Online education makes strong showing

From the Chronicle of Higer Education …

According to a new report by the Sloan Consortium, significantly more students are enrolling in online courses, and the perceived quality of online education is also rising. The study, which is in its second year, showed a 19 percent increase in the number of students enrolled in an online course. The authors of the report expect that number to grow by another 24 percent in the next year. Growth rates among private, for-profit institutions outpaces others by a factor of almost two to one. The study also showed increasing confidence in the quality of online education, with more than 40 percent of respondents saying they believe students are at least as satisfied with online courses as with classroom instruction. According to Jeff Seaman, chief information officer for the Sloan Consortium and coauthor of the study, small baccalaureate institutions are the slowest to embrace online learning. Administrators at those institutions, he said, are more likely to support small, on-campus classes for the type of educational experience they provide.The report is here in PDF format.

Online education makes strong showing

From the Chronicle of Higer Education …

According to a new report by the Sloan Consortium, significantly more students are enrolling in online courses, and the perceived quality of online education is also rising. The study, which is in its second year, showed a 19 percent increase in the number of students enrolled in an online course. The authors of the report expect that number to grow by another 24 percent in the next year. Growth rates among private, for-profit institutions outpaces others by a factor of almost two to one. The study also showed increasing confidence in the quality of online education, with more than 40 percent of respondents saying they believe students are at least as satisfied with online courses as with classroom instruction. According to Jeff Seaman, chief information officer for the Sloan Consortium and coauthor of the study, small baccalaureate institutions are the slowest to embrace online learning. Administrators at those institutions, he said, are more likely to support small, on-campus classes for the type of educational experience they provide.

No Igloo left behind education

A nice story at the Los Angeles Times about eskimo children using Internet video links to bridge the distances in their education.

Internet videoconferencing is helping to bridge the tremendous distances between students and the expert educators who are in short supply throughout alaska.

"Even in the smallest, most remote schools, you can start to provide equivalent academic rigor," said Chick Beckley, president of the Alaska Distance Learning Partnership, an organization of school districts and distance-learning providers. "It helps level the playing field by increasing education opportunities for rural students."

Staggering drops in numbers of foreign grad students in the U.S.

From Spectrum Online …

Really astonishing.

28% DECLINE IN NUMBER OF applications from abroad to U.S. graduate programs between 2003 and 2004

67 AVERAGE NUMBER OF DAYS the U.S. State Department has been taking to conduct security checks for non-U.S.science and engineering students seeking to study "sensitive technologies" in the United States

Corporate Culture

Optimize take a look at the top five IT/Business programs. Not online programs, but still interesting nonetheless.

In the five graduate technology programs identified by Optimize readers, neither technology nor traditional business courses are slighted. Programs at Babson College, Carnegie Mellon University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and Stevens Institute of Technology are preparing future executives to manage technology-oriented businesses.

At Stanford's Center for Electronic Business and Commerce, launched in December 1999, new research and coursework explore the impact of information and communication technologies on companies, industries, and markets. "Our approach is based on solving the business problem and applying technology for the solution," says Haim Mendelson, professor of electronic business and commerce. One notable visiting instructor: Intel's Andy Grove, who in 2003 led a class called Strategy-Making in the Information Processing Industry. It identified topics likely to have a "tremendous impact on the strategic evolution and future direction of the information-technology industry."

Women breaking business glass ceiling

From Career Journal, some encouraging news for women in business …

One story about women executives breaking the glass ceiling.

Consider Marjorie Magner, chairman and CEO of Citigroup Inc.'s Global Consumer Group, who oversees more than 150,000 employees in 54 countries and is responsible for 120 million customers. If the unit she leads was a stand-alone company, it would be among the world's 10 largest. Or Susan Arnold, vice chairman at Procter & Gamble Co., who oversees world-wide the company's beauty brands, including Pantene, Olay and Clairol, which generate more than one-quarter of P&G's revenue and make up its biggest division.

