Reported by Education Dive, free public four-year college appears to be on the table. But Biden’s original plan includes the individual states funding 1/3 of the costs, and in a COVID recession, that may be a difficult political possibility for financially devastated states.

Reported by Education Dive, while nursing and veterinary programs found their clinical scenarios the most difficult to reproduce online, many have found novel solutions since, including shipping animal models directly to students to practice surgical techniques over webcams. Other clinical scenarios have proven even easier to replicate, with the patient interview simply taking place virtually.

Reported by Education Dive, Netflix is launching and fully funding three technology boot camps with Norfolk State University, including Java Engineering, UX/UI Design, and Data Science program tracks. Netflix’s stated goal is to solve the underrepresentation problem in the tech industry. And in doing so, they also create their own employee feeder program.

Reported by Education Dive, new research from the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning and the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education found that only 11% of adult students earn PLA credit. But for those who do, 49% earn their credential in the next 7.5 years, compared to only 27% of adult students who don’t take advantage of prior learning assessment credit.

Reported by Education Dive, while many outbreaks this fall have been shown to square centrally in college towns, a new fear has become what happens when we send all these students back to their original hometowns for break? Some institutions like University of Michigan are planning on testing students twice before their planned exit with a built-in “if-needed” quarantine time in between.

Reported by EdSurge, a new book by Dr. James Lang, “Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It” offers some research-backed suggestions. One critical one? That doing “anything” for a long time increases attention-fatigue. Whether it’s a 75-minute lecture or a 75-minute discussion, the problem isn’t as much the modality as the length.

Reported by EdSurge, so much focus has been made on replicating the knowledge transfer process from in-person to online, potentially overlooking the similarly critical pedagogical reality of peer support.

Reported by EdSurge, this national enrollment drop is largest at community colleges with first-year community college student enrollment down a whopping 23% year over year, suggesting that the same students most economically disadvantaged by the pandemic and its impacting recession are of course the same group most likely to have their educational path detoured by it as well.

Reported by Education Dive, many institutions citing the high stress-levels amongst their students, have moved to a pass/fail grading system to ensure that earning a particular grade isn’t serving as an additional stressor for them.

Reported by EdSurge, Coursera has offered Coursera for Campus for free since March, to help colleges transition to online learning, offering their courseware to become part of an institutions’ for-credit courses.