By Matthew Tabor. In the United States, medical school is a major commitment. After 13 years in K-12 education, a doctor-to-be must first complete a 4-year Bachelor’s degree. Then, once admitted to medical school, it takes another four years — for a total of 21 years of formal education, the last 8 of which can be, depending on the institution, incredibly expensive.
Is it possible to make the path to becoming a doctor both shorter and less expensive?
New York University and other institutions with medical school programs think it’s possible to reduce the last stage of medical education from four years to three, resulting in jumping into practice sooner without compromising training, but also saving up to $50,000. NYU’s plan is to streamline curriculum and clinical training, as well as taking advantage of summer months that currently are used suboptimally. As Anemona Hartocollis writes in the New York Times, NYU is confident, but schools are easing into 3-year programs slowly. Read more...

By Jack Healy. SIDNEY, Mont. — For most high school seniors, a college degree is the surest path to a decent job and a stable future. But here in oil country, some teenagers are choosing the oil fields over universities, forgoing higher education for jobs with salaries that can start at $50,000 a year.
It is a lucrative but risky decision for any 18-year-old to make, one that could foreclose on his future if the frenzied pace of oil and gas drilling from here to North Dakota to Texas falters and work dries up. But with unemployment at more than 12 percent nationwide for young adults and college tuition soaring, students here on the snow-glazed plains of eastern Montana said they were ready to take their chances.
“I just figured, the oil field is here and I’d make the money while I could,” said Tegan Sivertson, 19, who monitors pipelines for a gas company, sometimes working 15-hour days. “I didn’t want to waste the money and go to school when I could make just as much.”
Less than a year after proms and homecoming games, teenagers like Mr. Sivertson now wake at 4 a.m. to make the three-hour trek to remote oil rigs. They fish busted machinery out of two-mile-deep hydraulic fracturing wells and repair safety devices that keep the wells from rupturing, often working alongside men old enough to be their fathers. Some live at home; others drive back on weekends to eat their mothers’ food, do loads of laundry and go to high school basketball games, still straddling the blurred border between childhood and adulthood.
Just as gold rushes and silver booms once brought opera houses and armies of prospectors to rugged corners of the West, today’s headlong race for oil and gas is reshaping staid communities in the northern Plains, bringing once untold floods of cash and job prospects, but also deep anxieties about crime, growth and a future newly vulnerable to cycles of boom and bust. Read more...

The National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI) held a public meeting on December 11-12, 2012 at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, DC. NACIQI is the advisory body that provides recommendations to the U.S. Secretary of Education on the recognition of accrediting organizations.

Accrediting organizations scheduled for review during the two-day meeting were:

Petitions for Renewal of Recognition of Accrediting Organizations

• Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Accreditation Council for Education in Nutrition and Dietetics
• American Physical Therapy Association, Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education
• American Veterinary Medical Association, Council on Education
• Liaison Committee on Medical Education
• Middle States Commission on Higher Education
• Western Association of Schools and Colleges, Accrediting Commission for Senior Colleges and Universities

Compliance Reports

• Accrediting Bureau of Health Education Schools
• American Board of Funeral Service Education
• Commission on Massage Therapy Accreditation
• Distance Education and Training Council
• Midwifery Education Accreditation Council
• Montessori Accreditation Council for Teacher Education
• North Central Association of Colleges and School, The Higher Learning Commission

Staff reports are available on the U.S. Department of Education (USDE) Website. Of the 13 non-governmental accrediting organizations before the committee, six were presenting petitions for renewal of recognition and seven were presenting compliance reports for renewal of recognition. The committee followed staff recommendations in most cases. A summary of the committee's deliberations will likely be posted to the NACIQI Website later this winter.

Since 2010 the Program works for the sustainability of solidarity projects in universities of the region

Peruvian and Argentinian rectors meet to discuss the initiative

The conference Latin American Universities and the International Rankings: Impact, Scope and Limits sought to provide a space for dialogue and debate on the international university classification systems.
The Conference brought together university rectors, ranking producers, and academic specialists who presented their views and perspectives on the topic.
In an effort to spur further debate on the issues, as well as to prompt the implementation of the resulting  initiatives and responses, the organizers  compiled and systematized the main ideas and proposals expressed throughout the conference as a Final Declaration. 
The document offers the combined vision of the participants, and will be further enriched with views from throughout the region, with the goal of presenting a common Latin American position on the international rankings.
For more information, follow this link.

UC Temuco is one of the 22 universities signing an historical Agreement
Twenty-two of the most important universities of Chile, the Universidad Católica de Temuco (UC Temuco) among them, have signed an agreement to promote sustainability in the country. The "Acuerdo de Producción Limpia" (Agreement on Clean Production) has been penned with the Consejo Nacional de Producción Limpia (CPL), institution that depends on the Chilean Ministry of Economy.

By William G. Passannante and Cassandre C. Théano. The Rutgers (N.J.) spying case and the Penn State abuse scandal, among others, highlight the liability risks of all types facing colleges and universities. From the other end of the risk spectrum, Tulane University’s (La.) long struggle to rebuild and recoup losses stemming from Hurricane Katrina illustrates the complexity of property damage risk management. In an era in which liability risks keep multiplying and natural disasters seem to have grown more intense, general counsels of colleges and universities should ensure that their existing liability policies cover the myriad complex liabilities and losses that they may face. Below are three growing categories of claims colleges and universities should watch out for, the types of insurance that address them, and steps to maximize insurance recovery following a loss. Read more...

By Julia Lawrence. With the price of college going up every year faster than inflation, more attention has recently been given to figuring out how students can make the best choices when it comes to picking their school and their major. So much so, that – according to The Atlantic – students now overrate the importance of both of these decisions.
As Andrew G. Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute and Abigail Haddad, a Ph.D. student at Pardee RAND Graduate School, write, it is no secret that conventional wisdom says that the surest way of achieving economic success is to enroll in college after graduating high school and majoring in a tech-related discipline. Several recent studies have been published supporting this point of view. Yet, there are reasons to question these findings because many of them are plagued with simple statistical errors, draw conclusions that the evidence doesn’t warrant, and – what is worse – encourage governments to introduce and pursue bad public policy. Read more...