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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- 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 […]
- Education Department releases final rule for Workforce Pell - Natalie Schwartz, Higher Ed DiveThe U.S. Department of Education on Monday released final regulations detailing the process for how programs as short as eight weeks can get approval from their governors and the federal government to be eligible for Pell Grants. The rule carries out the statutory standards that short-term programs must meet related to student outcomes — including […]
- College students are booing commencement speakers celebrating AI, but the wave of hate hasn’t stopped them from using it to cheat on their exams - Sasha Rogelberg, FortuneOn one hand, they’ve made their ire toward the technology clear: Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was met with hisses during his commencement remarks at the University of Arizona’s graduation ceremony on Sunday when he invoked the inevitability of a future with artificial intelligence. “The question is not whether AI will shape the world. It […]
- Online Education Market Hits New High | Major Giants edX, Pearson, FutureLearn - Open PRThe latest study released on the Global Online Education Market by HTF MI Research evaluates market size, trend, and forecast to 2033. The Online Education study covers significant research data and proofs to be a handy resource document for managers, analysts, industry experts and other key people to have ready-to-access and self-analyzed study to help […]
Other Curated News:
News from UPCEA:
Crime in the Future: Lessons Learned from Hollywood
Although the timelines are rarely ever accurate, Hollywood has often expanded our minds to see what the future could bring us, ranging from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey predicting a future with artificial intelligence and Star Wars with robotics being commonplace, to The Simpsons…
How and When Might the Great AI Job Replacement Take Place?
While there are isolated examples of wholesale layoffs among a few individual companies, the broad scale loss of jobs has not yet materialized. So far, the impact of Generative AI (GenAI) on the general workforce has been to enhance productivity rather than to reduce the…
Advocating for FAFSA Fixes and State Authorization Reciprocity | Policy Matters (May 2024)
Major Updates UPCEA Co-Signs Request to Congress on FAFSA Fix Proposal In a letter led by the American Council on Education (ACE), UPCEA joined with other organizations to seek legislation for crucial adjustments to the FAFSA process to enhance its efficiency and fairness. Key proposals…
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