Free Online Courses from Top Universities Education,

I was browsing Google+ the other night when I saw a link (from Francisco) to a post that listed 400 free online courses from top universities. IҀve heard about free course offerings but never really looked into it and I was so surprised to see such a wide variety of courses being offered by universities such as Stanford, Yale, MIT, Harvard, Oxford, UC Berkeley, Columbia University, Notre Dame, and the awesome UCLA!
Finals are around the corner for me so it is insane of me to be looking at these courses right now but eventually I do want to listen in on or watch the lectures of these amazing professors.
Some courses that IҀm going to look into are:

History
• History of New York City: A Social History ր Daniel Walkowitz, NYU
• Science, Magic and Religion ր Courtenay Raiai, UCLA

Journalism
• Journalistic Ethics ր Jim Newton, UCLA

Philosophy
• Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil ր Leo Strauss, U Chicago

Biology
• The Stanford Mini Med School (Fall) ր Multiple Professors
• The Stanford Mini Med School (Winter) ր Multiple Professors
• The Stanford Mini Med School (Spring) ր Multiple Professors

Computer Science
• Building Dynamic Web Sites ր David Malan, Harvard Extension
• Building Mobile Web Sites ր David Malan, Harvard Extension
• Intensive Introduction to Computer Science Using C, PHP, and JavaScript ր David Malan, Harvard
• iPhone Application Development (Spring 2009) ր Stanford
• iPhone Application Development (Winter 2010) ր Stanford

Psychology & Cognitive Sciences
• Human Emotion ր Dacher Keltner, UC Berkely
• Human Happiness ր Dacher Keltner, UC Berkeley

Business
• Entrepreneurship and Business Planning ր Mark Juliano, Carnegie Mellon
• Marketing 321 ր Elaine Daussy, Texas A&M

These are just the ones I am interested in. There are more courses under the subjects I have brought up here and other subjects include: Public Health, Physics, Natural Resources, Mathematics, Engineering (Mechanical, Civil, Electrical), Artificial Intelligence, Chemistry, Astronomy, Aeronautics, Urban Studies, Sociology, Religion, Political Science, International Relations and Law, Music, Literature, Linguistics, Law, Languages, Geography, Film, Economics, Classics & Classical World, Art & Art History, Architecture and Archaeology. To see the whole list of 400 Free Online Courses click here.
DonҀt see anything you like? Check out all of the courses offered by the following universities, and About.com even offers free courses where you receive courses via email on a daily or weekly basis!

• MIT Open Courseware
• Open Yale Courses
• Notre Dame Open Courseware
• Stanford on iTunes U
• Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative
• About U

Never Assume

A remarkable story appeared in the Chicago Tribune last Sunday. It's about a remarkable young man named Derrius Quarles and his determination to get somewhere and be somebody. A foster child whose father was stabbed to death when Derrius was four and whose mother struggled with drugs, he had the strength of character to overcome the vagaries of his life and end up winning scholarships to excellent colleges all over the country, including Morehouse, where he now attends.
Derrius's outlook can be summed up here: "You can't go around thinking you are inferior just because you didn't have parents," he says. "For me, it's about knowing where you are from and accepting it, but more important, knowing where you are going." 
At 17, he was living on his own, keeping himself together and focusing on the future. He budgeted his money and when he did the grocery shopping he avoided junk food in favor of fruits and vegetables. He never took his eyes off his goal.
Derrius was fortunate to have someone see his potential. As often happens and as studies have shown, sometimes just one person can have an immense effect on a young person. For Derrius, that person was his summer biology teacher, Nivedita Nutakki, who told him he shouldn't waste his talent. Arriving as a freshman with a 2.5 GPA at Kenwood Academy, Derrius was taking three AP classes and earning a 3.6 by his junior year. 
In the middle of this amazing story is a passage that made me angry: "Even his oversize ambition couldn't get Quarles past one roadblock. He dreamed of attending Harvard, until one college adviser told him his 28 ACT score was simply not high enough. He abandoned his plans."
Regardless of whether Harvard or Morehouse (or any other institution) would be the best for him, no college adviser should have told him not to bother applying to Harvard or anywhere else. It is not for that person to say. I always tell students that it is their right and privilege to apply wherever they want so long as they understand clearly what the odds are. In this case, it's a shame that someone assumed Derrius wouldn't get into Harvard on the basis of that score. And it's almost criminal that Derrius was convinced to abandon his plans as a result. Any college adviser who thinks he or she can or should make that determination suffers from a bad case of hubris.
The truth is, we cannot know what the future holds for our advisees. We don't know what colleges and universities will decide, even though we can come up with some pretty accurate guesses if we've had enough experience. We don't know how or when a student will suddenly "take off" and make us proud. But all you have to do is read Derrius's story to know that no matter where he went he'd make good, and that as a result the test scores say very little about him (and even so, they are miles above the average scores of someone from his background). 
Again, I'm not saying Derrius should have gone to Harvard or anywhere else or that he's deprived as a result--clearly not. But no one should have told him it wasn't possible. Anything is possible, as this young man has already shown. While we may think we know a lot, the future always confounds us and we should always be humble in its presence. 


