increasing access and success

Anant Agarwal, the president of EdX- Harvard, and MIT's $60 million online learning venture, is a bit of a rock star.

Last year, Agarwal taught EdX's first massive open online course (MOOC), a course on circuits and electronics. Like all MOOCs, it was posted online for free. 

"I was hoping for a sweet spot, a total of about 2,000 students. I figured if we had 200 students, that's as much as a campus class. That would be embarrassing."

But what Agarwal and his colleagues didn't figure was the worldwide demand for free, online MIT engineering courses.

"We had 10,000 students sign up in the first few hours of making the course open," Agarwal said. "So that was the first heart attack. Then, as the numbers kept rising and began approaching 100,000, then it was panic time. So we were wondering, 'How on Earth are we going to support this many students?'"

Agarwal is among those in higher education who believes it's important for people around the world to have access to a great education, but is EdX disrupting the higher ed market by giving away knowledge for free?

Massive open online courses, or MOOCs — the fast-growing movement to put higher-education courses online for free, have gotten the attention of President Obama.

"Universities like Carnegie Mellon, Arizona State, they're starting to show that online learning can help students master the same material in less time and often at lower costs," Obama said recently.

But the jury is still out on the effectiveness of online courses: Are they worth the hype or a passing fad?

It's been two weeks since President Obama proposed his sweeping plan to make college more affordable. Now, low-income students and their advocates are urging Congress to support it.

The president wants to create a college rating system that ties federal financial aid to colleges' performance outcomes, including their ability to increase access for nontraditional students.

Reactions to Obama's plan to rank colleges have been mixed.

Students are moving into dorms, apartments and houses, getting ready for the new school year, but a debate over free speech last semester still lingers at Northeastern University, where a group of pro-Palestinian students says administrators have stifled its free speech.

Graduates of elite colleges and universities don’t necessarily make more money than their counterparts at less well-known schools, according to new research.

Using the first-year earnings of graduates of colleges and universities in five states, the study found that those from regional and second-tier campuses, on average, earn about the same as those who go to prestigious flagship universities.

Will the new face of college be a computer screen? 

WGBH's Kara Miller asked a panel of educational pioneers about the university of the future on this special edition of Innovation Hub, taped at Suffolk University’s Modern Theater in downtown Boston.

Former Harvard University president Derek Bok says the average graduate’s student loan debt, which has skyrocketed above $26,000, isn't a serious problem when you consider the value of a college degree.

President Barack Obama may have trouble persuading the higher education community to support his plan unveiled Thursday in Buffalo to reform American colleges and universities.

Under the president’s plan, for the first time the federal government would rate colleges and universities for lowering their tuition and increasing access.

A well-educated workforce is directly linked to economic prosperity, according to a new report by the Economic Policy Institute. 

The best way for states to foster a productive economy is to invest in education to create a stronger workforce, which in turn will increase the median wage, the report says.