higher education

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India: Centre shifts focus to liberalization of higher education

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India/May 08, 2018/By: Prashant K. Nanda/Source: https://www.livemint.com

Over the past few months, the Indian higher education sector has been witnessing a gradual transformation.

The long promised new education policy is still in the pipeline, but the Union government seems to have taken up a new task — liberalization of higher education.

Over the past few months, the Indian higher education sector has been witnessing a gradual transformation from a restrictive regime to a liberalized one in all three key aspects: finance, academic and administrative.

“Higher education liberalization is a requirement and the government is taking steps to achieve it. You will see key regulatory bodies like the University Grants Commission and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) getting reformed for better management of higher education,” said a top official of the human resource development ministry.

“From legislative measures to executive orders, the ministry is now busy reducing the restrictive regime in the sector. In the next six months, you will see some more initiatives,” he said.

What he was referring to is a series of initiatives the ministry has already initiated over the past few months. It enacted the IIM Act, allowing Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) to become virtually free of government control. It has brought in a set of guidelines for autonomous colleges allowing them freedom to prescribe courses, become more industry linked and start self-financing courses to become financially sustainable. Besides, it has put in place a non-banking financial corporation to aid infra growth of educational institutions on a borrow and pay concept — a move that will reduce the financial burden on the government and make institutions accountable for their own infra and research growth.

In March, the Union government for the first time provided graded autonomy to 62 universities and colleges both in private and public space to operate with relatively less interference from the education regulators.

HRD minister Prakash Javadekar called this a “liberalized regulatory regime” and said on the sidelines of an event recently that the Indian higher education sector often complains about restrictive rules but now the government is making a conscious effort to liberalize it.

“Of late, there seems to an intention of liberalizing the sector. Autonomy and liberalization are a necessity for the higher education section to thrive. The moment you allow freedom and competition, the best will survive and others will strive to improve quality as it will be a requirement for survival,” said Harivansh Chaturvedi, director of the Birla Institute of Management and Technology in Greater Noida.

Chaturvedi, who is also the alternate president of the Education Promotion Society for India, a confederation of private education providers, said technical education colleges under AICTE should also be granted autonomy based on their rankings and accreditation scores.

While some of the recent moves are important, a new education policy is almost paramount and the government should bring that in to give direction to the education sector, Chaturvedi said. A new education policy is being deliberated for last four years.

Of all the steps the government has taken, the establishment of a higher education financing agency and its expansion in the past couple of months is perhaps the most under-rated but far reaching, said the official cited above. The government has already sanctioned loans worth over Rs2,500 crore to nearly a dozen top schools.

“While individual sub-sectoral moves like autonomy for IIMs, graded autonomy for a group of colleges and universities have their merits, the financing agency will perhaps reduce government spending by Rs10,000 crore per year, and push top higher educational institutions to become more accountable and finically prudent. That’s a bigger change from the way public funded institutions function — you get autonomy, you decide your growth path and you raise money and pay back from your own resources. That’s a bigger liberalization move,” said the official.

Source:

https://www.livemint.com/Politics/mx1YXvM5lCt26WaaHz91HO/Centre-shifts-focus-to-liberalization-of-higher-education.html

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Interview: 3 vital ways to measure how much a university education is worth

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By The Associated Press

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Mark S. Schlissel, University of Michigan; Michael H. Schill, University of Oregon, and Michael V. Drake, The Ohio State University

(THE CONVERSATION) Editor’s note: Today we begin a new series in which we ask the leaders of our country’s colleges and universities to address some of the most pressing issues in higher education.

The past several years have seen increased calls for colleges and universities to demonstrate their value to students, families and taxpayers. And the pressure has come from both sides of the political spectrum. Barack Obama, for example, didn’t mince his words when he spoke a few years ago on the University of Michigan campus: “We are putting colleges on notice…you can’t assume that you’ll just jack up tuition every single year. If you can’t stop tuition from going up, then the funding you get from taxpayers each year will go down. We should push colleges to do better.”

So how is a would-be student or a tax-paying citizen to decide the value of a given university or degree? There is certainly no shortage of tools that have been developed to help in this regard.

