MIT, Harvard link up with free online courses
BOSTON (Reuters) - Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, both academic heavyweights and often neighborly rivals, are joining hands in a new partnership to offer courses online and for free. The two schools, located near each other in Cambridge, Massachusetts, are teaming up on an initiative called edX only five months after MIT rolled out MITx, its online learning system which allows students to earn certificates for completing course work from a distance. Harvard and MIT each committed $30 million to the project, which will be overseen by a not-for-profit group based in Cambridge. Anant Agarwal, who led the development of MITx and directed MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, will be edX's first president. The group plans to offer its first courses in the fall and eventually expects other universities may join. With a wink to the schools' long-running rivalries in racing to academic breakthroughs and wooing professors and students, MIT President Susan Hockfield said they also work together. "One of the best-kept secrets is the profound richness of collaboration between Harvard and MIT," she said at a news conference, standing next to Harvard President Drew Faust. Full Story

Recovery threatened by runaway student loan debt
The federal student loan program seemed like a great idea back in 1965: Borrow to go to college now, pay it back later when you have a job. But many borrowers these days are close to flunking out, tripped up by painful real- life lessons in math and economics. Surging above $1 trillion, U.S. student loan debt has surpassed credit card and auto- loan debt. This debt explosion jeopardizes the fragile recovery, increases the burden on taxpayers and possibly sets the stage for a new economic crisis. With a still-wobbly jobs market, these loans are increasingly hard to pay off. Unable to find work, many students have returned to school, further driving up their indebtedness. Average student loan debt recently topped $25,000, up 25 percent in 10 years. And the mushrooming debt has direct implications for taxpayers, since 8 in 10 of these loans are government-issued or guaranteed. Full Story

Conn. university: competition for free tuition
Four years of tuition at the University of New Haven’s business school? About $120,000. A chance to get it free? Priceless. UNH’s new business school dean, a former MasterCard executive responsible for its ”Priceless” advertising campaign, has issued a challenge to the university’s incoming freshmen: Bowl me over with your entrepreneurial idea and win free tuition for your undergraduate degree. Larry Flanagan calls it an opportunity to draw the kind of creative students that the University of New Haven wants and to help carve out the small private school’s niche in higher education circles as an incubator for innovative business education. ”We have to zig where other schools zag and to find different ways of positioning ourselves,” said Flanagan, who became UNH’s business dean in June. The unusual contest is also an example of new approaches that some former corporate executives are bringing to their new roles as business and management school deans. Full Story

6 Colleges Cutting Tuition
While tuition bills continue to skyrocket, a small but growing number of private colleges and universities are bucking the trend and going on sale. At least six colleges announced plans to reduce tuition costs in the upcoming school year. Many of these schools say lower-cost higher-education will attract more students from middle-income families those with incomes too high to qualify for free federal financial aid, but not high enough to pay for college costs without going deep into debt. ”We are hoping to recruit more students from that group than in the past,” says Edwin Welch, president of University of Charleston, in West Virginia, which is slashing tuition by 22%. Others are looking to lure students away from nearby colleges that up to now have been more affordable, says Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org, which tracks financial aid issues. Full Story

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