Education

EDU news curated by Kiosk: Apprenticeships rise…and other higher ed news

Apprenticeships are on the rise. They’re one answer to the so-called ‘skills shortage’

From Reworked: “‘There’s a disconnect between work and school,’ Harvard professor Joseph Fuller told Reworked. He co-leads the school’s initiative, Managing the Future of Work. Fuller has proposals to help solve the skilled worker shortage in the United States. Among them is apprenticeships. Apprenticeships are a way for high school students to gain experience with skills in demand. Unlike most college internships, which generally last a few months, are offered exclusively to college students, and are typically poorly compensated (if at all), apprenticeships usually last a year or more (although some are part-time at first), pay a decent wage, provide true on the job training and a direct path to careers that pay well.”

 

ASU unveils new apprenticeship program for HR tech careers

From Fierce Education: “Arizona State University (ASU) announced a new apprenticeship program designed to expand access to high-demand HR tech careers for ASU students and alumni. The initiative was developed through a collaboration with Helios Consulting, an advisory partner of Workday, the HR tech platform of choice for nearly 10,000 companies worldwide, including half of the Fortune 500.”

 

The next big thing in coding bootcamps in 2023: Apprenticeships

From Fortune: “General Assembly launched an apprenticeship program earlier this year, utilizing a ‘learn-and-earn model.’ Apprenticeships are perhaps the headliner here, and, as other experts say, they may be the next big thing for bootcamps. That’s because they’re not only being implemented by General Assembly, but also by a number of other bootcamp providers.The primary reason why apprenticeships are gaining in popularity is that bootcamps often can’t follow through on their promise—either explicit or implied—to land graduates jobs.” 

 

Scaling up: Increasing apprenticeship programs

From Inside Higher Ed: “The City University of New York will add 12 apprenticeship programs to its associate degree programs starting this fall. … A $2 million investment from New York governor Kathy Hochul will expand apprenticeships for two-year-degree seekers at 10 CUNY colleges.”

 

In other news…

Over 1,900 colleges not requiring SAT, ACT in admissions for fall 2023

From Higher Ed Dive: “The tally comes from FairTest, a group advocating for the limited application of standardized assessments. … FairTest’s executive director, Harry Feder, said … that the group believes few institutions will maintain testing mandates should the U.S. Supreme Court restrict race-conscious admissions, as it is expected to do this month. … Critics of standardized exams point to wealthier students tending to score higher on them because they can access tutoring their low-income peers cannot. Meanwhile, testing providers like the ACT and College Board, which delivers the SAT, have acknowledged educational inequities but say their products are not to blame.”

 

Turnitin’s AI detector: Higher-than-expected false positives

From Inside Higher Ed: “When the product was released in April, Turnitin promoted it as having a less than 1 percent false positive rate. Now, the company has not disclosed the new document-level false positive rate. … When Turnitin’s AI-detection tool reports that a piece of writing has a less than 20 percent chance of having been written by a machine, it has a higher incidence of false positives, according to the statement. Now, the company will add an asterisk with a message casting some doubt on such results.”

 

Don’t want students to rely on ChatGPT? Have them use it

From Wired: “I decided to have each student … use ChatGPT to generate an essay based on a prompt I gave them and then ‘grade’ it. … Many students expressed shock and dismay upon learning the AI could fabricate bogus information, including page numbers for nonexistent books and articles. … Others expressed concern about the way overreliance on such technology could induce laziness or spur disinformation and fake news. Closer to the bone were fears that this technology could take people’s jobs. Students were alarmed that major tech companies had pushed out AI technology without ensuring that the general population understands its drawbacks. The assignment satisfied my goal, which was to teach them that ChatGPT is neither a functional search engine nor an infallible writing tool.”

 

The perilous predicament of the very small college

From The Chronicle of Higher Education: “Enrollment at many of these colleges of 1,000 students or fewer was already flagging … a result of increased competition for the waning number of college-bound high-school graduates. Covid-19 dealt them another shock to the system. … Leaders at small colleges say they’ve spent the last year overhauling their academic programs, bolstering their enrollment offices, and expanding their online-learning options to appeal to more nontraditional students. … Recruiting students to a small and faltering institution ‘can be hard because students and families sense your precariousness,’ he says. ‘So precariousness sort of yields further precariousness.’”

 

Career centers get a makeover

From Inside Higher Ed: “Given the rising cost of college and the vagaries of the job market, students and their families are more worried than ever about ensuring that a college degree leads to a successful career. At least that’s the view of many colleges, which are increasingly boosting the profile—and resources—of their career centers, according to research by the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Of 287 career centers that reported their total budgets to NACE this past academic year, the median budget was $417,595, up from $330,357 in the 2019–20 academic year.”

 

Why students opt not to enroll

From Inside Higher Ed: “More than one in five (22 percent) have decided to opt out because they are not mentally ready, a sharp increase from pre-pandemic levels (14 percent in 2019). This view is particularly prevalent among first-generation and lower-income students. ‘I’m not mentally ready for college’ was a concern expressed by 28 percent of first-generation students versus 20 percent of continuing-generation students. Twenty-six percent of students surveyed by EAB selected ‘whether I’ll be successful in college’ as a top concern, behind only concerns related to affordability and value.”

 

More students want virtual-learning options. Here’s where the debate stands.

From The Chronicle of Higher Education: “For some faculty, the need to accommodate students — some of whom kept attending their mostly in-person classes online, Covid or no Covid — was ballooning their workloads. … While adult learners have long preferred such flexibility … more 18- to 24-year-olds also want online courses — as well as hybrid courses, where they can attend a class in-person one day and virtually the next. … ‘I think it’s important to recognize that for a lot of people, quarantine was the daily state of our lives, and then having everything transitioned to Zoom was actually the world opening up and not closing down,’ said Li, a comparative literature student and a co-founder of Princeton’s Disability Collective.”

 

More borrowers at risk of defaulting

From Inside Higher Ed: “More student loan borrowers are behind on their credit card bills and loans than before the pandemic, and they are paying more because of rising interest rates, a new report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found. The rising delinquencies mean that more borrowers will be at risk of defaulting when payments turn back on later this summer after a three-year pause. Nearly 20 percent of borrowers, about 5.9 million, have two or more risk factors that indicate they’ll struggle with making their student loan payments. That’s up from the estimated 5.1 million borrowers who were at risk in April 2022.”