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9 août 2012

Going for broke: how universities can deliver on their economic potential

By Stephen Caddick. UK universities have the opportunity of a generation to build a sustainable economy for the 21st century, but they need to invest in infrastructure, business collaboration and in their people
Let me start by saying that I am not a proponent of directing academics away from blue-sky research towards second-rate contract research for the highest bidder. I am passionate about the long-term economic, social and cultural value of intellectual exploration through curiosity-driven research. But there seems to be a commonly held view that if you wish to preserve academic freedom, it's impossible to provide any substantial economic benefit to the UK, and that attempting to do so will create profound damage to our research base. I simply don't buy that argument.
The UK needs an economic game changer and we are incredibly fortunate to have a platform from which we can launch it – our universities. We already make a major contribution to GDP yet we can do much more if academics engage even more extensively with business. We should be using the base of our higher education sector to help our businesses innovate and grow, to encourage overseas corporations to invest in the UK and to create jobs for UK citizens. Many academics already do collaborate with business, recognising that it can enrich and enhance the quality of scholarly work. Such interactions will become increasingly important if we are to remain competitive in the global business that is higher education.
The government started well in 2010 by protecting the research budget – a tall order but essential given that our competitors are investing much more into research. What is frustrating is we are not joined-up in using our assets for the best interests of the UK. Research activity generates highly trained staff, as well as data, knowledge, and intellectual property (IP), and we should use them to our competitive advantage. We all know the benefits of seeing new developments, from academics who attend the latest conference to see unpublished work to businesses who have always recognised the importance of technology adoption and first-mover advantage. Recognising the value to business of access to our research first is a no brainer.
The question, then, is why, when we create some of the best knowledge and IP in the world, are we intent on pursuing initiatives such as Easy Access IP and gold open access, without giving due consideration to the benefits for our economy. I am not opposed to the underlying principles of these initiatives, but in some cases they are unnecessary and in others they are unlikely to work. At worst they could mean that, as a nation, we will spend more money, do less research and accrue less economic benefit for the UK. In my view, we can be smarter than this and use these assets as part of a package of measures to collectively make the UK the most attractive place for businesses committed to generating jobs and growth here.
What then should we be doing? We should create a network of research and innovation enterprise zones across the nation; places where large corporations could work alongside SMEs and university researchers from across sectors, rubbing shoulders, exchanging ideas and researching and innovating together. This would generate exciting new discoveries and then ensure their transformation at lightning speed into products, jobs and growth in the UK, for the UK. I'm not simply talking about science parks – but genuine research and innovation accelerators, promoting inward investment on scale and generating thousands of jobs.
The government would need to offer significant incentives to achieve this goal, perhaps including reduced corporation tax and flexibility on VAT to allow sharing of spaces. University researchers could make their research outputs preferentially available for a fixed period, perhaps alongside the embargo period of a green open access policy, providing an early view and hence opportunities for early uptake. We could also use these zones to pilot new ideas to liberate us from the stranglehold of red tape and burdensome regulation around employment law, immigration policies, procurement and others, which currently inhibit entrepreneurs and stifle growth.
Finally, the main assets of our universities are our people. It is people who innovate, collaborate and discover, not institutions. We need to nurture this talent and to boost innovation through enabling academics to gain exposure to new and different techniques in different settings. We need to enable people from across universities – from professors, to post-docs and PhD students – to move more freely amongst different types of institutions than is currently possible. We could establish a scheme whereby high-fliers rotate around a selection of small business, larger companies and university research departments to gain a variety of experience to develop new ways of innovating.
We are going to see profound changes in the next few years. The shift in economic power is clear and growing – and the signs are there for similar shifts in the global higher education market. We can chose to maintain a 19th century view of higher education, or we can recognise academic research can be enhanced by serious collaboration with external enterprises. We must be bold and recognise that the depth of our knowledge base provides a competitive advantage that most countries are desperately trying to emulate, because they know that it creates enormous economic, social and cultural value. We have the opportunity of a generation to build a sustainable economy for the 21st century – but we need to open our eyes and seize the opportunity.
Professor Stephen Caddick is vice-provost (Enterprise) and Vernon professor of chemistry at
University College London.
7 août 2012

