By Don Martin. International students often wonder what those who evaluate their graduate school applications are thinking as they read a candidate's file. Having been a director of admissions and an associate dean for enrollment management, my 28 years of experience in higher education included evaluating and making final decisions on tens of thousands of applications. I also attended many conferences with other admissions and enrollment professionals. During these events, we had opportunities to discuss our approaches to evaluating applications, including those submitted by international students. The following are some of the major things admissions officials keep in mind when evaluating and making final decisions about international applicants. Read more...

Have student support services become more complex? Or, has society, in its effort to remove the elitism of tertiary education, thrown out the reverence and thought which was formerly given to chosing a path of higher learning, leaving behind institutions which have become attractors of high debt and procrastinators?
It was a thought which rested on our minds, even as members of the Caribbean Tertiary Level Personnel Association (CTLPA) met in Barbados last week for its annual congress. The CTLPA was founded in 1996 as the first professional body of student affairs administrators. Spanning Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Guyana, Surniname and some of the OECS countries, the organisation has in its mandate to enhance the student’s academic approach to qualitative learning and sensitise them to the working world expectation of a tertiary level graduate, while professionally developing administrators to better meet the changing demands of modern students. Read more...

By Gwyn Mellinger. The recent outcry against the Kansas Legislature’s whack at higher-education funding came too late to prevent a shortsighted and misguided assault on state-supported colleges and universities.
Though Gov. Sam Brownback sought to maintain current funding for higher ed, his conservative legislative majority did not fall in line on this one. Now the governor must confront cuts to higher ed that Tim Emert, chairman of the Kansas Board of Regents, has called “devastating.”
According to the regents’ numbers, the damage over the next two years will total $48.7 million across the 32 public institutions under its umbrella. Among budget areas to be reduced are student financial aid and salaries. Kansas lawmakers passed this budget in a year when their peers in Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Colorado and Oklahoma all increased higher-ed support. Read more...

By Matt Zalaznick. Remedial programs across the country are getting overhauled by educators and lawmakers hoping to keep more two- and four-year college students on track for graduation.
The changes come as research shows that while many community college students are made to take—and pay for—at least one remedial course before they start compiling credits, those who take the courses are more likely to leave school without earning a diploma.
“For too many students, college begins and ends in remedial courses,” says Tom Sugar, vice president of Complete College America, an organization that works with lawmakers to enact policies aimed at increasing college graduation rates. Read more...