International
The pledge that Wits students wouldn’t sign | This is the draft pledge that all constituencies agreed to‚ except students. The pledge was meant to be read at the University of the Witwatersrand General Assembly on Friday.
Birzeit protest ends as students strike tuition deal | The Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education announced Oct. 4 that a committee of representatives from Palestinian universities has been formed to develop a higher education law to resolve problems plaguing Palestinian universities, particularly financial ones.
#FeesMustFall crisis: 10 points to ponder | Our universities are major national assets. They need to be nurtured to develop into engines of social progress. We cannot afford to avoid the hard questions and the rigorous discussions that are required to move forward in a rational and informed way.
Student loan scheme on higher education reform list | “Policy settings must create the optimal incentives for higher education institutions to be responsive to both student needs and economic demands for high-quality, employment-focused outcomes, as well as leadership in research and innovation, while operating within budget constraints,” Senator Birmingham said.
If we don’t need experts, do we need universities? | A striking feature of the rhetoric deployed in the recent campaign to take the United Kingdom out of the European Union was a call to ignore the experts who said that ‘Brexit’ would do irreparable damage to Britain’s standing in the world.
Ethical internationalisation for all is not impossible | On 15 July I wrote in my commentary ‘Internationalisation should be ethical and for all’ that in higher education there seems to be a division emerging “between word-class universities – with global research, students and scholars; competing and collaborating across the world; located in vibrant cosmopolitan urban environments; and benefiting from ample (inter)national and private resources – and others struggling with shrinking budgets, less-talented students and scholars, and located in rural or economically challenged areas.”
University chiefs to appear before Oireachtas over funding crisis | Prof Bruce Chapman, who designed the world’s first income-contingent student loan system in Australia 20 years ago, said these types of schemes in general offered an equitable approach to funding higher education by keeping college free at the point of entry. However, he said the UK’s approach – which included taking away publicly funded subsidies, increasing tuition costs to £9,000 (€10,235) and creating a relatively short repayment window – was a recipe for failure.
U.S. National
Meet the real face of the student debt crisis | “There are a significant number of students and individuals, particularly people who are from first-generation college, low-income and underrepresented backgrounds that, when they default on this debt, are locked into their current socioeconomic situation,” said Campbell.
Gallup Gauges Graduate Degree Holders Views | Three-quarters of recipients of graduate degrees said their graduate program was worth the cost and that they were applying the knowledge and skills they gained in the program in their jobs, according to a Gallup study of Americans with graduate degrees.
Indicators of Higher Education Equity in the United States (60 pages) | In 2004 and 2005, the Pell Institute for the Study of opportunity in Higher Education (Pell Institute), sponsored by the Council for Opportunity in Education (COE), published two editions of Indicators of Opportunity in Higher Education. The current 2015 publication, Indicators of Higher Education Equity in the United States, directly follows on this earlier effort.
U.S. States
When states make higher education decisions despite the evidence | Despite the accumulating mountain of empirical evidence that PBF doesn’t work as intended, policymakers continue to employ it.
States and Student-Level Data | While political support in Washington builds slowly for a federal student record database, Indiana and the University of Texas System get creative with their own data on how students fare after college.
UW System Regents say they want control over tuition back | University of Wisconsin System Regents said last week they want state legislators who control funding to the university to hand authority to set tuition back to them and voted Friday to increase tuition for the 2018-2019 school year.
Institutional
Enrollment on the rise at Cabrini | While some colleges nationally continue to struggle with enrollment dips, Cabrini University has reported its third consecutive year of increases.
QU faculty presents vote of no confidence in university president | “The board of trustees has received a resolution from the faculty and respects the concerns it raises in these challenging financial times,” said Del Mitchell, vice chairman of the QU Board. “This situation is not uncommon as many colleges and universities are faced with similar scenarios in today’s rapidly changing higher education landscape.”
Admissions Movement Leaving ACT/SAT Behind | The National Center for Fair and Open Testing, also known as FairTest, one of the leading organizations advocating against the use of standardized tests for evaluating student performance, keeps track of decisions such as Hampshire’s moving away from reliance on the tests. Its mission, as described on FairTest.org, is “to end the misuses and flaws of standardized testing and to ensure that evaluation of students, teachers and schools is fair, open, valid and educationally beneficial.”
Diverse Conversations: Should Diversity of a College be Ranked? | Gary S. May, engineering dean at Georgia Institute of Technology, says that the publication should start including diversity as part of what helps colleges and universities rank higher (or lower) on the major lists, like the National one. U.S. News already produces a diversity ranking, but it is separate from the larger, more popular list. That needs modification, May says, for real change to take place.
Doctoral Work at UPenn Brings New Opportunities for U of A Graduate | Ruiz, who was accepted into doctoral programs at seven prestigious institutions, is thriving at Penn, where he works with Laura W. Perna, co-founder of the Penn Alliance for Higher Education and Democracy. Perna and Ruiz co-authored the textbook chapter, which explores the role of technology in higher education. Ruiz and Perna have similar research agendas that focus on college access, particularly how federal and state education policies can improve college opportunities for low-income, racial- and ethnic-minority, and first-generation college students.
College presidents see opportunities in ‘disruptions’ of higher education | Higher education now faces several potential disruptions, including online courses, more diverse student bodies and concerns over the $1 trillion and growing in total student debt.
Note: Posted at 21:29PM GMT (2 hours later than normal) and updated as late as 20:00PM GMT.