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STUDENT LOANS ARE NOT FORGIVEN IF YOU CLAIM BANKRUPTSY. YOU WILL STILL OWE ON THAT LOAN WHICH WILL ONLY INCREASE YOUR DEBT THE LONGER YOU DON'T PAY IT OFF, AND THEY CAN AND WILL COME AFTER YOU FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE TO GET THE MONEY INCLUDING GOING AFTER YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY CHECK!

HISTORY

DIGITAL DIPLOMA MILLS: THE AUTOMATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION

The Military, Industrial, Educational Complex and the New CEO

Net Could Change Education
BOSTON--Without ever taking a seat in a classroom, millions of students around the world will soon be able to earn a diploma by taking courses over the Internet, computer industry leaders said.

Virtual University - California state program fosters 'virtual' universities

Business Bennies

Online Courses Lead For-Profit Learning Trend | Study: Online Education Continues Its Meteoric Growth

The concept of distance learning actually has a long history. The business model was pioneered in 1858 by Britain's London University, which established an "External System" through which students around the world could obtain degrees through correspondence courses. London boasts five Nobel laureates among its external graduates, and in 2008 its updated system had 41,000 students around the world. In 1969, the British government ushered in another distance-learning innovation when it chartered a television-based university — the Open University — aimed primarily at employed people who had never acquired a degree. Since then, 1.6 million people have studied at the university, with 250,000 students currently enrolled in the United Kingdom and around the world. In fact, the Open University is the largest producer of law graduates in the U.K., and is among the top three universities for student satisfaction, tied with Oxford.

These creative ventures did not lead to fundamental changes in the general higher-education landscape. But the rise of online learning — now also utilized by London and the Open University, among many other institutions — is likely to be the technological advance that triggers a broad transformation.

The main reason is that online education is growing rapidly in both scale and scope. For the past seven years, online enrollments in the United States have increased much faster than overall university enrollments. According to a survey of more than 2,500 colleges and universities by the Babson Survey Research Group, the proportion of students taking at least one online course grew from 10% in 2003 to 25% in 2008. And that figure continues to rise: In the fall semester of 2009, the share of students taking at least one online course was up 21.1% from the previous year and represented 29.3% of total enrollment — an enormous figure when compared to the increase in total post-secondary enrollment, which grew at just 1.2%.

The appeal of online education, and the nature of its threat to traditional universities, are not hard to fathom. Online education allows students, such as those working while studying, to learn from their own homes at times of their choosing. It permits far greater flexibility, so that students do not have to follow the traditional semester structure and can learn at their own paces. For an increasing number of today's students, whose K-12 educations and social lives have been built around technology, computer-based learning is more natural than the traditional "sage on a stage" model. And the quality of online education improves all the time: Babson reports that two-thirds of college and university administrators at public institutions now view online instruction as equal to or better than face-to-face instruction.
nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-coming-higher-ed-revolution

RESOURCES

GLOSSARY OF DISTANCE EDUCATION AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY TERMS

PERIODICAL LITERATURE CITATIONS: ELECTRONIC LEARNING

Mailing List Resources

9/2010 The Department announced the Fiscal Year 2008 national student cohort default rate increased to 7%, up from the FY 2007 rate of 6.7%. This default rate is a snapshot in time, representing the cohort of borrowers whose loan repayments came due between October 1, 2007, and September 30, 2008, and who defaulted before September 30, 2009. Some 3.4 million borrowers entered repayment during this time, and 238,000 borrowers went into default. They attended 5,860 participating institutions. (Borrowers who default after their first two years of repayment are not measured as defaulters in this data.) As a historical comparison, in FY 1990, nearly one in four borrowers defaulted on their federal loans when rates set an all-time high of 22.4%. The rate dropped to a record low of 4.5% in FY 2003. Schools with excessive default rates (of at least 40% in a single year or 25% or greater for three consecutive years) may lose eligibility from one or more federal student aid programs. This year, five sites are subject to sanctions. http://www2.ed.gov/offices/OSFAP/defaultmanagement/cdr.html
(Note: The public can search for individual school default rates at http://wdcrobcolp01.ed.gov/CFAPPS/COHORT/search_cohort.cfm

Steve Eisman blasted the for-profit education industry, likening these companies to the seamy mortgage brokers who peddled explosive subprime loans over the past two decades. "Until recently, I thought that there would never again be an opportunity to be involved with an industry as socially destructive and morally bankrupt as the subprime mortgage industry. I was wrong," Eisman said. "The for-profit education industry has proven equal to the task." (All of Eisman's remarks here come from a copy of his prepared remarks obtained by Mother Jones.) Much of the growth, Eisman explained, was the sector's easy access to federally guaranteed debt through Title IV student loans. In 2009, he said, for-profit educators raked in almost one-quarter of the $89 billion in available Title IV loans and grants, despite having only 10 percent of the nation's postsecondary students. Both push low-income Americans into something they can't afford—in the schools' case, pricey programs that leave the students heavily in debt; what's more, the degrees they get mean little in the real world.
How does this kind of industry even stay in business? That, Eisman asserted, has much to do with accreditation. There are two main tiers of college accreditation: national and regional—the latter being the more valuable. (Big schools like Yale and the University of Michigan are regionally accredited.) "Subprime Goes to College" Despite being less than 10% of total enrollments, for-profits now claim nearly 25% of the $89 BILLION of Federal Title IV student loans and grant disbursements.

