By Megan O'Neil. Internet2, a computer-networking consortium whose infrastructure supports the work of tens of thousands of educators and researchers across the United States, expects to formalize a partnership with its counterpart in India this month. Officials say the move will clear the way for collaboration between American and Indian researchers on a scale never seen before. Read more...
By Jennifer Howard. As risky as predictions are, here’s a fairly safe one: The future of media is bound up with computers. That doesn’t mean that print and other older forms of media will fade away. It does mean that newer media, whatever shape they take, will be created, shared, and used with the help of computers. If it’s not love, it’s apps that will bring us together. Read more...
By Jonah Newman. It’s that time of year when your office mates start saying “bracketology,” when everyone claims to know all about college basketball, and questionable research says businesses stand to lose an estimated $1.2-billion in productivity for every hour employees spend focused on the NCAA tournament instead of their jobs. It’s also the time of year when some news organizations try to tell you how to use statistics to fill out your bracket and win your office pool (or, this year, $1-billion from Warren Buffett and Quicken Loans). More...
By Lee Gardner. In many ways, the results of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education’s annual social-media survey offer no surprises. But just because there aren’t major shifts in how colleges use social media to keep in touch with alumni or solicit gifts doesn’t mean that major changes in social media aren’t afoot. The results of the fifth annual survey, released on Wednesday at CASE’s social-media conference, in Los Angeles, indicate that 98 percent of the nearly 2,000 respondents use social media and that 95 percent of those institutions use Facebook. Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube are the next three most-used social media, at 82, 76, and 68 percent, respectively. Read more...
By Eric Kelderman. Many colleges have fixed-rate tuition plans that lock in a student’s course costs for four years. In Texas that kind of policy is now a requirement for public colleges and universities. But not all undergraduate students graduate in four years, adding to the time and cost it takes to earn a degree. The University of North Texas has come up with a plan that offers both fixed-rate tuition and an incentive for students to finish their degrees on time. Read more...
By Goldie Blumenstyk. The American Council on Education, which has made no secret of its dislike for the Obama administration’s plan to create a new ratings system for colleges, has released a report offering new grounds for its opposition. Among them: findings from the recent Freshman Survey that show that students, particularly those from low-income homes, don’t rely heavily on ratings or rankings when choosing a college. Read more...
By Raynard S. Kington. In the struggle to find ways to reduce the costs of a college education, one of the greatest challenges has been understanding the drivers of costs and their value in terms of quality and outcomes.
Leaders in higher education—those of us in the middle of the cost debates and the ones most able to take direct action at our institutions—must push harder for better data and analysis on costs, quality, and, ultimately, student outcomes. Read more...
By Jeffrey R. Brown. The financial security of a strong university endowment would seem to matter most when hard times come along—when revenues slow and core functions are in danger of being compromised. At such times, an endowment can help guard against shortsighted cost cutting that harms both near-term quality and long-run vitality. But it turns out that many universities do nothing of the sort. During the recent recession, most endowments took a beating, with the average endowment losing a quarter of its value. That decline followed years of heady growth that led endowments to grow at a far faster clip than university spending did. Read more...
By Vimal Patel. The American Historical Association and four universities will split a $1.6-million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation aimed at broadening the career paths of history Ph.D.’s, officials announced on Thursday. The grant comes as graduate students in history and across the humanities face a bleak job market and as graduate programs are under pressure to improve their students’ employment prospects. The association wrote in its 2012 jobs report that less than 43 percent of new recipients of history Ph.D.’s in 2011 reported definite employment at the time they graduated, the lowest level in at least four decades. The 2013 report showed a slight increase, to 44 percent, in the proportion of new graduates reporting definite employment. Read more...
By Audrey Williams June. For the first time in at least six years, the median base salary of professors at public colleges increased at a greater rate than that of their private-college counterparts, according to an annual report released this week by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources. The median increase for tenured and tenure-track faculty members at public institutions in the 2014 fiscal year was 2.2 percent, compared with 2.0 percent at private colleges. Over all, the median base salary for tenured and tenure-track professors in 2014 rose 2.1 percent from the year before, the same increase as a year ago. Read more...
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