• Best Individual Blog: Jenna Johnson from the Washington Post
• Best Group Blog: GetDegrees
• Best Student Blog: Chef2Chef
• Best Resource Sharing Blog: Schools.com
• Most influential Tweet / Series of Tweets / Tweet based discussion: Schools.com for #edchat
• Best educational use of video/visual: Schools.com
• Best educational use of a social network: Schools.com @schoolsEDU
• Best Educational Webinar Series: Teacher Reboot Camp, Shelly Terrell

A big thanks for the great content! We’ve got our fingers crossed for you.

Arne Duncan Gives For-Profit Colleges a Big Thumbs-Up

For-profit schools in general–and online education specifically–get a bad rap. There’s something about not having a traditional brick-and-mortar campus that makes people think of the degree mills that promised a doctorate in a weekend for three easy payments. Those days are gone, thank goodness, but not all for-profit institutions are providing the quality of education they should be. As is usually the case, a few bad apples are making everybody else look bad.

Secreary of Education Arne Duncan understands this, fortunately. In a briefing today, he went so far as to point out that “Some proprietary schools have profited and prospered but their students haven’t, and this is a disservice to students and to taxpayers. And it undermines the valuable work, the extraordinarily important work, being done by the for-profit industry as a whole.” If that isn’t a vote of confidence for the industry as whole, I don’t know what is.

The Market Agrees: Stocks Go Up for For-Profit Schools

When they heard about this proposed legislation on Wall Street, stocks started climbing. DeVry Inc.’s stock jumped a full 13 percent, making it one of the biggest gainers for the day. Other for-profit schools saw mixed reactions today, but as it becomes clear just which schools will be affected by the new rules, things are sure to sort themselves out.

It’s estimated that if no changes are made, only 5 percent of schools would be losing their federal funding 2012. That’s a good amount of time to get things up to par and not very many schools that have to do it. During the press briefing, Duncan commented, “We want to hit the ones at the bottom, those that simply aren’t working for students. The 5 percent would frankly be the bottom of the barrel.”

What Are the New Rules?

Under the proposal, schools would be grouped into three groups, largely based on former students’ federal student loan debt and income:

• The Good (Qualify for federal aid): A minimum of 45 percent of former students are paying down the principal on their federal loans. Graduates have at most a 20 percent debt-to-earnings ratio for discretionary income and 8 percent ratio for total income.
• The Bad (Subject to enrollment limits and required to warn about high debt levels): Between 35 and 45 percent of former students are paying down their principals, and graduates have a debt-to-earnings ratios of between 20 and 30 percent, and 8 and 12 percent, for discretionary and total incomes respectively.
• The Ugly (Do not qualify for federal aid): Less than 35 percent of students are paying down the principal on their loans. And their debt-to-earnings ratio is enough to make anyone’s life uncomfortable at over 30 percent for discretionary income and 12 percent for total income.

The idea is to make the schools responsible for the claims they make about preparing graduates for careers. And it seems perfectly reasonable to me. This can only help the image of for-profit education, which will be a boon for online education.

Recently, a new report from the Community College Research Center challenged these findings. Perfectly timed, the report’s release coincided with the University of California’s announcement that they are seriously considering offering degrees you can earn entirely online. After reading this report and sifting through the one-sided language, I found that it does a fair job of questioning the validity of the data used in the Dept. of Ed. report. As the report goes on, though, a bias against online education becomes clear.

A Critique of the Response to the Meta-Analysis of Online Learning Studies

Let’s break it down…

Stacking the Odds: Shortening the List in Favor of Face-to-Face Instruction

First, let’s look at how the response chopped the Dept. of Education’s list down to 7 studies. From the report:

“[O]f the 23 hybrid courses that were examined in studies included in the meta-analysis, 20 required the students to physically attend class for the same amount of time that students in a face-to-face course would attend; the online portions of these courses were either in on-campus computer labs or were completed in addition to regular classroom time.”

Okay, great point there. It’s important to distinguish between hybrid programs that require time online outside of a traditional class schedule and those that are split more evenly between face-to-face and online instruction. Now, let’s keep in mind that this response isn’t trying to tackle any further claims about hybrid education–they stop here, and those last three courses that were determined acceptable aren’t mentioned again.

The response is, though, focusing heavily on online education, so they decide to weed through the Dept. of Education list to find the studies “that compared fully online courses to face-to-face courses,” of which there were 28. They focused on seven of these, saying the others were not relevant because “(1) conditions are unrepresentative of typical college courses, or (2) target populations are dissimilar to college students.” Okay, so they’re only interested in semester-long courses, not studies on shorter courses; I can get behind that one.

