By . Japan’s Kinki University plans to change its English name to avoid misunderstandings among English speakers, The Japan Times reported. The name “Kinki” refers to the region of Japan in which the institution is located, but the university’s president acknowledged that English speakers sometimes laugh when hearing the university’s name. A university spokesman said the name change was part of an effort to attract more foreign students. More...
By Chronicle Staff. Report: “Perils in the Provision of Trust Goods: Consumer Protection and the Public Interest in Higher Education”
Author: Robert M. Shireman, executive director of California Competes
Organization: Center for American Progress
Summary: Frequent investor pressures prompt for-profit colleges to compromise student and public needs in order to maximize profits. And while all colleges seek revenue, nonprofit institutions are overseen by boards without an ownership interest. More...
By Chronicle Staff. Report: “Borrowing Against the Future: The Hidden Costs of Financing U.S. Higher Education”
Organization: The Center for Culture, Organization, and Politics of the University of California at Berkeley’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment
Summary: As state appropriations for higher education have declined, the average cost of tuition and fees has escalated. Students are borrowing more to pay for their education, and colleges are borrowing more to finance capital projects to stay ahead in the amenities arms race. More...
By Chronicle Staff. Report: “‘Undemocracy’: Inequalities in Science”
Author: Yu Xie, a professor of sociology, statistics, and public policy at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
Summary: In a report published in the journal Science, Mr. Xie used the statistical tool known as a Gini coefficient—a measure of income equality across a given population—to assess the evenness of the distribution of science spending in the United States. More...
By Chronicle Staff. Report: “Faculty Climate Survey 2013″
Institution: Harvard University
Summary: Harvard University’s periodic faculty-climate survey reveals that most professors at the Ivy League institution are satisfied on the job. Yet female faculty members report higher levels of stress about child-related issues and elder care than do men. And if they’re mothers, they have more household duties than do their male counterparts. Seventy-two percent of the faculty participated in the survey, which was most recently conducted in the 2012-13 academic year. More...
By . The Financial Times on Friday raised questions about the data underlying the French economist Thomas Piketty’s best-selling book, Capital in the Twenty-first Century, asserting that an investigation of the data had revealed that they “contain a series of errors that skew his findings.”
Mr. Piketty’s book focuses on rising inequality, and its main thesis is that inequality is inevitably a part of capitalism. More...
By . The National Consumer Law Center on Monday sued the U.S. Department of Education to force it to turn over records on how it pays and oversees private student-loan debt collectors.
The law center has previously raised concerns about debt collectors who work on the department’s behalf, and said it asked the department in March to provide information about the incentives it provides those businesses. More...
By . The workers who helped build New York University’s recently completed campus in Abu Dhabi faced harsh labor conditions, with some of them saying that they were beaten, jailed, or deported after going on strike, The New York Times reported. In 2009, NYU issued a “statement of labor values” pledging that workers on the project, in the United Arab Emirates, would receive fair treatment. More...
By . The Apollo Education Group announced on Tuesday that its Apollo Global subsidiary had acquired a South African education company that specializes in business education. In the deal, Apollo paid about 265 million South African rand, or roughly $25.6-million, to acquire an 81-percent stake in Milpark Education (Pty) Ltd. Milpark has about 14,500 students across the country. More...
By . Jamienne S. Studley, a deputy under secretary of education at the U.S. Department of Education, on Wednesday published a blog post that provides some updates on the Obama administration’s push to develop a college-ratings system. More...
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