Formation Continue du Supérieur

By Serena Golden. While there exists a long tradition for defending the study of the humanities, in recent years the tone of such arguments has become rather more urgent. In an era of retrenchments and increased focus on immediate employment outcomes, those in disciplines whose vocational relevance may seem less than obvious have become increasingly outspoken about the value of their work (often in this very publication). Read more...

By Elizabeth Redden. Professors at the University of Chicago have renewed their opposition to the Chinese-government funded Confucius Institute on their campus, with more than 100 of them signing a petition calling on the Council of the University Senate to vote to terminate the university’s contract with Hanban, the government entity that oversees the centers of Chinese language teaching and research. Read more...

By Elizabeth Redden. The course: AMS 2270, 20th Century American Culture. The day’s lecture: the Civil Rights movement. The composition of the class: one-third American students, two-thirds international. The international students are enrolled in a pathway program here at the University of South Florida, one of a growing number of such programs that permit international students to take a mix of credit-bearing academic and English as a second language courses despite lacking the English language test scores required for direct admission. Read more...

By Bernard Lane and Julie Hare for The Australian. Students should pay higher interest on their loans and relieve the pressure on the public purse, a committee studying how to control spending by the Australian government recommends.
“The interest rate should be increased to a level which reflects all (the commonwealth’s) costs in making the loan,” says the report by the Commission of Audit, noting that the current rate falls below the government borrowing rate. Read more...

By Scott Jaschik. Visiting preachers set themselves up at many campuses and spend a day denouncing students for their fornication and criticizing professors for teaching evolution. On some campuses students have been known to engage with the visitors, or to try to offend them with same-sex kiss-ins. At the University of Connecticut last week, an anthropology professor decided to get involved. Read more...

By Scott Jaschik. English has taken off as a global language in higher education -- as a "medium of instruction," not just a foreign language in those countries where English is not the first language, says a report released Tuesday evening here. But in many countries and at many institutions, key issues related to the expanded use of English have not been defined or, in some cases, even discussed. The report was released at Going Global, the annual international education meeting of the British Council. Read more...

By Scott Jaschik. Agents to recruit international students may be like global rankings of universities, suggested William Lawton in a presentation here Wednesday. "Even if you don't like the look of them, they are here to stay," said Lawton, of the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education, a think tank. Read more...

By Carl Straumsheim. Google, pressured by privacy advocates and looming legal challenges, on Wednesday announced it will no longer scan student and faculty emails for advertising keywords, seeking to end a seven-year-long conflict that some university technology officers have said violates federal law. Read more...

By Carl Straumsheim. After more than two years in the cloud, Coursera’s massive open online courses will this summer make landfall at Dominican University of California, which will host the MOOC provider’s first Learning Hub at a U.S. institution. Dominican is part of Coursera’s latest wave of hubs -- physical locations scattered across the globe where MOOC students can meet in person to collaborate and, in some cases, receive in-person tutoring from course facilitators familiar with the content. Read more...