EdSurge Podcast

If Purdue University’s purchase of the for-profit Kaplan University can be thought of as a wedding, there were plenty of people in the audience shouting objections throughout the ceremony. The loudest were Purdue professors, who argued that the pair were far too incompatible to unite. Among those professors is David Sanders, an associate professor of biological sciences at Purdue and past chair of the university’s Faculty Senate. He organized a petition against the merger, which created what is now called Purdue University Global. When the EdSurge On Air podcast featured an interview last week with Purdue Global’s chancellor, Betty Vandenbosch, Sanders wrote in offering to share the faculty side of the story. And though the knot is already tied, he and other professors at Purdue say they would still like to have a say in how this new institution operates.

When leaders of Purdue University wanted to move into online education, they took the unusual step of buying an existing online university, a big one with 30,000 students. And here’s the most surprising part: that online school it bought, Kaplan University, was a for-profit business—part of a sector that’s been criticized for high costs and poor outcomes for students. The deal sparked vocal protests from Purdue professors, and hundreds of them signed petitions opposing the arrangement, calling it an unprecedented privatizing of public education. Purdue leaders, meanwhile, say that Kaplan has better outcomes than other for-profits and that it serves an important audience of adult students who aren’t able to go to a traditional campus. This month Purdue University Global held its first graduation under the new banner. But what exactly is different now at the online institution, and how does this whole thing work? To try to get some answers, EdSurge talked with Betty Vandenbosch, the chancellor of Purdue University Global, who had been leading Kaplan University for the past few years.

There is an art to making science fun and entertaining. Bill Nye has done it, and so has Neil deGrasse Tyson. Maybe now it’s time for a woman? For this episode of the EdSurge On Air podcast, we’re joined Sophia Shrand, host of the comedic YouTube show, “Science with Sophie.” “Science with Sophie” mixes a bit of feminism with science, a difficult combination of things to put together in a comedic fashion. EdSurge talked with Shrand about her comedic history and how educators can learn from her work, making science entertaining.

The college affordability crisis is a familiar story to most Americans. A simplified version often goes that state funding for higher-ed institutions has decreased dramatically over the years, which has translated into massive tuition hikes for students and their families. Sandy Baum, a fellow in the Education Policy Program at the Urban Institute, watches the issue—and its proposed solutions—closely. The story usually gets encapsulated into examples of students trapped in hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. And while this may be the case for some students, Baum notes that it’s not always the full picture. EdSurge talked with Baum about these issues—and about how innovative approaches are or aren’t helping solve the college affordability crisis.

In the education technology business, Larry Berger is considered—if not the smartest guy in the room, then certainly one of the wiser ones. With more than 20 years in the industry, Larry has seen the ups and downs, twists and turns. In 2000 he co-founded Wireless Generation, which pioneered the use of data, digital diagnostics and assessments to support students. It was bought in 2010 by News Corporation, which invested more than $1 billion into the company and rebranded it as Amplify. News Corp’s commitment proved to be a short-lived, however. The media giant sold Amplify to private investors five years later. Today, Larry Berger leads Amplify as its chief executive. The company is no longer as high-profile—or as big—as it once was. So what is Amplify today? What have the past years taught him, and where is the company going? EdSurge recently sat down with Berger for an update on what Amplify’s up to, along with his thoughts on how the curriculum business is evolving. He also talked about the challenges facing edtech companies today, including his skepticism towards what he calls an “engineering” model of personalized learning.

In Australia, there’s a university that was set up to focus on distance education called Deakin University. It started about 40 years ago -- before the internet really got going, so that meant sending lessons through the mail. These days, of course, distance education means online courses and its not a new idea anymore, but officials worry that if they’re not careful, they’ll just end up offering the same kind of education-by-mail ethos in a digital format. They’re trying to reboot their online efforts, in what they are calling a “cloud campus,” where educational experiences are designed to be digital first. And since they also have plenty of in-person students these days, they want to reinvent the campus experience as well, by trying to blend education into busy lives. For Deakin, that has meant developing their own personal assistant for students, a bit like Siri or Alexa, but that can remind you to do your homework. To find out more about what this university down under is up to, we recently sat down with Beverley Oliver, deputy vice chancellor education at Deakin. The conversation took place at the ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, as part of our EdSurge Live video forum, where people tuned in and could ask questions.

Running a lemonade stand may be the most entrepreneurial project that students get to experience. But increasingly, schools leaders want to take the spirit of these old-fashioned projects and create more—and more meaningful—opportunities for students and teachers alike to think creatively and build skills that will prepare them for future careers. In districts like Boston Public Schools, officials have set up new teams devoted to “innovation,” to rethink everything from professional development and instructional design to class schedules and school culture. These efforts are often lumped into one overused term: “innovation.” (But what does it really mean?) EdSurge recently sat down with Sujata Bhatt, managing partner of innovation at Boston Public Schools, to learn more about what exactly a district innovation job entails, and what it takes to get people to not only adopt an innovator's mindset, but also execute on new ideas.

A college degree isn’t the only path to meaningful work. In fact, these days it seems like there are more kinds of credentials than ever, some new ones even have trademarked names like Nanodegrees and MicroMasters. One leading force in reinventing the credential is the Lumina Foundation, one of the largest foundations focused on higher education. The group has an ambitious goal to increase the number of Americans with some kind of high-quality credential. But what counts as high-quality? And how can students and employers sort through all the new options. To get at those issues, EdSurge recently sat down with Courtney Brown, the Lumina Foundation’s vice president for strategic impact. She laid out the group’s vision for the future of credentials, and talked about what the cartoon The Jetsons says about the future of education and the workplace.

The campus of the future will be “networked,” argues Peter Smith, meaning that more and more academic-related services will be outsourced. That, in theory, will allow each campus to focus its energies on what it can do best and turn to outside companies and nonprofits for the rest. It’s a key claim in his new book, “Free-Range Learning in the Digital Age: The Emerging Revolution in College, Career, and Education,” due out next month, and it’s one that might unsettle college administrators accustomed to directly overseeing more campus services in-house. Smith has a unique perspective on innovation in education. He has led experimental colleges, including designing and launching the Community College of Vermont back in 1970, and becoming the founding president of California State University at Monterey Bay in 1994. He’s also been a force in politics, having served as a state senator in Vermont, Lieutenant Governor in that state, and then a U.S. Congressman. These days he’s back in higher education, as a professor of innovative practices in higher education at the University of Maryland University College. EdSurge sat down with Smith last month at the ASU+GSV Summit on the future of education, as part of our EdSurge Live video discussion series.

The eruption of teacher strikes in states all over the country caught national headlines, adding to the already heated debate about the questionable state of affairs in public schools. But the strikes aren’t over, so what is the next step for these educators? The quick-fix plans put together by legislatures in states such as Arizona and West Virginia feel more like a band-aid put on an ailing illness than an actual change. Educators in these states note that the "war" has not been won. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the largest teachers union in the country, joins the EdSurge On Air podcast for a lively conversation on what comes next for teacher strikes, working (or not working) with Betsy DeVos, and why she takes offense from people who come in to ‘disrupt’ public education.