International
Has marketisation of higher education reached its limits? | Quality metanarratives, made up of an overlapping number of norms, standards and agencies, offer images of transparency, accountability and excellence within a context of public funding cuts and rising consumerism. Studies show that this market-based quality brouhaha, replete with league tables and rankings, bears no tangible transformative or empowering benefit for academics or students and neither does it bear a positive effect on the quality of teaching and learning.
Protests continue to disrupt lectures at some campuses | Lectures at a few South African universities were disrupted this week after protesting students demonstrated their displeasure over allowances, accommodation woes, the denial of funding from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) and some students being turned away from registration.
Higher Education Needs Intervention From All Sides | A review from the Center for Global Higher Education concluded that debt decreases entrepreneurship and leads to lower job satisfaction. There is also evidence that those with high debt put off a variety of milestones in their personal lives; research suggests that couples delay marriage because of embarrassment from debt, feeling they cannot truly start adult life without financial stability.
Arguments for a New Field of Learning Innovation | What we are calling learning innovation needs to connect the literature and methods of higher education studies with those of learning science, with those of innovations in technology and with the changing understanding of learning analytics, design theories, equity, inclusion and many others. The scholar of learning innovation needs to be fluent in the history, economics, policy issues and other areas related to how higher education is changing. This fluency in postsecondary studies, with the institution and the postsecondary ecosystem as the units of analysis, must be complemented with equal expertise in the scholarship of teaching and learning and the fields mentioned above. The work of learning innovation is applied work. This work is carried out day in and day out at colleges and universities across the country. Each institution serves as an informal laboratory of learning innovation.
New push to help disadvantaged students in higher education | New push to help disadvantaged students in higher education | The watchdog for English higher education is launching a new centre to bolster efforts to increase the number of disadvantaged students in higher education. The new approach, announced on Thursday, is intended to close the gap in the educational outcomes between ethnic minority students and their peers, and between disabled and non-disabled students within 20 years.
U.S. National
Republicans Propose Plan To Address Student Loan Crisis By Automatically Garnishing Wages To Pay For The Loans | As Bloomberg reported last year, student loans have had 157 percent in cumulative growth over the last 11 years, which is significantly faster growth than other areas of lending. For example, auto loan debt has risen by 52 percent during that same time period, while mortgage and credit card debt actually fell by 1 percent. The report noted that the cost of higher education is also growing so rapidly that there will soon be a generation of students who will never be able to repay their student loans. [From Oct, 2018: The Student Loan Debt Crisis Is About to Get Worse]
Early Departures | The researchers found that there was little difference at the beginning of the students’ studies. About 19 percent of the white students declared as a STEM major, compared to 20 percent of Latinx students and 18 percent of black students. But the minority students left the major at far higher rates than the white students — about 37 percent of the Latinx students and 40 percent of the black students switched majors versus 29 percent of the white students. And 20 percent of Latinx and 26 percent of black STEM majors left their institutions without earning a degree, the research showed. Only 13 percent of white STEM majors dropped out.
Most Americans Think Government Support for Public Colleges Is Rising or Flat. They’re Wrong. | Only 29 percent of respondents correctly answered that government support had dropped. In 2017 state support for public colleges over all was down by $9 billion compared with 2009, when adjusted for inflation. While many states have increased annual support for several years now, buoyed by strong economies, in most cases the increases have not made up the ground lost to huge cuts in the years immediately after the Great Recession.
OPINION: Four ways to end the Ph.D’s ‘culture of snobbism and hierarchy’ | If traditional liberal arts colleges do not make sufficient efforts to accommodate the “new majority” of first-generation college students, students of color, adults and veterans, then many will be in danger of closing. If universities depend on part-time teachers — the most underpaid and overworked — to lead transformative first-year courses, then we will undoubtedly see high dropout rates. If we value only traditional research and devalue interdisciplinary investigations focused on these new majority students, then we will lack the knowledge to move forward.
U.S. States
Next on College Completion Agenda: Equity | “We will never make progress in moving the needle on student success for students of color if we don’t get real and understand the totality of factors that undermine their success on our campuses,” said Shaun Harper, executive director of the University of Southern California’s Race and Equity Center, who gave the opening speech at ATD’s Equity Institute. “I’m delighted that Achieving the Dream is intentionally focusing on racial equity. It would seem to me that any attempt to improve student success and outcomes and experiences at community colleges — especially given the racial diversity of community colleges — will always be incomplete if it’s not done through the prism of equity.”
At Innovation Conference, Poverty Among Issues Discussed | The League for Innovation in the Community College — an international nonprofit focused on student success and institutional excellence — used their annual conference to encourage college administrators, staff and faculty to think outside of the box in developing bold new initiatives for their students.
Report Envisions Path Forward for Educational Equity in Tennessee | [A] new Complete Tennessee report released Tuesday titled “No Time to Wait: The State of Higher Education in Tennessee”…reveals that although more than 40 percent of Tennesseans now hold a postsecondary credential, state leaders, educators and community and industry partners can do more to address and close equity gaps in enrollment, retention and graduation outcomes for minority, low-income, rural, undocumented, incarcerated and other underserved groups.
Study of American Democracy on Cal State Chopping Block | Within the Cal State system…Any course on U.S. history and ideals is supposed to cover 100 years or more, the role of social and ethnic groups in major events, and the interplay of politics, economics, social movements and geography. Any course on the U.S. Constitution must cover framers’ political philosophies “and the nature and operation of U.S. political institutions and processes under that Constitution as amended and interpreted,” and more. The system order doesn’t specify a number of required credits. But because it’s widely seen as difficult to impossible to address all three goals within a single course, most campuses require a two-course, or six-credit, American democracy sequence. Sometimes it’s integrated into the general education program, and sometimes it’s a freestanding requirement.
Institutional
Editorial: Amid loss, what we can learn from Hampshire College crisis | Hampshire is one of many small colleges trying to make ends meet — and failing. In Massachusetts, at least 17 colleges have closed or merged over the past six years. In the wake of the abrupt shutdown of Mount Ida College, state education officials are proceeding with a plan to screen colleges annually and gauge their risk of closing. The Massachusetts Board of Higher Education is moving towards using a so-called stress test to monitor the financial health of private nonprofit colleges.
Yearbook Review Finds Dean With Confederate Flag | Admissions leaders in higher education are generally strong supporters of efforts to attract more minority students. At meetings of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, numerous sessions are held on diversity-related topics. But in a much-discussed keynote speech at NACAC’s 2017 annual meeting, Shaun R. Harper, a professor at the University of Southern California’s school of education and executive director for the university’s Race and Equity Center, said the admissions profession was too white and needed to consider the ramifications of that reality. “Your profession is 80 percent white,” said Harper. “It’s even whiter when we get to those who are at the top levels.”
Another Private College May Close | College of New Rochelle has been unable to recover from scandal involving false budgets and unpaid payroll taxes.
Cuts Spark Fears at Azusa Pacific | The university’s financial performance has been flagged in recent months. In September, Moody’s Investors Service downgraded Azusa Pacific’s bond rating into junk territory because of weakening operating performance, issues meeting a debt covenant, weak internal reporting and weak expense control. Azusa Pacific told bondholders in October that it ended the 2018 fiscal year with a $9.9 million operating deficit and was pursuing numerous efforts to cut costs and put new controls in place. The 11,000-student university has collected about $230 million per year in tuition, fee and room and board revenue in recent years.
Scholars: Union Organizing on Campuses Signals Awakening | Faculty, adjunct instructors and graduate student assistants on college campuses across the nation are attempting to organize labor unions at an increasing rate, a trend likely to continue, according to some scholars.