Stephen Dubner, one of the coauthors of Freakonomics, interviews three of his professors at Appalachian State to see if they remember some of the things they taught him – things that helped form the foundation for how he would build his post-graduate life:
Not much to add to this TEDx presentation about education by Seth Godin. He provides lots of food for thought:
According to this website Wake Forest University is the 79th most expensive university in the country based on total cost (Tuition + Room and Board + Required Fees). Wake's total for the 2012-13 school year was $54,860. Other notables:
#1 – Sarah Lawrence College ($61,236)
#4 – Columbia University ($58,742)
#7 – Dartmouth University ($57,996)
#9 – University of Chicago ($57,711)
#36 – Boston College ($56,516)
#39 – Georgetown University ($56,362)
#48 – Penn ($56,106)
#53 – Duke University ($55,871)
#67 – Yale ($55,300)
#73 – Brown University ($55,016)
#78 – Notre Dame ($54,905)
#84 – Stanford ($54,508)
#85 – Harvard ($54,496)
#92 – University of Richmond ($53,970)
#98 – University of Miami ($53,102)
Contained in a blog post about the publishing industry is this eye-opening paragraph about what seems to be a possible paradigm shift in the textbook industry (one can only hope):
So lets take a deep breath and go back a step. The article on earning a million was sent to me by my daughter as a follow-up to both of us quoting the performance of the web service www.teacherspayteachers.com. Here US teachers deposit their learning plans and receive royalties on their re-use. Deanna Jump, a kindergarten teacher from Georgia, has become the first teacher to earn a million dollars in royalties. The site has had 50 million page views in the last 30 days and teachers post over 800 resources a day. The site has a rival (not mentioned in the article) in the shape of the UK periodical Times Educational Supplement, which has adopted this business model and teamed up with the leading US teachers union in a jv, while exploiting a global market from London. As advertising retreats the TES has executed a wonderful transition: not migrating so much as re-inventing itself in close alignment to what its readers needed to be better teachers. Indeed, in some ways this is re-inventing the textbook as much as the magazine, but whatever it is the outcome is the same: understanding how users work and supplying (in this case user-generated) content in the right context and with the right interface is the new publishing.
Check out the "About" page for TeachersPayingTeachers and behold some pretty incredible numbers:
TpT by the Numbers
40,000+ Free Resources
250,000+ Products
1,100,000+ Registered Users
50,000,000+ Page Views/Month
$10,000,000+ Teacher Earnings
This kind of thing has been a long time coming. It's been baffling how the textbook companies have been able to keep a stranglehold on the school systems even as technology has reduced the cost of self-publishing and enabled peer-to-peer sharing. It will be interesting to see how this service plays out politically – it's hard to imagine school systems allowing teachers to take wholesale control of their curricula, or the textbook industry to go down without a huge fight – but in these days of austerity there might be a chance for some cost saving innovations like this to take hold.
Again, we can only hope.
Fred Wilson has an interesting take on the student debt issue:
So we are big believers in the value of a higher education and we have invested in it for ourselves and our children.
I told the University President and the faculty members all that. But I also told them that I am deeply concerned that about the cost of a high quality education and the fact that it is getting out of reach for many. And I told them that I am not sure the return on the investment is as high as it once was for many degrees. And finally, I told them that too many students are walking out of college with a student loan burden that is crushing and that they can't and won't pay back.
So how you reconcile these two opposing views and what can we do about it?…
But we also need to get more creative about the financing of higher education. We should measure the return on investment students are getting from the institutions they attend and the degrees they obtain and tie the amount of loans they can get to the returns they are likely to achieve. Students that attend institutions that can deliver higher returns should be able to take out larger loans.
Repayment terms need to change as well. Loan repayments should be capped at a percentage of current income. I know a woman who has been out of graduate school for more than a decade who dedicates one of her two paychecks a month to paying back her student loans. She is spending half of her take home income on her student loans. That is nuts.
Bubbles are driven by easy money that drives irrational behavior. Our student loan policies have been doing some of that. We can and should change our policies to force more rational decisions in the purchase of higher education in this country.
