International
Teaching excellence ratings by subject announced | The [UK] government is extending its new system of rating teaching excellence and exposing poor quality teaching in universities to enable potential students to compare the ratings by subject, in addition to by the university as a whole.
Experts’ committee unveils higher education reform plans | The Committee of Experts for Better University Education or UUU, has published a hefty report on modernising Danish higher education, along with 37 recommendations, which will be drafted into a White Paper for Parliament to consider. The recommendations, which cover a wide range of aspects, from encouraging students to take a break before doing a masters degree to strengthening teaching, and developing more appropriate skills for today’s labour market, were unveiled by the committee and published at a meeting in Copenhagen on 12 March.
Yes, Higher Ed Is a Business — But It’s Also a Calling | As we mastered the language and mind-set of professional management in order to better advance our missions, we may have unwittingly encouraged the public to forget what we are — or ought to be — all about. The issue is not about just public perceptions. Anecdotal evidence abounds that many people inside higher education itself think of colleges as businesses.
Machine Learning, Big Data and the Future of Higher Ed | These technological opportunities could offer a lot to higher education. Indeed, if we ignore the opportunities that machine learning and big data analytics might provide to complement our human capacities, we will do a disservice to those we claim to serve — our students. But if we treat them as an opportunity to downsize the work force or largely replace human social interactions with automated ones, we are going to lose a lot more than we gain. Herein lies the dilemma. What is the balance?
U.S. National
L’œuf ou la Poule? | Even as institutions report accelerated, comprehensive internationalization efforts, graduate and undergraduate foreign language enrollments are on the decline, according to a recent report from the Modern Language Association. What’s driving that trend? The MLA isn’t sure yet — a forthcoming report seeks to offer more analysis.
Punishing Women for Being Smart | Study hard, earn good grades and career success will follow. Actually, a new study finds that this common advice given to college students isn’t true. The grades of new college graduates who are men don’t appear to matter much in their job searches, according to a new study. And female graduates may be punished for high levels of academic achievement. The study comes at a time of growing evidence that female students are outperforming their male counterparts academically in college (after also having done so in high school). The new research will appear in the April issue of The American Sociological Review.
A Fair Wage for Elite Athletes? How About $750,000? | Fueled by spiraling television- and licensing-rights fees, these members of the Atlantic Coast Conference, Southeast Conference, Big Ten, Big 12, and Pac-12 saw their athletic-department revenues double in the past 10 years, on the heels of having doubled in the decade before that. By my calculations, the result of this exponential growth is that the average football or men’s basketball player at a major conference college now generates between $1.5 and $2.3 million in revenue for his college per year. Big-time college football and basketball now produce about $8 billion in annual direct revenue. This is nearly 40 percent more than the entire National Basketball Association (the average NBA player makes $6.2 million).
U.S. States
Just 14% of New Mexico’s college students graduate on time | New Mexico colleges have increased the number of associate and bachelor’s degrees they’ve awarded by some 15 percent over the past few years, but the state remains stuck at the bottom nationally when it comes to students completing those degrees on time. As the state Higher Education Department focuses this school year on new efforts to improve the college graduation rate, a report released Monday to the Legislative Finance Committee says New Mexico ranks 49th in the country, with only 14 percent of students in the state earning a bachelor’s degree within four years.
Part I: Spending and student achievement linked, but that’s not the whole story | An analysis by the state Department of Education shows that school districts spending the most money per pupil are getting the best results on standardized tests, although there are some exceptions that stand out – low cost-per-pupil schools that do well, and high-cost schools without the test scores to match. The Department of Education recently released cost-per-pupil expenditures for all of the state’s school districts, something it does every year. But the data has never been linked to the academic performance of the districts as measured by standardized test results, until now [2018].
Conference Identifies Innovative Practices for Community Colleges | Education practitioners gathered at the 2018 League for Innovation in the Community College Conference on Monday to discuss and promote innovation in teaching and learning across the community college landscape. Community college leaders and education stakeholders presented on pressing trends that affect community colleges and their students today, data and technology strategies that can help align institutional values with student learning outcomes and equity-minded classroom practices that can reduce the achievement gap and increase student success.
