International
Educating in times of crisis: tools for innovating in higher education | According to data from the Quality of Life Survey 2017, conducted by Universidad Central de Venezuela, Universidad Católica Andrés Bello and Universidad Simón Bolívar, in 2017, 60% of university students abandon their studies to go to work and just half of those who graduate from high school enroll at a university. Moreover, according to Dr. Nicolás Bianco, Academic Vice Rector of Universidad Central de Venezuela, Venezuelan universities are on the brink of collapse as a result of the withdrawal of so many faculty members. On top of this reality, they are dealing with the lack of resources for research, infrastructure equipment and technological tools.
View: India’s education system needs urgent rewiring: Are we running out of time? | From ancient times, our approach to shiksha, or education, has been the relationship between the teacher, or guru, and the shishya, or disciple. Shiksha was not the imparting of information but of deep knowledge that comes from years of study and experience. Unfortunately, we appear to believe that this is precisely what our education system imparts! Consequently, most teachers don the mantle of the guru. They are, in fact, disciplinarians, who run classrooms like policemen.
São Paulo rector sees no end in sight to Brazil’s turmoil | The leader of Brazil’s biggest public university fears that upcoming elections will do little to end the instability and funding shortages that plague the country’s higher education sector. Vahan Agopyan, rector of the University of São Paulo, told Times Higher Education that the likely consequence was a decline in scientific output and a continuing exodus of academic talent to more stable economies.
TEF 2018: improved performance, or a more favourable methodology? | While the latest results of the teaching excellence framework brought joy for a number of institutions, they also throw up new questions about the validity of the exercise.
Civitas Learning Adds Mobile App to Transform Student Engagement in Higher Ed | Leading student success intelligence company announces acquisition of ClearScholar, empowering colleges and universities to deliver precise, personalized student support through mobile technology.
OECD Sounds Alarm Over ‘Broken Elevator’ for Social Mobility | One of the claims made in favor of the market economy is that it is socially dynamic, with people rising up or sliding down the income scale as a result of their talents and willingness to work hard, rather than who their parents were. The OECD suggests this is far from the case in most developed economies, and even less so in developing economies. For the U.S., it calculates that it would take five generations—or roughly 100 years—for the descendants of a person in the bottom 10% of earners to secure an average income.
Teenagers ‘let down over degree choices’ | The report says it’s “deeply concerning” that most students in England don’t have the advice they need to make an informed decision. “The substantial financial commitment required and wide variation in outcomes from higher education mean prospective students need high-quality advice and support to make decisions that are right for them,” it says.
U.S. National
How the University Became Neoliberal | Ask three academics what “neoliberalism” is, and you’ll get three different answers — at least one of which will be “there’s no such thing.” But many historians and social scientists believe there is such a thing, and that we can’t understand the world without knowing something about it. [Subscription required]
How New Humanities Ph.D.s Fare | Humanities Indicators, a project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, on Sunday released new data on the career outcomes of graduate degree recipients…Perhaps most strikingly, humanities Ph.D. recipients in 2015 had relatively high job satisfaction over all: 88 percent said they were “very” or “somewhat” satisfied with their employment. But there was an 11-percentage-point satisfaction gap between humanities Ph.D.s working in academic positions and those working outside academe (91 percent versus 80 percent).
Female Historians Try to End the I-Didn’t-Know-Any-Women Excuse for Men-Only Panels | Following in the footsteps of other disciplines, a group of female historians unveiled a searchable online database on Tuesday listing their peers’ areas of expertise and contact information. The site — called Women Also Know History — is meant to make it abundantly easy to find female historians to invite to speak at conferences, quote in articles, or add to a syllabus.
U.S. States
This event focused on women in color in higher education | The Virginia Network is a state-level network that was created by —and is supported by — the American Council on Education’s Office of Women in Higher Education in an effort to prepare more women for presidential positions in higher education.
As California Goes? | California’s top lawmakers on Friday reached agreement on a performance-funding formula for the state’s 114 community colleges, which enroll 2.1 million students. If the plan is enacted as part of the state’s budget, as is expected, California would join about 35 other states with some form of performance funding on the books. It gives a substantial boost to supporters of using government funding levels to prod colleges to do better on student outcomes — a group that included the Obama administration.
States Struggle to Close Degree-Attainment Gaps | Nationally, 30.8 percent of black adults and 22.6 percent of Latino adults have earned an associate degree or more, compared to 47.1 percent of white adults between the ages 25 and 64, according to the reports. Ed Trust graded states in two areas: overall attainment for black and Latino adults and the gains states made for those adults since 2000, said Andrew Nichols, the group’s senior director of higher education research and data analytics, who co-wrote the reports.
Institutional
President Eighmy announces strategic initiative on Data Governance and Integrity | The Strategic Initiative on Data Governance and Integrity will cultivate the excellence of UTSA faculty and staff by providing them with the data they need to make effective decisions on the job.
Ohio State announces increased tuition assistance | The newly-announced Buckeye Opportunity Program will commit up to $3 million annually in additional financial aid to low- and moderate-income students at OSU’s five regional campuses. The financial aid will go towards the tuition and mandatory fee needs of regional campus students who are from Ohio, qualify for federal Pell Grants and have successfully begun their college career.
Customer Service Is Misguided in the Classroom but Crucial in Advising | Four years ago, when I was still a faculty member teaching history, I took to the pages of The Chronicle to fulminate against the notion that professors should treat students like customers (“Faculty Members Are Not Cashiers”)…Now that I am in an academic-advising position, my work experience is very much in the world of customer service, and I have this to say: I was right all along.
Promoting Diversity Using Motivation-Based Admissions Screening | Motivation is the most critical element to success. It is this highly valuable consequence of motivation that makes it a primary concern for managers, teachers, religious leaders, coaches, health care providers, parents and others concerned with mobilizing others to act.
The Minority-Serving-College Mobility Bump | Lower-income students who attend minority-serving colleges are more likely to see a jump in their economic status than are those who attend other colleges. That’s the bottom-line finding from a new report by the American Council on Education, which crunched numbers from the Equality of Opportunity Project, the highly cited data project released last year by Raj Chetty, a Stanford University economist, and several other researchers.
Note: Posted June 18, 2018