By Julia Lawrence. International students studying in the United States in the 2011-2012 academic year contributed more than $21.8 billion to the economy, according to research by the National Association of Foreign Student Advisers. The report, titled What is the Value of International Students to Your State in 2012? also finds that the biggest beneficiaries of the foreign students largesse over that year were California, New York and Texas. Marlene M. Johnson, NAFSA Executive Director and CEO, said the international students don’t just bring financial benefits to the states that host them. They also contribute academically to US colleges and universities while providing cultural value to the surrounding communities of their schools.
According to the NAFSA, international students, as well as US students who choose to pursue studies abroad, create a strong cultural link between other countries and the United States. In addition, bringing international students into American classrooms provides a global perspective that is often limited or even non-existent. Foreign students in US colleges and universities often enroll in some of the toughest engineering and science courses, thus making it economically feasible for schools to offer them to more students including those that come from the US. Outside of class, spending by foreign students supports many local businesses, and their money also goes to benefit other parts of the local economy via rent and transportation payments and other expenses. More...

By Jonathan Marks. Conservatives once proudly stood, in William F. Buckley’s words, “athwart history, yelling Stop.” This posture led them to befriend defenders of liberal education like Allan Bloom, author of Closing of the American Mind (Simon & Schuster, 1987).
Admittedly, Bloom announced in a 1988 lecture at Harvard that he was “not a conservative.” The liberal education Bloom defended initiates students into a “quest for truth,” but Bloom didn’t think that “man is, or can be, in possession of absolutes.” That Socratic stance, in tension with discipleship of every kind, may have troubled Buckley’s “disciples of Truth, who defend the organic moral order.” But both the quest for unknown truths and the defense of known but unpopular truths required a stand against relativism, and for the university as a haven for reflecting on enduring problems. Conservatives and defenders of liberal education alike wanted the university to challenge, not merely reflect, the society that sheltered it. More...

By Beth McMurtrie. The number of Americans who study abroad grew an anemic 1.3 percent in 2010-11, according to the latest "Open Doors" report by the Institute of International Education.
While the numbers, which are on a two-year lag, were no doubt influenced by the country's economic woes, the poor showing highlights the challenges colleges face in making study abroad an integral part of the college experience.
"Those numbers are not growing fast enough," says Peggy Blumenthal, senior counsel at the institute. "We're going to have to find other ways to internationalize the thinking of Americans if we're not going to get them all abroad."
According to the report, 273,996 students went abroad in the 2010 academic year. Europe remains the preferred region of study, drawing 55 percent of all students. But China has steadily inched up over the years and is now the fifth most popular destination, reflecting a growing interest in Asia's leading economy. According to a separate survey by the institute, if those students traveling to China for service-learning projects, research, and other non-credit-bearing work were added in, the total number of students who traveled to China in 2011 climbed to 26,000.
Mexico and Japan saw their figures plummet—by 42 and 33 percent, respectively. No doubt the declining interest was due to the continuing drug-related violence in Mexico and the tsunami in the spring of 2011 in Japan. More...

By Jeff Selingo. The Association of American Universities operates its club in such secret that most presidents who yearn to get into it have no idea when another exclusive invite might be extended. So a dozen or so university presidents who aspire to be members were probably disappointed on Monday when the AAU announced it was welcoming another expensive private institution to its ranks, Boston University.
Membership in the AAU has become the benchmark for research universities to show the world that they have made the big time. As a result, university leaders who want to be part of the group seem willing to do almost anything to prove they are worthy, including spending their own tuition dollars to gain an advantage in the federal research rankings that matter so much to the AAU. More...

The Organization of American States (OAS) and the government of Mexico, through the National Council for Science and Technology (CONACYT) today launched a scholarship program for students of Member States who wish to pursue graduate studies in that country.
Within the framework of the 21st Regular Meeting of the Inter-American Council for Integral Development (CIDI), the OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza praised "the generous offer of postgraduate scholarships" presented by Mexico and stressed that the initiative is the "most valuable cooperation that a Member State has given to the OAS in terms of the education human resources, especially in the areas of engineering and science" which, he added, has already achieved broad acceptance among some countries of the hemispheric organization. For more information, please visit the OAS Website at www.oas.org. More...

