Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Thu, 16 May 2013 17:00:00 PDT Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101208/01331612181/dailydirt-getting-online-education.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101208/01331612181/dailydirt-getting-online-education.shtml

Sebastian Thrun is optimistic about creating an online class that will confer a master's degree in computer science. All the class material will be online for free, but the actual degree will cost a few thousand bucks still (via Georgia Tech). [url]

The traditional education system might be in for some disruption as more online education startups attract students and pull tuition dollars away from bricks and mortar institutions. If professors don't like their student reviews now, it's going to get a bit worse when online classes are rated instantly by students.... [url]

Professor Sugata Mitra has demonstrated that kids don't necessarily need a teacher -- if you just set up an internet-connected computer in the middle of a village in India, you'll be surprised by what the kids learn all by themselves. And now, Mitra has $1 million from a TED prize to further his research into self-organized learning. [url]

Don't have time to attend a class? You might not need to with the University of Wisconsin's upcoming program to grant bachelor degrees based on existing experience. You still have to take some tests and demonstrate your skills, but the school of hard knocks might be good enough in some cases? [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101208/01331612181 Tue, 23 Apr 2013 17:00:00 PDT Joyce Hung http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101230/15293612471/dailydirt-take-red-pill-young-people.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101230/15293612471/dailydirt-take-red-pill-young-people.shtml age 20 to 24) is about 13%, which is much higher than the rest of the adult population. Even worse, it seems like young workers (even college graduates) are increasingly taking low-wage jobs. Perhaps it's time for our youth to consider taking a chance and going into business for themselves. Here are a few links that might help convince them to take the plunge.

• Upstart, founded by a team of ex-Googlers, is an all-in-one loan agency, investment fund, mentoring network, and dream factory for up-and-comers in their early 20s. To find the most promising candidates, applicants are screened using sophisticated algorithms that can predict their likely future income based on GPA, educational background, past job offers, etc. Upstart helps them raise enough money to get their startups going, and in return, they pay their backers up to 7% of their future income each year for 10 years. [url]
• Check out these class notes from Peter Thiel's course on startups at Stanford, written in essay form. In 2010, venture capitalist and entrepreneur Peter Thiel created the Thiel Fellowship, which awards $100,000 to 20 students under 20 years old, with the goal of encouraging them to create their own startups instead of going to college. [url]
• Read the Upstart blog for founder Dave Girouard's account of how he came up with the idea for Upstart. The blog also has other personal accounts, information about Upstart, and interesting articles and perspectives on entrepreneurship. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101230/15293612471 Tue, 11 Dec 2012 17:00:00 PST Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101020/11482611500/dailydirt-educating-adults.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101020/11482611500/dailydirt-educating-adults.shtml faster than a lot of other goods (though the net price may not be). So what are aspiring university students to do? Here are just a few interesting links on the future of education.

• One proposal for college students to try to pay for rising tuition fees is for schools to take a cut of their students' future earnings in lieu of upfront tuition. Indentured servitude 2.0 might kill the classical liberal arts education, but oh well. [url]
• Baby boomers might be able to take college-level classes via iPads and chatrooms, but do they really want to? Mobile classes sound useful for students of any age, so why target just the baby boomers? (This exercise left to the reader.) [url]
• Sal Khan discusses the future of credentialing -- and how schools might be separated from the role of providing proof of proficiency. The future of microcredentials could offer a way for anyone to obtain proof of expertise in a narrowly-defined domain. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101020/11482611500 Wed, 27 Jun 2012 17:00:00 PDT Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100813/09470310616/dailydirt-pricing-aint-easy.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100813/09470310616/dailydirt-pricing-aint-easy.shtml

JC Penny may be learning a tough economic lesson from its fair and square pricing strategy -- "shrouding" prices is a deeply-ingrained retail practice and consumers have adapted to it. Getting out of the brutal commodity clothing market is a hard, uphill battle... especially if you can't/don't offer customers truly unique products or services. [url]

Orbitz is admitting to sending Mac users to more expensive hotels (maybe not against their will). It's part of a pricing experiment based on data mining consumer behavior online -- Apple computer users tend to pay more for hotels, so why not show them the pricier hotels they're already looking for? [url]

An everyday example of price discrimination can be seen in a vending machine. When the cheap snacks sell out, people may pay more for late night victuals. [url]

The list price of college has been rising incredibly over the last decade, but not everyone pays full price. There's a growing gap between what the average student actually pays for college and what universities say tuition is. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100813/09470310616 Mon, 15 Aug 2011 05:12:26 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110812/02193215489/court-says-college-can-snoop-students-email.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110812/02193215489/court-says-college-can-snoop-students-email.shtml there's apparently no violation of anti-snooping or data privacy laws. I definitely understand the reasoning here, though one might argue that the relationship between a student and a university is quite different than an employee and employer. And I could see how students might have a much higher expectation of privacy. Still, do students really use university email addresses any more, or do they have their own primary email accounts that they had before heading off to school?