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#k12 online school, #k12 virtual school #College Rankings #Computer Science #Graduate Schools Education
#Evaluate Distance Learning

More than 100 million college students worldwide, new campuses are being built, and existing campuses are expanding. Universities are competing internationally for resources, faculty, the best students, and education funding.

5/10/14 Exams damage learning, legal advice for colleges and MOOCs. A professor argues that exams stop students thinking critically. He writes: "The pressures on students to obtain the best possible grades have become so intense that they feel forced to resort to ingesting large amounts of information and then, in government-induced bouts of vomiting, otherwise known as national tests, they spew it out. "Groups of students can be found in colleges discussing topics about which they don't have sufficient knowledge to form opinions and so their learning remains shallow. We offer young people so-called 'transferable' skills and then discover they need to be in command of a body of knowledge before they can be either critical or creative."

2010 The U.S. Department of Education is also getting into the act with a $650 million fund to boost education innovation. University of Pennsylvania wants to create one of the nation's only business incubators dedicated to education entrepreneurs.

Distance Learning - Online Education - For Profit Higher Ed

IS COLLEGE JUST ANOTHER BUBBLE?

2010 Researchers at Georgetown's Center on Education and the Workforce predict that 63% of jobs nationally will require more than high school education. Nationally, employers are expected to need 22 million new workers with at least some education beyond high school by 2018, but Georgetown says the country is likely to fall short by 3 million. "If we don't address this need now, millions of jobs could go offshore," Anthony Carnevale, who heads the Center on Education and the Workforce.

Centuries-Old Tradition Lies Behind Diplomas of Today's High School Graduates Royal Engraving, a printing company in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The company opened its doors in 1924 as a small wholesale engraver on Fulton Street in Manhattan, then the city's printing district. Called Tripi Engraving, it was run by Italian immigrants, who bought the current one-story brick shop on Meserole Avenue in Greenpoint in the 1980s. It later changed its name to Royal Engraving, and merged with a former competitor, Palographia, about seven years ago, said Larry Paladino, who now co-owns the firm. Across the 11,000-square-foot printing floor, past 17 ink-stained engraving presses dating as far back as the 1880s, is a modern five-color offset printer, a far cheaper, easier way to print. But offset printers are a “dime a dozen,” Mr. Paladino said, and they do not print from engravings. Still, engraving diplomas the traditional way is an expensive job; the Department of Education's contract pays him just under $80,000 a year. “I'd hate to lose it, to be honest, but there probably is some other way it could be done,” he said. Using methods similar to those first developed in the 1400s, the design on the city's diplomas is etched with acid on a copper plate — the shop sends out for that — which then forms the basis for the pressing. Because engraving allows for perfect replicas of signatures and precise details, it lends the documents a layer of security.

Best Online Graduate Degrees and Best Graduate Schools

Video: College Inc (PBS Frontline) Are for profit schools the answer? AND MORE!!!
The cash cow of the for-profit education industry is the federal government. Though they enroll 10 percent of all post-secondary students, for-profit schools receive almost a quarter of federal financial aid. But Department of Education figures for 2009 show that 44 percent of the students who defaulted within three years of graduation were from for-profit schools, leading to serious questions about one of the key pillars of the profit degree college movement: that their degrees help students boost their earning power. This is a subject of increasing concern to the Obama administration, which, last month, remade the federal student loan program, and is now proposing changes that may make it harder for the for-profit colleges to qualify.

Higher Ed Trends

Dr. Tracey Wilen-Daugenti - business development, marketing, and operations brings Apollo and Stanford together for business. Apollo Group, Inc. OWNS University of Phoenix, Apollo Global, Institute for Professional Development, College for Financial Planning and Meritus University. The Company's programs and services are provided in 40 states and the District of Columbia; Puerto Rico; Canada; Latin America; and Europe, as well as online throughout the world (data as of May 31, 2010). In partnership with Stanford University to conduct research as part of the Media X program, which studies the impact of information and technology on society. http://www.cnbc.com/id/39168527

Incoming students, faculty support, job alliances, and data management, Evergreen students, Globalization, Technical and information literacy, Enrollment, retention, and branding, Mobility, Safety and security, Pedagogical centers and innovative campus commons, Evolution of teaching and learning, Collaboration, Strategic plans and technology, Edutainment, Green. http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac79/docs/wp/21st_Century_Top_Trends_POV_0811.pdf

Phoenix U
John Sperling invented Phoenix University
and everything about higher ed that could be done online. Business sells to customer. He is a billionaire 1994 Apollo Group went public. How much do they make? Sky is the limit. 3 - 6 times more expensive than community college.
Michael Clifford explains how he was an x pot head, finds jesus, and buys a college, from a guy who never went to one.
"Even in lean times, the $400 billion business of higher education is booming," PBS Frontline reports. "Nowhere is this more true than in one of the fastest-growing -- and most controversial -- sectors of the industry: for-profit colleges and universities that cater to non-traditional students, often confer degrees over the Internet, and, along the way, successfully capture billions of federal financial aid dollars. In College, Inc., correspondent Martin Smith investigates the promise and explosive growth of the for-profit higher education industry. Through interviews with school executives, government officials, admissions counselors, former students and industry observers, this film explores the tension between the industry --which says it's helping an underserved student population obtain a quality education and marketable job skills -- and critics who charge the for-profits with churning out worthless degrees that leave students with a mountain of debt."

