Category: Views

IBL News | New York

Stanford University launched its first class in virtual reality, using Facebook’s Oculus Quest 2 headsets.

Taught by Professor Jeremy Bailenson, Communication 166/266 Virtual People deals with the emerging VR technology and its use cases. It covers the expanding influence of VR in many different fields, including popular culture, engineering, behavioral science and communication.

The course is part of a study carried out by Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab. The research is looking at how virtual technologies can be effectively used in educational settings.

Professor Jeremy Bailenson came up with the idea after teaching students about VR for nearly 20 years. After that time, he decided that the best way to demonstrate its abilities was to create a full course experience with VR. He is the author of the seminal VR text Experience on Demand, which also is one of the class’ assigned readings.

According to the course structure, students will use lecture time to take part in VR experiences by themselves or as a group, including class discussions.

In 2021, 263 students, all with their own VR headsets, across 20 weeks and two courses, spent over 3,500 shared hours together in the Metaverse.

Each week, the course centers on different areas where VR can be used in the real world. According to the course structure, students will use lecture time to take part in VR experiences by themselves or as a group, including class discussions.

Among the class exercises was a guided meditation in outer space. Students were able to create performances with different avatars.

“In Virtual People, the students don’t just get to try VR a handful of times. VR becomes the medium they rely on,” professor Bailenson said in a statement. “Nobody has networked hundreds of students with VR headsets for months at a time in the history of virtual reality, or even in the history of teaching.”

The class has drawn students majoring in diverse disciplines, including economics, political science, communication, anthropology, biology, computer science, film and media studies, comparative literature, art practice, psychology, and sociology.

Facebook’s parent company Meta, creator of the Quest device, says that such headsets will play a big part in a future “metaverse” it plans to build with other companies.

In addition to the headsets, the course also uses the Engage virtual communication software to connect the students and teachers. Engage is used by major companies and educational organizations to hold virtual meetings and events.
.

 

 

 

IBL News | New York

With the Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus on the rise American colleges and universities are starting to take measures, that will impact the spring 2022 semester.

The concern is that even vaccinated individuals contract the virus, disrupting institutions’ plans.

Schools are closely monitoring the situation before alerting students to any changes. The input received from public health experts will mostly determine their course of action.

Beyond this wait-and-see behavior, some institutions have made public announcements:

• Harvard University already announced a transition to fully online learning to start in 2022. At least the first three weeks of classes will turn into remote learning.

• Stanford University reported that it will start the winter quarter online, from January 3 until January 18.

• DePaul University canceled on-campus classes until after January 17.

• Penn State will begin the semester in person as planned. However, the school might alter plans. An update is expected in December. 30.

• The University of California, Los Angeles, said it has yet to decide about returning to campus in January. Before December 25, the university will share more information with students.

• Seven universities of California campuses — Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, and Riverside — announced that they will start instruction online in January.

• Cornell, Princeton, Tufts, Towson University, and other schools are shifting final exams to online. Athletics and sports events are being called off in an increasing number of institutions.

 

IBL News | New York

Cornell University put its Ithaca campus into alert level red, moving all final exams to an online format yesterday. This measure followed the rapid spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant of COVID-19 among its student population. Around 883 students tested positive in the week ending Monday.

In addition to moving finals, President Martha E. Pollack announced that all university events and social were canceled, including the December 18 recognition ceremony and athletics competitions.

Also, libraries, fitness centers, and gyms were closed to students. Other measures involved the shut down for visitors and guests.

“It is obviously extremely dispiriting to have to take these steps,” Martha E. Pollack wrote in a letter to the community. “However, since the start of the pandemic, our commitment has been to follow the science and do all we can to protect the health of our faculty, staff, and students.”

Other colleges have also taken measures recently to head off the spread of the virus on campus.

Princeton, Cornell, and Middlebury College in Vermont shifted to remote exams, while others, such as Tulane, gave students the option of finishing the semester online.

Princeton University canceled indoor gatherings and encouraged students who plan to travel home for the holiday break to leave campus as soon as possible. According to Princeton statistics, more than 50 students of 8,200 who attend the New Jersey Ivy League university tested positive for Covid-19 Monday and Tuesday.