The Economy, Outsourcing Jobs and Higher Education

http://s.huffpost.com/images/v/logos/bpage/education.gif?26By William B. Bradshaw. The economy is a hot political issue as the 2012 presidential election approaches. Outsourcing jobs to foreign countries is a legitimate bone of contention that needs to be addressed not only by our presidential candidates and both houses of congress, but also by other sectors of our society.
The Chronicle of Higher Education and The New York Times have reported that some public and private colleges and universities are outsourcing the evaluation of written assignments to a company in Virginia that primarily employs people in India, Singapore and Malaysia. It's entirely a "virtual" program. The most surprising thing about this practice is that it is happening on college campuses -- some high-profile institutions -- where one would expect the core principles of English composition to be held in the highest esteem. Instead, the evaluation of written assignments is being relegated to people in Asia.
Based on the website of the company providing the outsourcing and direct quotes from educators, there are two reasons for this program's popularity: (1) many faculty members believe grading papers is a menial task that takes too much time they could be spending in more productive ways and (2) many college instructors and their TAs are not well-grounded enough in grammar to do the job. Both are shocking indictments.
Colleges and universities using this outsourcing program give it high marks. They point out that offshore workers merely evaluate the papers and professors decide on the grades. They describe the foreign evaluators as "professionals" who are well trained in English composition and provide "expert advice" to professors. Here's the rub! We rely on our universities to be on the cutting edge of academic excellence, which includes helping students hone their written and verbal communication skills. Yet, our educational institutions are outsourcing to people in foreign countries something as fundamental to education as grading term papers and final exams. In a country so concerned about continuing to be an international leader and about unemployment, under employment, and quality education, it just doesn't make sense for our educational institutions to outsource this work.
Outsourcing is not new for our country. For many years we have been outsourcing more and more jobs in our manufacturing and service industries. Now we are outsourcing high-level responsibilities in education, front-and-center corporations, and major financial institutions. In my opinion, we cannot expect our country to continue being a world leader if we keep outsourcing to offshore locations work we could and should be handling ourselves. As a grammarian I constantly use updated technology. I am not opposed to the technology that makes it possible for people from Asia to grade papers from the U.S. I firmly believe that we, as a country, should do everything it takes to be at the forefront of the high-tech sector. But, at the same time, we need to be in the forefront of solid practices in English composition. After all, grammar is the very foundation of communication with one another and the rest of the world.It is shamefully unacceptable that we cannot find enough people on our college campuses who are both willing and adequately prepared to grade term papers and final exams. Academia needs to make sure that we have an ample supply of grammarians now and in future generations. And educators on all levels need to be certain that we do not emphasize the use of technology at the expense of learning the basics of good grammar.
Today's world is too complex for any country to think it can isolate itself and rely only on the resources of its own people. Yet, countries should make every effort to train and use their own supplies of human resources before turning to other countries for workers. And America needs to guard against the dangerous trend of outsourcing jobs to offshore locations that we could and, certainly in the case of grading papers and tests, should be handling ourselves. This article is being written from the perspective of education -- from my personal experience as a classroom instructor and college administrator. Grading papers and tests properly -- taking the time to write helpful and critical comments in the margins and at the tops and bottoms of the pages before returning them -- is very time consuming. But experience has taught me there are few things a classroom teacher does that are more important.
Whether or not faculty members want to hear this is up for grabs, but students have told me time and again that they frequently learn more from the written feedback they receive on papers and tests than they do from classroom lectures and discussions. There is no question in my mind that instructors should grade their own papers and tests and that such important tasks definitely should not be outsourced to foreign countries. In very large survey classes, it may be acceptable for professors to delegate grading papers and exams to their TAs as long as those TAs are advanced graduate students majoring in the subjects they are grading papers for and are being supervised carefully by the faculty members they are working for. Grading the term papers and final exams of our college and university students definitely should be kept on their respective campuses.
Yes -- the economy is of major concern to most people, and outsourcing jobs to foreign countries is a practice we, as a county, can and should put a stop to. And, by the way, if you plan to visit a college or university to decide if it is the right place for you or one of your children to attend, be sure to ask who grades the written assignments.
10 juillet 2012

Precipice or Crossroads?

By Scott Jaschik. The land-grant universities of the United States are this year celebrating the sesquicentennial of the Morrill Act, which not only led to the creation of many of the universities, but arguably was instrumental in the development of public higher education broadly. A new book, Precipice or Crossroads? Where America's Great Public Universities Stand and Where They Are Going Midway Through Their Second Century (State University of New York Press), features essays related to public universities' history and current challenges. Essays mix the history of the universities with questions about their financing, their education and research missions, and their role in the world. The editors of the collection are Daniel Mark Fogel, a professor of English and former president of the University of Vermont, and Elizabeth Malson-Huddle, a lecturer in English at the university. Fogel responded via e-mail to questions about the book's essays and themes:
Q: What do you consider the most significant features of the Morrill Act of 1862 in terms of how public higher education was promoted in the United States?

