| International |
The Dangerous Myth of the Student Loan | In the US, the groundwork for the present loan-dominated system goes back to 1972 with the Student Loan Marketing Association, which was created with the intention of servicing federally insured loans. By 1986, a market-based credit system was the system of choice for the World Bank, which advocated it in order to fund the rapid gap in higher education demand and supply that was occurring in the developing world. India’s own experiences with government-backed loans date back to the 1962 National Loans Scholarship Scheme, which was eventually replaced with the current system of commercial bank-driven loans.
Moving from rhetoric to action on widening access to HE | As we approach the second World Access to Higher Education Day (WAHED) on 26 November, the evidence suggests that, while there is a growing community of institutions and individuals taking forward innovative approaches to widening access to higher education across the world, deeper global commitments across the sector are lacking.
‘Stop looking to foreigners to inform policy’ – CODESRIA | The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa or CODESRIA has planned a number of new programmes for 2020, including an advanced policy reflections intervention meant to encourage African governments and institutions to work more closely with local academia instead of “running to China, Europe and America” for consultants.
Governments need to think carefully about eliminating tuition fees | The elasticity of demand for tertiary education is very low – meaning that fee changes don’t affect demand very much. One reason, in the New Zealand context, is that virtually all domestic tertiary students qualify for interest-free income-contingent loans when they enter tertiary education…We see a similar phenomenon in nearly all developed countries: fees don’t necessarily deter participation.
Half of learners in top study destinations say HE fails to prepare for career | Almost half of learners in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and Europe don’t think that higher education prepared them for their eventual career, according to a survey published by Pearson.
India in ‘initial stages’ of higher education massification – Report | India has reached a gross enrolment ratio (GER) of 26.3% of people going into higher education and is close to achieving a target of 30% by 2020….according to a report by the United States-based think tank the Brookings Institution. GER is the proportion of 16- to 23-year-olds enrolled in higher education. However, India will see a bottleneck in achieving massification without increased funding for students’ access, said the just-released report Reviving Higher Education in India.
| U.S. National |
Individuals from Low-Income Households Likely to Skip 4-Year College | NORC surveyed 2,573 young Americans, including 769 teens ages 13-17 and 1,804 young adults ages 18-29, through online and telephone interviews. About 38 percent of respondents in households making less than $50,000 are more likely to attend or plan to attend a four-year college, followed by 43 percent of those making between $50,000 and $100,000 and 73 percent with household income more than $100,000.
High Debt, Low Earnings | On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Education released data on first-year earnings for thousands of different college programs. The data are both limited and flawed in some ways, but they are also some of the most accurate outcomes information currently available about different academic programs and majors…The debt and earnings information was also taken from different student samples — debt information collected from those who graduated in 2016 and 2017 and earnings from those who completed in 2015 and 2016.
The Faculty Shrinks, but Tilts to Full-Time | New data released Tuesday by the Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics show that 748,277 of the 1,454,136 postsecondary employees characterized as instructors were employed full-time — 51.5 percent…[T]hat continues a trendlet in the last few years in which the number of full-time instructors has risen and the number of part-timers has declined — thereby tipping the scales (ever so slightly) back in favor of full-time employment.
Future of education requires new way of thinking | Could there be a new paradigm for sustained education over a lifetime that could come in “chunks” that are relevant to current needs, desires or workplace demands? All of us can think of new roles or jobs we have taken on for which we would have valued some form of learning experience, rather than learning on the job. Most of us would benefit from renewal of our skills that would keep us updated as jobs and careers change. The Georgia Tech document calls this “episodic learning.”
| U.S. States and Territories |
Study: Students bear brunt of increased higher education costs, state funding cuts | The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a nonpartisan research think tank, found that since 2008, per-student funding for Michigan’s public colleges and universities is 15 percent less than the 2008 funding level. In the same period, CBPP found the average tuition of four-year public colleges and universities in Michigan increased by $3,075, with an average of $898 cut from per-student funding. Decreased state funding plus rising higher education costs helped push the 2017 average debt per borrower in Michigan to $30,978, according to online credit marketplace Lendedu, up 52 percent from 2007.
The Right to a Free and Quality Public Higher Education in New York | CUNY’s six-year degree completion rate is only 55%, and financial strain is one of the main reasons students drop out. In a 2017 report on college success, the Center for an Urban Future shared that 75% of dropouts at Kingsborough Community College had a financial “red flag” in their accounts such as owing money or loss of scholarship. To make matters worse, a staggering half of all CUNY students experience food insecurity, and many struggle with housing insecurity or even homelessness. There’s a reason for this dire situation: Tuitions have risen steadily year after year, as the share of the budget that comes from tuition has grown from 20% to almost 50% over the past 30 years.
EDsmart Names 2020’s Most Affordable Colleges in California | “The colleges and universities on our list offer high quality education at an amazing price,” said EDsmart’s spokesperson. “In addition, these schools offer additional financial aid to most of their students by way of scholarships, fellowships, and student loans.”
| Institutional |
History Repeats Itself | To hear some Syracuse University students and alumni of color tell it, the headline-grabbing events on campus over the past two weeks were a long time coming. They say while other colleges and universities across the country have experienced intermittent racial incidents and controversies, they occurred regularly at Syracuse. The problems were like a slow burn that went back decades and ultimately turned into a conflagration of anger, frustration and disappointment.
Guest Post: Weaponized Learning Outcomes | Although bureaucratic assessment reporting has been criticized by assessment organizations, and accreditors complain about “cookie-cutter” reports, the staff in most assessment offices are still obliged to at least pretend that learning outcomes are more than just words…The assessment bureaucracy — those periodic checkboxy reports — can only be justified if the formal learning outcome statements and their standardized assessments are superior to the native ways faculty know their students. Otherwise we could just ask faculty how the students are doing and use course registrations and grades for data. We could look at the table of contents to find the learning outcomes.
Admin 101: How to Properly Wrap Up a Strategic Plan (and Why That Matters) | The fact that most of us fail to conclude our strategic plans with as much energy as we start them undermines future planning. It also masks the reality that strategic planning is continuous and reciprocal: We are supposed to learn from the process, not just check some boxes and forget about it.
