The bright mind always seeks to find new opportunities by learning and those who integrate such a passion into their lives always succeed, making education a privilege for the modern person with aspirations. In today’s educational paradigm, opportunities are vast, as an engineering student might join a lab team to experiment with new tools and processes, while a project developer might take a CSM course to gain more agility and control over their project’s resources and personnel to achieve success. In a world of constant technological progress and mental evolution, education is moving beyond tradition to bring change to individuals’ perception and momentum to societies’ transformation.
In the new age of Information Technologies and Big Data, analyzing and assessing information is crucial for every field of life, including education. However, using data in a classroom environment is a problematic issue for many educators, creating anxiety and uneasiness, while the utilization of crucial data regarding student performance has already become a necessity in the new age of competition. With control over data, educators can easily track their students’ progress and define areas to supplement their current method, curriculum or approach with more innovative solutions. Educators have a moral obligation to maximize their assistance to students’ academic development and paying attention to the gradual shift towards a data-based system is necessary. Similarly, with different styles of teaching, educators need to come up with their own methods of gathering and assessing student data. Such educators should team up with one another to overcome the technical obstacles associated with computer technologies and save time, resource and energy by developing their computer skills to help their students. A more data-based approach to education will help teachers understand student realities and standards, making data collection and evaluation of a brand new and a better way to communicate with struggling students.
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There is no question about the financial benefits of attending a college for students as a recent study by the think tank, ‘Third Way’, revealed that a four-year college education makes the graduate “177 times more likely than a high school graduate to earn $4 million or more throughout their lifetime.” However, those seeking to get a better understanding of the issue, such as Carolina Arteaga at University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, have been wondering whether if it is really college education that creates such a difference or is it the student’s personal merit. Arteaga’s study of the Business and Economics programs at Los Andes University (LAU) in Colombia shows that upon the school’s decision to reduce the obligatory classes to earn a degree in these fields led to 16% and 13% wage loss for economics and business graduates respectively. Consequently, the school’s graduates ended up in lower quality or less successful firms or in the case of the Central Bank of Colombia admissions, such graduates faced a reduced probability of 17% for hiring. Arteaga concludes that many employers value the knowledge represented by a college degree rather than the name of the degree, pointing out how recent graduates of LAU working as managers at the Central Bank are now rejecting numerous LAU graduates directly, due to fears of underachievement and unproductivity at the workplace.
The financial crisis of 2008 turned quite a few tables in modern life and educational areas of concentration as well as student aspirations were two of the areas that were subjected to significant change. A recent report by the US Department of Education reveals that following the crisis, students began to shy away from studying Humanities, with the share of American college students graduating with a History degree dropping to 1% from 2% between 1998 and 2007. Consequently, the numbers of students majoring in exercise science, nursing and other health-related fields began to rise significantly as a result of the financial crisis, as students shifted towards more secure areas which yield higher earnings for graduates. However, the turn away from humanities might be a risky choice after all, as the financial payoffs for such degrees are not necessarily that lower than others such as computer science and finance, while the possibility of the tech or finance bubbles bursting also constitutes a grave threat for graduates’ financial well-being. However, not everything is lost. The new impositions of the Trump administration have already placed history major back in the top ten list of most declared majors for students at Yale, thanks to the social, political and cultural turmoil Trump’s extravagant stance on several issues has created among the general American public.