By Pushkar. Why do thousands of Indian students head abroad each year for a university degree? Dr. Pushkar discusses. Arindom Datta is an old friend I have kept in touch with since college. After graduating from Delhi’s St. Stephen’s College, he took a degree from a leading Indian business school and currently works with a multinational bank in New Delhi.
When I met Arindom soon after my return to India in July 2012, he was a worried parent. His son Reuben was finishing school in 2013. Arindom was concerned that it would be tough for his son to get admitted to one of the better colleges in the National Capital Region (NCR).
“Reuben is a good student. That’s not the problem. But even with 90 plus percent, forget Stephen’s, kids end up at obscure colleges where they still don’t get to study what they want to study,” he explained. “Most of these places, public or private, kuch pata nahin kaise hain (one does not know if they are good).”
Colleges in the NCR count among the best in the country and attract thousands of young Indians each year far and near. However, despite increasing student intake over the years, they have to turn away large numbers of hopefuls. Many are unable to get admitted in disciplines of their choice. Read more...

By Datuk Dr Ibrahim Ahmad Bajunid. NATION states in competition define realities. A comprehensive construction of change which provides coherence of reality sees the continuity of policies from primary to tertiary levels of education.
The quest to make connections between the education system and economic development has driven nations to try to borrow the best practices in policies and practices from other systems.
However, always, uncritical educational transfers of educational policies and practices have led to failures at the level of implementation.
Today, sometimes, almost to the point of obsession at tertiary levels, nations define and measure the success of their tertiary institutions in terms of global rankings constructed by Shanghai Ziao Ton University - Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), Times Higher Education World Rankings, and QS World Universities Ranking, or similar education ranking protocols. Read more...

By Bella Counihan. The first Australian free online education platform has been launched in Canberra today, by tertiary education minister Chris Bowen. Open Universities Australia, a private distance and online education organisation, has stepped into the world of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) with a new online platform called Open2Study.
Mr Bowen, who signed up for a course on anthropology at the launch, said “we don’t yet know what the full impact online forces will have on the delivery of higher education. But we know it’s going to have a big impact… and we know that any university or any institution that doesn’t respond and offer flexible programs is going to fall behind.”
Paul Wappett, Open Universities Australia CEO, said students wouldn’t “pay a cent” for courses with no hidden costs for textbooks, student admin or exams. “We’re focused on delivering outstanding quality, but without the price tag”, he said. Read more...

Les écoles de gestion et de commerce (EGC) ne cessent de développer leurs offres en matière d’alternance depuis quelques années. Un essor qui s’explique par le succès d’un dispositif aux avantages nombreux pour les étudiants.
Sur les 29 écoles de gestion et de commerce (EGC) françaises, 20 proposent désormais d’accéder à la formation par le biais de l’alternance. Autre chiffre révélateur de cette tendance: en trois ans, le nombre de places disponibles dans les EGC a augmenté de 36%. Les avantages procurés par ce dispositif ne sont pas étrangers à ce développement...
L'efficacité de l'alternance dans les EGC
En effet, l’alternance représente une excellente opportunité pour les étudiants souhaitant financer leur cursus à moindre frais, sachant que le coût d’une telle formation peut atteindre jusqu’à plusieurs milliers d'euros. Mais, l’intérêt n’est pas seulement financier: cette formule permet en effet à l’étudiant d’accumuler de l’expérience tout en bénéficiant d’un statut de salarié et d’un diplôme à la sortie. Résultat: l’insertion professionnelle est très élevée, avec 90% des jeunes diplômés qui trouvent un emploi dans les six mois suivant leur sortie de l’école. Suite de l'article...

Blog Educpros de Michel Abhervé. L’abus de stages est aussi dû aux étudiants: illustration par l’étudiant qui a remis son CV au président de la République. Mettre en cause les entreprises qui abusent des stages, et transforment ce qui devrait être des emplois en stages où des étudiants, de bon, voire de très bon niveau, est nécessaire (voir Jusqu’où exploiter (légalement) les stagiaires?).
Mettre en cause des universités qui faciltent l’abus de stages, en créant des formations qui ne sont que des prétextes aux stages est tout aussi necéssaire (voir L’abus de stages peut être organisé par l’Université).
Mais il est tout aussi indispensable de mettre en cause des étudiants qui entretiennent, par leurs pratiques, cet abus de stages. Nous le faisons à travers un exemple médiatisé, celui du candidat à un stage qui a remis son CV au président de la République, lors du séjour de celui-ci à Dijon. Suite de l'article...

