education
As college endowments soar, Congress takes notice
Stanford University's endowment grew nearly 22 percent last year to $17.1 billion, a staggering amount of tax-free money that is attracting attention from members of Congress who want wealthy institutions to do more to keep tuition costs down as student loan debt soars.
Reduced costs at Harvard, Yale hard to replicate
Education experts and university officials are cautiously considering the implications for other institutions after Harvard and Yale introduced new plans to reduce costs for low- and middle-income students.
Snowboards rule at this boarding school
CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. -- At this remote ski resort, going to "boarding school" means spending as much time in a snow-packed terrain park as a high school classroom.
A look at open-course offerings
By ELEANOR CHUTE
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Monday, November 19, 2007
A selection of open-courseware offerings
ocw.mit.edu -- MIT OpenCourseWare offers about 1,800 courses, some with audio and video.
apple.com/education/itunesu -- iTunes U offers audio and video lectures from more than two-dozen institutions at its iTunes store.
cmu.edu/oli -- Carnegie Mellon University offers about 10 courses designed specifically to provide not only materials but also computerized instruction.
ocw.tufts.edu -- Tufts University offers more than 30 courses in areas as different as agriculture and dentistry.
ocw.nd.edu -- Materials from the University of Notre Dame are generally in the humanities and social sciences, from women in Islamic society to ancient wisdom and modern love.
ocw.jhsph.edu -- Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health provides materials from some of its most popular courses, ranging from global health to nutrition.
youtube.com/ucberkeley -- In addition to materials available on iTunes U, the University of California-Berkeley has posted videos of lectures of eight courses and plans to add others to YouTube.
uocwa.org/ -- Utah Open Courseware Alliance lists free offerings from seven universities: College of Eastern Utah, Dixie State College, University of Utah, Utah State University, Utah Valley State College, Webster State College and Western Governors University.
www.ocwconsortium.org -- The Open Courseware Consortium has links to course materials at its participating universities in Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Colombia, France, Iran, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, the United States, Venezuela and Vietnam.
www.open.ac.uk/openlearn -- The Open University of the United Kingdom offers modules of some courses free through OpenLearn.
How to take a course at MIT -- for free
By ELEANOR CHUTE
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Monday, November 19, 2007
You may not have the grades, the money or even the means to get to a physics class with one of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's best lecturers.
But if you have an Internet connection anywhere in the world, you can watch a video of the Dutch-born physics professor, Walter Lewin, swinging on a cable across the front of a lecture hall in his Classical Mechanics course to demonstrate that weight doesn't affect the time it takes a pendulum to complete a cycle of motion.
And you can do this for free.
Six years ago, MIT began breaking down the knowledge barrier by announcing it would make materials from its courses available free on the Internet.
Later this month, MIT will celebrate reaching its goal of having written portions, at least, of 1,800 courses -- virtually the entire course catalog, including materials from about 90 percent of its professors -- available free on its Web site.
"MIT used to be an ivory tower, like the Forbidden City in China," said Lewin.
Alternatives to heavy textbooks
By SHIRIN PARSAVAND and JULIA GLICK
The Press-Enterprise
Thursday, November 01, 2007
California legislation passed more than five years ago was supposed to lighten the load for students lugging thick textbooks to school each day.
Private college in Pa. wants to make a deal
By BILL SCHACKNER
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
The sticker price for tuition at private colleges is higher than that at public schools, but so is the share of students who get bachelor's degrees within four years.
With that in mind, Juniata College is hoping to lure away families considering public schools with this guarantee: Get a degree from the Huntingdon, Pa., institution in four years, or the fifth year's tuition is free.
The offer will apply to incoming freshmen on the liberal-arts campus of 1,500 students, starting next fall.
Many Iraq and Afghan vets now on campus
By BOBBY CAINA CALVAN
Sacramento Bee
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
The college campus has become a new front line as veterans of the country's latest wars battle the bureaucracy at home to get the educational benefits they were promised from the military.
Colleges are bracing for a huge surge of military enrollees, reminiscent of post-World War II.
URI program to combine business, oceanography
By TIMOTHY C. BARMANN
The Providence Journal
Monday, September 17, 2007
The University of Rhode Island is developing a graduate degree program that would offer studies in both business administration and ocean and climate science.
The two-year dual degree, which the university plans to offer next fall, would be the first of its kind in the world, the university said.
Graduates of the program would receive a master's of business administration/master's of oceanography degree.
URI said the program is designed to help prepare people for careers that involve finding ways to reduce the world's greenhouse-gas emissions.
How to develop good memory skills
By ALISON apROBERTS
Sacramento Bee
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
A new school year means it's back to memorizing, whether it's multiplication tables, names of the Great Lakes, the stages of mitosis or Spanish vocabulary.
It's easy to stumble when you're taking a trip down memory lane, especially after a long summer off.
