Getting closer to ubiquitous fast connection to information → →

Fraser Speirs writing about 1:1 deployment in K-12 schools using the iPad:

The shift towards LTE cellular networking - which is typically faster than the broadband in a school - is starting to look like an interesting option for schools that cannot provision or scale their networks to multiple thousands of devices.

When using the iPad at coffee shops or hotels during conferences, I do not even bother anymore looking for wifi. It is exciting that schools are looking to go that direction.

Forget "traditional" social media means of communicating to students about financial aid, via facebook, twitter, or the less "social" of email, web portal, or snail mail. We should be thinking about push notificaitons. I am only half joking.

Time for an overhaul to sanity?

Friday, Congress passed a transportation bill that included extending the 3.4% interest rate on Undergraduate Subsidized Loans for another school year. While this is only a one-year extension, it is better then nothing.

But the question was always how was this going to be paid for. One of the ways that it is being paid for is to limit the total number of years students can have their loans subsidized to six-years after they start their undergraduate program. The rule only effects new student loan borrowers after July 1, 2013.

Starting July 1st, 2013, new borrowers will be limited in the amount of time they can receive an in-school interest subsidy. Students will lose eligibility for that subsidy once they have reached 150% of the published length of their education program.[1]

With this latest caveat, there is a growing list of “it’s complicated” about financial aid rules that need to be disclosed and explained to students and their families. These caveats include the six-year lifetime limit on Federal Pell Grant that was enacted retroactively upon students already pursuing their education, the elimation of the ability to benefit testing to qualify for federal financial aid for students without a high school diploma or GED (that grandfathered in previous enrolled students) and the elimination of subsidized loans for graduate students (including those already enrolled in their programs). Year-round Pell Grant was around for a whole school year before it was elimiated. Academic Competiveness Grant and SMART Grant programs were around for a couple of years before not being funded.

Does this constant change increase the work load for financial aid adminstrators? Yes, but that is not really that important. Financial aid administrators have and will continue to implement the programs and get the job done. It is what financial aid administrators do and get paid to do. By and large, they do a pretty good job at this.

While these fly-by-night programs and abrupt course changes are issues for financial aid adminstrators, the real problem is for the students who are navigating through their education. Students make plans and our hope is that they are making plans based on their program time horizon of two, four or even five years (let alone graduate school beyond). We now have students who have three or four different loan servicers, have lost aid one year, gain some other aid the next year, made plans based on current information only to have to radically change plans due to unpredictable decisions of Congress. If we ask students to commit to an educational goal, should we not also have to make the same promise to students?

We are at a time for a complete overhaul of the financial aid system and the way that student’s educations are funded in this country. It is time to stop the bandaid approach to policy and programs.

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1. House and Senate Pass Student Loan Interest Rate Extension via Association of Community College Trustees  ↩
   

Why I work at a non-profit art and design school

Stephen Beal - What Is the Value of a College Degree?

Despite the recent attacks on higher education, I remain a passionate advocate for the comprehensive, innovative educational model that our college espouses. In fact, I believe that this is the perfect time for creative, committed students to attend art and design school. There have never been more career opportunities for creative people, and the value of a college degree has never been greater.

One thing that I would add to Stephen’s article above that is often overlooked in talking about arts education (or most other “types” of educations) is the material is not the end goal, but a means to faciliate and train thinking. Few people educated in the US can recite the Presidents of the United States or name all fifty states after high school (let alone what countries that make up Africa), but that is not the point.

The point is that in good education systems it is a means to foster and develop student thinking so that students can use those thinking skills long after the basic facts have faded into the past.