The Internet: Two-Way Interactive Education is Both Marketing and Medium

Some interesting WES data that I found on WES.org.


International student recruitment strategies are focused more on the social media and social networking space.

A little more than half of the respondents indicated that they recruit using social media because almost all (91% of those responding) believe prospects are using it. The most used social media platforms are Facebook (95%), Twitter (54%) and Youtube (43%). The main reason social media is not being used was indicated as lack of staff resources.

Two thirds of the research respondents (66%) indicated that their website was the most important channel for their outreach programs with online advertising a far second at 18%. However, the largest allocation of the marketing budget is for printed materials, accounting for 11-25% of annual budgets. Not surprisingly, the two greatest challenges for recruiters in achieving their international enrollment goals were the availability of financial aid (37%) and travel budget concerns (34%).

How do recruiters of international students link efforts with value, or cost with return in using a social media model?

It's a given that using social media is an extremely low cost way to market to students, because in most cases, the most prized audience is already using the medium you wish to use.

But do you spend money on advertising, or just recruit other students to blog and post your recruitment efforts in the right space?

My general impression of advertising is that the audience for advertising is cynical of advertising unless it is interactive. I think WES is on to something positive here with the effort it's pushing to to interactive webinars and chats online.

StraighterLine CEO Burck Smith, not affiliated with WES as far as I am aware, is delivering low-cost high-quality schooling on the internet. This generation uses almost nothing but the internet.

Being Gladwellian: An Education in Not Listening to Experience

What is cliche? I believe cliche is the uttered evocative statement that has lost its evocation. It is gloss over nuance and the rivets that keep life together.

Maureen Tkacik gets a little gruff with Malcolm Gladwell over his cliches, but I'm not telling how she ends her own essay. You can read Gladwell for Dummies for yourself.

She reviews his work and posits that he is not the Francisco Redihe thinks he is. In other words, he is a person who glosses over truth, and speaks pretty for industry titans. He's not the guy who has found a new way to deduce what is happening in reality.

Here's her take:

Stars! They're just like us. Which is to say, every time Gladwell begins to close in on a conclusion of real meaning or intellectual impact, he clicks his heels and returns to the mental Melrose Place of quippy clichés. What's more, he apparently has no problem espousing the whole-truthness of two antithetical clichés--the innateness of genius and "The Power of Context" (as Gladwell had christened this truism in The Tipping Point) at almost simultaneous moments in time. Reduced further, depending on Gladwell's narrative needs, genius is either nature or nurture, and he has cheerily eaten his cake, wrapped it up neatly in a take-away box and left us wondering where the crumbs disappeared to.

It may seem obvious to some that these are false dichotomies; neither half is ever true to the exclusion of the other. But that is the rub: there are a great many book buyers determined to hedge their bets in precisely this Gladwellian mode. Depending on the situation, they want to believe in the sovereign power of either nature or nurture--to convince themselves that anyone can be a success but also that should one be so unfortunate as to fail, that failure was predestined by an accident of fate. This is the contradictory "story of success" that runs through Gladwell's articles, The Tipping Point and Outliers. The "power of apparent inevitability," as The Economist termed it, is a narrative that his hungriest readers can use to explain any turn their lives might take, and it was precisely these readers who flooded Gladwell's e-mail inbox with raves about how The Tipping Point had empowered them to take control of their lives and "contexts."

And here:

By the time Gladwell produced a sequel to The Tipping Point, Blink, his preference for light vignettes featuring plucky heroes over grimmer fare was proving its own insult. In Blink's afterword, he describes the book as "a journey into the wonders of our unconscious" but one that should not "be confused with the unconscious described by Sigmund Freud, which was a dark and murky place filled with desires and memories and fantasies that were too disturbing for us to think about consciously." Instead, Blink plumbs an unconscious realm that is surprisingly hospitable. Gladwell makes the case that because human existence is entirely too rich and nuanced to be reducible to data or logic (and by extension, to arguments or allegations), reason and reflex blend over time to yield snap decisions that are often better than the best-laid plans.

Oh, but it gets better.

