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Some 39% of college students who have taken out loans to finance their education don’t want to assume any more debt and would think about dropping out first, according to a new survey by MagnifyMoney. More than half of the students answering the survey owed at least $20,000. But when questioned more closely why they see leaving school as an option, it turns out the size of the loan debt isn’t the only—or even most critical—factor. Of the student respondents with loans, 51% admitted to having a difficult time juggling their studies with a job and 20% were grappling to accommodate family-related responsibilities. More than a quarter were pondering whether to drop out after realizing their intended field paid relatively low and 10% didn’t even expect to work in the major they were studying. Dissatisfaction with the college or university they were attending also played a role in considering whether to continue or drop out. Not all of the respondents with student loans, though, were having...

New K-12 educational approaches that encourage personalized and blended learning—the latter replacing a portion of traditional face-to-face instruction with web-based learning—are running afoul of the typical one-teacher-one-classroom structure. The new models pile additional tasks onto teachers already burdened by an overwhelming workload, in most cases handled solo. Effectively implementing these new learning strategies will require adopting equally new staffing strategies, according to a new report, Innovative Staffing to Personalize Learning , compiled by the Clayton Christensen Institute and Public Impact. The report’s authors examined how eight district, private, and charter schools and school networks used a variety of new arrangements to better support personalized and blended learning. They identified a number of elements key to the success of these endeavors: •  New roles for educators, including teacher-leaders heading small instructional teams, collaborative teams of te...

Despite concerns over whether postsecondary schools can prepare graduates for jobs in the real world, the public still feels there is value in pursuing higher education. Sort of. In a new poll from the research group New America, a majority of respondents agreed “a college degree leads to better job opportunities than a high-school diploma,” according to a report in The Chronicle of Higher Education . A large percentage (78% of respondents who said they were Republicans and 84% of those who voted Democrat) also were “comfortable” with tax money being used to fund colleges and universities. However, although the respondents had a more favorable view of community colleges in general as well as the institutions in their local vicinity, they weren’t so sure about other schools in the higher-ed universe. Just 25% of respondents were satisfied with the current state of higher education. The biggest reason was cost. Thirty-eight percent of respondents viewed college attendance overall as too...

According to the World Health Association, more than a billion people worldwide need one or more assistive devices to address physical, communication, or other disabilities. However, about 90% of them lack access to such technologies. To raise awareness of the situation, jump-start innovation, and encourage students to consider careers developing assistive devices, the Assistive Technology Hackathon (ATHack) brings together teams of MIT students every year to brainstorm, design, and create solutions for problems faced by specific disabled “clients” from the Boston/Cambridge community. The event is interdisciplinary and open to anyone. ATHack coordinators asemble teams of students with complementary skills, interests, and academic backgrounds. Clients often act as co-designers and meet with their teams at a dinner a couple weeks ahead of the hackathon to lay out the particular problem they need solved. On the day of the event, the teams have 11 hours to produce their solution, from sta...

All first-year students at The Ohio State University, Columbus, are receiving iPad Pros this fall as part of an initiative between the institution and Apple to enhance the learning experience. The devices are welcomed across campus, except for an economics course  taught by Trevor Logan . Logan banned all electronics from his courses during the spring semester. Instead of complaints, he saw student performance on the midterm exam improve significantly. The students even seemed to like the policy, telling Logan the ban helped them maintain their focus in class and take better notes. They also said it helped them enjoy the class. “I thought I would get much more pushback on this from students, and I didn’t think student outcomes would be so significant,” Logan wrote in a Twitter thread. “Given these results, I’m very encouraged to continue with the policy.” The one concern was the electronics ban might be an issue for students with learning disabilities who rely on technology. Logan ...

Three-year bachelor’s programs may be one way to reduce the overall cost of higher education while moving students into the workforce faster, according to a new study by the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI). PPI identified 32 institutions that were already offering bachelor’s degrees in three years but claimed all the programs deserved an “F” grade. “That’s because,” said the study report, “with the exception of a handful of schools such as Southern Oregon University, most are merely four-year programs squeezed into a three-year window.” The study recommended that three-year programs reduce the number of general and liberal-arts courses required so that most of a student’s time can be devoted to in-depth work in one or two subjects. That’s how many European universities structure their three-year degrees. To that end, the study said, students should also be required to declare a major or concentration as an entering first-year student, although allowed to switch later if they choose...

The next version of Google’s Android operating system, called Android P, will include features to help users, including students, address issues of digital distraction and smartphone addiction. Google unveiled the features, which are in public beta but aren’t likely to show up as part of an Android update for months, last week at its I/O Silicon Valley developer conference. Among the new features, p lacing your phone face-down on a flat surface will activate a Do Not Disturb mode that mutes calls and shuts down any visual notifications. Select VIP contacts can be tagged to allow them to break through DND mode. A Family Link app will let parents monitor how often their kids access certain apps, block or approve app downloads, set limits on screen time, and, if necessary, remotely lock their offspring’s devices. A dashboard will show when and how often you unlock your phone, and how long you spend with each app. There will be an option to set time limits on apps; once you hit the limit o...