The federal College Scorecard, for example, is meant to “help students choose a school that is well-suited to meet their needs, priced affordably, and is consistent with their educational and career goals.”

Various magazines put together college rankings. There have been efforts at the state level to show what graduates of a given institution or program can expect to earn. And some colleges and universities are working to provide those data themselves.

So we asked our panel of presidents – from the University of Michigan, University of Oregon and The Ohio State University: If you had to devise just one tool or metric to help the general public assess the value of a particular college or degree, what would it be and why?

Michael Drake, president of The Ohio State University

When I ask individuals if they want their own children to attend college, the answer is, overwhelmingly, yes. The evidence is clear. College graduates are more likely to be employed and more likely to earn more than those without degrees. Studies also indicate that people with college degrees have higher levels of happiness and engagement, better health and longer lives.

Wow.

If living a longer, healthier and happier life is a good thing, then, yes, college is worth it.

A four-year degree is not necessarily the best path for everyone, of course. Many people find their lives are enhanced by earning a two-year or technical degree. For others, none of these options is the perfect choice. But if there is one data point I want to highlight, it is the correlation between a college education and greater life expectancy. In fact, one study suggests that those who attend college live, on average, seven years longer.

Last year was the second year in a row that average life expectancy in the U.S. went down. But greater mortality didn’t affect all Americans equally. Studies point to a growing gap in life expectancy between rich and poor. Higher education may, in other words, be part of the solution to this problem.

This is just one of the reasons that so many of our country’s institutions of higher learning are focused on the question of how to make sure more Americans have access to a quality – and affordable – college education.

Since December 2016, the American Talent Initiative, a coalition of 100 (and counting) colleges and universities, has been working to educate 50,000 additional lower-income students by 2025. In another initiative, the 11 public universities in the University Innovation Alliance are committed to producing more U.S. graduates and have, over the past three years, increased their number of low-income graduates by 24.7 percent.

As educators, we must continue to increase pathways to the American Dream — a journey that includes health, happiness, long life and, very often, a college degree.

Michael Schill, president of the University of Oregon

While it is impossible to devise only one indicator to describe the value of a university, I would suggest that a good place to begin would be the number of first-generation students it admits and the rate at which they graduate.

As a first-generation college student myself, I may be somewhat biased, but I believe that our generation will be judged by how well we enhance the opportunities for social mobility among our citizens. And despite some skepticism about the value of higher education on the part of pundits and politicians, it is well-documented that there is no better way for young people to achieve the “American Dream” than by getting a college degree.

Note that my metric is really two – first-generation enrollment numbers and graduation rates. The simple fact is that students who go to college and don’t receive a degree may well be in worse shape economically than those who don’t go at all. They will have invested time and money, yet without a diploma will not achieve the economic returns from that investment. Moreover, many are hobbled by student loans without the economic wherewithal to repay them.

It is easy for universities, colleges and community colleges to admit large numbers of students from modest backgrounds. That happened in the for-profit sector. However, the graduation rate at for-profit institutions is only 23 percent, compared to the 59 percent rate overall. The hard part is to support students so that they can succeed.

First-generation students make up a third of college undergraduates in the United States. They are more likely to be minorities and to come from low-income households, and are far less likely to graduate than their peers who had one or more parent attend college. We can do better.

Part of the solution is for more universities to provide more adequate need-based financial assistance, but even that isn’t enough. College can be a confusing experience for first-generation kids, both in terms of learning how to succeed academically and “fitting in” socially. Real value will accrue to students and American society only if we can provide them with appropriate advising and counseling so that they not only get in, but persist and flourish.

Mark Schlissel, president of the University of Michigan

To devise one metric to help the public assess our value, we need to challenge ourselves the same way we challenge students in our classrooms and labs. Let’s first determine the right question to ask. What are our students looking for in life and how can a college degree change the quality and trajectory of their lives?

Higher education gives graduates the best opportunity to pursue their ambitions, change careers, define and solve complex problems, and persuade and lead others. College graduates enjoy higher salaries, qualify for further levels of education and are at a lower risk of ending up in jobs that become obsolete. Moreover, they lead richer and fuller lives – happier, healthier, wealthier and longer.

