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Showing posts from October, 2019

Florida Career College to Close

Florida Career College to Close Doug Lederman Fri, 01/26/2024 - 03:00 AM Byline(s) Doug Lederman from Inside Higher Ed https://ift.tt/avZRfLi

Should Britain Abolish Private Schools?

WINDSOR, England—Nestled in a historic town across the river Thames from Windsor Castle, Eton College resembles a small city-state more than a high-school campus. It boasts hundreds of buildings, half a dozen museums and galleries, and a reputation for cultivating the who’s who of the British elite. Current and former prime ministers, lawmakers and judges, and countless others who make up this country’s ruling class have walked through its doors. After all, to have graduated from Eton, or any of the other handful of Britain’s top, tuition-charging private educational establishments, is to be guaranteed lifelong membership in an exclusive echelon of a country where the school a person attends—even as early as the age of 13—correlates with wealth, power, and opportunity achieved in the years and decades after. The privileges these schools afford aren’t cheap: It costs £42,501 ($51,504) to send a child to study and board at Eton each year—a price well above Britain’s average annual wag

A Thank You to Bryan Alexander

Blog:  Technology and Learning As we approach the Thanksgiving season, I thought it’d be a good time to give some thanks. At the end of this piece, I’ll ask you who’d you’d like to publicly thank. I’m going to start by thanking Bryan Alexander .  Bryan Alexander seems to be everywhere in higher ed. There may be no other scholar who is as integrated into as many postsecondary networks, communities, and cabals as Bryan. In our higher ed world at the intersection of learning and technology, everyone seems to know Bryan.  There may be other thinkers, writers, consultants, and educators in other academic disciplines and professional areas who are as ubiquitous and influential as Bryan. If there are, I bet Bryan knows them. There are a couple of specific reasons to offer thanks to Bryan at this time. Before I do that, however, I should stipulate some connections. Bryan and I are both senior scholars at Georgetown’s Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS) , and

How Cleveland revamped its preschool programs in just five years

The number of high-quality preschool programs in Cleveland has increased by 32 percent since a city-wide effort began to improve early learning opportunities for children. Photo: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report Three years ago, Chalfonte Smith’s childcare center in north Cleveland, Ohio, was struggling academically. The problem was not for a lack of trying. Smith couldn’t afford a curriculum, which can cost thousands of dollars. Her teachers did not have enough training. And classrooms needed more books and educational materials. In September 2016, that all changed abruptly. Smith’s center, A Jubilee Academy, was chosen to participate in an improvement program by PRE4CLE, a city initiative with the goal of expanding access to high-quality preschool across Cleveland. Program officials purchased books, science materials, blocks and musical instruments for the center. They paid for a curriculum. And they underwrote the cost of intensive trainings for teachers to learn about instr

Indonesia turns to a technology legend to help universities

Indonesia has reshuffled its higher education and research portfolios, conscripting a political odd couple to recreate universities as engine rooms for its economic advent. In a reversal of a 2014 restructure, Indonesian president Joko Widodo has separated the higher education directorate from the ministry of research and technology. The two had been merged to foster an entrepreneurial spirit in universities -- an experiment that faltered because of Indonesia’s “overlapping bureaucratic systems,” with the two arms financed and regulated separately. The joint agency, Ristekdikti, underpinned the president’s goal of fulfilling the country’s vaunted economic potential by boosting human capital and cultivating the tech sector. He now hopes to achieve this aim through two of the more interesting appointments to his 38-person cabinet, unveiled Oct. 23. One is 53-year-old bureaucrat Bambang Brodjonegoro, who has been named minister of research and technology. An Illinois-trained economi

American University students protest mistreatment of black student

American University students are once again speaking out about the racial climate on the campus. They point to a recent incident as yet another example of a pattern of hostility toward black students by administrators at the Washington institution and among the larger student body. A multiracial group of about 120 students protested outside the student center Monday to call attention to what they described as the racist treatment of a black student who was suspended from American late last month after being accused of allegedly assault ing another student. According to the student newspaper, The Eagle , the suspended student was forcibly removed from her university-owned apartment by at least six officers from the university police department during what was supposed to be a wellness check . The removal of Gianna Wheeler, a junior, was videotaped and shared widely on social media. She can be seen struggling and shouting i n the 30-second video as the police officers carry her

Clark dismisses graduate student who complained about possible gender discrimination and research misconduct

Clark University officially kicked a graduate student out of her program last week, saying she had failed to find a new adviser within an initial, 30-day limit. But the student, Abby Nissenbaum, says the real story is that her department blackballed her after she complained about her first adviser’s research methods and behavior. The university denies that. But Nissenbaum said Wednesday, "This whole thing is weird and in total violation of prescribed policies." Nissenbaum’s case has attracted attention on social media, where she’s shared details about it. The primary concern among followers, including many faculty members, is that a student who is possibly a whistle-blower has not been afforded any special protections during the complaint process. What happened? Nissenbaum, who is interested in sexual violence interventions, started her graduate studies in Clark’s social psychology program in 2017. As sometimes happens, tensions soon emerged between her and her advise

New data on the 36 million Americans who left college without a credential

College leaders and policy makers are paying more attention to the millions of adults in the U.S. who attended college but didn’t earn a credential. Yet many questions remain about this population -- not just how to better recruit and serve them, but who they are. A newly released report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center helps fill in some of the blanks. The nonprofit group used data from institutions that collectively account for 97 percent of the nation’s postsecondary enrollments. It was able to track individual students across institutional boundaries, including when they left college and if they later enrolled at another institution. The result is an unusually extensive view of the “educational trajectories” of the 36 million Americans the center identified who left college without receiving a degree or certificate. Several experts said the findings have wide implications for colleges, systems and federal and state policy makers. As of December 2018,