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Der Müll muss raus, Oma braucht mal wieder einen Anruf und der Freund ein gebasteltes Geburtstagsgeschenk: Stehen Uni-Aufgaben an, werden Studenten besonders kreativ darin, sich abzulenken. Faulheit muss das nicht sein, sagen Experten - und warnen vor tieferliegenden Problemen.
Nachrichten lesen statt Fachliteratur, auf Facebook surfen statt im Bibliothekskatalog, mit der Freundin telefonieren statt mit dem Bafög-Amt: Es gibt immer etwas, womit man sich von lästigen Pflichten ablenken kann. "Aufschieben ist normal", sagt Hans-Werner Rückert, Diplom-Psychologe und Studienberater an der Freien Universität Berlin. "Aber nur bis zu einem bestimmten Punkt."
In der Regel seien Aufschieber nicht faul, im Gegenteil. "Wer faul ist, würde die Anstrengung vermeiden und nichts anderes tun." Der typische Aufschieber hingegen räumt auf, putzt oder geht einkaufen. Aber er setzt sich eben nicht an den Schreibtisch und lernt oder schreibt an der Hausarbeit. "Er macht auch ungeliebte Tätigkeiten, solange er dadurch etwas Belastenderes vermeiden kann", sagt Rückert.
Prokrastination, also krankhaftes Aufschieben, ist zu einem echten Problem geworden unter den Studenten in Deutschland: Forscher diagnostizieren bei jedem zweiten Studenten eine Eher-morgen-statt-heute-Mentalität. Etwa 20 Prozent zählten zu den chronischen Aufschiebern, sagt Rolf Schulmeister, Bildungsforscher an der Universität Hamburg. Mehr...

By Kristen Domonell. The University of Connecticut ranked at the top of a list of the most sustainable campuses in the world, according to results of the University of Indonesia’s GreenMetric Ranking of World Universities, released this month. Four other American universities ranked in the top 10: Northeastern University (Mass.); the University of California, Los Angeles; The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and the University of California, Merced.
This is the third year UI has released the ranking, which is one of several sustainability rankings in higher education. It scores institutions’ efforts in categories including green statistics, energy and climate change, waste management, water usage, transportation, and energy. Read more...

By R A Johnston. The New York Senate released its report on the state of higher education in New York on January 28, 2013, as reported by David Lombardo of the Schenectady Daily Gazette. Higher Education Committee Chairman Ken LaValle gave his committee members credit for a year of sound oversight of post-high school education. He said in his statement that:
“I want to thank the committee members for their continued support and commitment throughout the 2012 legislative session. I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues on the committee and in the entire Senate as we strive to make New York State higher education the best in the world.”
State licensing requirements and regulation of privately-run trade schools were chief among the state’s concerns in 2012. Read more...

Like many proud citizens of the world today, there are times when you might feel like the country you live in is one of the best on Earth—and there are times when you might feel that your country could make some improvements. When it comes to education in particular, some countries are ahead of the game. What does a “well-educated” country look like? Things like high school graduation rates, number of citizens with a college degree, and even things like employment and rate of pay, can be combined together to serve as a reasonable meter for educational success. At the end of 2012, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) calculated what proportion of residents in 34 countries had obtained a college degree or the equivalent of one. From there, the top 10 “most educated” countries were determined. Some countries are more surprising than others, but all seem to have their own unique way of ensuring that their citizens are educated properly. While not all countries have the same resources available to create wonderful education opportunities, those countries that use their highly-educated citizens to further world progress and assist those countries who have less can do amazing things for the future. Take a look at the stats behind these well-learned nations. Read more...

Financial fallout from a decision to leave the EU would, in reality, be minimal for higher education institutions, argues Alison Wolf.
We will give the British people a referendum with a very simple in or out choice," announced David Cameron last week: to stay in the European Union on the terms our government negotiates or to "come out altogether".
Suppose the UK population chooses "Out". How much should universities, as universities, care? And how much would we even notice?
For Britain as a whole, the consequences are large. Given academics' views and voting patterns, it is hard to believe that most would be in the "Out" camp. But for our institutions it is not obvious that the change would be dramatic. And I can think of some university finance directors who would be grinning widely.
It has been an article of faith in Brussels that, within the EU, states will converge in every way. A few years ago, I co-authored a report for the European Commission on "convergence and divergence" in European education. Our sponsors took it for granted that we would find convergence, and we had a hard time even getting "divergence" into the contract title. Read more...

By David Matthews. More than 300,000 people have signed up to the University of Edinburgh's free massive open online courses (Moocs) since they were first announced in July 2012, it has been revealed.
The university is offering six courses on the Coursera platform, which hosts Moocs primarily from universities in the United States.
For every student physically studying in Edinburgh, there are now ten online learners, a statement from the university says.
Timothy O'Shea, Edinburgh's vice-chancellor, said he was "delighted" that the courses had "caught the imagination of the public". Read more...

By Allan Metcalf. American Speech, the journal of the American Dialect Society, is unique, in the old sense of “one of a kind.” It is the one and only academic journal that focuses on what’s happening with the English language in the United States.
The editorial policy is more inclusive, allowing articles on “the English language in the Western Hemisphere” and “other languages influencing English or influenced by it,” but the center of attention remains American English.
Many people are concerned enough to write articles about what our language should be doing; look no further than Lingua Franca for examples. Few people, however, take the trouble to do research and find out, for better or worse, what our language actually is doing. Those few find room for their research in American Speech and its companion annual monograph, Publication of the American Dialect Society. Read more...

By Steve Kolowich. Course-management systems have become crucial to the everyday operations of colleges so gradually that many users may not think about it all that much. That is, until the lights go out.
A number of institutions had a rude awakening this week, when Desire2Learn, which makes a course-management system used by many colleges, saw what one top official described as the biggest malfunction in the company’s history.
Desire2Learn was moving its clients’ data from the servers of one “cloud” storage provider to another, when sometime on Tuesday a technical glitch triggered errors and outages across its entire network of higher-education, public-school, and corporate clients. Read more...

The following is a guest post by P. Pushkar, a former lecturer in international-development studies at McGill University who is now based in Gurgaon, India.
Many researchers who have been looking at data on international migration believe that the ideas of “brain drain” and “brain gain” have become less relevant in the 21st century. Instead, there are signs of “brain circulation,” in which skilled workers move around the world more freely than before to the benefit of all nations. In Indian higher education, however, little has changed; its most talented scholars continue to leave for Western countries. The paradigm of brain drain and brain gain stubbornly persists. A recently released study by Wan-Ying Chang and Lynn M. Milan of the National Science Foundation found that only 5.2 percent of Indians who study outside their home country to earn doctorates in science, engineering, and health return home. These numbers, which are based on a 2008 survey, are substantially lower than the 20.4 percent of foreign graduates who reported working or living in their countries of origin. Read more...