Amérique

University of Toronto targets non-traditional university students

The real reason this student got into every Ivy League school (and it’s not just grades)

By Dave McGinn. He’s the 17-year-old high-school student from Long Island, N.Y., who pulled off the feat of getting in to all eight Ivy League colleges – Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton and Yale. More...

Can International Students Save U.S. Public Schools?

By Elizabeth Weiss. On a frigid Thursday evening in February, more than two hundred and fifty residents of Valparaiso, Indiana, gathered for a school-board meeting in the cafeteria of Benjamin Franklin Middle School. The meeting was supposed to be about the search for a new superintendent, but many of the attendees had another purpose: to protest the school board’s preliminary approval of a proposal by a private company, Lumenus USA, to enroll up to thirty tuition-paying foreign students at the public high school. More...

How Businesses Use Your SATs

By Shaila Dewan. THE news about the SAT has been confusing lately. On one hand, so many colleges and universities have opted not to require it that the College Board, which administers the SAT, has announced a top-to-bottom revamp because the test is out of step with today’s academic expectations. On the other hand, many employers are still asking job applicants for their test scores, even if they are years out of date. More...

11 ways the provincial budget will affect you

Thursday’s provincial budget has something for everyone, from preschoolers, who will soon be offered a full day of school when they enter Kindergarten, to university students, who will get a major break on their finances, to seniors, who will get a modest increase in their disposable income.
Parents, young families
If you’re a parent with young children – or are planning to have some – the budget is aimed at you. Full-day Kindergarten, something the government has studied in the past but until now has resisted, will launch in September 2016. More...

Universities spend big to find top job candidates

By Jerome R. Stockfisch. It’s common in the private sector for a major company to turn to an executive search firm when it’s time to fill a high-profile vacancy.
In what is now the big-money world of academia and college athletics, school administrators are turning to outside firms to nab top talent, too.
With millions of dollars at stake – not necessarily in corporate profits, but ticket sales, TV contracts, research dollars and alumni support – local universities are borrowing the corporate model and have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars recently filling corner offices. More...

To Reach the New Market for Education, Colleges Have Some Learning to Do

By Jeffrey Selingo. A few weeks ago, I moderated a panel discussion at the South by Southwest education conference, in Austin, Tex. Known as SXSWedu, the gathering is in only its fourth year and already draws some 6,500 entrepreneurs, educators, investors, and policy makers, easily surpassing the attendance at many of the annual meetings held by the various higher-education associations.
Many of the education providers who showed up in Austin were relatively new players in the field. They don’t yet have the brand names of traditional colleges that have built their reputation over generations by offering degrees and certificates through the factory-model, one-size-fits-all delivery method of modern higher education. Read more...

Honoree: The Extended Campuses of Northern Arizona University

By Marcia Layton Turner. For years, The Extended Campuses of Northern Arizona University used a traditional marketing model. The four-person marketing team would create an annual budget and tie its goals and specific projects to it. Freelancers and local advertising agencies provided support for the 50 or so marketing pieces produced throughout the year.
That model worked fine until around 2010, says Ann Marie deWees, director of strategic marketing. “Then things began to change with increasing digital expectations.” More...

Bid for savings: Reverse auctions

By Kylie Lacey. Real-time reverse auction events are helping institutions save on purchases—and making the procurement office an exciting place to be.
Seconds tick by. Vendors submit bid after bid in real time, battling it out to win the business of the campus procurement office. The opposite of eBay, this reverse auction format results in the price going down with each bid. More...

Exploring help desk outsourcing as 24/7-support option

By Elizabeth Millard. The IT department at Widener University in Chester, Pa., was at a crisis point. Unexpected IT staff turnover and high demand for more technology resources intersected, leaving the university grappling with how to provide help desk support. The school had walk-in centers that were open into the evenings, but overall, coverage wasn’t keeping up with demand. Read more...