In era of high costs, humanities come under attack
Oregon State University President Ed Ray flinched when a stranger confronted him to say his daughter had just graduated from the school with a degree in philosophy. “I thought, ‘Oh my God,’” says Ray, who expected he would have to fend off yet another diatribe about the questionable value, in a weak employment market, of majoring in philosophy and other humanities subjects. In fact, the man wanted to thank him, Ray says. His daughter, he said, had just gotten a good job as an ethicist at a hospital. Ray’s anxiety was understandable. As rising tuition and student debt makes prospective income a bigger part of choosing a major, humanities disciplines such as philosophy and history are under attack in favor of such fields as engineering and business, which students, parents, and policymakers like because they offer jobs and salaries that justify the cost of university tuition. “Higher education has really pressed this idea that if you have a college education, you’ll make more,” says Ray, who is an economist by training. That strategy has backfired, he says. “Shame on us. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that the next step is, which major pays the most.” That question is now driving a
The five most important ed-tech trends at SXSWedu
I've been on the ground in Austin for the South By Southwest EducationConference & Festival 22 hours. In that time I've interviewed six people, chatted with many more, and hit the Java Jive in the Hilton four times. Here's what I see as the biggest trends coming out of the conference.
- Data and analytics. There seems to be a consensus, which Bill Gates will no doubt highlight in his keynote tomorrow, that the most important potential--as yet unrealized--contribution of technology to teaching and learning is the ability to extract meaningful insights from the myriad information that students generate as they travel through life on their learning journeys: diagnostics, individualized goals and plans, demographic information, performance evaluations, and on and on from cradle to mortarboard. Companies like InBloom and Engrade envision a teacher working like a doctor, synthesizing reams of test