News Items from the Week of July 22, 2016

International

Saudi Enrollment Declines | Colleges have come to count on tuition from large numbers of Saudi Arabian students. After years of rapid growth, enrollments are declining on many campuses, in some cases precipitously.

Dorothy Bishop: the costs of the teaching excellence framework | The TEF will divide universities into ‘institutional sheep and goats’ and then starve the goats, writes Dorothy Bishop on the eve of the HE Bill’s second reading.

‘Unprecedented’ Purge in Turkey | Turkey’s Higher Education Council reportedly demanded the resignation of 1,577 university deans on Tuesday as the widespread purges of state institutions begun after last week’s failed coup extended into the education sector. In addition, more than 15,000 education ministry officials were suspended and 21,000 schoolteachers had their licenses revoked.

Higher Education: How reservation helps the disadvantaged | As many as 26% male and 35% female students from India’s most disadvantaged castes and tribes in 245 engineering colleges would not be there without reservation, according to a new study that says affirmative action policy in higher education works largely as intended.

NZ’s high education rates are not matched in productivity stakes | OPINION: New Zealanders are well educated. New Zealand ranks third in the world among developed nations for tertiary education – more than a quarter of our citizens have a bachelor’s degree or higher. Are we getting value out of this?

Let’s not wait for student housing to become a crisis, says Blade Nzimande | STUDENTS in SA need to speak out on “what needs to rise” and “not just what must fall”, Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande said on Thursday, as the country continues to grapple with solving students’ financial problems.

Which Ed-Tech Tools Truly Work? New Project Aims to Tell Why No One Seems Eager to Find Out | Jefferson Education, an incubator affiliated with the University of Virginia, has enlisted more than 100 educators, entrepreneurs, and experts to examine why neither companies nor their customers tend to rigorously evaluate their products. (Subscription required)

U.S. National

The job nobody can seem to keep: college president | When Temple University hired Neil Theobald as its president in 2013, some at the Philadelphia institution with 37,000 students described his selection as a harbinger of things to come in higher education.

How Colleges Are Keeping Up With Business Changes | Different strategies take stage at the National Association of College and University Business Officers’ annual meeting.

Foundations and Political Influence | Author of new book on foundations describes how Gates has used venture philanthropy, measurable goals and a close relationship with the Obama administration to influence policy, and says Gates’s approach may be shifting in promising ways.

Liberal arts or business education? Both, deans say. | Two deans argue that higher education has become overly split, with students feeling they must choose either a practical, financial path, or a traditional liberal arts education.

Barnes & Noble Education, Instructure form new partnership | A leading operator of campus bookstores and a top software-as-a-service technology company have teamed up to provide student data analytics.

Investing in Higher Education: Benefits, Challenges, and the State of Student Debt (Report, 78 pages) | New data offer insights into the recent trends in student borrowing and repayment outcomes that build on our understanding of the overall health of the student loan portfolio, highlight areas of the student loan portfolio where Americans have benefitted from the Administration’s efforts thus far, and identify key areas where there is still work to be done.

U.S. States

Long Beach’s Eloy Oakley named chancellor of California Community Colleges | Eloy Ortiz Oakley, president of Long Beach Community College District since 2007, will serve as the next chancellor of the California Community College’s 113-school system.

Institutional

With upheaval at the top, Temple faces leadership crisis | In the span of two weeks, its president fired its provost, and its board of trustees, in turn, took a vote of no confidence in the president and announced its intention to fire him.

Guest opinion: UM suffers from lack of good leadership | The University of Montana has suffered tremendously from five painful years of bad publicity, the loss of several thousand students, the accompanying loss of millions of dollars in revenue, and devastating cuts that have gutted its budget and curriculum. Meanwhile, the UM president and the commissioner of higher education have failed to address the unfolding crisis.

Portland State University Views Diversity Efforts Through Eyes of Marginalized | When administrators at Portland State University (PSU) recently embarked on its ambitious four-year strategic plan, they decided to implement an innovative component called the Equity Lens, an intentional effort aimed at analyzing the plan through the lens of race and ethnicity and through the prism of the lived experiences of marginalized communities.

UOG accredited for 8 more years | The University of Guam marked a new milestone with the granting of another eight years of accreditation from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC).

Why a College Should Teach Its Own History | For the past six years, I’ve taught a course at Cornell University on the institution’s history and its role in the context of higher education in America.

Do Colleges Need to Be Need Blind? | Some maintain that they can drop the policy and preserve access, but those who have gone need blind have seen gains in student diversity.

Why Small Liberal Arts Colleges Should Embrace Diversity | Smaller, largely historically White colleges got a wake-up call when they found their easygoing, liberal-minded students lined up chanting “Black Lives Matter” and vehemently demanding inclusion and justice for all.