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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- Where today's job seekers have the best chance of getting hired - Mark Huffman, Consumer AffairsIf you're looking for the fastest path to employment, restaurants, hotels, entertainment venues, and tourism-related businesses are leading the way. Leisure and hospitality added roughly 70,000 jobs in May, making it the strongest-performing sector by a wide margin. Employers appear to be ramping up staffing ahead of the summer travel season. Healthcare continues to be […]
- Online Is a "Safe Space" in War - Robert Ubell, AI Learning Insights SubstackWhen remote classes were first tested so many years ago, who would have dreamed they would become a refuge for students and faculty cut off from campus by traumatic conflict? When the U.S. and Israel unexpectedly launched a war with Iran in late February, American colleges with branches in the Middle East took cues from […]
- 92% of US employers willing to offer higher starting salaries to graduates with micro-credentials - Business WireNew Coursera report highlights growing ROI on industry micro-credentials for learners, employees, and employers79% of US employers say micro-credential holders demonstrate improved productivity in their first year85% of US graduates with micro-credentials report securing a role aligned to their field within 12 months“Over the next decade, over 1.2 billion people are due to enter the […]
- New Federal Guidelines Threaten Almost Half of Graduate Arts Programs - Zachary Small, NY TimesThe Education Department is finalizing guidelines for an earnings test that would punish nearly half of all graduate programs in visual arts, music and performance based on the low income of recent alumni, according to the government’s calculations. The proposed guidelines apply to all university programs, and institutions whose alumni fail to meet them twice […]
- Higher ed’s next crisis won’t start in the classroom. It will start in the cloud - James L. Norrie, University BusinessHigher education has spent years worrying about enrollment cliffs, declining public trust, political polarization, and, as we enter the AI era, the commoditization of knowledge and the future value of degrees. Those concerns are real and deserve attention. But another crisis is quietly forming beneath the surface of nearly every college and university, and unlike […]
- The board’s role in managing emerging AI risks - McKinseyDuring a recent panel discussion, McKinsey and the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) gathered top chief information security officers (CISOs) and board directors, highlighting four priorities for effective oversight: strengthening governance and accountability, balancing innovation with risk, building real-time risk-management capabilities, and improving AI fluency in the boardroom. Together, these shifts signal that AI […]
- ‘If we make AI the enemy then surely it must become one’ - Stuart Christie, Times Higher EducationChatbots sit on our students’ shoulders, gathering information meticulously, whispering advice in their ears – and yet, it often comes up short. Still, GenAI’s hallucinations allow learners and educators to re-centre their thinking, recasting themselves as optimisers of fallible outputs. GenAI can also be used to challenge the untested assumptions of our own stances and […]
- A framework for ensuring student AI proficiency - Margaret Ellis, Times Higher EducationOver the past few semesters, I have structured my teaching around a framework that helps students build that capability: demystify, use and reflect. Many students arrive with strong opinions about AI but only a partial understanding of how these systems work. Some see them as nearly magical tools that can produce answers instantly. Others dismiss […]
- Reimagining What Higher Education Can Be - Kristen Turner, Drew UniversityStudents increasingly need skills that extend beyond traditional academic disciplines. They need to learn how to collaborate, solve complex problems, and adapt to new challenges. Drew’s new college is designed to address those realities. Rather than focusing solely on course credits and exams, students develop personalized learning pathways built around inquiry, mentorship, and real-world problem […]
- Five words and a GenAI prompt to spark deeper online learning - María Robertha Leal Isida and Dania Arriola Arteaga, Times Higher EdWe developed the “5E” framework (engage, explore, explain, elaborate and evaluate) to structure our online sessions around five learning stages. We then used GenAI to speed up lesson design and respond to our students’ needs in real time. Not only did this approach increase participation and deepen understanding of complex topics but it also allowed […]
- Will AI Help Revive the ‘Stale’ OPM Market? - Kathryn Palmer, Inside Higher EdOver the past few years, OPMs—including Coursera, iDesign and 2U—have adopted AI-powered features designed to enhance support for instructors and students through coaching, content creation, tutoring and curriculum mapping. According to an April analysis, 70 percent of OPMs are now deploying AI for such purposes. But experts are skeptical that the AI boom will have […]
- Are academics making an (em) dash for AI? - Times Higher EducationIn the four years since its commercial launch, generative artificial intelligence has had a profound impact on personal and professional life. But are academics enthusiasts or sceptics? Five scholars explain how the technology has affected their own practice – for good and bad. Artificial intelligence writing is instantly recognisable, we are told—soulless, dispassionate, and devoid […]
- 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 […]
Other Curated News:
News from UPCEA:
Prompting Progress: Advancing Your AI Skills
Generative artificial intelligence has the potential to greatly enhance your creativity, efficiency, productivity and relevance in nearly every role in higher education. The pathway to success in using generative AI is to become proficient in composing the initial prompts and follow-ups that fully, precisely and…
A Look in the Mirror – Using Inquirers Perspectives to Understand Enrollment Funnels
Eleven months ago, my wife and I were on vacation in Tucson, Arizona. In a past life, I’d briefly worked in Saguaro National Park removing invasive species, so I was eager to get back and bask in the unique qualities of the Sonoran Desert and…
UPCEA Announces 2024 Association Award Recipients
8 Individuals and 8 Programs Receive Association’s Highest Honors WASHINGTON, February 2, 2024 – UPCEA, the online and professional education association, has announced the recipients of the 2024 Association Awards. The UPCEA Association Awards program includes recognition of both individual and institutional achievement across the…
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