"There are only eight women CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, but right below them, usually operating under the radar, is a big talent pool of women who are running multibillion-dollar divisions," says Ilene H. Lang, president of Catalyst, a New York research group. "They aren't well known beyond their companies, industries and senior women's groups — but that doesn't mean they don't like power and success. They are progressing and are the future leadership in business."Secondly, a story how women can express themselves and still thrive at business.

If women executives have a universal issue, it's the desire to express their authentic self at work. They dislike repressing the side of them that cares about relationships and others' feelings. They don't want to leave their personalities at the corporate door or pretend to be someone else. They want to use so-called feminine behaviors and still be seen as real players.

What does it mean to be authentic in a work environment? I posed this question to a group of senior professional and managerial women. For them, it means not having to change who they are when they come to work. They want to be able to establish emotional connections with co-workers and relate to staff, colleagues and superiors on a personal level. This doesn't mean knowing every detail of a co-worker's personal life. Instead, it means having a sense of who the person is and being able to connect as human beings.And finally, some negotiating tips for women executives.

Mistake No. 1. Adopting a negotiating style that doesn't reflect who you are.

Solution: Be yourself, but be the best self you can be. Women often think that a good negotiator is tough, screams, knows all the tricks and can outsmart her opponent. So if they're seeking to become successful negotiators, they try to be this way. It usually doesn't work. Why? In the first place, this competitive negotiating style doesn't help the men who try it either. Moreover, most women simply aren't comfortable with this style, preferring a collaborative negotiating style instead.

Making that decision

The Boston Globe has an excellent story about trying to find the right online university to enroll in today.

''With 2,000 to 3,000 online courses, and more and more coming onto the Web, there has to be some intelligent way for people to sift through and determine what they are," said Greg Eisenbarth, a former corporate training executive who last year founded a group, the Online University Consortium, to assess the quality of online degree programs.

Many of these also assess online programs. Online MBAs offered by the University of Massachusetts, for example, are accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, a standard met by fewer than 500 schools worldwide. But many traditional accreditors hand out their blessing without expert study of the unique details of online learning, such as the quality of communication tools used to link teachers and students. And the online world lacks any one universally Accepted accrediting body, though the Distance Education Training Council is recognized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, and newer groups like Eisenbarth's are beginning to set standards and assess quality.

Internet turns 35

From Information Week …

Congratulations to the Internet, which, believe it or not, turned 35 years old this September. There's no denying that this invention, which started in a lab with the transfer of bits and bytes between two computers connected by a 15-foot cable and which only reached the average person in 1994, has caused the most revolutionary economic change since the steam engine. For our enjoyment, I have assembled, behind the curtain, the industries that the Internet is leaving in its wake. Mr. Internet–this is your life!

The family used to gather around our next guest to listen to Benny Goodman, Abbot and Costello, Amos and Andy, and Orson Welles. A younger generation can now download hundreds of songs from iTunes and stream audio collections posted from their favorite Web sites. That's why, in the last five years, more than one out of every 10 radio listeners between the ages of 25 and 34 have stopped listening. Ms. Radio, come on out and don't forget to bring with you the radio titans, Clear Channel, Citadel Broadcasting, and Cumulus Media, who've watched their share prices plummet 23%, 40%, and 26%, respectively, in the last year.

IT talent needed

From CIO …

CIOs say they need employees with business skills to build IT departments that can compete with outsourcers. Yet schools aren't providing this talent. Now, with enrollment in IT programs falling, colleges are beginning to listen.

Last year, Sumantra Sengupta, the CIO at Scotts, sat down with his network security group to find out what it was doing to protect his network from viruses. His staff boasted that it had installed great antivirus packages, five firewalls and a DMZ.

The demise of DeVry

Bad news for DeVry at the Motley Fool …

This will be the third time in a row that I've written unflatteringly of for-profit educator DeVry. Followers of the company will recall that as early as April, DeVry was already exhibiting an unhealthy lack of correlation between revenue growth and earnings growth. That trend reversed itself temporarily in the company's fourth quarter but remained strong over fiscal 2004 as a whole.