A new education landscape is emerging. Colleges are changing how they operate and how they teach, under pressure from lawmakers, parents, and students to respond to new economic realities.
And new players are emerging—start-ups backed by record Silicon Valley investment, deep-pocketed foundations set on reform, and academic outsiders using platforms that let anyone teach courses.
The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Re:Learning project provides stories and analysis about this change moment for learning.
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NewsHow a BYU Campus Is Reshaping Online Education — and the Mormon Faith
PathwayConnect, a yearlong program created by Brigham Young University-Idaho, has graduated nearly 24,000 students by cutting marketing costs, stacking credentials, and mixing online classes with real-world meetups. What can other colleges learn from the endeavor? -
Facilities
What’s New in Freshman Housing? Buildings That Help Students Make Friends
As colleges tailor residences to the needs of first-year students, architects find that what works best isn’t what students say they want. -
News
In Purdue’s New Vision, How ‘Public’ Will Kaplan U. Be?
Here’s what we know about that question — and several others that have sprung up in the wake of the university’s surprising purchase of the for-profit institution. -
News
Why Colleges Need to Embrace the Apprenticeship
Apprenticeships are no longer an alternative to the college path but a supplement that prepares students for careers while they earn a degree. -
News
Coding Boot Camps Come Into the Fold With Campus Partnerships
The career-focused programs were initially pitched as the antithesis of traditional colleges. But now several boot camps are discovering the value of a more direct connection to universities, and vice versa. -
News
If You Had $45 Billion, What Would You Do to Improve Education?
Jim Shelton, now heading up the education portfolio at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, isn’t giving any details yet. But in this podcast, he emphasizes the value of bringing learning scientists together with educators to improve learning and increase equality. -
The Review
A ‘Netflix for Education’? Why LinkedIn’s New Product Should Give Us Pause
Is delivering video courses and short quizzes all it takes to develop knowledge and skills? -
News
A Higher-Education Rebel With a Cause
Sarah Short, who has taught some 44,000 students over a half-century at Syracuse University, wants to see more classroom interaction. -
News
Sudden Demise of Start-Up Textbook Supplier Leaves Small Colleges to Scramble
Investors in a Silicon Valley company called Rafter pulled the plug on it on Friday, and its college customers are now in what one described as “crisis-management mode.” -
News
Online Education Is Now a Global Market
MOOCs may have been overhyped, but their impact is far from over, says Simon Nelson, of the online-learning provider FutureLearn. And traditional colleges have a huge opportunity if they’re just willing to think a little differently. -
Innovator
Boise State’s Innovation Guru Pushes a Start-Up Approach as a Model for Change
Gordon Jones, who moved to Idaho after experience at Harvard and in business, explains how to avoid the “immunological rejection response” to change and why to take more responsibility for what happens to graduates. -
Technology
How Colleges Should Adapt in a Networked Age
In a Re:Learning podcast, The Chronicle talks with Joshua Cooper Ramo, who points to a shift in attitudes toward college and authority figures in general. -
Technology
2 Projects That Promote Alternative Credentials Reach Key Milestones
Developers of a “credentials registry” unveil a prototype of the tool. And six more colleges joined the 21st Century Skills Badging Challenge. -
Technology
Amazon Expands Its Reach on Campuses
Colleges that have contracts with the online retailer stand to profit by pocketing 2 percent of every purchase delivered. -
News
A Comedian and an Academic Walk Into a Podcast …
Shane Mauss, a stand-up comic who likes picking professors’ brains, has become an unlikely but engaging science educator. -
Teaching Technology
What Clicks From 70,000 Courses Reveal About Student Learning
A study of more than 900 colleges by Blackboard hints at the potential of harnessing data from learning-management systems as “a real-time indicator of student engagement.” -
News
Group Unveils a ‘Model Policy’ for Handling Student Data
Academics and tech-company officials met earlier this year to hash out approaches for the ethical treatment of information collected via learning-management systems, online courseware, and other electronic sources. -
Commentary
MOOCs Are Dead. Long Live Online Higher Education.
The hype has faded for the massive courses, and their leading commercial proponents have moved on to other gigs. But they’ve left a legacy of the transformative potential of online technology in teaching. -
Teaching
You Don’t Know Your Students. This Professor Hopes to Change That.
Michael Wesch, an associate professor of anthropology at Kansas State University, joins his students for an unusual tour of their lives beyond the classroom. -
Technology
When Education Innovation Is the Family Business: a Dinner With the Romers
A Chronicle reporter sits down with three generations of ed-tech insiders, including a founder of Western Governors University and the father-daughter team behind a new adult-education platform. -
Teaching Technology
Professors Assign Students to Post to BuzzFeed. You’ll Never Believe What Happens Next.