Each of these outcomes is a component of the value of a college education, yet none of them alone fairly captures its full value. In considering these metrics together, in the context of our question, I believe that one very important concept emerges.

That concept is freedom.

Freedom’s link to education has long been a quintessential American value. As the educator and philosopher John Dewey wrote at the beginning of the 20th century, “We naturally associate democracy, to be sure, with freedom of action, but freedom of action without freed capacity of thought behind it is only chaos.”

At its best, higher education gives us the freedom to make decisions based on our values, desires, human talents and willingness to work hard. We are free to choose our own path.

Education takes freedom beyond its status as a legal right and elevates it into a lifetime of choices. It’s the trajectory of those lives, changed by the opportunities available through a college education, that I am most interested in measuring.

The American public rightfully expects higher education to serve as an enabler of prosperity and equality. I would devise a metric that captures higher education’s greatest potential: to enhance the freedom of an individual graduate in a nation founded on constitutionally guaranteed rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Editor’s note: The Ohio State University is a member of the University Innovation Alliance. The University of Michigan and The Ohio State University are members of the American Talent Initiative.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article here: http://theconversation.com/3-vital-ways-to-measure-how-much-a-university-education-is-worth-94208.

Source:

https://wtop.com/education/2018/04/3-vital-ways-to-measure-how-much-a-university-education-is-worth/

 

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EGYPT Caution greets private universities twinning requirement

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Africa/Egipto/universityworldnews

Resumen: A las nuevas universidades privadas no se les permitirá operar en Egipto a menos que tengan acuerdos de colaboración con instituciones clasificadas entre las 50 mejores universidades del mundo, según el presidente egipcio Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.La medida recibió críticas mixtas de expertos en educación superior. «No se deben otorgar permisos a ninguna universidad a menos que firme un acuerdo de gemelos con la mejor universidad en el extranjero para garantizar un mejor nivel de educación a los estudiantes universitarios», dijo El-Sisi en unadirectiva dirigida a funcionarios de educación superior el 22 de marzo. La medida, encaminada a mejorar la calidad de la educación universitaria en Egipto e impulsar las clasificaciones universitarias locales, fue confirmada por el viceministro de Educación Superior e Investigación Científica, Essam Khamis, según un informe local .  Las mejores 50 universidades del mundo se determinarán utilizando seis rankings de universidades. Entre ellos se encuentran los rankings universitarios mundiales Times Higher Education , los rankings QS World University , el ranking académico de las universidades del mundo y el ranking Webometrics de las universidades del mundo . A pesar de contar con una de las universidades más antiguas del mundo, la Universidad Al-Azhar, ninguna de las 48 universidades públicas y privadas del país ha llegado a la lista reciente de las 100 mejores universidades de clase mundial. Los expertos internacionales han acogido con cautela la medida. «Es una excelente idea tener universidades extranjeras asociadas con universidades locales para establecer nuevos programas conjuntos o universidades», dijo Jane Knight, experta en educación superior internacional en el Instituto de Ontario para Estudios en Educación de la Universidad de Toronto, Canadá. Sin embargo, dijo que limitar la colaboración a las 50 mejores universidades del mundo es «demasiado estricta y restringe la posibilidad de establecer asociaciones». Knight, quien también es un distinguido profesor visitante en el Centro Ali Mazrui de Estudios de Educación Superior en la Universidad de Johannesburgo, Sudáfrica, dijo que aumentar el número de instituciones de educación superior elegibles podría en realidad impulsar las opciones. Angel Calderon, asesor principal de planificación e investigación en RMIT University, Australia, dijo a University World News que la posición de una institución en el ranking universitario mundial no debería ser el criterio definitorio de si una institución es digna o no de una asociación con otra institución. «De hecho, los criterios para un top 50 son totalmente espurios y es poco probable que produzcan un compromiso significativo», dijo Calderón, un experto en rankings y miembro de la junta asesora del QS World University Rankings.

New private universities will not be allowed to operate in Egypt unless they have collaboration agreements with institutions rated among the top 50 universities in the world, according to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. The move has received mixed reviews from higher education experts.

“Permits should not be given to any university unless it signs a twinship agreement with the best university abroad to guarantee a better level of education to university students,” El-Sisi said in a directive to higher education officials on 22 March.