The target population part of this little formula for whittling down the list of studies they aim to debase, though, doesn’t sit well with me. By only looking at “those studies conducted with undergraduate or graduate students in semester-long online courses”, they ignore the “professionals outside of the college setting”, who are taking online courses because they can’t fit a traditional campus education into their schedules–a good-sized chunk of online students. This one has other implications, too. By limiting their focus to students who are in a college setting, they’re also limiting their focus to studies done in a traditional college setting (i.e., a campus college, not an online one). Why is this important? Because campus-based schools are geared towards campus education not online education–and they should be; it’s their thing. Online instruction isn’t their thing, which means that they may not have done the best job developing the online versions of the classes mentioned in the studies. So the odds are stacked against online programs from the get-go because they’re only looking at campus colleges trying something new, which becomes even more clear when they start critiquing individual studies later on.

Online Instruction Holds Its Own while Getting Downplayed

Now that we know how they determined which bits of data to pay attention to, let’s look at the studies in question. Keep in mind as we go through, that these are online versions of campus courses designed by professors who usually teach in a traditional, face-to-face setting. I’m not saying that courses designed to be taught online by professors experienced in that medium of instruction would be that much better, but, gosh, doesn’t it seem like that would be the case?

Comparing strictly online courses to strictly campus courses (occasionally with a hybrid or additional online version of the course thrown in), the studies found…

• Caldwell (2006): “[...] no significant differences [...].”
• Cavus and Ibrahim (2007): “The advanced-collaboration online course significantly outperformed both the standard-collaboration online and face-to-face courses [...]; there was no significant difference between the standard-collaboration online course and the face-to-face course.”
• Davis, Odell, Abbitt, and Amos (1999): “[...] no significant difference [...]“
• LaRose, Gregg, and Eastin (1998): “[...] no significant difference [...]“
• Mentzer, Cryan, and Teclehaimanot (2007): “[...] students in the online and face-to-face classes had the same test scores, but the online group was less likely to turn in assignments [...].”
• Peterson and Bond (2004): “[...] the online group still scored similarly to the face-to-face group [...].”
• Schoenfeld-Tacher, McConnell, and Graham (2001): “[...] online students showed significantly higher adjusted post-test scores [...].”

For those of you keeping score, that’s six ties and one win for online education (two if you count Cavus and Ibrahim’s advanced collaboration class). Which is why it makes total sense when the response report summarizes by saying that there was a “lack of consistent differences in outcomes between online and face-to-face.” Wait, no, that doesn’t make any sense at all.

Grasping at Straws

My favorite part of this report has to be the way it clings to the following assertion [emph. added]:

In addition, eight students who had taken both an online and a face-to-face teacher education course from the two participating instructors were interviewed, and all eight felt that the face-to-face course had better prepared them for teaching.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that this particular teacher education course wasn’t aimed teaching online courses. This finding only shows that a face-to-face teaching course better prepared students for face-to-face teaching, which isn’t surprising, let alone noteworthy. It’s easier to learn how to stand up in front of people and teach from someone who is standing up in front of you and teaching. The fact that the online students scored the same as their face-to-face counterparts is what should be held up as the primary finding, not that eight of the students who did both felt better prepared.

Some Notes on Another Critique of the Response to the… You Get the Idea

Education news website Inside Higher Ed wrapped up their summary of the report with this quote from John Bourne, executive director of the Sloan Consortium:

“I am exceptionally dubious of studies that tend to compare online education and on-the-ground education without even an attempt to understand the differences in the mechanisms of teaching. The jury is absolutely still out on this, and I don’t believe for a minute that it’s about the delivery mechanism, but what the affordances are of the delivery.”

Bourne added that he thinks both reports in question are flawed but interesting, which seems like a great place to leave things: up in the air (at least until we get some real studies done and have those analyzed by non-biased parties).

While pretentious scholarly types will dismiss the report as proof ignorance really is bliss, its author, Mike Dockery of the Curtin Institute of Technology, is unsure why it has confirmed the puzzling phenomenon that people in developed countries with higher levels of education report lower levels of wellbeing.

Okay, I’ve been called pretentious before, even scholarly, but the combination of the two made me feel like–well, it made me feel like Judith totally had my number. Fear not; I got over myself pretty quickly and started being genuinely intrigued.