Capella University
Capella Education Company a provider of exclusively online post-secondary education through its wholly owned subsidiary Capella University. The collaboration designs a cohort model specifically for SAIC's employees enrolled in the online university's master's degree program focusing on Information Assurance and Security.

Standing Up to 'Accreditation Shopping' July 1, 2010
Critics of for-profit higher education see as a pattern of "accreditation shopping" in which for-profit entities purchase financially struggling nonprofit colleges, and then hold on to the regional accreditation that the nonprofit colleges had for years, even as the new owners expand or radically change the institutions' missions. One accreditor is saying "not so fast." The Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools has recently rejected two "change of control" requests to have accreditation continue with the purchases of nonprofit colleges (Dana College, in Nebraska, and Rochester College, in Michigan) by for-profit entities. Further, the accreditor insisted on a series of stipulations to approve the continued accreditation of Iowa's Waldorf College -- stipulations that will effectively keep the near-term focus of the college on its residential, liberal arts mission.

2010 New Rules

June 16, 2009 For-profit college investors applauded the U.S. Department of Education's announcement Wednesday of a number of proposed reforms covering higher education, though analysts warn stocks could see pressure down the line as one issue remains unresolved. The government-proposed reforms cover 13 major shortcomings in higher education, but the department said it will hold its recommendations on the 14th--a measure that would penalize schools for graduating students with high debt loads--until later this summer. Investors were excited to see the government take a more studied approach after industry lobbyists warned the proposal could "crush" the for-profit school sector.
The nation's colleges are attracting record numbers of new students as more Hispanics finish high school and young adults opt to pursue a higher education rather than languish in a weak job market. Newly released government figures show that freshman enrollment surged 6 percent in 2008 to a record 2.6 million, mostly due to rising minority enrollment. That is the highest increase since 1968 during the height of the Vietnam War, when young adults who attended college could avoid the military draft. The enrollment increases were clustered mostly at community colleges, trade schools, and large public universities, which tend to have more open admissions policies and charge less tuition. Still, the gains in minorities were seen at almost all levels of higher education, with white enrollment dipping to 53 percent at community colleges and 62 percent at four-year colleges. [1]

Graduation Rates and Loans: 7/26/2010 The Education Department issued on June 15 a series of other rules that required the schools to give prospective students their graduation and job placement rates. The schools are often aimed at lower-income or minority students. But the department left the toughest rule for last -- the monitoring of federal loan default rates -- which could lead to a crippling loss of federal funds, and therefore profits. Education Secretary Arne Duncan predicted that five percent of programs would lose those funds. "90% of revenues in many for-profit schools come from student loan programs," Duncan told reporters on a conference call, adding that default rates approached 25% .

Inquiry Is Sought Into Practices of For-Profit Colleges 6/22/2010
For-profit colleges have less than 10% of the nation's college students, but get about 25% of all federal student-aid disbursements. With for-profit colleges taking in $26.5 billion in federal money last year, up from $4.6 billion in 2000, government scrutiny is becoming intense.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/education/22education.html

The Department of Education on June 16 proposed that for-profit colleges must disclose graduation rates and job-placement rates. In addition, rules that prohibit recruiter pay being linked to student enrollments would be tightened. Yet the most important reform - an effort to lower student debt defaults - has been deferred for now. For-profit colleges, and the companies that run them, including ITT Educational Services ESI.N , Apollo Group APOL.O and Corinthian Colleges COCO.O , now account for almost a quarter of U.S. Title IV loans for higher education. Their share has more than doubled over the past decade, as total loans extended to institutions increased to more than $70 billion. Moreover, federal aid makes up three-quarters of revenue, or more, at many for-profits. The Obama administration is weighing cutting off loans to programs that leave graduates with debt service costs greater than 8 percent of expected starting salary. Institutions that may fall afoul of this so-called "gainful employment" rule could increase quality, lower tuition, accept fewer students who take out large amounts of debt, or cut programs. Either way, the impact would sock margins, growth or both.
Apollo's “repayment rate of 44% was higher than most of its for-profit peers, supporting our view that the risk to earnings from 'gainful employment' may be lower than expected,” the New York-based analysts wrote. http://xrl.in/6ccz

Evaluate find the pro's and con's of distance learning school programs, the Digital Diploma, Accreditation and evaluate K-12 and Higher Ed online schools.

A coalition of foundations has put up to half a billion dollars to match federal grants meant to encourage education reform, taking the pressure off schools scrambling to find the matching dollars they need to get the money. They are investing $506 million, a portion of which is for a matching fund for the $650 million federal grant program, called Investing in Innovation.