By Spurgeon Thompson. Student evaluations can be either the most painful or falsely ego-boosting things we faculty members read. Sadly, they’re becoming more and more important as American universities veer toward private-enterprise models of educational management. Based on the concept of the customer survey, they have been taken public by a range of Web sites, most famously Rate My Professors. Now that I’ve returned from a decade teaching in Europe, where the culture around student evaluations is entirely different, it has been eye-opening, if not alarming, to witness American higher education’s shifts toward consumerist assumptions. The impulse behind this shift is understandable. We’ve all done it—written a negative review of a product we were unhappy with on Amazon, or complained about a bad experience with an airline that lost our bag or a hotel whose bedsheets weren’t changed. Read more...

By Beckie Supiano. While the average graduating senior who took out student loans leaves college with what should be a manageable level of loan debt—around $26,500—concerns about student debt are persistent and widespread. The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators took account of that broad concern and decided to convene a task force of its members to comb through research and trends, and offer recommendations for improving the student-loan system. On Wednesday the association, known as Nasfaa, released a report laying out those recommendations, which have been endorsed by its board. Read more...

By Anastasia Salter. For the past few weeks, I’ve been participating in the MIT Media Lab Learning Creative Learning “MOOC.” All the session videos are available online, including a great discussion of Making & Constructionism. I’ve enjoyed the course’s fairly active Google + community most of all, as participants share their own experiments with learning creativity (and creatively) across a broad range of backgrounds and environments. This week’s readings are inspired by some of the conversations happening throughout that course. Read more...

By Allison M. Vaillancourt. Last week I cited a management book that gave me some helpful perspectives on the insidious and even unintentional ways leaders can undermine organizational effectiveness. Knowing that academic audiences often discount items from the popular press, I expected a little electronic eye-rolling and was not disappointed. Words such as “psychobabble” and “common sense” made their way into the comment boxes, just as I knew they would. The ire of some readers was apparently increased by The Chronicle’s decision to insert a screen shot of the book’s cover, which seemed to suggest that I was reviewing the reading—or, worse, promoting it—which I most certainly was not. Read more...

By Anne Curzan. Two weeks ago I gave a talk to a group of University of Michigan at Ann Arbor undergraduates called “Txtng and the Future of English.” As a linguist who studies the history of the English language, I reassured the students that they are not ruining the English language, no matter what they hear from their parents or teachers or other trustworthy and concerned authorities. Some of the students looked gratified by this alternate perspective; others looked skeptical.
The changes in written English—and to a lesser extent spoken English—caused by texting and other electronically mediated communication (EMC) strike me as more interesting than worrisome. All living languages change, a fact that has worried people for generations. Benjamin Franklin’s distaste for the verbs colonize and notice now seems quaint. The recent rise of LOL and the verb friend seem to many less quaint.
We didn’t start talking or writing like the telegraph more than a 150 years ago, and we’re not going to start speaking or writing entirely in acronyms and other abbrevs now. Read more...

A total of 1,780 educational institutions and projects made possible through international cooperation were approved by China as of January, the Ministry of Education said Thursday.
Of the total, 775 are at the college level or above, said Zhang Xiuqin, head of the ministry's Department of International Cooperation and Exchanges, at a press conference.
"International cooperation in education still needs to be improved and the ministry will further strengthen supervision, as well as offer more guidance for education cooperation," Zhang said.
In 2012, four provinces carried out pilot programs to assess international education institutions.
China will also introduce a general mechanism to assess educational institutions that are globally recognized, Zhang said. Read more...

The World Bank Board of Directors approved a total of US$150 million in two credits to help Vietnam to support and sustain the implementation of the Higher Education Reforms Agenda, and to improve school readiness for 5 year old children.
“Improving education outcomes for the population is an important part of Vietnam’s economic and social development agenda, and has been defined as one of the three breakthrough areas in its Socio-Economic Development Strategy for 2011-2020.” said Victoria Kwakwa, the World Bank Country Director for Vietnam. “The World Bank is pleased to support the strengthening of Vietnam’s education sector to help raise Vietnam’s economic competitiveness.” Read more...

Interior Minister Evripidis Stylianidis has suggested that private entities should be allowed to invest in Greek universities.
Currently, all universities in Greece are public and any change to this would require the country’s constitution to be changed.
Stylianidis suggested that investors should be able to hold up to a 49 percent stake in universities in order create new sources of funding and ease the burden on the state.
The minister said that Greece can only afford to fund 15 of the 24 state universities in the country. Read more...

An emerging form of online education, called massive open online courses, provides access to renowned universities to people around the world. But can it improve the education of students in developing countries?
Unsatisfied with the curriculum at the University of El Salvador where he is a professor of electrical engineering, Carlos Martinez enrolled in a massive open online course - or MOOC, which when pronounced rhymes with "spook" - titled Circuits and Electronics offered by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology via the Internet to anyone interested...
Parlez-vous MOOC?
The language barrier can also pose a problem, Bates added, as younger students generally need instruction in their native language and MOOCs have not expanded far beyond English. "If the MOOCs are coming from Ivy League universities in the United States then language can be a problem," Bates said.
Interest in MOOC courses, however, is not restricted to the English-speaking world. Coursera saw that its first 1 million students came from 196 countries: 38 percent from the United States, followed by nearly 5.9 percent from Brazil, 5.2 percent from India and 4.1 percent from China. Both Coursera and edX announced in February that they would offer courses run by partner universities in languages other than English. Read more...