“The culinary literacy of college students is increasing,” said Tom Post, president of campus dining for Sodexo, a food service and facilities management company that works with 600 campuses in North America. “Students today grew up watching celebrity chefs on TV, eating organic food, enjoying authentic world cuisine and valuing good nutrition.”

Food for Thought
There’s no debate about the existence of what’s commonly called brain food. Omega-3 fatty acids, antioxidants, and vitamins–they all help you think and help your brain stay in tip-top shape. Is it any wonder that there’s been a push to provide good food at college cafeterias?

I remember using fake names to order our grilled cheese sandwiches (I was Vladimir, and my friend was Whitney). I also remember missing class, clutching my stomach (and a trash can) because of a bad Polish Dog from the cafeteria. The joke was that the cafeteria kept you regular–whether you wanted to be or not. The food choices were beginning to evolve, but a trip to the cafeteria nearly always left one sedentary. There’s definitely such a thing as food that’s bad for the old noggin’.

When We Got Cookin’
It was because of this that we sought out the dorm’s cooking facilities. We weren’t allowed anything other than a teapot or coffee maker in our rooms (not even a hot plate), which limited illicit in-room cooking to ramen, or noodle tea (we were such clever little rule benders).

I remember late nights in the main study lounge (fortuitously, the kitchen was right off this lounge) switching off between doing physics homework on the chalk board, cooking, and eating. I still remember a friend of mine making fresh biscotti during finals week, though I couldn’t tell you what classes I was taking or what I learned that semester.

Online Education Loses This One
I’m a big supporter of the dorm experience. I made lifelong friends, had adventures, and generally grew quite a bit as a person in the dorms. Cooking in the dorms and the community involved gave me some of my fondest college memories. An online education saves you the cost of room and board, but it comes at the price of these experiences. Keep this in mind.

So, Science, What Have You Done for Me Lately?
What blows me away about these statistics about America’s feeling regarding science can be summed up with a single piece of technology that has grown immensely in popularity–not to mention gotten ridiculously more complex–from 1999 to 2009: the cellular phone. In 1999, when science was in better standing with the public, my cell phone could do two things: make phone calls and send text messages (at least I seem to remember that being an option, I can’t say I tried to use that feature much at that point). Now you can get anGPS-enabled iPhone that connects to a nationwide 3G network to stream videos at speeds that would have made a 1999er’s head spin. It has a touch screen. It has a digitial compass and voice recognition software–that actually works. It knows which way up and rotates its display accordingly. For Pete’s sake, it has accelerometers and a built-in camera. It’s the most advanced piece of technology ever to be so widely desired–not to mention possessed.

So, to those of you who took this survey and decided that we aren’t doin’ so hot on the science front: if you’re reading this, you’re on the Internet and chances are pretty high you didn’t have to listen the screech of a 14.4 dial-up modem to get here. Take a moment and look around you. If you aren’t impressed by the technological innovations of the last decade, you’re either blind or a ludite.

• What drives you?
• If you can’t answer the first part, then why are you bothering to get out of bed?

Now, there’s no wrong answer to part one. It’s your life; you get to decide what drives you. It’s the second part that should hit home. You shouldn’t just be going to work; you should be working towards something. It’s all too easy to forget sometimes, which is why it’s often necessary to proactively remind yourself why you do what you do–lest you get stuck in a rut or lose sight of the light, leaving you to wander that tunnel blindly.

This is where rebranding your day comes in. Think of slogans like, “Fake it ’til you make it.” Next time your in a foul mood, try smiling for a while. You’ll start off feeling ridiculous, but you’ll be smiling in earnest in just a few hours. If you’re still alive, chances are high that you want to be. Figure out why, focus on that, and make your day about it. Life isn’t about trudging from one basic need to the next. When it starts to feel that way, take a step back, a deep breath, count to ten–whatever you have to do, get some perspective. Life is like surfing. You can ride the waves, or you can get tumbled–it’s your choice.

