By Sara Goldrick-Rab. A recent New York Times op-ed blames the rules and regulations of the federal Pell Grant program for many of our nation’s higher education access and completion problems. In short, the authors contend that the rule that defines a full-time course load as 12 or more credits per term hinders students from graduating early or even on time. Read more...
15 décembre 2013
The Real College Barrier for the Working Poor
Questions on Performance Funding
By David Tandberg and Nicholas Hillman. Policy making is difficult and complex; evaluating the effects of policy can also be quite difficult. Nevertheless, it is important that researchers and policy analysts undertake the hard work of asking difficult questions and doing their best to answer those questions. This is what we attempted to do when we undertook a yearlong effort to evaluate the effects of performance funding on degree completions. This effort has culminated in two peer-reviewed papers and one policy brief which summarizes the results of those papers. Our policy brief was widely distributed and the results were discussed in a recent Inside Higher Ed article. Read more...The Chicken or the Egghead?
By Scott McLemee. This year is the 50th anniversary of Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter, whose greatest achievement, someone once said, was keeping it to just the one volume. As discussed here a short while ago, the revisionist interpretation of American populism appearing in Hofstadter’s book The Age of Reform (1955) has taken a lot of positivistic hits by subsequent historians. He over-generalized on the basis of a (very) narrowly selected pool of primary sources -- and in the final analysis, he wasn’t really writing about the 1890s at all, but rather his own times, equating the mood and worldview of McCarthyism with the agrarian radicals of the People’s Party. Read more...
University Enterprise Zones aim to boost start-ups
By . The Treasury has funded a £15 million pilot project to establish three to four University Enterprise Zones in England.
The zones will house clusters of high-tech start-up companies that can access the expertise of the local university.
As part of this, the zones will offer affordable business space for students to start businesses after graduation.
The scheme is designed to combat the shortage of private sector funding for office, laboratory and workshop space for innovative firms. Read more...
Treasury loan book calculations ‘omit £1.7 billion’
By . The Treasury’s stated plan to fund expansion in student places by the sale of loans omits £1.7 billion in lost repayments arising from the sell off.
Andrew McGettigan, author of The Great University Gamble, who spotted the omission, claimed on his blog that the Treasury’s “back of the envelope calculations missed basic facts about financial assets”.
The Treasury said the omission of the lost graduate repayments from its calculations was “for reasons of commercial sensitivity” (the government is yet to agree any sale of the loans). Read more...
Nobel laureate attacks ‘luxury journals’
By . Nobel laureate Randy Schekman has pledged to stop publishing in “luxury journals”, which he believes contribute to the “disfigurement” of science.
Professor Schekman, co-winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, writes in The Guardian that journals such as Cell, Nature and Science “accept papers that make waves because they explore sexy subjects or make challenging claims”.
Because of the high career rewards for publishing in such journals, scientists were influenced by their preferences, leading to “bubbles in fashionable fields where researchers can make the bold claims these journals want, while discouraging other important work, such as replication studies”. Read more...
UUK gender segregation case study withdrawn
By . A controversial case study that aimed to help guide universities on gender segregation at events featuring Islamic speakers has been withdrawn after David Cameron waded into the row over Universities UK’s advice. The prime minister said universities should not be able to separate men and women at the request of guest speakers, a Downing Street spokesman said on 13 December. His comments came amid growing criticism of legal advice issued by UUK last month, which says a speaker’s right to religious expression may be violated if a request to segregate an audience is not allowed for in some way. Read more...
Gender segregation guidelines to be reviewed as David Cameron steps into row for the first time
By David Barrett. Universities UK announces it will work with the equality watchdog to re-write its controversial gender segregation guidance as the Prime Minister's spokesman says it should not be allowed. Controversial guidelines which endorsed gender segregation at British universities are to be reviewed after a massive public backlash. Universities UK (UUK), which last month said Muslim societies and other groups were entitled to practice gender segregation at public meetings on campus, said it would work with the equalities watchdog to look again at its guidance. Read more...
Are too many people going to university?
By David Ellis. If the Government continues to push for greater student numbers, a degree will be worth less and less, argues David Ellis. Four words that can unsettle me: ‘We need to talk’ and ‘No, everything is fine’. Last week, though, ‘Student admissions cap abolished’ did it.
George Osborne announced universities would be free to expand as they wish, with no ‘arbitrary cap’ – his words – on admissions. Next year initiates the change, with 30,000 more places made available, which is expected to boost university applications and undergraduate numbers. Read more...
5 Things to Consider Before Transferring to a U.S. College
By Yao Lu. My first year as a college student did not go as well as I had hoped. I felt I was not challenged enough academically, and the college I attended was quite small, meaning there were few clubs and activities I really enjoyed. More...
