By Courtney Sloane (NTEU National Office). The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) is hosting a forum tomorrow night that will explore the impacts of deregulating the Australian higher education sector, and alternative visions for reform.
The forum will hear from Professor Glyn Davis, Vice Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, and Adam Bandt, Federal Member for Melbourne. Audience members will be invited to participate in the discussion.
NTEU National President, and chair of tomorrow’s forum, Jeannie Rea, said that it was important to fully explore all options before leaping straight into reform.
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By Jen T. Kwok (NTEU National Office). After its original publication in the Chronicle of Higher Education, this piece was recently republished on Professor John Quiggin's
blog. We thank him for the opportunity to share it further.
Every year,
U.S. News & World Report, Times Higher Education,and othersupdate university rankings. Reactions are paradoxical. On the one hand, university administrators and faculty members scan the lists for evidence of small movements up or down. On the other hand, everyone knows that the top 10, or 20, or 50 names will be much the same as they have always been. The Duke sociologist Kieran Healy
points to a four-tier classification of leading universities made in 1911, and compares it to the most recent
U.S. News ranking. Of the top 20 universities in the ranking today, 16 were in the top class in 1911, one (Notre Dame) was in the second class, and three (Duke, Rice, and Caltech) had not yet been established under their current names.
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In preparation for the IAU Global Meeting of Associations 6, this issue - IAU Horizons, 21, 1 - offers reports on IAU priority areas, new projects and initiatives, especially LGEU, and upcoming events and conferences.
By Gilles Breton. Universities, Citizenship and Democracy
When listening to what is being said and reading what is being published, one comes to wonder if universities can be considered in terms other than, for example, the merchandizing (marketization) of higher education, the international rankings – 500 of 17,000 need we recall -, the contribution of universities to economic activity and to competitiveness, tuition fees and underfunding. If this type of discourse, with an economic and financial consonance, is hegemonic, fortunately, it is not unique. This is what rapidly comes to mind after reading the book entitled Reimagining Democratic Societies: a new era of personal and social responsibility.* Finally a puff of fresh air! Finally a work which demonstrates that if universities can obviously be considered as key economic players in the knowledge economy and in training the labour force, they can also contribute to the renovation and even the re-imagining of democracy in our societies. Download IAU Horizons, 21, 1.
In preparation for the IAU Global Meeting of Associations 6, this issue - IAU Horizons, 21, 1 - offers reports on IAU priority areas, new projects and initiatives, especially LGEU, and upcoming events and conferences.
By Catherine A. Odora Hoppers. Rethinking Social Innovations in Practice- the Case of the DST/NRF SARChI Chair in Development Education
Since its inception, higher education in sub-Saharan Africa has made significant strides, but also faced major challenges in particular in knowledge production paradigms, and developing methodologies to rethink thinking itself. To some, the solution to the crisis lies in Africanisation as part of a radical visioning of the university. To others, the solution is in reform of existing institutions. The Chair combines both theories and takes it further. It sees beyond the regulatory rules, to the social, legal and ethical innovative reforms of the constitutive rules governing the university as offering the best way out of the current crisis. Download IAU Horizons, 21, 1.
In preparation for the IAU Global Meeting of Associations 6, this issue - IAU Horizons, 21, 1 - offers reports on IAU priority areas, new projects and initiatives, especially LGEU, and upcoming events and conferences.
By Bernard Hugonnier. For social and corporate excellence
A large number of educational establishments now have the ambition to be part of the higher education institutions, which are recognized as ”excellent” in their country and the world. But what does this mean? For example, is it a question of recruiting the best professors and of selecting the best students? of offering the best courses? of developing the best research? of obtaining the best results in exams? of better preparing students to quickly get a job after graduation? or of facilitating the success of the largest number?
For the time being, we increasingly witness the development of a kind of ‘elitist excellence’ consisting in:
1. For the students: a strong selection at the entry, a highlevel competition between them, important personal work, a very dynamic system aiming at assessing knowledge, strict monitoring of attendance, a strong participation of the students during courses, a certain international mobility (often an academic year spent abroad).
2. For the professors-researchers: a selection of the ‘best’ on the basis of their research work or of their professional functions, an important obligation to publish, a fixedterm contract with an obligation of show ‘results’ (usually translated in terms of number of publications), a strong competition between them, an external evaluation based on bibliometrics and scientometrics. Download IAU Horizons, 21, 1.