Princeton, which requires all students, faculty, and staff to be vaccinated against Covid-19, is now also requiring all eligible students to receive a booster by January 31.

DePaul University in Chicago and Southern New Hampshire University each said this month that they would switch to all remote instruction, at least for a time, when classes resume in January.

 

IBL News | New York

Jim Malatras, the Chancellor of the State University of New York (SUNY), submitted his resignation on Thursday following intense bipartisan political pressure for him to step down. His resignation will go into effect on January 14, 2022.

In the last week, the controversy over his allegedly “toxic management style” loudly increased until provoking his fall.

Jim Malatras, an old Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s ally, faced mounting criticism over text messages that showed him belittling one of the women who had accused the now-disgraced politician of sexual harassment. The New York State Attorney General’s Office’s release of text messages sent by him accelerated his decision to step down.

IBL News | New York

The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday passed congressional Democrats’ sweeping $1.85 trillion climate and social spending bill by a vote of 220 to 213. No Republicans voted for the legislation, dubbed as the Build Back Better Act (BBB). Representative Jared Golden of Maine was the only Democrat to vote against it.

The legislation now heads to the Senate, where it’s expected to undergo changes. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, said the chamber “will act as quickly as possible.”

In addition to a large investment in clean energy on tax credits, the BBB legislation includes substantial funding to universal pre-K, provides child care subsidies covering 20 million children, and extends an expanded child tax credit for one more year.

It also includes billions of dollars in new investments for higher ed:

• $550 increase to the maximum Pell Grant,
• $2.35 billion for Black, Tribal, and Hispanic universities,
• $500 million for college completion and retention grants,
• $20 billion for workforce development.

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona [in the picture above] said in a statement that the passed act will be “transformative.”

He added:

— “Free universal pre-K and dramatically improved access to child care, so all our children can start their learning journeys from the same starting line.”

— “Increased resources for HBCUs, Tribal Colleges, Hispanic Serving Institutions and other institutions that unlock opportunities for students of color and unleash their potential in our communities.”

— “Expanded access to affordable college with increased Pell grants for anyone who dreams of getting a degree.”

— “A stronger workforce pipeline with workforce development resources, for better pathways to the middle class.” 

IBL News | New York

2U, Inc. (Nasdaq: TWOU) announced yesterday it completed its acquisition of edX Inc, the MIT and Harvard-created non-profit educational platform, sold last June by $800 million in cash. Now, edX will operate as a public benefit company property of 2U.

Along with the closing of the business, 2U decided to eliminate all membership and annual fees for current and future edX Consortium members — 230 in total, including 19 top universities — as a measure to keep them on board.

• Anant Agarwal, CEO at edX and professor at MIT, decided to join 2U after being named for a new executive position: Chief Open Education Officer. He will report to 2U’s CEO, Chip Paucek, and “will continue to steward the edX mission as part of 2U’s executive team.”  [Both in the picture, above]

Moreover, the announcement indicated: “Anant Agarwal will serve as one of 2U’s representatives on Open edX’s new Technical Oversight Committee, responsible for guiding the technical direction and vision of the open-source platform and community to support learning outcomes around the world.”

• edX Chief Technology Officer JP Beaudry was appointed Chief Technology Officer at 2U, succeeding former CTO James Kenigsberg.

• edX VP of Product Lauren Holliday was appointed Managing Director of Open Courses & Marketplace at 2U.

As part of the closing, 2U and edX also announced, without further detail, “a marketing campaign this week to expand the reach of edX partner organizations”, as well as “a million dollars in funding to support the production of 10 new free courses in Essential Human Skills for the Virtual Age to be developed by the edX partner community.”

In addition, “edX partner Boston University has committed to launching a new disruptively priced Master of Public Health degree.”

2U reported that “more than 25 2U partners are joining the edX Consortium and committing to contribute affordable, high-quality learning to edX.org, including Howard University, London School of Economics and Political Science, Morehouse College, Syracuse University, UC Davis, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Vanderbilt University and others.”

The Lanham, Maryland – based company reinforced its commitment to “contribute to the ongoing development of the open-source platform Open edX.”

As part of the PR campaign, Chip Paucek and Anant Agarwal wrote a shared blog post titled “Potential, Unlocked.”

