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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  • How to reclaim humanity in the AI classroom - Patrice Seuwou, Times Higher Ed
    As GenAI changes how students study and complete assessments, higher education educators must focus on metacognition, clarity and connection, says Patrice Seuwou. Nine in 10 UK undergraduates who took part in a recent Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) survey said they had used GenAI in their assessments. Students can now produce polished assignments without engaging […]
  • The future of higher education in an AI-driven economy - Davenport University
    Higher education is entering its most transformative era in generations. Artificial intelligence is reshaping what we learn and how we learn. In the next decade, we’ll witness wholesale changes in higher education, career development and workforce readiness. For forward-thinking institutions, employers and entrepreneurs, this is a moment of enormous opportunity. We’re building the intellectual infrastructure […]
  • You Can’t AI-Proof the Classroom, Experts Say. Get Creative Instead. - Emma Whitford, Inside Higher Ed
    Experts agree that instructors must remind their students that learning requires practice. Blue books made a comeback in 2025. In an effort to prevent students from feeding final essay prompts into ChatGPT, some professors asked their students to sit down and write in-person in the lined, sky-blue booklets that served as the college standard for […]
  • McKinsey Publishing’s year in charts - McKinsey
    McKinsey Global Publishing’s data visualization team shares a curated selection of the most compelling data it worked with this year—spotlighting the major themes that defined 2025. Our Week in Charts series showcases charts that help explain a rapidly changing world. From artificial intelligence to population transitions and shifting trade routes, the forces reshaping the global […]
  • Future-proof provision means offering degrees plus skills - Brendan O’Malley, University World News
    To improve employability, tertiary education should recalibrate provision to focus additionally on ensuring students acquire skills useful in the current and future labour market and improve how they make those identifiable to employers. Key steps include identifying what those skills are, examining whether the curriculum and learning experience delivers on them and embedding micro-credentials for […]
  • Upskilling Community Cancer Centers: A Training Pilot Hints at Promising Ways to Boost Oncology Clinical Research - Kara Bastarache, et al; Applied Clinical Trials Online
    The pilot project aimed to build clinical research capacity and enhance diversity in oncology trials at community cancer centers. Phase 1 identified barriers such as patient recruitment, staffing, and training needs, while Phase 2 provided targeted training to research-naïve programs. Training improved participants' knowledge and confidence, suggesting potential for increased trial access and diversity in […]
  • Enhancing College Education Management with Artificial Intelligence - Bioengineer
    In an age where technology shapes our daily lives, the role of artificial intelligence in education is taking center stage. A recent study conducted by researcher Q. Lai sheds light on how AI can transform the management of college student education. The findings, soon to be published in the journal Discover Artificial Intelligence, mark a […]
  • How I rehumanize the college classroom for the AI-augmented age - Shean Cho Ayers, the Conversation
    I am a college professor working at the intersection of humanities and artificial intelligence, and yes, I believe the latter not only threatens to devalue college, but it also risks stripping humanity from our lives altogether. It doesn’t have to be this way. AI automating away parts of work and life challenges the next generation […]
  • AI Isn't Killing Education - John Nosta, Psychology Today
    AI isn’t destroying learning, it’s exposing how education replaced thinking with ritual. Knowledge has shifted from static maps to living webs that demand judgment, not recall. The real risk isn’t ignorance, but fluent minds that no longer notice when thinking stops. For the first time, machines outperform humans in domains that education has long treated […]
  • University-Developed AI Tool Helps Simplify Transfer Process - Abby Sourwine, GovTech
    A new tool developed by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, is helping colleges simplify transfer credit evaluation, potentially reducing labor and expediting decisions. About 120 college campuses across the U.S. are piloting a new artificial intelligence tool designed to make transfer course equivalencies clearer and more standardized. Credit transfer is a point of […]
  • Universities must lead the world through change, ACU told - Brendan O’Malley, University World News
    Instability and crisis are increasingly the ‘new normal’ across the world, but universities should approach this as a landscape of opportunity, solidifying their role as anchors of stability and leaders of progress, the Association of Commonwealth Universities’ (ACU) Congress was told. As change hurtles towards us from all sides and in new forms, universities will […]
  • 70% of employers have confidence in universities – Survey - Nathan M Greenfield, University World News
