He asks : What are the projections for the size of the middle class assuming current economic and demographic trends? First, it’s worth noting that talking about the middle class can be tricky because there’s no universal definition. By Pew’s measure, roughly equal shares of Americans have been moving from middle to upper income status as have been falling into the lower income tier, but using a narrower definition of middle class paints a grimmer picture. MORE

And meeting college students like him, Hood said, “definitely opens them up to the possibility” of aiming higher. There are similar trends at work in the United States, the Economic Policy Institute reports — including for young college graduates, whose inflation-adjusted earnings are lower than they were in the late 1990s. Dominic Stevens, a University of East London student who is part of a program that uses sports to encourage boys to go to college. Photo: Nilay Kumar. MORE

The change is part of a nationwide pilot program Walsh joined this year, one that could indicate just how deeply and how quickly the personalized-learning trend will penetrate the average classroom. Basecamp schools then receive mentoring from and troubleshooting by Summit staff, as well as PLP access throughout the academic year. I’ve definitely heard from at least 10 parents who are like, ‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ ” O’Connor said. “ ‘Is this good for my child?’ ”. MORE

To establish create a common set of definitions around digital literacy, the report proposes three buckets of literacies: “universal literacy,” or being adept at using basic productivity (word processing, image manipulation, content authoring) tools; “creative literacy,” which involves more technical and specialized content-creation skills (such as video editing and animation); and cross-disciplinary literacies that combine humanities studies with digital social media. MORE

The only way I know that this can be changed is when there’s access to higher education.”. The disparity serves as an extreme example of similar trends across the United States, where the children of higher-income families go to better colleges than those from lower-income ones. The only way I know that this can be changed is when there’s access to higher education.”. It impedes access to institutions they might be qualified for, because it’s not being accepted.”. MORE

billion, is bucking a national trend — most other states are continuing to reduce, not increase, their higher education budgets. The goal, writes historian John Aubrey Douglass, was “broad access combined with the development of high quality, mission differentiated, and affordable higher education institutions.”. The trend peaked during the recession that began in 2008, when UC hiked undergraduate tuition by nearly a third in a single year. MORE

Via Inside Higher Ed : “The Department of Education has placed restrictions on access to federal student aid for West Virginia public universities after the state was late submitting required annual financial statements for the third year in a row. I’m also curious how this news – again, I’m not sure two closures are really a “trend” – will affect student loan startups. “ Is higher ed creating the next dropout factories? MORE

Some internet-access advocates say EBS is underutilized at best, and wasted at worst, because loose regulatory oversight by the FCC has allowed most of the spectrum to fall into the hands of commercial internet companies. “ The top 5 trends in K–12 ed tech – and where they’re headed,” according to Education Dive. For top students, taking an online course didn’t definitively have a negative effect on a student’s grade point average. MORE