Edit, Oct. 23: I was so taken with the story that I forgot I had met Derrius through Scholarship Chicago, a program that provides help and mentorship throughout the college process and in college as well as financial assistance during college. When I met him he had already received several admission offers from colleges and was racking up scholarships. I would never have guessed at the hurdles he was going through he was so poised, confident, and focused. 

Elephant in the Room

The Choice, a New York Times blog about college admission, has begun a series of answers to questions posed to HarvardҀs Dean of Admission, Bill Fitzsimmons. Those of us who have worked in the field for more than a few days will probably know how to answer the questions from nearly 900 respondents. WhatҀs remarkable is that even though there are dozens of books, articles, websites, counselors, and other methods purporting to reveal the ӀsecretsԀ of college admission, the questions and assumptions are the same as they have always been.

The admission process is the elephant being discussed by the blind men: each one ӀknowsԀ what heҀs feeling׀a tail, an ear, a leg׀but no one knows the whole thing. Some insist that most spots in a Harvard class are reserved for wealthy donors or legacies; others believe that the deck is stacked against public school students (Interestingly, Fitzsimmons, himself a Harvard alum, is from a blue collar background). Another demands to know that applying for financial aid will have no impact on a studentҀs chances, yet another asks how HarvardҀs process can Ӏreward diversity without committing a type of reverse discrimination.Ԁ The tone of the questions ranges from Harvard-induced bliss at having been accepted to outright skepticism, with some dark rumblings from fringy types about why Harvard Ӏgives awayԀ so many seats to Ӏforeign bornԀ students.

Underneath all these comments are two questions that vary according to whether you have a child of college-going age or not: ӀHow can my child reach the inner circles of wealth, connection and power?Ԁ and ӀWhy canҀt Harvard [or other appropriately big and powerful school] fix everything thatҀs wrong with our social system?Ԁ These are both unanswerable and mutually exclusive, which is what makes college admission so much fun.

Ultimately, however, the pleas to Fitzsimmons add up to what used to be addressed to philosophers: ӀHow shall we live our lives?Ԁ Parents of second graders want to know how to plan lives that will result in Harvard attainment; a high schooler worries that if she leads an ӀauthenticԀ life she may be disadvantaged by someone who has polished and ӀcreatedԀ hers; those without Harvard genes lambaste a policy that seems automatically to reward those who have them. We want answers that will assure us that life isnҀt random but has some direction and meaning. But in expecting ӀHarvardԀ to provide those answers, we avoid the more difficult task of wrestling with them ourselves, which is why philosophy is so hard.

