International
Taking a closer look at student attrition and migration | A recent survey which found that more than 50% of South African students felt they were not prepared for the transition from secondary school to tertiary education has highlighted ongoing debates around the causes of South Africa’s student attrition rates and how best to tackle them.
Could other countries copy Hungary and roll back higher education? | Hungary is making ‘dubious history’ by reversing the expansion of universities, writes David Matthews.
As by Fire – The end of the South African university | Student protests are normal in South Africa but this was different. The normal protests come in brief and seasonal cycles, are mostly limited to historically black campuses and the former polytechnics (technikons, now merged and renamed universities of technology), and are generally not violent.
U.S. National
The Rise and Fall of Confederate Statues | Last Thursday Duke University officials reported that a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee at Duke Chapel had been defaced. After the photo surfaced of a stone face of Lee with his nose broken off and his forehead and eye chipped away and punctured, Duke’s president ordered that the statue be hauled away.
National Study Shows Freshmen Better Off Taking 15 Credits | Students who took 15 credits during their first year of college did better academically and were retained at higher rates than those who took fewer credits, an analysis from the Education Advisory Board (EAB) being released today has found.
Even With Affirmative Action, Blacks and Hispanics Are More Underrepresented at Top Colleges Than 35 Years Ago | Even after decades of affirmative action, black and Hispanic students are more underrepresented at the nation’s top colleges and universities than they were 35 years ago, according to a New York Times analysis.
U.S. States
Nagging question: Is SC last in education? | Does South Carolina have the worst educational system in the nation? Yes, says a U.S. News & World Report study.
Oklahoma higher education is a good deal but still expensive or out of reach for some students | Oklahoma higher education officials say the state’s colleges and universities are “affordable,” and relatively speaking they are correct. Oklahoma’s public colleges and universities — and even its private institutions — are relatively inexpensive. “Relatively” being the operative word.
The Missing Black Professors | Efforts to diversify the faculty may not be focusing enough on key areas, namely math-based fields — especially when it comes to black faculty members. And such efforts haven’t led to any premium in pay for those hired to contribute to campus diversity. That’s all according to a new study of faculty representation and wage gaps by race and gender in six major fields at 40 selective public universities.
Institutional
Off the Pedestal | Duke removes statue of Robert E. Lee. University of Texas will remove statues of Lee and 3 other Confederate leaders. Bowdoin removes plaque honoring Confederate alumni and Jefferson Davis.
Challenging the ‘Productivity Paradox’ | In 1987 the Nobel prize-winning American economist Robert Solow famously observed, “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” Solow was referring to the slow productivity growth of the American economy following the technology boom of the 1970s and ’80s, but some scholars argue that this so-called IT productivity paradox also exists in higher education today.
Robert E. Lee’s Namesake | Lee statues have since come down at UT and at Duke University. But if those universities were able to remove their statues, the challenges raised by Lee are far greater 70 miles away at Lexington’s Washington and Lee University, which is named after both George Washington and Robert E. Lee.