The spread of a seemingly playful alternative to traditional diplomas, inspired by Boy Scout achievement patches and video-game power-ups, suggests that the standard certification system no longer works in today's fast-changing job market. Educational upstarts across the Web are adopting systems of "badges" to certify skills and abilities.…

Mike Potts was halfway through a five-year prison sentence outside Houston when he heard about a program that would help him start a business when even buddies with clean records were struggling to find work. The Prison Entrepreneurship Program, run by a nonprofit group of the same name, works with Baylor University's Hankamer School of Business…

Massive open online courses (MOOC's) are the latest development in online education. Over the past decade, millions of students have taken free online versions of existing courses at well-known universities like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but such courses often offered little more than reading lists and lecture notes. MOOC's are…

Universities and their inventors earned more than $1.8-billion from commercializing their academic research in the 2011 fiscal year, collecting royalties from new breeds of wheat, from a new drug for the treatment of HIV, and from longstanding arrangements over enduring products like Gatorade. Northwestern University earned the most of any…

For years, advanced-practice nurses have struggled for greater autonomy from doctors while physician groups have fought back, trying to protect what they see as their turf. This article reports that a new degree and a new certification test are blurring those boundaries even further. The test, and the "doctor of nursing practice" degree it…

In the world of international education, few subjects are as controversial as the use of paid recruiting agents. Paying the agents, particularly on commission, is often viewed as unseemly, if not downright unethical. But a new organization, the American International Recruitment Council, hopes to change that attitude. The council wants to develop…

When New Hampshire's 13 newest lawyers were sworn in to the state bar in May, the ceremony took place a day before they actually graduated from law school. This speedy swearing-in as officers of the court was part of an unorthodox program at the state's only law school, Franklin Pierce Law Center. And while their classmates and thousands of other…

This article describes how the certification program developed by the U.S. Green Building Council has been a popular way for colleges to "go green," but its certification process has been hampering colleges' efforts. The private, nonprofit Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program has become synonymous with green construction,…

The digital revolution has substantially improved scholarly work, but it has also brought challenges to those who are charged with overseeing their institutions' tenure, promotion, and rewards processes. While several electronic forms compete for legitimacy, the two most prominent are journals published exclusively online and Web sites devoted to…

The little attention given to ethics and ethical behavior in computer science is seen as part of a larger problem, student ignorance of the profession. (MSE)

Arguments between factions advocating more or less teacher education could slow down the reform process enough to allow gains in the trend toward licensing teachers lacking teacher training. (MSE)

Many colleges in New Jersey are opposed to the for-profit University of Phoenix plan to offer six degree programs within that state. The university currently enrolls 50,000 on 87 campuses in 13 states, Canada, and Puerto Rico and has formally applied for licensing in this and three other northeastern states. Thirteen colleges operate within a…

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants has ruled that by the year 2000, new members must have 150 credits in higher education (a year of study beyond the bachelor's degree) due to the increased complexity of accounting. The transition to the new requirements is predicted to be disruptive. (MSE)

Support is reported for the proposals of the Carnegie Task Force on Teaching as a Profession for sweeping reforms of the public schools and the teaching profession, including rigorous national teacher certification, emphasis on liberal arts in teacher education and increased graduate study, and improvements in conditions of the profession. (MSE)

A New Jersey plan to turn people without education degrees into schoolteachers is discussed. Some New Jersey education officials are concerned that schools have hired relatively few of the new provisional teachers, and some are critical of the quality of preparation the teachers receive. (MLW)