By Mary Beth Marklein. Student activists in the United States and worldwide are ramping up pressure on universities to drop fossil fuel holdings from endowments, garnering support from alumni and faculty as they organise sit-ins and other forms of protest. More...
By Brendan O’Malley – Managing Editor. This week in News Mary Beth Marklein reports on the growing number of campaigns by students, academics and alumni in the United States and worldwide challenging universities to drop investments in industries they believe are contributing to global warming.
In Features, Munyaradzi Makoni reports on the heated debate over whether the statue of Cecil John Rhodes at the University of Cape Town in South Africa – seen by black students as a symbol of white supremacy – should be moved.
In the World Blog, Rahul Choudaha says if Asian universities are to compete for international students they must learn to differentiate themselves in innovative ways.
In the Commentary section, Kurt Deketelaere, says the European Commission’s plan to pay for the European Fund for Strategic Investments by taking money out of the Horizon 2020 budget requires a complete redraft. Sarah Jane Aiston says Hong Kong universities should not assume that just because the proportion of undergraduates who are women is growing that women are getting their fair share of leadership positions. Steve Nerlich says study abroad data must capture all student experiences overseas, not just those studying full-degree courses, to show the true value of international education.
In our Special Report, from the International Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Nicola Jenvey reports on the power of social entrepreneurship to engage students with real life issues. Read more...
By Brian Mathews. I wrote earlier about serving on a Student Experience Task Force. This was a yearlong project that brought together students and faculty with people from the budget office, facilities, student affairs, the Provost’s Office, and other units. It was an eclectic mix resulting in many diverse conversations. More...
By Neal H. Hutchens. Oh Dorothy, we are indeed in Kansas. Under a bill pending in the state’s Legislature, public-college and public-university employees in Kansas would be barred from using their official titles in newspaper opinion articles written in their capacity as private citizens. More...
By Charles Fried and Robert H. Mnookin. Today Harvard faces a serious governance problem that requires institutional change. When we first came here, the university was organized on the constitutional principle: “Each tub on its own bottom.” This meant first of all that each of the component schools (arts and sciences, medical school, law school, and so on) had not only a high degree of budgetary independence but also that its faculty and dean had a large measure of autonomy. More...
By Carson Vaughan. In 2007, a group of students at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln fought to establish the first satirical newspaper on the campus. Eight years and nearly 70 issues later, the paper still hits the newsstand every other week. Recently, however, a committee charged with allocating student fees proposed defunding it — saving students a mere 15 cents annually — for the one reason that scares and baffles me the most. More...
By Erin E. Templeton. As March draws to a close, maybe you are back from your break. Maybe, you are still gearing up. Wherever you are in your academic term, we hope that the allergy gods smile, or that it finally stops snowing. Or both. Read more...By Ryan Cordell. Just over two years ago, I wrote about my early experiences with the Mailbox email application. Since then a lot has happened with Mailbox: it was acquired by Dropbox, for one, and it has released openly-available apps for iPad, iPhone, and Android Phones, as well as a beta desktop application for OS X. I’ve been using Mailbox since then—save one brief flirtation with Inbox for Gmail, which borrows many of Mailbox’s ideas and about which I may write soon—and wanted to write a brief followup. Read more...By Prof. Hacker. I’ve learned from years of trying that nobody “gets” Twitter when you talk to them about it, and that part of the power of it is in the capacity to make global connections to knowledgeable others. You can’t tell someone about this second hand – you need to immerse them and let them experience it, and hope for the best. Read more...By Natalie Houston. Because academic calendars vary so widely, some readers are coming back from spring break now, while others are enjoying a few days away from regular schedules. Some readers are wrapping up winter quarters or have started spring terms; others are somewhere in the middle of a spring semester. Read more.../https%3A%2F%2Fprofilepics.canalblog.com%2Fprofilepics%2F1%2F0%2F1076071.jpg)
