International
Report highlights global trend towards HE cost sharing | As enrolment in higher learning institutions has been growing steadily driven by improved student progression rates and higher numbers of part-time students, governments around the world, including those in Africa, are finding ways to shift the cost burden, according to a recent United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) report.
No easy solutions to university sex-for-marks phenomenon | A recent sex-for-marks scandal involving a senior academic and a postgraduate student has highlighted not only the prevalence of the problem, but the difficulty in addressing it in Nigerian universities.
Roadmap to address poor quality at universities | Egypt’s National Authority for Quality Assurance and Accreditation of Education has adopted a range of measures to tackle the poor quality of university education in the country. This includes plans to promote innovation and entrepreneurship, establish industry-higher education institution partnerships, and set up applied universities.
The road to sustainable world-class universities | India is the world’s seventh-largest economy and has advanced in several fields of technology and science. But it has failed to achieve its decade-long dream of having world-class universities to showcase its technical and economic power to the world.
Teacher’s bookshelf: World class education | In his new book World Class: How to build a 21st-century school system, Andreas Schleicher – OECD Director for Education and Skills – explores how we can prepare students for their future and deliver the pace of educational improvement needed for education to win the race with technology.
Are the humanities in crisis? If they are, how can we save them? | Rob Paige, provost emeritus of Arizona State University, has spoken of “indicators of clear and present danger to the humanities”. Yet Blaine Greteman, associate professor of English at the University of Iowa, has argued that “the humanities death watch for the past 60 years” is marked “both by its recurring character and its disconnect from objective fact”.
U.S. National
‘Grandfather of CDOs’ Trying to Do to Higher Education What He Did to Mortgages* | Christopher Ricciardi, a former Merrill Lynch banker, was known as the “grandfather of CDOs” for helping popularize these complex structured products that blew up during the financial crisis. Now, he is bringing his experience to another corner of the financial world with mounds of debt: student loans.
Roth’s Complex Relationship to Academe | Roth’s fiction, he said, often explores conflicts between older and younger generations of immigrants in which the younger generation pulls away from the older one. “My first-generation college students often here at UTEP really embrace Roth and his incredible body of work. I do think he’s extremely relevant to our society. We’ve just lost one of the great voices and one of the great chroniclers of our culture and our society — perhaps when we need him most, actually.”
Signals on the Agenda for Accreditation | “Secretary DeVos has challenged all of us to rethink education,” Jones said. “We must challenge our current assumptions, we must evaluate our current practices, and we must question everything to be sure we do not limit the ability of any student to reach his or her full potential. In that spirit, we are examining the accreditation process.”
U.S. States
Michigan’s floundering education system has left its children far behind | The relatively low numbers of college graduates and people with post-secondary training mean good jobs here can go begging. The state’s fast-growing occupations are those that require post-secondary training.
For too many Michigan college students, a degree is elusive | Only 28 percent of Michigan residents age 25 and older have at least a bachelor’s degree and another 10 percent have an associate’s. About four of every 10 Michigan adults who started college dropped out before finishing.
Universities in Kansas asking for higher tuition despite state funding boost | Public universities in Kansas are proposing tuition hikes significantly lower than some of the larger increases seen in recent years. The schools presented the plans to the Kansas Board of Regents this week. The increases in tuition and fees for in-state, undergraduate students range from 1.2 percent at Kansas State University to 3 percent at the University of Kansas.
Former Gates Foundation Official Will Lead Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education | In his new role, Greenstein will lead a state system that serves roughly 102,000 students and faces serious financial challenges. Nine of the system’s 14 campuses have seen fall enrollment drop by double-digit percentages since 2009…System administrators and state leaders are grappling with how to keep the system’s colleges open, whether by developing new niches for the campuses or even by consolidating them.
Leaders of California’s Big University Systems Look Ahead at Finances, Safety, Capacity | University of California (UC) President Janet Napolitano and California State University (CSU) System Chancellor Dr. Timothy P. White addressed a group of education reporters during a panel discussion last week titled, “What’s in Store for Big University Systems?” Napolitano cited financial resources, free speech on campus and the handling of sexual violence and harassment as priorities the UC system is working on. She said she is working to increase philanthropy in the UC financial model while ensuring that the system “continues to be an engine of social mobility” for California residents.
Institutional
Teaching Eval Shake-Up | Research is reviewed in a rigorous manner, by expert peers. Yet teaching is often reviewed only or mostly by pedagogical non-experts: students. There’s also mounting evidence of bias in student evaluations of teaching, or SETs — against female and minority instructors in particular. And teacher ratings aren’t necessarily correlated with learning outcomes.
Southern Cal Professors Want President Ousted | C.L. Max Nikias has raised billions of dollars for the University of Southern California, and used that money to recruit top faculty members and students. But his hold on the position of president is being challenged in ways that it never has since he took office in 2010. On Tuesday, more than 200 faculty members released a letter calling for his resignation.
This simple math strategy helps colleges enroll more low-income students | Despite colleges routinely bragging about their efforts to serve low-income and first-generation students as well as students of color, the reality is that our higher education system — and particularly elite, selective schools — serve a very small proportion of these students, in part because these top schools serve such a small share of college students overall. But over the past decade, some schools have found a handy trick to boost the number of underrepresented students in their ranks: Simply getting bigger.
* Title edited for clarity.