February 2012
4 posts
Podcast Friday: Manufacturing Jobs
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...
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Podcast Friday: Hybrid Campuses
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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Podcast Friday: The For-Profits
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...
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Podcast Friday: Getting Through College
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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January 2012
3 posts
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Podcast Friday: Teaching Online
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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Podcast Friday: King's Last March encore
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...
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Podcast Friday: The State of Online Education
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...
December 2011
4 posts
4 tags
Podcast: The Education Year in Review
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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Podcast Friday: Excellent Community Colleges
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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Podcast: Organizing Schools to Help Students
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...
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Podcast Friday: Saving Cooper Union
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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November 2011
5 posts
7 tags
Podcast Friday: Kindergarten Tech
The kindergarten classroom is traditionally a place where youngsters get to experiment with hands-on learning tools like finger paints and building blocks. But with budget-cutting at public schools forcing teachers to take on larger class sizes, more schools are experimenting with adding computer-enhanced lessons for early learners. American RadioWorks host Stephen Smith talks to the...
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Podcast Friday: Importing Chinese Students to...
In contrast to the United States and Europe, China’s economy is thriving. As the competition gets tougher for entrance into China’s universities, more middle-class families are sending their children to college out of the country, which has led to a booming college placement industry in China. Recent investigations revealed a pattern of fraud and financial kickbacks at one such...
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Podcast Friday: Occupy Wall Street & Student Debt
The Occupy Wall Street movement is spreading to college campuses, where students are protesting rising tuition costs and poor job prospects in today’s economy. One expert suggests cutting costs and streamlining college course offerings might produce graduates with more earning potential in the long term.
Guest: Anne Neal, President, American Council of Trustees and Alumni.
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Podcast Friday: Academic High Flyers
A recent study by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and NWEA asked how efforts to bring up the bottom in public schools are affecting the nation’s strongest students. It found that students at the top are not soaring as high as they could be.
Guest: Michael J. Petrilli, Executive Vice President, Fordham Institute.
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Podcast: School Libraries
With the rise of Internet search engines and the increasing digitization of textbooks, you might think the physical space of a library doesn’t have a place in the future of American schools. But a national group of school librarians met this week in Minneapolis and they argue that school libraries are essential to academic success.
Guest: Carl Harvey II, President of the American...
October 2011
2 posts
5 tags
Podcast Friday: Efficiencies on Campus
Many corporations are demanding cheaper, faster and more efficient work from their employees. Now that bottom-line kind of thinking is coming to higher education. Marketplace reporter Amy Scott recently reported on two initiatives to reign in spending on college campuses and to make the cost of college more affordable.
Guest: Amy Scott, Reporter for Marketplace’s Education Desk.
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Podcast Friday: Achievement Gap Mania?
Since the No Child Left Behind Act went into effect in 2002, public school reforms have focused almost exclusively on trying to close the “achievement gap” between children from poor and minority families and children from higher income families. But education scholar Rick Hess argues that targeting only the lowest-performing students is hurting higher-performing students while...
September 2011
6 posts
6 tags
Podcast Friday: Leadership Prep
To get hired in an ultra-competitive job market, you need the right combination of education, skills and experience. Whether you’re at the executive or entry level, figuring out that perfect combination can be a mystery. This week on the podcast, we turn to Mike Carey, vice president of global human resources at PDI Ninth House, a leadership development firm. Carey is an industry veteran...
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Podcast Friday: Failure Equals Success
We caught up with Paul Tough, who wrote this past weekend’s Sunday NYT cover story: “What if the secret to success is failure?”. If you haven’t read the article yet, you should. Our interview sheds a little light on the two educators profiled in the piece. Audio will be available Friday.
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Podcast Friday: College Rankings and Diversity
U.S. News & World Report’s 2012 national college and university rankings came out this week. Annual lists like these are supposed to help people compare many schools at a glance. But one college president recently criticized these rankings, saying those who compile such lists ignore an important factor when calculating the merits of a given school: the socioeconomic diversity of...
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Podcast Friday: Who Needs an English Major?
Today on the podcast, we present the third and final in our series, Tomorrow’s College, about the future of higher education: “Who Needs an English Major?”
The most popular college major in America these days is business. Some students think it doesn’t pay to study philosophy or history. But advocates of liberal arts programs say their graduates are still among the most...
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Listener feedback - thanks!
We’re getting great feedback about our “Tomorrow’s College” project. As we prepare to release our third and final doc in the series, here’s what some folks have had to say so far about “Some College, No Degree” and “Don’t Lecture Me.”:
Don’t Lecture Me- one of the best hour programs I have heard in ages. It has made me re-think how...
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Podcast Friday: Don't Lecture Me!
We just released the second hour-long radio doc in our Tomorrow’s College series and it’s available for podcast listeners on demand (see below)!
Don’t Lecture Me: Rethinking the Way College Students Learn tells the unexpected story of how a group of physicists became concerned about what their students were learning, what they did about it, and how their work is influencing a...
August 2011
5 posts
7 tags
Podcast Friday: Some College, No Degree
American RadioWorks is proud to present the first of three new documentaries in the Tomorrow’s College series. This week on the podcast: “Some College, No Degree: Why So Many Americans Drop Out of College, and What to Do about It.”
More people are going to college than ever before. But in the United States, about half the people who start don’t finish. There are 37 million...
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Podcast Friday: Group Learning
ARW is about to release three new documentaries about the changing face of higher education. This week we talk about the use of teamwork in college classes.
