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26 août 2012

Associations cap private HE graduates’ membership

http://enews.ksu.edu.sa/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/UWN.jpgByAshraf Khaled. Professional associations in Egypt have begun clamping down on graduates from private universities who gained admission to higher education with school-leaving marks far lower than those set by state-run institutions.
In recent months, Egypt’s engineering, veterinary and doctors' associations have announced bans on acceptance of new members who attended private universities despite low school marks.
And this month the Pharmacology Association said it would not accept among its members graduates of private universities who had achieved lower than 80% aggregate marks in secondary school certificate examinations.
“The association has taken this decision based on its responsibility towards its members and out of its keenness to ensure that proper admission rules are observed in private universities,” said Mohammed Abdul Gawad, chair of the Pharmacology Association. He added that syllabuses taught at pharmacology schools in public and private universities were challenging and needed “bright minds”.
The association’s deputy chair, Seifallah Imam, said the ban would be applied retroactively from last year, when minimum admission grades to Egypt’s key higher institutions soared. Minimum grades for secondary school-leavers to attend public universities have also surged this year, observers said. For example, the minimum grades for attending a pharmacology school in a state-run university have hit 97% of the overall marks of the secondary school certificate exams, compared to 78% for attending a pharmacology school at a private university.
The associations have said their curbs on accepting new members are aimed at maintaining “high professional standards”, cutting rates of joblessness and safeguarding the principle of equal opportunities among university students.
Adopting a market-style economy, since the 1990s Egypt has licensed the creation of fee-paying universities, which now comprise 17% of institutions. Critics of the institutions say they are money focused and disrupt the principle of equal opportunities by admitting new students with low marks, mainly because their families can afford the fees. Denying these accusations, private universities argue that they offer whole and partial scholarships to top-flight applicants. The Pharmacology Association said that a recent study it conducted showed the local market needed no more than 3,500 graduates annually.
Pharmacology schools in private and public universities in Egypt churn out nearly 10,000 graduates a year, according to the study. “This figure far exceeds the actual needs,” said deputy chair Imam.
Some years ago, the Egyptian Doctors’ Association won a lawsuit obliging the country’s public and private universities to admit a total of 3,500 new students a year. The ruling was never enforced, as an average of 8,000 new students annually attend medical schools. The ban threatened by the professional associations has been criticised as meddlesome.
“This move constitutes interference in the affairs of the Higher Education Ministry and the Higher University Council, which is responsible for working out the admission policy and specifying the numbers of new students,” said Zaki al-Saadani, a higher education expert.
“The professional associations have no right to set minimum marks for attending university. They [the associations] may have the rights to hold tests for graduates applying for their membership,” he wrote in the opposition daily in Al Wafd.
Al-Saadani added that the restrictions adopted by the associations “distort the image of private universities and deal them a hard blow”.
Neither private universities nor the Higher Education Ministry have commented.
23 août 2012

The Myth of Ivy Advantage

http://www.insidehighered.com/sites/all/themes/ihecustom/logo.jpgBy Karen Kelsky. Some months back I wrote a column in The Chronicle of Higher Education called "Graduate School is a Means to a Job." The column began with issues a prospective graduate student should consider before entering graduate school at all. I wrote:
"Go to the highest-ranked graduate department you can get into — so long as it funds you fully….. [But] never assume that the elite, Ivy League departments are the highest-ranked or have the best placement rates. Some of the worst-prepared job candidates with whom I've worked have been from humanities departments at Yale, Harvard, and Princeton. Do not be dazzled by abstract institutional reputations. Ask steely-eyed questions about individual advisers and their actual (not illusory) placement rates in recent years."
The column received a lot of generally positive commentary.

16 août 2012

Leader: Avoid the shadows of doubt

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/magazine/graphics/mastheads/mast_blank.gifBy John Gill. To maintain its reputation for trustworthiness, the academy must ensure that its scholarly scepticism is not misapplied
"Trust me - I'm an academic" is a phrase that remains largely superfluous, even as other professions, from journalism to banking, languish in the gutter of public opinion.
According to the 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer, an annual analysis of who and what is deemed credible by the public, academics remain the most trusted source of information. The survey asked 30,000 people in 20 countries: "If you heard information about a company from one of these people, how credible would that information be?"