There could be some pretty strong arguments made against tying the amount of a loan to the likely return of a degree. Someone who majors in English Lit with a concentration on 18th century poetry doesn't seem likely to have a high paying job, i.e. a high return, but you never know. There's also a compelling case for allowing kids to go on an intellectual exploration during their undergraduate years, and if you tie their loans to the return on any given degree you're likely to stifle that exploration.
But that's a nit-pick. Fred's core point, that we need to rethink how we structure and pay for higher education, is spot on. With two kids at NC State our family can tell you that the effects of reduced state funding are very real, and they are having a significant impact on students' abilities to fund their educations. Reduced state funding is leading inexorably to higher costs, which means more debt for students and an increasingly urgent need to figure out a way to turn the tide on student debt.
An infographic that is most worthy of sharing with our children, spouses, siblings, coworkers and parents (especially parents):
Found at onlineclasses.org
The two oldest of our three kids will be heading to NC State in a few weeks, our oldest for his sophomore year (transferring from UNC Charlotte) and our middle child for her freshman year. Our son has already changed his major from business to a biology-chemistry double major. Our daughter is in First Year College and as of right now is thinking of majoring in engineering, but who knows what degree she'll end up with? That's as it should be since one of the core benefits of a college education is the opportunity to try different things on until you find something that fits, if you're lucky.
A couple of weeks ago we were on vacation and during dinner my daughter mentioned that she might want to major in Italian (I think it was Italian), and I made the brilliant statement that she shouldn't major in a language because you can always study a language independently by taking a course later. That statement was followed by something like, "You should study something practical that, if you wanted, you could practice in any language you might happen to learn." My mother, who was also at the dinner, gave me the look that is normally reserved for people for whom she feels sorry, and drolly asked if that's why I majored in English. Ouch.
I later told my daughter that her Dad had a moment where he was indeed full of s*** and that she should study whatever she is truly interested in, something that she can be passionate about. Sharing this particular tale of parental malpractice was inspired by this letter written to Ted Turner by his father when young Ted informed the old man that he wanted to major in the Classics at Brown:
There is no question but this type of useless information will distinguish you, set you apart from the doers of the world. If I leave you enough money, you can retire to an ivory tower, and contemplate for the rest of your days the influence that the hieroglyphics of prehistoric man had upon the writings of William Faulkner. Incidentally, he was a contemporary of mine in Mississippi. We speak the same language—whores, sluts, strong words, and strong deeds.
It isn't really important what I think. It's important what you wish to do with your life. I just wish I could feel that the influence of those oddball professors and the ivory towers were developing you into the kind of a man we can both be proud of. I am quite sure that we both will be pleased and delighted when I introduce you to some friend of mine and say, "This is my son. He speaks Greek."
Note to my children: if I ever write or say anything remotely like this please tell me I'm full of s*** and feel free to not visit me in the home if I live long enough to get there.
There have been innumerable stories and opinion pieces written about the scanctions the NCAA dropped on the Penn State football program, but two of the strongest paragraphs come from Joe Nocera's opinion piece in the New York Times:
What was most galling about Emmert’s news conference (Note: Emmert is the current president of the NCAA) was its sanctimony. He kept talking about the “values” that athletics was supposed to embody, about how college sports is supposed to be an integral part of academic life, and how it should never overwhelm the mission of the university. “Football will never again be placed ahead of educating, nurturing and protecting young people,” he said.
But at big-time sports schools, football is always placed ahead of everything else. The essential hypocrisy of college sports is that too many athletes are not real students — and no one cares. Coaches make millions and lose their jobs if they fail to win. Universities reap millions by filling stadiums and making attractive television deals. They serve as the minor leagues for the pros. Everybody knows this — including the N.C.A.A. The notion that the Penn State case is going to change all of college sports is absurd. College football almost can’t help but corrode academic values. Nothing that happened on Monday is going to change any of that.
During his keynote address at the National Apartment Association education conference last week Tom Brokaw emphasized the increasing importance of in-person communication as people, especially young people, have come to rely more and more on digital forms of communication. He truly hammered his point home when he said, "No email will replace a kiss. No Tweet will replace the whisper of 'I love you' in your ear."
A great commencement speech, given by a high school English teacher who happens to be the son of historian David McCullough, is getting quite the buzz online. You should give yourself 13 minutes to watch it.
Befuddled 