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Educate America - Wine & Alabama
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Educate America This Week - Kanye, Swayze & the Economy
Educate America THIS WEEK - Patrick Swayze RIP, The Recession, and Elderly Romance
Watch Educate America - This Week - 9/16/2009
Educate America This Week is brought to you by Andrew Jackson University. You can get your degree online with one of our fantastic degree programs. Visit us at www.aju.edu
Educate America This Week - Tim Tebow and the Swine Flu
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University welcomes students turned away by colleges in New York and California
WEBWIRE – Friday, August 14, 2009
- Contact Information
- Don Kassner
- President
- Andrew Jackson University
- 205-451-2072
- president@aju.edu
- President
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Thousands of prospective college students are being turned away by schools in New York, California and other states because of budget reductions, space limitations and grade-point requirements. But Andrew Jackson University, a 15-year old private university, is welcoming students rejected by other schools.
“President Obama’s goal of ‘expanding the promise of education in America’ cannot be attained unless institutions like Andrew Jackson University www.aju.edu open their arms to those less-privileged or excluded for whatever reason by the traditional education establishment,” said Don Kassner, president of the accredited online university. “We are not a state university, so it is up to us who we accept as students as long as we see the person is capable of college level work,” Kassner continued. “And it is our philosophy to provide an opportunity to earn a college degree to everyone who seeks one.”
“When the economy tanked in 2008 we reevaluated our student selection process, our tuition and fee levels, our enrollment process and level of student services,” commented university board member Joseph Schmoke. The reevaluation resulted, Schmoke said, in the reduction or elimination of tuition, a higher level of student-friendly services, streamlining the enrollment process, and the unveiling of an online webcam-based exam proctoring system. The webcam proctoring system www.proctoru.com eliminated the requirement that a student travel to a proctoring location to have their exams supervised.
University president Kassner indicated that limits on the number of students enrolling each month in Andrew Jackson University were lifted as staff increased and systems improved. Kassner said the university can now accept an unlimited number of students in any of its eleven degree programs. “And unlike traditional universities, we have rolling semesters with a new one starting every month,” he stated.
Andrew Jackson University, claiming the “best value in education,” offers three master’s degrees, three bachelor’s degrees, five associate’s degrees and twenty certificate programs. All courses are delivered online and at the convenience of the student. All that is required is a computer, an Internet connection, and a high school diploma. “We welcome all those who have been rejected by other universities for whatever the reason. You’re all equal in our eyes,” stated university president Kassner.
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The rush by students to rent college textbooks may be misdirected
WEBWIRE – Thursday, August 06, 2009
- Contact Information
- Tammy Kassner
- Director of Admissions
- Andrew Jackson University
- 205-871-9288, ext. 107
- tkassner@aju.edu
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – College students are flocking to companies that rent textbooks rather than buying them at bloated retail prices from campus bookstores. Some students have the impression that they are saving money by renting textbooks. But research done recently by Tammy Kassner, director of admissions at Andrew Jackson University, indicates that many rental fees are frequently more expensive than buying books second-hand.
Since Andrew Jackson University www.aju.edu delivers its low-cost courses online, and their students can’t just walk into a traditional campus bookstore, their admissions and student services departments have been helping students find good deals on textbooks. After checking prices posted online by Chegg www.chegg.com , BookRenter www.bookrenter.com and Amazon www.amazon.com for textbooks used in eight popular courses, Tammy Kassner’s staff found that few rentals were bargains when compared to the used-book prices posted on Amazon.
Five out of the eight textbooks were less expensive to purchase, based on Amazon postings, than to rent from either Chegg or BookRenter. A textbook for a criminal justice course (CJ316) at Andrew Jackson University, for example, could be bought used on Amazon for $5.24 while rentals on Chegg and BookRenter were $45.09 and $58.40, respectively. The rentals have to be returned with minimal highlighting and no writing in the margins or the student is charged full price for the textbook, according to an article in the July 31 edition of Inside Higher Ed by Stephanie Lee. “That turns a lot of students off as they want to be able to make notes in the margin as well as highlight certain things,” commented Kassner.
Kassner says that newer editions can be cheaper to rent than to buy used as there aren’t as many newer editions flooding the market to drive down prices. One instance she found where renting made sense was a textbook required for the university’s BA 541 business course. The least expensive Amazon posting was $84.94 while the same book could be rented from Chegg for $51.50 and from BookRenter for $$27.40. “But a buyer of the new edition can also expect to sell the textbook for a pretty good price when they finish the course,” Kassner said, “so the actual net cost could be substantially less than the cost of renting.”
