By Julia Lawrence. Public universities have long been considered a bargain in higher education, but increasingly that is no longer the case. With a stagnant economy forcing state governments to cut funding for higher education, more schools are forced to make up the difference via tuition hikes — which means that those who considered a public university to be a great deal will now need to examine things a bit more closely.
Consider a Colorado math teacher’s story: he and his decidedly middle-class parents were able to completely cover his tuition which at the time – the mid to late 1980′s – at roughly $8,600 per year. Now that his daughter is looking to follow in his footsteps, the tuition bill has more than doubled. To attend CU, his daughter will have to pay more than $23,000 a year – a sum that is beyond what Joiner and his wife can afford. Read more...

By Julia Lawrence. With the price of college going up every year faster than inflation, more attention has recently been given to figuring out how students can make the best choices when it comes to picking their school and their major. So much so, that – according to The Atlantic – students now overrate the importance of both of these decisions.
As Andrew G. Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute and Abigail Haddad, a Ph.D. student at Pardee RAND Graduate School, write, it is no secret that conventional wisdom says that the surest way of achieving economic success is to enroll in college after graduating high school and majoring in a tech-related discipline. Several recent studies have been published supporting this point of view. Yet, there are reasons to question these findings because many of them are plagued with simple statistical errors, draw conclusions that the evidence doesn’t warrant, and – what is worse – encourage governments to introduce and pursue bad public policy. Read more...

By Julia Lawrence. Before College Scorecards — a tool highly-touted by the White House — can help high school students make informed decisions about their education, those high school students need to be able to understand them. And according to a new study out of the Center for American Progress and authored by Julie Margetta Morgan and Gadi Dechter, they do not.
The scorecards, which list such information as total cost of attendance, graduation rates, the average debt load carried by students — along with the potential earnings of those who graduate with a degree — are supposed to make it easier for potential applicants to get the full picture, all in a format that is consistent from school to school. Yet when four focus groups of high school seniors and juniors were asked their opinion on the new format, they were decidedly unimpressed. Read more...

By Julia Lawrence. Are Ivy League universities practicing discrimination against students of Asian descent? In short, yes, says Ron Unz, himself a Harvard University graduate and the publisher of The American Conservative.
In The New York Times ‘Room for Debate’ he writes that just as university officials never admitted that at one time there was a “Jewish quota” in place, they’re engaging in a similar type of dodge now – officially denying that a rule is in place to limit the number of high-achieving Asian-Americans enrolled while ignoring the powerful statistical proof that it exists.
Universities all over the country provide racial breakdown of their students to the Center for Education Statistics, which collects it and then posts it online. Prior to 1990, Harvard University was under investigation for allegedly discriminating against applicants of Asian-American descent, yet once the investigation was concluded, the percentage of Asian-American students admitted to the school begun to decline year-to-year. Today about 16.5% of all students attending Harvard are Asian-American. In the years between 1990 and 2000, that number was closer to 20%. Read more...

By Julia Lawrence. The idea has been expressed in many ways over the previous several years – overhaul, reform, revolution, and now a reboot – but however it is put, the facts it describes are still the same: the American higher education system is in need of some drastic and immediate changes if it is to continue to remain competitive in the global marketplace and produce graduates ready and willing to become the pillars that support and grow the nation’s economy.
Although there are a number of challenges facing the higher education system in this country, according to Steven Bell writing in Library Journal, the three mains hurdles seem to be the ever-increasing cost of attending college, the stagnation that keeps many universities from breaking with the status quo, and a failing primary and secondary education system that leaves its graduates unprepared for college-level academic work. Read more...

By Paul J Silva. Gregory Feist, a distinguished creativity researcher at San Jose State University, is not a haunting man, but his research on scientific eminence creeps me out. One of his early papers 'Quantity, Quality, and Depth of Research as Influences on Scientific Eminence: Is Quantity Most Important?' strikes chills in the hearts of thwarted writers who suspect they aren't publishing enough.
As you’d suspect from the title, his research, on university biologists, chemists, and physicists, found that the mere quantity of publications was the largest predictor of eminence, assessed via citation rates, awards and distinctions, professional visibility, and peer evaluations of research contributions. Read more...

By Ryan Dunch. Chinese studies and language programs are losing ground in our universities, even as China looms ever larger in Canada’s future.
China is currently our second-largest trading partner, and its economic importance to Canada will only increase. Complex policy questions are sure to arise as a result. The recently approved Chinese takeover of Canadian energy corporation Nexen is merely a foretaste of what is coming down the metaphorical pipeline.
In 1995, Graham Johnson, then Chair of the Centre for Chinese Research at the University of British Columbia, viewed Chinese studies in Canada with tempered optimism: “In the 1990s, Canadian universities, like those in other parts of the world, have been deeply affected by budget constraints. The growth of Chinese studies has, nevertheless, been sustained.” Read more...

By Mike Boxall. Twelve British universities are launching a free online course – or "Mooc" – service called Futurelearn. Mike Boxall explains why they're right to invest their financial futures in this untested model.
Few people would bet on the prospects of a business that gave away its products, complete with customer support, free to anyone anywhere with an internet connection. Yet this is exactly what the Open University, along 11 other leading British universities, is offering with the new Futurelearn service announced last week.
Futurelearn is the latest in the wave of Moocs (Massive Open Online Courses) launched by consortia of world-ranked universities over the past year. New players like Coursera, Udacity and edX have recruited millions of students to hundreds of degree-style courses from top-name institutions, all for free. Read more...

By Wesley Johnson. Warnings have been made over up to 90,000 fake foreign students since London Metropolitan University was stripped of its licence to sponsor overseas students four months ago.
Warnings have been made over as many as 90,000 bogus foreign students in the four months since London Metropolitan University was stripped of its licence to sponsor overseas students.
The university was stripped of its licence in August and the move prompted warnings by other universities over foreign students who may have failed to enrol on courses or who had stopped attending classes. Read more...

By John Morgan. Universities that failed to fill undergraduate places this year will not generally be hit with cuts to their student number allocation next year, unless their shortfalls were "extreme", England's funding council has announced.
In a circular letter sent to institutions this week, the Higher Education Funding Council for England says the approach was decided because "due to transient effects from the introduction of the new fee regime, 2012-13 might be an atypical year for recruitment".
The announcement on 18 December marks a reverse from previous Hefce guidance. In March, Hefce told institutions that where they "recruit significantly below their student number control limit in 2012-13, this may lead to a reduction to their baseline control limit for future years".
The announcement is a signal that student recruitment under the first year of £9,000 fees has proved more problematic than Hefce expected. Read more...