Courageous Learning:
Finding a New Path through Higher Education

"Courageous learning...is the ability to learn how to learn, to have the guts to learn something new."—Mark Milliron, former Deputy Director for Postsecondary Improvement, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

"I applaud institutions like Excelsior and Western Governors University for being on the cutting edge, and for developing better ways to meet customers where they are. Hopefully, this book will help returning adults make choices that are right for them."—Margaret Spellings, 8th United States Secretary of Education

Courageous Learning: Finding a New Path through Higher Education presents a realistic mosaic of the current state of adult education in America and underscores the urgent need for our nation's adults to embrace a culture of lifelong learning as a way to help solve the country's education and employment crises.

Courageous Learning offers timely, practical information: it includes in-depth profiles of a variety of long-established, adult-serving institutions that offer excellent service and value; autobiographical self-portraits of adult learners who have not only shown uncommon persistence in attaining their degrees, but who have overcome considerable challenges on their journeys to personal and professional success; interviews with a number of the nation's most outspoken proponents for education reform (including Martha Kanter, current U.S. Under Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings, former Secretary of Education under George W. Bush, Arthur Levine, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and Mark Milliron, former Deputy Director for Postsecondary Improvement at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation); and definitions of important concepts such as "credit by exam," "credit by assessment," "online learning," and "regional accreditation." There is also an appendix section “For Adults Only – 15 Essential Questions," which provides prospective students with an invaluable educational checklist.

In addition, the print edition features a companion CD-ROM that provides more in-depth information and interviews on the subject of online education.

Courageous Learning provides a comprehensive and effective navigational system for adults who want and need to complete their postsecondary degrees.

John Ebersole is president of Excelsior College in Albany, New York. Prior to assuming the presidency of Excelsior, he held the Michael Sandler Fellowship at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and has held leadership positions at John F. Kennedy University, the University of California, Berkeley, Colorado State University, and Boston University.His career in adult, online and continuing education spans more than 25 years.

William Patrick is an award-winning novelist. He has also written creative non-fiction, poetry, screenplays, and drama and taught writing at the University at Albany, the College of St. Rose, Old Dominion University, Salem State College, Onondaga Community College.Currently he is a faculty instructor at Fairfield University's MFA program.

978-0-9768813-1-5

240pp

Category: Education