By Peta Lee. Student plagiarism might be alive and well and sprouting up in campuses around the world, but in Slovakia, at least, measures put in place in 2010 are bearing fruit. For the past four years, all Slovak higher education institutions have been obligatory users of an 'Antiplag' programme – and since 2011 there has been open access to its Central Repository of Theses and Dissertations. More...23 février 2014
Student anti-plagiarism measures reap rewards
By Peta Lee. Student plagiarism might be alive and well and sprouting up in campuses around the world, but in Slovakia, at least, measures put in place in 2010 are bearing fruit. For the past four years, all Slovak higher education institutions have been obligatory users of an 'Antiplag' programme – and since 2011 there has been open access to its Central Repository of Theses and Dissertations. More...Mixed reactions to new research excellence fund
By Peta Lee. Starting in 2015, the Canada First Research Excellence Fund is to provide C$1.5 billion (US$1.4 billion) over a decade to support university research that contributes to the country’s long-term economic competitiveness. More...Universities back war on red tape
By Geoff Maslen. Australia’s conservative federal government has “declared war on red and green tape” and plans to hold the first of two ‘Repeal Days’ on 26 March, as part of its programme to abolish more than 8,000 laws and regulations it claims have clogged the arteries of federal agencies for years. Copied from America, where the US Congress has regular repeal days, the government will present an “omnibus red tape repeal bill” to parliament next month which it says represents the biggest single reduction in federal laws since the Commonwealth of Australia was established in 1901. More...Europe shelves HE and research negotiations with Swiss
By Michael Gardner. The European Union has shelved negotiations with Switzerland over two major higher education and research programmes. The move came after the Swiss government’s announcement that it would deny EU member Croatia talks over a labour market agreement. Switzerland’s announcement last weekend that it was suspending negotiations with Croatia on free access to the Swiss labour market came as a direct consequence of the referendum a week earlier in which a slender majority of voters opted for tougher immigration regulations. More...Beat the tuition bloat: Column
By . "Why am I paying so much tuition to people whose job seems to be telling me to call someone else?"
That was my daughter's lament last week as she tried to pry an essential form out of her college's labyrinthine bureaucracy, but it's a question that many Americans should be asking. Administrative bloat at American colleges and universities is out of hand, and it's probably the biggest cause of the skyrocketing tuitions that afflict students and parents today. Everyone knows that tuitions have skyrocketed, though many may not appreciate the full extent of the problem. As University of Michigan economics and finance professor Mark Perry has calculated, college tuition increased from 1978 to 2011 at an annual rate of 7.45%. More...
In our opinion: Fund growth in higher education
Utah lawmakers have a rare opportunity this year to provide some of the state’s fastest growing institutions of higher learning with the money they need to catch up with the demands of what, in some cases, is an overwhelming rate of growth.
It’s a rare opportunity because the presidents of all universities and colleges in the state have agreed to a formula that would provide this equity — even though the University of Utah, Snow College, Utah State and Southern Utah University would receive none of the roughly $69 million the Utah System of Higher Education is asking for in order to put all schools on an equal level with funding at about $4,800 for each full-time student. More...
MIT is crafting legal resource to aid students
By Martine Powers. Members of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology community were applauding the university’s president this weekend after he announced plans to establish an independent legal resource for students tangled in court issues as a result of their innovative work.
Rafael Reif’s announcement came after members of MIT’s faculty wrote a letter last week, signed by more than 800 others, that pushed for the institution to provide support to four undergraduates under investigation for fraud by the state of New Jersey because of a project that won them an award at a programming competition — a controversy haunted by the memory of Internet activist Aaron Swartz.
On Saturday, before the letter was even submitted to Reif, he responded in a campuswide letter — vowing support for the four students, and promising that the university would establish an initiative to serve students involved in legal battles that result from their entrepreneurial pursuits. More...
Show Me the Money: Higher Education and the Workforce
By Brian C. Mitchell. Writing for the Associated Press, Hope Yen reported recently that the earnings gap between young adults with and without bachelor's degrees has stretched to its widest level in nearly half a century. She suggested that it is a sign of the growing value of a college education despite rising tuition costs.
Citing Pew Research Center data, Ms. Yen noted that Pew found that even among the two thirds of young adults who borrowed money for college, about 86 percent said the degrees had been, or will be, worth it. More...
Wives Are Now More Educated than Husbands In the U.S.
By . More women are "marrying down," at least academically. For the first time in 50 years, the educational balance among married couples has tipped towards women. Wives are more likely to be the better educated partner than the other way around. The trend is particularly sharp among newlyweds; in 2012 almost 40% of college educated women were married to a guy without a degree. Read more...
Alumni split on value of degrees from for-profit colleges
They are largely satisfied with their day-to-day learning experience, but some students who attended for-profit colleges are struggling to answer a key question in higher education: Is it all worth it?
A new study by the research group Public Agenda concludes that 32 percent of alumni of for-profit schools said their investment “really wasn't worth it,” with 30 percent saying it “remains to be seen” whether their degree would be worth the cost and effort. Thirty-seven percent of alumni said the experience was “well worth it.”
Count Tampa student Niulca Tavarez among the latter group. More...