Just under 50% of graduates with a traditional four-year college degree in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) land jobs in their field, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics. The data also noted that 74% of people with a STEM degree aren’t actually working in the field. However, a 2017 survey found that 73% of coding boot-camp grads secured STEM jobs and 80% said their jobs directly related to or used skills acquired in the boot camp. The survey was conducted by Course Report, a coding boot-camp directory. Coding boot-camp grads also reported an average salary increase of about 51% and that their average starting salary was more than $70,000 a year. Most boot-camp grads have six years of work experience and a bachelor’s degree, but have never worked as a programmer before, according to the report. “The number of computer science jobs continues to grow, and there’s a skills gap between the number of skilled workers and the number of available jobs,” said Jay Patel,...

Some college students with limited funds are forced into a no-win choice: buy course materials or buy food. Some don’t have the money for either. Two new programs at Brown University aim to resolve that dilemma for the lowest-income students. Up to now, noted a report in University Business , students on financial aid were expected to pick up meal costs out of earnings from work-study or summer jobs. However, a working group exploring why some students couldn’t afford to buy their textbooks found that these jobs sometimes didn’t pay enough to cover both food and books. Starting with the 2018-19 academic year, Brown will expand the amount of aid provided to undergraduate students whose parents earn less than $60,000 and are unable to contribute anything toward their university expenses. In addition to tuition, fees, and housing, the aid package will now include a full meal plan, ensuring students have access to 20 meals per week. Also, the institution will try out a separate program to...

Proponents say computer-based standardized tests are more secure than traditional paper-and-pencil testing, can be scored faster, and allow questions to be designed more innovatively. They also see online testing as good preparation for students facing a job market that more and more emphasizes tech capabilities. However, some educators say that moving to computerized testing is actually increasing an achievement gap they’ve worked for years to shrink. Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data in 2015 found that about five million households with school-aged children didn’t have a high-speed Internet connection at home; many of those were low-income black or Hispanic households. A March 2017 Pew post indicated that the divide persists, with nearly half of households with an annual income below $30,000 not having broadband service or a desktop or laptop computer at home. Researchers report that the majority of teachers in poor districts claim their students aren’t prepared...

For IT professionals in higher education, cybercrime has become much more sophisticated than hackers simply sending out email blasts in hopes of finding an unsuspecting recipient. Criminals now create fake online ecosystems that look so real that even the most skeptical individual may be convinced they’re legitimate. Then there’s the problem of information shared on social media, which is so plentiful that it makes it easy to gather information about an organization and create targeted messages that are even more persuasive. “No matter how much training we give a faculty or staff member about how to recognize a suspicious message, it’s hard to blame them for failing to recognize a message that is crafted and customized to look as innocuous as possible,” Nicci Fagan, director of Central and Eastern U.S. higher education sales for CDW-G, wrote in an EdTech post . Technology solutions enable IT pros to stay up-to-date, but communication is the key to security. Users need to understand jus...

There could be tens of thousands of potential community-college students out there who haven’t enrolled yet, apparently because they never got around to completing the paperwork. A simple phone call could reel them in. According to Education Dive , a recent presentation at the American Association of Community Colleges Annual Meeting described how several colleges decided to conduct a call campaign to reach two groups of prospective students: those who had applied but didn’t finish forms for financial aid and those who had submitted financial-aid papers but hadn’t enrolled in classes. The results of the calls were pretty amazing. Hillsborough Community College in Florida, for example, increased enrollment by 745 students compared to the previous year, amounting to more than $3 million in revenue. San Juan College in New Mexico got 17% of the individuals called in the first semester to enroll; the percentage went up to 46% in the second semester. Like Hillsborough, San Juan enjoyed a ni...

As the world heads toward a more automated economy rooted in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), the United States ranks behind other wealthy nations in how well it’s preparing students for that future. A new study by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the research and analysis division of The Economist Group, rated the U.S. ninth in its “automation readiness” index—behind South Korea, Germany, Singapore, Japan, Canada, Estonia, France, and the U.K. The study looked at policies to promote technological progress, creation of new businesses, and the development of policies and skills to help manage a transitioning labor market. “If countries need a long-term strategy to deal with the challenges of automation, education must be at the center of it,” stated the report, which ranked the U.S. ninth in terms of its education policies. Students will need human-centered soft skills, such as critical thinking and communication, as well as grounding in certain hard skills that will ne...