Rachelle Peterson is Policy Director at the National Association of Scholars.
Quitting school is suddenly popular. The “un-schooling movement,” which claims that school is too expensive, too disengaged from the job market, and too elitist for smart, independent youth, has become the darling of hipsters, free spirits, and do-it-yourself-ers everywhere. Take Dale Stephens, the twenty-year-old entrepreneur who was home-schooled until age twelve and educated himself using […]
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A courageous group of students are using Valentine’s Day to protest the hook-up culture. At twenty-five schools, students from the Love and Fidelity Network are holding a week-long campaign called “Words that Still Matter.” On Monday they hung 4,400 posters around their campuses, placed ads in their student newspapers, and began inundating social media with […]
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Yesterday Time Magazine published articles by President Obama and Governor Romney on their higher education policies. Both paint a rosy view of a college degree but offer few specifics on how to best facilitate it. Obama speaks highly of his college days, acknowledging that “Michelle and I are who we are only because of the […]
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To the student tired of politically correct speech, whose soul longs for the free pursuit of truth, take heart! There are support networks that bring together like-minded students around conferences, seminars, reading groups, scholarships, and grants. Take a look at a sampling below. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute inspires students to discover, embrace, and advance the […]
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Early in the summer, a friend and I enrolled in Introduction to Sociology, the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) recently discussed by Princeton Professor Mitchell Duneier. Prof. Duneier taught 40,000 online students via six weeks of free reading assignments, lectures, and discussions, interspersed with weekly quizzes and two exams. I quit three weeks into the […]
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Now that Paul Ryan has joined the Republican ticket, it’s worth considering how his much-discussed budget changes higher education. Ryan wants to cap the maximum amount of Pell Grant awards at the current level of $5,550, eliminating the automatic increase according to inflation. Ryan would also shore up the eligibility requirements, adding a maximum income […]
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An article co-published by the New York Times and Chronicle of Higher Education reports that several universities now engage in student data mining. Electronic monitoring systems collect bits of digital information to create databases of profiles by tracking, timing, and tallying student activities like swiping ID badges or working on online assignments. The data collected […]
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Credentialing informal learning and experience is the next big push in higher education, with initiatives like Open Badges, Skills.to, Degreed, or LearningJar granting students credentials for skills and knowledge gained outside of school. Even traditional colleges are being pressured to accept credit by exam, portfolio, work experience, and other informal education, rather than reserving credit […]
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What happens when higher education becomes not an end in itself, but a means for rapacious gain? Consider the current case in point: A small, primarily online Massachusetts institution, the National Graduate School of Quality Management (NGS), and its former president, Robert J. Gee. A team of student investigative reporters at Northeastern University, combing through […]
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