Of course, one big mistake is to assume that only Harvard can address those questions. As college counselors and admission officers never tire of saying, the ӀbestԀ college is the one that will challenge you appropriately, open your eyes to new ways of thinking, and help you develop and broaden your talents as you take your place in the world ahead. Plunging full-on into college life will be rewarding no matter where you are.

A true story: While I was in the Amherst admission office, one of our tour guides told us that her parents had pressured her mercilessly to apply to Harvard even though she wanted to attend Amherst. They had never heard of Amherst and insisted that Harvard was the place sheҀd go. After much haranguing, they finally prevailed upon her to visit Harvard and take the tour. At the end, a visitor asked the tour guide, ӀIs there anything youҀd change about your Harvard experience?Ԁ The guide replied, ӀI would have gone to Amherst.Ԁ The rest, as they say, is history; hers, anyway.

Despite our best efforts, college admission remains an enigma wrapped in a mystery stuffed in an elephant. We just need to remember that weҀre dealing with flawed human beings and human systems. But Americans expect answers, not more questions: Socrates was executed for being annoying, remember--he wouldnҀt last ten minutes in an admission office. And no matter what answers Fitzsimmons gives, they wonҀt be the ones questioners are looking for. Even Harvard canҀt supply those.

A version of this essay appears on the NACAC blog, Admitted.

Harvard's SAT Exceptionalism

We all know that Harvard can do whatever it wants and usually does. And what it does usually sets the course for the rest of the country's colleges and universities (at least in the sense of giving them something to think about...) But this recent comment in the Boston Globe really has me steaming:

Harvard's dean of admissions, Bill Fitzsimmons, said standardized tests that are based on high school course work have proven superior to the SAT at determining college readiness and said he hoped such tests will begin to play a larger role in admissions decisions.
"Wouldn't it be better for students to study chemistry and math and language, than trying to game a somewhat esoteric set of test-taking skills?" he asked.
Yet Harvard "could never be SAT-optional," he said, because of the need for a national measure to identify top students, including those from urban or rural high schools that don't send many students to elite colleges.

Mr. Fitzsimmons recently chaired a committee that explored the use of standardized testing in college admission. It recommended that the SAT be de-emphasized in admission decisions for all the reasons that many of us have been giving for many years. Clearly, however, this recommendation is meant to apply only to lesser institutions, and not Harvard itself. Harvard couldn't possibly do what the plebes do because it needs to have a "national measure" to identify top students, unlike everyone else, who presumably only need, what, "local" measures? Or other more scurrilous ways of evaluating applications?

This smug exceptionalism not only throws the committee's study and recommendations into doubt (were you just wasting everyone's time?) it also reeks of a "Let them eat cake" mentality that makes us common folk want to grab our pitchforks and settle someone's hash. Why can de-emphasizing the SAT work for everyone else but not possibly for Harvard? Surely with its 372 years of experience it knows how to identify a talented student by now without a test that has only been in existence for 80 years or so. And surely, if it's good enough for Harvard, why should anyone else give it up, despite the fact that many colleges and universities have, without any diminution in their ability to attract and identify able applicants.

Fitzsimmons connects using the SAT with the necessity of finding "urban or rural" students who might otherwise, presumably, be overlooked without it. But this is just protective coloring, meant to reassure us that Harvard needs the scores to find talented first generation and minority students it would otherwise miss. But most of those students won't do well on the SAT, so Harvard would either have to reject them or ignore the scores. And Harvard has the resources to find anyone it wants, so why rely on the scores when it's just finished downplaying them?

So the message and value of the study become muddied and pointless. Whatever we may think about America's top university "brand," we must acknowledge that Harvard's imprimatur on anything carries great weight. Without Harvard's taking the lead by adopting a more enlightened view of admission testing (even if it stops short of de-emphasizing it), what was the point of doing the study in the first place? Of course, it's not bound to follow through on any conclusions, but wouldn't its participation suggest it was willing to lead where those conclusions might point? To say categorically that it couldn't possibly risk its reputation by de-emphasizing scores, even though that was the conclusion of the study seems arrogant at best, cynical and unilateral at worst.