16 août 2012

Indentures are a sign of universities' decline into a factory system

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/magazine/graphics/mastheads/mast_blank.gifUnpaid research posts represent the latest step in the 'proletarianisation' of the academy, argues Ross Perlin
Recent graduates - those who can afford to, anyway - resign themselves to months of unpaid interning, treading water in the labour market. The jobless, thanks to the government's controversial workfare schemes, are pressed into uncompensated service in a modern version of Lenin's all-Russia subbotniks. Meanwhile, those fortunate enough to be employed in paid work fearfully contribute a collective 2 billion hours of unpaid overtime to their employers every year.
Now the employment practices of higher education have come under the spotlight. First was the University of Birmingham, which blithely sought an "honorary" unpaid research assistant to work at least two days a week on a "voluntary basis". Then it was University College London and the Anna Freud Centre, where researchers had the temerity to advertise for a research assistant intern based at UCL, full-time or part-time, unpaid for six months.

16 août 2012

El Ministerio de Educación reduce las becas a los repetidores

http://ep01.epimg.net/iconos/v1.x/v1.0/logos/cabecera_interior.png . Se endurecen los requisitos académicos para los beneficiarios y se penaliza a los peores estudiantes
A los universitarios les será más difícil conseguir y mantener una beca general y de movilidad el próximo curso. El Ministerio de Educación publicó ayer en el BOE la resolución que abre el plazo para solicitar estas ayudas. El departamento de José Ignacio Wert mantiene prácticamente el mismo presupuesto que el año anterior. Pero, como había anunciado, endurece los requisitos académicos y penaliza a los peores estudiantes, algo que también ha hecho con las tasas, que se encarecen a partir de la segunda matrícula.
Los beneficiarios de las becas
podrán mantener las ayudas durante dos años más de lo previsto en el plan de estudios si están matriculados en ingenierías y arquitectura. En el resto, podrán utilizar solo un año más. Pero el ministerio fija que “la cuantía de la beca que se conceda para el segundo año será del 50% de los componentes que le hubieran correspondido” en las ingenierías y arquitectura. En el resto, también será del 50% en el año extra que necesiten.
El ministerio solo permitirá acceder a las becas a los alumnos que tengan una nota de 5,5 en Selectividad y endurece los requisitos académicos para mantenerlas. Por ejemplo, los alumnos de Artes y Humanidades y de Ciencias Sociales y Jurídicas tendrán que haber aprobado el 90% de los créditos en los que se matricularon el año anterior.
Educación también elimina los complementos para los estudiantes que tienen que estudiar en grandes ciudades. Y se fijan restricciones para los extranjeros. Para recibir las ayudas se necesitará ser español o de la UE. En este último caso, se requerirá que el estudiante o sus sustentadores trabajen en España desde antes del 31 de diciembre de 2011.
15 août 2012

Does Religion Really Poison Everything? Dusting Off GOD

http://chronicle.com/img/photos/biz/sub-promo-art.pngBy Tom Bartlett. A new science of religion says God has gotten a bad rap. When a moth flies at night, it uses the moon and the stars to steer a straight path. Those light sources are fixed and distant, so the rays always strike the moth's multilensed eyes at the same angle, making them reliable for nocturnal navigation. But introduce something else bright—a candle, say, or a campfire—and there will be trouble. The light radiates outward, confusing the moth and causing it to spiral ever closer to the blaze until the insect meets a fiery end.
For years Richard Dawkins has used the self-immolation of moths to explain religion. The example can be found in his 2006 best seller, The God Delusion, and it's been repeated in speeches and debates, interviews and blog posts. Moths didn't evolve to commit suicide; that's an unfortunate byproduct of other adaptations. In much the same way, the thinking goes, human beings embrace religion for unrelated cognitive reasons. We evolved to search for patterns in nature, so perhaps that's why we imagine patterns in religious texts. Instead of being guided by the light, we fly into the flames.
The implication—that religion is basically malevolent, that it "poisons everything," in the words of the late Christopher Hitchens—is a standard assertion of the New Atheists. Their argument isn't just that there probably is no God, or that intelligent design is laughable bunk, or that the Bible is far from inerrant. It's that religion is obviously bad for human beings, condemning them to ignorance, subservience, and endless conflict, and we would be better off without it.
But would we?
Before you can know for sure, you have to figure out what religion does for us in the first place. That's exactly what a loosely affiliated group of scholars in fields including biology, anthropology, and psychology are working on. They're applying evolutionary theory to the study of religion in order to discover whether or not it strengthens societies, makes them more successful, more cooperative, kinder. The scholars, many of them atheists themselves, generally look askance at the rise of New Atheism, calling its proponents ignorant, fundamentalist, and worst of all, unscientific. Dawkins and company have been no more charitable in return.
While the field is still young and fairly small—those involved haven't settled on a name yet, though "evolutionary religious studies" gets thrown around—its findings could reshape a very old debate. Maybe we should stop asking whether God exists and start asking whether it's useful to believe that he does. More...
14 août 2012

