International
Turning the tide on the ebbing of public trust in higher education | In the US there are any number of factors that have caused people to express scepticism about higher education. The US is in the midst of a populist moment with the election of President Donald Trump. One element that frequently accompanies populism is anti-intellectualism and what better institution to target anti-intellectualism at than institutions of higher education.
Bologna 20 years on – Look at the bigger picture | Bologna is not simply the outcome of a ministerial meeting. It is a part of a now 20-year-old network of stakeholder initiatives that have developed to provide European higher education systems with incentives to adapt and improve as part of a European Higher Education Area.
Evaluation of online learning effectiveness growing in importance | Higher education institutions, which often moved into the digital realm quickly, are now finding that they need to assess their offerings for their effectiveness.
U.S. National
Is Going To University A Good Investment? | A college graduate gains a platform of skills to apply at work. But it is hard to find a balanced post on this subject which discusses potential drawbacks as well as the benefits. NASDAQ vs. COLLEGE!
Scholars, Know Thy History: Higher Ed Has Always Struggled to Survive in the U.S. | Graduate students can read David F. Labaree’s A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher Education, published last year by the University of Chicago Press. The book is a course in American higher-ed history that you can hold in your hand.
Why We Need To Rethink Conventional Graduation Rates As A Measure Of Colleges’ Success | An alternative metric to the federal graduation rate is the Student Achievement Measure, or SAM. Developed by a consortium of higher-education associations with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation, SAM is designed to provide a more accurate picture of student progress and success. It includes transfer students and part-time students alongside full-time students, and it tracks progress at public and private colleges and universities and two- and four-year institutions.
‘Aim Higher Act’ House Bill Draws Praise from Higher Ed Groups | Marshall College Fund (TMCF) and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) have announced support of the Aim Higher Act legislation introduced this week in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Democrat-crafted bill, a version of the Higher Education Act that is due for reauthorization, has some significant differences from the PROSPER Act, a Republican-sponsored plan passed earlier this year by the House.
Poll: Most Americans See Higher Ed Headed in Wrong Direction | A solid majority of all adults (61 percent) believe that higher education is headed in the wrong direction, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center. But that view is much more likely to be held by Republicans or those who lean Republican than by Democrats or those who lean Democrat.
Higher Ed Policy Flurry Has Mixed Outcomes for HBCUs | If you haven’t been paying attention to higher education news over the last 48 hours, you likely missed legislative proposals and new laws which will have signifcant impact on historically black colleges for years to come.
U.S. States
Penn State Board of Trustees approves tuition freeze for all resident undergrads | The Penn State Board of Trustees Committee on Finance, Business and Capital Planning on July 19 recommended a $6.5 billion University budget that includes no tuition increase for all Pennsylvania resident undergraduate students for the 2018-19 academic year, the school announced Friday.
Maryland Higher Education Commission unveils new SmartSave portal on website to provide easier access to resources | As part of Governor Larry Hogan’s college affordability and student debt relief announcement earlier, Maryland Higher Education Commission (MHEC) Secretary Dr. James D. Fielder announced a new website feature to easily access information about financial tools available to students and Marylanders with student debt.
What Is Academic Freedom? Statement That Alarmed Professors at U. of Texas Sets Off Debate | Lawyers representing UT-Austin as part of a campus-carry lawsuit argued in January that academic freedom, if it exists, belongs to the institution and not to individual professors. In response to recent inquiries, the flagship’s president, Gregory L. Fenves, affirmed to faculty leaders that the principle of freedom remained central to the campus.
Summit held for improving educational outcomes statewide | W.Va. — Educators from all levels of the education system are learning ways to encourage growth in their students to pursue higher education levels.
With the new ‘Aim Higher Act,’ House Democrats want states to make community college free | House Democrats unveiled the Aim Higher Act this week, which they say would give students the opportunity to go to college debt free without compromising the quality of their education.
Institutional
Administration 101: Good Administrators Care About ‘How It Will Look’ | Academic leaders who focus too much on image are probably too shallow to be effective. But being aware of how you, your words, and your actions will look to others is not vanity — it’s common sense.
Positioning Ourselves to Support College Success for Males of Color | At some institutions, students of color in general and males of color more particularly are responding to and trying to navigate hostile and apathetic campus cultures. Here, the students often are trying to “survive” just to “make it through” college.
The Babel Problem with Big Data in Higher Ed | First, presidential and provost proclamations supporting data-informed campus decision-making notwithstanding, much of the decision-making in higher education is too often “informed” by opinion and epiphany, not data and evidence. Recent national surveys of presidents, provosts, CFOs, and CIOs reveal that the many (and in some surveys the majority) do not believe that their institutions do a good job of using data to inform campus planning and decision-making.
There’s a New Scholarly Take on Mizzou’s Race Crisis, and Its Former Leaders Don’t Fare Well | Ben Trachtenberg, a former chairman of the Missouri Faculty Council on University Policy, has written one of the early scholarly accounts of a tumultuous period at the university when African-American students criticized university leaders for indifference or insensitivity to a deteriorating racial climate. That period of tension, fueled by a graduate student’s hunger strike and a boycott by the football team, became a national spectacle that did lasting damage to the university’s reputation.
NOTE: Posted on August 3, 2018.