Digests

| Moving Away From Merit Aid | Pennsylvania has the second-lowest level of per-capita state support for higher education, according to a 2018 report from the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association. And its public four-year colleges have the third-highest in-state tuition and fees in the nation, according to a 2018 report from the College Board. To address that problem, the university created the Pitt Success Pell Match Program, which began this fall. The program takes a data-driven, targeted approach to disbursing grant aid. It provides a dollar-for-dollar match for all Pell Grants.Continue Reading

Digests

| Newsom Signs College Aid, Admissions, Accountability Bills | Governor Gavin Newsom signed a series of bills into law Friday focused on affordability, transparency and integrity in higher education. The bills expand access to financial aid for students, strengthen integrity in college admissions and enhance oversight of for-profit colleges in California.Continue Reading

Digests

| The need for a values-based university curriculum | The shift from pedagogically based academic values to market-based values over the past 30 years has signalled not only a change in the basic fundamentals of educational philosophy in tertiary education; it has also presented us with real-world crises of economic irresponsibility, displacement, exclusion, division and inequality.Continue Reading

Digests

Reliance on foreign PhD students ‘could harm US research’ | Data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development analysed by Times Higher Education suggest that the country is falling behind many other developed nations on new PhD numbers. Although about 71,000 people gained a PhD in the US in 2017 – more than double the number in any other developed country – when this is scaled to population size, the number of doctoral graduates in the US falls below many other OECD member nations.Continue Reading