Learning

The acquisition of knowledge is at the core of higher education. Here's where you'll find items on what's happening in classrooms, laboratories and libraries.

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May 9, 2012 | 12:53 PM | By

MN employers: Students need common sense, work ethic

Finding people who want to work and not just collect a paycheck is next to impossible. The skill most lacking is a work ethic. Not to mention, it is nigh on impossible to find a creative mind in today’s work place.

-Mark Hayes, head of Research and Development for a small company

We just recently posted an opening. Our last opening was in February of 2011. We haven’t had many applicants applying. Today I received a resume through email. The applicant had used a form letter he found online and hadn’t “filled in” the blanks. If it wasn’t so funny it would be sad.

-Ann Iverson, works for a small manufacturing company

While reporting an MPR radio story on skills that Minnesota employers are looking for, colleague Molly Bloom and I queried some of the employers in our Public Insight Network to hear what they had to say.

Looks like some of the skills they want just can’t be taught in a classroom. Molly wrote it up in News Cut, which you can read here.

FILED UNDER: Learning, jobs-skills mismatch
May 8, 2012 | 4:56 PM | By

Wednesday 10:20: Live blog on the future of online ed

computer

gothick_matt

As good as being there?

At 10:20 tomorrow, here on On Campus I’ll be live-blogging the discussion that MPR’s The Daily Circuit is having with both a professor and an entrepreneur on the future of online education — and online universities, to be exact.

Are they the future? Or, as The Daily Circuit puts it more compellingly:

How will online universities change the way we learn, and can we really expect them to replace a traditional college experience?

Guests:

  • Andrew Ng, professor of computer science at Stanford and a co-founder of Coursera, which offers free online classes; and
  • Kanyi Maqubela, entrepreneur in residence at the Collaborative Fund

Follow along, and feel free to chime in. (Get here a little early, too. This is live radio.)

You can get more background on the discussion and its participants here.

FILED UNDER: Learning, technology
April 5, 2012 | 2:01 PM | By

A few more tidbits on the UMN year-round calendar idea

student-bus-stpaul

MPR Photo / Alex Friedrich

Seeing this year 'round?

A lot of material couldn’t make it into this week’s piece on the proposal to convert the University of Minnesota to a year-round calendar.

I’ll try to lay it out in the coming weeks as the U studies the idea more.

But for now, here are some quotes and bits I found interesting.

It was really tough finding a university that goes year-round. A lot have considered it, including George Washington University. Even though President Emeritus Stephen Trachtenberg advocated it — including during a 2005 Congressional hearing on higher education — he said faculty turned it down.

A number of colleges and programs are on a year-round calendar, and even the U has a number of abbreviated summer classes.

But the only university that I’ve heard about with a full-on summer session of equal length and importance is Brigham Young University – Idaho. (It’s affiliated with BYU in Utah, but is a separate institution.)

Still, Larry Isaak, president of the Midwestern Higher Education Compact, says the idea is catching on. He told me:

“At the present time, it’s not that common. But I believe in 10 years it will be more the norm than the exception.”

Trachtenberg told me the calendar will help universities compete against their for-profit counterparts:

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning, Money, Schools, academic calendar, University of Minnesota
April 2, 2012 | 10:30 AM | By

What does St. Olaf’s Goldberg win say about STEM ed?

mousetrap

Mark Louden via Flickr

Nah, too simple for Rube

I don’t usually post much on college competitions, because there are so many of them.

But this (Lafayette, Ind.,) Journal & Courier piece on St. Olaf College winning the national Rube Goldberg Machine Contest intrigued me.

(The contest is named after the engineer-cartoonist who became famous for his drawings of complex machines that do simple tasks.)

Here’s the kicker in the article:

St. Olaf, a private liberal arts school, won the 2009 contest too. Unlike the seven other teams taking part today, the college does not have an engineering program.

Not to be taken too seriously. Just found that funny.

You can read the piece here.

 

FILED UNDER: Learning, Schools, St. Olaf College, STEM Science Technology Engineering and Math
March 28, 2012 | 1:50 PM | By

How is MN coming along in degree attainment?

In Minnesota and nationally, attainment rates must increase more rapidly to reach the Big Goal of 60 percent attainment by 2025. If the current rate of degree production continues, about 55 percent of Minnesota’s adult population — nearly 1.7 million people — will hold a college degree in 2025. To reach 60 percent, Minnesota will need to add more than 140,000 degrees to that total.

– A Lumina Foundation report on degree attainment within the 50 states. Minnesota showed a slight increase (.7 percentage points to 45.8 percent) in the percentage of the state’s working-age population with at least an associate’s degree.


You can read the full report here. I’ve had problems posting it on the blog, but a reader kindly sent me this black-and-white version of Minnesota’s section above. Or you can read it in color in the full report. It starts on p. 69 (which may be p. 71 on your PDF browser).

FILED UNDER: Learning
March 28, 2012 | 9:43 AM | By

Do community colleges provide a quality education?


“I just have a hard time understanding the facts being used by Ms. Jacoby to conclude that, you know, that… some community colleges provide one or two years of bad training. From my world view, education is a broad spectrum. There’s a place for everyone. There’s a time and place for everyone. You make what you wanna make out of education.”

– St. Paul College President Rassoul Dastmozd responding on MPR’s The Daily Circuit to a comment by scholar Susan Jacoby that many peopl have “gone for a year or two of very bad community colleges. That, while they might prepare you for a job or they may not, you’re not learning very much in them.”

You can access more details here or listen to the audio above.

FILED UNDER: Learning, Money, community colleges
March 23, 2012 | 4:52 PM | By

How the U responded to complaints about bioethics prof


Remember the complaint letter that stem-cell company CellTex sent to the University of Minnesota over critical statements made by bioethics professor Leigh Turner?

Above is the U’s response.

FILED UNDER: Learning, Schools, commercialization of research, research, University of Minnesota