Let’s start from a high level…

The Definition of a Western Education

As I understand and generally misquote, a Western education should serve one main purpose: to give those who’ve completed it the ability to reason. This ability to judge, to question, to argue prepares one to be a model, participating citizen, at least in the classic sense. It is, at the very least, a noble goal. [I should note here that I can't find any reference to my definition anywhere, but I rather enjoy it, so we're going to run with it because it helps me prove my point.] The other side of the coin–that’s the teaching-people-to-reason coin–is that a successful Western education nurtures skepticism. So here we all are, out in the Information Age, being blasted with more memes than we know what to do with, and we have to question everything.

Is it any wonder that we, the pretentious scholarly types, are paling in the face of the postmodern abyss? Surely it does mean that ignorance is bliss. And I for one am sick and tired of seeing the forest for the trees. Let’s go down to town hall, tear off our sociological imaginations, and burn them, for all to see!

Ahem.

So, if we toss that lot of elitist, second-hand, armchair-philosophy nonsense out the window, we’re left with an interesting question: what is wrong with us?

The Real Culprit

Further on in the article, we’re met with some hefty statistics about underemployment and student loan debt, followed by:

Perhaps rather than feeling let down about real life, university students feel let down about university instead.

Could the case be so pragmatic? Could it be that the contemporary college grad is just inundated by debt and struggling for work? Could it be, too, that we always wanted to grow up to be the president of police astronauts, and being stuck inside a cubicle, behind a register, or generally smiling and thanking people for being rude just isn’t working out the way we’d hoped? Yeah, that’s probably a bit more like it.

Pull Your Head Out…of the Clouds

Here’s an idea that’s worked for me: Stop focusing on how you thought things would be different, and start embracing the fact that they are. It’s time to grow up, but that doesn’t mean you’re dying tomorrow. You’ve still got plenty of time to achieve those dreams. The only real hiccup is that you’ve got to spend time keeping yourself afloat–your parents don’t pay for anything anymore, nobody cleans up after you, and you get excited about health insurance–these things happen.

Feeling a little envious of those aforementioned, happy-go-lucky vocational students? Enroll in an MBA program; you’d be hard pressed to find a master’s degree more practical than that. Is it the cubicle that’s grating on you? It’s never too late to pick up a less business-oriented skill.

Of course, if you’re happy feeling sorry for yourself and lamenting what could have been, by all means, keep at it.

Another, shall we say, symptom of the times is that the job market is more competitive than ever. This kind of thing happens all of the time in nature. There’s a dramatic change of some sort–be it climate shift, disease, or the introduction of an invasive specie, change is change–and the flora and fauna in question must adapt to survive. This pressure on the species is what spurs evolution, and this is exactly what is happening in today’s job market.

It should be kept in mind that I’m most certainly not talking about social Darwinsim, at least not in the sense that it is used pejoratively, typically denoting some type of social eugenics. What I’m suggesting is simply a way of understanding this new sort of job market we’ve found ourselves in and a way of adapting to it.

In nature, the name of the game is specialization. When things change, new niches are created, and the species that specialize and take advantage of the situation are the ones that survive. As a job-seeker, you need to be finding the same kind of niche markets and working towards taking advantage. Oddly enough, today, this means diversifying your abilities.

3 New Tricks Any Old Dog Can Learn

These skills can open a world of opportunity. Find the need, and fill it.

1. Marketing. Already got your bachelor’s degree? If you’ve been working in a field professionally for a few years since earning that degree, you’re in a great position to go get your MBA. Your experience, plus an MBA in Marketing, equals marketing specialist in the field. Use it to move up the ladder at work, or go start your own business.
2. Writing. Another great skill to tack on to your previous specialty is writing. Hone this skill, and you could start freelance writing on the side–or make a career out of it. Many industries are on the look for good writers who are genuinely knowledgeable in their field, which is where you come in.
3. Writing Code. Computers are everywhere, and we use them for everything. Learn their language and you could be designing websites, writing hit applications for smartphones, or creating specialty business software for niche industries.

Whether you’re thinking about changing jobs, brining in some extra money on the side, or making yourself way too useful to fire, picking up these skills is a great place to start. Don’t get outmoded in this ever-changing world; evolve right along with it.

Don’t Get Dumber: Three Quick Tips for Staying Sharp This Summer

These are easy, free, and fast, which means you don’t have any excuse!