A: The Morrill Act set the paradigm for public higher education in America. It reshaped existing institutions and set in motion the creation of new ones. In the depths of the worst crisis in our history, it was a signal moment in the building of the nation. It drove curricular transformation, elevating practical studies, especially agriculture and engineering, as essential and central additions to — not replacements for — what American colleges had taught previously (classics, literature, theology).
It did so for the benefit of ordinary people, the "industrial classes," who by and large had had little or no access to higher education: "the leading object shall be," the act reads, "without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life." The public purpose of higher education was thus forged in the Morrill Act, based on a belief that value would accrue not only to the citizens who benefited from the chance to study in the land-grant colleges but also to their states, their regions, and the nation in building agriculture, industry, know-how, and what some like to call "human capital."
The democratic implications of the act were amplified in the second Morrill Act of 1890, which insisted that postsecondary opportunity be extended to African Americans in states where the original land-grant schools were segregated. Moreover, the 1862 Act, which might have federalized higher education, instead confirmed the decision of the nation’s founders not to establish a national university, leaving the curriculum, management, and primary funding responsibilities to the states ("in such manner as the legislatures of the states may respectively prescribe"). The act thus promoted a distinguishing feature of American public higher education, its decentralization, a key to its strength and its genius. The ramifications over the last 150 years of all of these features of the act are hard to exaggerate. As I observe in Precipice or Crossroads?, for example, the GI Bill may be considered a secondary effect of the act, since without the capacity created by the state universities we never could have absorbed the huge influx of students after 1945, taking a nation that had gone to war with only 7 percent of its people studying beyond high school to 45 percent by 1960 and to over 70 percent in 2009.
Today, public research universities educate some 85 percent of the students who receive bachelor’s degrees at all American research universities, and 70 percent of all graduate students; perform more than 60 percent of the nation’s academic R &D; and award more than 50 percent of the doctorates in 11 of 13 disciplines the secretary of education identified in 2008 as national needs categories, including between 60 and 80 percent in computer and information sciences, engineering, foreign languages and linguistics, mathematics and statistics, and physical sciences. Take a bow, Justin Morrill.
Q: Do you think American higher education developed in different ways than, say, European higher education because of the land-grant movement?
A:
As noted, the act reinforced the decentralized (non-federalized) character of American higher education, a major distinction between our "system" and systems in other countries, including the highly centralized postsecondary systems in Europe. The land-grant movement, moreover, coincided with, and was a powerful element in, the evolution of the American research university as a hybrid of the English model of residential undergraduate education and the Germanic model of research married to graduate education. Arguably, the two greatest experiments that determined the emergent shape of the modern American research university were Daniel Coit Gilman’s at Johns Hopkins University (founded 1876) and Andrew Dickson White’s at Cornell University (founded 1865). One of those two, Cornell, was founded as a land grant, and its founder’s intention, democratizing with respect to access and comprehensive with respect to curricula, is encapsulated in an institutional motto deeply resonant with the ethos of Justin Smith Morrill and the intent of the Morrill Act, Ezra Cornell’s "I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study." More generally, the mass nature of American higher education without question has drawn impetus, and built capacity, from the land-grant movement. As Cornell wrote, "any person," not just a white male member of the elite, and "any study," not just the classical curriculum of America’s early colleges.
Q: At many land-grant universities, even those with outstanding agriculture colleges and extension services, agriculture is less central today than it was in the era when those institutions were founded. How significant is this shift?
A:
Well, here are four observations, partially against the grain of the question. First, in Justin Morrill’s own state, the University of Vermont (chartered 1791) accepted the land-grant designation in 1865 but did not appoint any agricultural faculty or grant any agriculture degrees for a quarter of a century. At Cornell, founded as a land-grant in 1865, the trustees were initially hostile to agriculture, and the College of Agriculture was not created, with a very small faculty, until 1888 (designated the New York State College of Agriculture only in 1904). So the agricultural component wasn’t always big or central at first, and it grew — as did many of the institutions — only slowly. Second, in 1900, well over half the population lived on farms and in rural areas — 41 percent worked in the agricultural sector — and agriculture was a huge component of gross domestic product (GDP). Today, agriculture, though far more productive per acre than in 1900 — largely due to land-grant based research and innovation — represents well under 2 percent of GDP.
But the great agriculture colleges are larger and more productive of graduates and research than they were in earlier periods. In absolute terms, agriculture colleges have more often than not waxed, not waned. Third, centrality is another question, but it makes sense — and is consistent with the land-grant mission broadly conceived — that when agriculture and manufacturing were the mainstays of the economy, agriculture and the mechanical arts (engineering) took center stage, with agriculture yielding that place over time, despite its impressive growth, to engineering, the physical sciences, the biomedical sciences, and information technology, among other disciplines. And, fourth, even so, agriculture at our land-grant institutions remains extraordinarily important to most of the institutions, their regions, and the world — and, as President Peter McPherson of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities points out in the foreword to Precipice or Crossroads, nearly everyone agrees that it is absolutely necessary to double food production by 2050 or "food prices at home and abroad will spike" well before that date, "and the world will be even less safe for us than today."
Q: Can land-grant (and other public research universities) fulfill their missions when their state support drops below 10 percent of their budgets?
A:
Without question the mission of these schools that do so much to build the human resources, prosperity, and competitiveness of the nation is at risk. Ergo, so is the nation. The reduction in state support is the chief threat, but other factors are in play as well, including the underfunding by granting agencies of the indirect costs of research (forcing universities to shift those costs to students and to patients in their healthcare systems). The most prestigious public research universities will soldier on despite sharply declining public support, but only by revising their missions away from the land-grant ideal of access and affordability. The Michigans and Berkeleys, that is, can compensate for state cuts by replacing resident students with revenue-rich non-residents, including many from other nations; but they can only do so by eroding or outright abandoning the historic mission of serving as portals to opportunity for resident students from all walks of life and as engines for developing the capacities and talents of the American people.
Consider that the pre-eminent public university system in the world, the University of California, has four campuses (Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, and UC-Davis) each one of which has more Pell Grant recipients than all eight Ivy League schools combined. As tuitions rise along with non-resident enrollment (tuition was up 21 percent at the University of California last year, after a 23 percent cut in state funding), the number of low-income resident students on these campuses can only decline. Meanwhile, the middle class in California is already being squeezed out: in the last 10 years, middle-income enrollment in the University of California has declined at nearly twice the rate of California middle-income households.
So, as a result of the drop in state support, even the public universities best positioned to be competitive for students in the global higher education marketplace are compelled to compromise their historic mission of serving and building American democracy. And the majority of public research universities that are less well positioned may simply be unable to sustain across the board — with respect to educational access and also to their research and service functions — their missions as research universities. Many of those that survive may do so primarily as undergraduate technological and vocational schools, with master’s programs in professional curriculums. It is regrettable and sadly ironic that a period of destructive disinvestment in U.S. public research universities should coincide with a period in which other nations have stepped up targeted investment in their universities in order to emulate the American record of building higher education as the key driver of national prosperity, well-being, and competitiveness.
Q: Your chapter in Precipice or Crossroads is about the state of the arts and humanities in public research universities. How would you evaluate their health?
A:
The arts, the humanities, and also the classical social sciences are all suffering from the sheer utilitarian pressures of the times, intensified by the recession. Outside the universities, and increasingly inside them as well, support for instructional and research programs is tied to economic development and vocational training. The humanities are far more likely than the sciences and engineering, moreover, to become the domain of low-paid contingent faculty working without benefits or the expectation of doing scholarship, and the recurrent employment crises in fields like history, English, and the foreign languages only exacerbate those trends, making new Ph.D.s easy victims of destructive changes in faculty employment practices.
And I would caution our colleagues in science and engineering that subordination of the purposes of higher education to those of governments seeking economic growth is in the long run a threat to the STEM disciplines themselves, even though those disciplines are highly valued as economic drivers. For while STEM takes center stage in an age of philistine utilitarianism, basic scientific research for which applications are not readily apparent has the potential to be marginalized no less than disinterested scholarship in the humanities. Our missions in teaching and scholarship (that basic duo that it was the American genius to combine when the modern research university emerged on these shores after the Civil War as a marriage of the English and Germanic models) can only suffer when our disciplines are reduced to their immediate monetary benefits and when we and our students are reduced to being economic production units, and that is no less true for the STEM fields than for the arts and humanities. As that reductive trend intensifies, our humanity and democracy itself are in grave peril, as Martha Nussbaum has so eloquently argued in her book Not for Profit.
That is why I say in my chapter of Precipice or Crossroads? that the arts and the humanities are the canary in the coal mine for the rest of the academy. Justin Morrill recognized that a central mission of the institutions he sought to catalyze through the Morrill Act was the "liberal education" of the "industrial classes" in "all the offices ... of peace and war" (as Morrill said, quoting John Milton, on the 25th anniversary of the act). And so, once again, take a bow, Justin Morrill.