A Goal Is a Dream with a Deadline
Figure out what you want from life. If your answer is nothing, then–again–why’d you even get out bed? Now, break down how you’re going to get there. This is an extremely intimidating task–suddenly you’ve decided to grab the reins rather than simply going through the motions. You’ll be better for it, I promise.

Starting by writing it out works very well, but staring at a blank sheet of paper won’t get you anywhere except discouraged. Start getting down ideas. Ask yourself what drives you. Figure out what you want, and start writing out ways to get it.

Be Realistic
I use a little lesson I picked up from Existentialist philosophy: the idea of facticity versus transcendence. Facticity is what you cannot change; transcendence is what you can change. Identifying too much with one or the other leads to despair.

Say, for example, you were born without legs. You can’t change this, which puts it into the category of facticity. If you decide your goal in life is to win the 100-meter dash in the Olympics, you’re identifying too much with your transcendence. You’re setting yourself up for failure and a life of despair and depression. If, on the other hand, you decide that because you don’t have any legs you’re a cripple incapable of accomplishing anything, you’re identifying too much with your facticity. Again, you’ve slipped into despair.

This example is extreme, but it gets the point across. Balancing your facticity and transcendence is a constant struggle. Ambition demands you push the limits of your facticity, and ambition is what gets you out of bed every morning. You desire to do something, accomplish something.

Education as a Means to Transcendence
Most every important life goal is going to involve success. If your goal in life is something abstract, like being happy, it’ll break down into requirements like eliminating stress by living well and within your means. In our society, that requires money. To get money, you need a job. To maintain the happiness part of the goal, you need a job you like. This is where education comes in.

You can get a high quality education online and keep your current job while your earning that degree. You can take advantage of a local community college, where night classes are offered more often than in traditional universities. The fact of the matter is, more education makes you look better to employers and succeeding in whatever school program you choose makes you feel proud of yourself.

It’s not going to be easy, but nothing that’s truly worth it is ever easy–the difficulty adds value. When you wake up tomorrow, get that special glint in you eye that says, “I’m in control, and I am going to succeed.” Go forth and achieve.

Pulling Together as a Planet for Higher Education
Call me a skeptic, but we–at least in these United States–can scarcely agree on a direct plan of action to fix higher education’s ills, let alone agree what said ills actually are. We’ve got ethical issues in business schools. We’ve got funding issues everywhere. In the face of a worldwide recession, can a group of intellectuals in a notoriously abstract field really pull together in a productive manner?

Another goal, seems almost narcissistic:

“The Conference will reaffirm the importance of higher education and research in meeting global challenges, as well as in building more inclusive, equitable and sustainable knowledge economies.”

Is this conference going to be an international group hug during which world leaders in various educational fields tell each other they’re making a difference?

Advertising Answers
Advertisements for the conference ask the following questions:

• To what extent is higher education today a driver for sustainable development in the national and international context?
• Does the sector live up to the expectations placed in it to induce change and progress in society?
• How does higher education contribute to the development of the education system as a whole?
• What are the most significant trends that will shape the new higher education and research spaces?
• How are learners and learning changing?
• What are the new challenges for “quality” and “equity”?

I’ll be reporting back next week with some actual information on what was accomplished, but at this point, it seems too nebulous for this business-minded blogger.

Online Education Wins! Key Findings
The online education study had the following key findings (I’ve taken the liberty of choosing the top three and arranging them in descending order, starting with my personal fave):

• Students who took all or part of their class online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction
• Instruction combining online and face-to-face elements had a larger advantage relative to purely face-to-face instruction than did purely online instruction
• Studies in which learners in the online condition spent more time on task than students in the face-to-face condition found a greater benefit for

This study has the potential to change the way we teach, from K-12 on up through higher education.

Blended Learning Is on Par, But…
Now, the Internet is a tremendous resource (it is, after all, the largest information database in history, organized and linked in a way that actually changed the way we think about knowledge). Any contemporary college student will tell you that much.

