International
Here is How Countries Rank in Education | Globally, there has been significant progress in educational attainment over the last few decades. However, the OECD warned in a September report that data show that inequities that manifest early in life – including socio-economic status, gender, immigrant background and geographic location – “tend to accumulate throughout life, first in education and then in the labor market.” Among those inequities, the report says that socio-economic status has the biggest impact not only on participation in education but also economic and social outcomes.
Transforming higher education in Vietnam | Approximately only 30%-35% of students are admitted into higher education, which occurs via students passing very demanding exams. Private conversations with university officials reveal that parents desperate for their son or daughter to gain entry to a university offer bribes to university administrators to ensure admission.
An issue of affordability or constitutionality? | Lyonpo Sonam Tobgye writes, “Their Majesties also mentioned that if Bhutan has enough funds, the government could continue to support students to pursue their studies up to university level. It is a pious expression of constitutional will and hopefully, a strong economy will help achieve the aim.” This means, should it be affordable, the government could provide free education beyond Class X and not violate the Constitution.
What are the implications of free public tertiary education? | At UoM [University of Mauritius], it is known that the majority of students come from middle- and high-income families who have attended some of the best secondary schools and whose parents have paid significant private tuition fees to ensure that they obtain good grades in SC and HSC examinations in order to gain access to a university in Mauritius or overseas. It can be said that most of them can afford to pay university tuition fees…So, essentially, free tertiary education will not benefit those who are really in need, the students from low-income families who often drop out of school because of poor performance or having to work to support the family. A targeted approach aimed at providing support to those really in need and using affirmative action for admission to tertiary institutions would have been much more effective and less costly.
The Impact of Predictive Analytics in Higher Education | Since this practice is so novel, there is a significant shortage of professionals with the necessary expertise to actually mine and interpret the data. According to McKinsey, the United States alone could face a shortage of qualified individuals with deep analytical skills. That’s why it’s important for universities to seek out experts or partners who can handle this practice ethically and effectively for the betterment of students. Without their assistance, universities might have used more traditional methods to evaluate data, which could lead administrations to leverage this data unethically while curtailing academic success. [h|r: In other words, outsource your student success to Perceivant!]
U.S. National
Educating Versus Training and Credentialing | Lurking behind many current debates about higher education lies a divide between those who seek to credential a growing number of young people and those more concerned about maintaining the integrity, quality, and rigor of a college education.
The college closing crisis | Increasingly, Americans question the value of such an education. Americans have greater access to higher education than ever before in the nation’s history, but the experience of a liberal education is becoming an elite privilege again. The liberal arts are a luxury.
Think ACT Is Just a College-Admissions Test? Think Again | Over the past few years, ACT has been quietly converting itself from a testing company into a multidimensional educational enterprise. Having put tens of millions of dollars into several major acquisitions and investments, the nonprofit is now increasingly selling products and services to colleges for their enrollment-management operations, their developmental-education programming, and even their classroom analytics systems. It’s also beefing up its offerings of tests and tools for the growing workplace-readiness market.
New International Graduate Enrollments Decline, Again | New enrollments of international students at U.S. graduate schools fell for the second year in a row, according to a survey from the Council of Graduate Schools. First-time international enrollments fell by 1 percent from fall 2017 to fall 2018, following on a 1 percent decline the year before that.
Lower Enrollment Hits Higher Ed Hard, HBCUs The Hardest | Attendance at colleges and universities grew 91% between 1976-2010, then declined 6% between 2010 and 2016, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. HBCUs followed the same pattern, but the gains paled in comparison to the overall trend, while the recent losses were more pronounced. In 1976, there were 223,000 students enrolled at HBCUs, a figure that grew 47% by 2010, to 327,000 students. But between 2010 and 2016, enrollment at HBCUs dropped 11% to 292,000 students.
U.S. States
Why Utah lawmakers say a $1 billion surplus is a ‘crisis’ in need of reform | Between now and March 14, lawmakers will decide how to spend an estimated $1 billion surplus from the state’s income tax, money that the Utah Constitution requires be spent on public education. But at least one outcome from the 2019 session is a virtual certainty: School funding will not increase by $1 billion. Gov. Gary Herbert’s budget calls for a roughly $500 million boost to public and higher education, generally similar to the budget requests of the Utah Board of Education and Board of Regents.
