News Items from the Week of Jan. 1, 2016

International

Blueprint for the New Year | India must transform its education system so that it focuses on outcomes. The complexity of Indian education challenge calls for greater involvement of private sector capital and expertise, especially global leaders, so that best practices reach our schools and colleges.

Education: India Needs College 4.0: Reboot Higher Education | Manish Sabharwal, co-founder and Chairman, Teamlease Services – a temporary workforce and skilling company – and a member of India’s Central Advisory Board of Education explains why skilling needs to be the future of education in India.

Student Union Federation welcomes negotiations with Ministry of Higher Education | The Egyptian Student Union Federation emerged from internal meetings on Sunday to announce in a press conference that it welcomes negotiations with the Ministry of Higher Education to resolve the student union’s election crisis.

U.S. National

Higher Ed Organizations Collaborate on Common Goals | The panelists assembled in the hotel conference room represent four higher education associations. They had gathered together for the first time.

What Is the Future of Higher Education? | We reached out to some of the leading scholars of, experts on, and advocates for higher education, and asked them what, as the year comes to an end, is giving them cause for hope and despair.

Study Warns of Looming Mental Health Crisis for Black College Students | The study, from researchers at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education and Human Development, argues that researchers are overlooking a looming mental health crisis for black college students who have had to draw on “grit” – mental toughness and perseverance – to achieve in predominantly white academic institutions.

U.S. States

As Graduation Rates Rise, Experts Fear Diplomas Come Up Short | It is a pattern repeated in other school districts across the state and country — urban, suburban and rural — where the number of students earning high school diplomas has risen to historic peaks, yet measures of academic readiness for college or jobs are much lower.

Debate continues over higher education funding | A recent paper published by a New Haven-based think tank, The Connecticut Policy Institute, calls for sweeping changes to how the state funds higher education.

Student loan aid effort starts | New York begins accepting applications Thursday for a new loan forgiveness program that allows recent college graduates to forgo making payments on their federal student loans for up to two years.

Institutional

PLU takes step to make college more affordable for local students | A new scholarship removes tuition cost from the equation. Called 253 PLU Bound, it is available to first-year students starting next fall. It targets students enrolled at the 61 high schools in the local 253 area code.

Crisis in Catholic Higher Education Conference: January 23 | The Cardinal Newman Society and the Institute of Catholic Culture (ICC) will present a unique conference on Catholic higher education next month, featuring the presidents of five Catholic colleges who will discuss the crisis in American society “under attack from the secularist agenda” and the solutions found in a faithful Catholic education.

Here’s the Modern Language Association’s Latest Jobs Report | Over the 2014-15 academic hiring season, the report says, the MLA’s English-language board advertised 1,015 jobs, a drop of 3 percent from the previous year. The foreign-language board announced 949 positions, a drop of 7.6 percent. It’s the third straight year that job listings on both boards have slipped.

Updated January 4, 2016.