So what does Kassner and the Andrew Jackson University staff recommend? They encourage students to shop around and compare prices, including shipping costs. “And be sure to read the fine print if you’re renting,” she cautions. “We also suggest that our students check www.wecomparebooks.com for their pricing comparisons. After all, we’re trying to provide our students with a quality college education at the lowest cost, and overpaying for textbooks just doesn’t fit in with that philosophy,” Kassner concluded.
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AJU president to give advice on using Twitter
OK, I have a Twitter account, now what? This is the title of a presentation that Don Kassner will make at the DETC Fall Education Workshop. The annual workshop, hosted by the Distance Education and Training Council, will be held in Naples, FL on October 18-20. For more information on the workshop, go to http://www.detc.org
Here the presentation summary:
Social media marketing (SMM) is one of the latest tools to market education, but figuring out how to do it successfully has been a challenge.
Will the federal government take over education?
We live in strange times. Over the past year, the federal government has begun to take over many privately-run industries. First, we saw the takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which put the government in control of a large portion of the home mortgage industry. This was followed by the takeover of AIG, and the Fed running insurance, investment and 401(k) plans. After that, the government began its takeover of the investment and banking industry, followed by the their entry into the auto industry by taking over General Motors.
At this point, it should be clear the federal government is on a path to own and control a significant portion of U.S. economic activity. The latest effort is the current health care reform bill. Watch Don Kassner in Educate America to learn details of the plan to eliminate choice in health care insurance.
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Although health care is bad enough - what is next? With education considered to be one of the pillars of the president's economic plans, will we be facing a government takeover in education next? The Obama administration is already committed to a significant role in the community college system and is using that plan to eliminate private student loans. Could this be a blueprint to the eventual takeover of the entire post-secondary landscape? Will the government outlaw private education in the same way that it is looking to outlaw private health care insurance?
For those of you who think this is far fetched - keep in mind the huge endowment funds held by many of the top private institutions in the country. It is easy to see the government viewing those funds as part of the problem that has led to the high cost of education. And what about private for-profit education? What will the government do as it looks at Apollo Group - with revenues over $3.5 billion and profits approaching $1 billion? Small peanuts in comparison to the amount of endowment funds that exist at the major universities, but easy pickings for a government that believes that large for-profit sectors that serve the public good should not exist.
Times are changing - for more proof, everyone should re-read George Orwell's Animal Farm - the similarities are striking.
And then, go back and re-read paragraph two of the Declaration of Independence. Is this what the Founding Fathers had in mind?
1500 Proctored Exams!!!
Fifteen hundred college exams proctored live online
- Contact Information
- Jarrod Morgan
- Business Development Manager & Co-founder
- ProctorU
- 205-870-8122
- getstarted@proctoru.com
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama - ProctorU, a university spinoff, conducts its 1,500th college exam online today making 1,500 students very happy. College students who take courses online no longer have to make appointments, travel to a proctoring location, and in many cases pay an exorbitant proctor fee to take a required exam. ProctorU, developed by Andrew Jackson University and spun off into a separate company eight months ago, is now considered by many as the smart choice for students who take courses online.
“In November 2007 I saw a presentation by a company that claimed to have an online proctoring service,” said Don Kassner, president of Andrew Jackson University, “and I said I’d sign up right then and there.” But Kassner was disappointed when the person presenting the service said it was not actually ready yet and turned him away. Kassner waited – not so patiently – until January 2008 and, when the proposed proctoring service was still not ready, he obtained board approval to develop online proctoring internally.
By late February 2008, one month after receiving approval to develop an online proctoring system, the first test exam was proctored. “It’s been smooth sailing since then,” stated Jarrod Morgan, co-developer of the unique online system. “We have improved the system by adding live certified proctors, real time audio/video using TokBox, technical assistance, practice exams, identity authentication, and the ability to assist exam-takers by remotely controlling their computers during an exam,” said a proud Morgan.
“Now that we’ve perfected online live-proctor exams and coupled the service with identity authentication,” commented Morgan, “and actually proven the system by proctoring 1,500 exams, we’re attracting more and more interested colleges and universities each week.”
According to ProctorU management, the service is also attracting organizations that are interested in partnering with it or buying it from its parent company, Pupilcity LLC. “We are not interested in exploring a sale now,” said Pupilcity LLC managing member Joe Schmoke, “but we are interested in partnerships that would provide our online proctoring service to a segment of the education and training industry that we are not addressing ourselves.”
Education industry analysts expect the demand for online exam proctoring, especially when coupled with a trustworthy identity authentication product, will skyrocket beginning in 2010. This is when the U. S. Department of Education starts requiring schools to make sure the person taking the exam is the student enrolled in the course.
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The balance and separation of powers in the United States of America
The US Senate takes up the nomination of Judge Sotomayor for Supreme Court Justice this week.