If Harvard wants to avoid being the Marie Antoinette of colleges and universities, perhaps it should get out with the people a little instead of simply visiting its faux village to commune with the peasants. It might experiment with how it uses the SAT by making decisions on a sampling of students without using scores and following them through over the years. With the immense resources at its disposal, Harvard could actually perform a service rather than retreat into its opulence. Leadership on this issue would be to take the study's conclusions seriously, as if they applied to ALL institutions and not just everyone else.

One interesting irony of this situation is that the SAT was once touted specifically as a way to find otherwise hidden talents throughout the country when many colleges had narrowly specific entrance exams of their own. It was conceived of as a great leveller. But with the increasing connection of test performance with income, this seems no longer defensible; now it's as much a barrier to admission as a way into college. The idea of the SAT's being a "national standard" that is somehow equal across the country has been definitvely refuted over and over again. And being able to find talented students in out of the way places has never been easier. So what's Harvard's excuse? Apres moi, le deluge...

Is Free Tuition Really Free?

I know you shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth (and surely there's a 21st century version of that around somewhere...), and I support colleges' and universities' using more of their endowments to ease the financial burden on families with low incomes. In fact, I work with first-generation and underserved students, so anything that eases their way to college I support. But I wonder about the implications of a "free" college education: By not asking a student or family to make any financial commitment to a college education, how will that change the dynamic between them and the college or university? And how will it affect the way a student values that education?

I've worked with the Daniel Murphy Foundation here in Chicago for a number of years. They help talented 8th graders from needy families attend private schools here and elsewhere by providing a scholarship and by getting the host schools to kick in most of the resrt of the tuition. But no matter how financially needy the family is, they are asked to contribute something to their child's education. This seems proper to me because it asks the family to back up its generalized support of its son or daughter with hard cold cash, a measure of its commitment. It's a commonplace that we value most what we pay for, and I think that applies here, too.

One might say that disadvantaged families are already in enough of an economic bind but I'm not talking about asking for anything that the family can't handle. The DMSF pegs its request of the family to income and families are able to pay it. It's not about the money; it's about the commitment. Since most of the colleges and universities eliminating loans and so on are in the elite crowd, perhaps their status automatically generates commitment from the families, but I think if someone comes up to you and hands you a diamond for free, you're going to wonder about whether it's stolen or a cubic zirconium. Without a price tag it's hard to gauge the value of the item. And I don't think it's unfair to ask students to shoulder some kind of debt if they really want the kind of education that a college can give. Again, not anything crushing (save that for law school or med school) but enough to keep their eyes on the academic prize.

My other reservation about the rush to give away the store is that it only benefits a handful of students at a time and only at the very point of entry to college. All that money might be better used to strengthen the educational prospects of more students from disadvantaged backgrounds sooner, so there might be a greater number of first generation and underserved students in the application pool. Right now, colleges' and universities' largesse is passive, not active: It rewards those who have made it through the American educational system but hasn't actively affected it. In a sense it validates a Darwinian process of survival of the fittest instead of attacking many of the inequities of the system at their root.

The economic might of the Harvards, Yales, Amhersts, and so on might be better used to inject life and hope into needy schools starting at 9th grade or even earlier, helping them build strong foundations for their students as they prepare for college. By taking a more active role in education, by considering themselves part of a K-16 educational continuum rather than the beneficiaries of the results of "educational selection," colleges and universities might have a much greater and more significant effect on the education of America's least served but not undertalented students. So two cheers for spending more of their endowments, but a third cheer in reserve for when colleges and universities really take up the task of improving American education where it needs it the most.

The More Things Change...

