Formation Continue du Supérieur

By Vimal Patel. The number of GRE tests taken by students in India increased by 70 percent in 2013 from the year before, according to figures being released on Tuesday. The numbers, from the Educational Testing Service, which administers the GRE, the entrance examination used by most graduate-school programs, suggest that a recent surge in the number of Indian students entering American graduate schools may continue. A report released last fall by the Council of Graduate Schools showed a 40-percent rise in first-time graduate enrollments from India from 2012 to 2013. More...

By Kevin Carey. In the autumn of 2012, a year after becoming president of Davidson College, Carol Quillen gave a lecture about the intimacy of relationships with the dead. A scholar of Italian humanism by training, she read Machiavelli’s account of his nighttime journeys into the "ancient courts of ancient men," where, among the authors of antiquity, he was "not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reason for their actions; and they in their kindness answer me; and for four hours of time I do not feel boredom, I forget every trouble, I do not dread poverty, I am not frightened by death; entirely I give myself over to them."
The lecture was part of Davidson’s undergraduate humanities curriculum, a program with its own long history that now struggles to compete for students’ attention. More...

By Harry Lewis. A friend of mine recently explained over dinner with some friends that a university has to be run like a business, but not too much like a business. He's right, and the fiasco about Harvard misreporting employee earnings to the IRS is a perfect example.
The Globe ran the story on February 8. The university had long made available a certain benefit to employees, which the IRS considered taxable. So the value of the benefit would show as income on employees' W-2 forms. So far, nothing unusual. Through some combination of changes in tax regulations and changes in the benefit program, the benefit ceased to be taxable in the eyes of the IRS in 2009. But Harvard, mistakenly, continued report its value as income on employees' W-2s. Unfortunate, and costly to employees, because they had to pay taxes on what should have been nontaxable benefits. And now they have to amend their returns, perhaps several years of returns, if they want to get their money back from Uncle Sam. More...

By Annaliese Davis. John Burbank, a Seattle-based liberal policy analyst, had been studying the escalation of college tuition for several years when, in 2012, he hit on a plan to help students complete higher education degrees without going into thousands of dollars of debt.
Frustrated by the state’s disinvestment in higher education — which Burbank calls “a financial and psychological barrier for students” — he proposed that the state charge nothing upfront if students agreed to return a small share of their future income.
Burbank, executive director of the Economic Opportunity Institute, took his idea to Rep. Larry Seaquist, D-Gig Harbor. Seaquist liked the idea, but couldn’t find the money to put it into action. Read more...

By Michael A. MacDowell. With President Obama calling for greater access to college, it is more important than ever for the public to understand that the issue is not just getting student into college, but keeping them there.
In a recent article in the New York Times, David L. Krip, professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, discussed the Accelerated Study in Associate Program (ASAP) at the City University of New York (CUNY). Designed for community college students, it provides a package of comprehensive financial resources, student support systems, and a variety of other personalized approaches that are designed to increase student retention. Without ASAP, only 27 percent of CUNY students graduate on time. More...

By Glenn Harlan Reynolds. UNC controversies show that college isn't always worth the price tag.
Everyone should go to college, we're frequently told. But what if we had a college, and nobody came? And still got credit anyway.
The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill might not have gotten quite to that point, but it has come close: More than 50 classes offered by the African Studies department, and very popular with athletes, appear not to have actually existed. Some of these courses listed instructors who had not "supervised the course and graded the work," and others "were taught irregularly," a university review said. More...