News Items from the Week of September 21, 2018

International

Cover | Outsourcing Student Success (Kindle Edition)
Outsourcing Student Success (Kindle Edition) | Click on the Image to Visit Amazon.com

Not enough diverse academic research is being published | Knowledge creation should not be limited to the elite universities, which are concentrated in the Global North. Nor should it be reserved for those at the highest ranks, which tend to lack diversity, including by gender, race, class and more. Reducing research publications leaves these roles and responsibilities to the narrow few at the expense of diversity.

Australian tertiary education funding is not as low as it seems in OECD metrics | From the evidence so far, many might wonder how Australia’s funding could be lower than in most European countries. This is because local reports of “second lowest”, “bottom four” and “40% below average” rely on a single slice of data from the OECD’s data set which shows public spending on tertiary institutions.

International tertiary numbers up 200% in two decades – OECD | The 2018 edition, which examines education systems across 35 OECD countries and various partner countries, found that advanced degrees continue to attract more international students than bachelor’s or equivalent degrees.

Most educated countries in the world: South Korea, Canada and Japan, and…. | South Korea has an ever increasing important role in the world, including in the global travel and tourism industry, culture and trade. Education may have a lot to do with it. South Korea is known as one of the four “Asian Tiger” economies, with an economy based on its fast-growing education, tech and tourism sectors.

U.S. National

Positive View of Higher Ed, With Lots of Caveats | National poll finds more appreciation of colleges than other surveys have. In some areas, including affirmative action, sexual assault and mental health, the public isn’t impressed. Public institutions earn more confidence than private ones.

Higher education has faced declines before | U.S. birthrates in 2017 dipped to a 30-year low, Dewitt noted, citing reports by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released in the spring. “We are no longer talking millennials. For lack of a better title, Generation Z is just a smaller generation than millennials,” DeWitt said. “The number of graduates is projected to decline after 2025. That seems to be where most of the projections say it will drop off.”

Free college for all will power our 21st-century economy and empower our democracy | Many of the success stories that produced these good outcomes for individuals and our country are the result of Americans who got their postsecondary education and training for free in the 1940s, 50s, 60s and 70s.

National HBCU Conference Week Underscores Institutional Competitiveness | Centering around the theme “HBCU Competitiveness: Aligning Institutional Missions With America’s Priorities,” presidents and representatives from the nation’s HBCUs, policymakers and stakeholders had the opportunity to learn about federal agency opportunities, partnerships and research opportunities, innovation development, workforce development and more in order to prepare HBCUs, their students and faculty to compete nationally and internationally.

Is free tuition the writing on the wall for college as a personal expense? | Free tuition for all at public institutions may be a necessary policy debate to have in the U.S. today. The pending economic crisis facing public institutions could offer the opportunity of following other Western democracies by restructuring financial support as a public cost, rather than bailing out the status quo as was done in 2008 for the financial system.

U.S. States

Return on investment in higher education: a student’s view | We don’t need the state demographer to tell us returns from universities like CMU are high; as students, we experience those returns every day. I thank the people of Colorado for investing in me, and in Colorado Mesa University.

Low public tuition, robust aid keep California among states with low per-student college debt | The average student loan debt held by graduates of California’s four-year universities was $22,785 in 2017, according to an annual report from The Institute for College Access & Success, a higher education affordability advocacy group based in Oakland.

Institutional

EIU significantly reduces tuition for qualified in-state students | Eastern Illinois University is unveiling a new multifaceted financial aid program that can significantly reduce — and in some cases completely offset — tuition and fee costs for qualified Illinois students who enroll at EIU. This past spring, the Higher Education Working Group — a bipartisan group of legislators interested in finding common-ground and viable solutions — proposed and passed a new merit-based grant program. That program — the AIM HIGH Grant — was signed into law in August.

Renewed Debate About GRE | University of Pennsylvania philosophy program drops requirement for its doctoral program, setting off broad discussion about the GRE test’s merits and drawbacks.

Walking on Campus… While Black | There was, in fact, an African American man walking into Whitmore at that time. He worked there, and has worked there for 14 years. His normal morning routine is to work out and then walk, with his duffel bag, to his office. He works on disability student issues. UMass police were dispatched to the building, located him as someone fitting the description in the call, and spent time questioning him before determining that he posed no threat. While he was being questioned, the police blocked access to the building.

Are College Tuition Resets Catching On? | St. John’s College, a private school with campuses in Maryland and New Mexico, is the latest to make such a move, slashing tuition by $17,000 a year. The school plans to make the money up through fundraising. According to a news release, St. John’s will lower tuition from $52,000 to $35,000 by raising $300 million to offset the revenue loss. The plan is set to go into effect in 2019.

After Silent Sam’s Fall, Calls to Rename a Building at Duke Grow Louder | Domby said that Carr should not be memorialized on campus buildings and that the Silent Sam statue should not be restored at his alma mater, in Chapel Hill. “Ultimately, monuments are about the communities they are in. And if it no longer represents the community, does it really belong?” Domby asked. “Carr’s hope when he put this monument up was to ensure that his values were passed on.”

Does Georgia State have a gender pay gap? | The average salary of a professor at Georgia State for men is $125,928 and for women is $107,505. This seemingly exposes a $18,423 gender pay gap. However, Georgia State’s Michael Galchinsky, who is the associate provost of the Office of Institutional Effectiveness (OIE), disagrees with the accuracy of these numbers. “That aggregate data is very misleading,” Galchinsky said. “They appear to tell a story that women are generally making less than men but without knowing all the other factors, it’s really hard to make sense of this data.”…Whether there is a pay gap at Georgia State or not remains unclear.*

* NOTE: $125,928 >> $107,505 — period. It is not a question of whether the gender salary gap exists, but why the gap exists. Tenure, discipline, salary grades, overloads, summer teaching, etc., etc., may contribute to the salary gap–legitimately or not–but the gap exists nonetheless. To characterize a “pay gap” (notice the term “gender” is dropped in the line) as not a gap suggests that there is an issue of research integrity at Georgia State University regarding this subject, or more generally. Then, one GSU faculty member skeptically states to the assertion that a gap is not a gap, “Numbers can tell you anything you want them to tell you.” I imagine it may be easier to get the administration to acknowledge a salary gap exists if the faculty response is: “These numbers unequivocally tell us a gender salary gap exists. The questions we as the leadership of a public higher education institution must ask ourselves are, why and how?”