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13 avril 2013

Margaret Thatcher’s Legacy Divides British Higher Education

http://chronicle.com/img/photos/biz/icons/worldwise-nameplate.gifBy Thomas Docherty. Often after someone dies who had significant influence over our lives, there is an argument over his or her legacy. In the case of Margaret Thatcher, rarely has the debate been more divisive—and higher education is not immune. Among university colleagues there is argument not just about what her legacy actually is, but about whether professors need to do more to actively reject its influence, which continues to help guide education policy today. Admirers will point to the obvious physical manifestation of her legacy: the University of Buckingham, Britain’s first private university, which opened while Thatcher was minister for education in 1976, and where she served as chancellor for a period starting in 1992. Buckingham’s current vice chancellor, Terence Kealey, praises Thatcher for introducing the sector “to greater accountability and to market forces.” Read more...
13 avril 2013

How Many Hands Are Required?

http://chronicle.com/img/photos/biz/icons/lingua-franca-nameplate.pngBy Anne Curzan. I have had an inkling for a while now that as a copy editor, I have been enforcing a rule that might not be justified. This post is part confession, part apology to all the authors whose prose I have changed without good cause, and part contemplation on prescriptivism.
For most of my editing life (including nine years as the co-editor of the Journal of English Linguistics), I have had a thing about on the other hand when it does not follow on the one hand. I have had it in my head for all these years that this is one of those points of usage that irks style guide writers and other copy editors. Therefore, as a responsible copy editor, I must enforce the pairing of on the one hand and on the other hand so that authors’ prose will not be judged as being stylistically maladroit—and so that the journal, for example, will not be seen as having lax editorial standards. Read more...
13 avril 2013

The University Will Not Be Sold

http://chronicle.com/img/photos/biz/icons/the-conversation-newheader.pngBy Belinda Edmondson and Beryl Satter. Public universities are not corporations. They are not sports franchises. They are not dysfunctional families in which the powerful can abuse the less powerful by enforcing silence. As faculty members, we were deeply dismayed to learn that some Rutgers University administrators had known for months about Mike Rice Jr. and his assistant coach’s physical and verbal abuse of student athletes, yet remained silent. Homophobic slurs and physical abuse teach students a deformed version of athletic masculinity.
We were equally dismayed by the institutional implications of this culture of abuse. The corporate vision of Rutgers’s president, Robert L. Barchi, and his associates centralizes sports branding as an income-generating strategy, clearly at the expense of our student athletes and potentially at the expense of academic excellence. Read more...
13 avril 2013

Why STEM Should Care About the Humanities

http://chronicle.com/img/photos/biz/icons/the-conversation-newheader.pngBy Kira Hamman. One need not look far these days to find people skeptical (at best) about the value of higher education. Most of these people particularly question the value of a liberal-arts education, which they view as outdated and elitist. Claiming economic pragmatism, they seek the curtailment or even outright elimination of arts and humanities programs. Liberal arts, they say, are a luxury we can no longer afford, because students who study the liberal arts do not develop the skills they need to succeed in the workplace. This is an absurd and entirely unsubstantiated claim that I will not bother to debunk here (for an excellent takedown of this position, see Brian Rosenberg’s January 30 article in the Huffington Post). Still, absurd though it is, those of us in the sciences may think to let the humanities fight their own corner. What does this have to do with us? we may well ask. Read more...
13 avril 2013

Coursera Takes a Nuanced View of MOOC Dropout Rates

http://chronicle.com/img/photos/biz/icons/wired-campus-nameplate.gifBy Steve Kolowich. Massive open online courses have gained renown among academics for their impressive enrollment figures and, conversely, their unimpressive completion rates. What accounts for the high attrition in MOOCs, and what does it mean? Coursera and data researchers at several partner universities of the MOOC provider have begun trying to answer those questions by learning more about why students wash out of MOOCs—and what instructors and course designers could do to stem the tide.
Some of that research was on display over the weekend at Coursera’s first-ever partners’ conference, where MOOC professors, instructional designers, and various invited guests spent two days talking shop. Read more...

13 avril 2013

California State U. System Will Expand MOOC Experiment

http://chronicle.com/img/photos/biz/icons/wired-campus-nameplate.gifBy Steve Kolowich. San Jose State University plans to widen its relationship with edX, the nonprofit provider of massive open online courses, and the California State University system is encouraging similar experiments on 11 other campuses.
The moves were announced on Wednesday, just two semesters after San Jose State began a pilot project with edX to improve teaching and learning in its own classrooms. The university will incorporate three to five new edX courses into its local curriculum next fall, including courses in the humanities and social sciences. San Jose State last fall used material from an edX course, “Circuits & Electronics,” as part of a “flipped classroom” experiment in its own introductory course in electrical engineering. Read more...

13 avril 2013

Ga. Language School Is Accused of Bringing in Prostitutes on Student Visas

http://chronicle.com/img/photos/biz/icons/the-ticker-nameplate.gifBy Nick DeSantis. A federal grand jury has indicted the leaders of an English-language school in Duluth, Ga., on charges of immigration fraud for allegedly using student visas to bring in prostitutes for work at local Korean bars. Dong Seok Yi, chief executive of College Prep Academy, is accused of enrolling female immigrants knowing that they would not attend classes at his institution. Prosecutors said his academy had issued fraudulent federal documents that allowed the immigrants to remain in the United States. Read more...
13 avril 2013

Enrollment Management Must Build for the Future, Experts Say

http://chronicle.com/img/photos/biz/icons/headcount-newnameplate.gifBy Beckie Supiano. Enrollment management has become more challenging and more important in the wake of the recession and as colleges stand on the precipice of sweeping demographic change. That’s what Don Hossler and David H. Kalsbeek argue in an update to an essay on enrollment management they wrote five years ago.
The original essay traced the rise of strategic enrollment management, or SEM. Mr. Hossler, a professor of educational leadership and policy studies at Indiana University at Bloomington, and Mr. Kalsbeek, senior vice president for enrollment management and marketing at DePaul University, wrote about how enrollment managers use their expanding portfolios to balance their colleges’ competing priorities. Read more...

13 avril 2013

Text Messages Can Increase Enrollment of Low-Income Students

http://chronicle.com/img/photos/biz/icons/headcount-newnameplate.gifBy Beckie Supiano. Admissions offices have fought for years against what they call the “summer melt,” in which a fraction of a college’s admitted students who have sent in deposits never show up to enroll. In some cases, students’ plans change because they have been admitted off the wait list at a top choice. But melt can also mean something quite different, especially among lower-income students. Such students are more likely to melt, and studies conducted in several locations around the United States have shown that around 20 percent of low-income students who are admitted to and are set to attend a four-year college do not enroll anywhere. Read more...

13 avril 2013

Proposed Student-Loan Reforms Set Activists and Lawmakers at Odds

http://chronicle.com/img/photos/biz/icons/bottom-line-header.pngBy Allie Bidwell. TWith interest rates on federal student loans set to double this summer, student-advocacy groups have intensified their calls for Congress to find a way to avoid the increase, and lawmakers are scrambling to pass legislation that would overhaul the student-loan system.
President Obama’s loan-reform proposal, which he released on Wednesday as part of his budget for the 2014 fiscal year, suggests switching to a market-based rate, in which interest rates would be set annually and fixed for the duration of each loan. But some experts say that the options being laid out, including the president’s proposal, will provide only short-term relief for borrowers, and that allowing the rates to double may be a better option in the long run. Read more...
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