Le blog de Jean-Luc Vayssière. Dans un discours récent, lors d’une visite en France, D. Willetts, Ministre de l’enseignement supérieur et de la recherche en Grande-Bretagne déclarait, à propos du projet « Paris, capitale du numérique »: « Ce n’est pas en créant un cluster de toutes pièces qu’on arrive à attirer les entreprises » (Source: dépêche AEF du 26 février 2013). C’est à la fois vrai et faux. Vrai parce que je ne connais pas d’exemple de cluster qui ait été créé artificiellement par les pouvoirs publics, en partant de rien du tout. Il est nécessaire qu’une masse critique d’entreprises soient là avant. Mais c’est aussi faux si l’on interprète cette déclaration comme une mise en cause du rôle des pouvoirs publics dans l’émergence de pôles forts d’innovation. Par exemple, qui pourrait dire qu’ils n’ont joué aucun rôle dans l’émergence de Sophia-Antipolis en France? Autrement dit, il ne faut pas opposer mécanismes de marché et intervention des pouvoirs publics: les deux peuvent se combiner et se renforcer mutuellement pour créer des clusters performants.
C’est dans cette perspective que se situe l’action de l’UVSQ en faveur de l’innovation et du développement économique. Elle capitalise sur l’existant tout en accompagnant l’action des pouvoirs publics. Suite de l'article...

By Darin Hayton. MOOCs are all the rage right now—academics generally upset or unimpressed and disruptors generally optimistic. What intrigues me is how familiar the kook-aid (sorry, typo) Kool-aid tastes. The latest technology becomes the mechanism to democratize learning, to bring the best college and university lectures to the underprivileged, and to expand learning to hundreds of thousands of students. The 20th century is littered with such failed schemes. Educational utopia seems as distant at every other post-lapsarian paradise. Browsing the Popular Science archive, I stumbled across this example: “Professor-Inventor Predicts ‘Radio Universities’.”
Professor Pupin from Colombia University foresaw a “Radio Extension University” poised to disrupt the educational landscape. Once the loudspeaker was perfected, Pupin predicted that “a great university like Colombia, equipped with a powerful broadcasting station for distributing to a knowledge-hungry people some of the vast store of authoritative knowledge accumulated by its great professors and teachers” will broadcast lectures to scores of halls and public meeting places equipped with radio receivers and powerful loudspeakers. Read more...

By Susan D. Blum. Learners Are People, Not Isolated Test-Taking Brains: Why MOOCs Both Work and Fail. MOOCs -- massive open online courses -- are not the same thing as the enormously popular interactive games titled Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs). Nor are they the same thing as going to college. And this matters. MOOCs are good at certain things and terrible at others, and we need to understand the difference if we wish to educate human beings, not just workers with credentials. In case you missed it: MOOCs are the latest thing, online courses that package the best, most effective classes and send them out, free, to the world. Tom Friedman and many others see them as the saving power for the coming world, the "disruptive innovation," in Clayton Christensen's phrase, that will challenge conventional education. Some see this as "meeting the unmet need for higher education." Read more...

By Steve Kolowich. What is it like to teach 10,000 or more students at once, and does it really work? The largest-ever survey of professors who have taught MOOCs, or massive open online courses, shows that the process is time-consuming, but, according to the instructors, often successful. Nearly half of the professors felt their online courses were as rigorous academically as the versions they taught in the classroom.
The survey, conducted by The Chronicle, attempted to reach every professor who has taught a MOOC. The online questionnaire was sent to 184 professors in late February, and 103 of them responded.
Hype around these new free online courses has grown louder and louder since a few professors at Stanford University drew hundreds of thousands of students to online computer-science courses in 2011. Since then MOOCs, which charge no tuition and are open to anybody with Internet access, have been touted by reformers as a way to transform higher education and expand college access. Many professors teaching MOOCs had a similarly positive outlook: Asked whether they believe MOOCs "are worth the hype," 79 percent said yes. Read more...

By Ry Rivard. Faculty union officials in California worry professors who agree to teach free online classes could undermine faculty intellectual property rights and collective bargaining agreements. The union for faculty at the University of California at Santa Cruz said earlier this month it could seek a new round of collective bargaining after several professors agreed to teach classes on Coursera, the Silicon Valley-based provider of popular massive open online classes, or MOOCs. The Santa Cruz Faculty Association's concern highlights an emerging tension as professors begin to teach MOOCs and, in turn, become academic stars to tens of thousands of students who sign up for the free classes. Santa Cruz is the only UC campus to have a unionized tenure-track faculty, so the exchange there is perhaps unique, but the issues there are not. Read more...