The move, aimed at improving the quality of university education in Egypt and boosting local university rankings, was confirmed by Deputy Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research Essam Khamis, according to a local report.

The top 50 universities in the world will be determined using six rankings of universities. Among these will be the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, the QS World University Rankings, the Academic Ranking of World Universities and the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities.

Despite boasting one of the oldest universities in the world, Al-Azhar University, none of the country’s 48 public and private universities have made it onto the recent list of the top 100 world-class universities.

International experts have cautiously welcomed the move.

“It’s an excellent idea to have foreign universities partner with local universities to establish new joint programmes or universities,” said Jane Knight, an expert on international higher education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, Canada.

However, she said limiting collaboration to the top 50 universities worldwide is “too strict and restricts the possibility of establishing partnerships”.

Knight, who is also a distinguished visiting professor at the Ali Mazrui Centre for Higher Education Studies at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, said increasing the number of eligible higher education institutions might actually boost the options.

Angel Calderon, principal advisor for planning and research at RMIT University, Australia, told University World News that the standing of an institution in the world university rankings should not be the defining criteria of whether or not an institution is worthy of partnership with another institution.

“In fact the criteria for a top 50 are entirely spurious and unlikely to yield any meaningful engagement,” said Calderon, a rankings expert and a member of the advisory board to the QS World University Rankings.

Susanne Kammüller, a senior expert in transnational education with the transnational education and cooperation programmes of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), told University World News the rankings were one way to judge the academic quality of universities, but their usefulness and informative value continues to be a controversial topic.

“The methodology and specific focus of analysis in international rankings lead to very different results among different rankings and practically exclude many higher education institutions which are excellent in their specific field,” Kammüller said.

“The rankings might be helpful to gain a broad overview on potential international partners but for the decision on a fitting university partner, ranking placements and, even less so, ranking results alone, are not an appropriate criterion,” Kammüller added.

Kammüller warned that the ideal partner would depend on specific circumstances, for example, a collaboration with a top-ranked research institution of international renown might be helpful for a new university aiming to create a name for excellence in fundamental research.

“If the aim is to educate qualified engineers to meet increasing industry demand for highly skilled specialists in an emerging economy, a good university of applied sciences without ranking status but with fitting specialisation and industry links could turn out a better choice of an international university partner,” Kammüller said.

But rankings expert Calderon said the driving criteria should be institutional affinity based on the institution’s mission and vision, as well as its orientation in alignment with the institution it seeks to partner with.

“Further, consideration needs to be given to an institution’s discipline strength and areas where it could have meaningful engagement,” Calderon said.

Fuente: http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20180417094909381
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United Kingdom: ‘Poverty premium’ in higher education leads to poorer people feeling isolated

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Europe/ United Kingdom/ 23.04.2018 / From: www.theguardian.com.

Working-class students are penalised by a “poverty premium”, often paying higher costs to continue studying in a university environment in which they may feel isolated and as though they do not belong, according to a report.

Research for the National Union of Students finds that student expenditure routinely outstrips income from loans, leaving many whose parents cannot afford to subsidise them without the means to pay for basics such as food and heating.

Fees for halls are often unaffordable for those struggling on maintenance loans, with many universities setting rents above inflation to generate additional income, the study claims.

It quotes the results of a freedom of information request by the University of East Anglia students’ union, which found that more than 20 higher education institutions generated more than £1,000 profit per bed space a year.

One student said they had to find an additional £700 on top of their maintenance loan to pay for their accommodation alone. “This pricing policy risks segregating working-class students in lower-cost accommodation from others who have access to additional funds from their families,” the report says.

Working-class students – who are most likely to be employed in a job that requires more than the recommended 15 hours a week of work while studying – also struggled to afford to participate in social events with their wealthier peers, leaving them feeling ostracised. One student said they were expected to pay £200 to join a junior common room for their halls of residence to be included in social activities.

Worcester students’ union submitted evidence from one contributor who said: “[If you are] working-class you are shunned by students too … It’s ridiculous. I remember feeling inferior to everyone else because I wasn’t pretty enough, I didn’t dress nicely enough, I had pack[ed] lunch rather than canteen food.”

