Formation Continue du Supérieur

By Elizabeth Redden. A main takeaway of a new British Council report analyzing trends in Indian student mobility is that there is no one single trend. The growth in India's own higher education system has been rapid at the same time that the sliding value of the rupee has made overseas higher education more expensive. While the U.K. and U.S. are the top two destinations of choice, students are increasingly applying to universities in Canada and Germany, where they perceive education to be cheaper and employment opportunities to be robust. Canada stands out in terms of perceived opportunities for permanent migration, while students see Germany as offering world-class opportunities in the automotive, engineering, and manufacturing industries. Read more...

By Michael Stratford. The average debt that borrowers of student loans had at graduation continued to rise last year, climbing to $29,400 for the class of 2012, according to a new report released Wednesday by the Institute for College Access and Success (TICAS). This year's figure, based on TICAS calculations of federal data collected every four years, is up by more than 25 percent compared with the group's $23,450 estimate for the class of 2008. Read more...

By Michael Stratford. Federal regulators next year will begin closer monitoring of companies that process student loan payments for the vast majority of borrowers to make sure they are following the law and not misleading consumers. Under a rule proposed earlier this year and set to be finalized Tuesday by the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, federal regulators will have the authority to oversee a much larger swath of student loan servicers. Read more...

By Nancy Shulock and Martha Snyder. A recent research paper published by the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education and reported on by Inside Higher Ed criticized states' efforts to fund higher education based in part on outcomes, in addition to enrollment. The authors, David Tandberg and Nicholas Hillman, hoped to provide a "cautionary tale" for those looking to performance funding as a "quick fix."
While we agree that performance-based funding is not the only mechanism for driving change, what we certainly do not need are impulsive conclusions that ignore positive results and financial context. Read more...

By Adam Kotsko. This summer, the faculty of Shimer College held a discussion of Jacques Rancière's book The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation. In it, he discusses the educational theory and practice of Joseph Jacotot, who claimed that one could teach a subject one didn't even know in the first place. For Jacotot, teaching isn't a matter of expertise, but of determination. It isn't about transmitting knowledge to the student, but about holding students accountable to the material that they are working on. Read more...

By Carl Straumsheim. A decade is an eternity in the ed-tech world. A draft of a report on academic freedom and electronic communications, updated for the first time since 2004, shows the American Association of University Professors is moving to extend its protection of faculty rights to keep up with advances in technology. The report, currently in draft form, contains thoughts on topics ranging from social media to cloud computing and cybersecurity, recommending a strong model of shared governance to ensure that faculty members are informed about and involved in solving technology issues. Read more...

By Carl Straumsheim. The story so far: Massive open online courses have yet to live up to their potential. But unlocking that potential could already be a pilot at a community college, state university or private institution. More than 200 scholars from institutions all over the world have gathered here at a conference hosted by the University of Texas at Arlington to hear preliminary results from the MOOC Research Initiative, a grant program founded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and administered by Athabasca University in Canada. Grantees, who received between $10,000 and $25,000 to examine how MOOCs can be used to change higher education, will compile their findings in a forthcoming edition of the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning. Read more...