Report finds most states shortchange high-poverty schools | Poor districts get far less money than needed to help students achieve average scores on standardized tests, and a financial analysis shows that higher test scores follow the money, says a new national report. The report examines the relationship between school funding and student achievement among the country’s school districts, grouped by states and subdivided by poverty levels. Conducted by researchers at Rutgers University and released by the Education Law Center of New Jersey, the full report is titled The Real Shame of the Nation: The Causes and Consequences of Interstate Inequity in Public School Investments.
Institutional
‘Take Back Trinity’, the Maxim College Can No Longer Ignore [Ireland] | The decision to introduce supplemental exam fees, and the subsequent campaign against them, has wrought huge embarrassment on a College that has spent years cultivating an outward-facing image. Provost Patrick Prendergast’s late-night tweet on Wednesday was a mea culpa made significant by previous indications that Trinity believed student anger was misguided. Prendergast once predicted fees and commercialisation would be the future. It all seems naive now.
The Reinvention of City Colleges of Chicago | In 2010, Cheryl Hyman was a shining example of what City Colleges of Chicago could do for its students…Hyman stands by the work she and her administration did at City Colleges. In her new book, Reinvention: The Promise and Challenge of Transforming a Community College System (Harvard Education Press), Hyman explores her tenure as chancellor. She explains the purpose and goals of Reinvention, what it did to improve outcomes and the setbacks and backlash both she and the program faced.
Why Relentless Administrative Turnover Makes It Hard for Us to Do Our Jobs | In the past decade, since I started work in a tenure-track position here, we have had eight provosts. When you subtract the interim ones, we’ve only had four. However, I think it’s more than fair to count the interims, because they last almost as long as the “permanent” ones. I wish I was kidding.
‘I Am First Gen’ | Many first-generation students don’t see themselves as belonging in college. At Arizona Western College, that doubt is one of the biggest barriers to getting students in and through the two-year institution. The college, which enrolls 8,000 students, has the highest proportion of first-generation students — 66 percent — in the state.
We’re Teaching Grit the Wrong Way | Good self-control has also been shown to be a key component of grit — perseverance in the face of educational challenges. It’s no wonder, then, that colleges have placed great emphasis on teaching students better self-control. But the strategies that educators are recommending to build that self-control — a reliance on willpower and executive function to suppress emotions and desires for immediate pleasures — are precisely the wrong ones.
After Years of Protest, Cooper Union Plans to Reinstate Free Tuition | Cooper Union, a private college which never charged tuition until the Fall of 2014, has recently released a 10-year plan to once again adopt free tuition. After several demonstrations by upset students, years of planning and extensive feedback from the Cooper Union community by both students and alumni, the Cooper Board’s Free Education Committee published a plan to return to full tuition scholarships on Jan. 15, 2018.
What Motivates Good Teaching? | Whether it’s talking to colleagues, reading the latest research or visiting a teaching and learning center, professors have places to turn to learn about best pedagogical practices. Yet faculty members in general still aren’t known for their instructional acumen. Subject matter expertise? Yes. Teaching? Not so much. Of course, many professors do teach well, and a new study explores what motivates them to do so.
The President Has Spoken, and Edinboro U. Is Reeling | H. Fred Walker, president of Edinboro University, said recently that he knew he would never be able to reason with his faculty. That will be a lot harder to do now. In the wake of a Chronicle article published on Sunday, faculty members and students at Edinboro, a financially struggling public university in northwest Pennsylvania, say that the president may have irrevocably fractured trust with the campus…In a series of interviews, Walker described the university’s unionized professors both as allies to be won over and as obstacles to be worked around. Walker did this, he said, by delivering grim treatises on the future of the institution, all part of a “boot camp” strategy that was designed to break the institution down to its lowest level before trying to build it back up.