Monthly Archives: November 2011

We’re living in a time when students are protesting tuition increases and tens of thousands of college graduates are drowning in debt. Yet according to “For New Coach at Ohio State, It’s First Down and $4 Million,” an article by Greg Bishop in The New York Times on November 29, Ohio State University sees no problem in offering its new football coach a compensation package that could add up to $4 million annually. Or to look at it another way the new coach, Urban Meyer, should be compensated a total of $26 million over the next six years.

Anyone who doubts the commitment of Occupy protestors needs to know about the hardy protestors who are part of the Occupy Alaska movement. According to a recent report on Reuters, Occupy protestors in Anchorage and Fairbanks are stalwartly refusing to give up and fold their tents, even after spending several weeks camping outside in temperatures that have plunged to minus 40 degrees.

If you are an adult learner who hasn’t thought about going back to college in a while, it might be a good idea to remember that college is now a lot less scary than it was the last time you looked. Thanks to the advent of online distance learning, you can start any time, while skipping the itchy interview clothes, the standardized tests and other obstacles. You can even drop out for a while, lighten your course load when your job makes you too busy, explore a number of majors before committing yourself, and behave in other ways that were generally taboo the last time you looked.

If you think that American students and colleges are embracing online study slowly, perhaps it’s time for you to think again. "The rate of growth in online enrollments is 10 times that of the rate in all higher education," says Elaine Allen, co-author of “Going the Distance: Online Education in the United States, 2011,” a study just released by The Sloan Consortium.

StraighterLine introduced some terrific new college courses. Today, we’d like to tell you more about one of them. It is the new StraighterLine Western Civilization I course.

“Students and recent college graduates make up a large contingent of the Occupy Wall Street encampments around the state. And it’s not because they’re schooled in democratic theory, it’s a simple bread and butter issue: the student protesters say rising tuition costs and ballooning student debt are what drove them to the streets.”

-          “‘Class’ Warfare? Student Debt Crises Fuels the Occupy Wall Street Movement” by Sam Lewis, Thirteen.org

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“The student loan bubble may not burst with a bang, but it is slowly suffocating us.”

If you are planning to go back to college in the new year,  why wait until then to kick off your educational plans? Why not get started now?

Getting closed out of college classes can be more than an inconvenience for students. Here are two case studies about young women at elite universities – paying hefty tuition fees – who locked horns with getting shut out of college courses.

There is always a way around obstacles for people with the will, imagination and ambition to keep moving toward their dreams.

“Occupy Wall Street Protesters Shifting to College Campuses,” an article in the November 14 New York Times, reports that as the Occupy Wall Street protesters are being driven from public parks in many cities across the country, they are setting up camps on college campuses. Perhaps that’s not a big surprise. After all, American students have always been willing to protest social wrongs, and now they are protesting high tuition.

If you’ve been thinking that intelligence declines with age and that you’re too old to go to college, you should have your head examined. Leading brain experts agree that intelligence remains strong as we age.

Studying in a foreign country for a semester or a year has been a longstanding tradition in American colleges and universities. In recognition of that fact, International Education Week will be celebrated at the University of Iowa from Friday, Nov. 11 through Thursday, Nov. 17 this year. The week, a joint initiative of the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Education, is intended to increase international understanding and promote awareness of the value of studying abroad.