News Items from the Week of May 4, 2018

International

Analytics is a priority among higher education leaders | Among the surveyed individuals were provosts, presidents, CFOs and CIOs. Sixty-one percent of them said that they have an analytics program at their college or university, and a half agree that their institution is investing the appropriate amount in analytics.

‘Why did we take over 20 years?’ – Zuma on free education | Former President Jacob Zuma gave a lecture in Umlazi, KwaZulu-Natal on Thursday where he took the opportunity to slam South Africa’s governing party, the African National Congress, for taking 24 years to implement free higher education for poor and working-class students. Zuma said his main concern was that he made the decision to introduce free education “three years too late”.

Autonomy in Times of Crisis | No word can match “autonomy” for the emotional value it enjoys in academia. It carries sanctity, and at the same time, it promises efficiency, in the context of the division of labour among the different social institutions comprising the regime of modernity in a colonised society. Along with many other bits of diction covering higher education, autonomy too was an import from England where its meaning and usage had been shaped by a long turf war over knowledge spaces, between the state and church. In colonial India, autonomy acquired both relevance and political substance soon after a skeletal system consisting of examining universities and affiliated colleges emerged in the latter half of the 19th century.

U.S. National

University Presses Are Not in Crisis | With the news last week that the University Press of New England will be shut down came the predictable takes on the plight of university press publishing today. But despite sensational headlines like the one this week in the Chronicle of Higher Education—“Scholarly Publishing’s Last Stand”—university presses, by the numbers, are actually faring rather well.

False Equivalences Used to Deny Paying College Athletes | The argument goes something like this: If colleges start paying football players, who have advocated for pay, they must pay other athletes at the same level because the law – presumably Title IX – demands equal treatment of all athletes. On the surface, this line of reasoning sounds somewhat reasonable. But when one digs beneath the surface and looks at the issue in light of how the real world operates, it is a classic case of a false equivalence.

U.S States

Big Cuts, Big Completion Gains | The recession hit the University of Rhode Island hard. The public flagship quickly lost $26 million — or more than 30 percent of its state support, which remains smaller than it was a decade ago. Yet the painful budget cuts have had a silver lining at the university, where the need to be more efficient contributed to substantial improvements in student retention and graduation rates.

Streamlining financial aid | The Massachusetts Board of Higher Education is looking for ways to make financial aid easier for students and families to access as the need among students is predicted to grow, but experts say the potential fixes are meaningless unless the rising cost of college is addressed.

A Stunning Ouster in Tennessee Gets Ugly and Feels Like Political Payback | The sudden firing on Wednesday of Beverly J. Davenport, the first female chancellor of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, stunned and angered her supporters on the flagship campus and raised the specter of more political retribution and legislative meddling in a state that has earned a reputation for it.

Institutional

What Really Makes a ‘High-Impact’ Practice High Impact? | We owe it to our students to ensure HIPs and other innovations intended to enhance the quality of undergraduate education are implemented equitably and with fidelity so that students realize the promised benefits.

Predominantly White Institutions, Black Women Grad Students and a Sense of Belonging | For a majority of PWIs, the lack of faculty of color who can serve as mentors and advisers, especially those who are Black, serves as a barrier to fostering supportive environments for underrepresented minority students. A report in 2017 indicated that Black women faculty members represented 1 percent of all full professors, 3 percent of all associate professors and 3 percent of all assistant professors on faculty at degree-granting institutions.

The Urgency of Supporting the University of Puerto Rico | Before the hurricane caused havoc on the island, Puerto Rico’s main public university system, the University of Puerto Rico, was already in a precarious situation. Due to the massive debt the island had accrued, and poor legislation and fiscal control, students at UPR had been striking periodically to protest the proposed $450-million budget cut the university system faced.