The approach, in use in a variety of subjects, is said to engage students in new ways and allow them to demonstrate their understanding of the material. -
Teaching Technology
As Coding Boot Camps Grow, One Tries a Nonprofit Model
The leader of the Turing School of Software & Design says its mission is to promote social justice and help diversify computing fields. -
Teaching
More Professors Know About Free Textbook Options, but Adoption Remains Low
Only 6.6 percent of faculty members are “very aware” of open educational resources, a survey found, and many say they can’t find such materials, although their use in introductory courses is ticking up. -
Technology
Which Ed-Tech Tools Truly Work? New Project Aims to Tell Why No One Seems Eager to Find Out
Jefferson Education, an incubator affiliated with the University of Virginia, has enlisted more than 100 educators, entrepreneurs, and experts to examine why neither companies nor their customers tend to rigorously evaluate their products. -
Teaching Technology
Science Students Learn to Use Social Media to Communicate Research
A professor of chemical engineering and a communications professional have teamed up to teach an innovative course at the California Institute of Technology. -
News
Are MOOCs Forever?
Coursera’s Daphne Koller discusses plans for the future of a format that some thought would never last this long. -
Textbooks
As Free Textbooks Go Mainstream, Advocate Says Colleges Should Do More to Support Them
Hal Plotkin, a longtime supporter of open educational resources, says efforts like the Zero Textbook Cost degree could save students billions of dollars. -
Teaching
For Students Taking Online Courses, a Completion Paradox
Researchers ponder the finding that at community colleges, online classes result in lower grades but more completed degrees. -
The Review
Amazon’s Quiet Dominance of Higher-Ed Learning Platforms
More and more colleges have moved their learning-management software to “the cloud.” What they don’t realize is that it’s all on the same cloud. -
Technology
As Big Data Comes to College, Officials Wrestle to Set New Ethical Norms
Institutions collect startling amounts of information on students. Do the students have a right to know how it’s being used, and should they be able to opt out? -
Learning
Does Reading on Computer Screens Affect Student Learning?
The evidence is largely anecdotal, and the research is inconclusive, but many professors say reading online clearly hampers students’ ability to take in what they study. -
Teaching
How to Prepare Professors Who Thought They’d Never Teach Online
As distance learning goes mainstream, colleges are rethinking how they train faculty members. -
News
Same Time, Many Locations: Online Education Goes Back to Its Origins
Decades after colleges embraced courses that students could take at their own pace, the trend is toward synchrony once again. -
Commentary
Adaptive Learning Earns an Incomplete
A recent report attempts to determine whether the teaching technique actually helps students learn better than traditional methods do. Because of methodological challenges, the results are inconclusive. -
News
Remember Second Life? Its Fans Hope to Bring VR Back to the Classroom
Evolving virtual-reality technology holds great promise for higher education, reports A.J. Kelton, director of emerging and instructional technology at Montclair State University. -
Technology
How One 84-Year-Old Professor Thinks About Tech in the Classroom
William Wendt, who teaches online and hybrid courses at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, says, “You have to go with the modern world, and things change.” -
Technology
What the Slowdown in Ed-Tech Investment Means for Colleges
Some start-ups may well burn out, but at least two areas are still growing: career services and learning analytics. -
News
Why Georgetown’s Randy Bass Wants to ‘Rebundle’ College
Believe it or not, he says, traditional institutions have a long history of innovation. His university’s project on the future of higher education intends to continue that trend. -
The Review
Distance Ed’s Second Act
Professors are still skeptical of online education, but they’re more involved in it than ever. -
Publishing
Elsevier’s Purchase of Social-Sciences Hub May Signal a Strategy Shift
The move by the publishing giant caused a ruckus on social media. -
Teaching
Carol Dweck Says Theory of Educational Mind-Set Is Often Misunderstood
In an interview, the Stanford professor also shares some of her latest ideas about how to help students push forward when they have setbacks. -
News
Backer of Student Loans Pivots in Push to Reshape Higher Education
USA Funds is increasingly a player — to some, a suspect one — in efforts aimed at helping students make strong connections between college and their career. -
Share Your Thoughts
Who Do You Want to Hear on Our Podcast?
