Higher education is hot. Jargon once relegated to the academy’s back alleys has gone mainstream while potential industry disruptions arrive with the speed of a viral video on the Information Superhighway. Keeping up with the Next Big Thing can be tough, and woe to the academic cocktail partygoer who doesn’t know what these MOOC things are.

Never fear: we’ve got you covered. Inside Higher Ed’s reporters and editors have compiled a list of terms, trends and people to know this year, as well as those that are so 2012. But while we fancy ourselves au courant – it’s our job, after all – nobody’s perfect. So please send us additions (in the comments section) to the following In & Out list.

Happy 2013.

2012		2013
Credit hour		Digital badges
Recruiting full-pay students		Recruiting Malia Obama
‘Fessing up for fudging U.S. News data		Getting better at hiding U.S. News trickery
Striving to get into AAU		Striving to get into Big Ten
Law school bubble pops		J-school bubble pops
Clay Shirky		Andrew Ross
Western Governors University		New Charter University
Big data		FERPA
Arizona State University		Northern Arizona University
$10,000 degrees		$10,000-a-year professors
Push to improve conditions for adjuncts		Colleges cut adjuncts’ hours
"Pitch Perfect" (with Anna Kendrick)		"Admission" (with Tina Fey)
Rick Santorum questions value of college		The New York Times questions value of college
Remediation		Gamification
Reputation-damaging athletics scandals		Reputation-damaging athletics scandals
For-profit colleges		For-profit MOOCs
Disruption		Alignment
Fetish clubs		Abstinence clubs
Innovation		Scaling up
Coursera		Google
Legislation		Accreditation
Completion agenda		Productivity agenda
Republican governors question humanities		Republican governors question humanities
Fiscal cliff		Economic recovery
Clay Christensen		Siva Vaidhyanathan
Representative Virginia Foxx		Representative-elect Susan Brooks
OER		ROI
Maryland vs. Duke		Maryland vs. Northwestern
Syracuse vs. Georgetown		Syracuse vs. Wake Forest
Peter Thiel’s $100K dropout scholarships		Apple’s six-figure salaries for college grads
Political science		Meteorology
Nate Silver's blog		Rosemary Feal's Twitter feed
Alt-ac		Anything that pays
Google Books		Digital humanities
Marco Rubio on science		Jon Huntsman on science
Arne Duncan		Elizabeth Warren
Bloomberg lures university to NYC for $100m		U. Texas offers Bloomberg $100m to run for Texas gov
Colleges		Course aggregators
Professors		Subject matter experts
Flipped classrooms		Flipped climbing walls
E-textbooks available through the LMS		E-textbooks are the LMS
Declining state investment		Declining federal investment
Dean Dad		Matt Reed
California collapses		California rises
Financial aid letters		Financial aid shopping sheet
Need-blind		Need-aware
Student loan interest		Indentured servitude
Big East		Big Lower 48 and maybe Hawaii
Hoping Obama’s second term saves higher ed		Reality
China		Brazil
Teresa Sullivan		Teresa Sullivan
Bath salts and butt chugging		Beer pong (it never left)