edge of the wedge. (Thanks to Kris Olds for pointing this out.) 6 Grade expectations: An "A" is not what it used to be Economist article that points to research detailing rising grades at elite US institution. "In 1950, Mr Rojstaczer estimates, Harvard’s average grade was a C-plus. An article from 2013 in the Harvard Crimson, a student newspaper, revealed that the median grade had soared to A-minus: the most commonly awarded grade is an A. The students may be much cleverer than before: the Ivies are no longer gentlemen’s clubs for rich knuckleheads. But most probably, their marks mean less."

  When I first entered the field of online education back in 1997, the first 56.6 kps modems were appearing in homes. Most institutions had no more than a handful of online courses. Universities treated educators with an interest in "distance education" with either suspicion or indifference. Online education was largely a faculty-led effort; few university Strategic Plans included more than a passing reference to online education. Obviously, much has changed. But one aspect of online higher education remains largely intact: the way that traditional colleges and universities go about designing, creating, and financing in-house online course development. Now, as in 1997, individual instructors assume the bulk of the responsibility for course design and development. Support from an instructional designer and technical staff is available, but their impact is limited by availability and the conventions of academic work. Funds for course development are similarly constrained, due to the limited revenue that can be generated from offering a single course at a single institution. This "cottage industry" approach took hold not because we thought it was the best way to create a great online learning experience for students, but because it fit with the institution’s existing organization and processes — one based on the classroom model. Mirroring the classroom model made the shift to online relatively painless. As a consequence, though, the quality of the online courses produced within our traditional colleges and universities falls to professionals who were not hired on the basis of their knowledge of graphic design, information architecture, programming, or the learning sciences — the very qualities required to consistently create great online courses. As has long been the case for classroom education, the overarching, but implicit assumption is that putting course design in the hands of people with deep subject matter knowledge translates into a good learning experience for students. There’s little evidence that this is the case in the classroom, and it’s less true for online education, where a whole new host of skills and knowledge are required. By simply transferring the existing roles, responsibilities and financial model to the online context, allowed institutions to quickly "put courses online". But it also all but ensured that these institutions are unable to produce more sophisticated and ambitious online courses that support better learning outcomes or reduce costs. Ironically, it restricts the use of the very instructional techniques, resources, and new business models that research claims can improve the value of higher education — research produced by our universities. Examples of more ambitious online course design include: Courses that offer students hundreds of opportunities to test and apply their knowledge and skills. And an equal number of moments of feedback that let them know of their progress; High-production value media, including illustrations, animations, audio and video, that explain difficult concepts and process in clear and powerful ways; Software that adapts to student input, enabling the optimal sequence of learning activities; Learning analytics, with instructional activities, that provides the student, educator, and institution with detailed explanations of a student’s relative strengths and weaknesses; Instructional methodologies tied to new business models that have the capacity — unlike the current model — to drive down costs by leveraging economies of scale. These tactics and others like them accomplish the obvious: they take advantage of the unique economics of the Internet and leverage the medium’s ground-breaking capacity to combine media, interactivity, social interaction, and data; the very things we dreamt of doing back in the 1990s, but have failed to accomplish. Simply getting courses online is no longer sufficient, and it can no longer serve as evidence of a strong institutional committment to online learning — as Penn’s Robert Zemsky argued a full decade ago. Institutions need now to turn their attention to finding ways to build or acquire instructional content that truly takes advantage of technology to improve learning. There’s no better place to start than course design. :: Dr. Keith Hampson is Managing Director, Client Innovation at Acrobatiq, a Carnegie Mellon University venture born out of CMU’s long history in cognitive science, human-computer interaction, and software engineering. @Acrobatiq

Ralph Waldo Emerson "Worth Reading" is a hand-picked weekly collection of new, not-so-new articles and downright old ideas, events and other items for higher education professionals. Higher-Ed Leaders Worry Most About Declining Enrollment, Survey Finds "Bottom Line: This year’s survey of higher-education executives underscores the dilemma that many colleges face as they deal with a declining number of high-school graduates (in much of the country) and falling state and federal spending on higher education. The increased competition for students compels colleges to maintain spending on academic programs and amenities at the same time that there is widespread concern about the rising price of tuition and about access for low-income students." Colleges’ Pursuit of Prestige and Revenue Is Hurting Low-Income Students "Fifty years ago, the federal government committed itself to removing the financial barriers that prevent low-income students from enrolling in and completing college. For years, colleges complemented the government’s efforts by using their financial aid resources to open their doors to the neediest students. But a new report from New America suggests those days are in the past, with an increasing number of colleges using their financial resources to fiercely compete for the students they most desire: the "best and brightest" — and the wealthiest." No College Left Behind: Randy Best’s Money-Making Mission To Save Higher Education "Philosophy, political science and art history majors need not apply, nor gifted high school seniors shooting for top-tier schools. "The Stanfords, the Harvards, oh my gosh, those schools are remarkable," says Best. "But they’re irrelevant