We asked readers whom they’d like us to interview on our weekly podcast. Tell us your favorite. -
News
Why Audrey Watters Thinks Tech Is a Trojan Horse Set to ‘Dismantle’ the Academy
In a new podcast, a prominent critic of education technology deconstructs what she calls the “Silicon Valley narrative.” -
Teaching
The TEDification of the Large Lecture
Oregon State University is among colleges that are redesigning arena classrooms and bringing higher production values to how they use them, to help keep students engaged. -
Commentary
Reaching Students in the Back Row
Put aside your sense of irony. Here are some thoughtful ways to use technology to advance personalized learning. -
Finance
The Mark Cuban Effect: How a Vocal Billionaire Is Betting on Higher Ed’s Disruption
The celebrity businessman and ed-tech mentor says education “is a mess.” He hopes to help turn it around with investments in start-ups and sharp criticism of bloated administration, glitzy facilities, and “easy money” in student loans. -
News
This Mongolian Teenager Aced a MOOC. Now He Wants to Widen Their Impact.
Battushig Myanganbayar enrolled at MIT after crushing one of its first massive open online courses. And he has some ideas about how they could make a real difference in the developing world. -
News
Dissecting One (Extremely Boring) College Lecture
Three teaching experts offer color commentary on a classroom scene, and discuss the pros and cons of this enduring teaching format. -
Technology
How Academics Can Use Snapchat to Share Their Research
A Norwegian professor posts videos on the platform, even though it deletes them after 24 hours. -
Technology
2 Hot Themes From a Fast-Growing Innovation Summit
Mentorship tools and college-to-career services dominated the buzz at a gathering of ed-tech companies, investors, and educators. -
The Review
A Moment of Clarity on the Role of Technology in Teaching
A recent report from MIT about online education argues that the right way to use technology is to help professors do what they already do, but better. -
News
Why This MIT Dean Is Leaving Her Job to Start a New Kind of University
Christine Ortiz explains how her radical project was sparked by interdisciplinary body-armor research and some time spent on a technology-free retreat. -
Technology
JetBlue Will Pay Employees’ College Tuition Upfront
The new program, for online classes at Thomas Edison State University, follows the model devised by Starbucks but goes further. -
Technology
Tyler Cowen Says Online Professors Should Think Like Bloggers
The economics blogger and George Mason University professor says the distinction between universities and non-university educators is “crumbling.” Just look at his Marginal Revolution University. -
Publishing
Online Piracy of Academic Materials Extends to Scholarly Books
A website called Library Genesis, apparently a sister site to the notorious Sci-Hub, has ripped off thousands of university-press titles. -
News
Google’s ‘Education Evangelist': Students Are Changing Faster Than Colleges
Jaime Casap represents one of the country’s most powerful tech companies. He’s also a voice for minority students from poor families. -
The Review
Understanding the Origins of Ed-Tech Snake Oil
Product marketers are on the far end of a game of telephone that often starts with research findings that are both nuanced and provisional. -
Technology
How Sal Khan Hopes to Remake Education
Khan Academy has become a force. Its founder, Salman Khan, talks about his vision for the future, and what he thinks the college of tomorrow should look like. -
Re:Learning
More Colleges Turn to ‘Stackable’ Degrees as Entries to Graduate Programs
MOOC sequences that lead to certificates can also be the ticket into some master’s programs. Educators say that’s one way of easing barriers and cutting costs for students. -
Technology
4 Ed-Tech Ideas Face The Chronicle’s Version of ‘Shark Tank’
For the second year in a row, innovators with very different notions of how to improve higher education brought us their pitches. Here’s how they fared. -
News
Where Are They Now? The Latest From Some Education Innovators
Several contestants in The Chronicle’s 2015 “Shark Tank: Edu Edition” have made progress in developing their ideas over the past year. -
Re:Learning Podcast
The education landscape is changing. On The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Re:Learning podcast, you’ll meet the renegade teachers, ed-tech entrepreneurs, and longtime educators shaping the future of college. Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Overcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is part of our broader coverage of the future of education. For updates, follow the Re:Learning project on Twitter, Facebook, and iTunes. -
Commentary
The Odd Couple: How Ed Tech Must Support Vastly Different Types of Professors
Understanding the needs, interests, and technical proficiency of faculty members before jumping into features and solutions is an important way to improve the process. -
Re:Learning
How LinkedIn Views Its Role in Education
Should colleges be worried about this mammoth new education player? The Chronicle spoke with Michael Korcuska, LinkedIn’s vice president of management for learning, who says no. -
Teaching and Learning
3 Takeaways From the SXSWedu Conference
Hot topics at the gathering, an offshoot of the South by Southwest festival, centered on how technology is changing the college experience, and what that means for students, professors, and administrators. -
Technology
Tech May Streamline College Administrations, Not Just Classrooms
Professors shouldn’t be so resistant to technology-driven change, says Michael Staton, an entrepreneur. They stand to benefit from it. -
Commentary
What’s Really to Blame for the Failures of Our Learning-Management Systems
Procurement is a dirty word that most academics don’t like to talk about. But if we want better products, we have to get better at choosing them. -
News
Why Do Colleges Still Use Grades?
