San Jose State University announced on Tuesday that it will develop a pilot program to create three online introductory math courses in cooperation with the for-profit massive online open course provider Udacity, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported. The classes will be offered for credit to San Jose State students at $150 per class, as opposed to $450 to $750 for traditional courses. San Jose State will retain 51 percent of the profits from the courses if the program continues after the pilot, and the remaining percentage will go to Udacity. Gov. Jerry Brown, D-Calif., initially contacted Udacity to find a way to mitigate increasing student debt. To combat the high dropout rates associated with online courses, San Jose State will consider implementing a peer mentoring initiative to monitor enrolled students.
Two shootings occurred on college campuses this Tuesday, leaving two dead and three injured in total at both schools, Inside Higher Ed reported. Two were killed in a shooting at Hazard Community and Technical College in Kentucky as the result of a domestic disagreement between a man and the mother of his child. The shooting took place on a campus parking lot, but those involved were not connected with the college. At Stevens Institute of Business & Arts in Missouri, an unidentified man with a currently unknown motive shot the college's financial aid director, Greg Elsenrath. Elsenrath and the shooter were both hospitalized, but will likely recover from their injuries. The shootings hold significant weight, given President Barack Obama's announcement of his comprehensive gun control policy on Wednesday.
A recently released report from the Delta Cost Project found that athletic spending by Division I colleges grew by 50 percent from 2005 to 2010, exceeding a 38 percent increase in tuition for in-state students at public institutions over that period, according to Inside Higher Ed. The authors also found that Division I colleges' athletic spending in the same period eclipsed academic spending on a student-to-student basis, which indicates that colleges may have misplaced their focus from academics to athletics. The report noted that during the financial crisis, several Division I schools decided to cut academic programs, but only a few athletic departments cut sports teams. Most athletic programs are not self-sustaining and instead required significant financial subsidies from the colleges.
