By Scott D. Gerber. A new academic year is upon us. Students, parents, and faculty are excited. But they are also nervous. These are difficult times for higher education in America. At all but the nation's top colleges and universities, enrollments are down and budgets are strapped. Many explanations have been offered about why higher education is floundering: wasteful administrative bloat and a reckless construction frenzy make almost every critics' list. Rightly so. After all, how many assistant deans and new athletic fields does a college really need? Far fewer than academic bureaucrats seem to think, in my humble opinion. More...

2013 survey of the 2010 cohort: The gap between levels of qualification widens as the crisis deepens
Christophe Barret, Florence Ryk et Noémie Volle
Training and Employment , n° 109-110 , 2014 , 8p.
In 2013, three years after leaving the education system, 22% of economically active young people were looking for work. This is the highest level ever observed in Céreq’s school-to-work transition surveys. The increase compared with the 2004 cohort is 16 percentage points for non-graduates and 3 percentage  points for graduates of long degree programmes. Nevertheless, first jobs are neither more precarious nor less well paid.

Par L'Atelier de l'Emploi. Secteur en crise, la presse peine à se réinventer. Entre journalisme d'hier et de demain, le modèle pérenne se cherche encore. Et si la réponse se trouvait dans une meilleure gestion des ressources humaines ?  
C’est un point de vue assez peu banal, dans une crise pourtant commentée de toutes parts : le problème des médias “traditionnels” n’est pas le manque de talents digitaux, ni même les lacunes des grands groupes en termes d’innovations. Dans le Nieman Journalism Lab d’Harvard, Matt DeRienzo, lui-même journaliste, avance que le principal problème que connaissent les entreprises de presse est… une mauvaise gestion des ressources humaines. Suite...

Europe’s image in the world could be better: when it comes to economic issues, it has been labelled as the crisis-stricken continent. It is the world’s problem child in terms of growth and development – one of the most affluent regions on the planet, yet it lacks of the ability to reinvent itself. One of the key problems: while hundreds of thousands of well-paid positions in the ICT field remain unfilled, millions of young people grow up without job prospects. There is a clear mismatch between the skills that people have and the ones that are needed in the labor market. With the “MOOCs For Web Talent” initiative, Europe is finally taking action to overcome this gap with new and open educational resources. More...

The public colleges and universities that educate more than 70 percent of this country’s students were burdened by rising costs and dwindling state revenues long before the recession. They reacted by raising tuition, slashing course offerings and, sometimes, by cutting enrollment.
They also cut labor costs by replacing full-time professors who retired with part-time instructors, who typically have no health or pension benefits and are often abysmally paid, earning in the vicinity of $3,000 per course. More...