College students massacred one-by-one in Nigeria

The militant Islamist group Boko Haram means ‘Western education is a sin’ but it’s not clear yet if the group was behind the attack, the Christian Science Monitor reports. Unidentified gunmen massacred at least two dozen university students in northern Nigeria Monday night in the city of Mubi near the border with Cameroon. The attacks lasted more than an hour, with gunmen targeting specific students by name rather than indiscriminately firing. Suspicion fell immediately on Boko Haram, a violent Islamist organization in northern Nigeria that has typically attacked Christian churches and security forces. Student leaders, meanwhile, suggested that the killings may have been tied to internal student political campaigns. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack…

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Bulgaria pioneers new approach to listing universities

Petar Stanchev is the kind of student Bulgaria needs to keep. Last year, according to the country’s Association of Private Universities, more than half of its college-bound students applied to institutions abroad, says the Hechinger Report. The 23-year-old planned to remain in this mountainous, verdant patch of southeastern Europe. For two years, working toward a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he showed up for classes in sociology and media at the prestigious Sofia University. The problem was, his teachers didn’t.

“I had a French teacher who didn’t come to lectures for weeks as though it was normal,” he said. “There were whole groups of us who were waiting for a lecturer who didn’t even bother to send us an email or let us know.” Finally, last spring, Stanchev got so fed up that he left home for university in the United Kingdom…

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The imperative of higher-education reform: More debt, fewer jobs

62 percent of all U.S. jobs now require postsecondary education; that number is expected to increase to 75 percent by 2020.

America’s colleges and universities are an extraordinary asset for our nation, and the envy of the world. Our universities can claim a substantial amount of credit for the fact that we have more Nobel laureates than any other country and that we lead the world in innovation, in fields from communications to medicine.

Unfortunately, our system is quietly slipping into a crisis brought on by inattention to costs and lack of discipline around federal programs and spending, and exacerbated by the growing competition from other countries determined to prepare their students for success in a global economy.

While our institutions may be leaders in many disciplines, students are not accessing postsecondary education at the rate they should, and those who do find themselves confronted with significant challenges, including the rapidly rising cost of higher education. At the other end of the process, too many students who pursue higher education fail to successfully complete their degrees, and even those who do finish often find themselves with skills mismatched to today’s job market.…Read More

Is higher-ed door too easy to open?

London’s Metropolitan University is taking legal action after losing its right to admit non-EU students, the Christian Science Monitor reports. The case has pitted efforts to tighten immigration against a lucrative international student industry. With an intake drawn from more than 150 countries at last count, London’s Metropolitan University has long been a magnet for overseas students attracted not only by the world-class reputation of Britain’s higher-education system but the prospect of going to school in one of the world’s most multicultural cities. Thousands of students now face deportation after the UK Border Agency (UKBA) found that more than a quarter of a sample of students studying at the university did not even have permission to stay in the country. Meanwhile, Metropolitan University, which enrolls 30,000 young people, including some of the UK’s poorest, has vowed to defend its reputation…

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Fears in Taiwan over downside of education boom

When Hsu Chung-hsin went to university three decades ago he became part of a small elite in Taiwan. Now virtually everyone can enter higher education, the AFP reports. That, he thinks, is deplorable.

“It’s become so easy. As long as you’re willing to pay the tuition, you can go to university. That’s no good,” said Hsu, a legislator with a PhD in law from Cambridge.

“It doesn’t influence the top universities. It’s the low-end universities that are affected. Their quality is low. The teaching is not so serious and the students are not so hard-working.”…Read More

U.S. colleges see opportunity as Brazil sends students abroad

U.S. colleges, holding onto a shrinking lead as the world’s biggest educator of international students, are eyeing a promising new market in Brazil, an emerging economy with big hopes for the future but a shortage of skilled labor, Reuters reports. U.S. Commerce Undersecretary Francisco Sanchez will lead officials from 66 U.S. colleges and universities to Brasilia, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro beginning Thursday on what he told Reuters is the biggest trade mission of the Obama administration. The seven-day visit capitalizes on Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s “Science Without Borders” initiative aimed at reducing her nation’s skills deficit by sending as many as 101,000 students to study abroad over the next four years.

“She’s stated publicly that she wants half of those to go to the United States and specifically to study in the STEM areas: science, technology, engineering and math,” Sanchez said. Brazil’s skilled-worker shortage is a major challenge on the country’s path to developed-nation status. In addition to spurring Brazil to seek educational opportunities abroad, the shortage has encouraged the government to explore ways to ease immigration rules to attract more foreign professionals…

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Lady Gaga and U-Va.’s Helen Dragas

Helen Dragas, the rector of the University of Virginia’s governing board, probably never thought she would be linked in a headline to Lady Gaga, but she did it to herself with e-mails she sent to the school’s leaders, The Washington Post reports.

My colleague Jenna Johnson reported on her Campus Overload blog about an e-mail exchange that started when Dragas sent a missive to university President Teresa Sullivan and Provost John Simon signaling her concern over a negative 2011 post on a conservative foundation’s blog about courses at four universities that use Lady Gaga to explore some other topic. The University of Virginia was one of them (along with the University of South Carolina, Wake Forest University and Arizona State University).

Dragas said in her first e-mail: “Opinions will, of course, vary on curricular content and direction, but there must be some internal arbiter of what is appropriate. I don’t purport to know what that is, but it is clear to me that that others do (at least purport to know), and that those people can influence our future. We should be mindful of that, in my opinion.”…Read More

3 critical graduate school considerations for international students

Despite worries that the U.S. economy and the rising cost of higher education will lead to fewer students applying, one set of graduate applicants seems undeterred: international students, U.S. News reports. Last year, first-time enrollment of international graduate students in the United States rose by 8 percent–the largest increase in 5 years, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Council of Graduate Schools. While it’s clear that an increasing number of international students want to earn a graduate degree in the United States, there are three important issues that these students must weigh before applying

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South Korea outpaces the U.S. in engineering degrees

Any eighth grader who wonders if anyone actually uses algebra should ask Hyungtae Lee, an electrical engineer who writes algorithms to build computers with the power of human sight. It’s a skill he learned first here in South Korea, where undergraduate students are five times more likely to major in engineering than their counterparts in the United States, the Washington Post reports. U.S. universities and companies often look abroad for students and workers to fill positions because not enough Americans have the necessary skills or training. To help meet the demand, President Obama has announced a goalto train 1 million more graduates over the next decade in engineering and related fields. At a White House science fair in February, he told the young contestants, “You’re not just trying to win a prize today, you are getting America in shape to win the future. You are making sure we have the best, smartest, most skilled workers in the world, so that the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root right here.”

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MIT and Harvard pour $60M into “edX” online courses

Harvard and MIT will each contribute $30 million to the new online initiative.

Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have joined forces to offer free online courses in a project aimed at attracting millions of online learners around the world, the universities announced Wednesday.

Beginning this fall, a variety of courses developed by faculty at both institutions will be available online through the new $60 million partnership, known as “edX.”

“Anyone with an internet connection anywhere in the world can have access,” Harvard President Drew Faust said during a news conference to announce the initiative.…Read More

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