| International |
After prison, academic’s university hearing a ‘test case’ | The release on bail from jail of a prominent pro-democracy scholar in Hong Kong could be a test case for dwindling academic freedom in Hong Kong as university disciplinary hearings loom, academics have said.
Universities tap into predictive analytics to improve student outcomes | While a degree represents a stepping stone to prosperity, reports suggest dropout rates remain high across many universities…While the trend of universities using predictive analytics is still limited, just how effective are they and what are the implications of its use?
Did Austerity in the UK Lead to the Brexit Crisis? | While a political solution to the Brexit crisis is yet to be found, our academic understanding of why the Brexit vote happened has developed significantly over the last three years. Studies have found that areas that supported Leave had an overall weaker economic structure, with lower levels of income and life satisfaction, fewer high status-jobs, an aging demographic, and lower levels of educational attainment. In a recent paper, forthcoming in the American Economic Review, I show that these “left-behind” parts of the UK were particularly reliant on the welfare state – and hence, particularly vulnerable to welfare cuts.
In search of a more equitable global higher education space | For Sall, the starting point for the kind of “transformative” internationalisation needed in Africa is the creation of an African higher education space – one that recognises the critical role of the continent’s universities in the structural transformation of African economies and the re-negotiation of Africa’s position in the global epistemological, economic and governance order. “Internationalisation ought to promote universal values and help in addressing the challenges facing our planet in ways that make it a place where all its inhabitants (humans, flora and fauna) feel secure and acknowledged, and are able to live in harmony,” he said.
| U.S. National |
Bipartisan Push for Student Loan Transparency | The bipartisan bill would push more regular disclosures to student borrowers during the lifetime of their loan, including when they are still in college. The legislation is the latest evidence that while Democrats and Republicans are split on many major higher ed issues, transparency still has broad bipartisan support.
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.
Why Conservatives Are Turning Against Higher Education | The idea that college is an invaluable engine of upward mobility is firmly planted in the national imagination, and no doubt many conservatives will balk at efforts to diminish its central role. But the diploma divide will, I suspect, continue to concentrate the minds of Hawley and other ambitious politicians on the right looking to create more accessible, lower-risk paths to upward mobility than gambling on college degrees that might not pay off.
Even Some College Tends to Pay Off | [A] new study found that attending college typically isn’t a waste of time, even for students who fail to graduate. The research found “very substantial increases in employability and income” for this group of former students, who attended community college or a four-year institution…
Americans Owe $1.6 Trillion In Student Debt – What Will It Take To Solve This Crisis? [Audio: 53 mins.] | On this edition of Your Call, we’ll discuss the student loan debt crisis in the US. Americans owe over $1.65 trillion dollars in student loans. One in five people carry student debt, which severely impacts their ability to save money, buy homes, and start families, but it’s not just young and middle aged people who are struggling. Three million people over 60 have student loans. With some Democratic presidential candidates proposing to eliminate student loan debt, can we stop this crisis and make higher education affordable for all?
What the Numbers Can Tell Us About Humanities Ph.D. Careers | About 66 percent of people who have completed Ph.D.s in history are teaching at postsecondary institutions, as either contingent or tenure-track faculty members, said Dylan Ruediger, a panelist and a coordinator at the American Historical Association. Very few of the historians who work in academe are teaching at universities that resemble the R1 institutions where they got their advanced degrees. Just 19 percent of them, said Ruediger, are employed at R1 institutions.
| U.S. States and Territories |
College grads stung by broken promises of federal loan forgiveness program | Hundreds of South Dakota residents are caught in financial limbo wondering if the tens of thousands of dollars they owe on student debt — and which they were promised would be forgiven if they entered public-service careers — will actually ever be eliminated. Those South Dakotans include teachers, police officers, employees at charitable organizations and even members of the military who signed up to participate in the federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.
As Free College Tuition ‘Promise’ Programs Grow, What About Wisconsin? | In Wisconsin, there is no state-supported promise program, so each institution that wants to set up a free-tuition pathway must independently fund it.
The Number 1 Student Success Challenge | At many broad access institutions, the Number 1 student success challenge is to bring many more community college transfer students to graduation. Across the City University of New York system – the nation’s largest urban public university system, with 274,000 students enrolled in 11 senior colleges, 7 community colleges, and 7 post-graduate institutions – transfer students comprise a majority of those receiving bachelor degrees. These transfer students are much more likely than “native” students to come from underrepresented, low-income, and first-generation backgrounds – and their graduation rate is significantly lower than those that arrived on campus as freshmen.
| Institutional |
Has Admissions Changed Since the Scandal? | Add up all the beneficiaries of the scandals, and they are a minute share of the population. But there are legal ways (used by far more applicants) that advantage the wealthy in the admissions process. No college has looked at the status quo and eliminated, say, early decision.
New School Drops N-Word Case | The New School dropped its investigation against poet and novelist Laurie Sheck. Sheck, who is white, had been the focus of an inquiry triggered by a student complaint that she’d used the N-word in her graduate-level creative writing class when quoting the late black writer James Baldwin.