International
Student Union to meet Higher Education Minister to resolve crisis | A meeting was scheduled between the General Federation of Egypt’s Student Unions (SU) and Minister of Higher Education Ashraf Al-Shehy Sunday night in a bid to resolve the recent elections crisis, the federation said in an official statement.
Higher education: Promotion policies at the centre of declining standards | The Indian higher education system appears to be in a crisis: a huge number of its graduates are considered unemployable, and it does not seem to be producing high quality research.
Gender gap in UK degree subjects doubles in eight years, Ucas study finds | Women outnumber men in 112 of 180 degree subjects, with females from poorer backgrounds 50% more likely to go to university than their male counterparts.
Students at odds with government over measuring teaching quality | Students have ranked the initial measure proposed for the teaching excellence framework, the results of Quality Assurance Agency reviews, lowest among potential indicators of teaching standards.
U.S. National
Rise in Colleges Undergoing Greater Financial Oversight | The number of colleges and universities subject to increased financial oversight by the federal government rose to 540 in December from 499 three months earlier, according to an updated list posted to the U.S. Department of Education’s website last month.
Leaders give their 2016 higher-ed predictions | From predictions on data governance to the influence of elections, higher-ed leaders say 2016 will shape up to be a rollercoaster of a year for student services and campus operations.
Racial prejudice is driving opposition to paying college athletes | With the money made from college sports increasing every year, the way colleges treat their athletes has become controversial.
U.S. States
Enrollment challenges at several colleges in Virginia and Maryland | Sweet Briar College, a small women’s school in rural Virginia, got much smaller in 2015 amid the tumult of a shutdown plan announced abruptly in March and then canceled three months later… But new data from Virginia and Maryland show Sweet Briar was not the only college in the region with significant enrollment challenges.
States Are Slacking on Higher Ed Spending | More than 95 percent of states in the U.S. have been spending less on their public higher education systems than they did before the Great Recession.
Inside one state’s effort to tackle the student debt crisis | Connecticut’s student loan bill of rights, which was signed into law by the state’s Democratic governor, Daniel Malloy, last September, aims to level the playing field.
Institutional
‘Man Up’ on Racism | Black students at the University of Missouri at Columbia talk about how they experience racism on a campus where only 7 percent of students and 3 percent of faculty members look like them. And the students lay out what their peers and professors need to do to bridge divides: Examine yourself, they say. Acknowledge prejudice. Empathize. Fight the status quo. Be a part of change.
As times get tough, colleges turn to nonacademics to lead | When tiny Paul Quinn College faced its darkest hour, it turned not to a physicist or an historian or a political scientist to lead it forward. It named a corporate securities lawyer and crisis manager as its president.
Is Tenure Essential? | Presidents whose institutions are members of the Council of Independent Colleges have been working on a project to help map the future of their institutions, which are generally small and midsize private colleges.
As Justices Weigh Affirmative Action, Michigan Offers an Alternative |