Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has recently launched the University Social Responsibility Network (USRN), with initial membership from 12 universities in 8 countries across the globe, includes Tufts University and the Talloires Network. The USRN will promote global awareness of university social responsibility as a catalyst for social betterment and seeks to be a global platform of ideas, resources and collaboration.
Data mining, the practice of collecting and cross-correlating large amounts of data from online sources, is becoming increasingly prevalent in higher education, ‘LMS’ or Learning Management Systems enable institutions to collect and analyze a wide range of student data to gain insights into student learning habits and behaviors. This data is then used to personalize educational interventions and differentiate campus and academic experiences. Often obtained without student consent, the practice is giving rise to concerns about student privacy.
The UK has been added to the growing list of countries where students are protesting an increase in the cost of higher education. The Cameron government’s plan to cut financial grants that assist full time university students with living costs and replace them with what British Member of Parliament George Osborne dubbed, “maintenance loans”, brought thousands of students into the streets of London. These uprisings follow similar waves of student activism in South Africa and Chile, where government cuts for financing higher education have also been announced.
Despite mixed feelings towards Europe’s current refugee crisis, the latest reports emerging from the OECD suggest that, due to the continents’ aging workforce, an injection of 50 million new members of the workforce is necessary in order to avoid drops in productivity, labour shortages and to adequately finance the pensions of the aging population. A recent study conducted by Hamburg’s World Economy Institute, for example, found that Germany’s birth rate is now the lowest in the world and is declining faster than any other industrial country. While most believe that the rush of thousands of refugees through EU borders in recent months has caused economic strain on local governments, experts believe that the presence of these refugees can have important economic impacts for years to come, including expanded purchasing power and additional job creation.
Recent research conducted by the MasterCard Foundation into the daily lives of African youth has identified career pathways into agriculture as the key to ensuring stability across the continent. Some 600 million African young people currently live on less than $2 US per day. Experts estimate that up to 14 million jobs may be created between now and 2020 if the African agricultural industry is invested in heavily. The inaugural MasterCard Foundation's Young Africa Works Summit in Cape Town October 29-30 brought together hundreds of experts, practitioners, young people and policymakers to discuss practical solutions to address youth unemployment on the continent.
In late 2014, the Project on Fair Representation filed a suit against Harvard University, alleging discrimination against Asian and Asian-American applicants on the basis of their rate of admissions to Harvard by comparison with their presence in the college population. The “nation's oldest continuously published daily college newspaper,” the Harvard Crimson argues against “racial quotas in the name of diversity” and for maintaining Harvard’s diversity objectives through existing affirmative action policies to ensure progress towards racial equality for African American and Hispanic students.
An innovative learning environment across a whole system would be characterized by the “buzz” of collegial activity and have many students learning outside conventional classrooms according to a recently released synthesis report from the OECD project Schooling Redesigned: Towards Innovative Learning Systems. Twenty-six school systems (countries, regions, networks) participated in the project. According to the report, “learner voice would be prominent, including in leadership, right across school systems; educators would discuss and practice learning strategies collaboratively, and personalize these strategies for individual learners; learners and educators would use digital resources and social media innovatively for teaching, learning and professional exchanges; there would be a dominant practice of self-review and use of evidence to inform design; and there would be dense networks of collaboration across districts, networks, chains and communities of practice.”
The publication of an interim report from the Commission on Widening Access, set up by the Scottish government, has led to calls for changes to the university entry system. The report concludes that there has been insufficient progress in closing the gap in access between higher and lower income students with only 1,335 school-leavers from the poorest 20 per cent of households going to university in 2013/2014 compared to 5,520 from the richest 20 per cent of communities. At universities such as St Andrews, Aberdeen and Edinburgh fewer than five per cent of incoming students are from the poorest communities. Research shows that underachieving students from lower income families given the same level of support as their higher income peers during university years perform just as well. Scotland’s First Minister has made several strides in recent months in order to make sure that changes in the admissions process become a reality.
