12 mai 2013
12 mai 2013
Traditional students lose out as college intakes grow
By William Patrick Leonard. A number of commentators have suggested that the American tertiary community is facing a bubble reminiscent of the 2008 housing meltdown. While many underlying factors have been identified and discussed to near ad nauseam, one has been largely ignored. The bulk of the US’s non-elite tertiary institutions have employed, whether consciously or not, an unsustainable budget-balancing strategy. In sum, they have repeatedly used tuition fee increases, often exceeding the nation’s Consumer Price Index, coupled with larger student intakes, to balance their operating budgets. Read more...
12 mai 2013
New national data on aboriginals may highlight education shortfall
By Michael Woods. New data on Canada’s aboriginal people are likely to underscore the need to address education for indigenous youth, the country’s fastest-growing group, experts say. Wednesday morning, Statistics Canada will release the first batch of data from the 2011 National Household Survey, including new information about the country’s burgeoning aboriginal population.The data will include total numbers of First Nations, Metis and Inuit, including breakdowns by area, age structure and the living arrangements of aboriginal children. It will also look at the languages spoken by aboriginal peoples. Statisticians caution there is no way of knowing how good or bad the information is from the National Household Survey. The voluntary nature of the survey, which replaced the once-mandatory long-form census, leaves gaps in information for some groups that tend not to respond to voluntary surveys – including aboriginals.
But experts believe the data should provide a fairly accurate broad-scale picture of Canada. Canada’s aboriginal population grew by 45 per cent between 1996 and 2006, nearly six times faster than the rate of increase in the non-aboriginal population, according to the 2006 census, the last time the comprehensive study was done. Almost half the aboriginal population consisted of children and youths aged 24 and under. Read more...
12 mai 2013
Canadian universities don't hire only Canadian professors. And that's OK
By Frances Wooley. Every year, Ontario universities graduate over 2,000 new PhDs, but generate perhaps half that number of new jobs for professors. Academic reform advocates Ian Clark, David Trick and Richard Van Loon have looked at these numbers, and concluded Ontario has a problem: “the increase in supply of PhDs has vastly outstripped the increase in demand for new full-time professors.” Yet Canadian universities are part of a global academic marketplace, exporting graduates to other countries, and importing freshly minted PhDs from elsewhere. In my own research, I have studied just one segment of that market: the demand and supply for new economics PhDs. Read more...12 mai 2013
Should we try to reduce graduate program times to completion?
By Nicola Koper. Many universities across Canada are attempting to reduce times to completion for graduate student programs. At my own university, there have been numerous policy changes that are aimed at reducing program lengths. While masters programs are usually described as one- or two-year programs, and PhD programs are described as three- or four-year programs, average times to completion are often much longer than that. Certainly, I did my bit to increase these averages when I was a student, and I suspect many other readers of this blog have as well. So do we really need to reduce times to completion? I’ll argue that often, it isn’t in the best interests of students to shorten the length of their programs, and nor are university policies effective in doing so. Read more...12 mai 2013
Merit Consideration
By Kevin Kiley. In pursuit of both prestige and tuition revenue, often to make up for declines in other forms of income, many four-year colleges and universities are making it more difficult for students from low-income backgrounds to afford a college education, according to a report released today by the New American Foundation. The report, which looks at data from the 2010-11 academic year, found that at about two-thirds of the 479 private, nonprofit colleges and universities analyzed, students with annual family incomes of $30,000 or less had tuition bills that averaged more than $15,000 a year even after all forms of scholarship and grant aid were factored in. Read more...12 mai 2013
Legislation on Graduates' Salaries Reintroduced (and Altered)
Senators Marco Rubio, Ron Wyden and Mark Warner introduced a bill Thursday to require colleges to disclose data about their students' salaries in the first year after graduation. The measure would require colleges to break down salary data by major or program of study, as well as require them to report more information on remediation rates, debt for students who graduate and those who drop out, and continuation rates to graduate education. It would also disaggregate outcomes for Pell Grant and G.I. Bill recipients. The bill would also repeal the ban on a federal unit record data system to track students' outcomes in college and beyond. The previous version of the bill would have circumvented the ban by linking state unit record databases. Some House Republicans, privacy advocates and private colleges strongly opposed the creation of such a database in 2006, when it was proposed by the Bush administration. The bill, the Student Right to Know Before You Go Act, was first introduced in the last Congress; since then, transparency about graduates' debt and salaries has become a point of agreement for the Obama administration and some Congressional Republicans. Read more...
12 mai 2013
Study: Hispanic College-Going Rate Tops White Rate
An all-time high of 69 percent of Hispanics graduating from high school in 2012 enrolled in college that fall, according to analysis by the Pew Research Center. This is a greater proportion than that of white graduates from the same class, of whom 67 percent enrolled in college. According to Pew, Hispanic college-going has seen a long-term increase, especially since the recession hit, whereas enrollment by white high school graduates has gradually declined since 2008. Read more...
11 mai 2013
AUGM organized the Encuentro de Redes Universitarias sobre nuevo Pensamiento Latinoamericano en Desarrollo
In the event, universities from 6 different countries in Latin America as well as several students enrolled in Development studies debated on the importance of knowledge in Latin America for development.
The Asociación de Universidades Grupo Montevideo (AUGM) organized, jointly with the Comisión Económica para Latinoamérica y el Caribe (CEPAL), the Encuentro de Redes Universitarias sobre Nuevo Pensamiento Lationamericano en Desarrollo (University Networks Meeting on the new Latin American Thinking on Development), which took place in Universidad de la República (Uruguay) last 14-15 March. The meeting was based on one of AUGM’s main objectives, which is to contribute to the integrating process through the creation of a common academic space, thus fostering development, strengthening and consolidation of higher education. The relationship and collaboration between AUGM and CEPAL were stated as essential in order to deal together with themes related to economic and social development, inequality, poverty and technological changes, amongst other themes. For more information, follow this link (in Spanish). Read more...
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