The White House announced this week an initiative called the COVID-19 College Challenge to encourage universities to get their communities — students, faculty, and staff — vaccinated. This project is part of the Biden Administration's campaign to accelerate vaccination, aiming for the goal of 70% of the U.S. adult population receiving at least one shot by July 4th. First Lady Jill Biden and Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona kicked off the challenge on their social media platforms. "I encourage every college and university to take this pledge and get creative in becoming Vaccine Champion Colleges," said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. As part of the COVID-19 College Vaccine Challenge, the Administration will host regular training sessions for college and student leaders, under the umbrella of the COVID Community Corps. According to the White House, to date, 60 community colleges from 20 states have signed up for this initiative.
"The new normal will be blended education in 2025," said Anant Agarwal, Founder and CEO at edX during the annual Open edX Conference, which took place in a virtual format yesterday. "50% will be online and 50% in person," he explained. During the conference's opening keynote, Mr. Agarwal predicted that the shift will also impact the corporate world. "Remote work and learning are here to stay, and all businesses will go into some kind of blended work model." Anant Agarwal stated that "edX has become the movement of the moment". The non-profit organization created by MIT and Harvard reached 38 million learners and 1,000 corporations as clients. [See slides below]. The 2021 Open edX virtual conference — which attracted a limited audience on a paid subscription platform — hosted Sanjay Sarma, Vice President of Open Learning at MIT, as the main speaker. He elaborated about the future of work. Sarina Canelake, an edX engineering manager, revealed that 70% of total code contributions on the Open edX platform come from its community of developers. One of the successful case studies analyzed was the Harvard University-promoted initiative LabXchange.org. Launched in January 2020, this educational platform has attracted 6.2 million unique users to date. As an upcoming development, in addition to the new version of the Open edX platform called Lilac, Marco Morales, from edX, announced that the organization was working on an app that will include "a fully mobile learning experience," not dependant on the desktop version. [Disclosure: IBL Education, the parent company of IBL News, uses Open edX software in its platforms] A lot of friends playing to grow @openedx and doing some insights with @agarwaledu & @nedbat about the last year and trends and needs in online learning. The @graspway team sends thanks for the event and a lot of strength to keep changing the world with #opensource pic.twitter.com/MwTk77jso7 — Javier Viñuales (@vigu) May 27, 2021
While the frenzy over cryptocurrencies continues in Wall Street — despite a severe correction last week — colleges and universities launch a message to donors: we are happy to accept your crypto. In addition to cash, art, land, or stock, institutions understand that gifting cryptocurrency — Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Ripple… — is quite beneficial for donors since the money goes directly to the university, avoiding to pay capital gains tax. Colleges and universities also do not have to pay capital gains taxes on the gift, because nonprofit organizations are exempt from many taxes. The University of Pennsylvania announced last week it received $5 million in Bitcoin. It immediately liquidated that donation and converted it into cash. An anonymous donor channeled the crypto money to the Stevens Center for Innovation in Finance at the Wharton School. The university is currently accepting cryptocurrency gifts valued at $10,000 or more. However, Penn is using a third-party intermediary called NYDIG to liquidate the assets and transfer cash to the university. According to a report at Inside Higher Ed, other universities have also received crypto as gifts, such as the University of Illinois and the University of California. The University of California, Berkeley received its first Bitcoin donation in 2017: $50,000 in Bitcoin from the EchoLink Foundation for the university’s Blockchain Lab. Seven years ago, an alum gifted $10,000 of Bitcoin to the University of Puget Sound.
The Economist organization announced yesterday that its new division of Education launched its first course: "The New Global Order: How politics, business, and technology are changing." This 6-week, 6 to 8 hours per week course is part of a new online executive education program, designed "to give business executives an edge in their careers." It is priced at around $2,000 and has been created in collaboration with GetSmarter, a 2U subsidiary. "What makes this program different is that it is created by Economist journalists and features experts from around the world," said a representative of The Economist to IBL News yesterday. "Twenty Economist journalists helped to put together the first course and a number of high-level outside speakers will present including Kevin Rudd, former Prime Minister of Australia, and Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google." The second course of Economist Education will be on How to Write and is scheduled for the Fall.
Around 460 million children experienced reading difficulties in 2020. That number jumped by 20% to 584 million in 2020, due to the COVID-19 crisis and the school closures. This dramatic increase of 100 million children falling behind the minimum proficiency level in reading is wiping out two decades of education gains, according to UNESCO, the United Nations cultural agency. The recovery to the pre-pandemic pathway may take a decade, says this institution. The UNESCO's study One year into COVID: Prioritizing education recovery to avoid a generational catastrophe elaborates on the learning losses. "It's a generational catastrophe," states the report. The partial or complete shutdown has disrupted schooling for an average of 25 weeks, especially in Latin America and Caribbean countries, as well as in Central and Southern Asia. To tackle the problem, UNESCO is calling for schools to reopen "with greater support for teachers; initiatives to prevent pupils from dropping out, and an acceleration of the availability of digital learning tools." The problem of lack of learning gets aggravated with the fact that many nations — one in eight in the world — spend more on debt than education, health, and social protection combined, says a recent report from UNICEF, UN Children's Fund. In this regard, Henrietta Fore, Chief at UNICEF, called for a global effort, with international agencies, creditors, and national governments acting together for debt relief and restructuring. "The personal and public costs are enormous, leaving children, their communities, and their countries with little hope for sustainable economic and social development," Fore explained. One year into the #COVID19 crisis, 2 in 3 students worldwide are still affected by full or partial school closures. @UNESCO’s high-level event finds solutions on how to prioritize education recovery & avoid a generational catastrophe. https://t.co/cjm2onqPSq #LearningNeverStops pic.twitter.com/G563M8TfG4 — UNESCO 🏛️ #Education #Sciences #Culture 🇺🇳😷 (@UNESCO) March 25, 2021
