International
Student accommodation crisis: our school-leavers deserve better | The receipt of an offer for a college course should be a time of celebration for school-leavers. Instead, students planning to study away from home are facing into a period of stress and uncertainty.
Protecting the Integrity of Nigerian University Admissions and Public Education, By Bámidélé Adémólá-Olátéjú | The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) designed the United Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) as a standardised test for prospective candidates seeking admission into tertiary institutions in Nigeria on problem solving, critical thinking, the principles and concepts in subjects required for their chosen course of study.
Niti Aayog Suggests Less Regulation, More Focus On Autonomous Governance In Higher Education | New Delhi: The Niti Aayog, in its recently released ‘Three-year action agenda’, has said that less regulation and more focus on autonomous governance, transparency and outcomes are critical components of a vibrant and successful higher education sector, and these ideas should be the basis of our strategy in higher education.
UK universities must ‘fight back’ against ‘malicious’ attacks | Universities must fight back against muddled and “malicious” attacks to show that they are “forces for good in our world”, according to the new chief executive of Universities UK.
U.S. National
The Myth of American Universities as Inequality-Fighters | In a fascinating new paper published this summer, five economists, Raj Chetty, John Friedman, Emmanuel Saez, Nicholas Turner, and Danny Yagan, call into question higher education’s role in promoting upward mobility. The centerpiece of the paper is “mobility report cards” for each college in America.
Higher Ed’s Data Experts Face a Crossroads | Yet institutional-research offices — long known as home to a university’s data crunchers — are battling an identity crisis that has played a key role in keeping the field from reaching its full potential. Subscription required or link through Chronicle tweet.
Academia is in Crisis—And It’s Political | Young academics who graduated from one of the growing numbers of Ph.D programs in women’s and gender studies, ethnic studies, and other interdisciplinary programs—programs that typically trace their histories back to social movements for marginalized populations and which explicitly state their commitment to advancing social justice—are finding their futures in the academy untenable.
The Shrinking Humanities Job Market | Many new Ph.D.s in humanities disciplines report that they struggle to find academic jobs, and that many of the positions they find available are off the tenure track.
Socially Savvy Freshmen | Despite the tendency to write off first-year college students as cellphone-obsessed and face-to-face relationship oblivious, they’re socially aware to a degree. At least enough to classify which friends they consider their most trusted and those they rely on just for a fun time, according to the results of a new study out of Stanford University.
Quantifying Higher Education | Ranking universities is big business. Numerous organizations rate everything from the overall “best” in the world to individual programs like engineering or sociology. Indeed, metrics are baked into the culture of higher education. But what happens to research and learning when they are rated, ranked and judged by that number crunching? What happens to universities?
U.S. States
Future of UNC Center for Civil Rights Remains Uncertain | After 16 years of providing legal relief to North Carolina’s most vulnerable residents, the future of the UNC Chapel Hill School of Law’s Center for Civil Rights hangs in the balance. A UNC Board of Governors committee voted 5 to 1 to recommend a policy banning litigation by UNC centers and institutes on August 1.
T-Squared: A closer look at higher education outcomes | Since its launch in 2012, our Public Schools Explorer has been one of our most popular features. Updated annually, it details graduation rates, test scores, teacher salaries, demographic breakdowns and more for every Texas public school and school district.
Institutional
Design Learning Outcomes to Change the World | We in higher education do a poor job helping students translate the specific content or knowledge gained in our classrooms into a tool that will help them thrive in life, writes Cathy N. Davidson.
Defending Nontraditional Presidents | New book examines which liberal arts colleges are hiring nontraditional presidents (money and prestige make it less likely) and argues that boards should be asking a different question than “traditional or nontraditional?”