By Melonie Fullick. Howard Rheingold, the longtime Internet commentator and UC Berkeley lecturer, uses the term “crap detection” to describe the process of determining whether online information is credible or not. What Rheingold calls “crap detection” is also known as information literacy, and in my case it was acquired partly through a degree in communication studies with an emphasis on analysing mainstream media coverage. I thought of Rheingold’s ideas, and my own mass comms background, the other day when I came across an article by Douglas Todd from the Vancouver Sun titled “The pros and cons of foreign students.” This article is taking on what is currently a hot topic in Canadian higher education. Read more...

By Jean-François Venne. Editorial team forced to scramble when an article about Aboriginal experiments sparks a media frenzy. When historian Ian Mosby submitted an article to the editors of the journal Histoire sociale/Social History, none of them suspected that it would create a media frenzy. A sizeable management challenge awaited them.
It was no wonder that the subject matter caught the media’s attention. In his article, Dr. Mosby, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Guelph, revealed that between 1942 and 1952, some of Canada’s leading nutrition experts, in conjunction with various federal departments, conducted experiments on Aboriginals in native communities and residential schools without their consent or that of their parents. Some children’s milk rations were cut in half for two years, while others were deprived of vitamin B1, iron and iodine, in addition to having their dental care suspended. More...

By Tim Goral. Saying “We've got a crisis in terms of college affordability,” President Obama outlined a three part proposal to reign in the cost of higher education before a capacity crowd at the University at Buffalo Thursday. The appearance was the first of the president’s two-day bus tour through New York and Pennsylvania designed to call attention to high education costs.
“We can’t go about business as usual,” Obama said. "Our economy can't afford the trillion dollars in outstanding student loan debt.”
The centerpiece of the proposal rests on tying financial aid to college performance, based on a new college rating system, before the 2015 school year. Higher-rated schools would qualify for larger federal grants, making them more affordable. More...

By Karine Joly. In higher education, we love, hate, and thrive on college rankings. The annual U.S. News and World Report top colleges list—as well as rankings by other news organizations—is anticipated with excitement and trepidation. When it comes to the numbers game of college admissions, it’s important to secure a spot near the top of these lists. Improving your institution’s rank means an automatic increase in general visibility. It also often results in a better chance to convert more college-bound high school students into serious prospects and highly motivated applicants. More...

By Jeff Amy. As they present their annual request for capital spending, leaders of Mississippi’s eight public universities say they’re pleased with the Legislature’s pledge to borrow $100 million a year to cover the schools’ needs. The College Board adopted the plan at its meeting last week. Each institution adopted 10 top priorities, an amount totaling $634.4 million across the system. Top priorities range from another $30.5 million to pay for the new medical school building at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson to $300,000 to upgrade sprinklers at the Cedar Brook Apartments at the University of Southern Mississippi. Higher Education Commissioner Hank Bounds said the board knows lawmakers won’t contribute the amount needed to cover the total request. However, he said the future map for capital spending laid out in the 2013 bond bill is enough to sustain the universities. More...

By Cathy Sandeen. In my former role as a dean at the University of California Los Angeles, I helped thousands of typical American college students gain the knowledge and skills needed to become informed, engaged citizens and progress in their chosen careers. But as the dean of UCLA Extension, these "typical" students were a diverse group of nontraditional learners searching for ways to earn postsecondary degrees and credentials, often while juggling family responsibilities and jobs that meant frequent stops and re-starts for their postsecondary experience -- very different from the first-time college students attending UCLA straight out of high school but representative of the current face of American higher education. More...

By Emily Deruy. President Barack Obama on Thursday called for sweeping higher-education reforms that aim to make college more affordable. The president proposed changing the way colleges get federal aid, encouraging institutions to use technology and online learning to make courses more accessible, and capping loan repayment plans depending on how much graduates earn. Rising tuition costs have far outpaced income gains in the past several decades and forced more students than ever to take out loans to pay for college. That’s delayed things like saving for retirement, and even buying a home and getting married for many young people.
“Higher education is the single best investment you can make in your future,” he told students at the University at Buffalo, during the start of a two-day bus tour on college affordability. But students today are saddled with a choice previous generations didn’t have to make, he continued, the choice between saying no to college or saying yes and accepting the burden of debt. More...

By Kaitlin Gallagher. As a lab citizen, you may be responsible for supervising undergraduate senior/honors thesis projects. With all of your other work that needs to be done, this can seem like an extra burden—another project to work on with a student  you think you’ll have to micromanage because you are unsure of how well of a job they can do with their limited (no) laboratory experience. As the supervisor of an undergraduate student, your role is not only to ensure that the student does the study properly, but also to teach the student about general research practices, scientific rigour, independence, and critical thinking. When first starting out, it’s easy to take the micromanager role because we are used to things running at a certain pace. But an undergraduate project likely will not go as quickly. As a result, we may overextend ourselves into the project. This, however, is not good for your students. Not only should they be doing their own work, but they are missing out on important lessons that can be taught through these projects. Read more...

By Tracy Mitrano. Especially in Western, Central New York and Pennsylvania, where President Obama is on a bus speaking tour of the region to give his opening salvos of a promised shake up of higher education, we await his pronouncements with bated breath.  What could he possibly propose that we have not all thought about, discussed and implemented already as remedy to access, completion and tuition challenges?  Prelude remarks bate our breath because word is out that at least some, perhaps most, of his proposals will be directed at our “industry!”  (Never mind that as not-for-profit institutions in the main, with very different corporate foundations, we are not an “industry.”)
I feel a few defensive hairs rising on the back of my neck.  Higher education has had a target on its back for some time now.  We scramble to pull out the array of regulatory arrows that have already been thrown at us. Read more...

By Colleen McCain Nelson and Caroline Porter. The Idea Is to Reward Colleges That Offer Students Better Value, President Tells Buffalo Audience.
Calling growing student debt levels a "crisis,'' President Barack Obama laid out a plan Thursday aimed at reining in rising tuition costs by creating a system to rate colleges and eventually tie federal student aid to the institutions' performance.
The president called for rating colleges before the 2015 school year on measures such as affordability and graduation rates—"metrics like how much debt does the average student leave with, how easy is it to pay off, how many students graduate on time, how well do those graduates do in the workforce,'' Mr. Obama told a crowd at the University at Buffalo, the first stop on a two-day bus tour.
"The answers will help parents and students figure out how much value a college truly offers," he said.
Once a rating system is in place, Mr. Obama will ask Congress to allocate federal financial aid based on the scores by 2018. Students at top-performing colleges could receive larger federal grants and more affordable student loans. "It is time to stop subsidizing schools that are not producing good results," he said. Read more...