International
Indian Universities Shouldn’t Fall for the Allure of the Yale Model of Financing | Most modern US Universities currently use the “Yale model” of investment, developed by David Swensen and Dean Takahashi. The model, which involved dividing the endowment amount into five or six roughly diverse asset classes and investing heavily, saw massive returns for Yale which were soon mimicked by other universities.
Higher Education Funding: ‘The political inaction has surpassed many ‘dust-gathering on a shelf records” | [I]t would seem that those who wield political power in Ireland have some way to go to be convinced of the need to properly fund the university and higher education system.
Why higher education requires an intersectional lens | Globally higher education institutions are juggling multiple demands such as the need to maintain competitive positions in terms of funding and research output and to turn out good and employable graduates, as well as the need to contribute to social development and social justice through studentships and scholarships.
Higher Education Commission bill: Big goals, but sans institutional autonomy | The commission [India] will evaluate the “yearly academic performance” of higher education institutes. Institutions that fail to meet standards will be closed down by the commission. So, there is little else left for colleges and universities to decide for themselves in academic matters.
Starfish Analytics Increases Understanding of Student Barriers for Higher Education Leaders | Hobsons, the education technology leader and company behind Starfish, today announces a series of enhancements within Starfish Analytics that will enable higher education institution leadership to make decisions based on data in order to break down barriers to student achievement. Starfish’s Benchmarks dashboard enables higher education leaders to compare longitudinal outcomes from schools with similar degree offerings, school size, demographics, or level of online delivery. Institutional leaders can narrow the results from more than 500,000 possible comparisons to specific student outcomes including program of study, demographic characteristics, cohorts or timeframes.
U.S. National
Americans Still Believe in Higher Ed’s ‘Public Good’ | Most political discussion of higher education these days focuses on the return on investment to individuals, rather than on the contributions that colleges and universities make to society broadly. So it wouldn’t be surprising to find that many Americans don’t put much stock in the “public good” arguments on which much government funding of higher education was premised.
The Crisis in Political Science Education | If a student says that he thinks taxes should be reduced and that anti-poverty programs tend to only worsen the problems they seek to fix, that would unquestionably be permissible partisan dialogue in the classroom, even if it provoked controversy. If that student then said that Mexican immigrants are corrupting white American culture and that “we can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies,” as a Republican member of Congress said last year—is that a hateful attack or a partisan talking point?
Who Lives in Education Deserts? | In 2016, almost 40 percent of first-time, full-time freshmen reported that their colleges were less than 50 miles from their homes, a proportion that has held since the 1980s. Studying close to home, family, and community can be even more vital for the roughly one in four undergraduate students who are considered nontraditional — those who are older, have child-care duties, work full time, or attend college part time.
U.S. States
Report highlights strengths and weaknesses in Vt. higher ed | The University of Pennsylvania’s College Opportunity Risk Assessment, released this week, ranked Vermont high overall in comparison with other states on access to higher education. Vermont did particularly well in higher education funding and productivity, ranking fifth overall and number one in the country on investment in higher education per degree produced.
Ohio won’t meet higher education attainment goals by 2025, University of Pennsylvania study says | Inequity in who has access to higher education is dragging down educational opportunity in Ohio, according to a new study.
Wild and wonderful higher education challenges, opportunities | Higher education in West Virginia is seemingly at another crossroads. As leaders in the state, we must take the opportunity — not to bemoan the situation or begrudge our fellow institutions — but to reimagine a college education for all learners and to look at things differently. The Mountain State is counting on it.
New Report Explores Florida’s Minority Serving Institutions | [P]opulation grows, so, too, will the state’s Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs). That is one of the key findings outlined in the new report “Even More Potential to Serve: Florida’s Minority Serving Institutions” from the Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions (CMSI) at the University of Pennsylvania. The report is a comprehensive analysis of longitudinal data on enrollment, financial indicators, student financial aid and institutional completion measures at Florida’s MSIs.
Institutional
Feuding Letters at Yale Law Expose Divisions Over Supreme Court Nomination | Yale Law should have looked past the opportunity to boast of a prominent alumnus, he said. “The university is not just a reputation machine. We’re supposed to instill a sense of values and morals and ethics.”
University of Iowa refutes faculty claim it’s suspending center closures | The local AAUP chapter, focused on academic freedom and shared governance values, didn’t provide in its newsletter specifics on which center it believed might fall off the closure list, which includes the 67-year-old UI Labor Center, UI Center on Aging, Confucius Institute, Office of Iowa Practice Opportunities, UI Mobile Museum, Iowa Center for Assistive Technology Education and Research, and Iowa Center for Higher Education — formerly home to AIB College of Business campus in Des Moines.
Neil Kraus: View higher education in the context of the larger economy | Without question, there is an immediate budget crisis at UW-Stevens Point. Yet there is also a larger, less-immediate but much more far-reaching crisis in the form of growing economic inequality in the United States.
The President Who Helped Plot to Divide His Campuses Will Step Down | Although Dunn denied accusations of favoritism for the Edwardsville campus, emails from a public-records request suggested that Dunn had come up with the initial $5.1-million figure, and that he had helped orchestrate the rollout of legislation to separate the campuses.
Peril for Small Private Colleges: A Survey of Business Officers | Inside Higher Ed’s 2018 Survey of College and University Business Officers finds that just 44 percent of chief financial officers at four-year baccalaureate colleges say they are confident their college will be financially stable over the next 10 years, down from 52 percent a year ago and 54 percent in 2016.
The Case for Assessment | At its core, assessment is about determining what your students are learning and figuring out how to take a more active role in facilitating that learning. Assessment is so much more than rubrics, forms and statistics. It is a way of knowing, which is why it belongs in higher education.