Formation Continue du Supérieur

9 mai 2013

Online students and teachers are no different from the rest of academia

By David Newton. Demand for online higher education is at record levels – yet the model remains a mystery for many. For David Newton, the only mystery is why everyone thinks it's so unusual. My name is David Newton, professor of business studies. I'm an online higher education tutor. Some of you may read that last sentence as a confession, rather than a simple statement of fact. Why? In my view, it is because – despite its growing popularity and valuable role in the future of higher education – online learning is still a mystery to many in academia, and viewed with prejudice by some. Take me, for example. People assume I'm some new breed of academic. I'm not. I am currently a tutor and programme director for undergraduate and MBA business degrees with a respected online learning provider. But my background is no different from any other university professor. I've worked in numerous UK and overseas universities, researched and published widely, and was dean of business and vice-principal at the Royal Agricultural College, where I still hold a visiting professorship in strategic management. Read more...

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9 mai 2013

UK students escape the fees nightmare and head for Europe

By Louise Tickle. Are you looking for an affordable university somewhere different? There are plenty of English-friendly options in Europe to consider. Going to university is a pretty big step, but moving abroad for three years to do your degree is an even bigger one. To date it's a choice that few UK students have made – 2009 figures from the OECD show just 22,000 opting to study in another country, a tiny proportion of the two million or so who stay at home. With the introduction of much higher tuition fees this autumn, however, this is already starting to change, and there are good reasons why studying in Europe may be well worth considering. If you want do your entire degree within the EU – which means most of Europe – you'll lose your entitlement to a student loan here. But you'll find that all UK students are eligible for the same financial assistance as a home student from that country would receive. Many countries are considerably more generous to their undergraduates than we are: in Holland, for instance, you'll pay just £1,500 a year for your course. In some countries, including Denmark and Sweden, tuition costs nothing at all. Read more...

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9 mai 2013

Student loans: Will it soon be pay-back time?

By Anna Fazackerley. Heads of universities are lobbying the government to alter student loans as a way to limit cuts. Students may have assumed the arguments about the new fee system were done and dusted. But as the axe looms over government funding for universities, senior academics are lobbying the government for graduates to start paying back their loans much earlier to cut public costs. Universities have already suffered severe cuts to their government funding for teaching and capital. Most are braced for further reductions when George Osborne unveils his comprehensive spending review on 26 June. Yet vice-chancellors warn that there are few pots of money left to raid, and further scything of the universities budget could seriously threaten the quality of teaching and science. Although none is keen to say so publicly yet, some vice-chancellors see changing the student finance arrangements as a fairly painless way of absorbing cuts. Backing them up is Nicholas Barr, professor of public economics at the London School of Economics and one of the leading experts on student loans. This, he argues, is a no-brainer. At present, graduates have to start repaying their loans when they earn £21,000 or more, but Barr is adamant that this should drop to £18,000. Read more...

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9 mai 2013

Universities must prepare for a buyer’s market

By Jeffrey Selingo. Jeffrey Selingo is editor at large at The Chronicle. This piece is adapted from his essay Colleges Must Prepare for a Buyer's Market, published 8 April 2013 in The Chronicle. Jeffrey will be speaking about the future of higher education in an LH Martin Institute webinar on 6 June 2013. University professors increasingly complain about the consumer mentality of their students: In exchange for shelling out ever greater amounts of tuition dollars, students expect to be treated to easy As and maximum flexibility in assignments and class attendance.
Students should be savvy consumers of higher education—but not in the classroom. Instead, they, and their parents, should adopt the consumer mind-set earlier, during their initial search for a university. Too many prospective families are captivated by the bells and whistles that institutions play during the admissions process, designed to hook students well before they fully understand the financial realities of going to their first-choice institution.
While doing research for my forthcoming book on the future of higher education, I visited nearly two dozen campuses in the U.S. and tagged along on as many prospective-student tours as I could inconspicuously join. For the most part, I found students and parents asking all the wrong questions. Universities have long benefited from the fact that they know more about prospective students than prospective students know about them. But that balance of power is slowly shifting, as consumer information about higher education improves, thanks largely to such long-overdue tools as the U.S. Education Department's College Scorecard and financial-aid "shopping sheet." Armed with these data, prospective students and parents in the U.S. become savvier consumers and begin asking better questions of the institutions they are considering. In order to continue attracting students, universities must be prepared to answer questions far more difficult than those about food service, new majors, or social life. Read more...

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Tags: marchés

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9 mai 2013

Standards and controls

6-8pm Mon. 17 June. Two decades of quality assurance at institution level and then at system level in higher Australian education have convinced few outside university marketing departments that real quality is stable or standards are improving. Now the government has put in place a vigorous Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Authority (TEQSA) to tighten external scrutiny and define and monitor standards of teaching and learning. But can standards be standardized between disciplines and institutions in a meaningful way? How can we accurately register improvements or declines? Is TEQSA summative or developmental? Is the system bigger than TEQSA or with it start to strangle institutional initiative, educational creativity and academic freedom?
Confirmed speakers:
Prof. Pip Pattison, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic), University of Melbourne
Prof. Greg Craven, Vice-Chancellor, Australian Catholic University
Chair: Prof. Richard James, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Equity and Student Engagement), University of Melbourne
VENUE: Woodward Conference Centre, 10th Floor, Melbourne Law School, Pelham St, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria.
Jointly presented by the Centre for the Study of Higher Education & the LH Martin Institute.