Base salaries for CEOs of the nation's more than 1,100 community colleges increased a modest 4.1-6.2% over the last six years (2006-2012), according to a new study released today by the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC). The increase varied according to the type of institution where the CEO served, with single-campus colleges posting the greater increase, followed by leaders at multicampus colleges, then by CEOs of individual colleges of multicollege districts. Median salary across all respondents was $167,000, and mean base salary was $173,983. The 37-question survey on which the study is based had a response rate of 39%.
A secondary finding from the study, Compensation and Benefits of Community College CEOs: 2012, relates to anticipated CEO turnover at the colleges and has potentially greater and more long-lasting impact for leaders of higher education's largest sector. Almost 75% of respondents indicate they plan to retire within the next decade, and an additional 15% say they will leave their jobs in the next 11-15 years, according to the study. The study's findings seem almost counterintuitive, AACC leaders say, given current trends affecting community colleges. Over the last few years the colleges have experienced record enrollment -- from 2007-2011, enrollments surged 22% (http://www.aacc.nche.edu/). More...

By Alya Mishra. Canada is turning to higher education partnerships as a form of ‘soft’ diplomacy and as part of a global economic strategy that includes attracting Indian students to fill a growing skills shortage.
“Canada is looking to take advantage of India’s demographic profile,” Marcia Lang, senior advisor to the president of the University of Alberta, told University World News on the sidelines of a higher education conference held in New Delhi from 5-6 November.
“Indian students are bright and very good and we want to encourage more students to not only study in Canada but to fill our skills shortage by working there.”
Lang noted that Canada has the second largest oil sands after Saudi Arabia, “but we don’t have enough people to work. We have partnered with IIT [Indian Institute of Technology] Bombay, IIT Roorkee and oil companies such as Indian Oil to not only train Indian middle-level managers but also to attract students,” Lang said. More...

By Tamar Lewin. Although the United States no longer leads the world in educational attainment, record numbers of young Americans are completing high school, going to college and finishing college, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of newly available census data.
This year, for the first time, a third of the nation’s 25- to 29-year-olds have earned at least a bachelor’s degree. That share has been slowly edging up for decades, from fewer than one-fifth of young adults in the early 1970s to 33 percent this year. More...

By Sarah Boesveld. The “abysmal” state of free speech at Canadian public universities is stifling students’ right to speak their minds, according to a new report card that gives mostly failing grades to universities and their student unions.
The 2012 Campus Freedom Index (download PDF), released Wednesday by the Calgary-based Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, awarded only three A’s to 35 universities and student unions it analyzed in its second annual report. A grade of ‘F’ was far more common — handed out 28 times to 12 universities and 16 student unions for everything from cancelling controversial speakers and obstructing pro-life groups to banning the expression “Israeli Apartheid.”
“Everyone’s forced to pay for these universities through tax dollars and the universities get the money in part by claiming to be these centres of free inquiry,” said JCCF president John Carpay, who co-authored the report. “It’s fundamentally dishonest for the university to go to the government … and ask for hundreds of millions of dollars on the pretext that they are a centre for free inquiry and then receive the money and turn around and censor unpopular opinions.”
While universities scored an average grade of C for having fairly sound policies and principles around free speech, the report said they weren’t as good at following them.
For example, the University of Toronto earned an A for its policies, which include a statement on freedom of speech from its governing council and student code of conduct provisions that protect a person’s right to voice views not everyone may agree with. But it scored an F for its actions — the report citing the administration’s 2008 effort to have pro-life groups turn their graphic posters towards the wall. Another example was a group being charged a $400 security fee for holding an Israeli Apartheid Week, a move study authors deemed unfair.
Student unions scored lower in the rankings, earning a D average on both policies and actions.
“The Index sheds light on the significant role that Canadian student unions play in damaging the free speech climate on campus,” the authors wrote, adding that they were particularly troubled that 10 student unions denied official club certification to student groups based solely on the content of their message, not because of misconduct. The student unions at Carleton University and Memorial University of Newfoundland scored Fs because they “refused” to certify pro-life clubs, the report said.
Student unions at the University of Saskatchewan, University of Victoria, University of Calgary, University of Western Ontario, University of Guelph, McGill University and Lakehead University have all banned campus pro-life groups at different times in recent years, earning them Fs, according to the report.
Pro-life groups seem to be the “current target” on campuses, Mr. Carpay said, but in 20 years it could well be another group that doesn’t fit with the popular view of the day. He was especially troubled by the arrest of pro-life protesters at Carleton University in October, 2010, whose trespassing charges have since been dropped. President of the Carleton University Students’ Association, Alexander Golovko, said in an email to the Post that the results from this index “are not fully representative of the current state of affairs” at Carleton. “This year my team and I are striving to ensure there are open and accessible debates on issues that matter to students.”
The national chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students, Adam Awad, dismissed the index, saying it did not explain its methodology well enough to support its criticism of student unions. Email: sboesveld@nationalpost.com.