• Learn a new word everyday. Whether you do it by tearing all of the pages out of your dictionary, wallpapering your living room with words, and throwing a dart to pick which bit of verbiage you’ll be learning, or you use one of those word-of-the-day sites (probably easier, but way less fun), picking up a new word everyday (or so) helps keep the language center of your brain functioning. Let’s face it, your professors don’t want to read that Voltaire totally wasn’t stoked on Leibniz when he wrote Candide. Fun twist: do this with a bunch of friends, and use the word constantly throughout the day–and then make fun of everyone not in on the joke.
• Do it longhand. Chances are pretty good that you do simple math on regular basis. Whether you’re dividing up the utilities between roommates or maximizing the amount of beer you can fit into the cooler (because, really, what else is calculus good for?), putting down the calculator to do a little math longhand can really help you stay sharp. Once you’re practiced, you can do simple math in front of other people to make yourself seem hip (it could work, really).
• Read. When you’re actually taking classes, the old I-don’t-have-tiime-to-read-for-fun excuse works just fine. Now that school’s out for summer, you’re just being lazy. Pick up a good book (or even a bad one), and get in some of that recreational reading you lied about wishing you could do during the semester. Tip: Dostoevsky isn’t great beach reading.

There are plenty of other things that you could be doing (reading through your notes, playing Name That Transcendental Philosopher drinking games, or even taking a class online to pick a few extra credits without having to actually set foot on campus), but these are quick, easy, and–if done properly–could actually make you look smart enough to land a date with that attractive barista who’s got that cute bookish look going. Don’t get dumber this summer!

Recession Effects Still Trickling Down, but Chin Up, Grads

All of the bad news aside, if you just graduated (or you’re just about to), you should still have an ear-to-ear grin. During the semester leading up to my graduation, things were a touch stressful. Not only had life decided to throw me a few curves to make things more difficult, my relatives had had their plane tickets since the holidays, which meant that I’d be out of the family if I didn’t walk. When I’d finally finished, I wasn’t impressed by my accomplishment, I wasn’t proud of myself–nope, I was relieved. I’d actually made it all the way through to a college degree, and I was having trouble mustering any sort of enthusiasm. I was treating my graduation as something else I had to do, which is the quickest way to take all of the awesomeness out of the day.

It wasn’t until I’d been handed my placeholder diploma and my name was read aloud that it hit me: I’d totally just graduated from college. It was at that point that I relaxed and started smiling so much that my cheeks hurt. I’d forgotten the best part of the whole thing: I’d graduated from college. Sure, it probably wouldn’t be my last class, and, no, I didn’t have a career-type job lined up, but I had done it!

My point? Even though you might be sitting there contemplating what this degree you’re getting is really worth (since it doesn’t make money by itself), even though you might be stressing about those final grades, this is a time for celebration. And this isn’t one of those phony holidays that the calendar tells you about–no, this is a genuine, totally-so-real-it’s-ridiculous holiday that you actually deserve, so live it up and tell reality to take a hike for a few weeks. You can get back to worrying about landing a real job later.

All that aside, what’s the best part about earning your degree online?

You Can Make Your Classroom Anywhere, Anytime

The Internet is everywhere. Whether you’re still fiddling with that old cradle modem or streaming class lectures on your phone, you can learn anywhere you can get online–and today, that’s pretty much everywhere. Here are a few fantastic ways to take advantage of online learning:

• Road Trip! Love to travel, but think you have to wait until after graduation? Think again. Drive across the country submitting assignments at coffee shops, downloading lectures at national monuments, and doing homework during those long stretches of open road.
• Raise Your Kids. Don’t miss class to take care of your children. You can be a great parent and a great student at the same time. Write that paper during nap time; sneak in a quick study at the tee-ball game; and don’t worry about day care.
• Keep Your Day Job. Just because you’ve got a 9-to-5 doesn’t mean that you can’t go back to school. If you’re looking to change jobs, sneak in study time while you’re at work (not recommended if you’re gunning for a promotion).
• Get Campy. This one is along the same lines as road tripping your way to a degree, but it’ll be slightly more difficult to find signal. Fortunately for you, many national parks have lodges that are all wired up for your Internet needs. Why not spend the semester hiking the Pacific Crest Trail? If you do it right, you could be in gorgeous Yosemite Valley in time for your midterms.

A Few More Ways to Make Online Learning Awesome

• Pants Optional. Dressing for success in an online degree program means being comfortable. If that means posting to the class discussion board while you’re chillin’ in your underoos, so be it.
• Five O’Clock Somewhere. Yeah, you can bring a beer to the lecture; it’s your living room. Better yet, bring the classroom to the bar and plug in your laptop for happy hour. Just keep in mind that you aren’t your sharpest when you’re hitting the sauce.
• But the Game’s On! You don’t want to miss the big game, but you really need to attend the live chat before the test. No problem. Flip on the TV, and settle in for some sporty studying. Tip: Don’t type “gooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllll!!!!!” accidentally, no matter how excited you are–you’ll totally blow your cover.