Pretty much everybody agrees that grades are not an effective measure of learning. So what are they good for, and what might be better? -
The Review
Students Are Spending Less on Textbooks, but That’s Not All Good
The numbers can be misleading, and the real question is whether the costs are still hurting vulnerable students’ chances to succeed. -
News
As Big-Data Companies Come to Teaching, a Pioneer Issues a Warning
Candace Thille says colleges shouldn’t let proprietary “black boxes” control the future of personalized learning. -
Teaching
UNC Gives Professors a Way to Rate Classroom Technologies Across Campuses
The new online-technologies commons will help faculty members find tools to use in their classrooms, and yield insights on which lead to positive student outcomes. -
Technology
Librarians Find Themselves Caught Between Journal Pirates and Publishers
Academics are increasingly turning to renegade websites like Sci-Hub to view subscriber-only articles free. The trend is putting librarians in an awkward position. -
The Review
How a ‘Syllabus Commons’ Could Change Higher Education
Colleges have the capacity to create a valuable new public tool. -
News
New Credential Aims to Make Professors Into Better Teachers
But advocates for adjunct faculty members worry it could become an additional burden for instructors who already carry a heavy load. -
Technology
Boom in Online Tutoring Means Another Cost for Many Students
One student’s perspective: “It’s Thursday night and you have two big homeworks due Friday. Your friends are going out. You’re just like, I just want to finish this, I don’t really care how this gets done.” -
News
Trends, Teaching, Transformation: The Chronicle’s Sessions at SXSWedu
At next month’s conference, we will again borrow a page from the TV show Shark Tank with a return of our “Shark Tank: Edu Edition.” -
Re:Learning
What the MIT Dean’s New University Can Learn From Past Upstarts
Administrators at Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering and Hampshire College reflect on the challenges of shaking up the standard system. -
Commentary
Muy Loco Parentis: How ‘Freakouts’ Over Student Privacy Hamper Innovation
Colleges should start thinking of data about students as data that in some way belongs to the students. Let them make the call about sharing it. -
News
MIT Dean Takes Leave to Start New University Without Lectures or Classrooms
Christine Ortiz, a dean of graduate education, envisions a new kind of college, built from scratch for today’s needs and with today’s technology. -
Technology
Computer Science, Meet Humanities: in New Majors, Opposites Attract
Stanford University sees such integration as a way to bring in students who are drawn to the arts but feel that they need computing skills for their careers. -
Technology
Does Technology Ever Reduce the Costs of Teaching?
The Chronicle spoke with three experts about ways colleges can use technology to reduce instructional costs. -
Online Education
Why More Colleges Are Emulating Deals Like the ASU-Starbucks Alliance
Student-acquisition costs are lower and retention rates are higher for institutions that team up with companies to give tuition discounts to workers. -
Curriculum
From a Red House Off Campus, Georgetown Tries to Reinvent Itself
The effort’s successes and failures hold lessons for other colleges interested in transformation from within. -
Technology
Money-Back Guarantees Come to Online Courses
The MOOC provider Udacity pledges that graduates of its four most marketable courses will earn a job in their field within six months of completing the program. -
Technology
The Story of a Digital Teddy Bear Shows How College Learning Is Changing
At a vast consumer electronics show last week, student entrepreneurs matched their corporate counterparts in pitching products for teaching. Whether any of them catches on is anyone’s guess. -
Teaching
Mapping a MOOC Reveals Global Patterns in Student Engagement
By looking at who comes from where, geographers can explore gender imbalance, achievement, and even motivation in open online courses. -
This Chart Shows the Promise and Limits of ‘Learning Analytics’
Data about how students learn could open new vistas in education, if only instructors can figure out how to use it. -
How For-Profit Education Is Now Embedded in Traditional Colleges
Proprietary institutions were easy to track and regulate. The new companies are something else entirely. -
News
What Are You Wondering About How Colleges Are Changing? Tell Us. We May Write About It.
Tell us what you want our reporters to explore in a coming story. -
Share Your Thoughts
Which of These Stories Should We Tackle Next?
We asked readers which questions they’re curious for us to research in a future story for Re:Learning. Tell us your favorite.