An annual survey by the University of Bristol students’ union found just over a third of respondents had witnessed bullying, harassment or discrimination based on a person’s economic or class background.

The NUS report, Class Dismissed: Getting in and Getting on in Further and Higher Education, goes on to point out that dropout rates from university are highest among working-class students, who are more likely to be debt averse than their wealthier peers, yet can end up paying more.

Fees for access courses mean many working-class students pay an additional year of fees to gain qualifications and they can struggle to find a guarantor to rent in the private sector, leading them to use private schemes with higher fees and interest rates.

Addressing student poverty and creating equal access to education has been Shakira Martin’s central mission as NUS president. A black, working-class single mother, she explains in a powerful introduction to the report how education has played a transformative role in her life.

“I left high school with one GCSE, left home at 16 – living on just £44.50 per week – and became the young mother of two beautiful girls. If you were to tell any of my teachers at secondary school this would be where I am, where I have worked to be, they would have never believed you. But here I am. Against all odds. Further education transformed my life and gave me the second chance I needed.

“My hope, and my vision for the UK is that we will arrive at a day where my story is not against all odds. That no working-class person’s story is against all odds. We will no longer be the exceptions to the rule when it comes to success and fulfilment in education. We will be the rule.”

The report calls for the introduction of a minimum living income for students in further and higher education; it also recommends the restoration of maintenance grants, the education maintenance allowance and NHS bursaries for healthcare students.

From: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/apr/23/university-costs-working-class-students-more-says-nus-repor

 

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Interview: Deborah Quazzo on the Business of Education Innovation, the Nation’s Shrinking Skilled Workforce & the GSV Acceleration Fund

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By: EMMELINE ZHAO

Deborah Quazzo got her start in education at an investment bank.

In the mid-1990s, while Quazzo was working in finance at Merrill Lynch & Co., she was inspired by colleague Michael Moe, who was a growth research analyst identifying trends and themes in the growth economy. Moe developed white papers and built businesses around one of the core themes: education.

What Moe discovered was that human capital, a major chunk of American GDP, was highly fragmented and inefficient, yet untouched by technology at the time. Employers and economists were deeply dissatisfied with outcomes across the board. In working together, Moe and Quazzo realized that there was huge potential for entrepreneurs to enter the space and create businesses in education that built human capital.

With that, Quazzo began looking at the future of education as an investing platform, from which she and Moe eventually grew to become business partners upon leaving Merrill Lynch. As Moe continued to explore abroad growth themes, Quazzo was diving deeper into education domestically.

In 2009, Quazzo co-founded GSV Advisors, an advisory firm focused on learning and human capital technology companies. She now acts as founder and managing partner of GSV Acceleration Fund, a venture capital fund with more than 25 investments in disruptive technology companies, including ClassDojo, Course Hero, and Turnitin.

GSV, which stands for Global Silicon Valley, partnered in 2010 with Arizona State University for the first ASU+GSV summit. Now in its eighth year, the gathering brings together leaders from investment, enterprise, higher education, and pre-K–12 sectors “for elevating dialogue and driving actionaround raising learning and career outcomes through scaled innovation.”

Ahead of the summit next week, during which more than 4,000 stakeholders and change makers in education innovation will descend on San Diego for the conference, The 74 spoke with Quazzo about the inspiration behind ASU+GSV, the role of technology and investment in learning, and the state of innovation across the American education sector. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What happened in 2008 that made you decide to dedicate 100 percent of your time to investing in education technology?

I realized that I had become quite passionate both philanthropically as well as professionally around the fact that innovation in the education market is a unique lever in giving people access. Our motto is getting all people access to the future and allowing all people to participate in the future economy. So it was an area that I was inspired by and made me get out of bed in the morning, so I really hunkered down and began to spend 100 percent of my time there, which has been great.

How has your perspective on education evolved since the time when you were just reading Moe’s reports at Merrill Lynch?

I don’t know if it’s change as much as just what I didn’t know when I started.

We have invested thousands of hours, meeting with companies, talking to entrepreneurs and innovators, both philanthropically as well as socially. We spent time in schools with educators both in the K-12 space as well as the higher ed space. The enterprise is as interesting as anything.

