Engagement bénévole: un plus pour votre CV

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...

La réforme de la taxe d'apprentissage sera présentée au second semestre 2013

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...

How to survive university fairs

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...
Which degree? How to make your degree work for you

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.
Time and motion studies

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...
Brick nations' strengths are unevenly distributed, says report

Soaring research spending, output and innovation in several of the so-called Brick countries does not always capitalise on those nations' strongest areas of research, a report suggests.
The report, Building Bricks: Exploring the Global Research and Innovation Impact of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Korea, published last week by Thomson Reuters, details sharp rises in spending on research and development in the giant emerging economies.
China, for instance, has nearly tripled its research spending as a proportion of gross domestic product since 1996 even as its GDP was growing rapidly. Similarly, South Korea is currently investing a higher proportion of its GDP in R&D than is Germany. Read more...
Portugal's blurred binary line needs redrafting

Improved coordination between Portugal's universities and polytechnics is needed to improve the country's higher education system, a study advises.
A report by the European University Association, titled Portuguese Higher Education: A View from the Outside, highlights the country's "confused" binary system of higher and vocational education providers as a key concern. Read more...
Please Professor, I want some more

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...
Education about much more than employability
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...