In an unlikely alliance, the NAACP has partnered with conservative organizations and former U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige, among others, to call for states to reduce spending on prisons and direct these additional funds toward their education budget.
Winners of the first phase, or Wave I, of the Next General Learning Challenge—a “collaborative, multi-years initiative created to address the barriers to educational innovation and tap the potential of technology to dramatically improve college readiness and completion in the United States”—were announced today by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Twenty-nine educational organizations will share a grant in the amount of $10.6 million to implement technology-driven initiatives designed to boost student success and college completion rates.
The Maryland General Assembly passed a sweeping reform bill that will affect online college operation significantly in thestate. When the bill is signed into law, online colleges will be forced to report enrollment numbers, no longer offer bonuses to the recruiters, and restrict state aid to online students. Additionally, the bill “forces for-profit colleges to pay back [...]
The United States Department of Education (U.S.D.E.) completed a review of online education in 2009 and found that online courses do, in fact benefit college students. But the U.S.D.E. also “concluded that few rigorous studies had been done at the K-12 level, and policy makers ‘lack scientific evidence of the effectiveness’ of online classes.”
As states across the nation make cutbacks to remain above choppy financial waters, Georgia’s HOPE Scholarship’s cutback and reconfiguring comes as somewhat of a surprise to some. The HOPE Scholarship was always a merit-based award that used funds from the state lottery “to pay college tuition for students who maintain a B average.” Under the [...]
A new tool that “examines 70 quality indicators, offering online educators a standardized view of their program performance” has received the stamp of approval from The Sloan Consortium, an association dedicated to quality online education. Today, the Sloan Consortium announced its endorsement of the Quality Scorecard for the Administration of Online Education Programs, a system developed to evaluate the quality of online degree programs and recognize areas that need improvement.
Many colleges and universities tout internships as the best way for students to gain the experience they need while still in school. However well-intentioned this seems, the author of a recent New York Times article, Ross Perlin, suggests that many colleges “are complicit in helping companies skirt a nebulous area of labor law,” and also [...]
Bill Rodgers, an economist and professor at Rutgers University describes current economic recovery as split, “because people who have college degrees are getting hired, but those who didn’t finish school are sitting on the sidelines.” Many of the unemployed have simply given up looking for jobs, after months or even years of nonsuccess. Individuals with a college degree are accepting positions that they are overqualified for, leaving those without an education even more disadvantaged.
Education budget cuts across the country are going to force schools to downsize in upcoming years; program eliminations, teacher layoffs, and building closures are inevitable. But New York City schools have determined one area of education that can’t afford to take a hit: technology. Despite a $1.3 million cut to the city’s school construction budget over the next three years, “New York City’s Department of Education plans to increase its technology spending, including $542 million next year alone that will primarily pay for wiring and other behind-the-wall upgrades to city schools.”
Education budget cuts are a common occurrence these days as more states contend with massive debt and budget shortfalls for the next few years. However, the cuts are the most drastic in cash-strapped California, and hundreds of community colleges in the state are faced with the most dramatic cuts of all. There is a “predicted [...]