to the market." The degrees Academic Partnerships are selling are aimed squarely at the bulging middle mass of the college market-the millions of adult students seeking degrees as a vehicle to better jobs and bigger salaries. Let the 20-somethings pack the coffeehouses, stadiums and frat parties. Best’s clients are all business. They are cops, nurses, teachers and construction workers grinding for the promotion and pay bump that comes with a B.S. in criminal justice or nursing or a master’s in education or construction management but can’t take days or nights off-much less four or five years-from the job and kids to earn a diploma." Commuter Students Using Technology "A multi-year qualitative study of undergraduates at six colleges at the City University of New York focused on how, where, and when students accomplished their academic work and how the presence or absence of access to technology helped and hindered them." Boosting productivity in US higher education "To meet the target without spending more, colleges would simultaneously have to attract additional students, increase the proportion of them who complete a degree, and keep a tight lid on costs. Gaming the target by lowering the quality of the education or granting access only to the best-prepared students obviously wouldn’t count. Not surprisingly, many people within and beyond higher education say that colleges can’t possibly do all these things at once." "But McKinsey research suggests that many already are, using tactics others could emulate. In fact, the potential to increase productivity across the varied spectrum of US higher education appears to be so great that, with the right policy support, one million more graduates a year by 2020, at today’s spending levels, begins to look eminently feasible. The quality of education and access to it could both improve at the same time." Students Should Be Tested More, Not Less: When done right, frequent testing helps people remember information longer. "Henry L. Roediger III, a cognitive psychologist at Washington University, studies how the brain stores, and later retrieves, memories. He compared the test results of students who used common study methods—such as re-reading material, highlighting, reviewing and writing notes, outlining material and attending study groups—with the results from students who were repeatedly tested on the same material. When he compared the results, Roediger found, "Taking a test on material can have a greater positive effect on future retention of that material than spending an equivalent amount of time restudying the material." Remarkably, this remains true "even when performance on the test is far from perfect and no feedback is given on missed information." Wisdom in the Age of Information and the Importance of Storytelling in Making Sense of the World: An Animated Essay "This barrage of readily available information has also created an environment where one of the worst social sins is to appear uninformed. Ours is a culture where it’s enormously embarrassing not to have an opinion on something, and in order to seem informed, we form our so-called opinions hastily, based on fragmentary bits of information and superficial impressions rather than true understanding." "Knowledge," Emerson wrote, "is the knowing that we can not know."

(Note: Part One in this series on the subject of online consortia can be found here.) :: In the late 90s — during the "early years" of online higher education — many colleges and universities didn’t have the internal resources required to build, support and market online education. Some institutions saw fit to join online consortia; by pooling limited resources, each institution gained access to the resources they needed. Many of these early initiatives are still operating.  Access and/or Innovation In a recent review we conducted of online higher ed consortia, we found that the majority of consortia, and the vast majority of those that started ten or more years ago, are designed primarily to increase access. That is, these initiatives define success by the number of online courses created and/or supported by the consortia, and the number of students enrolled in these courses. More courses, means more access. Access is obviously important. However, for a number of reasons, we believe that a recasting of the consortia model for online higher education would be beneficial. Given the state of online education, the focus needs now to shift from ensuring institutions can launch and support online courses, to stimulating innovation and improving quality. Time to Focus on Innovation First, and most obviously, the needs of member institutions have changed and consequently consortia need to change, as well. Over the last decade-and-a-half, most colleges and universities have significantly augmented their internal capacity to develop, support and market online education. The LMS is now near universal. The majority of university leaders see online education as fundamental to institutional strategy, and far more instructors have experience teaching online. moving beyond the basics . . . As internal capacity of member institutions increase, the functions that can’t be done well (or at all) within each member institution change too. Although this may seem so obvious as to be not worth mentioning, our review suggests otherwise. Many consortia we reviewed continue to provide only the basic requirements of creating and supporting online courses. One consortium, for example, simply assigned a single instructional designer to work with a lone instructor from the member institution to develop an online course. No meaningful quality standards are employed, the instructor isn’t even paid for the course development. Fewer and fewer institutions need these basic services. It isn’t surprising that our review found that institutions that have set more ambitious goals for online education are less interested in participating in consortia. Our review suggested that more consortia should focus less on providing basic, increasingly common, services and more on helping institutions test and scale more ambitious online learning strategies that can improve outcomes and drive down costs. If the fundamental value proposition of consortia is that it enables member institutions to do what they can’t done alone, then the initiative should be deliberately and systematically focusing on those functions that are anything but "basic". Services that fall into the category of "ambitious" in 2014 might include the development of rich media, the use of learning analytics, and the development of competency-based programs. why consortia . . . Consortia align particularly well with three trends in online higher education: A slow, but important migration to the software