International
PhD or professional doctorate – which is better? | From the Ebola outbreak in West Africa to special needs education in the UK, more mid-career professionals are taking professional doctorates.
Esemplare ’18: Embrace the MOOC | Short for Massive Open Online Courses, MOOCs became available at the start of the present decade and have grown exponentially since. These courses are open to the public and are often free or relatively low-cost, with enrollments sometimes reaching into the hundreds of thousands.
Kenya’s universities are in the grip of a quality crisis | If you walk down a busy street in one of Kenya’s larger cities, you’ll pass pubs, restaurants, supermarkets, brothels—and universities’ branch campuses.
Why one woman stole 47 million academic papers — and made them all free to read | Elbakyan is a Russia-based neuroscientist turned academic Robin Hood. In 2011 she founded the website Sci-Hub, which has grown to host some 47 million academic papers — Elbakyan claims this is nearly all the paywalled scientific knowledge that exists in the world. These papers are free for anyone to view and download.
Internationalisation 2.0: scaling up to meet the challenges | As in other developing economies, appetite for higher education is enormous, and the system that has emerged in India is a mix of central universities and elite Indian Institutes of Technology, underpinned by less prestigious state universities and tens of thousands of private colleges.
U.S. National
‘Breakpoint’ in Higher Ed | How much does higher education need to change to preserve the qualities of colleges and universities that are important to students, faculty members and society?
Obama announces his intent to nominate John B. King Jr. to officially take the role of education secretary | President Obama has nominated John B. King Jr. to officially lead the Department of Education, where he has served as acting secretary since the start of the year.
This movie wants to help solve the student debt crisis | Every year, millions of 17- and 18-year-olds stare down the prospect of taking on thousands of dollars in debt without knowing much about it.
Assessing, Without Tests | Measures of student learning, beyond grades, are on the rise, according to results of a new survey. But colleges are less likely to use standardized tests for learning outcomes.
Expert Says Diverse Students Subjected to ‘Intellectual Apartheid’ | Zaretta Hammond grew up in a low-income, non-White neighborhood in San Francisco, born to a teen mother who was raising three children by age 22.
U.S. States
Illinois colleges in crisis | If the potential for layoffs, furloughs or even a full-blown shutdown didn’t have Illinois colleges worried enough, now they’re bracing for accreditation sanctions.
N.C. schools battle back against student debt crisis | As the cost of higher education continues to skyrocket and federal and state funding for it declines, America’s college students and their families are facing a well-publicized debt crisis.
Louisiana Faces Worst Fiscal Crisis in 30 Years | Within the next four months, Louisiana must fill a $940 million budget deficit. Edwards has proposed a series of severe cuts over range of programs, but that most significantly affect healthcare and higher education because those are the two main areas of spending that are not protected by the state’s constitution.
Institutional
Turmoil at the Mount | President of Mount St. Mary’s in Maryland says he reinstated two professors he fired. Faculty asks president to quit. Many report fear for their jobs and uncertainty over liberal arts and Catholic heritage. Many students back president.
Where Are the Minority Professors? | An examination of the demographics of more than 400,000 professors at 1,500 colleges shows where those of each rank, gender, race/ethnicity, and tenure status can be found.
Completion and Controversy | City Colleges of Chicago Chancellor Cheryl Hyman, who is widely heralded for leading graduation-rate improvements, faces faculty unrest over new tuition rates and program consolidations.
Not the Disruption We Need | “Disruption” is a favorite term among critics describing the comeuppance due to overly-expensive under-performing colleges and universities.
Some Lessons Learned From Berkeley’s Fiscal Crisis | Writing in the Washington Post last week, Nick Anderson described the fiscal crisis at the University of California at Berkeley which is facing a “‘substantial and growing’ budget deficit and is preparing to take measures that its leader warned will be ‘painful’ as it repositions itself financially.”
Mount St. Mary’s trustees apologize, seek information from campus | Things have been incendiary for weeks on the Maryland campus of Mount St. Mary’s University — a damaging story by the Mountain Echo, the student newspaper, brought a sharp response from the board chairman. But on Tuesday, some glimmers that things were simmering down were apparent.