Anitoch University integrating MOOCs to lower tuition costs

It's finally happened, a university is has taken advantage of free MOOC to offer students a lower cost alternative to traditional courses.  Read Antioch's announcement here, and the Inside Higher Ed article.
This model is targeted to adult learners, (finish their BA for a price cheaper than community/state schools)  whether this would work for high school seniors and the traditional undergrads has yet to be seen.
(Turns out I had this idea a couple weeks ago, but I've been too chicken to send my letter to the Board of Trustees at my college).

Update:
I heard on the radio this morning that the University of Chicago is waving the application cost and tuition costs for Chicago high school graduates.  The program, UChicago Promise, makes it appear that the UC is really "making college more affordable" and with an average tuition cost of $61,000 / year, there is a need to at least act like they're doing that.  But the figure I found socking was that, on average only 50 Chicago resident students are admitted each year!

my direct loan has a new home

Last week my Direct student loan was resold to another lender.  This isn't the worst student loan experience I've heard of, but it's really common for student loans to be resold, hopefully this is the first and last time for me.

My main complaints are I have to set up a new account, direct payment with my account.  At least I wasn't trying to set up anything special, but I'm still worried about information not being transfered in time resulting in a late payment. This happened aprox 2 weeks after I paid $500 extra towards my balance. I don't doubt my debt was bundled and re-sold because some model rated it higher.  If I want to pay extra above my monthly payment, do I run the risk of my loan being resold again? Without my permission. I can't get too upset over this, because it is part of the contract and banks having the ability to do this is essential for the market place to provide loans in the first place, but it still makes me feel powerless as a borrower.

Alright I'm done gripping now. I'm sure people have worst stories than this.

on the other side of the college fair

Tonight I volunteered at a college fair representing my alma mater.  Despite being very different from what I expected, I think it was a good experience.  Going in I thought that being a recent grad would me a big advantage to high schoolers and parents who wanted to learn about the school, instead it was the professional recruiters who had lines of people wanting to talk to them.  I eventually got a rhythm for my greets and responses going, but I was still pretty awkward for my first time at a college fair.
I talked to the rep at the table next to me, (he knew all about my college, having the same first name as his institution he always ends up at the next table).  Going to college fairs are his full time job, this was half-way through the season, and he knew way too much about his college in his opinion.  Sounded like he was burning out.
I noticed the big difference in what questions the high schoolers and what recent grads (like myself) ask each other to compare their experiences.  I don't think these high school students had any concept what college experience was like.  Doesn't this put them at a big disadvantage because they don't yet know what factors are important to them or what questions to ask when comparing institutions?
I found it hard to sell a liberal arts degree, probably a sign of changing times.  Those who knew what kind of degree they wanted were all those found in technical colleges.

Maybe I should've worn my Justin Bieber T-shirt.

google search thursday night

  It's Thursday night, I have a glass(box) of wine and Google search at my disposal.  I'm going to see what new goodies the internets have to offer me, I thought I'd share some of my findings and typos.

The Center for College Affordability  blog is now one of my new favorite sites.  From five minutes of looking through the blog posts it seems to be run by some intelligent people covering important topics on the edu-bubble (my new favorite word of the night).  I haven't even begun to explore their following blog list.

I have to credit Edububble, I think I will buy the book.

Hack Education (omg, I just got the irony! clever girl)  is a blog I have been enjoying for a while.  I got sucked into Adury's post on a reddit troll and the Gawker article. A disturbing side to free speech.

Cyprus Badge, 1 year on Khan Academy

Looks like I have reviewing to do, but at least I've mastered the telling time branch ;)

Has it really been a whole year since I enthusiastically joined Khan academy?  I hadn't been on all summer, but when I first joined I eagerly wasted a couple hours a night doing basic arithmetic just to earn those silly badges.  Most of the time I would log on just to count how many badges I had earned.  I  revisited it this week to look at some material to help me with my Udacity ST101 course.  I figured I should set some goals for the next year.

1. Participate in the community, teaching is the best way to learn and asking questions is the best way to focus your mind.  
2. Make it to the end of the Math Tree; Calculus!!
3. Get one of those pretty sun badges

Sun Badges are epic

Anything to learn from university hacking-spree?

It's all over the news, a hacker group called @TeamGhostShell, targeted a hundred of the world's top universities stealing thousands of user's private information, posting it here. You can read it for ourself, but among other things, the group cite high tuition prices and generally unjust practices as the source for this assault.  When I heard about this I naively tried accessing some of the files, but they had been deleted and searching through the first three pages of Google is almost the extent of my very limited computer skills.  I found enough news reports about it, such as this article.  Which opened with this quote:

On Monday Team GhostShell returned with a new campaign called “Project WestWind”. The project is aimed at “raising awareness towards the changes made in today’s education, how new laws imposed by politicians affect us, our economy and overall, our way of life,” — and to make their presence known, how better than to dump data and expose vulnerabilities in university networks?

I"ll tell you how, analyze that data to show that universities are getting richer and richer off of student debt.  I can only hope there are some industrious data miners on @TeamGhostShell looking to stir up higher education.  People want a scandal, hopefully one that doesn't involve another Sandusky.

It'd be interesting to graph the relationship of tuition increase with average student debt by institution. And then what about average faculty salary compared to graduating student earnings? These are only some brief ideas, I think enough people want blood for the student debt crisis that any findings would be blowen out of proportion.
What information would you want exposed?