Avec près de 12 millions de bénévoles en France dont pas moins d’un tiers de 18 et 25 ans, la question de la place du bénévolat sur le CV mérite d’être posée. Il y a quelques années encore, faire figurer ses engagements bénévoles sur son CV restait une pratique controversée. Mais avec l’avènement de la Génération Y, en quête de sens, et le développement croissant de la RSE, les mentalités ont évolué, et la question est maintenant de savoir comment valoriser au mieux cette expérience auprès des recruteurs.
Les jeunes générations, c’est un fait, sont engagées. En quête de sens nous le disions, à la recherche d’une solidarité perdue, ouvertes aux autres et au monde. Autant de valeurs que l’on retrouve dans le bénévolat que ce soit au sein d’une association à vocation culturelle, sociale, sociétale, environnementale, politique ou religieuse. Puisque les missions bénévoles permettent de progresser tant sur le plan humain, individuel, que sur le plan professionnel, il est important de bien les retranscrire dans un CV, d’en faire de réels atouts pour se démarquer. Selon l’étude 2012 de France Bénévole, 11% des bénévoles ne savent cependant pas mettre en valeur l’expérience acquise, bien que 47% l’inscrivent systématiquement dans leur CV, la considérant comme un réel atout. Suite de l'article...

En 2012, la baisse du nombre de nouveaux contrats en alternance confirme la nécessité de réformer la taxe d'apprentissage pour accroitre le nombre d'apprentis. C'est tout l'enjeu du projet de loi que présentera au second semestre 2013, le ministre en charge de la Formation et de l'Egalité professionnelle.
Près de 12 000: c'est le nombre de contrats de formation en alternance qui ont disparu entre 2011 et 2012, soit une diminution de 2,6 points. On dénombrait 433 000 apprentis en métropole fin 2012, alors que le gouvernement misait sur 800 000 apprentis à l'horizon 2015. De son côté, Thierry Repentin, le ministre délégué à la Formation professionnelle et à l’Apprentissage, se fixe toujours comme objectif d'atteindre 500 000 apprentis d'ici à 2017. Suite de l'article...

By Anna Taussig. The first major university convention of the year opens in London today. These fairs may be baffling but they are worth attending, says Anna Taussig. Sixth-formers are spoilt for choice when it comes to making decisions about their future. “There’s an amazing array of options available to Year 12 students,” says Fred Binley, head of UK student recruitment at Lancaster University.
A baffling array, in fact, which is why a visit to an education convention can prove invaluable. These events offer students the opportunity to meet representatives from universities, gap-year organisations and student finance bodies, and to start having conversations about their next steps. Read more...

By William Ham Bevan. As this year's university fairs and open days commence, William Ham Bevan explains why a "vocational degree" isn't always the best way to improve your job and salary prospects. In recent years positive headlines about graduate employment have been thin on the ground, and many university leavers now face a stiff challenge when it comes to securing a graduate-level job. But there’s still every indication that a university education will improve your career prospects. Despite the rise in tuition fees, it continues to make financial sense to invest your time and money in a degree.
The increase in earnings you can expect a degree to deliver — the “graduate premium” — is holding up well. The latest research from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says graduates earn on average 65 per cent more than their peers who have only secondary education. Other surveys, such as Futuretrack from the Higher Education Careers Services Unit (HECSU), agree graduates are maintaining a significant salary advantage. Read more...

The Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings 2013: coming soon
Ahead of their publication at 21.00 on Monday 4th March 2013 (and their formal launch at the British Council’s Going Global conference in Dubai), Times Higher Education rankings editor Phil Baty offers a sneak preview of the project.
The Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings employ the world's largest invitation-only academic opinion survey to provide the definitive list of the top 100 most powerful global university brands. A spin-off of the annual World University Rankings, the reputation league table is based on nothing more than subjective judgement - but it is the considered expert judgement of senior, published academics - the people best placed to know the most about excellence in our universities.

By David Mould. Not only do medieval travellers' tales provide students with a compelling account of history rooted in personal experience, they also promote cross-cultural understanding in the present day, argues David Mould
What can the travels of pilgrims, soldiers and merchants in the Middle Ages teach students about the conflict-ridden and interconnected world in which they live today?
Plenty, according to historians such as Michele Clouse and Jeffrey Bowman. They are among a growing number of medieval and early modern historians who make extensive use of travellers' tales in their undergraduate courses - not only to engage students, but also to make them think about how cultures and belief systems collide.
For Clouse, who teaches at Ohio University, a large public institution, the tales complement the political and military chronology of her world history survey course, a breakneck semester-long dash from early humankind to the mid-18th century. "That's five continents and roughly 5,000 years of history in 15 weeks," she says, a little wearily. Read more...

By Chris Parr. 'Grade grubbing' may be on increase as student entitlement grows in high-fees era. How often have you handed a freshly marked paper back to an expectant student only for their face to drop as they realise they have not been awarded the grade they expected? And how often has that student then pursued you to your office, teary-eyed, to plead with you to change the grade, or to add a few marks on the sly?
The process of "grade grubbing", whereby students seek to appeal the marks they have been given using unofficial channels, happens across the world. However, there has been little research into how widespread the practice is in the UK, prompting Steph Allen, a researcher studying for a doctorate at the University of Southampton's School of Education, to investigate. Read more...

David Willetts's suggestion (People over 60 should go back to higher education, 21 February) identifies only one function of education: preparing people for entering or remaining in employment. The weaknesses of his proposal are exposed by Michele Hanson (New tricks, 23 February). But his reductionist proposal also ignores that at its best education is concerned with promoting an open and critical mind, contributing to personal, intellectual and cultural development and to the potential role we can play as citizens. For many years, open-entry education for people of all ages and backgrounds was an important provision of universities, made under various guises, namely extramural education, adult education, continuing education and lifelong learning. Courses attended by students of mixed social and formal educational backgrounds addressed two kinds of educational disadvantage: vertical disadvantage, which faces those who have not had the benefits of higher education; and horizontal disadvantage, where graduates lack knowledge of a particular field because of earlier specialisation. Read more...