It is sad that young, educated people go into journalism in order to learn about and write about important local issues, but as they learn more and more about the local society they live in, they seem to be overcome with an intense desire to escape it. At least, this is my intuition of what is going on at CB. At the Star Advertiser, they don’t ask the tough questions, so they don’t get any hard answers, and therefore they feel no discouragement. That attitude is very much in alignment with the complacent attitudes of a typical small town.

Ah, to be young again, and to escape while there was still time and some hope….

Best of luck to them.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47400500/ns/business-us_business/#.T7As1ehYvIZ

Our governor does not seem to have a plan to make college affordable. Or perhaps he does?

What’s the plan, Neil?

Abercrombie’s idea of a rail system linking Kapolei with UH Manoa reminded me of a story I read years ago — repeat, YEARS ago — in which a college student was living in the dorms and paying full-time tuition, but it turned out that all the classes she was taking were online. Her mother was furious that the student was shelling out big bucks for the so-called “COLLEGE EXPERIENCE”, but spent the bulk of her time in her dorm room at her laptop.

So one scenario is that billions of dollars will be spent on a rail line so that students can ride from Kapolei to UH Manoa, so that they may then walk to a computer center on campus where they will spend the day taking online courses provided by instructors who are … back at home in Kapolei.

BTW, here’s an article from the NYT on Harvard and MIT’s revolutionary new edX initiative to offer free courses.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/03/education/harvard-and-mit-team-up-to-offer-free-online-courses.html

In what is shaping up as an academic Battle of the Titans — one that offers vast new learning opportunities for students around the world — Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Wednesday announced a new nonprofit partnership, known as edX, to offer free online courses from both universities.

Harvard’s involvement follows M.I.T.’s announcement in December that it was starting an open online learning project, MITx. Its first course, Circuits and Electronics, began in March, enrolling about 120,000 students, some 10,000 of whom made it through the recent midterm exam. Those who complete the course will get a certificate of mastery and a grade, but no official credit. Similarly, edX courses will offer a certificate but not credit.

But Harvard and M.I.T. have a rival — they are not the only elite universities planning to offer free massively open online courses, or MOOCs, as they are known. This month, Stanford, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan announced their partnership with a new commercial company, Coursera, with $16 million in venture capital.

Meanwhile, Sebastian Thrun, the Stanford professor who made headlines last fall when 160,000 students signed up for his Artificial Intelligence course, has attracted more than 200,000 students to the six courses offered at his new company, Udacity.

The technology for online education, with video lesson segments, embedded quizzes, immediate feedback and student-paced learning, is evolving so quickly that those in the new ventures say the offerings are still experimental.

“My guess is that what we end up doing five years from now will look very different from what we do now,” said Provost Alan M. Garber of Harvard, who will be in charge of the university’s involvement.

While one society in the middle of nowhere embraces yesterday’s solutions for yesterday’s problems, the rest of the world world evolves at the speed of light, utilizing the latest in technology which even the best and brightest acknowledge will probably be obsolete in a few years. This is a threat to schools like UHM.

Harvard’s involvement follows M.I.T.’s announcement in December that it was starting an open online learning project, MITx. Its first course, Circuits and Electronics, began in March, enrolling about 120,000 students, some 10,000 of whom made it through the recent midterm exam. Those who complete the course will get a certificate of mastery and a grade, but no official credit. Similarly, edX courses will offer a certificate but not credit.

But Harvard and M.I.T. have a rival — they are not the only elite universities planning to offer free massively open online courses, or MOOCs, as they are known. This month, Stanford, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan announced their partnership with a new commercial company, Coursera, with $16 million in venture capital.

Meanwhile, Sebastian Thrun, the Stanford professor who made headlines last fall when 160,000 students signed up for his Artificial Intelligence course, has attracted more than 200,000 students to the six courses offered at his new company, Udacity.

The technology for online education, with video lesson segments, embedded quizzes, immediate feedback and student-paced learning, is evolving so quickly that those in the new ventures say the offerings are still experimental.

“My guess is that what we end up doing five years from now will look very different from what we do now,” said Provost Alan M. Garber of Harvard, who will be in charge of the university’s involvement.

Also, so many academic lectures have been online for free for so long it’s surprising our Governor has never heard of this. Here’s my favorite, thanks to Sal Khan.

http://www.khanacademy.org/