International
‘Access to third level isn’t on merit. It’s a lottery based on which family you were born into’ | [T]he boards of Irish universities have taken this crisis as an opportunity to forge ahead with their ideological preference of a higher level system based on a ‘business model’ – where public institutions will be aligned with the demands of business, rather than the needs of the public.
Under-educated workforce will push Australia to a productivity crisis: report | Researchers at the Mitchell Institute – an education think tank at Victoria university – say if enrolments in the VET sector stay on trend and growth in university places only matches population growth, there will be 10.7 per cent fewer tertiary graduates in just over a decade.
Serving growing need for higher education | The need for quality higher education is especially important in the Arab region as a whole, whose youth make up is the highest proportion of the youth population in the world. While the Arab world expects to widen its educated talent pool by 50% by 2030, according to the World Economic Forum, opportunities are out of reach for far too many of the region€™s 105 million young people.
The business of funding tertiary education | The conversation about funding higher education in Jamaica has been ongoing for a long one, but little has been done to address the real issues of higher cost to students, reduced government subsidies, and an albatross of debt around the neck of graduates.
Goodbye Disruption, Hello Collaboration: Ed Tech Changes Gears | Many of the conversations around ed-tech began with a discussion of student achievement gaps. Presenters talked about the stagnant national college graduation rate; differences by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status; and the growing percentage of low-income students entering higher education. Far from disrupting traditional higher education, which has been the standard narrative of ed tech, the industry was promising to improve it.
Improving skills would drive job creation and growth in Spain | Spain should boost support for the unemployed and expand vocational education and training as part of a series of reforms to promote better skills utilisation and drive job creation and growth, according to a new OECD report.
Europe ‘should codify’ university autonomy to ward off threats | Speaking at the “University Autonomy in Europe” event, held at the University of Leicester on 23 and 24 April, organised by the European University Association and Universities UK, Professor Matei said that although there was a “consensus” across the continent on the importance of university autonomy, there was a need for something “anchored, not on a particular consensus at a particular time, but on legal concepts, rights, values”.
U.S. National
What are US institutions’ top-shared priorities? | Our team conducted a qualitative analysis of 57 randomly selected institutions, including…three private Ivy League institutions, one public Ivy League institution. [Note: Randomly selected four Ivy institutions in a sample of 57 institutions???]
Drew Cloud Is a Well-Known Expert on Student Loans. One Problem: He’s Not Real. | After The Chronicle spent more than a week trying to verify Cloud’s existence, the company that owns The Student Loan Report confirmed that Cloud was fake. “Drew Cloud is a pseudonym that a diverse group of authors at Student Loan Report, LLC use to share experiences and information related to the challenges college students face with funding their education,” wrote Nate Matherson, CEO of LendEDU.
U.S. States and Territories
Board votes to double tuition at Puerto Rico university | A majority of federal control board members voted Friday to more than double tuition at Puerto Rico’s largest public university despite heavy criticism the increase will make higher education unaffordable. Six of seven members also voted to cut benefits at the University of Puerto Rico and consolidate 11 campuses that serve more than 58,000 students on an island mired in an 11-year recession. “The (university) will no longer be able to afford its status quo operating model,” said Natalie Jaresko, executive director of the board created by U.S. Congress.
THECB: High school to college rate declining | With the percentage of high school graduates enrolling directly into college declining, Commissioner of Higher Education Raymund A. Paredes said the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board must take steps to reverse that.
What Community College Leaders Think on Enrollment, Completion, Presidential Pipeline and More | Enrollment concerns and finances remain the biggest challenges community college presidents say they face. And those challenges have two-year college leaders not only concerned for their students and institutions but worried about the future of the community college presidency as the sector faces increasing pressures to improve work-force outcomes and completion, according to Inside Higher Ed’s 2018 Survey of Community College Presidents.
Institutional
New Report Offers Evidence of Digital Learning’s Benefits | A case study of Arizona State University and five other institutions with a longstanding interest in digital learning…suggests that when colleges and universities take a “strategic approach to digital learning” and invest in design and development, they can achieve three major objectives: improved student learning outcomes, improved access for disadvantaged students, and an improved financial outlook for the institution.
Program creates new access to higher education | Level Up is an innovative solution to the barriers that plague middle- and working- class students and families. It enables students to complete an associate’s or bachelor’s degree at Lackawanna College in an accelerated time frame and/or transfer to another institution anywhere in the United States — with little to no student debt.
Maybe Not So ‘High Impact’? | “High-impact” educational practices widely promoted and adopted to improve learning by college and university students and increase graduation rates have not led to those expected outcomes, according to new research in The Journal of Higher Education. The study (abstract available here) found the effectiveness of 10 such practices — first-year seminars, writing-intensive courses and collaborative assignments, among others — recommended by the Association of American Colleges and Universities questionable and worthy of re-examination, at least as a tool to promote completion.
Posted on May 15, 2018