Formation Continue du Supérieur

By Scott Jaschik. Schools of education need to improve the way they evaluate faculty members -- whether on or off the tenure track -- according to two reports released Friday by the American Educational Research Association. One report, on evaluating faculty members for tenure and promotion, finds that significant changes are needed in how teaching and research are evaluated. The other report says that faculty members off the tenure track deserve "appropriate conditions of professional employment and support." 
Tenure-Line Faculty 
The report on tenure-track faculty members suggested significant shifts in all parts of the evaluation process. Read more...

By Robert J. Sternberg. When people want to know how “good” a university is, they often turn to published media ratings, such as the rankings of U.S. News & World Report. The assumption is that the better the ratings, the better the university is. But there may be cases in which a better rating is actually a bad thing. It all depends on the mission of the university. Consider, for example, the case of the land-grant mission. First, the land-grant mission, as framed by the Morrill Act of 1862, emphasizes the importance of access. Believers in the land-grant mission trust in the potential of students and in their capacity for self-improvement. Read more...

By William G. Tierney and Julia C. Duncheon. Remedial education in higher education has become a target for reformers. Lawmakers in Florida have made remedial classes in math, reading and English optional for students entering community colleges in fall 2014. The placement tests to assess these skills will be optional as well. 
Meantime, Tennessee and Connecticut have passed legislation making it easier for students to bypass remediation and enroll directly in courses that lead to graduation and completion of a major. And California State University has lowered its math and English placement test cutoff scores, requiring fewer students to do remedial coursework. Read more...

By Carl Straumsheim. The death of the learning management system has been routinely predicted over the last few years, but if a new market forecast is to be believed, commercial vendors have little to fear. The industry will continue to expand over the next five years, though most of the growth will come from outside the higher education sector. According to a report by the market research and consulting company MarketsandMarkets, the industry is anticipated to post a year-over-year growth rate of about 25 percent for the next five years, expanding from $2.55 billion today to $7.83 billion in 2018. Read more...

By Libby Page. Students who get involved in campaigns at university pick up impressive skills and learn to adapt to the unexpected. It's not every day that you meet an international development minister at the houses of parliament while dressed as a sweet potato. For Billy Hill, a third-year history student at the University of Birmingham, this was another day as a student campaigner. Hill's campaigning not only gave him memorable experiences, but led to his first job. More...

By Stephen Burgen. Rebellion in ruling party forces U-turn on plan that could have left thousands of students on Erasmus programme without funding. The Spanish government has abandoned plans for deep cuts to an European scheme that allows degree and post-graduate students to study abroad.
The education minister José Ignacio Wert was forced to back down after a rebellion in his own party, the governing Partido Popular, and has agreed that the 10,000 students already on the Erasmus scheme will receive the grants they were promised. More...

Spain's poorest students who had already made their plans will now receive some funding after all. Erasmus would approve. "I wish to be called a citizen of the world," wrote the humanist Erasmus in 1522, a sentiment that inspired the Erasmus programme of EU scholarships, which funds university students to study for up to six months elsewhere in Europe as part of their course. Three million students have taken part in the scheme since it was launched (amid controversy, of course) in 1987. More...