Eye on Education

Medical School Applications Increase

College and university enrollment overall dropped in the fall of 2020, but the number of people applying to medical school increased 18 percent compared to 2019, reports the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).

Officials say the increase is the direct result of the COVID 19 pandemic, which underscored inequities in the delivery of health care and showcased the heroics of front-line workers and high-profile public health figures like Anthony Fauci.

“It’s unprecedented,” says Geoffrey Young, AAMC’s senior director for student affairs and programs.

In a story prepared by The Hechinger Report and WGBH Boston, Dr. Young compared it to the increase in the number of men and women who entered the military after 9/11. “So far in my lifetime, at least, and for as long as I’ve been in medical education, that’s the only comparison that I could make.”

Medical school admissions officers call the phenomenon “the Fauci Effect.”

“If it works to get more young individuals into medical school, go ahead and use my name. Be my guest,” says Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He’s received hundreds of letters from people telling him they want to practice medicine.

By 2033, the U.S. will be short 54,100 to 139,000 physicians, estimates the AAMC, while the proportion of people who are over 65 will grow by an expected 45 percent. More than two out of every five doctors now practicing will reach retirement age over the next 10 years.

Already, there are fewer primarycare providers than needed, noted The Hechinger Report. More than 7,000 areas of the U.S. with a combined population of roughly 82 million people need more internal medicine doctors, family physicians and pediatricians, based on data from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

A big deterrent has always been the price of medical school. Based on figures from 2015-’16, medical school graduates finish with $241,560 of student-loan debt, on average, says the National Center for Education Statistics. That figure discourages many would-be doctors, including those from lowincome and ethnic and racial minority groups. Eight percent of medical students are Black and 7 percent are Hispanic. Both proportions are smaller than their share of the population.

Wanted: Qualified Grandma Tutors

GrandmaTutors.com, a division of the Los Angeles-based company Rent-AGrandma, is hiring friendly, mature tutors to work with children in grades K-12 on a broad range of subjects.

With so many students around the United States and abroad learning at home, parents have been hungry for reliable help to meet their children’s educational needs. GrandmaTutors allows them to search for fully vetted and qualified “grandmas” in their area, many of whom have a long history of teaching experience, said a company press release.

Rent-A-Grandma (rentagrandma. com) was founded in 2011 by Todd Pliss, a licensed “studio teacher” who worked with child stars like the Jonas Brothers. “Grannies” don’t have to be real grandmas, but they must be at least 50 years old. They work as nannies, maintenance staff, pet sitters, chefs, and personal assistants.

Ransomware, Malware and Phishing Threaten Online Ed

The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) issued an advisory late last fall warning K-12 educators of an uptick in cyberattacks, reports Campus Safety Magazine. The attacks, which include ransomware and data theft, are designed to exploit and disrupt distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Cyber actors likely view schools as targets of opportunity, and these types of attacks are expected to continue through the 2020/’21 academic year,” says the alert. “The issues will be particularly challenging for K-12 schools that face resource limitations; therefore, educational leadership, information technology personnel, and security personnel will need to balance this risk when determining their cybersecurity investments.”

Fifty-seven percent of the ransomware incidents reported involved K-12 schools in August and September 2020 – up from 28 percent January through July, said the agencies. Cybersecruity officials have also observed malware attacks on state, local, tribal and territorial institutions over the last year. Attackers use malware to infect machines and send stolen information to command-and-control centers.

Phishing is also becoming common in education, with cyber actors targeting students, parents, faculty, IT professionals and others involved in distance learning operations. “These attacks masquerade as legitimate requests for information via email and trick users into revealing account credentials or other information,” says Campus Safety Magazine.

Pandemic Speeds Up MOOC Evolution

New platform Engageli – for live, online higher-education courses – promises game-changing functionality, reports the newsletter New World Same Humans (NWSH). “Basically, it’s a Zoom for university teachers and their remote students,” says the article.

Developed by Daphne Koller, a cofounder of online learning platform Coursera, Engageli gives students the ability to visually signal whether they understand what’s being taught, and teachers the opportunity to post real-time quizzes and instantly show the results.

The new platform’s launch occurs during a huge, pandemic-fueled spike in the number of students taking Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), notes NWSH. “According to online course site Class Central, the top three MOOC providers – Coursera, edX, and FutureLearn – registered as many new users in April 2020 as in the whole of 2019. “Not so long ago, MOOCs felt something of an unsuccessful experiment,” continued the article. “Now, remote learning is on the agenda as never before. The big question is: will it stick or is it just temporary?”