6 juillet 2012

Notre maison brûle ! Les universités ne veulent pas regarder ailleurs, mais veulent voir l'avenir en face

Conférence des présidents d'universitéLe sommet mondial de Rio + 20 vient de s’achever. 20 ans après les espoirs suscités par une prise de conscience commune par les Nations des actions à mener pour l’Avenir de notre planète, la crise économique semble avoir ravivé les individualismes et empêché les coopérations de se développer.
Face à cette situation, on ne le répétera jamais assez, l'enseignement supérieur et la recherche restent le seul levier pour sortir de la crise, rapprocher, par la science, les hommes, et  permettre, grâce à l’accroissement du niveau des connaissances, au transfert de technologie, à l’innovation, de relancer une croissance durable.
En cela, les universités et les écoles sont apparues, à Rio, comme des établissements regroupés parfois plus responsables que les Etats, et acteurs d'une autre forme de mondialisation.
En cela également, le sommet mondial des universités, organisé chaque année dans le pays qui accueille la réunion des chefs d’Etat du G20 – à Chicago, cette année, l’an dernier en France, à Besançon, Dijon et Paris – reste un lieu d’échanges, de propositions et de construction sans doute unique au monde.
Rio+20 : « Dommage ! Mais… »

Dommage…
Le Sommet de la Terre vient de s’achever à Rio et laisse une impression de « loupé ». Les gouvernements ont certainement manqué, encore une fois,  une belle occasion d’intégrer le développement durable non pas comme une contrainte à enfouir en temps de crise mais comme un des leviers pour en sortir.
Mis à part quelques engagements, dont celui de définir d’ici 2015 des objectifs de développement durable, dans la droite ligne des objectifs du millénaire, mais intégrant les trois aspects économique, social et environnemental, le texte final est comme le dit Serge Orru, Président du WWF France, un « piètre texte issu d'une négociation internationale de deux ans et une nuit [qui] démontre la force des égoïsmes nationaux et la faiblesse de la solidarité écologique planétaire ».
Néanmoins, si les Etats n’ont pas réussi à s’engager courageusement vers une transition de l’économie, la Société Civile dans son ensemble s’est aujourd’hui massivement organisée. De la même façon que certaines organisations survivent et se développent non pas « grâce » mais « malgré » leur management, le développement durable se propage bien que les Etats se montrent incapables de collaborer.
A ce titre la diversité de la délégation française emmenée par l’Elysée et celle du Club France Rio+20 (à l’initiative du Comité 21) montre à quel point l’ensemble des acteurs est aujourd’hui impliqué en direction de cette mutation sociétale. Collectivités territoriales, ONGs, entreprises, syndicats et établissements d’enseignement supérieur se sont retrouvés pour partager, échanger et débattre au milieu de 50 000 autres participants de ce Sommet de la Terre. Membre du Club France  Rio+20 , la conférence des Grandes Ecoles (CGE) et la Conférence des Présidents d’Université (CPU) ont contribué fin 2011 à la rédaction du  « Manifeste pour une gouvernance territoriale durable, solidaire et humaine », ont participer à de nombreuses conférences (Palais Brongniart, Assemblée Nationale, CESE…) et ont produit un cahier d’acteur pour le Ministère. Si cinq cents « side events » officiels ont eu lieu dans Rio Centro, c’est plusieurs milliers qui se sont déroulés partout dans Rio au cours des quinze derniers jours.
La France, un acteur du changement ?

Même si, au dire de nombreux délégués, le remaniement ministériel au lendemain de Rio, le départ de Nicole Brick et la perte de deux places pour le ministère de l’Ecologie dans l’ordre protocolaire ne sont pas des signes très rassurants, on peut se féliciter de la venue du Président de la République, François Hollande, à Rio.
Accompagné par plusieurs de ses ministres, le Président français s’est en effet engagé à lancer des chantiers majeurs tant dans le domaine du social que de l’environnement d’ici l’automne prochain. Les engagements annoncés, au niveau de la France et de l’Europe, portent sur la transition énergétique et écologique, l’accès aux biens publics ainsi qu’à l’habitat, au transport, et à la spéculation financière… Reste à traduire ces annonces en véritables engagements chiffrés et en plans d’actions.
L’enseignement supérieur, enfin présent dans les sommets mondiaux

