15 décembre 2012

By Karin A. Wurst. The recent conversations on the future of the humanities degree -- most prominently at the Annual Convention of the Modern Language Association by its then-president, Russell Berman -- are encouraging steps in addressing the challenges. The position paper that Berman helped write outlines some meaningful first steps to address the time-to-degree issue, for example, that will need to be a driver for change. The recent article “The 5-Year Humanities Ph.D.” on Inside Higher Ed reiterates Stanford’s desire to continue fostering the debate with an emphasis on shortening time to degree for humanities Ph.D.s.
The current contribution seeks to expand the conversation and offer some concrete ideas for desirable changes beyond the time-to-degree issue. In particular, some funding changes -- coupled with restructuring programs so that the summers are utilized better and students have an expectation of an impactful year-around engagement -- need to take place. In addition, in order to open more avenues for employment, we may have to provide a similar co-curriculum as we do on the undergraduate level, one that produces T-shaped Ph.D.s aware and confident not only of their disciplinary depth, but also of their broader transferable skill set. Read more...

By Matt Reed. “Lose the do-rag.”
A dozen or so years ago, I actually had to say that to a student who was on his way to a job interview. It simply hadn’t occurred to him that wearing a “do-rag” (a bandana over his hair) would be a problem. (Now, faculty tell me, similar conversations occur with young women who favor bare midriffs.)
That didn’t happen at Williams. There, most of the students arrived with the informal folkways of the professional class already at hand, and those who didn’t, picked them up quickly.  We knew that you didn’t go to an interview in a t-shirt, or unshaven.  We knew about the handshake, the small talk, and the rule about showing up 10 minutes early.  We didn’t necessarily know how to write resumes, but we knew that they existed, that they mattered, and that we could get help from career services. Read more...

I read something recently that said, “By acting as if grading motivates learning, we put both student and faculty energies in the wrong place.” Grades are supposed to assess learning, not be the goal. Students too often see the grade as the thing they go to class for, when they are supposed to go for learning and practice. And it’s the professors’ faults because we hold grades over their heads.
Or is it the professors’ faults?
I wrote this in class. I sometimes use Sondra Perl’s composing guidelines as a pre-writing activity. Many a Chronicle blog post has arisen out of class time with Perl’s guidelines. About five steps in with this one, I looked up and saw about four students studying for another class and at least one sleeping (or close enough to it). Read more...

By William G. Moseley. Study abroad can be a powerful experience for many students. A student’s trip overseas can be one of those transformative educational periods after which a young person will never look at the world the same way again. Yet many students, faculty members, and college administrators don’t take this education as seriously as they should.
Let’s be frank, some students view study abroad as a vacation or at least a time when normal academic standards ought to be relaxed. But as an instructor and director on two different study-abroad programs for undergraduates in South Africa and Botswana, I have sought to expose participants to new cultures and provide academically rigorous courses. Read more...

By Hilary Layton. Three years ago I had doubts about using the word “internationalization” in my formal job title. I wasn’t sure that the word was being used commonly enough. Now, of course, the word appears everywhere in higher education—and directors and vice presidents of internationalization are popping up at universities all over the world.
How we go about internationalizing higher education, however, is a question that draws some interesting distinctions, notwithstanding our shared vocabulary. In conversation with colleagues from the United States, China, Australia, and other European countries, I find many common ideas. But I’m also conscious of some significant differences between nations.
In many European countries, where university tends to be publicly financed and some degrees take a long time to complete because there is far less pressure to finish them, the strongest international facets seem to be synchronizing countries’ university-degree systems and internationalizing the curriculum. In Asia, the focus is strongly on bringing in foreign students and sending Chinese students overseas, and the recruitment of foreign faculty. In the United States, I am struck that universities are so focused on study abroad (not usually in the form of an exchange with another country) and the establishment of high-profile branch campuses. Meanwhile, in Britain, our international focus for a long time centered on the recruitment of overseas students and is now increasingly turning to business and research links. Read more...

By Lee Gardner. It isn’t news that the recession hit higher education hard, but a new report from the Delta Cost Project presents data about key shifts from 2007 to 2010 that the report says have “ushered in a new era in higher-education finance.”
The report is one of a series of annual updates released by the Delta Cost Project, an arm of the American Institutes for Research, a nonpartisan research and advocacy organization. Titled “College Spending in a Turbulent Decade,” the latest report affirms many familiar findings—reduced government support, cutbacks at colleges, and more of the cost of an education being borne by students in the form of tuition.
The report also includes a number of telling findings based on data from the 2010 fiscal year, the most recent available. Read more...

By Marc Parry. Earlier this month, one of Britain’s top newspapers noticed a glaring absence on the British education scene: MOOC’s. “U.K. universities are wary of getting on board the MOOC train,” read The Guardian’s headline. Two institutions, the Universities of Edinburgh and London, have recently signed on to offer massive open online courses via the American company Coursera. Yet in Britain, said the newspaper, “there is scarcely a whiff of the evangelism and excitement bubbling away in America, where venture capitalists and leading universities are ploughing millions” into MOOC’s. Read more...

By Katrina Trinko. Instead of increasing financial aid, two states are decreasing college tuition.As college costs rise rapidly in most places, Texas and Florida are trying to implement something that has become a radical notion: a degree that costs only $10,000.
Texas governor Rick Perry announced this goal for his state last year. (Perry was inspired by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who had remarked that online learning ought to make it possible for students to pay just $2,000 per year for college.) In November, Florida governor Rick Scott announced that he, too, wanted to see state colleges offer bachelor’s degrees for $10,000 or less. In Texas, ten colleges have signed on (some of them working together in a partnership), while in Florida, twelve colleges — nearly half of the 23 four-year colleges in the Florida community-college system, which includes both two-year and four-year institutions — either have developed proposals or are in the process of doing so.
Considering that the nation’s public colleges cost $13,000 per year on average for tuition, room, and board, while private colleges cost an average of $32,000 a year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics’ 2010–11 academic-year numbers, Texas and Florida colleges have their work cut out for them. But there is plenty of demand for cheaper degrees: Some 57 percent of Americans think students are not getting enough value for the money they spend, according to a May Pew Research Center survey. Read more...

Par FmR. 2012 a été un excellent millésime pour les CV originaux. Les jeunes chercheurs d'emploi ont déployé des trésors d'imagination pour se démarquer avec des candidatures très originales. De nouvelles manières de rechercher un emploi qui ne paient pas toujours, mais qui ont au moins le mérite de faire parler, en bien ou en mal.
C'est le moment de faire le bilan avec ce florilège (subjectif) des meilleurs CV originaux de l'année 2012. CV vidéo en chanson, CV qui envoie du pâté, CV animé, à plier, à scroller... Il y en a pour tous les goûts. Suite de l'article...

Geneviève Fioraso, la ministre de l'Enseignement supérieur, a saisi la justice afin qu'elle examine une éventuelle "utilisation abusive de l'appellation université", suite à l'ouverture d'une antenne dans le Var de l'Université Fernando Pessoa, qui permet aux étudiants de contourner le numerus clausus.
Après la polémique, l'ouverture d'une université portugaise privée dans le Var prend une tournure juridique, un mois seulement après son ouverture. Les services de Geneviève Fioraso, la ministre de l'Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche, viennent en effet de décider de porter plainte contre l'établissement, qui s'est installé à La Garde, près de Toulon. La raison de cette décision: l'emploi du mot "université". Suite de l'article...