Business schools, reading lists, and federal ratings

MIT study finds learning gains for students who took free online course Students in a free online physics course from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology demonstrated roughly equal learning gains if they stuck with the class, regardless of previous academic experience, researchers reported. Their progress also was comparable to what some MIT students showed when they were required to take the introductory course on campus as a remedial measure. (The Washington Post)

Colleges reject charge that freshman reading lists have political bias Freshmen at colleges around the country for years have been assigned to read the same books as a way to bond at orientation and to encourage intellectual interactions rather than just social ones. But this year, some of the reading selections are coming under attack. (Los Angeles Times)

College admissions chiefs worry: How will students find them? Schools face peril at every step of the way in a fluid and highly competitive market. (The Washington Post)

Robert Reich: Harvard Business School is complicit in America’s widening inequality The former secretary of labor calls out the famed university for the way it's educating our country's future CEOs. (Salon)

Why Federal College Ratings Won’t Rein In Tuition  Better-informed consumers can’t do much to hold down prices in public colleges, because those prices are not set in a competitive market. Instead, they are determined through a political process, so it is only through the ballot box that people can affect them. (The New York Times)

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