| International |
Why a new higher education review is a waste of time | However, central to both quality improvement and increased access is money. Indian higher education has been chronically underfunded – it spends less than most other BRIC countries on higher education. The latest Indian central budget allocates only 37,461 crore rupees (INR374.61 billion or around US$5.2 billion) for the higher education sector. [NOTE: Ummm…”Most other BRIC countries” must be the other three of the four (Brazil, Russia, and China), no?]
A breathtaking shift from autocracy to an open HE system | Although Uzbekistan was the first of the Central Asian states to permit international branch campuses, having hosted the United Kingdom’s University of Westminster and Russia’s Plekhanov Russian University of Economics since 2001-02, the number of foreign higher education institutions remained very limited at just five. However, under Mirziyoyev, regulation was introduced in late 2017 offering tax breaks and other financial incentives. Since then, international branch campuses have spread ‘like mushrooms’, according to Yekaterina Kazachenko, a journalist with the independent Russian agency Fergana News.
Provost at Odds With Higher Education Minister Over National Rankings Strategy | Provost Patrick Prendergast has called for the introduction of a national strategy on university rankings, after Trinity’s persistent falls in both the Times Higher Education and QS rankings in recent years. In an interview with the Sunday Business Post, Prendergast said said it’s “imperative to consider how we get a good number of Irish universities into the top of the ranking”.
The financial benefit of going to university has slumped over 20 years | A report published by the researchers suggests that the decline in the graduate premium has happened recently. “Our results indicate that the decline appears to be a recent development, primarily affecting those born after 1987,” it says…The findings come as more questions are being asked about the worth of university degrees, particularly in England where institutions can charge students tuition fees of up to £9,250 a year. In September research by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) found that England has the second highest tuition fees in the developed world after the US.
| U.S. National |
We must find a reasonable fix to student loan debt | For students graduating in 2018, 69% of them took out student loans and the average debt rounded out at around $29,800. That doesn’t even count the parents who took loans out on behalf of their students. That number averaged out at around $35,600 and included 14% of 2018 graduates. That means that somewhere around 83% of our students cannot afford higher education without taking out a loan.
Study: Racial Discipline Disparities and Academic Achievement Gaps are Connected | National data shows consistent correlation between discipline disparities and academic achievement gaps for African-American students, according to a new study from AERA Open, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association. The study utilizes data from the Stanford Education Data Archive and the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection to confirm and expand on previous research that explored racial discipline gaps and racial achievement gaps.
| U.S. States and Territories |
Make College Affordable, Not Free | I am not in favor of free higher education… | [Contributor] Dr. Carol F. Probstfeld is president of State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota.
Dueling Conclusions on State Disinvestment | On Wednesday, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank, published a report arguing that state disinvestment in higher education is a myth. Then this morning, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive think tank, published its own report saying deep cuts to state funding for higher education have shifted the burden of the cost of college onto students.
Louisiana higher education board asks for $156M budget boost | The increased spending would lift general state financing for higher education by nearly 15%, to $1.2 billion in the budget year that begins July 1. Lawmakers will consider the request in the 2020 legislative session. Among the new dollars sought, $18 million would cover increasing retirement and health insurance costs; $29 million would reward campuses that show improved student performance; and $36 million would cover pay hikes aimed at moving faculty salaries to the Southern regional average.
| Institutional |
4 Personas of Adult Learners | dult learners make up about 27 percent of the nation’s undergraduate student population. As enrollment continues to decline overall, and the U.S. population skews older, some argue that institutions will have to attract adult learners to survive.
Halloween, a Season for Racist Costumes | There are two sides of the spectrum among those students who choose to dress in offensive costumes, according to Caldwell. On one side, there is a lack of awareness and education. However, on the other hand, she said that some students want to see how far they can push the limits and boundaries of the first amendment and free expression. Additionally, a more extreme aspect of the spectrum is the intent to harm.
The Case for Cluster Hiring to Diversify Your Faculty | By way of illustration: In the three years leading up to our cluster-hire experiment — between 2014 and 2017 — Emory hired a total of 65 tenure-track faculty members, only 15 percent of whom were from underrepresented groups (in STEM fields that designation includes women of all racial and ethnic groups). But between 2017 and 2019, after adding cluster hiring to our other efforts, we’ve recruited 80 new tenure-track faculty members, 51 percent of them (or 41 hires) from underrepresented groups.
H.B.C.U.s’ Sink-or-Swim Moment | Rising college costs, the student loan crisis and federal budget cuts have broadly hamstrung higher education. But it’s killing H.B.C.U.s, where nearly three in five attendees are low-income, first-generation students and over 70 percent of students have limited financial resources. Fifteen of them have closed since 1997. Public and private H.B.C.U. endowments taken together are now roughly 70 percent smaller than that of non-H.B.C.U.s. And private historically black colleges saw a 42 percent decline in federal funding between 2003 and 2015. H.B.C.U.s are awarding fewer doctorates now than they did in 1977, and a report found that the six-year graduation rates at 20 H.B.C.U.s were 20 percent or lower in 2015.
Education before Regulation: Empowering Students to Question Their Data Privacy | [T]here is broad recognition that new laws must be passed to account for the changing landscape, with 41 states passing more than 126 laws related to K-12 and higher education student privacy in the last six years. Given these signs of progress, some might think we can just hold our breath until law and common sense sort out our data privacy woes in their own due time. These are promising moves toward creating regulation and policy that may better protect student data at a structural level. Nonetheless, we believe that they are insufficient on their own and that education is needed in addition to these efforts.