Toulouse serait la grande ville étudiante la moins chère de France, selon une étude du syndicat étudiant Unef. Celle-ci indique également que Montpellier est la ville la plus onéreuse… Mais rien de comparable avec Paris !
700 euros : c'est ce qu'un étudiant vivant à Montpellier doit débourser en plus par an qu'un étudiant vivant à Toulouse. L'Unef a en effet classé les villes de province par coût de la vie étudiante. Au total, huit villes ont été passées au crible. Santé, frais de scolarité, alimentation : en moyenne, les étudiants dépensent 6 771 euros par an en frais de consommation, peu importe leur localisation. Mais les loyers et le transport font pencher la balance… Suite...

Innovation et créativité : il semble que ce soient les mots d'ordre des grandes entreprises américaines. Dernier coup de buzz en date : la création d'une Twitter University, pour les ingénieurs qui travaillent déjà pour le site de micro-blogging, avant de l'ouvrir à "quiconque qui souhaite apprendre".
L'université traditionnelle serait-elle en voie d'extinction ? C'est ce que l'on peut se demander, au vu des dernières nouveautés. Après l'université complètement dématérialisée, l'université made in Twitter. Twitter University a même… son propre compte Twitter, qui annonce quelques informations sur sa création. "Pour aider les @TwitterEng [ingénieurs de Twitter] à développer leurs compétences, nous proposerons des classes techniques telles Android Internal et Python Bootcamp", peut-on par exemple lire sur le compte de Twitter University. Suite...

Alors que l'UNEF vient de publier une étude sur le coût de la vie étudiante, le site location-etudiant.fr a de son côté réalisé une étude spécifique sur l'augmentation des loyers en fonction de la ville. Et même si certaines villes ont enregistré des baisses de loyers entre 2012 et 2013, nombreuses sont celles où ils continuent de grimper…
Trois : c'est le nombre de villes qui, sur un an, ont vu leurs loyers baisser. Les onze autres villes étudiées ont toutes connu des hausses, parfois même spectaculaires. Pour arriver à ses conclusions, le site immobilier location-etudiante.fr a étudié 22 500 annonces de studios et deux pièces, présents sur son site.
Concernant les studios (plutôt prisés par les étudiants), les cinq villes les plus chères sont Paris, l'Ile-de-France, Nice, Aix, et Marseille, avec un loyer moyen de 598 euros par mois. On chute à un loyer moyen de 396 euros avec les cinq villes les moins chères : Poitiers, Nantes, Rouen, Strasbourg et Bordeaux. Soit un écart de 202 euros par mois entre les extrêmes… Suite...

By Tracy Mitrano. Especially in Western, Central New York and Pennsylvania, where President Obama is on a bus speaking tour of the region to give his opening salvos of a promised shake up of higher education, we await his pronouncements with bated breath.  What could he possibly propose that we have not all thought about, discussed and implemented already as remedy to access, completion and tuition challenges?  Prelude remarks bate our breath because word is out that at least some, perhaps most, of his proposals will be directed at our “industry!”  (Never mind that as not-for-profit institutions in the main, with very different corporate foundations, we are not an “industry.”)
I feel a few defensive hairs rising on the back of my neck.  Higher education has had a target on its back for some time now.  We scramble to pull out the array of regulatory arrows that have already been thrown at us. Read more...

By Joshua Kim. I've been spending lots of time thinking about mobile learning. Why am I so excited about designing online and blended learning environments around the phone? Isn't this yet another case where the technology is driving the approach to teaching and learning, exactly the opposite of what we all say we should be doing?
The number reason to be excited about mobile learning is that mobile learning will force us to edit our online and blended courses.
The lack of screen real estate will push us to think about what is really important in our classes. Read more...

By Matt Reed. As a kid, late August carried the dread and melancholy of knowing that summer vacation was nearly over.  I’m seeing some of that now with The Boy and The Girl. As a teenager, late August carried a certain relief and excitement. The dreary summer job was ending, and I could get back to school to see my friends. The same held true in college.  In grad school, late August suggested that I could finally get away from the crummy summer jobs that I felt like I should have already aged out of, and get back to the business at hand. At DeVry, late August didn’t mean anything at all. The “summer” trimester ran from July through October. Read more...

By Margaret Andrews. In addition to my day job of running a degree program and a growing portfolio of professional development programs, I teach and consult. I also advise incoming freshman at Harvard.  At yesterday’s Board of Freshman Adviser’s meeting, much of the discussion was about one of the most important roles of the advisor – and, believe it or not, it’s not giving advice.
It’s asking questions.
It’s asking questions about their hopes and fears and aspirations. It’s asking about why they chose this university over others, and what they most want to see, experience and accomplish while they are on campus. Read more...

By Frankline Sunday. The Higher Education Loans Board is reaching out to the private sector and individuals in a bid to boost the value of its revolving fund. This, the board hopes, will help it increase its lending capacity, which has been hard hit by a sharp increase in the number of students enrolled in the country’s institutions of higher learning. The board recently announced the launch of the Afya Elimu Fund, a joint partnership between Helb, Usaid, the Kenya Private Sector Alliance and selected government ministries. The private-public partnership hopes to raise Sh1.5 billion that will go towards providing education loans for health studies. More...

An increasing number of higher education finance directors are ready to invest to maintain their competitive position despite the vast majority believing that their institution still faces above normal levels of uncertainty, according to a new survey.
Professional services firm Deloitte said that expansion, and how to fund it, was becoming a "big priority" for the finance directors from 35 higher education institutions (HEIs) it had surveyed for the first time (16-page / 947KB PDF). It plans to repeat the exercise annually and increase the number of respondents, it said.
"Capital expenditure is needed to underpin the expansion of student numbers, support research, meet the demands of the 21st century learning environment and compete in an increasingly global higher education sector," said Julie Mercer, Deloitte's head of education consulting. More...

By Katherine Sellgren. A second for-profit institution has been granted the title of university. BPP University College of Professional Studies, based in London with branches nationwide, now becomes BPP University.
To be granted the title of university, the institution had to fulfil criteria, such as offering its own degrees and meeting set student numbers. The move has been condemned by the University and College Union (UCU) which fears more for-profit companies could become universities. More...