    Seventy per cent of employers indicate that they have either “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in America’s higher education institutions, according to a new survey by the American Association of Colleges & Universities (AAC&U). Another 23% indicated they had some confidence, with only 7% indicating “very little confidence”. Seventy-three per cent […]
  • For the First Time, AI Analyzes Language as Well as a Human Expert - Steve Nadis, Wired
    This view was summed up by Noam Chomsky, a prominent linguist, and two coauthors in 2023, when they wrote in The New York Times that “the correct explanations of language are complicated and cannot be learned just by marinating in big data.” AI models may be adept at using language, these researchers argued, but they’re […]
  • Purdue unveils comprehensive AI strategy; trustees approve ‘AI working competency’ graduation requirement - Phillip Fiorini, Purdue
    Purdue University on Friday (Dec. 12) unveiled a broad strategy of AI@Purdue across five functional areas: Learning with AI, Learning about AI, Research AI, Using AI and Partnering in AI. A key element of the comprehensive plan came as the Board of Trustees approved a first-of-its-kind plan in the country to introduce an “AI working […]
  • 2025: The State of Generative AI in the Enterprise - Tim Tully, Joff Redfern, Deedy Das, Derek Xiao, Menlo
    Venture funding surged back toward all-time highs, with nearly half of it concentrated in just a handful of frontier AI labs. Then the euphoria peaked. An MIT study2 claiming that 95% of generative AI initiatives fail rattled markets over the summer, exposing how quickly sentiment could shift beneath the weight of AI’s massive capex spend. […]
  • Skills are the new hiring currency: 86% of employers say certificates show real job readiness - Preston Fore, Forbes
    No longer does simply getting a degree guarantee career success; instead, employers are increasingly evaluating candidates based on demonstrable skills—and credentials that prove them. And a new report from Western Governors University released today, shared first exclusively with Fortune, underscores that shift: 86% of employers now see nondegree certificates as valuable indicators of job readiness. […]
  • The Psychology of AI Doom - Andrew, the Batch
    In this letter, I’d like to explore why some people who are knowledgeable in AI take extreme positions on AI “safety” that warn of human extinction and describe scenarios, such as AI deciding to “take over,” based less on science than science fiction. As I wrote in last year’s Halloween edition, exaggerated fears of AI […]
  • Gpt-5.2 is the first human replacer -Wes Roth, YouTube
    This video by Wes Roth, published in December 2025, discusses the release of OpenAI's GPT-5.2, describing it as a massive leap forward rather than a small incremental update. The second half of the video focuses on the economic implications, specifically analyzing a new benchmark called "GDP-eval," which measures performance on real-world, economically valuable tasks. In […]
  • Micro-credentials as shape-shifters: From learning to recognition - Simone Ravaioli, University World News
    What is perceived as ‘new’ is the shape – the naming, the framing, the emerging infrastructure around them. What is not new is the spirit – the longstanding practice of short, targeted, work-based learning tightly connected to capability and performance. Employers have always participated in lifelong learning, but they have never called it ‘micro-credentials’. This […]
  • Bringing state-of-the-art Gemini translation capabilities to Google Translate - Rose Yao, the Keyword
    We’re bringing Gemini’s most powerful translation capabilities to Google Translate for text, launching a beta experience for live speech-to-speech translations with headphones, and adding new languages to the app for practice and skill building. True understanding comes from not just what someone says, but also the nuance of how they say it. Today, Google Translate […]

Other Curated News: 

News from UPCEA: 

UPCEA Issues Public Comments to Department of ED on Regular + Substantive, Distance Education Regulations

Today, UPCEA has submitted comments to the US Department of Education in response to their Notice of Public Rulemaking (NPRM) issued on April 2, 2020, which closes on May 4, 2020. These regulations were informed by the 2018-2019 negotiated rulemaking committee. We wrote regarding clarification…

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Digital Learning Pulse Survey: 90% of U.S. Higher Ed Institutions Used Emergency Distance Education to Complete Spring 2020 Term

The survey of higher education’s immediate priorities related to the COVID-19 pandemic was conducted April 6-19 by Bay View Analytics on behalf of OLC, WCET, UPCEA, CDLRA and Every Learner Everywhere, and underwritten by Cengage; findings will be discussed in a webinar, this Friday, April…

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Regional conferences go virtual ⁠— and are free for members!

Exciting news: All five of our 2020 UPCEA Regional Conferences this fall will now be fully virtual AND are free of charge to our members! Choose one or all five regions for this new conference experience—Virtually Together: 2020 UPCEA Regional Conference Series. All are open…

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