IBL News | Madrid, Spain

A private university in Spain opened this month campus in a skyscraper in Madrid, as shown in the picture. The inauguration took place last week.

IE University’s new campus will host 3,800 undergraduate students in the IE Tower, a modern, high-tech, sustainable building that resembles, only in shape, the United Nations headquarters in New York.

The building looms large amid four other corporate skyscrapers populated by executives from PwC, KPMG, and other global corporations.

For IE University, a school that teaches in English and has been operating as a business school for over four decades, the 180-meter tall tower is a landmark achievement. Spain’s national and Madrid’s regional governments shared this view.

This building, visible all over Madrid, Spain, occupies 35 floors filled with 64 classrooms, 50,000 square meters, and 7,000 square meters of green space.

It includes exhibition halls, a creativity center, a sports zone with swimming pools, and even a meditation room. The classrooms are equipped with technology to simultaneously deliver face-to-face and online sessions.

The IE Tower expects to house 6,000 students within five years.

The owner of the IE University [in the picture below] is a prominent, well-connected to the Monarchy, Spaniard entrepreneur and art collector Diego del Alcázar, 71. He privately funded the school 48 years ago. Today his 37-year-old son, Diego de Alcázar Benjumea, operates as a Vice President.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IBL News | New York

Harvard University’s mythical endowment — the largest endowment in the world — grew even beyond the most favorable expectations this year, despite the pandemic.

Harvard’s annual financial report for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2021, showed that its endowment increased from $11.3 billion to a breathtaking $53.2 billion, a 27% growth.

In addition, in the same fiscal year, the university operations yield a $283 million surplus. In 2020, the institution’s budget showed a $10 million operating deficit.

The fact that the university — an institution with around $5.5 billion in revenues — was forced to send students home in March 2020, beginning more than a year of remote instruction didn’t damage its financial health.

In their annual report letter summarizing the year, Thomas J. Hollister, Vice President for Finance and CFO, and Paul J. Finnegan, Treasurer, observed that “Harvard’s finances ended the year in a dramatically improved position compared to initial budget assumptions.”

The net decrease in revenue, 5 percent during the two-year period, was half what University administrators feared. Total student income decreased nearly $200 million in fiscal 2021 (17 percent) to $888 million.

Overall, Harvard emerged stronger from the pandemic, better positioned to educate and conduct research in the future, Harvard Magazine writes.

To make things better, Harvard Management Company (HMC) recorded a 33.6% investment return on endowment assets during fiscal 2021, up from 7.3% in the prior year. That was the highest return recorded since the 43.6 percent achieved in fiscal 1983 (during a period of declining interest rates and recovery from a recession) and 32.2 percent in fiscal 2000 (during the dot.com boom).

Endowment investment returns for the year totaled a staggering $12.8 billion. That sum eclipsed the traumatic $11-billion loss recorded in fiscal 2009, during the financial crisis and Great Recession, and handily outpaced the $9.6 billion realized from all sources and for all uses by Harvard Campaign, which concluded in June 2018.

“The true heroes for Harvard in fiscal 2021 were supportive donors, past and present,” said the report. The endowment distribution for operations increased about 2 percent, to just over $2 billion. And gifts for current use surged $63 million (13%) to $541 million, although some of this reflects a swing in payments to Harvard from its affiliated hospitals.

•

The Harvard Management Company (HMC) recognized that the endowment’s robust return took place in a context of economic recovery, which led to 40-plus percentage-point gains in U.S. stock indexes during the fiscal year of 2021. “Those conditions also prompted a deluge of initial public offerings by new companies at eye-popping valuations (rewarding the venture-capital and private-equity funds that had underwritten them: investment managers to whom large endowments often allocate sizable shares of their assets).”

The Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service, a standard analysis of institutional investments, reported the best overall results in 35 years, with median returns of more than 33 percent for large foundations and endowments. That was nearly ten times the median return of 3.4 percent for fiscal 2020.

Extraordinary performance in equity investments drove the results of the endowment. HMC’s managers achieved 50 percent returns on public equities (14% of HMC’s assets). Even better were the 77 percent returns on private equity (34 percent of assets, the largest single allocation).

