International
Local issues, global actions by student activists | On campuses and in communities, from the Americas to Africa, students are at the forefront of demanding a more fairly funded, decolonised, good-quality education system.
ISS Today: Getting to the heart of SA’s higher education crisis | At the heart of the crisis is the demand for free higher education. Protesters argue that the current system is unfair towards the poor, asymmetrically disadvantaging segments of the population in a way that harks back to a racially divided past.
Making Metrics Matter | There’s growing awareness among higher education leaders and practitioners that digital promises an endless supply of metrics. Paired with the ever-present demand to demonstrate return on investment for every marketing activity with a digital component (hint: every marketing activity should have a digital component), higher ed marketers find themselves scrambling to answer some interesting requests around metrics.
U.S. National
Polls: Americans increasingly mistrustful of college costs, leadership, and value | A series of surveys conducted or released during the primary and general election campaigns show widespread skepticism about how universities and colleges are run, how much they cost, and whether they’re worth the money.
Could higher education be key in healing US economic divisions? | Dr Greenstein told the conference of the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning in Chicago that the election had shown that “the gulf between the haves and have-nots is real and it is getting wider and it is brimming with fear and anger and resentment”.
U.S. States
Referenda and Higher Ed | Voters in many states weren’t exactly thrilled with the notion of raising taxes to fund higher education.
Institutional
How Trustees Can Do Better at Presidential Transitions | Presidential transitions at colleges and universities typically do not receive much media attention, unless they occur in the context of scandals or controversies.
Academic Pollsters Didn’t See All Those Trump Voters Coming, Either. Why Not? | Other questions were left unanswered in the aftermath of Donald J. Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential race, and could remain so for a while. Why were so many polling forecasts so off-base? Who is to blame? What went wrong, and how can it be fixed?
Note: I am at The Registry conference in Austin, TX. Much of the news appears to be speculative pieces on the meaning of the federal election. I tend to avoid speculative articles about potential policy (over existing policy), so the list of news items is running shorter than usual.