Thanks to the American Publishers Association 2016 Award for best book in Education Practice for Revolution in Higher Education: How a small band of Innovators will make college accessible and affordable.
This bearded fellow is Bryan Alexander, who runs a wonderful future-oriented blog about higher education. Bryan has been conducting a read-along of Revolution in Higher Education. As he was approaching the last chapter, he sent me a note asking me to be interviewed on his new Future Trends Forum, On February 16, I spent an intense hour with Bryan and a pile of viewers discussing topics ranging from access and affordability to the nature of innovation in colleges and universities. It was an interesting (and not entirely accidental) contrast to a similar interview that Bryan had conducted a week before with Audrey Watters, who more or less savaged the very notion that higher education could be doing a better job.
An edited version of that interview along with Bryan’s notes is located here. The YouTube video is embedded below. I encourage you to follow Bryan’s entire FTF series.
Josh Goodman from Harvard’s Kennedy School will be giving a seminar January 7 on Georgia Tech’s Online Masters Degree in Computer Science at Stanford University’s Center for Education and Policy Analysis.
Tilte: Can MOOCs Increase Access to Education? Evidence from a Large New Computer Science Degree Program
Summary: Though MOOCs and online technology have generated excitement about their potential to increase access to education, most existing research has focused on comparisons of student performance across online and in-person formats. We provide the first evidence on the impact of online education on the amount of education pursued. Georgia Tech’s Online M.S. in Computer Science is the first model combining the inexpensive nature of MOOCs with a degree program from a highly-ranked institution, a price-quality pairing that has not been seen before. A regression discontinuity design around an admissions threshold shows that access to this low cost, high quality option substantially increases the amount of formal education pursued, with demand driven largely by mid-career Americans for whom in-person options are not appealing. Our estimates suggest that, by satisfying previously unmet demand for mid-career training, this single program will boost annual production of American computer science master’s degrees by eight percent.
Welcome back! “Revolution in Higher Education” was released by Amazon and other booksellers a few weeks ago. There is also an audio version in CD and online formats. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Fans of “Abelard to Apple” will recognize this as a continuation of the story of how higher education got to its current state and where it is going. However, Revolution is edgier and I think it will promote more spirited debate. There are already reviews that call it depressing and others that call it inspiring. The one thing that everyone notices is my emphasis on the social contract with universities. It is the unifying thread.
I want to give special thanks to Ambassador Andrew Young for a wonderful Foreword that focuses on the role of American universities in providing access to quality education. Ambassador Young and I will be taking this message to audiences over the next several months.
I’ll be blogging about the three themes of this book: affordability, access, and achievement. A lot has happened since the manuscript was completed earlier in the year and I want to update you on where the revolution stands.
Is College Worth It? Andrew Rossi Investigates the Alarming Cost of Education in Ivory Tower.
The trailer is available here. It is also worthwhile to check out the TakePart home for the film, where there are some very interesting interactive tools for exploring the impact of rising costs in your state and at your institution.
Digital versions can be purchased at iTunes, Amazon, and many other online media stores.
Innovate.EDU 