International
International students boost jobs and business | Foreign students studying in Australia spent more than AU$35 billion (US$24 billion) last year on tourism, food, travel and housing. The huge expenditure by students also supported more than 240,000 local jobs and countless small and family businesses across the nation.
It’s time the UK starts talking about graduate outcomes for international students [login required] | To meet the country’s ambitious student recruitment targets, UK institutions should make better use of data showing the return on investment of their degrees.
U.S. National
US suffers worst global ranking performance in 16 years | The United States’ higher education system has recorded its worst performance in 16 years and is accelerating in its rate of decline, according to the 16th edition of the QS World University Rankings. The rankings, released on 19 June, sees 72.6% of the US’s 157 ranked universities deteriorate in rank. The US has also recorded its lowest number of top-100 universities (29) since 2016, and four fewer than last year (33).
Not All Studies Are Created Equal: A Reader’s Guide | The rising tide of misleading “research” also poses a challenge for journalists who communicate this work to the public. News-media outlets wield an enormous amount of power over public opinion simply through the choice of which studies to cover and how to frame them.
Here’s why America’s $1.5 trillion student-loan crisis has spiralled out of control | Ultimately, it’s a laudable goal to help college students better understand their loans and their finances, but the question of how much to emphasize financial education underpins a broader debate about student debt, its causes, consequences — and possible solutions. Robert Kelchen, a Seton Hall University professor who studies higher education finance, said lawmakers and experts often ask whether people are making bad financial decisions or if they simply don’t have enough money. “The answer is probably some of both — but it’s hard to tell how much is a literacy issue versus how much is a lack of money issue.”
Bill Gates, Please Stay Away from Higher Education | Fresh off his successful efforts to transform K-12 education through a combination of investment and support of policy initiatives such as the Common Core State Standards, Bill Gates has turned his eye toward higher education. His move is the establishment of the Postsecondary Value Commission, which promises to develop methods to measure the “value” of a post-secondary degree or certificate, essentially answering the question “What is college worth?” They want to know definitively about the “return on investment”[1]of college.
U.S. States
States Where Students Graduate With The Most Debt | According to data from LendEDU, a financial product information website, student debt is not uniform across the country. In some states, recent graduates have nearly double the debt of recent graduates in other states. 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the average student debt among borrowers of the class of 2017 to identify the states where students graduate with the most debt.
New Jersey governor says cuts leave tuition grants uncertain for community college students | New Jersey Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy called the Democrat-led Legislature’s decision not to fully fund his proposed grants for low-income community college students “stone cold crazy stupid” Wednesday, saying his administration will have to figure out the program’s future in the next fiscal year.
Institutional
Designing Meaningful and Measurable Outcomes: A First Step in Backwards Design | The focus of Backwards Design (or Understanding by Design) is that of student learning and understanding. Wiggins and McTighe (1998) contend that faculty typically design their courses around a set of activities and content first (forward design), and then try to connect those activities to learning goals of their course. Often this is a forced fit, artificial at best and completing missing the mark at worst. In order for instruction to be both meaningful and measurable, it is important that instructors begin their course/curriculum design process with outlining the course level student learning outcomes. The outcomes are the final destination on the journey students in the course will take.
College Counselors and College Labor | The persistent and growing exploitation of adjunct college faculty is a significant labor issue in higher education with grave moral and academic implications. This is a pervasive problem, nationally, and those in higher education should be very, very concerned.
UNCF Study: HBCUs ‘Punch Above Their Weight’ | According to the study, conducted by UNCF’s Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute, the approximately 100 HBCUs in 21 U.S. states and territories enroll and degree Black students in outsized numbers despite the institutions’ smaller sizes and financial challenges.
Enhancing Student Academic Success with Technology | Students want more use of technology to aid them in their work of being students and to enhance their success. But students don’t all necessarily want universal access to expensive, cutting-edge technologies such as 3D printers. Students expect their institutions to provide effective and efficient technology and expect their instructors to consistently use technology to promote student success. Student expectations include ubiquitous and frictionless Wi-Fi networks, instructors’ incorporating more technology in the classroom, and consistent use of their institution’s LMS.