I think there is great dysfunction in terms of delivering the right learning at the right time and the enterprise, especially with the pace at which jobs are changing today. So I’m a lot more optimistic today than I was probably when I got into this 20 years ago.

I think 20 years ago, the education sector really lagged every other technology sector in terms of adoption of technology-based solutions. That’s not to say that technology is a silver bullet, but it can certainly give critical scale in an area where we really need scale to help us bridge achievement gaps and bridge the fact that only 30 percent of people have a higher education credential and probably more like 60 to 80 percent of people are going to need them in the future. So we think it’s a critical wedge.

I think what’s really changed is that somewhere around 2008, 2009, 2010, we began to see a new a new breed of leader and entrepreneur come into the sector — both social and commercial. People who had either been very successful in technology or in other sectors and actually wanted to come make a big difference began to bring their talents into the marketplace.

The population of students and teachers also over time became dominated by digital natives in a way that obviously wasn’t true in prior years. In programs like Teach for America young people out of college will go into the teaching profession and become inspired about fixing one thing or another in their classroom experience, and go back out and found companies. We’ve seen lots of that from different sources.

So I think there has been sea change. I think the other thing that’s happened is just where we are in the tech sector in terms of having data and being able to transparently look at results: It allows students, teachers, faculty members, and adult learners to know whether the things they are using are actually working. That was something that hadn’t really been true in the past.

It’s what we like to call “a confluence of catalysts.” There was dramatic reduction in costs for technology implementation, the huge influx of talent into the sector, and just the natural migration of demographics such that the user had a natural digital proclivity.

Do you think we’ve seen a true disruption in K-12 and higher ed?

I do. The K-12 market gets kicked around a lot as being a market environment that never changes, but I actually think some of the greatest innovations are happening in K-12 and has happened around personalized learning, around looking at different ways of delivering instruction, led by great school leaders and teachers. So maybe I don’t know it’s been disruptive as much as it has been a strong evolution towards more effective delivery of learning in classrooms, and I think you can see results in different pockets all over the country.

Chicago is a good example of where people have really looked to leverage all kinds of that innovation and thinking to drive outcomes for students.

I’d say higher ed has seen more literal disruption, whether it’s MOOCs, which people love to act like they aren’t working, but they’ve aggregated just a massive number of global students. Students at Coursera, for example, are actually accelerating on a month-to-month basis coming onto the platform.

We’re seeing all kinds of interesting businesses being developed for the delivery of online degrees at universities in a non-university setting. So I think there actually has been a really interesting disruption in higher education institutions, whereas 10 years ago you had to sell an online learning product. Today I think it’s pretty well recognized that digital delivery of learning in some format is a sensible part of your portfolio. Students are really expecting to see some component of their learning in online formats, so I think there has been a literal disruption in the higher ed market that’s continuing. And it will continue to play out, as we’ve actually got some pretty interesting demographic changes coming down the pike to higher ed.

Tell us more about these demographic changes.

There’s a book written by Nathan Grawe called Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education. There was a dramatic fall-off in fertility rates during 2008–2010, a depression that really has not bounced back. So if you look out to the 2025 area, you begin to see very substantial reductions in high school population that would be going to college: 10 to 15 percent, even higher percentages, depending on geography. And you also end up seeing a re-sorting of where the growth is.

The Northeast and the Midwest will see the most precipitous declines. The Southwest is the only area that’s seeing any material growth in college-eligible high school population, so it’s a pretty interesting dynamic for a university to be planning for that, that has been landlocked by their site.

So if you’re a mid-tier university in the Northeast, you probably need to be thinking about where you’re going to be pulling your student body from, whether it should be all physical or whether you need to actually have it be digital or online in order to support your physical plan.

What’s your analysis of the education policy landscape right now in terms of innovation?

My general sense is that the wheels are in motion. No one wants to talk about Common Core anymore, but those wheels did get set in motion and did get planted in different ways — maybe people changed the titles. But accountability at the district level, we certainly see it here in Chicago, there’s a very effective accountability framework.

I think a lot of the things that have been put in place are moving forward. I think whether there’s policy changes in higher ed that result in freedom for for-profit institutions is sort of a moot point at this point, as many of them have now converted into different formats of not-for-profit and for-profit pieces, so that industry has really already restructured ahead of any further policy change unless new entities jump in as a result, which seems less likely.

