Education

EDU News Curated by Kiosk: Demise of liberal arts and other higher ed news

Demise of liberal arts

From Kiosk: “The current discourse on the ‘demise’ or ‘gutting’ of liberal arts education echoes past exaggerated predictions about other industries. We have seen bold claims about the death of many things that are not quite dead: vinyl, albums, advertising, cable TV, American manufacturing. And while there may be declines and shifts in the short term, the practitioners who use a growth mindset to find opportunities within the challenges will build a viable platform for healthy evolution and a resurgence.”
View the full article from Kiosk.

 

How will the rise of AI in the workplace impact liberal arts education?

From Higher Ed Dive: “Demand for liberal arts education has declined in recent years as students increasingly eye college programs that directly prepare them for jobs. But according to many tech and college experts, as businesses launch advanced AI tools or integrate such technology into their operations, liberal arts majors will become more coveted. That’s because employers will need people to think through the ethical stakes and unintended consequences of new technologies. Companies may also need people to help improve the written commands given to chatbots or resolve challenging customer service disputes that AI can’t handle. College leaders therefore need to take action as AI changes the workforce, scholars say.”
View the full article from Higher Ed Dive.

 

Liberal Arts Microcredentials on the Rise

From Inside Higher Education: “Colleges have recently begun to rapidly expand their microcredential offerings as state lawmakers clamor to fill workforce gaps and students question the value of a traditional degree. Such nondegree options have mostly proliferated in career and technical education fields, such as cybersecurity, information technology and welding. But some institutions are starting to branch out into microcredentials in the liberal arts disciplines, hoping to capitalize on the hype surrounding these flexible alternatives to degree programs and highlight the market value of the humanities, arts and social sciences.”
View the full article from Inside Higher Ed.

 

Liberal arts colleges must embed career services throughout campus life

From Higher Ed Dive: “The liberal arts teach students how to think and problem-solve — qualities that can propel them to success in any career. While this is true, in a competitive and uncertain job market, liberal arts colleges need to shift their positioning away from, ‘Trust us, learning how to think will be enough.’ Instead, the objective should be teaching students how to think and how to be career-ready when they graduate. … Making career launch a central part of our classic liberal arts education required focus, commitment, time and attention to nuance. As we get it right, our students are launching quicker and with more success.”
View the full article from Higher Ed Dive.

 

Will Republicans save the Humanities?

From The Chronicle: “Certain parts of the long-suffering humanities are a growth sector in higher ed. Even more surprisingly, this expansion is being driven by state legislatures and governing boards dominated by Republicans. At public colleges in red and purple states … about 200 tenure- and career-track faculty lines are being created in new academic units devoted to civic education … Because a political party intensely critical of higher education has backed the founding of those programs, some worry that they will debase academic standards … Criticism of these new programs is both understandable and premature. Most of them have just been founded and have yet to demonstrate exactly how they intend to fulfill the mandates that have set them in motion.”
View the full article from The Chronicle.

 

The Edge: Yup, liberal-arts degrees are “credentials of value”

From The Chronicle: “Lawmakers — yes, in Texas — unanimously agreed that those colleges’ traditional degrees in liberal-arts majors like humanities and arts count as “credentials of value.” … The basis for Texas’ credential-of-value model is whether the typical wages of people who hold that credential are higher after 10 years than are the typical earnings of a person with only a high-school diploma, also factoring in the cost of obtaining the degree … After years of funding community colleges based largely on their general enrollment, now nearly all the state’s funding for community colleges is allocated under this new formula, and the Legislature threw in about 30 percent more in state money to boot.”
View the full article from The Chronicle.

 

Not All ‘Free College’ Programs Spark Increased Enrollments or More Degrees

From EdSurge: “The free-college program appears to have led some students who would have enrolled in a four-year college to instead start at the two-year college — where they may or may not end up going on to a four-year institution. There is a chance, then, that the program may end up keeping some students from finishing a four-year degree. ‘On balance, the program expands access to postsecondary education more than it diverts students away from four-year degrees, though it does appear to do this as well,’ the paper asserts.”
View the full article from EdSurge.

 

Two-thirds of colleges are prioritizing online versions of on-campus programs, poll finds

From Higher Ed Dive: “Roughly two-thirds of colleges are making it a priority to create virtual versions of on-campus classes and programs, according to an annual survey of chief online learning officers. College officials likely see creating online versions of existing programs as easier than launching entirely new academic programs, according to the report. However, 48% of chief online learning officers still said their priorities included launching new online programs with no campus equivalent.”
View the full article from Higher Ed Dive.

 

There’s a Gender Split in How US College Grads Are Tackling a More Difficult Job Market

From Bloomberg: “There’s a gender divide in how recent college graduates are responding to a cooling US job market. While young college-educated women are sticking with their job search even as the number of vacancies shrinks, many of their male peers are choosing to take a break. The share of male college graduates participating in the workforce has declined in the past year, with 1 in 5 under the age of 25 neither employed nor actively looking for work, according to the latest 12-month average in a Bloomberg News analysis of government data.”
View the full article from Bloomberg.

 

Campus Protests Are Coming Back. Students and Administrators Are Digging In.

From The Chronicle: “In July, the Young Democratic Socialists of America — a section of the progressive organization for youth and students — passed a resolution encouraging campus chapters to change their tactics. The ultimate goal, the resolution said, should be a national student strike over the Israel-Hamas war. … The willingness to embrace new strategies this fall reflects not only doubts in the utility of encampments, but also a sense that activists need to meet colleges’ enhanced restrictions on free expression with an equal and opposite force. In recent months, institutions have tightened their time, place, and manner policies to avoid the headaches of the spring.”
View the full article from The Chronicle.

 

A Fifth of Students at Community College Are Still in High School

From EdSurge: “Called dual enrollment, the phenomenon grew for the third year in a row this year. And the growth is steep — up 10 percent compared to last year, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. That’s significant in an era when college leaders are concerned about attracting and retaining students who may be skeptical about the value of a degree and also worried about the impending ‘enrollment cliff’ resulting from fewer Americans of traditional college age coming up in the next few years.”
View the full article from EdSurge.