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...
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...
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...
Disability, or super power?
Today, April 2, is World Autism Day. In another month, graduation season will start, and another class of young people with a diagnosis on the autism spectrum will enter the labor market. Those of us who live and work in the Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) field know that we are witnessing a tsunami...
With Intelligent Tech, Low-Income Students Find Success in College, Success for Life
For many, attending college was always part of "The Plan" after high school—a few years of polish (and partying) before earning a degree and finding meaningful employment. But that's not often the case for one segment of the U.S. population: first-generation college goers like Ashoka Fellow...
How Can Higher Education Stay Relevant for the Workforce?
This is the second post in a series where we share the conversations between higher education leaders that came together during Everyone a Changemaker Week. They discussed the role of social innovation as a significant lever for the relevancy of higher education in a time when many claim that...
Reinventing the Scholarly Article in the Digital Era
This is the third post in a series where we share the conversations between higher education leaders that came together during Everyone a Changemaker Week. They discussed the role of social innovation as a significant lever for the relevancy of higher education in a time when many claim that...