‘Bite my tongue and bear it’: University students shoulder costs Kansas used to carry | Students and parents have worried about the cost of college for years, but those concerns are being felt strongly right now in Kansas after years of stagnant state funding for higher education. Gov. Laura Kelly wants to increase funding and lawmakers have several ideas for reducing costs, from tax exemptions to scholarship incentives. Still, students now provide much more funding for Kansas universities than the state does. It’s a situation that’s unlikely to change anytime soon.
Institutional
One Way to Make College Meaningful | The phrase “vocational education” might conjure up an image of trade schools that train students to work in traditionally blue-collar jobs. There is a growing movement, however, found largely among private and religiously affiliated colleges and universities, to focus on vocation as it evolves from the Christian tradition, in the sense of a “calling.”
U. of Illinois at Chicago Will Pay Nearly $700,000 in Settlement With Former Chicago State U. Provost | The University of Illinois at Chicago will settle with a former Chicago State University provost for $694,363 after she sued the institution for discussing her academic history publicly when she was accused of plagiarism, the Chicago Sun-Times reported on Monday. Angela Henderson, who left Chicago State in 2018, earned a doctorate in nursing at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She was accused of plagiarizing her dissertation by a Chicago State professor when she was appointed interim provost, in December 2013.
Racist Histories | But the incident has also prompted those questions to Northam’s alma mater about how it handles racism, both presently and historically, and whether officials there skated over the prejudice that was apparent on campus during Northam’s time. It’s a question more broadly posed to universities — especially in Virginia, a state steeped in the Confederacy. While debates over monuments to Confederate leaders have been long-standing, the new development in the last few days has been reckoning with more recent history.
Not an Isolated Incident | How common is it for faculty and administrators to harbor attitudes toward international students that could be characterized as culturally insensitive or even outright discriminatory or hostile? It’s hard to say for sure, but experts who have studied international students’ experiences and faculty perceptions of international students say what happened at Duke for example is not an isolated incident.
Bennett College Raises $8.2M, Looks to Move Forward | Bennett College has exceeded its $5 million #StandWithBennett campaign goal, raising $8.2 million in 55 days in the fight to save its Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) accreditation…Now, the private historically Black college (HBCU) will continue to focus on re-engineering the institution for long term sustainability as it approaches a decisive SACSCOC accreditation hearing later this month.
Pay gap lingers among KSU professors | The AJC reports that there is an eight percent pay gap between male and female professors at the university, with full-time male professors being paid “an average salary of $94,173 and women $87,202.” In November 2018, the Office of Institutional Effectiveness at KSU conducted a study titled “An Analysis of Faculty Salary Equity by Gender” to conclude if there was a significant statistical difference in pay between female and male professors at KSU. One of the key results that the study found was “when additional work-related salary contributors were taken into account, there was no evidence that on average female faculty at KSU were paid less than comparable male faculty.”
As Faculty Strike Wears On, Wright State Seeks ‘Long Term’ Adjuncts in More Than 80 Fields | Administrators have maintained that, while the university managed to avoid financial disaster last year, belt-tightening is still needed. The union has repeatedly pushed back against that argument. Faculty members weren’t the ones to take the institution to the brink, the union has said, nor should they be the ones who pay the price by making sacrifices in their contract.
Higher Education Needs to Innovate. But How? | High-quality higher education is not cheap, and efforts to “trim the fat” too often result in eliminating the very elements that distinguish a college education from vocational training: Access to foreign language instruction, laboratories, and, of course, intimate interaction with research scholars and engaged peers.
Higher education leaders gather to share ideas for access and affordability | Penn State already has launched and supported a number of programs to increase access to people from all socio-economic backgrounds in response to a challenging national financial climate for students and a commitment to provide upward mobility for Pennsylvania residents.
Program aims to ease tuition woes | According to school administrators, Sampson Promise allows Sampson Community College the opportunity to pay all tuition and fees not covered by financial aid or other scholarships. This financial assistance is available for up to four semesters towards any program of study. This opportunity is open to students who have graduated from any Sampson County high school with an unweighted GPA of 3.0, can verify residency in North Carolina and has enrolled full time at Sampson.