Acceptance and rejection letters are out for this year and the usual articles about how it's never been harder to get into college and so on have been coming out like crocuses at the first sign of spring. As I've noted before, this isn't really news, it's just a repeat of articles from the last 10 years with different numbers, and of course we always have the details of rejected or waitlisted students being astonished that they didn't get into their "dream" schools, how much the pressure is getting to them, and so on. Focusing on colleges and universities whose acceptance rates seem to be approaching zero, the ultimate exclusivity (not may idea--see Doonesbury from a few years ago), media make it seem as though legions of rejected students will soon be roaming the streets in their ragged cardigans, homeless shades doomed to walk the earth without any cozy campus to call their own.

Of course, this is nowhere near the real picture. Just about everyone who applies to college will get in somewhere; quite a few colleges even (mid-April 2008) now are still accepting applications. The whole thing is only a problem if you care very deeply about where you attend and think that if you don't go there your life is somehow ruined, destroyed, or otherwise diverted from its true course and flowering, all of which is nonsense.

A colleague and I were talking the other evening about our own college research and application processes, laughing at our callow approach to the whole thing. She and I are contemporaries, so we're talking about the early 70s, before the whole thing got really out of hand. We were both clueless, to be honest, even though we were both good students. I was head of my class at a large public high school in Chester, NJ, which offered honors but no AP classes that I can recall (not a big thing then), and I did well in the honors track, although to this day I consider calculus my mortal enemy. I had what today would be considered so-so SAT scores (no I'm not telling, although to my chagrin I still know them), and a decent although not spectacular career in the chorus and the theater group. I also worked part-time at the local pharmacy, working the counter and making deliveries all over the area.

When college came on the horizon late in my junior year (although my family always told me I could go anywhere I wanted when the time came), we had no special seminars, no offers of essay help, no test prep, no piles of glossy viewbooks, no "college counselor." I figured I'd apply to Harvard and Yale simply because my uncle, whom I greatly admired, had attended the former and taught at the latter; I briefly considered Tufts, my father's alma mater, but since he was an engineer I thought it was a school for engineers, so I dismissed it. There was no "strategizing" to it; I was just going with what I knew.

One day, going by my guidance counselor's office, I heard him call to me and ask what I was thinking about college. I told him, and he said that was fine, but had I ever considered a small liberal arts college? I asked what that was and he said a good place to get an education but smaller than a university. That seemed fine to me so I asked him to name a few. "Well, Amherst, for example," he replied. I'd never heard of it, but I was willing to check it out.

I don't remember what I knew about Amherst (it wasn't much) before I got on the Peter Pan bus in New York for the four hour ride to Amherst, MA later in the summer, but when I got off in the town center, I swooned at the New England charm and the compact yet spacious Amherst College campus. I thought, "This is what college should look like!" I walked around by myself, coming without warning on the spectacular view of the Pioneer Valley from Memorial Hill, after which I was completely overcome with desire. I dropped in on the admission office, which at the time was tucked away in the main administration building. I was smitten without having seen a student, professor, or admission office person. I asked about interviews. I didn't need one, I was told; by the time I returned to New Jersey, I was ready to apply.

The time came and I applied to Harvard, Yale, and, at random, Ithaca College in upstate New York. I applied to Amherst early decision, still intoxicated with the thought of lounging on that hill, or simply being there, reading, surrounded by nature. Hell, even the trees seemed intelligent. I wanted to ingest it all. But once the applications were in I went on with the rest of my high school life. (I don't remember what I wrote my essays on, but I do remember that I didn't get any help that I recall. My mother may have given them a quick read, but not much else--no English teacher or counselor help.)

Ithaca accepted me almost immediately, it seems to me. Harvard and Yale turned me down, which was OK by me, especially when I recalled my "group interview" at a Yale's alum's home. A group of applicants sat around a table and an admission person spoke with us after we had each had a chance to speak with one of the Yale alums who had gathered for the occasion. The home was elegantly appointed, perhaps even lavish; it seemed like a mansion to me and it made me uncomfortable. But what I really remember is the girl who said, "I understand Yale has a burgeoning film department." I made a face, probably, groaning inside at her pretentious use of a big word to impress the dean. It was then I decided I didn't want to go to Yale, although I learned a new word that day.

