International
Government will start phasing in free higher education in 2018, Cyril Ramaphosa says | President Cyril Ramaphosa has committed to phasing in fully subsidised free higher education and training for poor and working-class students starting in 2018.
Lessons from Asia on road to world-class universities | The debate around developing ‘world-class universities’ in India often involves benchmarking top Indian universities against the best in the world, which are generally regarded to be Anglo-American universities. However, in recent years, Asia has emerged as a breeding ground for some of the world’s top universities.
How can universities address spiralling enrolment? | Excessive growth in enrolment has negative effects on the quality of education universities provide to students – the teaching, learning and academic environment. Studies of publicly-funded universities in Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya indicate that most professors and lecturers have resorted to assessment practices like multiple choice papers, fill-in-the-blanks and short form answers as coping strategies to deal with the situation.
Differential tuition fees are not the answer | Making arts and humanities degrees cheaper than science courses would be ‘cultural heresy’ and ‘economic barbarism’, argues the University of Hertfordshire’s vice-chancellor Quintin McKellar.
The tuition fee review is about saving the government money, not students | The much-awaited major review of post-18 education and funding has arrived. This week, the prime minister, Theresa May, took to the stage at Derby College to announce her plans. All this fanfare provides a clue to just how much the government wants to win back young voters.
Data Accuracy Looms as Major Challenge Facing Educators, Survey Finds | Data consistency and its accuracy in support of legislation compliance and driving positive student outcomes are the biggest daily challenges for those working in and delivering education across Australia and New Zealand. That’s according to the “Global Education Market Study” conducted by Tribal Group, a pioneering world leader of education software and services.
The Gates Effect | The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, at $36-billion the world’s largest private grant-making foundation, has done much to orchestrate that new era. Its largess and sway helped get Southern New Hampshire’s program off the ground, supported a key think-tank report that advocated moving beyond the credit hour, and helped persuade a risk-averse Education Department to open federal coffers to competency-based education.
U.S. National
More students are taking on crippling debt they can’t repay—it’s time for higher education to share the risks | In a new Brookings paper that uses administrative data to look at “large-balance borrowers,” New York University’s Constantine Yannelis and I find that the share of students graduating with more than $50,000 in student debt has more than tripled since 2000, increasing from 5 percent of borrowers in 2000 to 17 percent of student borrowers in 2014. That group now holds the majority of outstanding student debt owed to the government—about $790 billion of the $1.4 trillion total at the end of 2017.
‘Poorly Paid’ Professors | Professors earn about 15 percent less than others with advanced degrees, finds a study circulated Tuesday by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The study (abstract available here), “Why Are Professors ‘Poorly Paid’?,” uses data from the Current Population Survey to compare the salaries and other characteristics of those with Ph.D., Ed.D., J.D. or M.D. degrees. Those who reported their profession as “postsecondary teacher” were compared to everyone else. The study was conducted by Daniel S. Hamermesh, an economist at Barnard College.
Focus on Student Success Increases Well-Being | The report, “Measuring What Matters,” surveyed more than 5,700 community college graduates from 15 Achieving the Dream colleges from five states and found those ATD institutions were outpacing other two-year colleges when it came to the reviews of alumni on how the institutions helped them get better jobs and have better financial, social and community well-being. Gallup also surveyed more than 2,500 associate-degree holders from non-ATD institutions to compare. The report was released during Achieving the Dream’s annual conference.
Study: Wide Black-White Wealth Gap Growing | Despite increases in Black business ownership, elected office, and university enrollment, a new study indicates that the wealth disparity between U.S. Blacks and Whites has been widening.
U.S. States
Opinion: Alabama needs to restore higher education funding now | Americans once embraced higher education as the great equalizer. State colleges and universities allowed children from working and middle class parents to compete on a level playing field with children from more advantaged backgrounds. The race gap in higher education has also been closing, with more African-American students and Hispanic students achieving degrees.
How Clemson University prospers amid South Carolina’s higher ed budget woes | Public institutions have been feeling the pressures of declining state support and scrutiny over their ability to provide graduates that are workforce ready, while keeping tuition costs down. But critics of policymakers’ scrutiny note that states are slashing higher ed budgets. Reports show South Carolina and other states have cut their higher ed budgets by more than 30% since the Great Recession.
Texas Students Welcome Campus Support Groups | With $25,000 in funding from a two-year college-completion grant, the Department of Residence Life at Texas A&M University (TAMU) created two social support groups for African-American and Hispanic students to increase their comfort and confidence in college. In the two years since, the social support groups – AFAM and Aggie Familia – have served as a space for the historically underrepresented students to feel included on campus.
Institutional
Data Culture: Inaugural IC Data Day to Promote Informed Decisions for Student Success | An event like IC Data Day might sound like a simple plunge into the information sets and analyses that shape Ithaca College. But the inaugural event is about more than the quantitative — it’s a cultural celebration of sorts, meant to emphasize the importance of decision-making backed by data, with student success as the ultimate goal.
I Know How You Felt This Semester | With sentiment analysis software, set for trial use later this semester in a classroom at the University of St. Thomas, in Minnesota, instructors don’t need to ask. Instead, they can glance at their computer screen at a particular point or stretch of time in the session and observe an aggregate of the emotions students are displaying on their faces: happiness, anger, contempt, disgust, fear, neutrality, sadness and surprise.
As Kaplan Sale Faces Final Hurdle, Purdue President Criticizes Faculty Opponents | The Indiana Commission for Higher Education and the U.S. Department of Education have already approved the deal, and the regional accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission, is scheduled to review the proposal in a hearing this week. The Lafayette Journal & Courier reported on Monday that some faculty members said they would travel to Chicago for the hearing in an effort to stop the acquisition.