International
Here’s why millennials have to fight harder than their parents did to stay in the middle class | Today, just 60% of millennials (those born between 1983 and 2002) are considered middle-class, compared to 70% of baby boomers (those born between 1943 and 1964) when they were in their twenties, according to the report, “Under Pressure: The Squeezed Middle Class.” Worldwide, the share of households considered middle-class has slipped from 64% in the 1980s to 61% today.
Higher education is about transformation | We need to re-focus our attention on the educational purposes of undergraduate higher education. This involves developing a clearer understanding of the transformational nature of an undergraduate education.
Call to fight the spread of corruption in HE globally | Despite evidence of the existence of corruption in the regulation of higher education, 64% of respondents expressed no concern about it. Some were confident that existing measures being taken ensure corruption is kept under control.
Changing attitudes to university teaching and research | To sum up, the factors mentioned above, the increased stratification in the structure of higher education and functional diversification in higher education systems worldwide and in particular growing demands on faculty from government, business, students, their parents and other stakeholders have had a significant impact on faculty’s perceptions of teaching, research and the relationship between them.
Is higher education failing to evolve into the 21st century? | “Many universities and their faculties are lagging behind and yet charging even more money for out-of-date courses and curriculum that has not been changed in years, if not decades,” writes James Carlini of International Policy Digest. News sources from Australia to America are publishing grim reports that higher education is stuck in the 20th century, failing to prepare graduates for the rapidly-changing, largely tech-driven workforce.
New global testing standards will force countries to revisit academic rankings | When the OECD launched the Programme for International Student Assessment — PISA — the idea was to enable countries to make cross-national comparisons of student achievement using a common/standard metric to increase human capital. In other words, higher academic achievement should corelate with earnings in the future and a country’s standard of living. As PISA states, it publishes the results of the test a year after the students are tested to help governments shape their education policies.
U.S. National
Student Loan Debt is a Crisis | Yes, the student loan situation is a crisis that must be addressed early and often with students, parents, family members, and guidance counselors. We need to make this an issue on the campaign trail on both sides of the aisle in every election, not just the 2020 presidential one. Roll Call recently reported that there are 66 members of Congress who are currently paying off their own personal student loans or debts for dependents. “Collectively, the 44 Democrats and 24 Republicans have higher education liabilities of $2.5 million, according to recent financial disclosures. The median student loan debt is $15,000, while average debt is $37,000.”
‘The Adjunct Underclass’ | Like any ecosystem, there are innumerable influences. Some of them come from the changing nature of higher ed — its broader participation, its reconfiguration to vocationalism, the changing technological landscape, the changing mix of student choices about majors. Some of them come from overstocking the lake with one species, putting 50,000 new Ph.D.s a year into a system that can sustain 10,000 and letting them fight for resources. And some of them come from the fact that higher ed is a component of a larger culture that accepts gig work as a norm, that protects consumers but not workers, that devalues work done by women, that faces fundamental demographic shifts and a 30-year population trough on the heels of a gigantic boom. All of those forces favor contingency.
Harsh Take on Assessment … From Assessment Pros | Much of the assessment work in the last decade has focused on trying to develop quantifiable proof that institutions are helping their students, collectively, learn, with the aim of being able to create a measure of educational quality that was comparable across institutions. This push was often driven by accreditors’ pressure on colleges, which was driven in turn by federal government pressure on accreditors.
Let’s solve the college debt crisis by treating students like startups | [Income share agreements] allow students to trade a small share of their future earnings for cash to cover up-front enrollment costs. Rather than using capital from investors to start a business, students invest in their future career using funds provided by the ISA to pay for the cost of enrollment in college. In exchange, the student will share the return on this investment with the investors who made it possible by remitting an agreed-upon fraction of their earnings for a set number of years. Most of today’s ISAs are relatively short-term—as short as 36 months, as long as 120 months—but in theory, ISAs could one day be structured as very long-term contracts with a very small percentage of income owed each month.
U.S. States
New Mexico takes a big leap toward modernizing higher ed | The Legislature and the governor responded to nearly a decade of dramatic and deep cuts to New Mexico’s higher education system by increasing the basic operating funds that all colleges rely upon by $28 million. They gave a raise of a few percentage points — $24 million — to faculty and staff whose paychecks have seen consistent chipping-away for many years. Finally, the Legislature and the governor invested $3.67 million in one-time funds to support local higher education-related projects.
Connecticut Moves to Consolidate Community Colleges Amid Faculty Opposition | Ojakian’s consolidation proposal, also known as Students First, would place the 12 colleges and their satellite campuses under a single, centrally managed authority. Instead of 12 separate presidents for each college, the proposal creates three regional president positions. Six finalists for the positions were announced in March. According to the proposal, faculty, academic and student affairs staff would not be affected, but about 23 percent of the 750 administrative staff positions in the system would be cut. Ojakian said some of those positions would initially be reduced through employee retirements.
College debt is indeed a crisis—but this isn’t the right fix | [Illinois Treasurer Michael Frerichs] should be focused on issues like Illinois’ battered credit rating, which won’t be helped by a risky new student loan venture…Frerichs’ spokesman Greg Rivara says the treasurer assumed a default rate of 12 percent in concluding Illinois would reap a return of 3 percent on student loans that charge interest rates of 4 to 6 percent. Noting that “the typical ROI for the state portfolio is about 2 percent,” Frerichs calls the anticipated student loan return “a net win for the state regardless of economic cycle.”
University System of Georgia sets tuition for 2019-2020 academic year | The Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia today approved tuition rates for the 2019-2020 academic year. Systemwide, depending on the type of institution, the increase translates to $35 to $125 per semester for a full-time, in-state undergraduate student, or 2.5 percent. According to a press release, the board did not raise tuition in 2016 or 2018, and by limiting the increase to 2.5 percent for the 2019-2020 academic year, has held increases to an average of 1.7 percent annually over the last five years, less than the rate of inflation.
Barriers to student completion in higher education | The Minnesota Office of Higher Education recently released a report “The Impact of Housing Insecurity on Educational Outcomes” that describes the challenges that students who are experiencing insecurity in housing and other basic needs face in pursuing and completing their degrees.
Institutional
Walkouts held at 3 Seattle community colleges to protest funding crisis | With current budget proposals, the Seattle colleges are facing a $2 million shortfall next year that will force them to make reductions. Since 2013, the legislature has covered only 65 percent of salary for staff pay increases they approved, forcing the colleges to cover the remaining 35 percent.
Equity Chase: Efforts Narrow Racial Disparities in College Study Abroad | White students are the overwhelming majority of American college students who travel internationally to study at some point during their college education, an adventure that personally enriches, adds an impressive line to a resume and often translates into academic cache before graduation. According to the 100-year-old Institute of International Education (IIE), 70.8 percent of U.S. college students who studied abroad in 2016-17 were White. Among ethnic and racial minority students, Hispanics were highest at 10.2 percent, Asian and Pacific Islanders constituted 8.2 percent and African-American students were 6.1 percent.
Middlebury’s Strange April | Middlebury is facing the debate over the Legutko talk as it is also dealing with fallout from a bizarre incident involving a question on a chemistry exam that asked students how to create the gas that Nazis used in concentration camp gas chambers (more on that later). The Legutko talk was called off Wednesday with Middlebury officials citing safety and security issues. When Murray was shouted down two years ago, the college not only faced the shouting and chanting at his talk, but physical attacks on a professor and on the car carrying Murray by protesters — widely believed to be anarchists who were not necessarily affiliated with the college.