By the time students get to college, they’re expected to be proficient at learning independently, without the support of a group. But at the University of Minnesota-Rochester, group work is a core part of the curriculum. ARW producer...
Is a College Degree Worth It?
Getting a college degree is more expensive than ever. Each year, the sticker price goes up about six percent – about twice the rate of inflation. The cost of college is causing parents and students to borrow record amounts at a time when the economy is weak. It’s also why we see so many news articles and commentaries wondering if a college degree is even worth it.
On this week’s podcast,...
The Seven Biggest Myths About Paying for College
For many parents, the prospect of paying for a child’s college education is daunting. A college degree today costs ten times what it did fifty years ago. In this podcast, we clear up some of the biggest misconceptions about paying for college with Carol Stack, co-author of The Financial Aid Handbook: Getting the Education You Want for the Price You Can Afford.
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Public University Cuts
As the national economy struggles to pull itself out of the Great Recession, states across the country are making painful budget cuts. Education is a major part of most state budgets, so public colleges and universities are getting hit hard.
On this week’s podcast, American RadioWorks talks to higher education blogger Alex Friedrich about how cuts in state funding to the nation’s...
July 2011
4 posts
11 tags
Podcast Friday: Scrutiny for Schools on Military...
At a White House event back in April, President Barack Obama declared his administration’s commitment to supporting military families.
But a new investigation reveals that children at military bases worldwide often attend school in substandard and deteriorating buildings, even as their parents serve their country. On this week’s podcast, American RadioWorks speaks with iWatch...
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Podcast Friday: Put to the Test, Revisited
Last month, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan reignited the ongoing debate about how to improve the federal No Child Left Behind law (NCLB). Under the 2001 legislation, all schools must demonstrate 100 percent proficiency in math and reading by the year 2014. Secretary Duncan recently offered reprieve from the 2014 deadline to any state that would agree to comply with new federal education...
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Podcast Friday: Mathophobics
If figuring out the tip at a restaurant makes you break a sweat, you may suffer from math anxiety. Today on the podcast, we ask a psychologist why so many Americans think they’re bad at math and how this anxiety might be prevented in schools.
Guest: Sian Beilock, Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago and author of Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting...
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Podcast Friday: Challenging the Liberal Arts
Many schools that offer degrees in the liberal arts and sciences are adapting the ways they teach to meet the demands of the 21st century. In September, American RadioWorks will premier a documentary called “Who Needs and English Major?” This week on the podcast we’ll preview one of the schools that will be featured in the documentary: Berea College in Eastern Kentucky.
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June 2011
5 posts
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Podcast Friday: Skills to Pay the Bills
This week we continue with our series on the value of a college degree. ARW Producer Emily Hanford shares excerpts of her interview with Tony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.
Download this podcast episode Open the American RadioWorks Podcast in iTunes Or copy and paste http://www.americanradioworks.org/podcast.xml into your preferred...
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Podcast Friday: How College Pays
We’ve been talking a lot on the podcast about higher education and whether or not it’s important to have a college degree in the 21st century economy. This week and next we’re going to explore what college degrees are worth, and why they matter so much.
Our producer Emily Hanford is working on a documentary called “Some College, No Degree: Why So Many Americans...
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Podcast Friday: Alexander Russo on Turning Around...
In 2008, the non-profit charter-management organization Green Dot took over Alain Locke High school in L.A.. Locke is located in a tough inner-city neighborhood, and was a picture of academic failure when teachers secretly schemed for Green Dot to take control of their school. When a charter school replaces a traditional public school, there’s often a house cleaning of existing teachers,...
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Podcast Friday: Art majors find satisfying careers
A new survey of college graduates indicates that the myth of the “starving artist” might be just that - a myth. The study shows that a majority of art majors end up being very satisfied with their careers, whether they work in the field they studied or not. American RadioWorks conducted its own informal survey of arts graduates and we share some of the responses on this week’s...
Arts majors talk about their careers
Tomorrow’s podcast is a collection of voice-mails we got from people with fine and performing arts degrees. We sent out an survey through APM’s Public Insight Network (a nationwide database of people who serve as sources for journalists) and got nearly 80 responses, most of which arrived within the first day of posting the query. Because we couldn’t use all the responses in the...
May 2011
5 posts
5 tags
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Podcast: Battling the "Summer Slide"
The countdown to summer vacation has begun in many schools across the country. Traditionally, summer break is a time for students and teachers to leave the classroom behind for three months. But research shows that being idle for an extended period of time can cause students to fall behind academically. This week we discuss how summer break can leave lower-income students at disadvantage during...
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“What happens when a whole bunch of teenagers have nothing to do all day for two...”
– Lisa Salazar, the acting chief of the program-operations division for Los Angeles’ community-development department, said in an Education Week article out today:
Ms. Salazar estimates that the city’s summer-jobs program will hire just 725 youths ages 14 to 19 this summer, compared with...
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What to do with your summer vacation
This Friday, our podcast will focus on the effects of targeted summer learning programs. The chart below is excerpted from a National Summer Learning Association research brief featuring work done by Duke University’s Harris Cooper about the effects of the so-called “summer slide,” or learning loss that kids can experience when they’re not in school for several months....
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Podcast: Preschool, Day Care, Both?
Research points to a strong correlation between high-quality preschool and success later in life. But not everyone agrees that childcare needs to have an educational component. A leader in the field discusses how standards for early education are changing the way we think about daycare.
Guest: Barbara Yates, Executive Director, Resources for Child Caring.
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