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The cost of higher education sometimes includes fees that pay for intercollegiate athletics. While sports are a valued part of campus life, what would students select if they were given the choice between sports and tuition discounts? “ I have no idea, but I’ve been pondering this question as I consider the cost of running a sports program weighed against the cost of college to students,” John Warner wrote for a blog post for Inside Higher Ed . “Student-loan debt threatens the future prosperity of a significant proportion of college graduates—not to mention those who get loans, but don’t graduate—and it doesn’t take a crystal ball to see the potential for this to be a larger drag on the economic health of the nation.” Based on data from USA Today , Warner postulated that erasing athletic subsidies could provide each student a discount of as much as $1,600 each year, decreasing their average student-loan debt by 25%. Research from the Urban Institute found that self-sustaining athletic ...

One of the arguments against permitting community colleges from offering bachelor’s degrees has always been that doing so would just shift students away from existing four-year schools in the area. However, a new study shows the opposite. According to a report on the Education Dive site , the American Educational Research Association (AERA) found an overall increase in the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded after community colleges began such programs. The study focused primarily on Florida, which in 2014 gave its community colleges the green light for bachelor’s degrees. As a result, 24 of those campuses now have at least one bachelor’s program. AERA determined that there wasn’t much negative impact on enrollment or graduation rates at the four-year institutions located in the vicinity of baccalaurate-degree community colleges. In fact, most of the public four-year schools even experienced a rise in graduation numbers, although private schools didn’t get a similar bump. On the other...

As open education librarian at the City University of New York, Ann Fiddler and her colleagues have been working for the past year to help faculty members integrate open educational resources (OER) into their courses as part of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s $8 million budget investment to provide OER to students at the 21 campuses of the City University of New York (CUNY) and the 64 campuses of the State University of New York (SUNY) system. In an opinion piece for the education website The 74 Million (a reference to the number of children in the U.S. under the age of 18), Fiddler noted that by this coming fall, CUNY students in high-enrollment classes should have saved $8.1 million through use of OER. However, she added that the impact of open content goes beyond dollars and cents, citing four other powerful effects: 1) Faculty members become reinvigorated about their vocation as they retool their courses for OER, sometimes involving their students in the creation of new learning mate...

Some advocates argue that online learning can lead to better outcomes for students, lower costs for institutions, and more access to minorities. A new report concludes all are possible, if colleges and universities do it the right way. Making Digital Learning Work , a study of digital-learning initiatives at three four-year institutions and three community colleges, found a generally higher retention rate for online students and improved outcomes for Pell-eligible and minority students. It also noted enrollment increases as a result of digital-learning initiatives. At the same time, the report concluded that online courses do cost less to produce because higher student-to-teacher ratios and less need for classroom space offset the financial investments in course quality. It also suggested that some of the key practices in launching a digital-learning effort include a strategy to meet the needs of different students, support for remote accessibility, and treating faculty members as par...

Two new studies reinforce previous research showing college students are less likely to continue their education if the first courses they take are taught by adjuncts or part-timers, rather than tenure-track faculty. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported one study looked at community college students taking remedial and introductory courses and found that fewer students in adjunct-taught classes moved on to the next course in the sequence. The other study examined students enrolled in STEM courses at four-year schools. More STEM majors switched to other fields after experiencing intro courses led by adjuncts. Both papers were presented at the American Educational Research Association’s annual conference. The reason doesn’t appear to be that adjuncts are overall less capable at instruction than full-time faculty. Instead, the findings pointed to the lack of opportunities for adjuncts to assist students individually after class, often because they don’t have time due to a larger t...

As new technologies enter the learning landscape, educators need to ensure their introduction doesn’t create a “digital divide 2.0,” wrote Emory Craig, director of e-learning and instructional technologies, College of New Rochelle, New Rochelle, NY, in a piece for EdTech: Focus on Higher Education . Virtual (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are already beginning to offer virtual labs and field trips, interactive storytelling, and immersive world-building experiences. However, the cost of some VR headsets and the computers capable of supporting them can be quite high. Lower-cost systems so far tend to confirm the truism that you get what you pay for. While Google Cardboard offers an easy-to-use, affordable option, its visual experience is poorer and interactivity is limited by the lack of a hand controller. Newer, standalone VR headsets that don’t require a smartphone or external computer may prove to be workable solutions. Facebook, which has a stated goal of getting a billion people usi...

