Online and Professional Continuing Education News
See below for a listing of curated news articles of the day brought to you by Ray Schroeder, Senior Fellow at UPCEA.
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- Bypassing the Bachelor’s Degree - Josh Moody, Inside Higher EdHazelden Betty Ford Graduate School created a pathway for students to earn a master’s degree without a bachelor’s. Officials say the program helps passionate students find their footing and fills much-needed workforce roles in the counseling field. Kevin Doyle, president of Hazelden Betty Ford Graduate School, said the institution was inspired to launch the program […]
- Law Professors Prefer AI Over Peer Answers - Alejandro Salinas, et al; SSRNLarge language models (LLMs) are increasingly promoted as educational tutors, yet most evaluations focus on domains with a single ground truth. Many disciplines, however, hinge on judgment: reasoning, weighing ambiguity, and reaching defensible conclusions. Law provides a sharp test. We conducted a blinded evaluation of short-answer tutoring in contracts courses with sixteen U.S. law professors. […]
- How Personalized AI Tutors Can Help Students Learn - Emma Needleman, Knowledge at WhartonThe researchers built an AI tutoring platform that gives all students access to the same gen AI chatbot and course materials, but varies the sequence in which practice problems are assigned. In a five-month Python course across 10 Taipei high schools, students were randomly assigned to one of two groups: One received a standard sequence […]
- Tech Future Promotes Continuing Professional Education - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher EdIt wasn’t that long ago that professional education was the less-respected, fragile forum for night school, weekend programs, extension and applied study at many colleges and universities. More recently housing the nascent online programs of the 1990s, this school or college was last in recognition and stature among the more powerful renowned and acclaimed schools […]
- Stackable Micro-Credentials: The Revenue Multiplier Enterprises Actually Buy - AI CertsEnterprises are moving away from broad, slow degrees and generic upskilling programs. Instead, they are rapidly shifting to modular, skill-specific training. Stackable micro-credentials group together narrow, job-focused skills to create clear, targeted career pathways. This blog shows strategy allows businesses to close immediate talent gaps while increasing internal revenue, creating a highly efficient path to […]
- Quantum’s bold promise: What business leaders need to know - Henning Soller and Sven Smit with Anna Heid, McKinseyFor years, business leaders and corporate boards have viewed quantum computing (QC) as a threat—and for good reason: It has the potential to break today’s strongest encryptions. That moment, commonly known as Q-Day, will occur when quantum computers succeed in factoring exceptionally large numbers, undermining the math that public-key cryptography depends on. Though business leaders […]
- Agentic AI and job skills. How will agentic AI reshape the workforce? - McKinseyIn this video, McKinsey Senior Partners Kate Smaje and Robert Levin and Special Adviser Eric Lamarre, authors of Rewired: How Leading Companies Win with Technology and AI (Wiley, April 2026), discuss what’s real—and what isn’t—about AI-driven workforce disruption. The authors reflect on how AI is changing the kinds of skills organizations value most and what […]
- Five big changes coming to higher education July 1 - Meredith Kolodner, Matt Krupnick and Jon Marcus, the Hechinger ReportFrom student loan repayment to career and technical training, big changes in higher education are coming July 1. Tens of thousands of students are sent each year to Texas' alternative disciplinary schools, sometimes for minor offenses like being disruptive. Plus, hundreds of college-based programs around the country are designed to help students who are former […]
- California Senate passes bill that would create $12B in state research funding - Ben Unglesbee, Higher Ed DiveCalifornia’s state Senate passed a bill on Wednesday that would create a new public entity to help fund health and science research, including at California universities, amid the Trump administration’s disruption to the federal research system. SB 895, which passed by a 29-9 vote, would establish the California Foundation for Science and Health Research and […]
- White House Aims to Establish Political Oversight of Federal Grants - Ryan Quinn, Inside Higher EdThe White House is advancing a sweeping rule change that would give administration officials more power over billions of dollars in federal grants. The regulations seek to codify that Trump officials have the right to keep doing what they started last year: canceling thousands of grants that they said didn’t align with the president’s priorities, […]
- 2026 EDUCAUSE The Impact of AI on Learning Assessment Report - Jenay Robert, EDUCAUSEFew areas of higher education have been as passionately debated as learning assessment in the age of AI. Since the debut and rapid adoption of readily available generative AI chatbots, educators have grappled with how learning assessment would be impacted. By only surveying individuals who are currently doing the hands-on work of learning assessment, we […]