The large shift toward private equity reflects, to some extent, N.P. Narvekar’s — CEO at Harvard Management Company — focused move in that direction since fiscal 2018 (with a related sharp reduction in the real-estate and natural-resources portfolios).

Other changes in allocation—such as the sharp decrease in public equity, where HMC’s external managers continued a multiyear record of significantly outperforming market benchmarks—were implemented following Harvard’s risk parameters, as well.

 

• Harvard University financial report
• Harvard Gazette Q&A on Harvard’s finances and operations with executive vice president Katie Lapp and Tom Hollister.

—-

IBL News | New York

Veritas Capital, the private equity firm that will own Blackboard after its acquisition from another investment company, Providence Equity Partners, avoided providing any details about the deal yesterday. The New York-based firm didn’t even mention the purchase on its website.

The move, performed in a context when EdTech companies are largely increasing their valuation and capital raising, wasn’t a surprise.

Providence Partners has been trying to sell Blackboard since 2015, after noticing the Blackboard was increasingly losing ground in the market in favor of Instructure’s CanvasLMS.

Precisely, yesterday the Cal Poly Pomona’s student newspaper posted an eloquent article titled “Canvas adoption erases Blackboard from campus.”

Consultant Phil Hill wrote that it was “the end of Blackboard as standalone EdTech.”

The Washington, DC – headquartered company that invented the LMS and overwhelmingly dominated the market for years was absorbed by a firm half of the size, Anthology, which was engineered mostly for financial purposes.

Roughly speaking, and without further confirmation, the dominant speculation is that Blackboard was valued at below two billion dollars, given its struggle with the accumulating debt. Providence Equity Partners paid $1.64 billion to buy Blackboard in 2011. Exiting the company has taken them ten years.

Meanwhile, Veritas Capital-backed Anthology, valued at $925 million last year, according to data provider PitchBook, seems to be the winner. Its CEO will run the merger company, while Blackboard’s Chief won’t play any managerial role, according to several sources.

The deal is pending official approval, and it’s soon to tell how and when the venture capitalists —who run the EdTech market show — will convince retail investors to back this new venture.

 

IBL News | New York

The private equity firms that currently own Anthology, Veritas Capital, and Leeds Equity Partners, will acquire the majority of shares of Blackboard Inc. from Providence Equity Partners LLC investment company for an undisclosed amount.

With that equity stock, Veritas Capital and Leeds Equity Partners will create a merged company, which will be lead by Jim Milton, current Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Anthology.

The combined company (as yet unnamed), valued at about $3 billion dollars including debt, will be majority-owned by Veritas Capital.

Providence Equity Partners — which bought Blackboard in 2011 for $1.64 billion — will hold a minority stake in the combined company. The transaction is expected to be closed by the end of 2021, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.

“Once the deal closes, Blackboard will no longer exist as a standalone EdTech company,” wrote expert Phil Hill on its blog.

The merge of Anthology and Blackboard will result in one of the industry’s largest LMS management firms, with a workforce of 4,000 employees and over 4,000 colleges and universities as clients.

Anthology — which is the recent gathering of Campus Management, Campus Labs, and iModules — accounts for 2,000 higher ed institutions in 30 countries.

Blackboard claims it currently serves 150 million users in 80 countries.  For years, Blackboard was the dominant provider of learning management systems (LMSs) until Canvas LMS surpassed it.

“Upon the completion of this merger, we will have a data-driven product portfolio that seeks to touch every constituent at the institution and will aim to transform the way education uses technology to engage, connect, teach, learn and drive efficiencies across the institution,” Milton said. “We are fully aligned around a deep focus on learner success.”

“Together, Blackboard and Anthology will lead the next wave of EdTech innovation,” said Bill Ballhaus, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and President of Blackboard.

According to Bloomberg, the resulting company will be valued at several billion dollars. A Bloomberg reporter was told that Blackboard was valued at $2 billion and Anthology at $1 billion.

and it all comes full circle for me. Although I’m told BB was valued close to $2 bln time around with Anthology closer to $1 bln https://t.co/CZzbqHXwoj

— Liana B. Baker (@LianaBaker) September 13, 2021