By Lawrence Biemiller. A new report on online education finds “noise in the data” that institutions send to the U.S. Department of Education about their offerings. While 3,311 institutions say they have online programs, the report says, the actual number is more like 1,243—in part because the definition of “online” is “overly ambiguous and broad,” and in part because an institution that has multiple campuses can count each as having online programs, even if the institution in fact has only a single online offering available to all its students. More...
16 mars 2014
There May Be Fewer Online Programs Than You Think
A Science Student Talks Her Way Onto the Model UN Team
By Beckie Supiano. As a ninth grader in her native Ethiopia, Yemi Melka had to choose between studying science and social science. Now, on a college campus in Minnesota, she has found a way to combine her interests in chemistry and international relations, including through Model UN. Read more...
Mailbag: We Answer Critiques of Our Graphic on Public Higher Education
By Jonah Newman. Two weeks ago The Chronicle published a special report on the forces that have led to the gradual decline in support for public higher education over the past three decades. Two reporters, Karin Fischer and Jack Stripling, explored the trend through the eyes of six people who have played parts in that change. This accompanying graphic shows the change in the share of higher-education costs carried by states versus students in all 50 states since the late 1980s. More...
Video: College Presidents Talk Leadership at ACE’s Annual Meeting
By . Nine college presidents sat down with Chronicle reporters here at the American Council on Education’s annual meeting to talk about leadership.
Sharing their experiences were Thomas R. Rochon of Ithaca College, John Bassett of Heritage University, Horace Mitchell of California State University at Bakersfield, John R. Kroger of Reed College, Earl H. Potter of St. Cloud State University, Diana S. Natalicio of the University of Texas at El Paso, Teresa A. Sullivan of the University of Virginia, Mary Sue Coleman of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and Ricardo Azziz of Georgia Regents University. More...
Who Knew? Arts Education Fuels the Economy
By Sunil Iyengar and Ayanna Hudson. In public-policy battles over arts education, you might hear that it is closely linked to greater academic achievement, social and civic engagement, and even job success later in life. But what about the economic value of an arts education? Here even the field’s most eloquent champions have been at a loss for words, or rather numbers.
Until now. More...
The Technologists' Siren Song
By W. Patrick McCray. In July 1969—less than two weeks after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin cavorted on the moon—The New York Review of Books published a controversial essay by John McDermott, "Technology: The Opiate of the Intellectuals." In it, McDermott, a social scientist at the State University of New York, offered a sharp rejoinder to those who viewed the Apollo 11 mission as a harbinger of ever-more-ambitious technological triumphs. The essay was in response to a report put out by Harvard University’s Program on Technology and Society, a grand interdisciplinary effort bankrolled to the tune of several million dollars by IBM. The Harvard report was sanguine, arguing, in McDermott’s words, that "technological innovation exhibits a distinct tendency to work for the general welfare in the long run."McDermott was having none of this "extravagant optimism." More...
5 Things to Know About the Proposed Gainful-Employment Rule
By Goldie Blumenstyk. Why is the Department of Education proposing a new gainful-employment rule?
Most of the original proposed rule was thrown out by a federal district court in June 2012, after the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, the main trade group of the for-profit-college industry, challenged it in a lawsuit.
A judge appointed by President Obama agreed that the department had the right to issue the regulation but said the department had been "arbitrary and capricious" in setting the thresholds for one of the three key criteria it would use to determine whether a program would lose eligibility for federal student aid. More...
Varsity councils need upgrading
By Jairam Reddy. All post-1994 ministers have had to deploy administrators to shore up troubled universities. Until recently, university councils — the highest decision-making body of universities — did not have a collective voice. But the new University Council Chairs Forum South Africa (UCCF-SA) aims to rectify this. The vision of the organisation is to promote co-operative governance and transformation of universities, within a unified co-ordinated higher education system.
Since 1994 the higher education sector has undergone fundamental transformative changes at the level of governance, funding, planning, quality assurance, growth and expansion of the system. The number of university students has increased from 495 356 in 1994 to 937 455 in 2011, and black students have increased from 43% to 80%. More...
Report: State higher education cuts fuel student debt crisis
By . A new report argues that tighter state budgets have triggered higher tuitions.
Biola Jeje, 22, graduated Brooklyn College last May with a degree in political science and a mission: Force lawmakers to address the $1.2 trillion student debt crisis.
“It’s unfair that it’s happening to us, and we’re even being sort of blamed for the amount of debt that we’re being put in,” she said from the offices of New York Students Rising, where she serves as statewide coordinator.
Jeje left college with $9,500 in student loans, less than half the $29,400 national average for four-year college graduates. She and her fellow activists are mobilizing support to march on Albany, New York state’s capital, to deliver a message to legislators. More...
Women still falling off higher education ladder
By Will Jackson and Vandy Muong. Waiting to begin a shift as a cashier at the 24-hour BBWorld restaurant on Monivong Boulevard, demure young Srun Vouchleng, wearing a white and red uniform that matched the burger joint’s decor, quietly explained how her dream of getting a university education was crushed. As is the case for so many young women in Cambodia, the social, financial and logistical challenges of completing higher eduction proved insurmountable. Vouchleng, 26, who grew up in a rice farming family in a small village in Kandal province, said she had always wanted to attend university and, after finishing high school, moved to Phnom Penh chasing her goal. More...