So I don’t get the sense that policy is either being used to aggressively accelerate things — which I would say would have been true under the Obama administration — or to decelerate things — which could also be argued to be true under the Obama administration, depending on what sector you’re talking about — but it was an activist policy environment then and perhaps it’s activist in a different way now with the folks on choice and things like that. But I just don’t see that as having as much of an impact, barring some big changes today.

Have you encountered challenges and/or opportunities because you are a woman?

Challenges change. I do think we’re particularly proud within the education and human capital talent in the technology sector. At our ASU+GSV Summit, we don’t select with this in mind, but we have about 400 CEOs of tech companies present the summit and about a third of those companies are founded or led by women. This year actually the numbers went up to about 38 percent of the companies are founded or led by women.

On the positive side, I would say this: The education and human capital sector, for whatever reason, seems to be one that’s much more supportive for women to participate in leadership roles, because a normal tech sector is more like 6 percent.

I have a venture capital fund, and certainly those numbers are still pretty bad in venture capital. We need to have much more aggressive tone in looking at the benefit of having diversity in terms of sex, race, investment communities, and everything else. Diversity leads to better decisions.

About a quarter of our companies are led by people of color, so we’re very proud of those numbers. But in the finance community we don’t see that kind of diversity, so it has a long way to go and we have a lot of work to do.

What are too few people paying attention to right now in education?

It’s a great sector to work in because you have so many people who really care about it. I’m quite optimistic about where things are directionally. I think people do need to keep looking down the road at things like the demographic changes, which are mathematical and should have been obvious to everybody, but I think it’s kind of taken this guy writing a book to really move it front and center.

The bizarre part is we have declining enrollment in higher education and yet we’ve got an expanding need for people to have a higher ed credential of some sort in order to be relevant in the economy and have a good job.

So I think there is a strange dichotomy there that doesn’t seem to get a lot of focus for explanation, like why would we have declining enrollments in the face of people actually needing to have higher levels of skills to hold employment?

Otherwise I feel really fortunate to be operating an area where there are lots of people who really care a lot about the outcomes here, because they know it’s going to make a huge difference in how this country performs in the next 100 years — or doesn’t.

How do you think the private and public sectors should co-exist in education?

We have a concept called “no labels.” We think it’s relatively irrelevant what your tax structure is — whether you’re for-profit, not-for-profit. Organizations have to be held accountable for delivery of “return on education.” Are you increasing access, reducing costs, providing leverage to learning, and that accountability should really be there for any actor in the market. For-profits and higher ed should not be held more accountable than not-for-profits, because there are many bad actors in the not-for-profit sector, as there might have been in the for-profit sector. So I think it’s bizarre to have accountability standards that are different.

Every organization should have similar accountability standards. I think sometimes what you’ll see in for-profit entities is that you can instill greater urgency with potentially less bureaucratic overload, and I think things can get done in startups that can’t get done at bigger companies, either for-profit or not-for-profit, that can be very productive and disruptive to what’s happening. So I think it’s critical that there’s a partnership between the commercial and social organizations in the sector, and that they’re both marching forward and are both held highly accountable for outcomes.

See the full 74 Interview archive right here; get the latest editions delivered straight to your inbox by signing up for The 74 Newsletter

Source: 

74 Interview: Deborah Quazzo on the Business of Education Innovation, the Nation’s Shrinking Skilled Workforce & the GSV Acceleration Fund

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Mongolia targets higher education quality assurance and accreditation to overcome skills mismatch

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Asia/Mongolia/UNESCO

Alrededor del 40% de los graduados universitarios en Mongolia están desempleados y no pueden encontrar trabajo en sus campos. Es una situación que la Sra. Ts. Tsogzolmaa, Ministro de Educación, Cultura, Ciencia y Deporte, se atribuye en parte a un desajuste entre habilidades entre la educación y el mercado laboral, y la calidad no está al mismo ritmo que la cantidad en el sector de la educación superior en rápida expansión de Mongolia.

El ministro se reunió recientemente con una delegación de la UNESCO Bangkok para analizar las formas en que la organización puede colaborar con el ministerio para mejorar la política de educación superior en Mongolia.