Despite the rapid proliferation of online courseware available at a click away, corporate recruiters remain reluctant to recognize online credentials from unknown suppliers. While individuals are seeking out these courses to further their knowledge, brush up on concepts learned in university or attempt to make up for their lack of college credentials, in the absence of any system currently to certify course skills content, recruiters are simply not convinced. But several major players are moving to fill this gap, including an online registry currently being developed by academic researchers in conjunction with the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation with funding from the Lumina Foundation. When completed, employers will be able to match job descriptions with the skill sets of those who have completed online courses.
The signing of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act in 1975 aimed at better addressing the needs of American students with learning disabilities and resulted from years of advocacy for inclusion. But research has shown that disability students often require intensive, personalized instruction, a need that is not addressed in a traditional classroom setting. Many feel, however, that removing students with disabilities from the traditional classroom setting is contradictory to equality goals. The author calls for an end to ideological disagreements about the meaning of educational equity in favour of an approach where special education and general education teachers work together to provide appropriate instruction, with co-teaching and collaboration increasing the success of all students and the supplemental instruction required by students with learning disabilities being delivered in smaller groups.
A mismatch between skilled persons and the number of available jobs matching their competencies and expectations is limiting economic growth and development and leading to unemployment for workers with post-secondary education in low-income countries according to the 9th edition of the ILO’s Key Indicators of the Labour Market. According to the report all but two of 64 countries with available data have registered an increase in the share of the labour force with a tertiary education over the past 15 years with the biggest increases in Canada, Luxembourg and Russia. But despite an increase in post-secondary participation worldwide, those with a university education living in low-income countries are more likely to be unemployed.
In early November, the Council on International Educational Exchange and the Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions hosted the first summit of Minority Serving Institution presidents in Berlin, Germany to explore future opportunities to increase the number of racial and ethnic minorities from lower socio-economic backgrounds accessing study abroad experiences.
The latest OECD Education at a Glance 2015 reveals the rapid progress made in expanding education over the past 25 years, with around 41% of 25-34 year-olds now having a tertiary qualification. But inequalities still persist, with major consequences for labour markets and economies. In 2014, less than 60% of adults without an upper secondary education were in work, compared to over 80% of tertiary-educated adults. The report covers all 34 OECD countries and a number of partner countries (Argentina, Brazil, China, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Latvia, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia and South Africa, and for the first time, Costa Rica and Lithuania). It provides indicators on the impact of skills on employment and earnings, gender differences in education and employment, and teacher and school leader appraisal systems, looking at first generation tertiary-educated adults’ educational and social mobility, labour market outcomes for recent graduates, and participation in employer-sponsored formal and/or non-formal education. Country readiness to use information and communication technology for problem solving in teaching and learning is also examined.
See also:
GAPS Students & Young People Bulletin
The Students and Young People Bulletin focuses on the commitment of students and young people to a more accessible post-secondary education across the world. It also provides access news, event information and resources of interest to students and young people. If you are interested in submitting an article or sharing events, news or material relevant for students and young people, or would like to give us some feedback or ideas on how to develop this bulletin, please contact florian.kaiser@gaps-education.org.
This third edition provides a retrospective of the 2015 GAPS Kuala Lumpur conference, including a reflection by Beth Button (NUS UK), one of the winners of our First Students and Young Peoples’ Award for Furthering Access to Post-Secondary Education who also spoke at the conference in Malaysia. A report about volunteering in a Cambodian School and an interview with a student activist from arbeiterkind.de follows.
To access the GAPS Students & Young People Bulletin click here.
