28 juillet 2013
Free Courses for a Big Problem
By Paul Fain. Free online courses have run into a backlash of late. But a handful of community colleges may have found a way to dial up open-source content to help tackle one of higher education’s thorniest problems: remedial education. The two-year colleges aren’t offering massive open online courses as substitutes for their offerings, however, or for the instructors who teach them. Read more...Students Under Financial Stress
By Julie Hare for The Australian. Two-thirds of all Australian university students live on less than $20,000 a year, with one in five surviving on less than $10,000, placing them below the poverty line and facing rising levels of debt. A report by the group Universities Australia, to be released today, says the average debt carried by an undergraduate student has soared over the past six years, rising from $28,800 to $37,200. Read more...No-Bid MOOCs
By Ry Rivard. The providers of massive open online courses have rapidly expanded in the past year, aided in part by a series of potentially lucrative no-bid deals with public colleges and universities, including for services that may extend beyond the MOOC model. At least 21 universities and higher education systems in 16 states have signed agreements with Coursera, Udacity or edX without going through a competitive bidding process, according to interviews and open records requests by Inside Higher Ed. Read more...(Another) Apparent Loan Deal
By Doug Lederman. The months-long saga to try to reset the interest rates on federal student loans appeared near an end Wednesday night, as Senate negotiators said they had reached a deal that would tie rates to the market and set the rate for all undergraduate loans at 3.86 percent in 2014. But then again, the same parties -- led by Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Dick Durbin and Republicans Richard Burr and Lamar Alexander -- thought they had reached a deal last Wednesday, too, and that one fell through hours later. Read more...Times Higher Education Best University Workplace survey
Tell us what you love (or loathe) about your institution. What’s the best thing about working at your university? How do your colleagues and managers make you feel valued? In what areas do you need more support? These are among the questions we will be asking in the inaugural Times Higher Education Best University Workplace survey, which is online now. Read more...Open University leaves Alliance to become non-aligned
By Chris Parr. The Open University has ended its six-and-a-half-year affiliation with the University Alliance mission group. The departure of the distance-learning institution, which had been a member of the group since it was established in 2007, means that 23 universities are now part of the Alliance. Read more...PhD success forecast improves, but still gloomy for some
By . The proportion of PhD students in England expected to obtain degrees has risen slightly, but at some institutions around a fifth may never qualify. According to a report published on July 26 by England’s funding council, 72.9 per cent of the 11,625 students from the UK or the EU who began full-time doctorates in 2010-11 will obtain a degree within seven years. This compares with 70.1 per cent who started in 2009-10 and 70.5 per cent in 2008-09. Read more...Students need to make time for love, as well as for sex
By Cristina Odone. We are nervously awaiting the 18-year-old’s A-level results. Not as nervously, however, as if he had chosen, as many of his friends have done, to try for an American university. The latest news from elite campuses across the Atlantic struck fear in our hearts: everyone is “hooking up” over there, and that’s bad. Hook-up culture is about sexual encounters that are rushed, unemotional and brief. It sounds depressingly familiar – “wham, bam, thank you ma’am”, we called it when I was an undergraduate – but what makes hook-up culture different is its raison d’être: students today are too busy for relationships. And, unlike the no-strings sex of yesteryear, women as well as men are choosing a hook-up over proper dating. The bleak new thinking was exposed in a New York Times investigation last week. Read more...UCAS: white teenagers 'less likely to apply to university'
By Graeme Paton. White schoolchildren are less likely to apply to university than classmates from any other ethnic group, according to research from the official admissions body. Fewer than three-in-10 white teenagers have lodged applications to start degree courses this autumn amid growing concerns over access to higher education, it emerged. Read more...Graduate jobs: How to get a job with a 2.2
By Rozina Sabur. A competitive jobs market and the value placed on the ubiquitous ‘2:1’ can make ending up with a 2:2 seem a very difficult position. Graduate recruitment sites can make you feel sub-standard if you don’t possess the required grade for the employers they promote. There are, however, several routes open to graduates. Read more...
