Formation Continue du Supérieur

By Megan O'Neil. The University of Maryland at College Park has a new Ferrari of a supercomputer, and it’s students who are taking it for a test drive. Some 60 students enrolled in the university’s high-performance-computing boot camp, now in its second of two weeks, are the first to make use of Deepthought2, the newest supercomputer in higher education. The $4.2-million machine has a processing speed of about 300 teraflops, meaning it can complete up to 300 trillion operations per second, and it has a petabyte of storage. It is the equivalent of 10,000 laptops working together simultaneously, university officials say. Read more...

By Jonah Newman. It’s commencement season, so it’s no surprise that the “Is college worth it?” question is making headlines (again) this week. Perhaps fueled by nervous graduates and parents wondering if they’ve just flushed four (or more) years and many thousands of dollars down the drain, a column on that question by David Leonhardt of The New York Times became the most-read and most-emailed article on the newspaper’s website. More...

By Jonah Newman. The Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics released on Thursday its enormous annual report on the state of education in the United States. “The Condition of Education 2014” is based on 42 national indicators, from preschool enrollment to degree attainment to labor-force participation. More...

By Jerry A. Jacobs. These days, the term "interdisciplinary" is increasingly assumed to be synonymous with "innovative." The popular notion seems to be that the solutions to real-world problems require the insights of cross-trained researchers, or at least interdisciplinary teams. Indeed, interdisciplinary initiatives are springing up on campuses everywhere. 
For example, Arizona State has reorganized its college of arts and sciences along interdisciplinary lines, and Brown University’s program to support an extra year of graduate interdisciplinary training, which received a $2-million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is in its second year. Read more...

By Thomas Doherty. Mention Bernard Natan to even the most obsessive connoisseur of French cinema and you’re liable to get a blank stare. If recognized at all, the name might call up a vague association with sleaze and scandal. Natan, a new documentary from Ireland by the filmmakers David Cairns and Paul Duane, sketches in the full and fascinating picture—enumerating Natan’s achievements, debunking the allegations, and reconstructing a legacy lost to malign neglect. Read more...

By Goldie Blumenstyk. The for-profit-college industry’s trade association, backed by a 100-page report by economists, is coming out swinging against the U.S. Department of Education’s draft "gainful employment" regulation. The proposal is "flawed, arbitrary, and biased," and will deny educational access to as many as 7.5 million students over the next decade, contends the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, or Apscu, in documents it is filing on Tuesday. Read more...

By Vimal Patel. Humanities doctoral programs are under intense scrutiny. Policy makers, scholars, and the public have questioned whether universities should be producing so many Ph.D.’s in those fields, especially when the job market for tenure-track positions is tight. The Modern Language Association on Wednesday proposed a path forward for doctoral programs in literature and languages that calls for change but not contraction. In a document, titled "Report of the Task Force on Doctoral Study in Modern Language and Literature," the association agreed with critics on one point at least. Read more...

By Guy M. Rogers - Higher Ed Beta. Almost four months ago my EdX/WellesleyX course, “Was Alexander Great?” was launched to test three questions about online education: whether a Massive Open Online Course could be as intellectually rigorous as a brick and mortar history course; whether a MOOC could serve as a portal for both teaching and historical research; and whether an online course could engage and inspire students. The data are in and the answer to all three questions is an emphatic yes. Read more...

By John Warner. I am a fan of Rebecca Schuman’s education writing. Hers is a necessary voice, as she’s willing to challenge the status quo in unsparing terms, calling out the worst bad actors and empowering the disenfranchised to share their own stories. I agree with her about 95% of the time, but when it comes to the Obama administration’s development of a college ratings system, I have to (temporarily, I’m certain) leave Team Schumany. Read more...