News Items from the Week of December 21, 2018

International

Cover | Outsourcing Student Success (Kindle Edition)
Outsourcing Student Success (Kindle Edition) | Click on the Image to Visit Amazon.com

Higher education’s role is to reassert universal values | Higher education has a key role to play in countering the spread of populism and nationalism and tackling global challenges such as poverty and climate change, by reasserting universal values of human dignity and the value of science and research, UNESCO’s education chief, Stefania Giannini, said last week.

Research universities – Lessons for Africa from China | The 10-year Higher Education Research and Advocacy Network in Africa (HERANA) study concluded that a serious challenge for governments in Africa was to create higher education systems in which universities would be strong and dynamic enough to withstand the tensions inherent in their multiple, contradictory functions, while at the same time being able to respond to what they see as their specific mission at any given moment. The fulfilment of different functions, including that of research, cannot be resolved within individual universities alone. These functions need to be distributed throughout the system, with particular institutional types undertaking different combinations of functions in response to a suite of incentives on offer.

Universities’ research aspirations – 15 years of data | The recently published Research Universities in Africa chronicles and presents the findings of one of the most interesting and creative research projects in Africa in the last decade, the Higher Education Research and Advocacy Network in Africa (HERANA) project. The book reports on 10 years of research and 15 years of data collection from eight African universities regarded as flagship institutions.

U.S. National

Commentary: Students aren’t learning enough – a brewing crisis in higher education | There is a crisis in American undergraduate higher education requiring a shift away from spurious magazine rankings, unacceptable graduation rates, inequitable admissions selectivity, rising costs, and administrative and faculty inefficiency to a more fundamental problem: Students do not learn enough in college, period.

Measuring True Post-College Employment Outcomes Is a Fool’s Errand | [A] report recently produced by the Institute for College Access & Success, according to “Of Metrics and Markets: Measuring Post-College Employment Success,” the problem starts with a lack of coordination among the “three entities tasked with oversight” of higher ed — the accrediting agencies, state governments and federal government — each pursuing their own approach to calculating and reporting employment metrics. The result is a “patchwork” of data that makes comparing programs and colleges “nearly impossible.”

Push for Student-Level Data the Feds Don’t Collect | Over the last three years the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Lumina Foundation and the National Student Clearinghouse have partnered to build a system, using a new “metrics framework” developed by the Institute for Higher Education Policy, that will fill those data gaps and help institutions, states and researchers analyze the academic performance of all college students.

How Researchers of Color are Left out of the Gun Violence Conversation in Media and Academia | [R]esearchers of color who have studied this issue have often been left out or sidelined in the conversation in media. A simple scan of articles in reputable, mainstream media outlets, such as The Washington Post, NPR Health News and The Huffington Post show that a limited number of the researchers represent the populations disproportionately impacted by gun violence, which tend to be Black or Brown. Furthermore, the research discussed rarely takes into consideration the social context of gun violence in communities of color, resulting in the ensuing media discussion not only excluding researchers of color, but also failing to recognize the nuances needed to provide comprehensive solutions to alleviate gun violence.

Advance Closing Notice | Newbury College had been through many changes and adaptations in its 56 years…But on Friday Newbury joined a steady drip of small private liberal arts institutions succumbing to financial pressures and falling enrollment. It announced it will close at the end of the spring 2019 semester.

U.S. States

UMass chair sounds alarm over higher ed’s ‘graduation rate crisis’ | Since 1980, more than half of the people who have enrolled in colleges or universities have not graduated, Manning said, and more than half of the $1.5 trillion in outstanding student debt is owed by people who do not hold college degrees.

Public Education Coalition Seeks $1.5 Billion in MA State Budget | At a rally at the State House this week, a coalition announced its plans for new legislation to ensure more funding for public schools and colleges. The Fund Our Future coalition says schools have been under-funded for years, and wants the Massachusetts Legislature to increase the public education budget by $1.5 billion.

Institutional

UNC Board Rejects Plan for Silent Sam Location | The University of North Carolina (UNC) System Board of Governors has rejected a proposal that UNC-Chapel Hill create a $5.3 million history center where the Confederate statue ‘Silent Sam’ would permanently reside.

Historians Should End Silence on Silent Sam | The vast majority of social-media posts from our guild [i.e., historians] weighed in on the side of protesters at UNC, congratulating them on successfully blocking the proposed history center. [Note: Apparently, historians have not been all that silent about Silent Sam, but have instead rejected this historian’s proposed compromise with the legacy of white supremacy at American colleges and universities…]

Report: Women and Minorities Continue to be Underrepresented in Computer Science | Though the field of computer science has seen strides in the increased number of people earning degrees and in job openings across the country in recent years, the field is still lacking diverse representation of women and minorities. [Note: Perhaps UNC Chapel Hill could spend $5.3 million on this legacy of white supremacy at American colleges and universities…]

Report: Minorities Underrepresented in Earning Engineering Degrees | According to a report from the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), African-American and Hispanic students earning engineering degrees remain underrepresented despite an increase seen in recent years and a growing demand for workers in the industry. [Note: Or, on this legacy of white supremacy at American colleges and universities…]

Lack of Diversity in Study Abroad | African-American students make up a mere 5.9 percent of students who study abroad, according to a 2016 diversity study by NAFSA: Association of International Educators. While the participation rate may be low, the success rate of African-American students who participate in international studies is not — a 2017 report, Underrepresented Students in US Study Abroad: Investigating Impacts by the Institute of International Education (IIE), noted that African-American students who studied abroad had a 31.2 percent higher graduation rate than those who did not. [Note: Or, on this legacy of white supremacy at American colleges and universities…]

Posted: January 17, 2019