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]]> no-privacy-violation http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110812/02193215489 Wed, 8 Jun 2011 17:00:00 PDT Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110509/17331214217/dailydirt-hey-teacher-leave-those-kids-alone.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110509/17331214217/dailydirt-hey-teacher-leave-those-kids-alone.shtml

Professor X isn't a leader of mutant superheroes -- he's an adjunct professor with lots of opinions on how college students should be taught. Perhaps a liberal arts education shouldn't be a pre-requisite for certain high-paying professions anymore... [url]

Peter Thiel's foundation has picked twenty-four young adults (under 20 years old) to stop going to college. This program doesn't prevent them from going back to school after its two-year fellowship, though. [url]

Georgetown researchers have gathered up some stats on how much college graduates earn, over their expected careers, by major. Petroleum engineering, FTW! [url]

Do test scores effectively evaluate the quality of a school? Are we teaching fourth-graders how to take tests? [url]

To discover more interesting education-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110509/17331214217 Tue, 25 May 2010 13:20:00 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100525/1137059565.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100525/1137059565.shtml Romenesko we learn that a judge in Wyoming has issued a temporary restraining order against two local newspapers, barring them from reporting about a trip by the local community college's president to Costa Rica, saying that the report was stolen... and that publishing the info could cause the college to lose federal funding. At issue is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which prevents colleges from revealing private info about students (a good thing). But here it's clearly being misused. Yes, the report may include some student info, but that should not, in any way, bar publishing a story about what happened. Furthermore, that the document was leaked shouldn't bar publication either. If that were the case, there would never be any whistleblower stories out there, or stories like the one about the Pentagon Papers. Update: Well, that didn't last long. The original order has been dissolved, though this now has helped bring much more attention to the original story.

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]]> that-whole-first-amendment-thing http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100525/1137059565 Mon, 3 Aug 2009 09:55:00 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090802/1514335738.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090802/1514335738.shtml Jeff Nolan points us to the story of a college graduate who has been unable to find a job since she graduated in April and is now suing her college, Monroe College, for the $70,000 she spent on tuition. Apparently, the fact that we're in one of the worst economic downturns in ages doesn't come into play. Or the fact that what you learn in college (hopefully) lasts a lifetime. To this woman, the fact that she hasn't been able to find a job in four months means she deserves her entire tuition back?

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]]> entitlement-culture-gone-wrong http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090802/1514335738 Tue, 23 Sep 2008 04:22:01 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080922/0319412328.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080922/0319412328.shtml Slashdot points us to a study suggesting that 10% of universities now examine social network profiles as part of their efforts to evaluate applicants. And, in some of those cases, the profiles hurt candidates to the point of having admissions directors change their minds. Other universities claim that they don't think it's right to view such "personal" spaces, but you have to wonder if that view will change over time. Personally, I don't see anything wrong with universities doing this. They're used to just seeing a carefully controlled image of the student, and what's on their social networking sites may reveal a lot more useful info. However, it seems like students should at least be aware that this public display of information is being added to their "permanent record" for consideration at universities.

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]]> your-new-permanent-record http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20080922/0319412328 Fri, 4 Apr 2008 18:17:00 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080404/003809748.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080404/003809748.shtml Against Monopoly points us to a story of a textbook publisher who is suing a company called Einstein's Notes that takes notes in classes and sells them to students. Most colleges have services like this, but the publisher, Faulkner Press, is claiming that Einstein's Notes is violating its own copyright and the professor's copyright on the lectures.

Of course, we thought that the purpose of a textbook was to educate people so that they would naturally take that information and do more with it. Some may claim that Faulkner's claim makes sense since Einstein's Notes are selling the note taking service, meaning that it's "making money" on the lectures. However, that's pretty weak when you think about it. After all, if that were true, wouldn't professors (and textbook publishers) then have a claim to anyone's earnings that were based on what they learned from the lecture and the text? I still have a bunch of textbooks from college that I consult at times. If I use something that I learned from an economics professor or textbook to help build my business, have I violated a copyright? Where do you draw the line?

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]]> careful-when-you-take-notes http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20080404/003809748 Thu, 6 Mar 2008 13:44:00 PST Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080306/121402464.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080306/121402464.shtml Vincent Clement writes in to let us know that that a student at Ryerson University in Toronto is facing expulsion for setting up an online study group for his chemistry class using Facebook. The school is saying it wasn't so much a study group as it was a place for 146 students to cheat and share answers (though, it's only blaming the student who ran the group). Students at the university are reasonably up in arms over the matter, as they don't see how it's any different than a traditional study group. Of course, the whole thing seems a little bit silly. As we discussed almost exactly a year ago, people working together to collaborate is an important skill in the real world, and what some people consider "cheating" these days seems a lot like the type of collaboration that kids are quite used to doing online, and which should serve them well later in life.

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]]> once-it's-on-facebook,-it-must-be http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20080306/121402464 Fri, 21 Dec 2007 19:34:00 PST Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20071221/154105.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20071221/154105.shtml is for students to become famous online. It apparently doesn't matter how they become famous, but their grades depend on it. The class, at Parsons The New School for Design, has 15 students, all vying to be more famous than one another. What's amusing is that, as the semester wound down and more subtle means of becoming internet famous were proving ineffective, many in the class resorted to the old short-term standby: posting videos of scantily-clad women on blogs and using suggestive titles. You can check out the class blog to judge for yourself how famous the students have become.

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]]> and-what-did-you-major-in? http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20071221/154105