IBM to launch online job service

From CNET News service, this news for IT pros looking for work:

To help fill what it calls the "gap between skilled IT professionals and the increased number of technology jobs," IBM will introduce an online job-listing service targeting graduates in computer sciences. On the applicant side, the service will be open to students who have passed an IBM Professional Certification test. Those individuals will be able to post resumes as well as access tips on writing resumes and being interviewed. For employers, the site will be open to IBM, its partners, and its clients, who can search the resumes for prospects, sorting them by skills and location. Meanwhile, the company has
introduced a doctoral fellowship program as well as an initiative that helps those in technical fields to become math and science teachers.

Reader Comment: A note on Colorado Technical University

A scam, bad policy, or just a mix-up? I don't know. The following note came from one of our readers, debbie Harris, whose husband has allegedly been having problems with Colorado Technical University. This is what she wrote:

My husband lost his job in June 2005 and since finding a job was difficult because he lacked a degree, he was thrilled when CTU told him he was approved by V.A. (Veterans Administration) and that V.A. would pay for his education through March 2006. We then got a letter from V.A. saying our request for funding was denied and that he no longer qualified. I called V.A. and the person I spoke to said you are denied. I called our admissions counselor at CTU and she said you are approved. I faxed a copy of the V.A. letter to CTU. They still said you are approved through March 2006. The admissions counselor, my husband and someone from financial aide had a conference call and we again voiced our concerns about not being able to pay for the courses because we had no job. We made it very clear that without V.A. we could not start school of any kind. We were again told we were approved.

Now CTU wants almost 5000 dollars for two courses my husband did take and two other courses he has not taken because V.A. denied our benefit request. They won't even give us a break and let us just pay for the two courses my husband did take, they are insisting that we pay for the whole quarter. It is people of this ilk that give online universities a bad reputation. Please , do yourself a favor do not do business with CTU. They will lie to you and then blame you for not understanding their double-speak.Now, one word of warning, this situation hasn't been verified by anyone at CTU. It could be a dishonest gripe, or could be spot-on criticism – it's difficult to tell. I'm also wondering what the problem is with the V.A. and why they aren't angry at the V.A. for denying the funding. If anyone from Colorado Technical University can comment on this it would be appreciated.

Mrs. Harris also followed up with this:

One other interesting little tidbit , despite not completing the last two assignments in the two courses he did take, he got a B. You know in any other college setting he would have gotten an incomplete, it makes me wonder if this is online learning or a diploma-mill. Please stress to everyone : Get it in writing! Never trust your admissions counselor, because they may either be lying to you ,or they may be being lied to . The lady who was my husband's counselor no longer works for CTU. If she was the honest woman she appeared to be I have to believe she quit when she found out what the college was doing.

Online schools could get student-aid break from Katrina

Story at the Chonicle of Higher Education:

A bill to provide education relief to victims of Hurricane Katrina would temporarily remove a controversial distance-education regulation, allowing some students attending virtual colleges to receive Federal financial aid for the first time.

Currently, colleges that enroll more than 50 percent of their students at a distance, or offer more than 50 percent of their courses through distance education, cannot participate in the federal aid programs. The rule was established in 1992, after a string of fraudulent correspondence programs ripped off students during the 1980s.

Online education market heating up

From RedNova:

The online distance education market is heating up, with enrollment expected to exceed 1 million students in 2005, representing a market of more than $6 billion, according to a recent report by Eduventures, an independent research firm.

Sean Gallagher, senior analyst for Eduventures and lead author of the report, said the focus in online distance learning will turn to quality over the next few years, and new brands, institutions and types of programs will emerge.

Using blogs to recruit students

Tell us what you think about this story from the Wall Street Journal:

A number of colleges and universities have begun including student blogs in the list of resources used in effort to attract new students. According to David Hawkins, director of public policy at the National Association for College Admissions Counseling, high school counselors and students want highly personal information as part of their recommendations and decisions about what college to attend. The personal, free-form nature of blog writing offers institutions just the kind of insight into the daily lives of students that prospective
students are looking for. Lewis and Clark College, which highlights nine student blogs, advises bloggers to use discretion in what they enter in their blogs, which are not censored. "We tell bloggers your mother is going to read this, and your grandmother is going to be reading this," said Mike Sexton, dean of admissions at Lewis and Clark.

