International
A lifetime of University World News – Africa | Often time flashes by. But it feels like a lifetime ago that University World News – Africa was launched on 30 March 2008. Perhaps this is because so much has happened in Africa over the past decade, especially in higher education, which has clocked the world’s highest regional enrolment growth rate and has expanded exponentially.
Is ‘Reproducibility Crisis’ Overblown? | The narrative of the reproducibility crisis has come to dominate scientific debate in recent years, with about 90 percent of respondents to a 2016 Nature survey agreeing that such a crisis existed, and more than 60 percent blaming it on selective reporting and pressures to publish.
Leading Universities and Colleges Drive Large-Scale Improvements in Student Success through Analytics | Student success pioneer Civitas Learning announced, today, at its seventh annual partner “Summit” convening, that its community of practice now includes over 350 institutions, serving more than 8 million students worldwide and 40 percent of U.S. higher education.
U.S. National
An Efficient Education? Sure. As Long as It’s Good, Too | [N]ew frameworks include the Lumina Foundation’s Degree Qualifications Profile, the Association of American Colleges and Universities’ LEAP initiative (both of which I helped shape), and the Competency-Based Education Network’s Quality Framework for Competency-Based Education Programs. Each provides guidelines for the entire degree and can be supplemented by comparable guidelines for specific areas of study, such as history, engineering and technology, and business.
Is student loan debt the next financial crisis? | Since 2014, student loan debts have increased from $260 billion to roughly $1.4 trillion. At this price tag, policymakers should be working to improve degree attainment, certification quality, repayment options, and financial stability; but instead they are advancing legislation like the PROSPER Act. It would restructure federal student loans to dilute and restrict eligibility for Pell Grants, would remove rules that hold for-profit colleges accountable for deceptive and predatory behavior, would eliminate all loan forgiveness programs, and would redefine income-driven repayment plans—hurting those who need it most.
Scholars See Mixed Progress on Civil Rights 50 Years After King’s Death | Many people who were alive during the nation’s Civil Rights Movement felt that America stood still April 4, 1968, the day the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed by an assassin’s bullet. The energy he had generated among millions in years of aggressive campaigning and preaching for progress and civility had suddenly lost its compass, steam and determination.
U.S. States
Does Public Education Need “Reform” or Just More Cash? | A new effort from a Rutgers University team provides a new perspective on educational spending and success that can guide local, state, and national policy makers. Using data sets that compared local district educational outcomes and spending, The Real Shame of the Nation: The Causes and Consequences of Interstate Inequity in Public School Investments set as its goal determining what it costs to educate a child to reach an average level of educational performance. Full report: The Real Shame of the Nation.
Why didn’t the lottery save education in Oklahoma? | [C]rippled by an education funding crisis and teacher walkout, many Oklahomans are are asking: What happened to the lottery money? Why didn’t the lottery fix our problem with education funding?
California Governor’s Community College Funding Proposal Creates Controversy | California Gov. Jerry Brown’s bold new budget proposal that awards community college districts funding not just for each enrolled student, but also based on the number of low-income students being served, has drawn praise and criticism…The proposed approach would blend the existing enrollment-based funding model with the student-focused and student success funding models.
Institutional
We Reversed Our Declining English Enrollments. Here’s How. | In my very first year as course scheduler, our enrollments plummeted about 20 percent. A combination of factors contributed to the pronounced dip: The university adopted a new general-education program that didn’t include many English courses; part of the reorganization stripped English of its virtual monopoly on an important writing requirement; and, as we all know, enrollments in English were in decline across the country.
Online Ed Leaders Agree Top 2 Indicators of Program Quality Are Student Success Rates, Student Evaluations | The majority of online education leaders agree that most relied-upon metrics currently in use by online programs are student retention and graduation rates and student course/program evaluations, according to a recent survey from Quality Matters and Eduventures Research.
The incredible shrinking freshman class | Especially in the realm of elite universities, a low acceptance rate is often paraded as the end-all to be-all for prestige, quality and desirability of an institution, as evident by social media posts and online college admissions forums. As students who are often fixated on the validation of our own elitism by the nature of us attending such an institution, we are undoubtedly complicit in perpetuating this standard.
Too Soon to Turn the Page? | College of New Rochelle administrators sounded eager to turn the page on a dark chapter of the institution’s history after naming William W. Latimer the college’s incoming president last month. But with still-fresh memories of a recent financial crisis that unfolded after the discovery of fabricated budgets and a lawsuit over layoffs of tenured faculty and longtime instructional staff lurching through court, Latimer has his work cut out for him even before he officially takes over April 15.
The Awakening: Women and Power in the Academy | “When it comes to silencing women,” writes Mary Beard, “Western culture has had thousands of years of practice.” Academe is no exception. A recent conference at Stanford University featured 30 speakers — all of them men, all of them white. The incident sparked ridicule and outrage, as well as a sense that higher education is facing a reckoning.
Are Waiting Lists Out of Control? | The figures on waiting lists raise questions — especially to those who work with high school seniors. Some say the lists simply shouldn’t be so long. Others say that colleges should publicize how many students are placed on the lists — and the very long odds of anyone on them being admitted.
Posted on May 15, 2018