Author: IBL News

IBL News | New York

edX, Skillshare, and Outschool have been included in Fast Company’s top 10 most innovative organizations in education in 2021.

The magazine explained that these companies found ways to thrive during the COVID-year when most learning is remote. Skillshare and Outschool amused learning while developing their creative passions, while edX reinvented the bachelor’s degree.

The 11 “MicroBachelors” degree programs launched by edX last year enrolled over 180,000 students.

This is the complete list, along with Fast Company’s reasoning.

1. Outschool — For making remote learning fun. With 1.6 million sign-ups, Outchool is a marketplace for virtual extracurriculars, such as ukulele lessons and food-science experiments, for students ages 3 to 18.

2.  Ruangguru — For livestreaming school for free to 10 million students during lockdown. This Indonesian startup took an engaging approach to help kids.

3. Skillshare — For giving creatives and hobbyists a pandemic outlet. This video platform for video lessons attracted 3 million new users last year.

4. Tonies — For bringing children’s stories to life — without a screen and without Amazon. Toniebox is a Germany-based alternative to Alexa for parents looking for audio storytelling without an e-commerce link. To date, the company has sold 1.7 million Tonieboxes.

5. edX — For reinventing the bachelor’s degree. MicroBachelor students can earn transferable credits and work their way toward credentials for less than a third of the cost of a traditional undergraduate program.

6. 4.0 — For giving educators an entrepreneurial boost — For teachers, New Orleans–based 4.0 is both a community and an incubator for entrepreneurial ideas. 4.0’s fellowships provide cash and coaching, giving educators tools to build solutions to challenges they see in their classrooms.

IBL News | New York

A new study that investigates authoritarianism and political discrimination among colleges and universities, shows that a “majority of conservative academics experience a hostile environment for their beliefs in U.S., Canadian, and British universities.” 

“A significant portion of academics discriminate against conservatives in hiring, promotion, grants, and publications. Over 4 in 10 US and Canadian academics would not hire a Trump supporter, and 1 in 3 British academics would not hire a Brexit supporter.”

However, most professors do not back “cancel culture” in its most authoritarian forms.

The study, titled “Academic Freedom in Crisis: Punishment, Political Discrimination, and Self-Censorship”, was authored by Dr. Eric Kaufmann, professor of politics at Birkbeck College, University of London.

According to the data of the research, in the U.S., “over a third of conservative academics and Ph.D. students have been threatened with disciplinary action for their view, while 70% of conservative academics report a hostile departmental climate for their beliefs.”

• Summary of the Report
• Full Report (PDF)

IBL News | New York

Harvard University’s 2021 live commencement—scheduled for May 27—will be virtual for the second year due to the pandemic.

“The delay of our Commencement Exercises for two years running is deeply disappointing, but public health and safety must continue to take precedence,” said Lawrence S. Bacow, President of Harvard University.

“We will gather as a community online on Thursday, May 27, to award degrees and celebrate the achievements of our graduates. After degrees are conferred, each School at Harvard will follow up with its own special virtual event and afterward deliver diplomas through the mail.”

Ruth Simmons, the president of Prairie View A&M University, a historically black college near Houston, will deliver the principal address.

IBL News | New York

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) canceled Google as a sponsor for the fourth annual Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT), which takes place online March 3-10, 2021.

The association had been facing pressure to address a recent event at Google, which is the departure of two female computer scientists: Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell (in the picture). Inside Higher Ed reported the story.

Timnit Gebru, former co-lead of Google’s ethical AI team, abruptly left the company in December.

She explained—see the tweet below—that she’d been fired after executives wanted to censor an unpublished paper she’d co-authored with academics about the ethical and environmental risks of large language model AI.

I was fired by @JeffDean for my email to Brain women and Allies. My corp account has been cutoff. So I’ve been immediately fired 🙂

— Timnit Gebru (@timnitGebru) December 3, 2020

Google argued that Gebru’s paper ignored important bias mitigation developments within AI.

Many employees and computer scientists said that Google failed to live up to its stated values about diversity in firing, effectively or directly, Gebru, a Black woman who researched ethical technology.

Last month, Google also fired Gebru’s former co-lead on ethical AI, Margaret Mitchell.

I abruptly lost my job 9 days ago. Tomorrow I lose my healthcare. This is the “view from the top” for a successful female AI research scientist who has built her career for over 15 years.

— MMitchell (@mmitchell_ai) March 1, 2021

Mitchell said on Twitter that she’d written an email to Google about Gebru’s termination and its relationship to sexism and discrimination — and then promptly had her own work email access cut off. Google later fired her.

Google has said it terminated Mitchell, who is white, for violating company policies.

IBL News | New York

The U.S. colleges and universities will receive nearly $40 billion in new aid as
Congress approved the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill, this week.

Colleges and universities will be required to spend approximately half of the funds in the bill on emergency grants to students. Whether undocumented and international students can get the help, however, still hasn’t been decided by the Education Department.

This is the largest infusion of help to higher education approved during the pandemic. President Biden called the bill “a giant step forward” in providing help to Americans during the pandemic.

ACE (American Council on Education) President, Ted Mitchell, said yesterday this federal help “falls short of our most recent estimate of at least $97 billion in student and institutional needs.” 

The measure also provides additional dedicated support to Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, and other Minority-Serving Institutions.

The Senate approved several amendments to the House-approved version, including one that would exempt all student loan forgiveness from federal taxes for five years, in the event the president or Congress decides to cancel any debt.