model of course development, in which upfront costs for course development are relatively high, but maintenance and distribution costs are marginal. By pooling resources, consortia can accommodate higher upfront costs and then coordinate distribution at scale. Growing use of analytics to inform and personalize learning. The more data is shared and compared across institutions, the greater its value. Again, consortia are well positioned to facilitate the proper movement of data-generated insights across institutions. Online education will continue to demand new, increasingly complex skills and knowledge that are not readily available within each institution. Consortia can serve as a central, shared source of talent and technology across individual institutions. defining ROI . . . Consortia need to define and then share clearer and more concrete objectives with member institutions. In particular, it would be useful for consortia to provide members with more robust assessments of the initiative’s ROI. If success is defined by the consortium (as noted above) by the number of online courses and students that are supported by the consortia, then members should be able to assess whether the cost of running the consortia is greater than the actual increase in enrolment and number of courses. ROI is always difficult in education, but consortia — given their frequently tenuous financial stability — may be less inclined to produce this kind of information. Member institutions should demand it. built to change . . . Lastly, consortia must be built to change. If, as suggested, the basic purpose and value proposition of the consortia is to do what member institutions can’t do separately, then the services offered must change as technology, costs, and objectives change. Again, this may seem obvious. But consortia struggle with change like other organizations. Nevertheless, the value proposition of consortia requires that they continually adjust their services to meet changing conditions. :: Dr. Keith Hampson is Managing Director, Client Innovation at Acrobatiq, a Carnegie Mellon University venture born out of CMU’s long history in cognitive science, human-computer interaction, and software engineering. @Acrobatiq Consortia typically offer a range of services for member institutions: Course registration and course registration systems Help desk (technology and/or administrative) for students Professional development for instructors Learning management systems Video conferencing (hardware, software and support) Webinar hosting and management (hardware, software and support) Sharing of online courses between institutions Instructional quality assessment and rubrics Development of new applications Multimedia development (instructional material) Market research services Instructor training on educational technology Instructional design Tutoring services (student online/phone) Learning object repositories Project management/coordination Marketing / clearinghouse of members courses and programs

"Worth Reading" is a hand-picked weekly collection of new and not-so-new articles, ideas, events and other items for busy professionals in higher education that seek to spend their reading time wisely.  :: The Current Ecosystem of Learning Management Systems in Higher Education: Student, Faculty, and IT Perspectives Excerpt: "This study explores faculty and student perspectives on learning management systems in the context of current institutional investments. In 2013, nearly 800 institutions participated in the EDUCAUSE Core Data Service (CDS) survey, sharing their current information technology practices and metrics across all IT service domains." Software Will Not ‘Eat’ Education Article challenges Marc Andreessen’s argument that . . . "Technology is not driving down costs in . . . education, but it should…[Access is] the critical thing. We need to get every kid on the planet access to what we consider today to be a top Ivy League education. The only way to do that is to apply technology." Why Federal College Ratings Won’t Rein In Tuition Excerpt: "College costs have been rising for decades. Slowing — or even better, reversing — that trend would get more people into college and help reduce student debt. The Obama administration is working on an ambitious plan intended to rein in college costs, and it deserves credit for tackling this tough job. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s going to work, at least not in controlling tuition at public colleges, which enroll a vast majority of students. The plan might dampen prices at expensive private colleges, but some of them may close if they can’t survive on lower tuition." University Innovation Alliance Excerpt: "By failing to produce enough graduates, our nation is failing to capitalize on its economic potential. In 2008, McKinsey and Company reported that the education achievement gap cost between $1.3 trillion and 2.3 trillion in lost gross domestic produce because "American workers are, on average, less able to develop, master and adapt tone productivity enhancing technologies." ::  Dr. Keith Hampson is Managing Director, Client Innovation at Acrobatiq, a Carnegie Mellon University venture born out of CMU’s long history in cognitive science, human-computer interaction, and software engineering. @Acrobatiq

Join CEO Eric Frank and an esteemed group of leaders in education from the University of California, Davis, Rice University, Capella University, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Arizona State University and CCKF as they discuss Adaptive Learning and the Quest to Improve Undergraduate Education, sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This three-part 90-minute interactive session will highlight recent progress in the implementation of adaptive learning approaches to improve undergraduate education by colleges and universities participating in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Adaptive Learning Market Acceleration Program: Part 1: Three leading adaptive learning providers will provide a brief overview of their diverse adaptive learning solutions, followed by audience participation and dialogue. Part 2: Two instructional designers will provide an overview of their efforts integrating adaptive learning technologies in the design of high-enrollment undergraduate courses. Part 3: A diverse team of "learning engineers" from UC Davis who focused on combining active learning pedagogy in undergraduate high-enrollment STEM courses with adaptive learning technologies will share and recount their experiences. If you are attending the event live, please join us for this lively and informative session, and if you are unable to attend live, consider the online option. You can register to attend the sessions online here.

