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Post-Annual Meeting Resources

Even though the 2012 NAICU Annual Meeting is history, you can continue to benefit and learn from the many presentations and speeches that were offered, and are now available on line.


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Another Highlight


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Higher Education Reform/Innovation


Why not a right to a college education?

CNN.com "Schools of Thought" Blog - Opinion Piece
February 8, 2012

For me, politics is about pushing the borders to create space for even more change in the future. What if, instead of proposing policies geared towards individual middle-class tax-payers that revolved around the assumption that higher education was an individual's responsibility, the president instead proposed policies geared towards embedding higher education as an individual right. What if, instead of getting a tax write-off after you've already paid your son/daughter's tuition, you instead didn't have to worry about education because the government would pay for it?

UC Students Propose Alternative To Tuition Increases

NPR - Morning Edition
February 7, 2012

Under the Fix UC proposal, students would pay 5 percent of their income for 20 years following graduation. Fix UC recently presented the idea to the university regents. The idea is that students would have a dependable bill to pay, rather than wrestling with unpredictable tuition increases and rising debt. It's an appealing idea to some, but not a brand new one. Bob Shireman of the nonprofit group California Competes says conservative economist Milton Friedman wrote about similar concepts in the 1950s, saying education should be seen as an investment.

MIT’s New Free Courses May Threaten (and Improve) the Traditional Model, Program’s Leader Says

Chronicle of Higher Education - Interview
February 6, 2012

The recent announcement that Massachusetts Institute of Technology would give certificates around free online course materials has fueled further debate about whether employers may soon welcome new kinds of low-cost credentials. Questions remain about how MIT's new service will work, and what it means for traditional college programs. On Monday The Chronicle posed some of those questions to two leaders of the new project.

A nontraditional university for nontraditional students

Washington Post "College Inc." Blog - Guest Post
February 6, 2012

Alan Walker, president, Upper Iowa University, writes:  How education is delivered is really important, because it has a huge influence on the costs of education to our students, as well as on recognizing that many cannot commit to the traditional four-year college structure. Largely because of the economic realities, the need to offer a structure that can still accomplish the student's educational goals at an affordable price is imperative. We've adopted an innovative structure with essentially four avenues leading to a degree.

Harvard Conference Seeks to Jolt University Teaching

Chronicle of Higher Education
February 5, 2012

Too often, faculty members teach according to habits and hunches, said Carl E. Wieman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and associate director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, who has extensively studied how to improve science education. In large part, the problem is that graduate students pursuing their doctorates get little or no training in how students learn. When these graduate students become faculty members, he said, they might think about the content they want students to learn, but not the cognitive capabilities they want them to develop.

We’re ripe for a great disruption in higher education

Globe and Mail, Toronto, Canada - Column
February 4, 2012

The digital revolution will make higher education better, cheaper, more accessible, more engaging and far more customized than anything that exists today. It'll also turn our current institutions upside down. But the real disruption comes when you stop measuring academic accomplishment in terms of seat time and hours logged, and start measuring it by competency.

What Free Market in Higher Ed?

Chronicle of Higher Education - Commentary
February 4, 2012

During a panel discussion at the meeting of Christian colleges, a president challenged me on the need for additional government oversight. Let the "free market" correct rising college prices on its own, he said. The problem is, the current financing mechanism for college is far from a free market. Government subsidies account for close to 90 percent of revenues at some colleges when you add up grants, loans, and research funds.

Adventures in Wonderland

Inside Higher Ed - Opinion Piece
February 3, 2012

The notion that certificates or "badges" might displace degrees in any meaningful timeframe is incorrect. Even in developing economies, where there is truly a hunger for knowledge in any form and where the degree may not yet be as central to the evaluation of prospective employees, the wage premium from a bachelor's degree is even higher: 200 percent in China, compared with a mere 62 percent in the U.S. Degrees are definitely not disappearing; they're not even in decline.

What’s Most at Risk for Traditional Colleges

JeffSelingo.com
February 3, 2012

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about the coming disruption of the higher-ed system and asked if traditional institutions were prepared. A few college leaders gave me suggestions on how they're getting ready, while others trying to disrupt the space told me where they are finding the best opportunities. So what is the low-hanging fruit? Where are colleges most vulnerable? Where are they least at risk? Here are a few clues.

An ‘Arab Spring’ of free online higher education

Washington Post "College Inc. Blog" - Guest Post
February 3, 2012

The stars are aligned for this new disruption to emerge - whether you call it "the unbundling of the university," the "modularization of education" or "eliminating the middleman" (the College). Steve Jobs said, "You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards." However, when some of the bread crumbs start to line up, it is an indication that a change is coming.

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