Making Friends Online

A story from eSchoolNews:

"It makes me feel much more secure. I feel like I already have a little sense of community, or actually have one," Goldstein said during a break from unpacking in his new dorm room.

Many chatted about their future dorms and meal plans, sororities and fraternities, and their majors, as well as fantasy football, their worst drinking experiences, and television shows such as The O.C. and Laguna Beach.

Professors Online

Interesting study at First Monday: "Professors 0nline: The Internet's Impact on College Faculty," by Steve Jones and Camille Johnson-Yale, reports on findings from a nationwide
survey of Internet use by U.S. college faculty.

Early Internet adoption on college campuses has generally given college faculty a head start on Internet use. Indeed, college faculty have played a pioneering role in Internet development and have brought their work to college campuses early in the life of the Internet. Researchers like J.C.R. Licklider and Lawrence G. Roberts were on the faculty at M.I.T. Licklider, a computer scientist, headed the division of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in the early 1960s that set the wheels in motion for funding the Internet's development, while Roberts headed the engineers that created ARPANET, the agency's computer network and precursor to today's Internet. Leonard Kleinrock served at M.I.T. and U.C.L.A. and is widely credited as creating the first node on the ARPANET. Robert Taylor, on the faculty at the University of Utah, succeeded Licklider at ARPA and was responsible for conceiving the need for an ARPA computer network and spurring on Roberts and his team. His Utah colleague Ivan Sutherland did pioneering work on computer graphics. Doug Engelbart, on the faculty at Stanford, invented the computer mouse (among other things).

Research universities began to wire their campuses comparatively early, in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. Other universities followed in the 1980s and 1990s, and soon virtually all campus classroom, laboratory, office, and student residence buildings had high-speed Internet access. The coming of the Internet to college campuses wasn't always smooth: Wiring was often uneven. Typically, it began with science and engineering buildings, then other office and classroom buildings, then dorms and other campus buildings. Faculty greeted the innovation with mixed reviews; the Internet enjoyed greater popularity among faculty from the sciences and engineering departments than among those from other departments. Still, no matter the diffusion of Internet connectivity or use on college campuses, the "jump start" with the Internet that U.S. college and university communities enjoyed put them well ahead of most of the rest of the population and ahead of most industries.

Students impacted by hurricane go online

From the Collegiate Times:

Not all college students displaced by Hurricane Katrina want to relocate to new universities, and, to help those students, Virginia Tech is collaborating with other universities to offer a unique online course of study this fall.

" We know that many colleges and universities in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi will not be able to resume their fall semester and students are scrambling for alternatives,&lrquo; wrote David Spence, president of the Southern Regional Education Board, in a recent statement. " With the help of dozens of colleges and universities nationwide, we can now offer students key courses online to bridge them through this difficult time and eventually allow them to return to their home campuses.&lrquo;

Term-paper vendor sued

From Inside Higher Education:

A graduate student has filed a lawsuit charging three online vendors of term papers with selling a paper she wrote without her permission. Blue Macellari is currently pursuing graduate degrees at Johns Hopkins University and Duke University. The paper in question, which was written when she was a student at Mount Holyoke College, was posted on Macellari's personal Web page in 1999 but turned up for sale on DoingMyHomework.com, FreeforEssays.com, and FreeforTermPapers.com, all of which are owned by an Illinois company called R2C2. Macellari said she did not give her permission to use the paper, which itself could violate honor codes at Johns Hopkins and Duke. John Palfrey, law
professor at Harvard University and executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said that the defendants will have difficulty prevailing if Macellari's complaint is accurate. On the question of whether the action would have an appreciable effect on the sale of papers online, Palfrey was less optimistic. Comparing Macellari's lawsuit to similar actions to limit spam, he noted that spam continues to grow unabated. "It's hard to bring enough spam
lawsuits to make a big difference," he said.

Millions of students go back to school … online

From PRWeb:

August means the end of summer and the start of a new academic year for millions of college students. However, according to the results from a 2004 Sloan Consortium survey, for 2.6 million students, and growing, going to college means going online and not on campus.

For the online college student, preparation for the start of classes does not include packing clothes or dorm room essentials; however, it is critical for a student's success to prepare for the unique issues and circumstances they will encounter while taking college courses online.

There are also some great tips in that article for online students. So be sure to check them out.