International
Why displaced people are being failed by higher education | Worldwide fewer than 1% of refugees have access to higher education.
Indian Higher Education Is Currently Lagging Significantly Behind Global Standards | Let us acknowledge at the outset that rankings must always be considered in the particular context for which they are intended, so I would think of them as a guide rather than as a dominating influence. As things stand, among the key components of global rankings in the education world are the curriculum taught at an institution, and the quality of research there, which in turn feeds into the quality of the curriculum.
Debt Nation: How the student-loan crisis is putting young Canadians — and their futures — at risk | Students used to pay their tuition with summer jobs, but sky-high fees mean they’re now taking out billions in loans — and we’ll all have to pay the price, writes H.G. Watson.
Tuition fees ‘not the answer’ for Argentina as budgets squeezed | The head of Argentina’s largest university has rejected calls for the introduction of tuition fees in the country, even as an economic crisis puts campus budgets under severe pressure.
U.S. National
A New Dropout Crisis | About a decade ago, the number of college dropouts exceeded the number of K-12 dropouts, and the two have continued to move in opposite directions since then. And if you focus only on high-school dropouts — excluding people, many of whom are immigrants, who dropped out earlier and never reached high school — there are now about twice as many college dropouts as high-school dropouts.
Mary Sue Coleman on solving the funding crisis in higher education | The world was quite different for U.S. universities in the spring of 2016, when Mary Sue Coleman became president of the Association of American Universities (AAU).
Study: Black and Hispanic Students Get Lower Return on Higher Ed Investment | Black and Hispanic students largely completed associate degrees and certificates, which provide a smaller return on a student’s investment, according to the analysis, which was released this week. It indicates that White students are at a significant advantage compared to their Black and Hispanic peers, graduating with higher degrees from colleges that spend more on their education.
Congress Needs To Follow The Research And Prioritize Higher Education | Worldwide, we have seen a trend towards increasing investment in traditional higher education, including and especially liberal arts programs like philosophy, economics, mathematics, biology and chemistry. But in the U.S., we’re questioning not just the dollars-and-cents value of a four-year degree but the developmental, intellectual and societal value.
In Defense of the Liberal Arts | The study of the history of human societies and forms of human expression is now too often construed as frivolous, and several colleges and universities have recently announced the wholesale elimination of liberal arts departments,” says the statement from the Association of American Colleges & Universities and the American Association of University Professors.
These are the students most crushed by the debt crisis | [T]he data show those who are most buried in student debt are people like Rhapsody and Shawnta. A disproportionate number are black. They are often older than 40. Almost two-thirds of the student debt in the country is held by women. Many attended for-profit colleges. Some didn’t graduate, leaving them in debt for a certificate they never received.
Student loan debt and the cost of college are out of control and climbing | The primary reason for this is three-fold: unfettered access to federal student loans; a plethora of overly-generous loan forgiveness and multiple repayment plans which encourages over-borrowing and frees schools from the responsibility to charge prices that actually match the market value of the degrees they offer; and the fact that nearly half of undergraduates take at least six years to earn their degrees.
U.S. States
Ensuring Rural Students Succeed | Despite rural America’s geographic, ethnic, and racial diversity, rural students attending higher education institutions exhibit some commonalities. A few similarities rural students exhibit are heightened anxiety, lower retention rates, greater economic obstacles, social alienation, and identity conflicts compared to more urban classmates.
Institutional
At Harvard commencement, grads hear a defense of higher education | The value of a college degree is in doubt, facts are under siege, and campus endowments are being chipped away, Harvard president Drew Faust said Thursday — but she used her final commencement speech to vigorously defend higher education.
Georgia State U. Made Its Graduation Rate Jump. How? | When it comes to predictive analytics, Georgia State University is arguably the leader of the pack. An army of advisers there tracks more than 800 risk factors daily, and innovations include in-class tutors, restructured gateway courses, and freshman learning communities. The public research university raised its six-year graduation rate from 32 percent in 2003 to more than 54 percent in 2017.
Lingering Accusations of Discrimination Haunt Community College of Philadelphia | Tensions between the college’s administration and the faculty union have escalated in the last two years. Current faculty union members say they are fighting a battle to recruit and retain diverse faculty, increase salaries and maintain appropriate workloads through contentious contract negotiations.
* As of June 3, at time post scheduled.