Saylor.org

Earlier this year, we were thrilled when Apple made three major announcements that indicated the corporation’s interest in education. Of those three announcements, we’ve been watching the progress of iTunes U very closely – and today we are pleased to announce the launch of the Saylor Foundation on iTunes U!

“Saylor’s free, complete and intuitively-structured courses built with the self-directed student in mind are a natural fit for iTunes U which combines lectures, iBooks, educational apps and reference tools for a fully integrated experience,” said Alana Harrington, Director of the Saylor Foundation.

Beginning early this morning, 18 of our free, self-paced and automated college-level courses became available on our very own iTunes U site. These courses, hailing from our 12 disciplines, consist of nearly 1,000 readings and 300 video lectures – and we’re only adding more! We hope that by making our educational materials available on this amazing educational platform, we will be able to extend our reach and to continue to get our courses into the hands of knowledge-hungry individuals.

“We’re excited to launch the Saylor Foundation on iTunes U and increase free access to education around the globe,” said Harrington.

You can find the full press release here – and be sure to head over to itunes.com/saylor to see our official iTunes U site.

“College Completion: Still a Big Deal, So Let’s Make It Easier and Cheaper“ by Tom Vander Ark was originally published on Getting Smart on 10 May 2012.

The return on investment from American colleges is dropping—a combination of insane cost inflation and a crummy job market.   To be fair, many colleges are giving kids what they want—beautiful campuses, restaurants, and spas—and parents, lenders, and alumni keep shelling out the cash.  But disruptive alternatives—like free—will pop the bubble for third tier institutions.  Declining subsidies will convert your favorite state U into a selective private institution (e.g., University of Colorado is basically private). And your kid won’t get in because the U decided to boost enrollment of full-tuition international students.

A group of about thirty higher education leaders, philanthropist, entrepreneurs, policy makers and advocates met in DC yesterday to discuss strategies for boosting college completion and ROI.

They started with a provocative question: now that most of the world’s knowledge is available as free and open content, does college still matter?  There was general agreement that most employers still value a degree, so credits still matter—especially for low income and first generation students.

Competency-based systems, like Western Governor’s University, obviously makes sense and despite the fact that WGU is growing by 30% annually the idea just hasn’t caught on.  That’s because institutions have had little incentive to grant credit for people that show up with skills or can more quickly through the system.

But that is going to change.  The rise of open content—Khan Academy, Saylor.org, Edx, Academic Earth—is building a giant reservoir of demand for competency-based college credits.  There are game-based iPad apps (e.g., Cut The Rope and Water) that do a better job of teaching engineering than the classes I took 30 years ago.

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The Saylor Foundation has not one, but  two very exciting pieces of news today! First, we are thrilled to announce a formal partnership with StraighterLine. Beginning in the Fall of 2012, students taking advantage of this partnership will have the opportunity to earn college credit for a very low cost. More details are available in the press release – located here - and in this Chronicle of Higher Education blog post.

And, for our second announcement, this partnership, and the rising costs of a college education, is prompting the formation of a working group between the Saylor Foundation, StraighterLine, and two universities located in northern Virginia - George Mason University and Northern Virginia Community College. We’re still working out the details of the working group, however the objective is create clear articulation plans among the participating groups so students who have the discipline for independent or accelerated study would have frictionless transfer, leading to a low cost college degree. Here’s a link to the official announcement.

We’re enthusiastic about the opportunities that these developments will create for Saylor.org students. Please keep a close eye on our website and blog in the coming months for updates on both announcements.

The image “Newspapers B&W”  came from Flickr user NS Newsflash and is licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY license.