Laura White on the Disruption Needed in Higher Education: Empathy
This is the first of a series of posts featuring Exchange participants discussing “Disruptive Innovation in Higher Education.” This week we feature Laura White, a senior at Tulane University and founder of the nonprofit Swim 4 Success. When you ask Laura White about reforming higher education, she...
Creatively incorporating social entrepreneurship in the classroom
If you think social entrepreneurship has to be taught as a stand-alone subject, you haven’t met Jane Turner and Benhür Oral. While teaching English as a preparatory subject in Istanbul’s Özyeğin University, they quickly realized they could incorporate far more into the syllabus than just the basic...
MITx: One Small Step for MIT, One Giant Leap for Higher Education
According to Marina Kim, Ashoka U's co-founder and executive director, "Ashoka is working closely with universities that are at the forefront of innovation in Higher Education and are looking to develop a generation of students with the skills to be changemakers. Technology plays a key role in...
Dale Stephens: 'You Don't Need a College Degree to Change the World'
The landscape of education reform in the United States is turbulent, and there may be no idea more radical than that of 20-year-old Dale Stephens: He thinks you don’t need to go to college. Stephens is the leader of UnCollege, a social crusade that challenges the commonly-accepted notion that a...
Disrupting College: A Mother of Five's Search for Answers as Tuition Looms
For 60 grand a year at an elite private college, today's students are paying for a lot of things they could get elsewhere for cheap or free. So, is college worth it? And the residential four-year model of lectures and directed study may not be preparing them for a changing world that demands...
ArcelorMittal Finds Steel Resolve to Support Youth Ventures
A new partnership between the business and social worlds is set to make (positive) waves in the youth entrepreneurship movement. ArcelorMittal, the world's leading steel and mining company with a presence in more than 60 countries, has joined forces with Ashoka to support a groundswell of interest...
Ashoka U and Cordes Foundation Announce “Most Innovative Educators of 2012”
Forget the Oscars—this week, the hottest stars on the red carpet are ideas for improving higher education. Six sustainable, scalable teaching and partnership models to bring disruptive social innovation education have won the 2012 Ashoka U – Cordes Innovation Award. Ashoka U, Ashoka's initiative...
Bill Drayton: Generation Z Will Network Its Way to Social Change
In an increasingly resource-stretched world, it takes more than social activism to cut to the heart of social challenges. Today the world needs social entrepreneurs — who work like entrepreneurs to address social problems — according to Ashoka founder Bill Drayton, who last week contributed to...
An Executive and a Student Walk into a Subway Car: Creating a Self-Sustaining Jordan Through Unlikely Teamwork
According to Ashoka Fellow Raghda Butros, there are two types of poverty in Jordan. The first is obvious: financial poverty in low-income neighborhoods. But Butros sees the second—the cultural poverty of more-affluent Ammanis—as an equally serious impediment to social change. While these Ammanis can...