Recession Spurs Would-Be
Entrepreneurs to Prepare to
Strike Out on Their Own

Everblue Energy instructor Vince DiFrancesco shows entrepreneurs how to perform a BPI Home Energy Audit. Rutgers University Advanced Technology Extension offers several programs that help prepare students to start their own businesses in the fields of science, technology, and ‘green’ jobs.

Photo courtesy of Rutgers University

As we begin a new year with an economy still struggling, it appears that opportunities for financial success are few and far between. Yet, some argue that the best time to launch a new business may be during a recession. Brad Sugars, columnist for Entrepreneur magazine wrote that the cheap cost of goods, less competition, and abundance of talent can give a start-up a better chance of success than during other economic conditions. With unemployment rates hovering around 10 percent due to layoffs and downsizing, this may be the perfect time for those who have lost their jobs to change direction and tap into their entrepreneurial spirits. Professional and continuing education units offer practical strategies and resources to prepare those ready to strike out on their own.

Marrying Science and Business

Rutgers University Advanced Technology Extension (RATE), the continuing education arm of the School of Engineering, at Rutgers, offers an Entrepreneurship Bootcamp. The noncredit short course provides would-be entrepreneurs with practical advice about how to go about launching a start-up. “The program is designed for entrepreneurs who want to get into scientific innovation,” explains Stephen Carter, Director of RATE. “What we saw at universities across the nation was that not many of people were combining business with the sciences. We saw the Bootcamp as mechanism to do that.”

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Conference Trends:
Virtual Collaboration Tools Enhance,
Not Replace, Face-to-Face Meetings

The New York University Hospitality Conference advances green initiatives and sustainable solutions for the lodging industry. NYU used new online strategies, such as Twitter, to promote the program.

Photo courtesty of NYU

Online video conferencing and collaborations are expanding and enhancing—but not replacing—the way we like to meet. According to a new study by the American Society of Association Executives, participation among association members in online media events jumped from 30 to nearly 36 percent this past year. And their use of social media rose from nearly 10 to 16 percent. The 7,000 survey responses included associations of lawyers, doctors, pharmacists, counselors, architects, accountants, scientists, engineers and meeting professionals—representing both the corporate and nonprofit sectors.

CE conferencing is on the vanguard of employing new web-based networking technologies, vastly expanding a university’s reach. At a time when just about any computer can serve as a video conferencing tool, movement into the digital world has fundamentally changed the way workers interact. It has also greatly changed functionalities and preferences in conferencing. Collaborative technologies—university sponsored blogs, wiki’s, YouTube channels and other grassroots video and text uploads—can now quickly capture and disseminate the collective intelligence shared at conferences—something that used to take months or even years to produce in written proceedings. Moreover these reports no longer need to remain stagnant. They can be updated online with ongoing commenting.

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View a Table of Contents for Past InFocus Stories

UCEA 95th Annual Conference

Leading Innovation in
Higher Education

April 7-10, 2010
San Francisco, CA

Conference Website

Letter From Kay Kohl,
UCEA Chief Executive Officer

Empowering Learners with Open Content

Letter From Patricia Book,
UCEA's President

An Endless Adventure

Other Resources

2009 Edition
of

Lifelong Learning Trends

Now Available

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The 10th edition of UCEA'sLifelong Learning Trends focuses on The New Face of Higher Education. The publication includes graphics, analyses, and the latest statistics of relevance to college and university professional and continuing education. Learn more.

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Trends & Announcements

Students Seeking Online Offerings
in Record Numbers

Economic downturns have historically been periods when higher education institutions experience a surge in enrollments, as unemployed workers seek to increase their appeal to potential employers and workers with jobs look for opportunities to advance in their careers. Many colleges and universities are facing an increased demand for courses and programs with a simultaneous decrease in their institutional budgets. Online education is particularly appealing to students because it allows broader access and more flexibility, and demand for such courses has never been higher.

The seventh annual Sloan Consortium online learning report, Learning on Demand: Online Education in The United States, 2009, reveals that there were more than 4.6 million students taking at least one online course in 2008, a 17-percent increase from 2007. Online courses are defined as those in which at least 80 percent of the course content is delivered online. More than one-quarter of higher education students now take at least one course online. The growth from 1.6 million online students in 2002 to 4.6 million students in 2008 is a compound annual growth rate of 19 percent, compared with an annual growth rate of less than 2 percent for all higher education students during that time period.

Degree Completion Hindered by
Work and Family Responsibilities

The prevailing wisdom as to why most students start but do not finish college is because they cannot afford it, are not prepared for the academic rigors, or do not value education as much as those students who complete college. Yet a report by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Public Agenda reveals that the primary reason students cite for leaving college is balancing work and school. The challenge of simultaneously juggling work, family, and education is more daunting for most of these students than being able to pay for college – and has implications for the benefits and services that students need to complete their degrees.

Alternative Teacher Certification
Programs Are Burgeoning

Alternative teacher certification programs, which offer a route to the classroom other than the traditional four-year education major, are flourishing, with about one-third of new teaching hires coming through alternative routes to teacher certification. All 50 states and the District of Columbia have some type of alternate route to teacher certification, with nearly 500 alternate teacher certification programs spread across the country.

According to the National Center for Alternative Certification, the number of teaching certificates issued to people who completed an alternative route program grew from roughly 20,000 in 2000-01 to approximately 59,000 in 2005-06. This period of rapid growth has been characterized by a shift away from emergency and other temporary routes prevalent in the 1980’s and 1990’s, to new routes designed specifically for non-traditional candidates who have already earned bachelor’s degrees, many of whom come from other careers.

View More Summaries

Recession Spurs Would-Be Entrepreneurs to Prepare to Strike Out on Their Own

Marrying Science and Business

Conference Trends: Virtual Collaboration Tools Enhance, Not Replace, Face-to-Face Meetings

UCEA 95th Annual Conference

Leading Innovation in Higher Education

Letter From Kay Kohl, UCEA Chief Executive Officer

Letter From Patricia Book, UCEA's President