American RadioWorks Podcast

Harvard Medical School's "Training the Eye" course. Photos taken at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, April 6, 2012. Special thanks to Michelle Grohe.

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Jamie Merisotis, President of Lumina Foundation*, speaking on the ARW podcast last December. He'll be back on the podcast next week to respond to a recent paper critical of megafoundations' role in higher education advocacy.

Why do some students drop out of college, while others persist? Researchers think it may have something to do with a person's level of "grit" and are trying to figure out whether this trait can be taught to others.

India is one of the fastest-growing countries in the world, and with about a third of its population under the age of 14, India will soon see a surge in working-age adults. That's why the government there is leading an ambitious effort to expand higher education institutions both on-ground and online.

The Hechinger Report's Sarah Garland joins us on the podcast to talk about what she learned on her recent trip to India. Here's more on Hechinger's series, "Lessons From Abroad."

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The 2012 presidential candidates have all stressed the need to bring manufacturing jobs "back" to the United States from overseas. While it's true that the United States has lost more than five million manufacturing jobs in the past decade due to foreign competition and productivity gains, there are also a lot of manufacturing jobs still here in America - and many of those jobs are going unfilled.

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This week: reporting from Stephen Smith's upcoming documentary on how technology is changing higher education. Northeastern University President Joseph Aoun discusses why the physical boundaries of the traditional college campus becoming less relevant to learning.

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For-profit universities have come under fire in recent years because of questionable practices at some institutions. But today, schools like the University of Phoenix, DeVry and others are working hard to transform their images. Correspondent Emily Hanford interviewed Kaplan University's Peter Smith for an upcoming documentary that tracks the rise of the for-profit higher education industry.

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Our correspondent Emily Hanford produced a documentary last fall called "Some College, No Degree" about the challenges people face getting back to college once they quit. Now she's working on a new documentary that looks at the college completion question from a different angle.

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This week we go inside the world of virtual education. Kristin Kipp was voted 2011 National Online Teacher of the Year and she tells us what it's like to teach high school English from her living room.

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As a belated tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the podcast this week is an encore presentation of our 2008 documentary, "King's Last March" by Stephen Smith and Kate Ellis. Over 40 years after Dr. King's assassination, he remains one of the most vivid symbols of hope for racial unity in America. But that's not the way he was viewed in the last year of his life. For more on this doc, visit http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/king/

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Online coursework was once considered an experimental alternative to on-ground classes, but it's quickly becoming a part of the mainstream. Online courses make it possible for colleges and universities to stay within their shrinking budgets, and for busy working adults to go to school anywhere, anytime. As of last fall, about a third of all American college students were enrolled in at least one course online.

Guest: John Bourne, Executive Director, The Sloan Consortium.

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What were the top education stories of 2011? The Wall Street Journal's Stephanie Banchero joins us to discuss the stories she thinks had the biggest impact this year.

Guest: Stephanie Banchero, National Education Reporter, Wall Steet Journal and President, Education Writers Association.

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In the coming decade, most new jobs will require a college education. Community colleges are expected to play a big role in helping Americans get those jobs. Nearly half of all college students go to community colleges but only a third of them graduate.

Guest: Josh Wyner, Executive Director, Aspen Institute's College Excellence Program.

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When it comes to education reform, the most controversial ideas usually generate the most attention, but these flashy efforts are often hard to measure and expensive to do. The authors of a new report argue that there are less glamorous, more common-sense school reforms that benefit students by changing the way schools are organized.

Guest: Jonah Rockoff, Sidney Taurel Associate Professor of Business, Columbia Business School.

More on the report, "Organizing Schools to Improve Student Achievement: Start Times, Grade Configurations, and Teacher Assignments"

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Going to college for free may sound like a fantasy, but Cooper Union in New York City has offered free tuition to its students since its founding in 1859. Now Cooper Union is facing a serious budget deficit and its trustees are considering charging tuition to keep the institution solvent.

Guest: Jamshed Bharucha, President, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.

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