Amherst deferred me, making my guidance counselor, David Boelhouwer, crazy. He couldn't understand it and called to see what had happened. Turns out, you did need an interview if you applied ED and lived within 250 miles of campus. He managed to wrangle an interview for me over the Christmas break with the Dean himself, the legendary Ed Wall. I went back to campus, courtesy of my aunt, who drove me out from Acton MA in a snowfall and waited while I had my session. I remember being disappointed that Dean Wall didn't ask me anything about my grades or accomplishments; instead he asked what I was reading and I told him The Wheel of Love, a story collection by Joyce Carol Oates. We talked about that. What was even more frustrating was that I didn't even like the book, and during the whole interview I could see the snow coming down harder and harder and the light fading and it was a long way back to Boston.

Afterwards, Dean Wall took my puny hand in his massive bear grasp and told me it was nice to meet me. Despite my disappointment, I stopped at Hastings in town and bought an Amherst sweatshirt, which I resolved not to wear unless I got in. My aunt picked me up and we drove back to the Boston suburbs.

The day I got into Amherst was the only day in my school life that I cut a class. My mother, who had been in a terrible auto accident over New Year's 1973, had needed a nurse during the day, and I would take over when I got home. Consequently I was able to have a car at school. When the letter arrived, she called the school and I got called to the office. She wanted to open it. At first I said yes, then changed my mind. I rushed out of school, hopped into our VW Bug and zoomed home, where I found the acceptance letter. I celebrated a bit with my mother, ran upstairs and put on the sweatshirt, and raced back to school, in time to catch the end of my German class. Mrs. Kerekes, a stern but fair Hungarian, started to scold me, but when she saw the sweatshirt, she started beaming, and all was forgiven.

So I got to Amherst, but here's the punchline--to this day I don't think I even knew that Amherst was all male until I actually got to campus. (It went co-end in 1976, one of the last schools of its kind to do so.) My whole experience of college search and application was a fluke arising from a casual comment by my counselor. I'm sure that if he'd said "Williams" or "Union" or "Hamilton" or "Calcutta" I'd be one of their alums today. Total chance. And I'm also convinced that I owe Joyce Carol Oates credit for my admission. Even today I feel guilty about not reading everything she writes (which would, of course, be impossible for a mortal with only 24 hours a day to read...)

So back to my colleague and me sitting in an Irish pub in downtown Chicago. Her story, in its similar lack of focus on "getting into" a particular college, is very similar to mine. And yet, here we were, laughing at our ignorance and marveling at the fact that we managed pretty well in spite of it, having survived and even prospered. Our lives are good, our work fulfills us, and we have good memories of our alma maters. Yet they were accidents! When I see today's high school students sweating, and planning, and conniving, and arranging their lives so they'll "stand out" starting even before high school, I have to wonder what it is they're really doing. It's not a bad thing to want to go to a particular place, but, let's be honest, it doesn't really matter where you go to college. The important thing is what you do once you're there.

I can already hear you saying, "Well, but what about the contacts, the smart kids who attend, the best professors, and so on?" I still say, it makes no difference, and to fret about it is a stress that's totally unnecessary. The contacts you make in one place are different but the same as in another--you find the people you need to find no matter where you are. You attend classes or not, you party or not, you start becoming an adult or not, no matter where you are. And with acceptance rates below 10 percent, those big deal colleges are doing other schools a favor by making sure they have a good supply of smart kids who end up fanning out all over the country. So do yourselves a favor and think that you could probably do just as well applying to colleges randomly as you could trying to predict and insure every element.

In the long run, we can't control what will happen no matter what we do or how much we'd like to. Why should applying to college be any different? The students with the least stress were the ones who came to my office and said, "You know, I think I'll be happy wherever I go." As the Chinese say, "Be careful how you travel or you may end up where you expected to." That's the spirit!