The author describes how providers of free online courses are officially in the headhunting business, bringing in revenue by selling to employers information about high-performing students who might be a good fit for open jobs. Coursera, which works with high-profile colleges to provide massive open online courses, or MOOC's, announced its…

In what some are calling a peaceful revolution, researchers have mounted a takeover of high-energy-physics publishing. One signature at a time, national research agencies and university libraries have pledged to support a radical new system that would replace expensive subscriptions to leading journals with membership in a nonprofit group. The new…

Technology decisions should not be made solely in some geeky corner of the campus, but should be central to strategic planning and involve top academic leaders. Campus-technology leaders traded tales from the trenches and plenty of advice during the two-day Technology Forum, held in Tampa, Florida in February 2008. Ohio University responded to a…

Canadian universities now have the fastest research network backbone in the world, CA*Net 3, claiming it can transmit the contents of the Library of Congress in one second. In the United States, network officials feel that their competing Internet2 project supports more research into new network applications than the Canadian project. CA*Net 3…

Some college administrators feel the next major trend in educational technology will be wireless networks that let students and professors connect to the Internet with radio waves rather than cumbersome cables. Several universities are already using the less expensive technology. However, some find the slower speed of available wireless services…

Five of the world's largest libraries have joined Google in a herculean effort to digitize millions of books and make every sentence searchable. The project involves libraries at Harvard and Stanford Universities, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and the University of Oxford, in England, as well as the New York Public Library. It could…

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University is aggressively pursuing a plan to change the presentation and dissemination of student research by requiring students to submit theses and dissertations in digital form and creating a database on the World Wide Web that provides free, instantaneous access to graduate students' research. Some…