| International |
Managing risk to HE institutions in an uncertain world | A university-wide approach to risk management requires the establishment of a risk committee (or assigning management responsibility to an existing committee) that implements institutional risk policies, monitors risks and controls the effectiveness of countermeasures.
University transformation at the crossroads | [W]e need to reject the popular arguments that appear to steer the thinking and programmatic work of our public agencies around trade-offs between excellence and quality on the one hand, and social justice on the other; and between equity and development. Or, as some would have it, the trade-offs between social equity and knowledge production. Despite growing scholarly work and research reports that debunk these forms of logic, it has ruling currency within the dominant higher education policy and programmatic space. Why this is the case will be an illuminating study, which may well explain the post 1994 systemic re/racialisation of the university sector.
Universities tell charred Australia: ‘We’re here to help’ | In a speech to the National Press Club on 26 February, Universities Australia chair Deborah Terry will peddle the power of academia to help the world understand disasters like Australia’s summer bushfire crisis and find ways of mitigating their effects. Professor Terry will use the Press Club address − a regular fixture of the Universities Australia annual conference, now underway in Canberra − to highlight the benefits of university expertise and to stress the danger of ignoring it.
Rwanda steps up efforts to improve education quality | The government plans to assess education quality in existing higher learning institutions and review the accreditation and licensing requirements for new ones, according to a statement released by the prime minister’s office. It will also discontinue automatic student promotion practice in primary and secondary schools, which had been adopted to avoid repetition and school dropouts, and reinforce a merit-based system to prioritize quality in education.
University partnerships – A carrot and stick approach | “The US uses the UPI and YALI as a carrot or reward for contributing to African higher education development and youth empowerment and at the same time it uses African universities as a proxy battleground to counter the influence of other international powers such as China and Russia and as a soft power tool for expanding its cultural, political and economic spheres of influence,” Abdelhamid said. “On the other hand, the US also imposes travel bans and sanctions which harms the academic community and higher education sector as a stick or punishment for African countries to secure its interests.”
| U.S. National |
Serfs of Academe | Given the parlous state of academic publishing—with Stanford University Press nearly shutting down and all but a few presses ordered to turn profits or else—it should perhaps come as no surprise that one of the best recent books on the contemporary university was instead self-published on Amazon. [Note: Our latest book, Honors of Inequality, would never have been published by a university press. The book explores the neoliberal origins of higher education as a field of study — a history that the scholars of higher education, who control what gets published by university presses, prefer their colleagues in other disciplines and the public not know.]
‘The Rise of Women in Higher Education’ | The premise of my book is that the most important change in higher education in recent history is the increase of women leaders, faculty and students. I first became interested in the topic through observing the encouraging impact of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and women’s athletics on campus cultures. The changes are broad and international. At the turn of the 21st century, women worldwide finally surpassed men in higher education participation.
OPINION: There’s a black student loan-debt crisis and it needs an urgent solution. How about reparations? | African Americans heavily rely upon higher education as the gateway to upward mobility. The combination of the wealth gap, rising tuition costs and reliance upon student loans, however, is now saddling black students with disproportionate amounts of debt. Meanwhile, the black student loan-debt crisis needs urgent remedies. For many, attempting to climb the economic ladder means trading one form of economic distress for another. For colleges interested in giving financial weight to their declarations of forgiveness and justice, reparations should not be restricted to direct descendants of those enslaved by universities because universities profited from countless slaves owned by others as well.
It’s Time to Stop Calculating Graduation Rates [subscription required] | [F]or graduation rates, we see one institution at 75 percent, another at 40 percent, and people assume the first is a better college. We ignore that rates are affected by preparation of students, socioeconomic status, race, full-time status, etc. If you compare a college where 20 percent of students are eligible for Pell Grants and 80 percent are white, versus one that is 80 percent Pell-eligible and 20 percent white, then comparing their raw graduation rates would be like judging health based on weight alone. Most students and their families don’t have the time or attention span for a meaningful understanding of graduation rates, so the simplistic use of those numbers only harms colleges with rates that people consider to be low.
Report: Majority of Americans favor free public college | Nearly two-thirds of Americans (63%) support tuition-free public college for all U.S. students, a new study from the Pew Research Center finds. But the country’s opinions are divided by political party. While 83% percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning adults Pew surveyed favor free college, 60% of Republicans and those who skewed Republican oppose the concept. Just over half of white Americans (53%) favored free public college, compared to 86% and 82%, respectively, among black and Hispanic adults. College affordability continues to be a key talking point among contenders for the 2020 Democratic nomination.
| U.S. States and Territories |
Op-Ed: Shouldering our student loan debt | An effectively trained workforce is essential to the longevity and strength of Pennsylvania’s economy. It is estimated this year that 63 percent of the Commonwealth’s jobs will require at least some post-secondary education. Without these advanced degrees and training, job seekers will not be qualified to fill the available positions. There are a multitude of programs available that provide the training and experience necessary for students; however, there are limitations that exist beyond the accessibility of the program. Significant inequalities in race, geographic location, and ability to pay, impact the attainability to earning a post-secondary degree. There needs to be a greater improvement in policy and innovative solutions to address affordability of college, demographic disparities, and repayment of student debt.
