| International |
‘At a Glance’ – Tertiary education needs more investment | According to the latest Education at a Glance 2019 report, only 6% of 25- to 34-year-olds in South Africa are tertiary educated (including university study) – the lowest across OECD and partner countries and well below the G20 average of 38%. After South Africa, the second poorest performer on this indicator is India at 16%. Indonesia is next at around 18% and China just below 20%.
A looming disaster for HE and Brazil’s development | In Brazil, decisions made by the federal government have historically determined the development of higher education, science, technology and innovation, given its central role in terms of policy, funding and regulation.
The need for a values-based university curriculum | The shift from pedagogically based academic values to market-based values over the past 30 years has signalled not only a change in the basic fundamentals of educational philosophy in tertiary education; it has also presented us with real-world crises of economic irresponsibility, displacement, exclusion, division and inequality. As the once fatalistic inevitability of neoliberal ideology begins to be questioned and the world around us grows ever more interconnected, yet unstable and uncertain, university educators have shown a growing interest in global citizenship, signalling a shift in the responsibility and purpose of higher education to that of shaping more peaceful, tolerant and inclusive societies.
Another freshman programme – Will it work this time? | After freshman programmes were banished from university curricula for nearly two and a half decades, the Ethiopian Ministry of Science and Higher Education has decided to reintroduce them as of the new academic year beginning October 2019. This decision is drawn from the recommendations of Ethiopia’s new Education Development Roadmap (Ministry of Education, 2018) that incorporates different policy directions set to chart the future of the national education system in the years to come.
Former UCD president calls Brexit a ‘national crisis’ regards higher education | The former president of University College Dublin has called for immediate action to address a ‘national crisis’ ahead of Brexit. Now the Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Bristol, Hugh Brady spoke at the British Irish Chamber of Commerce earlier today, insisting that the “state of Ireland’s higher education and research system should be viewed as a national crisis.”
| U.S. National |
Education Trust Addresses Black Student Debt Crisis at D.C. Briefing | There is a debt crisis among African-American students on college and university campuses. According to the college access nonprofit organization The Education Trust, Black borrowers have a 50-50 chance of defaulting on a federal loan within 12 years of entering college. Black borrowers are also over 150 percent more likely to default on a federal loan than their White peers.
Can the ‘Crisis in the Humanities’ Be Solved? | We view this “crisis in the humanities,” and the History department’s response to it, as a phenomenon best understood only by considering the ways in which our economy, Harvard, and higher education in general have changed in recent years. As the number of concentrators in the humanities and some social sciences has dwindled here at Harvard, we believe the shift away from these subjects can be explained by a tragic feedback loop between the University’s changing relationship with the economy at large, and students’ increasing academic orientation towards career-related fields, partly fueled by misconceptions about the utility of the humanities.
70% of college students graduate with debt. How did we get here? | Today, roughly 70% of American students end up taking out loans to go to college. The average graduate leaves school with around $30,000 in debt and all told, some 45 million Americans owe $1.6 trillion in student loans — and counting.
| U.S. States and Territories |
UNC System launches statewide affordable education campaign | In the coming weeks, North Carolina residents will hear a lot more about the low cost of a college education in the state. On Tuesday, the UNC System launched a statewide, multimedia campaign to promote North Carolina’s public higher education affordability.
California’s Athlete-Compensation Law Is Now Official, Posing a Serious Challenge to the NCAA | California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, made the state’s challenge to amateurism in collegiate sports a reality on Monday, signing into law a bill that allows athletes at California universities to earn money from their name, image, and likeness rights starting in 2023.
UMaine system to cover tuition for more than 1,200 students | The University of Maine System says it’s going to cover the full cost of tuition and fees for more than 1,200 members of the state’s graduating high school classes next year.
Pennsylvania schools look to a ‘reset’ to solve tuition crisis | In recent years, a growing number of colleges have addressed soaring educational prices with an innovative strategy. It’s called a “tuition reset.” The concept is simple: Reduce tuition significantly, and make up the lost revenue by growing enrollment and decreasing financial aid costs.
| Institutional |
Columbia breaks decade-long enrollment slump | After years of enrollment decline resulting in staff layoffs, faculty departures, tuition increases and disappearing resources, President and CEO Kwang-Wu Kim announced the college’s first enrollment increase since 2008. For Fall 2019, enrollment at Columbia has increased by 1.8% to 6,947 students, according to a Thursday, Sept. 26, college-wide email from Kim.
End of an Admissions Era? | The most-anticipated change at the conference was a package of deletions from NACAC’s Code of Ethics and Professional Practices. The CEPP was stripped Saturday of sections restricting colleges’ ability to offer early-decision incentives, recruit first-year undergraduates and recruit transfer students. NACAC made the cuts because the U.S. Department of Justice believes they restrain competition.
NACAC Agrees to Change Its Code of Ethics | Before they approved the measure to strip the provisions, the delegates approved (unanimously) rules that would limit discussion, but they didn’t need the rules. There was no discussion on stripping the provisions, which most NACAC members learned of only at the beginning of the month. The Justice Department has been investigating NACAC for possible violations of antitrust laws for nearly two years, but the details of that investigation have not been generally known for most of that time. The Justice Department believes that with these rules, colleges are colluding to take away student choices.
How Can Colleges Make Grading More Equitable? | Feldman has a series of recommended grading practices that he shares with faculty. One of his core principles is that traditional grades average a students’ work over time rather than assessing how much they’ve learned overall. So, students who take longer to grasp the material have lower grades dragged down by their early homework and test scores, even if they’ve fully mastered the concepts by the end of the course.
The Secret’s Out | Today Claflin, which is affiliated with the United Methodist Church, is among the most highly regarded HBCUs in the country. It has a freshman retention rate of 78 percent and a job placement rate of 86 percent, among other good academic outcomes. Its average four-year graduation rate for the last five years is 40 percent, and the average six-year graduation rate for the same period is 50.4 percent, which is higher than the average for HBCUs.