By Jaime Morrison. As we learned in November, the effects of youth unemployment and unpaid internships are hitting a nerve among Canadian families. I expect we'll be hearing more about this topic over the course of the coming year.
The narrative around unpaid internships resonates closely with young people (15 to 29) who are threatened by unemployment, precarious employment or underemployment and, of greater political consequence, their parental piggy-banks. More...

By Andres Oppenheimer. Here are a few little-noticed actions that experts agree Latin American countries should take in 2015 to improve their innovation, science, technology and education systems, which are rated very poorly in international rankings and are key to their economic future.
Granted, there are other bigger steps — such as encouraging entrepreneurship, cutting red tape, combating corruption and firing underperforming teachers — that the many countries in the region needs to take to prosper in the new global economy, in which mental work is much more lucrative than manual labor. More...

By Ivan Kreilkamp. A front-runner for the year’s most regrettable literary social-media rant has emerged: Ayelet Waldman’s instant classic of dismayed pique at the non-inclusion of her novel Love and Treasure on The New York Times’s annual list of  “100 Notable Books.” More...

By Peter Halpin. It’s been said that what the New Year brings us will depend a great deal on what we bring to the New Year.  In the case of Nova Scotia’s universities, there is an abiding commitment to bringing as much as we can to improve the economic, social and cultural prosperity of our province.  A partnership between Nova Scotia’s universities and the provincial government, driven by a mutual desire to maximize the outputs of our institutions to the benefit of our province, is a paramount priority. More...

The Obama administration has taken on the admirable but tricky task of rating colleges based on real-life factors that might matter the most to working families. If they're going to scrape up the money for a four-year education, these families tend to worry foremost about how much it will cost, whether their children will graduate and get a job, and whether the new graduates will be able to pay off student loans. Less important to them might be what professors elsewhere think of a college, or how many applicants it rejects, factors that weight the rankings produced by various publications, most notably U.S. News & World Report. More...

The for-profit education industry in the U.S has become highly competitive due to increasing secular headwinds. As the job market improves, students are opting for employment over degree programs.  The value proposition of a formal college degree is declining due to increasing tuition rates and overall difficult discretionary spending environment. Headwinds such as reluctance of students to take loans, sluggish demand and an overall difficult discretionary spending environment remain. In addition, educational institutions are being monitored by the Department of Education (DoE) and are now being asked to furnish information to prospective students relating to recruitment procedures and the use of student grants. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. If you were to Start a School from Scratch….
Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano, LangWiches, 2014/12/25
I've actually thought about this question quite a bit. New Brunswick has legislation that makes it comparatively easy to start colleges and even universities, so I've idly scoped out all the buildings in the city, pondering amenities and sitelines, and thinking about the possibilities. More...