International
One last chance to save a bastion of higher education | [T]wo things in particular are hurting the University of Juba and the public tertiary education institutions most – the fixed salaries and tuition fees, both of which have been declining in real value due to depreciation of the national currency against the dollar. The cost of operating the university as well as consumer prices have increased 3,000 fold since January 2016, while precious little has changed in the salaries received by the professors at public universities and the tuition fees paid by the students.
Building a higher education sector needs more than high hopes | Botswana is a relatively new country, gaining its independence in 1966. Unfortunately, in the former Bechuanaland British Protectorate, the previous administrative entity in this territory, there had been no interest in building an educational system. In fact no secondary school had been established during 81 years of British rule. During that period, the country had a meagre total of 677 qualified primary school teachers. Against this backdrop one cannot help but admire the efforts of this brave new nation to move away from a situation of almost complete illiteracy to close to 90% literacy in 2014, according to the National Literacy Survey published in 2016.
What can be done about poorly performing universities? | A widely-used international indicator to measure the level of investment in research is the Gross Domestic Expenditure on Research and Development. It’s measured as a percentage of the total economic activity in a country or gross domestic product. The world average is a healthy 1.77%. But African countries lag behind. In South Africa it is 0.76% and in Egypt it’s 0.4%. Nigeria trails behind even its African equivalents at 0.2%.
U.S. National
Where Do Colleges Recruit? Wealthy and White High Schools | A report being issued today suggests that leading public universities contribute in a significant way to these advantages with their recruitment of out-of-state students — and, to some extent, with their lack of recruitment of in-state students as well. The report focuses on the high schools at which public universities recruit outside their state. The study finds that these high schools are more likely than not to be high income and largely white. Further, a disproportionate number of the high schools visited are private schools.
Increasing Understanding of Online Learning | [T]here remains a surprising dearth of good information about how colleges approach online learning given that a third of all students take at least one online course and more institutions are putting online education front and center in their strategies. With their third “Changing Landscape of Online Education” report (nicknamed CHLOE 3), Quality Matters and Eduventures Research are trying to change that.
This Is How You Kill a Profession | Our contemporary religion of innovation has as one of its tenets the following belief: Rather than defeat your competition, make your competitors irrelevant. This is exactly what we see in higher education. College faculty were not defeated after great struggle, after a battle with a winner and a loser. College has simply been redefined, over and over, in ways that make faculty irrelevant. College teaching, as a profession, is being eliminated one small, undetected, definitional drop at a time.
Study Finds Wide Institutional Differences in Instructional Spending | [Dr. John J.] Cheslock’s report, “Examining Instructional Spending for Accountability and Consumer Information Purposes,” summarizes his analysis of 2014-15 data from the IPEDS Finance Survey. He found that: · Public colleges and universities reported significantly higher ratios of instructional spending than private nonprofit schools and for-profit institutions. · Public schools on average actually spent more on instruction than they received in tuition, in some cases a lot more because of local and state taxes. But even after accounting for tax subsidies, public schools overwhelmingly spent more than half of their combined taxpayer and tuition support on instruction.
Higher Education Needs an Audit | In the aftermath of Operation Varsity Blues, it’s time for institutions to implement an audit process so that admissions officers don’t have to be superhuman and make up for the vulnerabilities in the system. Yes, audits can be clunky. Nor does their presence mean everything will be caught. But by checking whether there are strong internal controls in place, and even going the extra step to spot check the veracity of details on a representative sample of admitted applicants each year, they can be very useful in catching larger systematic problems.
How International Education’s Golden Age Lost Its Sheen | While it might be tempting to pin internationalization’s current challenges on President Trump and the nativist environment he has fomented, that explanation also seems insufficient. The president, after all, wasn’t the one that decimated college foreign language programs, shutting down 650 in just three years. His policies have little bearing on the drop-off in the share of institutions reporting that internationalization is a high priority in their strategic plans, from 60 percent, in 2011, to 47 percent in 2017.
U.S. States
Governor ups budget for public universities | Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker recently proposed a 5 percent increase in state funding for public universities and community colleges to help increase college affordability. In his first state budget address, Pritzker outlined his ideas for the fiscal year, the investments he wants to make in the Illinois budget and some notable changes to the education budget.
Institutional
U of M Announces New Tuition Structure | University of Memphis (U of M) officials announced major changes to the school’s tuition structure on Friday that could make education there more affordable, more predictable, and more uniform. Beginning in the fall semester, U of M will implement its Access Memphis initiative that will lock in tuition costs for incoming freshman, provide free classes after 12 hour credit hours are paid for, and make tuition rates uniform.
US higher ed: A system of meritocracy that never was | Wealthy students benefit from privilege compounded by more privilege, crowding out the rest from university spots. Many universities give preferences to legacy admits, students with at least one parent who graduated from the institution — a policy that overwhelmingly benefits privileged, white candidates. Harvard, my alma mater, accepts 34% of legacy applicants, as opposed to six percent of non-legacy applicants, a nearly six-fold advantage. While over one-fifth of white admits to Harvard were legacies in recent years, only 4.8% of black admitted students, seven percent of Latinx students and 6.6% of Asian students were legacies, with the total number of white legacies surpassing all legacies of colour combined. Some 14% of Harvard’s class of 2022 are children of alumni, and over 29 percent have family ties to the school.
What Is the Future of Town-Gown Relations? These Researchers Think They Know | Many colleges have boards and initiatives that focus on town-gown relations and research — say, a public-service graduation requirement or a commitment to purchase and hire from neighborhoods around the campus. But few community members actually play roles in leading or shaping those projects, according to a new report analyzing 100 urban college and university partnerships with their cities.
Obfuscating Net Price | Colleges were supposed to clearly display tools called net price calculators that would show students total costs after subtracting grants and scholarships and factoring in students’ family incomes. The idea behind the requirement was that many would-be students see only college sticker prices and don’t realize how much aid they may be able to obtain. But many four-year institutions are failing to meet federal standards for their disclosures more than a decade later, according to a study released today by the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.
Is college completion really the root of the student debt crisis? | [S]ome student groups such as Young Democratic Socialists of America at ASU rebuke this argument, saying that debt is an issue that prevents people from completing college. While some believe a degree might make it easier to pay off debt, Jake Phillip Morris, a member of Young Democratic Socialists of America at ASU and a sophomore studying earth and environmental studies, said that many students can’t bear the debt burden enough to even make it through their first year of college. “They can work on (student completion and student debt) at the same time,” Morris said. “There are tons of students who are dropping out their first year, at least partially due to debt. Once you’re in the hole, you can’t climb out.”
Posted: April 2, 2019