International
Does higher education contribute to rising inequality? | [T]there is no denying the fact that in both Britain and America social mobility has actually been falling over the same period that higher education has been expanding.
Internationalisation of HE needs to be replaced | International scholars have been flogging the internationalisation paradigm for over 40 years. It’s a Western paradigm with a focus on a ‘First World’ Western knowledge base. Western hegemonic knowledge construction devalues, discards and dismisses other knowledge forms and indigenous perspectives on building glocal (local and global) communities, sustainable living and raising the quality of life through quality education.
Graduate employment tracking set to be rolled out across Europe | European Union states will be encouraged to produce comparable data on graduate employment to ensure that degrees remain relevant to the labour market.
Higher education: time to invest to match our ambition | Ireland’s higher education system has a critical role to play in creating jobs, raising living standards and supporting an open and tolerant society. In turbulent times,the quality of our third-level sector is even more important in supporting economic growth and fulfilling the potential of our students.
Canada: The bastion for higher education | Canada is regarded as one of the top most destinations for higher education based on the quality of education and research facilities. While you may have heard of or experienced Canadians’ are friendly and open natured, you may not have known that the United Nations consistently ranks Canada as one of the best places in the world to live.
Italy’s graduates few, many low skilled | Italy has a relatively low proportion of university graduates and many of those who do have degrees score relatively low in terms of skills, the OECD said in a report on Thursday. “Italy has relatively few tertiary educated workers and the inflow of new graduates to the labour market is relatively small. The share of 25-34 year-old Italians with university-level higher education is just 20% as compared with the OECD average of 30% for the same age group,” the Skills Strategy Diagnostic report for Italy said.
U.S. National
Black Minds Matter: Civil Resistance in the Classroom | As national tensions surrounding racial bigotry rise, Dr. J. Luke Wood, a professor of education at San Diego State University and an expert on the education of men and boys of color, is utilizing an academic approach to re-think solutions to systemic oppression.
Higher Education has an Admissions Problem | The most startling finding is that “only 34 percent of colleges met new student enrollment targets this year by May 1, the traditional date by which most institutions hope to have a class set.” This number is down from 37 percent a year ago and 42 percent two years ago.
Post-Recession Borrowers Struggle to Repay Loans | The report from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, released today, examines patterns of student loan repayment for two separate groups of borrowers — those who started college in the 1995-96 academic year and those who started eight years later, in 2003-04. Twelve years after beginning their postsecondary educations, the second group had paid off a smaller proportion of their student loans and had defaulted at a higher rate on at least one loan.
U.S. States
State Board of Education adopts higher ed reform recommendations | State Board members voted to prioritize a $350,000 request to launch a statewide degree audit and student data analytics system. Such a system would be designed to provide students more transparent data on credits they earn and the transferability of courses as students move from one institution to another, State Board of Education staffers said.
Community Colleges Seek Continued Support in Closing Skills Gap | Community colleges are seeking to address a mismatch between employer needs and the skill levels of available workers nationally. The AACC says that schools can help address that deficit, commonly referred to as the skills gap, by working directly with industry partners in areas as diverse as advanced manufacturing, healthcare, viticulture and petrochemical processing.
Institutional
A ‘devastating’ fall from grace. Nearly every corner of Louisville campus in crisis | The university’s troubles have a negative impact on the state’s entire higher education system, which has been struggling to improve amidst state budget cuts, said Adam Edelen, the former state auditor who began investigating the U of L Foundation in 2015.
Getting Faculty Members to Embrace Student Data | Pierce College has improved graduation rates by breaking down student success, course by course (subscription).
At the U. of Puerto Rico, Widespread Damage and Anxiety After Maria | More than a week after Hurricane Maria made landfall, the leaders of Puerto Rico’s public university are confronting damaged buildings, broken windows, felled trees, and water damage, a level of destruction that they say will keep their campuses closed for at least several more weeks.
Racist Incidents Plague U. of Michigan, Angering Students and Testing Leaders | Since the beginning of the fall semester, a series of racist intrusions has unsettled the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and the surrounding town. The most recent was on Tuesday, when posters were found on campus that read, “We must secure the existence of our race and a future for white children. Make America White Again.”