International
‘There’s no crisis at NSFAS’ | JOHANNESBURG – The Higher Education Department insists there’s no crisis at the National Students Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) following the resignation of its chairman Sizwe Nxasana.
South Africa Vows to End Corruption. Are Its New Leaders Part of the Problem? | One of the party’s historic promises had been to provide a good education for black people, who had been deliberately denied the opportunity under apartheid. A.N.C. leaders like Nelson Mandela often spoke about freeing black South Africans through school, and Mr. Mabuza, whose first big post in the province was education minister, got his political start by promising just that.
Cash crisis hits higher learning | Matiang’i reported that Kenya needs at least 1,000 PhDs to effectively drive academics and research in institutions.
Higher Education Enrollment Crisis in Tripura | Tripura despite having the highest literacy rate in India is lagging far behind from the national average in enrolling its youths in the higher education. A recent survey conducted by the State Education department revealed that the Gross Enrollment Ratio in higher education in this state is only 19 per cent while it is 25 per cent in the national level.
Can we measure education quality in global rankings? | Clearly, assessing teaching and learning is central to determining the quality of higher education, but using current methodologies to produce comparative data is foolhardy at best. Rather than fooling ourselves by believing that rankings provide a meaningful measure of education quality, we should acknowledge that they simply use inadequate indicators for commercial convenience. Or, better yet, we could admit, for now at least, that it is impossible to adequately assess education quality for purposes of international comparisons.
33% Teaching Posts Vacant: Indian University Crisis Hits Rankings | Professors play a leading role in conducting academic research, apart from teaching duties. But India is short of professors, with 5,606 posts vacant in central universities, a shortfall of 33 percent, Satya Pal Singh, minister of state, ministry of human resources development (HRD) told the Lok Sabha (Parliament’s lower house) on 23 July, 2018. At the flagship Indian Institutes of Technology, 2,802 (34 percent) teaching posts are vacant.
U.S. National
America’s Education ‘Deserts’ Show Limits of Relaxing Regulations on Colleges | The market for higher education is strongly local, with sparse options for many potential students, so merely giving them more information may not work.
The University Must Be Defended | Our recent Chronicle Review essay — “The University Run Amok!” — elicited a number of responses, ranging from those that welcomed our effort to shed light on the historical connections between American universities and the democratic project to those that took issue with elements of our argument. We would like to consider two of the most substantive ones: Cathy N. Davidson’s “Is Higher Ed Omnivorous or Sucked Dry?” and Alan Jacobs’s “The Clientele, the Public, the Person.”
The Great Recession Never Ended for College Humanities | [W]hatever other reasons are leading students to ditch the humanities and soft social sciences for STEM and economics, money seems to be part of the story. The job market has now recovered from the Great Recession, but it will be several years before a generation goes to college whose formative years weren’t shaped by bad economic times.
U.S. States
California Gets Low Marks When It Comes to College Attainment | When it comes to higher education, California has not kept pace with changing workforce demands of the needs of the state’s racially diverse populations. That’s the finding of a new report by The Campaign for College Opportunity, a nonprofit that works to ensure that college-age students in California have the opportunity to go to college and succeed.
California student leaders focus on affordability | The three students who vote on the governing boards of California’s three gigantic systems of higher education say they want to focus attention this year on the costs of housing and textbooks.
Institutional
Small colleges are struggling financially, and they can’t raise tuition high enough to fix it | Financial conditions are deteriorating at many of New England’s quintessential small private colleges, with tuition revenue failing to keep up with expenses at more than half of the schools, a Globe review shows.
Shared Governance Does Not Mean Shared Decision Making | [S]hared governance is not an impediment to action — an idea I may have unwittingly communicated in my description of our exceptional governance situation after Katrina — but a competitive advantage, one that differentiates institutions of higher education from many other organizations in both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors.
Increasing Diversity on HBCU Campuses Often Leaves Blacks in Minority | As a White graduate of a historically Black college, Norton is somewhat unusual – but a lot less unusual as time passes. She’s an example of the growing ethnic diversity on the campuses of the nation’s 100-plus degree-granting historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). While the presence of White, Latino and Asian students at these schools is not a new phenomenon, they are attending HBCUs in increasing numbers, representing a growing proportion of the student body.
For Many, HBCU Mergers and Closures Are Not an Option | Colleges and universities will be trumpeting their horns over the next few months, celebrating the beginning of another school year filled with lots of promise and anticipation for many among administrators, teachers, behind-the-scenes staffers and students. The excitement masks a growing sense of anxiety, however, especially among historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), as warning signs abound for many small and mid-size institutions.