In that case, perhaps Gladwell's intellectual compromises are neither commercial nor unintentional but rather a necessary outgrowth of his higher calling: to explore the secret workings of the world and impart the resulting data to its self-appointed stewards, the titans of industry. This conclusion, if true, may resolve many of the most puzzling incongruities riddling Gladwell's articles: his continued defense of the pharmaceutical industry even as he advocates for single-payer healthcare; his refusal to indict the financial sector's rigged "star system" as the engine of corruption that it is; the meticulous bleaching of his own prose so that he's whitewashed out any real context, any framework in which wars and economic collapses can actually be understood as wars and economic collapses rather than simulations or malfunctions; his near total avoidance of academic thought that does not base its findings on things observed in labs (with the exception of Carl Jung, whose legacy he reduces to the popularization of personality tests); his coyness about politics; and most memorably, his irritating, unrelenting readability.

Did Arne Duncan Save Healthcare?

Arne Duncan part of last minute health care deal

African-American Workers Laid Off in Strikingly Bleak Numbers

Fast Company, where I maintain a blog, puts up some incredible analysis of a recent New York Times infographic, and it's something that you should pay attention to, with your thinking cap situated firmly on your head.

Take for example that the unemployment rate for what Fast Company describes as "black" men and women "without a high school degree" is 42.7%. How can our economy survive with that statistic? And what is being done about helping these people maintain a high school education to receive the degree, or go back to high school and get a certification?



The other question this raises for me is this: is there proof that completing high school serves in and of itself as an incentive to go and get a higher degree?

How are degrees-to-job satisfaction or job acquisition ratios calculated? Are they tabulated anywhere? I'd like to see how often someone with a high school degree decides not to go to a higher degree course.

You can read the whole thing below:

Jobless Rate for people like you

Tom Vander Ark: ESEA "Must Reflect the 'good school' Promise"

According to Tom Vander Ark, partner of Revolution Learning and executive keynote speaker at Education Industry Investment Forum, the Department of Education should create partnerships with the private sector to meet the enormous challenge of creating the system of education that American students deserve.

And there's more:

This ESEA should be forward leaning. It should incorporate online assessment and anticipate the continued growth of online learning. School networks that blend online and on-site learning and targeted tutoring should be harnessed in the effort to turn around thousands of struggling schools.

ESEA must reflect the ‘good school’ promise intended by NCLB—every family in America deserves access to at least one good public school. Fulfilling this promise requires strong support and strong accountability, new tools and new schools, and it will require public and private investment. The private sector is ready, willing, and able to help America meet the educational challenges of the next decade.

Race to the Top Set for FAIL

This seemed to have a bit of the rhetorical flourish, but then, it is something that business people talk about when they talk about how they would like to nourish and invest in the American education sector.

Why Race to the Top is set to fail takes a look at how inefficiencies, improper evaluation of performance and talent, and a lack of clear thinking on curriculum and life skills in American education is setting Race to the Top to fail.

India: Enabling Investments in Education

This post was written by Rahul Choudaha, who runs Dr. Education.

India's Human Resources Minster Mr. Kapil Sibal aims to increase Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) in higher education from current 12% to 30% by 2020.

Mr. Sibal, who is control of the country's education portfolio, says that this translates into a need for 14,000 additional general colleges, 12,775 professional institutes and 269 universities over the next 11 years. (Indian higher education system follows the model of multiple independent colleges affiliated to a common degree-awarding university). Government understands that it would not be able to achieve it without private investment. To achieve this scale of expansion with speed, Mr. Sibal is actively exploring options to streamline regulatory structure and encourage private investment.

Apart from a host of public-private partnerships the minister is also considering to allow for setting up a not-for-profit entity under Section 25 of the Companies Act 1956.

Current regulatory structure only recognizes institutions which are set up as non-profit trusts or societies. While the registration under section 25 as company would still require a non-profit objective it would enable recognition from the regulatory body and help in managing in a more scalable, professional and accountable manner at a national level.

Posted by:
Rahul Choudaha (PhD, MBA, BE)
blog: Dr. Education
New York, New York

Chris Whittle to Speak at FuturED Symposium During EIIF

We have great news for the third day of the Education Industry Investment Forum.

Chris Whittle, founder of Edison Schools, will be opening up the third day with a keynote on international schooling. We can provide more details later, so stay tuned.

For now, check out our static home site at Education Industry Investment Forum to download the brochure.

We will be adding more information about Mr. Whittle soon.

TeamEDU Acquires Piccolo International University

It must be the magic of this Education Industry Investment Forum brand. Another speaker writes in to inform of us of good news in his company. This news is about a very recent school purchase

Steve Cooper, CEO of TeamEDU, tells us that he has just purchased the Piccolo International University division of Piccolo Education Systems, Inc., helmed by Laura Palmer-Noone. He sent along a press release.