There are plenty of other ways to make online learning a blast, and we’re sure that you’ve figured a few out. Show us your classroom for a chance at $1,000. Your video doesn’t need to too long (shouldn’t exceed two minutes), and it doesn’t have to be professional (we want to see where you learn, not how awesome you’ve gotten with video editing software).

The Two Biggest Benefits of the New Student Loan Laws

1. Payment Caps. The current program, which was rolled out in July of 2009, caps student loan payments at 15 percent of the borrower’s discretionary income (read: the money that you wouldn’t necessarily die without having. The most recent legislation, which will affect student loans issued after 2014, caps the pay-back rate at 10 percent.
2. Loan Forgiveness. Another bit of great news for future borrowers: while the current legislation provides for forgiveness of a borrower’s remaining student debt balance after 25 years, the new bill that just went through brings that down to twenty years. Better news for everyone in public service: your loan will be forgiven after just ten years under both sets of legislation.

I know a few teachers who are still up to their necks in student debt, even after more than a decade of teaching and making payments. I found out the other day that a relative of mine working (quite successfully, I might add) as a public defender will still be paying off his student loans when his kids start heading to campus in a few years–and he’s been at it for close to twenty years. In short, these new lower caps and forgiveness programs are good for us as a country and should be treated as such.

And Now for Something Completely Different: You Got a Scholarship for What?

Student loans are a great way to pay for college–that is, unless you can someone else to foot the bill. I’ve heard quite a number of versions of the whole unclaimed-scholarships bit. Some say that millions go unclaimed; other say it’s closer to billions; and still others say that that whole thing is a bunch of hooey dreamt up to make high schoolers feel about playing computer games instead of applying for scholarships. Whatever the reality of the situation is, there are a few scholarships that fall right under Woefully Esoteric. Thanks to The Wall Street Journal for gathering up these gems:

• Stuck at Prom Scholarship Contest. The winners of this scholarship took home three grand. What merited the award? Making prom attire out of Duck brand tape. It took ninety hours of work for Izzy Bristow and John Dyer to make their outfits.
• Tall Clubs International. Short people need not apply for this scholarship. Women over 5′10″ and men over 6′2″, however, can collect $1,000 if they have good grades and write a great essay on being tall. This scholarship is presumably to make up for having to sit in those awkwardly sized desk-chair combos during lectures.
• Scholar Athlete Milk Mustache of the Year (SAMMY). Drink milk enthusiastically without regard for the actual location of your mouth? You could be one of the 25 yearly SAMMY winners. If you do it right, you might get to star in a genuine “Got Milk?” ad–in addition to the trip to Disney World and the $7,500 you’ll hopefully put at least partially towards learning how to drink milk in an appropriate, albeit less profitable, fashion.

The article went on to note a few last-name-oriented scholarships, among others. If you aren’t lucky enough to land one of these weird ones, don’t give up hope. Paying for college can be difficult, but it’s worth it.

My friend and I had gotten to the lecture a few mintues early, figuring that the place would be packed. While the middle section was, indeed, quite full, we found some great seats a little ways to the right and settled in. Unbeknownst to us, we had mistakenly seated ourselves in the undergraduate section. Who knows why all of the sponsored undergrads chose to congregate around where we’d seated ourselves–that’s not important. What is important is that each one of these fresh-faced, idealistic students had some sort of electronic device monopolizing at least one of their five senses.

My friend and I had chosen to pass the very few minutes before the lecture started not by plugging in, turning on, and tuning out–but by chatting. I felt anachronistic–like writing checks to pay for groceries, sending letters snail-mail, and using a land line to make phone calls. Thankfully, it passed.

Unplug or Else

The Internet is positively amazing. It may be a bit off course as far as the goals of its progenitors are concerned, but, really, it’s a great thing. It and the myriad devices that have brought it to our fingertips have changed the way we consume and interact with information. I won’t ramble on about how cool it is that hypertext has helped revolutionize how we think about and organize knowledge. No, I won’t pontificate in the slightest. What I will do is talk briefly about how ridiculously bombarded with information we are and how we’ve become completely numb to it.

With all of our awesome little gizmos, we’re so plugged in so much of the time that everyday reality is no longer all that interesting on its own. This sort of desensitizing is turning us into a bunch of ADHD techno-addicts. What will become of us if we can’t appreciate the sunset without an iPod blaring away? Well, we can only turn up the volume for so long before blowing out our ear drums. Take a break from your electronic devices for a while, and resensitize yourself.