By Vanessa Lu. The mismatch between training and education in Canada and the jobs that are being created raises calls for a revamp of the education system. Canada must fix its educational system to ensure that a looming demographics shift doesn’t leave result in a “people without jobs and jobs without people” scenario, experts warn.
“The demographic time bomb that’s ticking is getting louder and louder,” said John Manley, president and CEO of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, which hosted a conference on the issue in Toronto on Monday.
“There’s a mismatch between the training and education that’s being offered, and the jobs that are being created.”
The influence of the postwar baby boom generation has long been known, but the potential impact is staggering. Read more...

By Susana G. Baumann. Almost nine out of 10 young Latinos agree that higher education is the path to success, yet only one out of five plans to pursue a college degree. These numbers have a strong impact in every aspect of the country’s future, from economic to political outcomes and from the domestic labor market to competing in a global economy.
In 2009, President Obama set a goal for the nation: To be first in the world in terms of college graduates. Currently the United States is the fourth country in percentage of population with tertiary education, as Canada, Israel and Japan are reported to be ahead.
As of 2009, only the District of Columbia was over this goal at 65 percent college graduate rate, and three states were close to it (Massachusetts at 54 percent, Minnesota and New York at 49 percent). But others like Arkansas, New Mexico and Nevada were at the lower end with just 28 percent of achievement rate. Read more...

By Elaine Smith. The number of college and university students studying internationally has grown more than fourfold since 1975 — and Canada wants a larger share of that market. pproximately 3.7 million students sought post-secondary education outside their home countries in 2009, compared with 800,000 in 1975, according to Unesco and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. This year, the number of international students in Canada exceeded 100,000 for the first time — triple the number who studied there in 2000. Edward Fast, the Canadian minister of international trade and for the Pacific Gateway, released a report by a government panel in August that recommended that Canada double its number of international students by 2022. It called international education “the driver for economic prosperity and social progress.” Read more...

By Nicole Perlroth. In the eighth grade, Arlan Jaska figured out how to write a simple script that could switch his keyboard’s Caps Lock key on and off 6,000 times a minute. When friends weren’t looking, he slipped his program onto their computers. It was all fun and games until the program spread to his middle school.
“They called my parents and told my dad I was hacking their computers,” Mr. Jaska, 17 years old, recalled. He was grounded and got detention. And he is just the type the Department of Homeland Security is looking for. Read more...

By Kevin Kiley. The appointment of a new president at one of the University of Texas System’s eight regional universities would typically generate some local press and excitement, and maybe a mention in the state’s larger newspapers.
But when the University of Texas at Arlington named the sole finalist for its presidency last week, the pick was featured in a glowing profile in the world’s largest newspaper by circulation – The Times of India. That’s because the pick, Vistasp Karbhari, was born and completed his undergraduate education in India.
As the Times notes, Karbhari will join a “small but expanding league of Indian Americans heading educational institutions in the U.S.” Read more...

On March 19, 2013, the U.S. Department of Education (USDE) issued a "Dear Colleague" letter providing guidance to higher education institutions on how competency-based programs can be approved for federal financial aid eligibility. As a condition of approval, an institution must demonstrate that its institutional accrediting organization has reviewed and approved the direct assessment program and agrees with the institution's assessment of its credit hour equivalencies. Articles about the letter appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed.
The letter, signed by David Bergeron, Acting Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education, notes that "The Department plans to collaborate with both accrediting agencies and the higher education community to encourage the use of this innovative approach when appropriate, to identify the most promising practices in this arena, and to gather information to inform future policy regarding competency-based education."
CHEA will follow this issue closely and will keep member institutions and recognized accrediting organizations informed on any developments.

By Eric Hoover. Yeats wrote that “loves comes in at the eye,” but Agnes Scott College is counting on the nose.
The women’s college, in Decatur, Ga., will soon mail a booklet containing scented pages to its 800 accepted applicants. The smell of pine accompanies a photograph of campus trees. A few pages later, an aerial shot of the Quad comes with a whiff of freshly mowed grass. The idea is to convey the experience of strolling through the campus, especially to students who have yet to visit. Read more...

By David Leonhardt. Most low-income students who have top test scores and grades do not even apply to the nation’s best colleges, according to a new analysis of every high school student who took the SAT in a recent year. The pattern contributes to widening economic inequality and low levels of mobility in this country, economists say, because college graduates earn so much more on average than nongraduates do. Low-income students who excel in high school often do not graduate from the less selective colleges they attend. Only 34 percent of high-achieving high school seniors in the bottom fourth of income distribution attended any one of the country’s 238 most selective colleges, according to the analysis, conducted by Caroline M. Hoxby of Stanford and Christopher Avery of Harvard, two longtime education researchers. Among top students in the highest income quartile, that figure was 78 percent. Read more...

By Lynn O'Shaughnessy. The amount being spent per student at public colleges and universities has sunk to its lowest level in at least 25 years. In 2012, states spent an average of $5,896 per student, which represents a 9 percent decrease from the previous year. This is the third year in a row of declining state support.
To give you an idea of how far state aid has eroded, the highest spending per student in constant dollars ($8,670) occurred back in 2001.

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This grim news comes from a new report by the State Higher Education Executive Officers, which documented the continuing decline of state support for public colleges and universities. Read more...