Le texte final adopté à Rio comprend un chapitre de 6 paragraphes (229 – 235) sur l’éducation. Outre, l’accès pour tous à l’éducation porté depuis longtemps par l’UNESCO, pour la première fois l’enseignement supérieur est mentionné (notamment dans les pays émergent) comme un levier essentiel au changement de paradigme. Depuis plusieurs mois, la CGE et la CPU ont intégrées la commission interministérielle de préparation à Rio+20 et ont notamment contribuées au « Zero draft » porté par la France lors des négociations. On peut se féliciter que concernant l’enseignement supérieur, une partie des recommandations aient été suivies.
Il est demandé aux établissements d’aller au-delà de programmes dédiés et de diffuser de manière transversale le développement durable dans toutes leurs formations. Deux autres points ont survécu à la coupe des négociateurs dans le texte, l’importance de la formation continue et l’exemplarité dont doivent faire preuve les établissements d’enseignement supérieur.
Mais c’est au-delà du texte que la dynamique dans l’enseignement supérieur est remarquable.
La CGE et la CPU sont intervenues lors d’un side event “Aiming Higher, Unlocking Tertiary Education's Potential to Accelerate Sustainable Development and the Transition to a Fair and Green Economy” organisé notamment avec leurs confrères labelisateurs ACTS (Australie), ASHEE (US), AUEC (UK). Plusieurs institutions françaises se sont par ailleurs engagées dans des projets passionnants comme le « 50+20, management education for the world” et bien sûr, dans le 3rd Global Forum for Responsible Management Education  qui a réuni 300 établissements venus du monde entier. A noter la publication de deux dossiers INSPIRATIONAL GUIDE: Placing sustainability at the heart of management education et Practical guide to the UN global compact for higher education institutions qui cite le référentiel plan vert comme un des outils d’implémentation.
Rio+20 aura surtout été un catalyseur, un formidable moment de co-construction entre les différents acteurs, d’enclenchement d’initiatives et d’engagements individuels ou collectifs. A ce titre la France est le pays qui compte le plus de Présidents, de Directeurs d’universités et de grandes écoles signataires de la Déclaration de Rio pour l’enseignement supérieur. Mentionnée lors du discours de Rossen PLEVNELIEV, Président bulgare, cette déclaration représente près de la moitié des 700 engagements volontaires présentés par l’ONU. Cette initiative onusienne portée par l’UNEP, l’UNESCO, Global Compact, PRME et l’UNU, est supportée par une trentaine d’organisations nationales (type CGE ou CPU) ou internationales (EFMD, GRLI …) et a été signée par 280 établissements.
Dans cette dynamique, l’idée défendue par la France de pousser les établissements à poursuivre l’excellence tout en recherchant la cohérence (cohérence entre leur recherche, pédagogie et exemplarité dans la gestion environnementale et sociale des campus) a été largement embrassée par la communauté académique. Cette conviction défendue par la CGE et la CPU depuis plusieurs années a permis encore une fois de crédibiliser le référentiel Plan Vert vis-à-vis de nos confrères étrangers avec qui nous avons déjà entamé des travaux de reconnaissance mutuelle (ASHEE, LIFE) mais aussi avec de nouveau réseaux Sud-Américains et Espagnol.
Par ailleurs le projet, lancé lors de la conférence à l’UNESCO en janvier dernier, d’un test obligatoire en fin de master pour garantir la connaissance d’un minimum de savoirs communs sur les enjeux du monde a été très bien accueilli. Du côté des écoles de management (ou des « business schools » rattachées aux universités) la nécessité de faire évoluer les critères d’accréditation (EQUIS, AACSB et AMBA) ainsi que les classements nationaux et internationaux fait l’unanimité et ce même au sein des différents organisations des Nations Unies.
Le sentiment général qui ressort de la communauté académique présente à Rio, c’est une immense volonté de prendre les choses en main. Les projets sont lancés et les mois à venir devraient être le théâtre de belles collaborations.Le slogan du Sommet de Rio était « The Future We Want ».
Indéniablement les Etats n’ont pas réussi à s’entendre sur le contenu d’un texte ambitieux mais ils ont ouvert la porte à la société civile dans toute sa diversité, et elle s’y est engouffrée. Il nous appartient maintenant de profiter de cette dynamique pour, ensemble, VRAIMENT construire le futur que NOUS souhaitons.
Jean-Christophe CARTERON, Directeur de la RSE – Euromed Management, Représentant de l’enseignement supérieur français (CGE & CPU) à Rio+20.

Conférence des présidents d'université The Rio Earth Summit + 20 just ended. 20 years after the hopes raised by a common awareness Nations actions to take for the future of our planet, the economic crisis seems to have revived individualism and cooperation prevented from developing.
Given this situation, can not be repeated enough, higher education and research remain the only lever to overcome the crisis, closer, by science, men, and enable, through the increased level of knowledge , technology transfer, innovation, boost sustainable growth.

In this, universities and schools have emerged in Rio, as institutions sometimes grouped more responsible than the States, and actors of another form of globalization
. More...

22 juin 2012

Universities Feel the Heat Amid Cuts

http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/NA-BR143_RESEAR_D_20120614154809.jpgBy Jack Nicas and Cameron McWhirter. A panel of business and academic leaders warned funding cuts to higher education are hurting the global competitiveness of U.S. research universities, the latest sign of financial strain that is intensifying battles over school leadership and has led to several high-profile departures of university presidents.
U.S. research universities "are in grave danger of not only losing their place of global leadership but of serious erosion in quality," the committee of 22 academic, business and nonprofit leaders warned in a 250-page report issued Thursday. The report, commissioned by Congress, called for a combined effort among the schools, governments and corporations to reverse the decline.
Richard Vedder, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity and retired economics professor at Ohio University, reviewed parts of the report Thursday and was skeptical. He said he has found no correlation between extensive university research and a nation's economic prosperity. The Center for College Affordability is a research group that focuses on free-market solutions for rising college costs. More...
9 juin 2012

“Fat” furor is revealing about attitudes in academe

By Melonie Fullick. There’s a lot of discussion among academics these days about how to use new media in ways that are productive and engaging, in ways that help us build networks and share resources. But last weekend, we got a taste of what happens when social media work to reveal and amplify the biases that are operating in academe (and elsewhere) on a regular basis. Dr. Geoffrey Miller, of the University of New Mexico, decided to tweet about how he believes fat students should not consider doing a PhD because they don’t have the “willpower” for it. After all (according to his logic), if they don’t have the self-discipline to go on a diet, how could they complete an advanced degree? Read more...
1 juin 2012

Is a university education still worth the time and money?