Every Georgian Deserves Access to Higher Education | Higher levels of education are connected to higher incomes, better health outcomes and longer life expectancies. Also, communities with higher levels of education experience less crime, lower rates of incarceration and greater participation in school, community service, civic and religious organizations. Georgia ranks No. 31 among states in the percentage of adults who have an associate degree or higher. Georgia is also one of only three states with policies that bar undocumented students from enrolling in certain colleges. The other two states are South Carolina and Alabama, which are home to much smaller populations of DACA recipients.
Governor Murphy Announces Historic $50 Million Investment in College Affordability with Tuition-Free “Garden State Guarantee” | Under this Guarantee, 13 campuses of the state’s four-year public institutions will receive increased direct operating aid to assist low-income and underrepresented students of color. Students with adjusted gross incomes (AGIs) of $65,000 or less would be guaranteed tuition- and fee-free prices for their first two years of study at the institution. Eligible community college transfer students who have benefitted from the Community College Opportunity Grant program would have the potential to have their total tuition and fees covered if they graduate on time.
Drilling Down Into Distance Education Data | The National Council for State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements (NC-SARA) has been collecting data on the number of out-of-state students studying online for the past four years. This year for the first time the report includes in-state students studying online in addition to out-of-state students studying online — painting a much fuller picture of the online learning landscape. Data collected from NC-SARA’s 1,960 member institutions (from every state but California) show that 2.8 million students studied in fully online degree programs in 2019. Of these, 1.5 million were in-state students and 1.3 million were out-of-state students. Out-of-state online enrollment grew by 5 percent compared with the 2018 data.
| Institutional |
50 Years Ago, the College Tried to Silence Them. Now Black Protesters Are Returning to Campus to Be Heard. [subscription required] | Linnie Willis remembers the day federal troops came to town in 1962. She was attending an all-black school in Oxford, Miss., when James Meredith won a legal battle to become the first black student at the University of Mississippi…
‘On My Own’ examines the difficult STEM transfer paths students must chart through community college | More than eight million students enroll at community colleges across the United States, with 75 to 80 percent intending to transfer and earn a bachelor’s degree. Yet only about a quarter of those students actually transfer. The students who do transfer, however, are highly successful and experience similar outcomes compared with students starting directly at four-year institutions. But as Wang explains, the road to transfer is infiltrated with structural barriers.
Putting Liberal Arts Programs on Ice | Long Island University has frozen new enrollments in undergraduate programs in fields including chemistry, history, philosophy, photography, physics, sociology and public relations in what some faculty view as an assault on the liberal arts core of the institution. The enrollment freezes follow on eliminations or freezes in recent years of other programs at the New York institution’s Post campus, including programs in art history, earth system science, French, Italian, music performance, Spanish, geography and geology.
Is Students’ Early Career Success Their Professors’ Problem? | The paper, the latest in a series on teaching from ACE, the largest association of campus administrators, focuses on the ways that colleges and universities should encourage and support their faculty members to connect “learning and work through career-relevant instruction,” as its subtitle states. Among other things, the paper discusses numerous steps institutional leaders can take to encourage faculty experimentation, get professors thinking beyond their own discipline and better connect instructors to student success professionals, so professors understand their key role in helping students think about their workplace possibilities. Faculty members are, after all, the “greatest single influence on students,” the authors write.
Even ‘Valid’ Student Evaluations Are ‘Unfair’ | “Unbiased, Reliable and Valid Student Evaluations Can Still Be Unfair,” published in Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, was written by Justin Esarey and Natalie Valdes. Esarey, an associate professor, and Valdes, an undergraduate research fellow, both work in political science at Wake Forest University. They note — rightly — that their field has faced concerns about gender bias, including in student evaluations of female professors. The problem transcends political science, of course, and many studies suggest that students perceive instructors differently based on factors beyond gender, such as race…As the paper notes, “Using invalid, unreliable or biased student evaluations to make decisions about hiring and tenure is obviously harmful to students and faculty alike.” Even worse, it says, “biased SETs could disadvantage faculty from underrepresented minority groups or punish faculty members who teach unpopular required courses.”
‘I Want to See You Here’: How to Make College a Better Bet for More People | To explore how to lift more people’s prospects, The Chronicle brought together a campus leader, a public official, a researcher, and a college counselor: José Luis Cruz, executive vice chancellor and university provost at the City University of New York; Daniel J. Hurley, CEO of the Michigan Association of State Universities; Anthony Abraham Jack, an assistant professor of education at Harvard University and author of The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students; and Sara Urquidez, executive director of the Dallas-based Academic Success Program. We discussed structural inequalities, expectations of students and their motivation to enroll in college, and the kind of support they actually need.
Free Speech Challenges in Real Time | A University of California conference on free speech turned into a microcosm of the free speech battles regularly taking place on American college campuses after student activists showed up at the event in Washington Thursday and interrupted speakers to advocate for raises for the system’s graduate teaching assistants.
Demanding a Provost’s Resignation | It happened again — this time at the University of Oklahoma. Two more professors used the N-word during class, angering students who say it was pedagogically unnecessary and hurtful. But what started as a protest over those incidents has escalated into a student sit-in Oklahoma’s central administration building and calls for Provost Kyle Harper to resign. The university says it won’t happen. “Our demands still have not been met, so we will continue to do a sit in, we will continue to do a hunger strike,” organizers of the campus group Black Emergency Response Team, or BERT, said in a statement Thursday from their position in Evans Hall.
