News Items from the Week of May 13, 2016

International

Predictive Analytics for Publishing | Start-up uses data analytics to tackle information overload among researchers and publishers in science, medical and technical fields.

Global education crisis hits home | [The] crisis in Indian higher education has been in the pipeline for years but has reached a gradual tipping point ever since the current national government was formed in 2014 by the conservative Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

UK’s development fund commits £45m to international HE projects | The UK’s Department for International Development will launch a new £45m fund next month to support cross-border partnerships that will help to facilitate higher education transformation in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Thought Leaders in Strategic Planning and Budgeting Partner to Improve Higher Education | Campus Strategies and Strategic Planning Online announced a partnership this week to combine their respective consulting and technology solution offerings in order to help their college and university clients discover new ways to implement and manage best practices for long-term success.

Elite universities least likely to hit access goals* | [English] Higher education providers with the most unequal student bodies are the least likely to hit access and progression targets, an analysis reveals.

U.S. National

The Journey of a Non-traditional Student | Unfortunately, non-traditional students, especially working-class ones, are often segregated from the leisures of mentoring, counseling, socializing, graduate assistantships and attending seminars — due to their intersectional identities, located outside of the school, tied to labor.

What’s Right and Wrong About Research Universities | Several weeks ago, I completed five bracing years in Washington, D.C., as president of the Association of American Universities. What have I learned about research universities and their place in American life?

Making College Accessible to Low-Income Students Is About More Than Just Tuition | The paper, by Charles Clotfelter, Helen Ladd, and Steven Hemelt, found that a program providing financial and non-financial support to low-income students in North Carolina increased graduation rates and academic performance.

What’s a college test score worth? An ACT-vs.-SAT dispute* | The ACT and the College Board, overseers of the nation’s two rival college admission tests, are exchanging unusually pointed words this week over an effort to help students interpret scores on the revised SAT.

U.S. States

Schools, state trying to boost college affordability | There’s been no shortage of tactics deployed at Indiana public colleges recently to attack the problem of rising student debt—from years of tuition freezes at Purdue University to Indiana University’s practice of sending letters to borrowers with sometimes jarring information about future monthly loan payments.

Detroit’s Educational Catastrophe | In reality, the operators of Detroit’s charter schools almost never close them because of poor academic performance. So even a school where no child is achieving at grade level can continue enrolling new students. And the higher-education institutions that authorize them often have financial incentives to keep the schools open; charter networks often give authorizers a percentage of their funding.

Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) Partners with Taskstream on Pilot Supporting the Interstate Passport Initiative | Six institutions across Colorado, Montana, and New Mexico to use Aqua by Taskstream to assess student learning and proficiency as part of a new framework to aid student transfer and improve graduation rates.

In the Texas House, Concern But Less Fervor Over College Tuition | Members of the Texas House on Tuesday took their swing at the higher education topic du jour in the Capitol this year — tuition. But compared with their Senate colleagues, the discussion was decidedly kinder and gentler.

Students of color take biggest hit in Illinois higher education funding crisis* | [W]ith long-term state funding still held hostage by the ongoing budget crisis, deeper problems with college access and affordability remain unsolved for low-income and first-generation students of color, who depend most heavily on state aid and publicly funded universities.

Institutional

Presidents debate challenges to higher education | It is a challenging time to be a college president… Four UB alumni who serve as college and university presidents discussed these challenges, as well as others, as part of the second UB Volunteer Leadership Summit, which took place May 5-6 in the Center for the Arts, North Campus.

The New Out-of-State Pricing Pitch | A brazen University of Maine effort using tuition matching to thrust itself into the conversation with six larger and more widely known Northeastern public universities paid off with a 54 percent increase in out-of-state freshman commitments for the fall.

Civic Learning | A growing number of colleges and universities are emphasizing civic engagement in their curriculum — a move institutions say is in response to an erosion of public discourse.

Refusing to Be Measured | Rutgers professors vote a second time to seek access to and limits on use of data from Academic Analytics — as faculty advocates vow to take such criticism to other campuses.

Nevada Higher-Education Chancellor Resigns After Email Scandal* | The chancellor of the Nevada System of Higher Education, Daniel J. Klaich, resigned at the Board of Regents’ meeting on Thursday, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports.

*Updated May, 16, 2016