http://static.guim.co.uk/static/b05b48a62321634f4c0395bffea3cb2437e98040/common/images/logos/the-guardian/news.gifBy Jeevan Vasagar; Paolo Baroni, La Stampa; Isabelle Rey-Lefebvre, Le Monde; Juan Antonio Aunión, El Pais. Across Europe, young people are doing the same calculations: pay their way through three or four years of higher education for uncertain returns – or take their chances without a degree. Giulia is 20 years old. She is in her second year at Sapienza University in Rome, studying communication science, but has decided to drop out.
Is this because she chose the wrong subject? No – like many other students in Italy, she simply no longer believes that her degree will help her to find a job. Not only has the financial crisis left many facing an uncertain future, but the education system itself is believed to be useless by families who point out that it does not reward merit. In the current academic year, according to the latest report from the national committee for university grading, less than 60% of pupils with high-school diplomas enrolled at an Italian university, the lowest percentage for 30 years.
"It's far better to get a job without doing a degree," says Giulia. In a few weeks she will be at the seaside in Ostia, working in a bar run by her aunt and uncle.
All across Europe, young people are performing the same calculations: pay their way through three or four years of higher education for uncertain returns, or take their chances without a degree. In countries such as Italy and Britain, there is a real financial cost: tuition fees of up to £9,000 in the UK from September, and as much as €3,000 (£2,400) in Italy.
Entry-level salaries for graduates are shrinking – and yet a degree is still a big advantage in the fight against unemployment. Among 25- to 29-year-old graduates in the European Union, unemployment rose from 7% to 9.2% between 2008 and 2011, while among people with only basic education it went from 16.1% to 24.3%.
Nevertheless, in countries such as Italy, a university degree may be a risky investment: Italy's universities are ranked among the lowest in Europe by Eurostat, as only 76.6% of graduates find work, compared with an EU average of 82.3%.
Many students will be well into their studies before they realise that they have little competitive advantage to show for their efforts. In France, the BA from public universities is now considered so inferior that it is almost mandatory to continue on to a master's. Not surprisingly, in countries such as France and Italy, where the standard university bachelor degrees are somewhat tarnished, high numbers of students do not complete their courses. In French public universities, 48% of first-year entrants do not go on to the second year and just 38% finish the three-year course. Italy has a drop-out rate of 45%.
With student numbers multiplying in Europe and across the world (from 50 million in 1980 to 170 million in 2009), students "look for other ways to differentiate themselves apart from their degree certificate", according to Rolf van der Velden, a professor at Maastricht University. These include master's degrees and postgraduate courses. In Britain, experts believe the university is more important than the course; a situation that is similar in France, with regard to the highly thought-of grandes écoles.
So a university education is worth it? The student verdict in Britain appears to be yes, just about. Despite the tripling of many tuition fees this autumn, university application numbers have not fallen that much – by about 9% year-on-year. The number of 18-year-old UK applicants – the largest single group of candidates – has decreased by 2.6%. Unexpectedly, the application figures also reveal a sharper drop among more affluent candidates than among those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
The latest application figures show a drop in applicants from the rest of the EU – down from around 45,000 last year to around 39,000 for this September. But UK universities remain popular with candidates from the rest of the world. There are big rises in applications from Hong Kong, Malaysia and other east Asian countries.

27 mai 2012

The social contract between universities and society

http://euprio.eu/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Euprio_logo_3.jpgEUPRIO Annual Conference: The social contract between universities and society, Gothenburg, Sweden (6-9 September 2012). The 2012 EUPRIO annual conference is this year situated in Gothenburg, Sweden. The conference is hosted by the University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology, and the theme of the conference is ‘The social contract between universities and society’.
We are very proud to present a an exciting programme with a number of excellent speakers  from all over Europe, on how to bridging the gap between universities and the society at large.  As always, the opportunity to network with colleagues from all over Europe is a reason good enough for attending the EUPRIO conference. Do not miss the chance to participate in the EUPRIO award 2012.
‘The social contract between universities and society’

Although the days of universities as ‘ivory towers’ may be gone, this doesn’t automatically mean that universities are very good at proving their value to society, or in creating partnerships with important public stakeholder groups. Universities are challenged to convince the public of what could be called ‘the social contract between universities and society’. In this contract universities commit themselves to constantly improve teaching, to educate young people to become the leaders in future society, to do important research for economic, social and cultural development and to drive public debate about the development of a responsible and prosperous society.
Playing a muted role in promoting ‘the contract’ makes universities an easy prey for governments trying to reduce state deficits. And indeed more than ever universities are in the contemporary global crisis confronted with major cuts. General audiences barely react. They do not feel an urgency to protest against cutbacks or support universities. There is no general notion that investing in universities, in academic education and research, is one of the essential measures to find a way out of the current crisisWhat should universities do or how could universities improve their communication in a way that society recognises the general importance of academic education and research for the welfare of society itself? How can we improve a common understanding of the importance of public funding for universities as a essential investment in society itself? Quite a challenge!
The coming year we want to discuss this issue with all of you. We want to seek solutions, exchange best practise and develop ideas how we as communicators could effectively work on the improvement of the common understanding of the importance of universities for society of ‘the social contract between universities and society’. The European Plaza is the starting point to exchange ideas and experience and gather examples of best practise. We have formulated 4 different themes which allow us to discuss this issue looking at it from different angles. Don’t hesitate to give your opinion or to send in ideas how to handle this situation.
See also University Communicators establish their roles towards 2020.
17 mai 2012

