DailyDirt: Are College Degrees Useless Now?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The education industry seems to be ripe for disruption. Although it's undeniable that higher education and advanced technical skills are correlated with higher salaries, more and more parents and students are questioning the real value of college. If college is merely another step in the process towards applying for a job, some folks think colleges should be a bit better about actually being able to match employers with recent graduates. On the other hand, if college is more about making social connections and laying the foundations for a rewarding life, perhaps acquiring hefty student loans to do so isn't the way to go for that. Here are just a few links on getting a college education.

• Should college students focus on "vocational degrees" that might land them lucrative jobs after they graduate? The number of business majors in the US outnumbers liberal arts majors by a 2:1 ratio -- but instead of worrying about what majors are the highest paying, it might be better to work on graduating in 4 years and learning some fundamental skills. [url]
• Does college really prepare students with the skills necessary to succeed in the workplace? It depends on who you ask. A poll of academics says colleges do a great job. A poll of business leaders and the general public suggests the opposite. [url]
• If college isn't worth all the trouble and expense, what else can high school grads do? Self-directed learning is getting more attention as the resources to educate yourself online become easier and easier to find. Hackademics need to be really motivated, but they can save thousands in college tuition if they can develop practical skills on their own. [url]

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Filed Under: academia, college, degree, education, hackademics, tuition, university, vocational degree

DailyDirt: No More Classes, No More Books...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The field of education is looking ripe for disruption as "distance learning" becomes more and more practical with internet connections and algorithmic grading systems. There are still plenty of bugs to be worked out for digital education, but it's coming. (And famous dropouts from Steve Jobs to Mark Zuckerberg seem to suggest some flaws in the traditional university system.) Here are just a few links on how schools are changing and developing new kinds of classes.

• Massively open online courses (aka MOOCs) have the word "open" in their name, but these classes don't necessarily have to be open. Online classes can be closed and proprietary, and maybe massively "closed" online courses are less of a threat to public education? [url]
• EdX, Coursera, Udacity and the Khan Academy are just a few examples of online schools. The ease of signing up for an online class also makes it easy to drop out of an online class, but that might not be a bad thing. [url]
• University rankings often emphasize how many applicants are turned away instead of how many graduates are competent in their chosen field (or employed). In the future, colleges might get rid of the traditional September-to-June school year, change how long it takes to graduate, or allow all classes to be taken online without using heavy printed textbooks at all, but the cost of college is likely to stay the same: expensive. [url]

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Filed Under: certification, college, degree, distance learning, education, massively open online courses, mooc, university
Companies: coursera, edx, khan academy, udacity

DailyDirt: Who Cares if You Went To A Good School?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The field of education seems ripe for disruption -- with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and other forms of online classes. However, it's difficult to judge the quality of these online programs and compare them to the traditional classroom experience. The conventional wisdom has ranked prestigious universities in roughly the same order for decades, so it'll be interesting to see how online courses and degrees might factor into these lists. Here are just a few interesting links on the quality of higher education.

• The college/university rankings from US News & World Report is not as meaningful as most people assume, according to Malcolm Gladwell. Any ranked list generated by weighting multiple variables depends greatly on those weights -- and a simple, single score may be too simple to capture the most important characteristics of a diverse set of schools. [url]
• The US News college rankings don't heavily weight the value (or "bang for the buck") of the schools it covers, but the Washington Monthly ranking does. In 2013, Amherst College is listed as the "best bang for the buck" school, and Harvard/Princeton don't seem to be in the top ten.... [url]
• Northwestern University was once known as a horrible football school, setting a 34 consecutive game losing streak record in 1981, but its football team has turned itself around recently. Unfortunately, there's no special recognition for schools that simultaneously have good academic and athletic performance. [url]
• Newsweek and the Daily Beast have ranked 2,000 US high schools according to their effectiveness to produce college-ready graduates. But after going to college, how much does high school matter? [url]

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Filed Under: certification, class, college, degree, education, high school, mooc, ranking, school, university

DailyDirt: Tuition Debt Is For Chumps?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Crowds of students are graduating (or have just graduated) from college, and they might be a little nervous about how they're going to pay off their student loans. Student debt can be difficult to pay off, so some folks are trying to avoid it completely in a few novel ways. Here are a bunch of examples of students getting financially creative with their tuition bills.

• In 2011, Richard Linder got a college degree from Excelsior College for about $3,000 -- without attending any classes in person. Excelsior doesn't require graduating students to have taken any of its own courses, so Linder transferred credits (many of them free) from a variety of online classes. [url]
• Ken Ilgunas went to grad school at Duke and lived frugally in his van because he didn't want to get into debt again after paying off his undergrad loans. Ilgunas showered in the school's gym facilities, bummed electricity and internet from the libraries, and wrote a book (Walden on Wheels) about his lifestyle. [url]
• Jonathan Hood paid for his graduate education at Auburn University with a TON of mail-in rebate offers. Buying stuff, redeeming the rebates and then eBaying the stuff... it takes a lot of time, but he wrote some automation software to help him keep track of all of it (and he'll likely be able to sell that someday, too). [url]

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Filed Under: degree, graduate school, jonathan hood, ken ilgunas, rebates, richard linder, student debt, student loans, tuition
Companies: duke, ebay, excelsior college

DailyDirt: Getting An Online Education...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The existing system of going to a school, listening to lectures and getting a degree after you've passed some tests might not be the way education will operate in the near future. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) promise to teach a wide array of subjects, and there are plenty of students willing to try out these online classes instead of sleeping through another boring lecture at 8am. Obviously, not all the kinks have been worked out yet, and there will undoubtedly be online degrees that aren't worth the paper they may (or may not) be printed on. Still, there are some interesting developments in the field of education, and here are just a few.

• Sebastian Thrun is optimistic about creating an online class that will confer a master's degree in computer science. All the class material will be online for free, but the actual degree will cost a few thousand bucks still (via Georgia Tech). [url]
• The traditional education system might be in for some disruption as more online education startups attract students and pull tuition dollars away from bricks and mortar institutions. If professors don't like their student reviews now, it's going to get a bit worse when online classes are rated instantly by students.... [url]
• Professor Sugata Mitra has demonstrated that kids don't necessarily need a teacher -- if you just set up an internet-connected computer in the middle of a village in India, you'll be surprised by what the kids learn all by themselves. And now, Mitra has $1 million from a TED prize to further his research into self-organized learning. [url]
• Don't have time to attend a class? You might not need to with the University of Wisconsin's upcoming program to grant bachelor degrees based on existing experience. You still have to take some tests and demonstrate your skills, but the school of hard knocks might be good enough in some cases? [url]

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Filed Under: college, degree, education, moocs, online classes, sebastian thrun, students, sugata mitra, tedtalk, tuition
Companies: udacity