Choosing a university course and the new never-ending learning lifecycle

http://www.anglohigher.com/front/images/logo.pngBy Ioannis Soilemetzidis. In today’s globalised world, choosing a country, university and a course to study can be a daunting prospect for anyone, so how can you make sure you pick the most suitable path for you? The domination of English language as the means of instruction in higher education worldwide has added to the vast availability and extensive range of subjects, meaning that current students are spoiled for choice. However, choosing a university has never been so difficult and stressful both for students and parents. One can state a number of factors that need to be considered when making decisions concerning university education.
Some questions to answer are:
• Perhaps the most important question is: does the course and the programme of studies truly interest you?
• What are the career choices and job prospects after graduating from the course?
• How good and diverse are the programme structure and the assessment methods for the degree?
• What options and routes are available within the course: will one have the option of a gap year to gain work experience, will one have the option to select some of the modules or are all elements compulsory?
Moving away to study in another country or city is still a popular option. But with the credit crunch, living at home while studying has become again, one of the main options. If one stays put, you could potentially save money on things like rent and travel, and keep in touch with old friends and relatives, while still making new friends and new experiences. For many this is the option that delivers the best of both worlds, while others value more the experience of living in private shared flats or in university halls of residence, and regard that, and the opportunity to live in a different country or city as unique. More...
14 août 2012

‘I’m Not Paying for Your Opinion’

http://chronicle.com/img/photos/biz/icons/on-hiring-nameplate.gifBy Rob Jenkins. Perhaps, to explain Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s now infamous findings in Academically Adrift, we need look no further than the current customer-service culture. That thought came to me after a recent incident in my introductory rhetoric course.
We were talking about the way that social mores and public opinions change over time, and how writing both influences and reflects those changes. When I broached one particularly controversial topic, a student interjected, “But that’s just your opinion, and I’m not paying for your opinion.”
OK, then.

10 août 2012

Too Much Business in Academe

http://chronicle.com/img/subscribe_11_2011.jpgBy William W. Keep. Recently the Board of Visitors—not a particularly apt name given their actions—at the University of Virginia forced the ouster of President Teresa A. Sullivan after two years in office. Since then we have learned that the rector and vice rector of the board, Helen E. Dragas and Mark J. Kington, who has since resigned, have M.B.A.'s from UVa's Darden School of Business. Peter D. Kiernan, a powerful alumnus who evidently weighed in on the decision, is also a Darden graduate and, before he resigned in the midst of the furor, was chairman of the Darden School Foundation Board.
The trio, having made their chops in real estate, construction, and investing, apparently saw an opportunity to transfer their knowledge to higher education. Though colleges can learn many things from the ways businesses operate, treating a college strictly like a business would be a mistake.
10 août 2012

New Realities

http://chronicle.com/img/subscribe_11_2011.jpgBy Eliana Osborn. If there’s one thing you can count on in academe — or in life — it is that things will change. My campus is in the midst of a lot of personnel changes. I wrote about my direct supervisor leaving, which threw me for a little bit of a loop as an adjunct. As the summer went on, more shifts came to light. Even my department secretary has moved on.
Whether the changes are in your workload, in management or personnel, or there’s been a hiring freeze put in place, we all have to be flexible and roll with the punches. I find it challenging to know where to turn for issues when people and organization charts are in flux. For me, that’s an added stress, especially at the start of a semester.
Some professors simply resist change, burrowing in and rarely leaving their office to avoid dealing with new realities. While I understand the impulse, it isn’t a long-term solution. Others jump on whatever bandwagon is coming through — a push for new paradigms, tossing out traditional grading systems, etc.
How do you keep your head amid the winds of change?
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