Digests

| International | Academic freedom, institutional autonomy and democracy | Higher education can only fulfil its mission if it enjoys academic freedom and institutional autonomy…While concern about the state of academic freedom and institutional autonomy is near universal, the most salient issues vary between countries and continents. For example, the focus in the United States is largely on academic freedom and its relationship to the right to free speech on campus, most recently prompted by the alt-right movement. In Europe, the focus has so far largely been institutional autonomy.Continue Reading

Digests

‘A Culture of Sexual Harassment’ | [Marybeth Gasman, the Judy and Howard Berkowitz Professor of Higher Education in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania,] is alleged to have made repeated references to her body and sex life, and those of staff and students — often people of color — at work and in running center group texts. Several former center assistants described Gasman as “fetishizing” some of her Latinx and black staff and students, such as by rubbing men’s arms and chests and asking a man and a woman to compare butt sizes and repeatedly encouraging them to hook up.Continue Reading

Digests

| U.S. National || Turning Point for Student Loans | Fed researchers defined severely derogatory debt as any kind of delinquent loan combined with a repossession, foreclosure, or charge off. The proportion of debt falling into that category in U.S. households has stayed fairly consistent for the past four years. But defaulted student loans now make up 35 percent of that debt.Continue Reading

Digests

.| U.S. National | ‘I’m Going to Die with a Student Loan’: What Should the Government Do About the Trillion-Dollar Debt Crisis? | Some 44 million people in the United States are similarly saddled with student loan debt, owing nearly $1.5 trillion. Last fall, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos called it “a crisis.” More and more students leave school each year with loans, experts say, and students borrow more than $100 billion every year to attend college or graduate school.Continue Reading