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9 mai 2013

Open and free-for all

6-8pm Mon. 15 July. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) began in September 2011 at Stanford and it is already clear that they have radically changed higher education. Free programs from brand name universities with world leading experts, with online assessment and Ivy League certificates of completion at the end of a rigorous program, are a real competitor for face-to-face universities in the international education market, especially now that MOOC programs are recognized by many universities. And some institutions are incorporating MOOC units in their own programs, radically reducing teaching costs. Will academic staff numbers in Australia fall? What are the implications for the teaching/research nexus and for national research capacity? But should the world take its curriculum content from the American Ivy League and a handful of others. And is online assessment adequate and does the excision of face-to-face teaching and discussion take vital elements out of degrees? What do students want?
Confirmed speakers:
A/Prof. Gregor Kennedy, Director of eLearning, University of Melbourne
Prof. Beverley Oliver, Pro Vice-Chancellor Learning Futures, Deakin University
Chair: Prof. Simon Marginson, Chair of Higher Education, Centre for the Study of Higher Education, University of Melbourne
VENUE: Woodward Conference Centre, 10th Floor, Melbourne Law School, Pelham St, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria.
Jointly presented by the Centre for the Study of Higher Education & the LH Martin Institute.

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9 mai 2013

Students and money

6-8pm Mon. 3 June. It is 25 years since the Higher Education Contribution Scheme began and the funding weights applied to each discipline were fixed. But we are yet to achieve a stable consensus on private and public contributions. The funding weights are out of whack with real cost differences, and both public and student contributions are capped at levels blocking the provision of genuinely high quality programs across the board. The rationale for government funding is unclear, a recipe for its continued erosion as a proportion of total revenues. The government commissioned the Base Funding Review to sort all of this out and then threw out the Review report! Meanwhile a future Coalition government, plugging a deficit created by the abolition of the carbon tax, is likely to cut government contributions and ramp up student charges. And the public costs generated by HECS loans at higher levels, in a demand-driven system, are mounting. Can we afford to bankroll education as a right? Can students from poorer backgrounds afford to take on an increased HECS debt? With free online courses of high quality now available, shouldn’t the cost of higher education be going down and not up?
Confirmed speakers:
Bruce Chapman, Director, Policy Impact, Australian National University
Prof. Paul Wellings, Vice-Chancellor, University of Wollongong
Prof. Ian Young, Vice-Chancellor, Australian National University
Chair: Prof. Leo Goedegebuure, Director, LH Martin Institute
VENUE: Woodward Conference Centre, 10th Floor, Melbourne Law School, Pelham St, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria.
Jointly presented by the Centre for the Study of Higher Education & the LH Martin Institute.

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9 mai 2013

Educationalists must do better

By John Furlong. Education academics must demonstrate their practical relevance if they wish to save their discipline, argues John Furlong. Education is the UK’s second biggest social science; only business and administration employs more academic staff in our universities.
But as a discipline, it is at a major turning point - a crisis even.
Academic disciplines are not merely intellectually coherent fields of study, they also have a political life. They are argued for, supported, challenged and debated - and nowhere more so than in education.
Education as a discipline has rarely been master of its own destiny, mainly because it remains dominated by its role in providing professional preparation to teachers. Read more...

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8 mai 2013

Mutual Recognition Agreements

What is a Mutual Recognition Agreement?
The NASBA/AICPA International Qualifications Appraisal Board (IQAB) is the link between the U.S. accounting profession and that of other General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) signatory countries. Through a mutual recognition agreement (MRA), qualified professional accountants from another country can practice in the United States without having to completely re-credential. Similar recognition is given to U.S. CPAs who wish to practice in that same country.
Current Agreements
IQAB has currently established MRAs with the following professional bodies:
Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia
Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants
Canada, Mexico, and United States Memorandum of Understanding
Chartered Accountants Ireland (formerly the Irish Institute of Chartered Accountants)
Instituto Mexican de Contadores Publicos
New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants
Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants
Any professional accountancy body wishing to enter a reciprocal agreement with U.S.-IQAB must submit a letter of intent to NASBA. The letter should contain a brief, written description of the nature and objections of the organization, the size of its membership and its interest in applying for an MRA. If the organization does not have the authority to grant practice privileges including audit rights, it must provide evidence it can facilitate obtaining these privileges for U.S. CPAs from the licensing authority.
Mutual Agreement Process
Professional bodies from countries that have signed on to GATS and that have qualifications that are substantially equivalent to those of the U.S. CPA in the areas of education, examination and experience (as stated in the Uniform Accountancy Act) are invited to apply for an MRA by contacting Louise Haberman at lhaberman@nasba.org. Upon approval of an MRA by the Boards of Directors of NASBA and the AICPA, it will be distributed to all 55 State Boards of Accountancy that license CPAs in the United States, with the recommendation that they each adopt the agreement.

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8 mai 2013

Continuing Education

One of the most frequently asked questions is where candidates can go to obtain continuing education. This section is designed to provide you with links to all kinds of resources for this information.
Inclusion as a link in this area does not imply endorsement of the educational program by CFRE International, nor does it guarantee that courses taken from these providers will be applicable toward Continuing Education point requirements. To assure acceptance of courses, please choose an programme offered by a CFRE Continuing Education Approved Provider.
All courses submitted for credit on the CFRE application must meet the Continuing Education Credit Policy as outlined in the Candidate Handbook.
When selecting continuing education activities, applicants may wish to be sure they are choosing courses that cover topics found on the Test Content Outline - or which cover skills new to them. Selecting courses which have been approved by various organizations to offer continuing education units (CEUs) is not required - but may be desirable as it provides a measure of assurance of the quality of the program.

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