23 février 2013
McGill gets on MOOC bandwagon
By Karen Seidman. These massive open online courses — all the rage in education circles, with the New York Times having dubbed 2012 as The Year of the MOOC — may offer Quebec students the kind of accessibility they’ve been looking for.That is to say the courses are free, although they don’t typically offer academic credit.
McGill will join several universities around the world as a member of the edX consortium, founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
McGill will begin to offer the courses in 2014.
Professors at McGill, working closely with edX teams, will design, develop and deliver MOOCs, with initial course offerings in sciences, humanities and public policy.
MOOCs represent a fast-growing innovation in higher education. They aim to connect the learning styles and expectations of today’s university students and lifelong learners with state-of-the-art digital learning. Read more...
Gov't raises merger of teacher training
By Janet French. Just seven months into office, University of Saskatchewan president Ilene Busch-Vishniac says provincial government officials have twice questioned her about the "efficiency" of running two teacher training programs in Saskatchewan.Busch-Vishniac said she has faced questions from both the treasury board and a group of government deputy ministers about why the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Regina both need colleges of education.
One deputy minister - who the president wouldn't name - told Busch-Vishniac it was "so inefficient" to have two university education programs running in the province. Read more...
Learn a foreign language for free: top five resources
By Anne Merritt. Learning a foreign language can give your career a boost – but that doesn't mean it has to cost you. Anne Merritt outlines the five best ways to pick up a language for free. In an age of global-minded commerce, foreign language skills are becoming crucial for young professionals.
Many learners therefore invest significant sums of money in language-learning software and textbooks – and yes, they may reap great results. But you don't have to break the bank. For those with tighter budgets, there are many language study tools that cost nothing and produce the same benefits.
Though the learning may be a bit less guided than traditional resources, these materials are free, helpful for any level of language skills, and a great deal more engaging than the typical textbook. Here are five of the best... Read more.... Read more...
Time to change the way student loans are paid
By David Ellis. Paying student loans in one lump sum pushes undergraduates into debt and provides no practical experience for financial responsibility in later life, says David Ellis. Seventeen and 18 year-olds entering university this year will have changed quite a bit since Tony Blair introduced maintenance loans during his early years of government. Most are taller, for instance, and some will have stopped wetting the bed.Yet 15 years on, they’ll still be burdened by maintenance loans which, save for a paltry inflation of the figures, remain essentially the same as when they were toddlers. Read more...
University at 60? No thanks, say pensioners
By Tim Ross. Pensioners have rejected suggestions that older people should go back to university to retrain for work, after the Government suggests people will be expected to work for longer before retirement.The government has said it is important for people in their 50s and 60s to keep up to date with their skills in order to remain in employment for longer before retirement.
The state pension age will rise to 67 by 2028 and in later years will automatically increase with as people live longer.
However, Dot Gibson, general secretary of the National Pensioners Convention, dismissed the idea that older workers would want to take out government loans to cover the cost of tuition fees, which can reach £27,000 for a three year degree. Read more...
Who wants a sixtysomething graduate?
By Linda Kelsey. Doing a degree later in life can be a pleasure, but will it improve people's job prospects in the way that higher education minister David Willetts would like? At 5 o’clock yesterday evening I sharpened my pencil, filled my satchel with a ring-binder, a copy of Late Victorian Gothic Tales (Oxford World Classics series) and an A4 lined notepad, and set off for college with a smile on my face. I am 60 years old and doing a part-time undergraduate BA in Arts and Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London.
According to David Willetts, the higher education minister, I’m just the right age to go to university. As the age limit on student loans to cover tuition fees has been lifted, he thinks this is the perfect opportunity to help people like me cope with the pressure of keeping up to date, as we have no choice but to work well into our seventh decade. Read more...
A degree of good sense
By Telegraph View. With people working for longer, and jobs for life becoming a thing of the past, it makes sense for older people to return to higher education. Britain’s elderly may not be pleased to be asked by David Willetts to swap their carpet slippers for a mortar board. Yet the Universities Minister was doing no more than articulating a hard truth. As life expectancy increases, the retirement age must rise, too – otherwise the pension system will become utterly unaffordable. With people working for longer, and jobs for life becoming a thing of the past, it makes sense for those who are so inclined to brush up on their skills, or explore new challenges, by returning to higher education. Not everyone will be keen to dive back into a world of drinking games and essay crises, but some will relish the idea – and given that fewer than 2,000 new undergraduates last year were over the age of 60, out of some 550,000, there is certainly space for a few more elderly faces on the quads. Read more...Over-60s are told: go back to university and retrain
By Tim Ross. People in their sixties should go to university to retrain because they will be expected to work for longer before retirement, the Government has suggested. Older workers who take courses to keep their skills up to date will be more likely to keep their jobs, claims David Willetts, the higher education minister.Mr Willetts said the age limit on student loans to cover tuition fees had been lifted, making a degree course “great value” for older people. This would help them cope with the pressure they would face to keep up to date as they worked well into their sixties, he suggested. His comments followed a government report which found that the country’s future economic success would depend on the skills and contributions of older workers.
Campaigners for the elderly voiced doubts that prospective pensioners would be willing to commit to challenging degree courses and increased levels of debt to continue working. Read more...
Cameron's Indian signs welcome, but policy unchanged
By David Matthews. 'Change of tone' will not arrest falling student numbers, critics argue.David Cameron's positive messages to Indian students have been greeted as a sign that he may be abandoning his "neutral" position in the battle between government departments over the issue of student migration, but others have warned that student numbers from the country will continue to decline without a change in policy.
During Mr Cameron's trade mission to India this week, where he was accompanied by seven university heads, he repeatedly stressed that there was no cap on the number of Indian students who could come to the UK, and that they could work in the country after their degrees if they found graduate-level jobs.
His intervention has been seen as significant, given the tussle between the Home Office and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills over the message sent to overseas students by the government's drive to reduce net migration. Read more...
Low-cost universities fail to fill 'margin' places
By David Matthews. A key government policy designed to cut tuition fees has been labelled a failure after it emerged that nearly half the places reallocated to lower-cost universities went unfilled.Data revealing a lack of student demand for low-cost places allocated under the "core-and-margin" system also show that further education colleges had more success than universities in filling the places - running contrary to the predictions of some in higher education.
For 2012-13, higher education providers in England with an average fee of £7,500 or less were allocated 20,000 places - a so-called "margin" created by top-slicing a portion of places from institutions. The Higher Education Funding Council for England invited bids for the places and distributed them on the basis of "quality, demand and cost".
Of the 20,000 margin places, 7,000 went unfilled, according to government figures released to Shabana Mahmood, Labour's shadow universities and science minister, in answer to a written parliamentary question. Read more...