Quest for College Accountability Produces Demand for Yet More Student Data

http://chronicle.com/img/chronicle_logo.gifBy Paul Basken. Despite growing pressure from policy makers and prospective students for colleges to prove their value, the institutions have often insisted that their unique missions make simple measurements forbiddingly difficult. Now they have documented proof. After three years of studying ideas for measuring institutional quality, an expert panel assembled by the National Research Council delivered a 192-page report on Thurday that indicates just how hard it is to do that.
"While productivity measurement in many service sectors is fraught with conceptual and data difficulties," the 15-member panel said in its summary, "nowhere are the challenges—such as accounting for input differences, wide quality variation of outputs, and opaque or regulated pricing—more imposing than for higher education."
The panel, led by Teresa A. Sullivan, president of the University of Virginia, nevertheless identified some starting points. Its 15 recommendations start with the notion that the productivity of higher education should be regarded as ratio of outputs, such as degrees completed and credit hours passed, to inputs, including both labor contributions and non-labor ones, like buildings and grounds, materials, and supplies. But the panel acknowledged that those are rough measures, and their imprecision is a sign that colleges compile insufficient measures of the quantity and quality of their work. The panel recommended a series of efforts to improve data collection, covering such variables as fields of study, hours spent on instruction, and job placement.
It's good advice, but not something that can be accomplished quickly, said Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president of government and public affairs at the American Council on Education.
"This report shows in great detail how difficult it will be to put sensible productivity measures in place quickly or easily," Mr. Hartle said.
Obstacles and Shortcomings
Along with Ms. Sullivan, the panel members consisted largely of university administrators, economists, and policy analysts and consultants in higher education. It was assembled by the Lumina Foundation for Education and the National Research Council's Committee on National Statistics, which in February 2009 proposed a study to identify the complexities of measuring productivity and accountability in higher education. Lumina paid the $900,000 cost of the project. Colleges are facing mounting demands, from both ends of the political spectrum, to hold down costs and demonstrate their value to students. Under the Bush administration, the education secretary, Margaret Spellings, formed a Commission on the Future of Higher Education that blasted colleges over their records on access, affordability, and accountability. President Obama outlined a plan for improving college affordability in this year's State of the Union address, though his administration has been slow to offer details of how to accomplish it.
Key obstacles include the difficulty of making meaningful comparisons across institutions in a system in which diversity of mission has long been a fundamental strength. And measuring some of the most important outcomes—like those involving student success in the job market—has been hindered by the complexity of tracking millions of students decades after their college years and overcoming the associated privacy concerns. The National Research Council panel may have provided more detail on the dimensions of those obstacles, but it wasn't immediately clear that it provided any new path through the maze of variables.
One major shortcoming, said Grover J. Whitehurst, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, is the panel's emphasis on avoiding institution-by-institution comparisons. The panel apparently feared making such direct comparisons out of concern that emphasizing simple factors such as graduation rates might lead colleges to artificially lower their graduation standards. But that's an argument for finding better institution-by-institution measures, not avoiding them altogether, said Mr. Whitehurst, a former director of the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education.
Clicking 42 Times
Among its recommendations, the National Research Council panel suggested that the Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics revive a plan for creating a national unit record database, which would allow the government to follow students into their careers and compile detailed reports on which colleges ultimately produce the most successful graduates. The idea of a unit record system has been pursued by both the Obama administration and the Bush administration before it. Both administrations have recognized it as critical to gaining a true bottom-line measure of the value provided by higher education. But neither has been able to overcome strenuous objections in Congress fueled by university lobbyists, most notably those representing private institutions.
The federal government is now working with some states to get around those privacy objections. The Census Bureau is sharing data, using Social Security numbers as the means of tracking, to help at least three states match job data with college-graduate data. In one of those states, Washington, data studied by Mr. Whitehurst involving two community colleges near Seattle showed one performing much better than the other as measured by graduation rates, job placement, and salaries for students in nursing programs.
Those are the kinds of comparisons that policy makers and prospective students would find highly valuable, Mr. Whitehurst said. But the few institutions that have such information don't make it easily accessible on public Web sites, he said. "You've got to click 42 times to get what you want," Mr. Whitehurst said. The National Research Council panel shows little outward concern for improving that situation, gearing most of its recommendations toward data-gathering systems that would be used almost exclusively by professional researchers, he said. It's also unlikely that colleges, already feeling overwhelmed by the volume of data required by federal officials, would welcome the additional demands suggested by the National Research Council panel, said Mark S. Schneider, vice president of the American Institutes for Research.
"You're talking about hundreds and hundreds of more pieces of data," said Mr. Schneider, who ran the Education Department's data-collection systems as commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics. And without a unit record system, it's questionable how much additional value would be produced by all that additional data, Mr. Schneider said.
Mr. Schneider said he agrees with his former colleague, Mr. Whitehurst, that data efforts should be driven primarily by the need to help students weigh their options. The nonprofit American Institutes for Research, working with Lumina, is nearing an agreement with six states that will make public program-by-program and institution-by-institution records of the starting wages of their students. The strategies outlined by the National Research Council panel also don't appear designed to reflect the changing nature of higher education as students increasingly seek alternatives such as online courses and single-subject certifications, Mr. Schneider said. The report, he said, appears "too backward-looking."
Still, Mr. Hartle said, the panel provided "a terrific service," giving the Education Department a series of new steps for data collection and analysis that it could begin to consider.
"There's no doubt that this will advance the conversation," he said. "But it makes clear this is going to be a pretty long chitchat."

17 mai 2012

Why do some graduates believe university is a waste of time

http://www.hecsu.ac.uk/assets/assets/images/logos/GMT_logo.JPGGraduate Market Trends: The HECSU journal. Latest edition: Spring 2012. In the latest edition of GMT Alan Milburn, the Coalition government's Independent Reviewer of Social Mobility and Child Poverty, discusses how higher education can contribute to social mobility, while Dr Tessa Stone, Chair of the Bridge Group and CEO of the Brightside Trust, explores what universities can do to improve social mobility. Other contributors include: Matt Grist, senior researcher for Demos, who examines how changes to funding policy might lead to a more sustainable model of higher education; Holly Higgins, senior researcher for HECSU, who explores why some graduates attach more value to their higher education than others; and Daria Luchinskaya, PhD student at the University of Warwick, who describes how graduates utilise their skills in small businesses. View the the digital version of GMT Spring 2012.
Why do some graduates believe university is a waste of time (pp.12-14)
Holly Higgins, senior researcher at HECSU, asks what graduates’ reflections on the benefits of higher education can tell us about their understanding of the relationship between higher education and employment.

The UK’s Coalition government is currently implementing a series of reforms which signify a ‘radical departure from the existing way in which HEIs are funded’ (BIS, 2011; Browne 2010: 3). The government’s proposals, which will see publicly funded teaching grants replaced by repayable tuition loans, have reignited public debate about the purpose and practice of higher education (Anyangwe, 2011; Collini, 2011; Swain, 2011).
Public debate about the benefits of participating in higher education is currently dominated by a discourse of employability which privileges the financial rewards of achieving a higher education qualification, demonstrated by the so-called ‘graduate premium’ (Willetts, 2011), over the personal and social rewards associated with the experience itself. Critics of this employability discourse argue that attempts to isolate preparation for employment from other aspects of personal and social development are unhelpful, because they fail to take account of the interrelationship between personal, educational and professional development (McArthur, 2011).
In 2011 HECSU conducted a survey to examine graduates’ experiences of the world of work. The Real Prospects survey was conducted in 2011 which asked employed and self-employed graduates to share their experiences of the world of work. The survey, which explored graduates’ experiences of higher education, work experience and graduate employment, asked participants if they felt they had benefited from participating in higher education. We found that graduates who believed their participation in higher education had contributed to their personal and professional development demonstrated an awareness of the broader purposes of higher education, while graduates who perceived their higher education to be of little or no value were more likely to view university as a means to an end.
‘I wouldn’t be where I am today without the experiences and knowledge I gained from my time at university’

