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Showing posts from June, 2014

A Cost Crisis, Changing Labour Markets and New Technology Will Turn an old Institution on its Head

HIGHER education is one of the great successes of the welfare state. What was once the privilege of a few has become a middle-class entitlement, thanks mainly to government support. Some 3.5m Americans and 5m Europeans will graduate this summer. In the emerging world universities are booming: China has added nearly 30m places in 20 years. Yet the business has changed little since Aristotle taught at the Athenian Lyceum: young students still gather at an appointed time and place to listen to the wisdom of scholars. Now a revolution has begun (see article), thanks to three forces: rising costs, changing demand and disruptive technology. The result will be the reinvention of the university. In this section Creative destruction The third arrow Europe’s unlikely star FATCA’s flaws A half-smoked joint Reprints Related topics United Kingdom Brazil Distance and Online Education Colleges and universities Higher education Off campus, online Higher education suffers from Baumol’s disease—the tend

SESP Receives $4 Million Grant to Train Education Researchers

Developing excellent researchers to work on improving U.S. education in significant ways is an important goal for the School of Education and Social Policy. Now SESP has received a new $4 million grant from the  Institute of Education Sciences  to train doctoral candidates as highly qualified education researchers through its Multidisciplinary Program in Education Sciences (MPES). MPES will prepare young scholars from across Northwestern University to conduct and disseminate rigorous and relevant research in education. Over the five-year duration of the grant, the program will bring together 24 doctoral students from multiple disciplines, from psychology to economics, human development and social policy, and engineering. “We aim to prepare educational researchers who are not only cutting-edge empiricists but also are equipped to work on topics that are both useful to and usable by decision-makers in schools and education systems,” says associate professor  Diane Schanzenbach , director