Piccolo Education Systems announces the sale of its Piccolo International University division here.

Here's a clip from the press release:

Capstone Partners LLC, the investment banking firm that assisted Piccolo in the transaction, has also been retained by the company to secure growth capital and pursue strategic acquisition opportunities. Presently, Piccolo and Capstone are in advanced discussions with various investor groups related to a significant growth investment, a portion of which will help fund an acquisition currently under preliminary agreement.

"This transaction will allow us to focus our resources on larger scale growth initiatives. In turn, acquiring additional educational institutions, or operating as a management overlay to an existing organization, will expedite our core goal of operating an accredited institution of higher learning," said Laura Palmer Noone, president and chief executive officer of Piccolo Educational Systems. "We are seeing excellent opportunities in the post secondary education sector and believe our planned business model, supported by our deep management expertise, will represent a compelling educational offering for students worldwide."

Laura Palmer-Noone is also a speaker at the Education Industry Investment Forum.

Rob Crawford, CEO, Life Development Institute Invited to Qatar

I received this email from Rob Crawford, CEO, Life Development Institute. Hew was selected as a finalist for the WISE awards, sponsored by the Government of Qatar. He didn't win the award, but he was selected to attend the forum in Doha. We say kudos to him. It's a great moment for him, as he explains below.

LDI was selected as a laureate finalist in Pluralism for the WISE awards, and I say thank you again to the many of you sending expressions of support and good luck.

While not being one of the two awarded this honor, I have been asked to this "invitation only" forum representing a voice of innovation, inclusion, and change for people with disabilities for this international event. There are two breakout sessions specifically focusing on planning a global educational future for the 750 million people identified with disabilities by the World Health Organization. The program and invited participants can be found at the link in the cover letter above.

It is a great tribute to our program and collaborative community partners to be able to contribute to this international dialogue. I am but one voice calling attention to the needs of those we serve as well as to the many more without a voice who have little to look forward to or hope for change.

If you are so inclined, please send me an email or phone call with specific questions or ideas that can be shared at this event as it concerns the movement to improve the quality of life for people with learning and neuro-diveristy issues.

Congratulations, Rob. We look forward to seeing you at the Education Industry Investment ForumMarch 1-3, 2010 in Phoenix.

Education Companies for the BankNote Building

To attract education companies, the BankNote building will build a campus.

How I Work

This is an illuminating article about how the founder of 37signals Jason Fried works.

Key takeaway:

I usually get to work between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. Of the 16 people at the company, eight of us live here in Chicago. Employees come to the office if and when they feel like it, or else they work from home. I don't believe in the 40-hour workweek, so we cut all that BS about being somewhere for a certain number of hours. I have no idea how many hours my employees work -- I just know they get the work done.

I spend most of my day writing. I write everything on our website. Communicating clearly is my top priority. Web writing is terrible, and corporate sites are the worst. You don't know what they do, who they are, or what they stand for. I spend a lot of time taking a sentence and reworking it until it's perfect. I love the editing process.

Our blog has more than 100,000 readers, but I don't post every day. I write when I have something specific to say. I recently wrote a scathing piece on the tech media. It really bothers me that the definition of success has changed from profits to followers, friends, and feed count. This crap doesn't mean anything. Kids are coming out of school thinking, I want to start the next YouTube or Facebook. If a restaurant served more food than everybody else but lost money on every diner, would it be successful? No. But on the Internet, for some reason, if you have more users than everyone else, you're successful. No, you're not.

Truth. Being spoken.

PS22 Is Singing a Song from The Cure

Pictures of You

Claude Levi Strauss Dies, Father of Modern Anthropology Study

Via BoingBoing, which pastes this glorious quote below the video on their site, which I will also post here.

"Among the more striking conclusions of his work was the idea that there is no fundamental difference between the belief systems and myths of so-called 'primitive' races and those of modern western societies."

Lunch: Tofu Koans

You can follow us on Twitter, where during lunch I often spout off tofu-induced koans about reality, learning, education and imagination.

Seriously, something about a good Thai food dish sends me back to Thailand, and then thinking about reality in the way that Buddhists might. Questioning the assumption that what I am experiencing is actually real, and what more can be made of that, once it is understood that illusion has a way of seeming real.

Enjoy!