Formation Continue du Supérieur

By Paul J Silva. Gregory Feist, a distinguished creativity researcher at San Jose State University, is not a haunting man, but his research on scientific eminence creeps me out. One of his early papers 'Quantity, Quality, and Depth of Research as Influences on Scientific Eminence: Is Quantity Most Important?' strikes chills in the hearts of thwarted writers who suspect they aren't publishing enough.
As you’d suspect from the title, his research, on university biologists, chemists, and physicists, found that the mere quantity of publications was the largest predictor of eminence, assessed via citation rates, awards and distinctions, professional visibility, and peer evaluations of research contributions. Read more...

By Ryan Dunch. Chinese studies and language programs are losing ground in our universities, even as China looms ever larger in Canada’s future.
China is currently our second-largest trading partner, and its economic importance to Canada will only increase. Complex policy questions are sure to arise as a result. The recently approved Chinese takeover of Canadian energy corporation Nexen is merely a foretaste of what is coming down the metaphorical pipeline.
In 1995, Graham Johnson, then Chair of the Centre for Chinese Research at the University of British Columbia, viewed Chinese studies in Canada with tempered optimism: “In the 1990s, Canadian universities, like those in other parts of the world, have been deeply affected by budget constraints. The growth of Chinese studies has, nevertheless, been sustained.” Read more...

By Mike Boxall. Twelve British universities are launching a free online course – or "Mooc" – service called Futurelearn. Mike Boxall explains why they're right to invest their financial futures in this untested model.
Few people would bet on the prospects of a business that gave away its products, complete with customer support, free to anyone anywhere with an internet connection. Yet this is exactly what the Open University, along 11 other leading British universities, is offering with the new Futurelearn service announced last week.
Futurelearn is the latest in the wave of Moocs (Massive Open Online Courses) launched by consortia of world-ranked universities over the past year. New players like Coursera, Udacity and edX have recruited millions of students to hundreds of degree-style courses from top-name institutions, all for free. Read more...

By Wesley Johnson. Warnings have been made over up to 90,000 fake foreign students since London Metropolitan University was stripped of its licence to sponsor overseas students four months ago.
Warnings have been made over as many as 90,000 bogus foreign students in the four months since London Metropolitan University was stripped of its licence to sponsor overseas students.
The university was stripped of its licence in August and the move prompted warnings by other universities over foreign students who may have failed to enrol on courses or who had stopped attending classes. Read more...

By John Morgan. Universities that failed to fill undergraduate places this year will not generally be hit with cuts to their student number allocation next year, unless their shortfalls were "extreme", England's funding council has announced.
In a circular letter sent to institutions this week, the Higher Education Funding Council for England says the approach was decided because "due to transient effects from the introduction of the new fee regime, 2012-13 might be an atypical year for recruitment".
The announcement on 18 December marks a reverse from previous Hefce guidance. In March, Hefce told institutions that where they "recruit significantly below their student number control limit in 2012-13, this may lead to a reduction to their baseline control limit for future years".
The announcement is a signal that student recruitment under the first year of £9,000 fees has proved more problematic than Hefce expected. Read more...

By Clay Shirky. Academics have watched the internet change the music industry, books and news. And yet, now it's happening in higher education, we are about to screw it up, says Clay Shirky
Fifteen years ago, a research group called The Fraunhofer Institute announced a new digital format for compressing movie files. This wasn't a terribly momentous invention, but it did have one interesting side-effect: Fraunhofer also had to figure out how to compress the soundtrack. The result was the Motion Picture Experts Group Format 1, Audio Layer III, a format you know and love, though only by its acronym, MP3.
The recording industry concluded this new format would be no threat, because quality mattered most. Who would listen to an MP3 when they could buy a better-sounding CD? Then Napster launched, and quickly became the fastest-growing piece of software in history. The industry sued Napster and won, and it collapsed even more suddenly than it had arisen. Read more...

Anonymous. 'Your indifference bears no relation to my hours of preparation'
I look at the 23 of you in the room – a small group this year – and wonder if you're even aware of me as I teach. Might it be that because you're not talking to me, one-on-one, you forget to filter the expressions on your faces? Or is it that you imagine, in a crowd, you are somehow invisible?
So oblivious are some of you to my scrutiny that you all suspend your polite, public faces. Your expressions and bodies reveal far more than you know – self-preening, lip-curled sneering, eye-rolling, yawning, you can barely stay awake sometimes.
Your indifference bears no relation to my hours of preparation. The university asks you to comment, anonymously, on the quality of my teaching. Read more...

By Colleen Flaherty. After two years of growth in both English and foreign language faculty positions, English jobs are harder to find this year while foreign language jobs continue to grow, according to Modern Language Association data released Thursday.
Although the analysis of the Job Information List, released each year prior to the annual MLA convention, doesn’t include all jobs available within modern language departments, it’s seen as a reliable indicator of the job market in the current hiring season. Overall, MLA projects that 2012-13 will see about 11 percent more positions in foreign languages coupled with a 4 percent decline in English positions. In real numbers, that’s 1,246 jobs in foreign languages that were listed with the association, compared to 1,128 the year before. For jobs in English, that’s 1,191, compared to 1,235 a year ago.
Not since 1995-6 has hiring in the foreign languages exceeded hiring in English. Rosemary Feal, executive director of the MLA, attributed the upward foreign language trend to globalization initiatives that are increasingly part of colleges' and universities’ strategic plans, in addition to students’ increased interest in global and language studies. Read more...

By Anne Hyde. Giants can move. So can venerable, cautious scholarly organizations like the American Historical Association. In a recent New York Times op-ed, Kevin Carey of the New America Foundation asked "Who Will Hold Colleges Accountable?" As a professor at Colorado College, and faculty chair of the AHA’s Tuning Project, I can answer: we will. In a moment where college education and the value it provides students, their families, and American society in general seems continuously under attack, the American Historical Association has been quietly helping its members define and promote the value of history. Carey’s piece, pointing out the outdated notion of credit hours that grant students "credit" and eventually degrees for the act of sitting in chairs or staring at screens, thoughtfully calls for scholarly societies to "define and update what it means to be proficient in a field." Read more...

We've touched on this issue in the past, but it's worth revisiting in light of this e-mail from a job seeker:
I'm on the job market (not for the first time) and I worry I'll be perceived as "stale". From what I hear, lots of philosophers think it looks very bad that, after a few years out of a Ph.D. program, there's no tenure-track position on my CV.  I have a few questions that I hope you or your readers might be able to answer:
i. Do people have a sense of how much "staleness" continues to matter even for candidates who are in other ways attractive -- some good publications, lots of teaching experience? 
ii. If you continue to publish (or publish decent stuff) does that make you any less "stale", or are you still considered obsolete or defective simply in virtue of your defence date? 
iii. Is "staleness" less of an issue these days than in the recent past, in light of the terrible job markets and overall economy since 2008? 
iv. Do people have any tips about what a "stale" candidate might do to compensate?
The "staleness" issue, as I think about it, is this: the more years since the PhD that the candidate does not have a tenure-track job, the more likely hiring departments are to draw negative inferences from that fact. Prior to the economic collapse, my sense was that staleness worries kicked in after 4 or 5 years; I would hope that hiring departments are allowing that strong candidates may take considerably longer these days to find a tenure-track position.  As to the other questions, I'll make just one comment now, and open comments for thoughts for readers; my one comment is that the longer out from the PhD you are, the better it would be if one or more of your letter writers might speak to that and make clear why this does not support any negative inferences about your candidacy. Signed comments preferred, but job seekers may post anonymously.