Investors think MOOCs will stick. “We’re seeing, as a result of COVID, the whole industry advancing at least a year or two with a real uptick in terms of the number of users that are coming to these platforms,” Julia Stiglitz told Education Dive. A partner at GSV Ventures, which has invested in MOOC providers Outlier.org and Coursera, Stiglitz added: “You’re seeing a lot of investors who are getting very excited about the education technology category.”

Coursera – one of the largest MOOC providers in the world — garnered $130 million from investors in July after launching a service in 2019 to offer online courses to colleges.

Statewide Tutoring Programs make Impressive Gains, say Experts

Tutoring is needed to solve the education equity gap exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, said a panel of education researchers during a webinar. National Press Foundation. They suggested statewide, potentially federally funded tutoring programs and noted that to be effective, tutoring requires in-school, small groups with one or two students per tutor.

States funding tutoring programs are seeing impressive gains, the panelists said. Research shows that Minnesota Reading Corps, which uses AmeriCorps volunteers, was effective for higher-risk students in younger grades regardless of gender, race or socioeconomic standing. They advanced students up to almost a year. “Oftentimes with education interventions, the results you get are maybe six weeks’ worth of advancement,” said Katharine Stevens, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and one of the panelists. “A year is massive.”

Right now, approximately 12 states have statewide models, and North Carolina and Tennessee are scheduled to launch programs in the coming months.

Researchers pointed to a national program in England as a model for the U.S. The national government provides the funds and resources, but the schools vet the tutoring companies they want to use. The model could be used for math, they noted, where preliminary test results show learning has slowed the most during the pandemic.

In June, the Netherlands became the first nation to invest in a large-scale tutoring program by earmarking the equivalent of $277 million for schools to use to support students, according to The Economist. A comparable investment for the U.S. would amount to $5.3 billion because of its larger scale, calculated Robert Slavin, director of the Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University.

EDspaces Sold (continued from page 15)

Evidence of that commitment appeared in November when Emerald held its annual International Gift Expo of the Smokies live at the LeConte Center in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. It was considered an exposition industry milestone given market conditions at the time, including the significant restrictions on domestic and international travel.

“The number of exhibiting companies declined 60 percent, but buyer attendance was down only 30 percent to create a 75-percent boost year-over-year in the overall attendee-to-exhibitor ratio, from seven attendees per exhibitor to 12 attendees per exhibitor,” reported Emerald in a press release. “As a result, sentiment scores from exhibiting customers improved across all measures, and confirmed the demand from the gift and souvenir community to connect face-to-face to source new products, replenish inventories, and prepare for the important upcoming holiday season.”

“Successfully holding the International Gift Expo of the Smokies (IGES) this year is a testament to our support of our communities, and a positive first step forward for our industry as a whole,” noted Lori Silva, EVP of Emerald’s Retail Group. “We are extremely proud of the IGES team and our amazing partners for implementing a stringent health and safety plan that delivered a strong, productive show.”

Buyer Don Henk, retail operations manager at Massanutten Resort in Virgina, said, “Given the uncertainty we have all been facing much of this year, attending the IGES show in November was critical to the future success of our business. It helped maximize the sales and profitability of all our shops by allowing us to connect with our key vendors. There is nothing like seeing new items, designs, and colors in person; not to mention talking with new vendors to see what they have to offer. It goes well beyond just viewing products in a catalog.”

Examples of the safety measures implemented at IGES included temperature screening, the required use of face masks at all times, registration queue lines to ensure 6-foot social distancing, one-way entrances/exits, transparent shields at all concession stands, and daily disinfection of all seating, restrooms, and frequently touched public areas.

In January, those safety measures were implemented again at the live Surf Expo at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando.

The next EDspaces is scheduled for November 3 through 5 in Pittsburgh.

Please note the new address of the Education Market Association: 9841 Washington Blvd. Suite 200-1041, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20878.

Virtual Tradeshows (continued from page 17)

VP for global events, said that while the company’s live events were more theatrical — “with dynamic speakers on stage commanding a rapt audience” – its all-digital format needed to be cinematic. “We now tailor our content to that format, and we have transformed from a live-show production team to a 24/7 television production network, complete with live anchors from around the world.”

Most of the meetings industry has now adopted virtual events, notes Madison from Cvent. She cites a recent study from the Professional Convention Management Association that revealed that 76 percent of planners are going virtual. They had to. The rest of us have to, too. “In this period of change, our industry, and the world, has been experimenting and adapting at a rapid pace,” she wrote. “The global pandemic has caused a dramatic acceleration of technology adoption and digitalization across many areas of our lives. As McKinsey Digital observed in May, ‘We have vaulted five years forward in consumer and business digital adoption in a matter of around eight weeks.”

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