News Items from the Week of January 4, 2019

International

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

Nontraditional but More Collaborative: Edtech Trends for 2019 | One frustration frequently expressed by Top Hat customers has to do with a lack of coordination among edtech solutions. Because the tools have not been designed to work together, faculty often have to juggle several platforms at once.

Revealed: the universities most likely to award higher grades | The Irish Times has used a mix of Freedom of Information requests and statistics from the Higher Education Authority (HEA) to crunch the numbers. The analysis shows grades at Ireland’s seven universities have been rising consistently over the past decade.

More private investment in education can improve its productivity | With India spending about 2.7 per cent of its GDP on education (Budget Estimates for 2017-18), small changes in the efficiency of public spending can result in better education outcomes and income of the country.

Selective universities appear not to increase inequality | AMONG THE gilets jaunes on French streets last month were students protesting against the way the government is changing the university admissions system from one that admits pretty much everybody to one in which there is a modicum of selectivity

U.S. National

The Dismal (and Too Elitist?) Science | The open letter, issued in response to the reports on Fryer, says in part, “This is a painful moment for our discipline. Abuses of power, bullying, and harassment damage peoples’ health and happiness, ruin careers, and reduce the quality of scholarship in economics. Moreover, it is well documented that these abuses of power disproportionately harm women, minorities, and queer individuals. These frustrating realities have pushed us to ask how economics can address the power imbalances that drive out talented individuals, prevent the inclusion of underrepresented groups, and collectively damage our discipline.”

Grading Smarter, Not Harder | A 2018 paper by members of the Stanford History Education Group called out historians for failing to value evidence of student learning as much as they value evidence in their historical analyses. The authors’ occasion for rebuke? Their recent finding that many students don’t learn critical thinking in undergraduate history courses — a challenge to history’s sales pitch that its graduates are finely tuned critical thinkers.

Gen Z entrepreneurs view higher education as vital to their startups | With their minds set on this entrepreneurial future, a common narrative has emerged that students are skipping college to start their own businesses. In reality, 8 in 10 students believe college is important to achieving their career goals. Sixty-three percent of those same students – all between the ages of 16 and 19 – said they want to learn about entrepreneurship in college, including how to start a business.

U.S. States

Report Shows Varied Progress in Achieving Equality in NYC | A new report by the City University of New York (CUNY) highlights a complicated narrative about equality in New York City. Overall citywide levels of inequality improved slightly compared to the 2015 baseline, with positive and negative results across certain areas.

Skipping Free College and Federal Loans | “Colleges that do not participate in the federal loan program are limiting access to federal student aid for their students,” Laura Metune, vice chancellor of external relations for the system chancellor’s office, said in an email. “Not participating in the federal student loan program doesn’t prevent debt. Instead, it limits students’ options when they do have to borrow.”

Institutional

Report: OSU Makes Strides in Achieving College Affordability | Public colleges and universities in Ohio have saved a combined $320 million in institutional funding in the 2018 fiscal year, and approximately $179 million of that reduced student fees.

Does Inclusiveness Include Nazis? | After Nicole Parsons, a University of Massachusetts at Amherst student, hung a sign to her residence hall window proclaiming “Fuck Nazis,” she got an email from an administrator. It wasn’t “inclusive,” he wrote, and asked that Parsons remove it.

Private Colleges Need a New Agenda | Most private colleges across the country are facing significant challenges in the coming years, due to demographic shifts, an inability to grow net revenue and a growing demand for larger and more urban colleges. But the threats are much greater for certain colleges: those with an obsession with what so-called aspirant colleges are doing as well as those that are, for a variety of reasons and realities, paralyzed into inaction.

Posted: January 31, 2019

Note: Delayed by holiday schedule…and then Block Editor (Gutenberg update) to WordPress 5.0. Here is the most helpful article I found about the new Block Editor functionality in WordPress:

How to Disable the Block Editor (aka Gutenberg) and Use the Previous WordPress Editor | The block editor is an intriguing system, but it’s also generated a lot of criticism. As such, some people would prefer not to use it at all. That’s actually easy to do, using a dedicated plugin created by the core WordPress team (more on this later).