GAPS Network News
Outcomes-Based Funding Aims at Increasing Student Completion Rates
The Lumina Foundation has released the first installment in a series of papers that look at how states and public institutions are using new outcomes-based funding models to improve performance- and enrollment-based funding approaches and boost student completion rates. For more information: https://www.luminafoundation.org/news-and-events
IDEAS Partnership Looks to Highlight Best Equity Interventions
IDEAS is a European project with a variety of international partners, including GAPS network partner the ECHO Centre for Diversity Policy, that aims for a collective goal to reduce the barriers that cause inequality in European higher education. IDEAS will do this by delivering an IDEAS Toolkit based on research evidence, good practices and the needs of stakeholders. A partnership of 7 organizations from 6 countries from a variety of fields IDEAS is collecting examples of equity interventions from all corners of the world. We are researching if they worked, how they worked and why they worked. The partners are looking to highlight the best equity interventions and to demonstrate how they may be replicated in other settings. For more information: http://www.eurashe.eu/projects/ideas/ For IDEAS progress to date in collecting case studies, see also: http://equityideas.eu/#section-collected-equity-cases
Gaps in International Education Opportunities a Major Risk
In his address at the University of Siena, host to the International Association of Universities’ recent International Conference on Internationalization:Moving beyond Mobility, IAU President Dzulkifli Abdul Razak spoke of the inherent risks of international opportunities being available only to students with financial resources as “the most significant potential risk of internationalization for institutions”. “More so recognizing that the existing divides and crises continue to diminish the foundational purposes of education in ways that could hinder university development towards the creation of social justice and equitable society.” For the full text, please go to: http://www.thesundaily.my/news/1601919
About GAPS
Our Mission- Connecting the Unconnected
To build a global, engaged & collaborative access community that will champion post-secondary education for all and transform student opportunity.
Our Vision
By connecting the access community around the world, the cause of access and student success for those underrepresented at the post-secondary level will gain its voice, momentum and capacity for impact, positively transforming student opportunity at the global and local level.
By 2030, post-secondary education will be measurably more accessible, available and affordable to developed and developing world populations as a result of the efforts of the global access community.
GAPS Calendar
December 11, 2015: NEON Access Academy, How to widen access to postgraduate study, presented by Paul Wakeling, University of York (York, United Kingdom). To find out more, click here.
December 20-22, 2015: EQUIS 2015, The Second Asian Symposium on Education, Equity and Social Justice, Hiroshima, Japan. For information, click here.
January 7-8, 2016:Breaking Boundaries: Interdisciplinarity, E-Learning, and Universities without Walls, Kolkata, India. This conference is part of E-QUAL (Enhancing Quality, Access and Governance of Undergraduate Education in India), a European Union funded international collaborative project aimed at enhancing the quality, access and governance of undergraduate education in India. For more information, click here.
January 20-23, 2016: Association of American Colleges and Universities’ 2016 Annual Meeting: How Higher Education Can Lead—On Equity, Inclusive Excellence, and Democratic Renewal. To find out more, click here.
February 21-24, 2016: 2016 Association of International Education Administrators Annual Conference. Building a Better World: The Academy as Leader, Montreal, Quebec. More information available here.
March 9-12, 2016: European Students' Convention 31 (Amsterdam, Netherlands). For details click here.
March 16-18, 2016: Consortium for North American Higher Education Collaboration (CONAHEC). Global Grand Challenges: Channeling International Collaboration, San Luis Potosi, Mexico. For information, click here.
May 29-31, 2016: European Access Network’s 25th Anniversary Conference, Dublin. For more information, click here.
June 1-3, 2016: 48th EUCEN Conference, Dublin (IE). Dublin City University and the Higher Education Centre. Crossing borders through lifelong learning: Enhancing quality and equity in higher education. For more information, click here.
August 31-September 3, 2016: 35th Council for Opportunity in Education (COE) annual conference, San Diego, California. More information available here.
September 19-21, 2016: National College Access Network NCAN) annual conference in Detroit, Illinois. For additional information, click here.
November 14-17, 2016: The next IAU General Conference will be held in Bangkok, Thailand. Co-organized in partnership with a Consortium of Thai universities lead by Siam University, this 15th General Conference will focus on Higher Education: a catalyst for innovative and sustainable societies. For more information, click here.
Online Library
Our Online Library has the following new postings:
Overview on Student-Centered Learning in Higher Education in Europe
No Future for the Social Dimension?
Taking Equal Education into the classroom
Higher Education in Nigeria: A Status Report
Social equity in a mass, globalised higher education environment: the unresolved issue of widening access to university
To share initiatives or news with access and success colleagues from around the world email Florian Kaiser or tweet @gapseducation
Disclaimer
All links in this newsletter are being provided as a convenience and for informational purposes only. They do not constitute an edorsement or an approval by GAPS of any of the products, services or opinions of the corporation or organisation. GAPS bears no responsibility for the accuracy, legality or content of external sites or for that of subsequent links. Please contact the external site for answers to questions regarding its content.