Most contemporary college students are also taking courses with an online component, but it’s most often simply based around taking quizzes and participating in discussion boards. The latter is great, as it encourages discussion in a setting in which most everyone is comfortable (whereas face-to-face debate/discussion intimidates many students into quietude). The former–well…

• Elements such as video or online quizzes do not appear to influence the amount that students learn in online classes

Nail in the coffin for videos of lectures, too–which makes sense. If face-to-face teaching is less effective, than videos of it probably wouldn’t score any better.

Of Course, This Isn’t the End
There’s no substitute for a great teacher. That personal touch is responsible for, among other things, my starting off in engineering and finishing with a degree in English. I have friends and mentors who have taught me about life while instructing me.  And, as the study shows:

• Blended and purely online learning conditions implemented within a single study generally result in similar student learning outcomes

Not to mention…

• Providing guidance for learning for groups of students appears less successful than does using such mechanisms with individual learners

So, teachers, you’re not being outmoded; it’s just time to evolve.

“Simplifying the FAFSA is another significant action in our quest to keep a college degree within the reach of every person who aspires to higher education,” Duncan said.

What’s Changing in FAFSA Land

In the Department of Education press release, several of the changes are laid out:

• Since this past May, students have been able to get instant estimates of Pell Grant and student loan availability–this used to take weeks
• This summer the online FAFSA system will have its skip-logic system updated, which should reduce most user navigation by fifty percent
• Started in January 2010, students will be able to instantly grab their tax info directly from the IRS–while applying

They’re also working on eliminating 26 questions from the form by taking out all of the financial information inquires that can’t be answered with IRS data. Perhaps this new and improved FAFSA will eliminate the need for explanatory pages and services that actually charge to fill it out for you.

More Good News for the College Students–and Their Parents
Several other bits of good news were announced as well:

• Pell Grants are getting a shot in the arm to the tine of $500 more a pop, raising them to $5,350, thanks to the Recovery Act, which also created the American Opportunity Tax Credit
• The Perkins Loan program is going to become available to 2,600 new schools–that’s 2.7 million more students who can take advantage of Perkins Loans
• Obama has proposed a new College Access and Completion Fund. This 5-year, $2.5 billion fund is aimed at economically disadvantaged students and will hopefully make a big impact on enrollment

All of these changes, expansions, and new funds are proof that Obama is working towards his goal of putting America back on top of the list for college graduates per capita. Nice work, Mr. President.

Great News for Online Education
Of the roughly 18.5 million college students in the U.S., 11 percent took most of their classes online in 2008, shows the study by EduVentures, Inc. Compare that to the 1 percent in 1998, and it’s pretty clear that popular opinions about online education are shifting. This big-name backing is fantastic for online education as a whole.

Mr. Welch had two extremely encouraging things to say about the program:

“I think it’s a real education,” and “I’m now a believer.”

This kind of support will echo throughout the halls (or servers, as the case may be) of online universities everywhere. It’s about time.

This new program isn’t the only good news for business-minded individuals, either. Hiring is up in financial institutions. It’s not skyrocketing, but progress is progress–and it’s better than more layoffs. So, go get yourself a shiny new Welch Institute MBA, and hop on the finance hiring train. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the beginning of the end… of the recession. (Not to worry, I’m knocking on my wooden desk vigorously.)

Yes, the Times Are Changing
A new adult education class in Connecticut is teaching social networking. For most students today, social networking is a way to lose credits (by Twittering, Facebooking, et cetera-ing instead of doing homework), but not for these folks, who are actually earning credits while learning how the younger generations communicate with each other. The question is: do you get extra credit for Twittering during a lecture? Or is my phone going in the June box again?

Dept. of Education: Speaking of Sallie Mae…
The U.S. Department of Education has just chosen Sallie Mae to help the Federal Student Aid Title IV Student Loan Management/Servicing program. Sallie Mae and three other companies will be servicing $550 billion in loans that are owned by the Dept. Education.