- eHBCU: A first-of-its-kind HBCU online consortium to expand economic mobility through education - McKinseyHistorically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are essential for creating economic mobility. According to McKinsey research, they enroll more than twice as many Pell Grant-eligible (low-income) students as non-HBCU institutions, and their graduates are 51 percent more likely to move into a higher-income quintile than graduates of non-HBCUs. The mean mobility rate across all US […]
- Autistic students who make it through college face a bigger challenge: getting jobs - Kelly Field, Hechinger ReportToday’s college graduates are entering one of the tightest job markets in years, as companies scale back entry-level hiring amid economic uncertainty and the explosion of artificial intelligence. Just under a third of 2025 graduates - and fewer than half of 2024 graduates - have found full-time employment related to their education, according to one […]
- Choosing to Stay Human - Ethan Mollick, One Useful ThingBut using AI for writing has a cost beyond turning off readers, it risks undermining the development of an important human task. I am lucky enough to have been writing for decades, and I have developed my own style which I think shines through whether I am writing a book, a tweet, or a blog […]
- Rural Opportunity,Through Apprenticeship - Sara Weissman, Inside Higher EdHoward isn’t originally from Exeter, a town of roughly 700 people, but she grew up on her family’s cattle farm in a similarly rural area just a half hour away. Over her years in school, she was diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and dyslexia, and she struggled to get the support she needed. Now, she’s training […]
- How to choose the right AI tools for teaching - Laura Milne, Times Higher EducationUniversity educators have a duty to prepare students for an AI-enabled world. This can be challenging, given the plethora of tools available; the temptation to try every shiny new one is common, but doing so without careful consideration may raise ethical concerns. So which AI tools should we use? And how should we incorporate them […]
- Free course empowers people with disabilities - McPherson Media Group, Shepparton NewsThe world‑first program, delivered by Collaborating 4 Inclusion and The University of Sydney, supports inclusive, practical and person‑centred emergency preparedness. It was co-designed by people with a disability and focuses on emergency preparedness for individuals and groups. The training consists of six self-paced online modules completed over five weeks, which include reading, videos and activities, […]
- Assessing critical thinking in critical times - Kate Williams, Times Higher EducationImproving critical thinking is neither easy to do nor easy to measure. Outside educational philosophers, it is often defined as something “you know when you see it”. Or, perhaps more clearly, you know it when you don’t see it. When people opine on the absence of critical thinking, they often use examples of illogical assumption, […]
- Generative AI use and misuse call for assessment reform in higher education - Igor Chirikov, Ivan Smirnov, and René F. Kizilcec, ScienceThe debate about the impact of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) on higher education is polarized. Some portray GenAI as normalizing cheating at scale (1), whereas others argue that misconduct patterns have changed little (2). These competing narratives underscore the need for reliable data on where GenAI use is concentrated and where misuse is most likely. […]
- How Golden Gate’s big AI bet will energize fundamental changes - Alcino Donadel, University BusinessAt the height of California’s gold rush, a YMCA night school was founded to train students in gold assaying and assist Chinese immigrants with learning English. It marks the humble beginnings of Golden Gate University—and an enduring tale that inspires President Brent White to capitalize on a new national phenomenon.Golden Gate made three major announcements […]
Other Curated News:
News from UPCEA:
A Comprehensive View of the Role of AI in the University
Today as I publish the several curated reading lists I maintain, it strikes me that we are approaching the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into our universities in a piecemeal rather than a comprehensive fashion. It seems that most universities began taking up the topic…
The current environment for online higher education is defined by what the 2026 Landscape of Higher Education Report calls a decade of “structural change,” making the job of a Chief Online Learning Officer (COLO) complex and intensely stressful. COLOs are not operating in a vacuum;…
Honoring the Life and Legacy of Dr. Gary W. Matkin
UPCEA joins colleagues, friends, and the broader higher education community in mourning the passing of Dr. Gary W. Matkin, a distinguished leader in online and professional continuing education whose nearly five decades of service shaped institutions, expanded access, and advanced innovation across the globe. Dr….
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