Sector Insights

(MoneyWatch) Grappling with large cutbacks in state funding, America's public colleges and universities are responding by jacking up tuition, firing professors, shutting facilities and taking other drastic measures to reduce costs.

Every U.S. state except for North Dakota and Wyoming is spending less per student on higher education than they did before the 2008 financial crisis and ensuing recession, concludes the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington think-tank,...

Do those who teach MOOCs think it's worth it? A new survey indicates the answer is a qualified yes.

The Chronicle of Higher Education attempted to survey all 184 college professors who have taught a MOOC to date. It got responses from 103 of the professors and published the data here.

The Chronicle asked, "What is it like to teach 10,000 or more students at once, and does it really work?"

The answer is that it can work, though the median class size...

MINNEAPOLIS -- In response to the decision of the Marine Corps, Air Force, Coast Guard, and Army to suspend their tuition assistance programs due to the sequestration and other budgetary pressures, Capella University (http://www.capella.edu) has announced that it will cover the tuition assistance (TA) funding for the spring quarter 2013 for approximately 300 existing military learners who have been impacted by the suspension...

Online courses could open worthwhile classes at California's public colleges to thousands more students, or they could undermine the reputation of our widely admired public higher-education system. As the state embarks on its first foray into offering such courses for credit on a large scale, it's intriguing to think about virtual classrooms and the opportunities they present. Online courses could make a fine education possible even for students who cannot travel to a campus easily...

Tune in to a conversation about higher education today and you’re sure to hear about MOOCs—online courses that enroll tens of thousands of students from across the world, all for free. There’s no doubt the Internet has the potential to disrupt higher education as it did the publishing industry, or political leadership in the Arab world, by delivering access to information and democracy, but there’s another revolution happening in colleges and universities that is...