While the debate over smartphone usage in the classroom rages, new research suggested that even having the device nearby can pose an issue. Experiments conducted jointly by the schools of management at the University of Texas, Austin; the University of California, San Diego; and Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, found students who had no access to their phones outperformed those who had the phone on their desk or in their pocket. “It’s not that participants were distracted because they were getting notifications on their phones,” said Adrian Ward, co-author of the report  and assistant professor at UT-Austin’s McCombs School of Business. “The mere presence of their smartphone was enough to reduce their cognitive capacity.” The study asked students to sit at a computer and take tests that required concentration. The first experiment split students into three groups that either left their phones outside the testing room, placed their phones face-down on their desk, or kept ...

Virginia is for open educational resources, or at least state legislators there think so. The governor recently signed into law an amendment directing all public colleges and universities to develop guidelines for adopting and using open educational resources (OER) for their courses. The measure allows institutions to include low-cost commercially published materials in the guidelines, along with free and open materials. While other states, such as Florida, have passed bills calling on their public institutions to take concrete steps toward reducing the cost of course materials for students, Virginia’s new law is apparently the first to emphasize OER to this degree. Virginia law already requires faculty to be aware of the retail prices of the course materials they choose and encourages them to select used editions when feasible. Some university systems and individual institutions have set up programs to provide grants to professors for the creation of OER. The Virginia bill doesn’t in...

For children just entering kindergarten—the so-called Generation Alpha—interacting with devices driven by artificial intelligence may be among their earliest memories, and will mark the beginning of a lifelong intimate relationship with AI. In February, the BBC announced it would create a “Listen with Alexa” series of bedtime stories to be read to children by Amazon’s virtual assistant through the company’s Echo and Echo Dot voice-operated smart speakers. Since most voice assistants don’t feature a screen, some observers view their use as avoiding the risks excessive screen time poses to healthy social development. Giving smart speakers an even bigger role in family life, however, raises concerns about their replacing some necessary and beneficial interactions with parents or guardians. In addition to bedtime stories, AI-powered devices may also take over homework duties. While that could appear a boon to tired working parents, it also presages a significant shift in family dynamics a...

Generation Z is often described as pragmatic and cost-conscious. A 2017 study showed just how pragmatic those students are. EAB Enrollment Services’ The New College Freshman Survey found that 70% of the 4,800 college freshmen surveyed said they visited college websites to find information about majors and minors, up 4% over the results of the 2015 poll. College costs came in a distant second (45%), followed by information on scholarships (25%), financial aid (24%), and general information about the school (21%). The report also noted that students checking out college ads on social media sites are still very interested in information relating to majors and minors offered at the institutions. Just over 40% of the students said information on majors and minors was the most useful part of their social media search. Other studies by EAB have found that Generation Z students select majors and minors that will have a stronger impact on their job prospects. That fits with a rise in the numbe...

Even though most higher education institutions have learning management systems that are intended to provide each class with a platform for communication and content sharing, some students and faculty members are tapping into social media for those purposes. In the January 2018 Student Panel Survey fielded by NACS OnCampus Research , 69% of the student respondents said they had personally used social media for some type of academic purpose (such as sharing notes or asking questions) and 38% indicated at least one of their professors had incorporated social media into a course (creating a community or posting content, for example). When asked which social media sites they had accessed for academic reasons, 53% of students named Facebook, followed by YouTube (30%), Snapchat (23%), LinkedIn and Instagram (12% each), Twitter (11%), Pinterest (6%), and “other” (5%), which were mainly document-sharing and messenging platforms. Facebook probably received the most use because more students ha...

Blockchain is best known for underpinning the bitcoin cryptocurrency, but the technology is still in its infancy and may grow to be adapted to a vast array of other applications. Information recorded on “blocks” is linked on a shared, public, and continually reconciled database that isn’t stored in a central location that would be vulnerable to hacking. The data in any block can’t be modified without altering every subsequent block, which would require a consensus of the majority of users on the network. “The blockchain lets people who have no particular confidence in each other collaborate without having to go through a neutral central authority,” observed The Economist . “Simply put, it is a machine for creating trust.” In a post updating a 2016 prediction on his Personanondata blog, business strategy consultant Michael Cairns noted that one area where blockchain could be applied is publishing, where it might be employed to identify copyright information and form a new method for bu...