Graduates who felt that participating in higher education had contributed to their personal development explained how studying for a degree had enabled them to develop confidence in their own ability, giving them the courage to volunteer and defend their own ideas, and to challenge the opinions of others. They described how attending university had given them the opportunity to engage with, and learn from, people they might not otherwise have met, explaining how this prompted them to re-assess their priorities and think more critically about their own ideas and ambitions, broadening their horizons and developing their understanding of the world.
Graduates who felt that studying for a degree had facilitated their professional development also referred to the social and intellectual rewards of higher education, describing how their experience at university had given them confidence in their ability to make sense of new ideas and unfamiliar concepts, and to understand, manage, and summarise complex information. They explained how studying for a degree taught them how to appraise other peoples’ work, assess the validity of their conclusions, consider the implications of their suggestions, and then apply their own knowledge in order to come to their own conclusions. Graduates also indicated that participating in higher education had prompted them to adopt some of the behaviours associated with career selfmanagement (King, 2004), describing how studying for a degree taught them to evaluate their skills and knowledge, which helped them to identify their strengths and address their weaknesses.
These graduates felt that achieving a degree demonstrated that a student had the intellectual ability to engage with, and understand, unfamiliar concepts and ideas. They were determined to achieve success within the labour market, and encouraged current students to make the most of opportunities to engage with academic knowledge, gain work experience, participate in extracurricular activities, and develop their social skills.
‘I do not feel my degree benefited me at all. I thought it was a waste of time’

While many graduates agreed that participating in higher education had contributed to their personal and professional development, some argued that their higher education was of little or no value because it had not enabled them to secure a particular kind of job. These graduates had struggled to find what they considered to be a ‘graduate’ job and felt that universities were no better at equipping students with transferable skills than schools or colleges. These graduates felt that achieving a degree demonstrated that a student had acquired the necessary knowledge and skills to perform a particular role, but were pessimistic about their chances of achieving success within the labour market, arguing that nepotism was rife and that they did not have the contacts to secure a job in their subject area. They believed that many students would be better off pursuing professional or vocational qualifications which are designed to prepare them for employment, and wished they had done the same.
‘Don’t think it’s just about what employers want. University is a great opportunity to learn what you can do as an individual’

Graduates were asked to reflect on their experience of higher education as part of a wider survey about career development, so it was inevitable that many would focus on the role higher education played in preparing them for employment. However, it is interesting to note that those who were positive about their experience described how their higher education had contributed to their personal and professional development, while those who expressed negative views perceived their higher education to be of less value because they hadn’t been able to secure a particular kind of job.
Students’ orientations towards higher education are important because they influence their understanding of, engagement with, and ambitions for academic learning, extracurricular activities, employment and employability (Stevenson and Clegg, 2011; Haywood et al, 2010; Tomlinson, 2010; Beaty et al, 2005). They also inform students’ understanding of the relationship between education and the wider world, and the current discourse of employability is prompting some to view higher education primarily as a way of distinguishing themselves from others in an increasingly competitive labour market (Brookes and Everett, 2009). This should be of concern to both politicians and educators because it suggests that the discourse of employability is leading some students to adopt an instrumental approach to education, preventing them from engaging with higher education in a way which facilitates the personal and social development which will enable them to secure fulfilling employment and make a meaningful contribution to the economy.
Further research is needed before we can draw any firm conclusions about the relationship between student’s orientations towards higher education and their educational and employment outcomes, but the preliminary findings from the HECSU survey are a timely reminder that universities and policy makers need to do more to remind students of the broader purposes of higher education if they want students to participate fully in university life.
More about the Real Prospects research programme

HECSU’s Real Prospects research and development programme explores the process of higher education and employability in order to understand how universities and graduate employers can better support their students and graduate employees. To find out more about the research programme, please visit www.hecsu.ac.uk/real_prospects.
References
Anyangwe. E. (2011). What is the purpose of higher education? Live chat, 16th December. Guardian Higher Education Network, 13th December 2011.
Beaty, L., Gibbs, G. and Morgan, A. (2005). Learning orientations and study contracts. In Marton, F., Hounsell, D. and Entwistle, N., (eds.) The Experience of Learning: Implications for teaching and studying in higher education. 3rd (Internet) edition. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, Centre for Teaching, Learning and Assessment, pp. 72-86
Brookes, R. and Everett, G. (2009). Post-graduation reflections on the value of a degree, British Educational Research Journal, 35:3, 333-349
Browne, J. (2010). Independent Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance: securing a sustainable future for higher education.
Collini, S. (2011). From Robbins to McKinsey, London Review of Books, 33:16, 9-14
BIS. (2011). Higher Education: Students at the Heart of the System. London: HMSO
Haywood, Jenkins and Molesworth. (2010). A degree will make all your dreams come true: higher education as the management of consumer desires. In Molesworth, M., Scullion, R. and Nixon, E., (eds.)
The Marketisation of Higher Education and the Student as a Consumer. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 183-195
King, Z. (2004). Career self-management: its nature, causes and consequences, Journal of Vocational Behaviour, 65, 112-133
McArthur, J. (2011). Reconsidering the social and economic purposes of higher education, Higher Education Research and Development, 30:6, 737-749
Stevenson, J. and Clegg, S. (2011). Possible selves: students orientating themselves towards the future through extracurricular activity, British Educational Research Journal, 37:2, 231-246
Swain, H. (2011). What are universities for? Guardian, 10th October.
Tomlinson, M. (2010). Investing in the self: structure, agency and identity in graduates’ employability, Education, Knowledge and Economy, 4:2, 73-88 Willetts, D. (2011). Speech to the Guardian HE Summit, London, 16th March
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