I’ll admit, I’m a little gun shy about moving loans around because of the recent economic situation. Call me skeptical, but is Sallie Mae really a sound choice? Moody’s Investor Services recently rated Sallie Mae’s debt non-investment grade. This rating implies substantial credit risk and generally maintains the negative outlook for the company. While it’s true that this rating is a slight improvement from Sallie Mae’s previous rating, do we really want the government teaming up with them?

At least their hearts are in the right place.

Go Online to Learn–and Get Licensed–to Operate a Boat
South Carolina has just christened a new online boating education program. The course, which is approved by the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators and recognized by the U.S. Coast Guard, teaches students all sorts of great things about boats, boating, and boat safety–and all at their convenience, thanks to the wonders of online education. After completing the course, students go to BoaterExam.com and, upon passing the exam, can print out temporary certificates immediately.

This is great news for anyone looking to append Captain to the start of their name, but it raises some interesting questions about what can and cannot be taught online. I, for one, don’t think I’d feel ready to pilot a boat around my local, popular lake after taking a course online. In the same way, I wouldn’t want to be licensed to drive a car without being forced to, you know, actually get some driving in.

Online Universities Just as Susceptible to Fire as Their Brick-and-Mortar Counterparts
Fires in Santa Barbara, CA threatened to burn down a virtual university last week. Well, actually, it threatened their servers. Fielding Graduate University staff members actually pulled the plug on their network, put it in the back of a car, and raced the flames out of town. Students were only without access for 25 hours, which is pretty remarkable, considering the entire online university relocated and set up shop at another location.

I don’t mean to make dramatic comparisons, but look at how far we’ve come, thanks to technology: it’s been roughly two millenia since the burning of the Royal Library of Alexandria, and we’re now so technologically advanced that when fire threatens our stored knowledge, we can email it, upload it, unplug it and toss it in the back of a horseless carriage–whatever it takes. Students can be back and learning at their leisure in less than a day–or just go to a different site–whereas the burning of the library at Alexandria set Western civilization back hundreds of years because of everything that was loss. If that’s not progress, I don’t know what is.

First, the good news: Arne Duncan, who is the Secretary of Education, has just announced an $18.5 million dollar plan to “enhance libraries in 57 low-income school districts across the United States” (from the press release).
This is great to hear. I don’t know about everyone else, but I’ve become a little concerned about the literacy of our up-and-comers. I was recently wandering through the halls of a local high school (on my way to meet a teacher friend of mine, not just recreationally), when I heard the students talking in a language I couldn’t readily identify. It was verbalized text message jargon. An example: “OMG, my BFF was all ‘WTF’ and was like LMAO! K, TTYL!” It was frightening, confusing, and a little depressing.

In all seriousness though, there are a great many schools out there that could use some extra funding pushed towards literacy programs. Secretary Duncan had this to say about the grants:

Encouraging students to improve their reading is a key to their success in school and in life. These grants help schools give students access to the most up-to-date books, technology, and highly trained library personnel to improve teaching and learning and to challenge students to achieve.

Now, Moving on to the Weird News…
Apparently, I missed the first go-round on this story, but I’ve caught up–and I’m disgusted. In Corpus Christi, TX, at a state school for the mentally and developmentally disabled, they’ve been fighting. The fights have been organized by staff members. The fights have been bet on by staff members. The fights have been going on for over thirty years. Now, it’s one thing to have a boxing club or a wrestling team; it’s an entirely other, sick thing to pit mentally and developmentally handicapped students against each other. Apparently, a similar school in Austin was also participating, and–get this–the winners from each school were brought in to fight each other. Congratulations, Texas, you’re home to some of the most depraved individuals in the country.

In Georgia, some one has been cheating on standardized tests: the principal. With help from the assistant prinicpal, answers were changed on fifth-grade standardized tests. They wanted to make sure that they met the federal achievement standards. Now, correct me if I’m wrong here, but aren’t principals, especially principals of elementary schools, supposed to be a moral compass for the youngsters they watch over? How on Earth are we to explain to these kids that they shouldn’t cheat after something like this? With an education system full of this kind of stuff, is it any wonder that we’ve been suffering the consequences of underhanded financial dealings? Thankfully, the principal resigned.