"Worth Reading" is a hand-picked weekly collection of new and not-so-new articles, ideas, events and other items for busy professionals in higher education that prefer to spend their reading wisely.  :: Using Technology to Engage the Nontraditional Student Article on strategies to serve "non-traditional" students by Phil Regier, Executive Vice-Provost of ASU and Dean, ASU Online.   "Traditional higher education institutions need to focus more intensively on these students and help them succeed while, in turn, helping the country succeed as well. Public education is the cornerstone of a successful, inclusive society. We need to concentrate on nontraditional students’ success and their learning outcomes. We need to leverage personalized and adaptive technologies to create an environment with features that are specific to their needs. We need to stop overlooking these students and start engaging them. And we need to start now." Hire Education: Mastery, Modularization, and the Workforce Revolution  A report from the Christensen Institute that touches on many of the issues he made as part of his keynote at Educause 2014. "Students themselves are demanding more direct connections with employers: 87.9 percent of college freshmen cited getting a better job as a vital reason for pursuing a college degree in the 2012 University of California Los Angeles’ Higher Education Research Institute’s "American Freshman Survey"—approximately 17 percentage points higher than in the same survey question in 2006; a survey of the U.S. public by Gallup and the Lumina Foundation confirmed similarly high numbers. "Learning and work are becoming inseparable," argued the authors of a report from the Institute for Public Policy Research, "indeed one could argue that this is precisely what it means to have a knowledge economy or a learning society. It follows that if work is becoming learning, then learning needs to become work—and universities need to become alive to the possibilities." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOJM6Hv1I8g "Despite these trends, few universities or colleges see the need to adapt to the surge in demand of skillsets in the workforce. Distancing themselves from the notion of vocational training, institutions remain wary of aligning their programs and majors to the needs of today’s rapidly evolving labor market. At the same time, the business models of most traditional schools make them structurally incapable of responding to changes in the markets that they serve. Therefore, whether institutions like it or not, students are inevitably beginning to question the return on their higher education investments because the costs of a college degree continue to rise and the gulf continues to widen between degree holders and the jobs available today." The Student Life Project An interesting project led by Dr. Andrew Campbell at Dartmouth that uses smartphone data to detect depression, loneliness and stress among students. "Much of the stress and strain of student life remains hidden. In reality faculty, student deans, clinicians know little about their students outside of the classroom. Students might know about their own circumstances and patterns but know little about classmates. To shine a light on student life we develop the first of a kind StudentLife smartphone app and sensing system to automatically infer human behavior. Why do some students do better than others? Under similar conditions, why do some individuals excel while others fail? Why do students burnout, drop classes, even drop out of college? What is the impact of stress, mood, workload, sociability, sleep and mental health on academic performance (i.e., GPA)? The study used an android app we developed for smartphones carried by 48 students over a 10 week term to find answers to some of these pressing questions." Big Data: Seizing Opportunities, Preserving Values.  A report from the US government on the creation and use of data. (You may not want to read all of it.) The section on education starts on page 24. "The big data revolution in education also raises serious questions about how best to pro- tect student privacy as technology reaches further into the classroom. While states and local communities have traditionally played the dominant role in providing education, much of the software that supports online learning tools and courses is provided by for- profit firms. This raises complicated questions about who owns the data streams coming off online education platforms and how they can be used. Applying privacy safeguards like the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment, or the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act to educational records can create unique challenges."