Vallaud-Belkacem, the first woman appointed to the post, replaces Benoît Hamon, who was minister for only five months. Read more...
31 août 2014
New minister for higher education and research
Vallaud-Belkacem, the first woman appointed to the post, replaces Benoît Hamon, who was minister for only five months. Read more...
Battle over four-year degrees hits IITs and privates
Higher education regulatory and funding body the University Grants Commission, or UGC, ignited a new controversy just weeks after forcing Delhi University to abandon four-year degrees. Read more...
Research postgraduates to pay for the privilege
Under the new scheme, planned to be adopted in 2016, postgraduates undertaking research degrees would be charged up to A$3,900 (US$3,600) a year. At the same time, Pyne wants to cut A$175 million from the government’s research training scheme which enables universities to enrol research students without them having to pay fees. Read more...
Federal government introduces radical reform bill
UNE shuts down its loss-making MOOCs
By Tim Dodd. The University of New England (UNE) has shut down its pioneering experiment with massive open online courses (MOOCs) because it could not make it pay. The university’s new vice-chancellor, Annabelle Duncan, said it was questionable whether the pay-for service model which UNE had tried would work for a small university. More...
Generation Later, Poor Are Still Rare at Elite Colleges
By Richard PÉREZ-PEÑA. As the shaded quadrangles of the nation’s elite campuses stir to life for the start of the academic year, they remain bastions of privilege. Amid promises to admit more poor students, top colleges educate roughly the same percentage of them as they did a generation ago. This is despite the fact that there are many high school seniors from low-income homes with top grades and scores: twice the percentage in the general population as at elite colleges.
A series of federal surveys of selective colleges found virtually no change from the 1990s to 2012 in enrollment of students who are less well off — less than 15 percent by some measures — even though there was a huge increase over that time in the number of such students going to college. Read more...
Ten Steps to Using Twitter in the College Classroom
By Jason A. Llorenz. Like all college and university faculty, August means finalizing fall syllabi and lesson plans, and pre-reading articles for fall courses. For many professors, this process includes thinking (or rethinking) on how to leverage social media to engage students in the semester's learnings. More...
How to Game the College Rankings
. Northeastern University executed one of the most dramatic turnarounds in higher education. Its recipe for success? A single-minded focus on just one list.
From the start, schools have argued that the rankings are subjective. Defenders of the rankings maintain that the system exposes students to more schools and helps the consumer compare products. Regardless, students, graduate schools, and employers have embraced the list, giving it unprecedented power. An unintended result, however, is that schools need to spend more to stay competitive in the categories that U.S. News considers important. Universities may be in the business of education, but it’s a competitive business in which all compete for students and revenue. With an arms race to the top, higher education has soared out of reach for an increasing number of Americans. NU tuition alone in 1989 was $9,500; today it’s $42,534. More...
Victoria University taps analytics to provide blended learning
By Shahida Sweeney. University fast-tracks investments in data analytics to tailor programs for students.
Victoria University (VU) has gone live with an integrated learning platform that uses data analytics and mobile apps to help design, deliver and manage anywhere, anytime learning programs for more than 40,000 students.
This blended learning strategy replaces an antiquated learning management system, said VU’s associate director of blended learning, Dr Lisa Germany. More...
How to educate Americans for jobs? Ask the Germans, employers urge
By . Two years. That’s how long it takes William Lankin’s fast-growing electrical contracting company to teach new hires with four-year university degrees the tricks of the trade.
These college grads “have learned the book stuff, but they don’t have real-world experience,” said Lankin, vice president of Industrial Electric. “They don’t know how to work with other people, or subcontractors — how to actually do business.”
Bringing them up to speed while paying them a salary is time-consuming and expensive, and even then there’s no guarantee that they’ll be good enough to keep. More...