«La garantía de calidad y la acreditación son los instrumentos clave para mejorar la calidad de la educación superior y resolver el desajuste de habilidades en el mercado de trabajo», dijo el Ministro Tsogzolmaa.

El 29 de marzo, se reunió con la delegación, encabezada por el Dr. Libing Wang, Especialista Principal de Programas en Educación Superior y jefe de la Sección de Innovación Educativa y Desarrollo de Habilidades (EISD) de la UNESCO Bangkok, para analizar cómo la organización puede apoyar los esfuerzos de Mongolia para fortalecer estos dos áreas clave de política. Desde su transición de una economía planificada a una de mercado abierto, la educación superior de Mongolia se ha expandido rápidamente, con el aumento del número de instituciones de educación superior de 14 a 95, y la tasa bruta de matriculación en el nivel terciario aumentando del 14% al 69%. Como es el caso de la mayoría de los países, la expansión cuantitativa ha venido acompañada de desafíos de calidad. Reconociendo esto, el Consejo Nacional de Acreditación de la Educación de Mongolia (MNCEA, por sus siglas en inglés) designó el año 2018 como «Año Interno de Garantía de Calidad» e invitó a la UNESCO a colaborar con Bangkok. El Dr. Wang dijo que la UNESCO proporcionaría apoyo técnico para garantizar la calidad de la educación superior y solicitó la participación activa de Mongolia en eventos de educación superior, como el Seminario Asia-Pacífico sobre MOOC para la Educación Superior en junio y la Reunión Asia-Pacífico sobre Educación 2030 (APMED) en julio. También alentó encarecidamente a Mongolia a ratificar la Convención Regional de Asia y el Pacífico sobre Reconocimiento de Cualificaciones en la Educación Superior (Convención de Tokio) para impulsar la movilidad transfronteriza, que permitirá al país desarrollar las competencias de los estudiantes y la competitividad global. La UNESCO se compromete a apoyar los esfuerzos de los Estados Miembros para mejorar la calidad de sus sistemas de educación superior como parte integral del avance de la agenda educativa global para » garantizar una educación inclusiva e igualitaria de calidad y promover oportunidades de aprendizaje permanente para todos «.

Around 40% of university graduates in Mongolia are unemployed and unable to find work in their fields. It’s a situation that Ms. Ts. Tsogzolmaa, Minister of Education, Culture, Science and Sport, attributes in part to a skills mismatch between education and the labour market and quality not keeping pace with quantity in Mongolia’s rapidly expanding higher education sector.

The minister met recently with a delegation from UNESCO Bangkok to discuss ways that the organization can collaborate with the ministry to improve higher education policy in Mongolia.

“Quality assurance and accreditation are the key instruments to improve the quality of higher education and solve the skills mismatch in the job market,” said Minister Tsogzolmaa.

On 29 March, she met the delegation, led by Dr. Libing Wang, Senior Programme Specialist in Higher Education and head of UNESCO Bangkok’s Section for Educational Innovation and Skills Development (EISD), to discuss how the organization can support Mongolia’s efforts to strengthen these two key policy areas.

Since its transition from a planned to open-market economy, Mongolian higher education has expanded rapidly, with the number of higher education institutions growing from 14 to 95, and the gross enrolment ratio at the tertiary level increasing from 14% to 69%. As is the case with most countries, the quantitative expansion has come with quality challenges.

Recognizing this, the Mongolia National Council for Education Accreditation (MNCEA) designated 2018 as «Internal Quality Assurance Year», and invited UNESCO Bangkok’s collaboration.

Dr. Wang said UNESCO would provide technical support for quality assurance in higher education, and asked for Mongolia’s active participation in higher education events, such as the Asia-Pacific Seminar on MOOCs for Higher Education in June as well as the Asia-Pacific Meeting on Education 2030 (APMED) in July. He also strongly encouraged Mongolia to ratify the Asia-Pacific Regional Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications in Higher Education(Tokyo Convention) in order to boost cross-border mobility, which will the country develop students’ competencies and global competitiveness.

UNESCO is committed to supporting Member States’ efforts to improve the quality of their higher education systems as an integral part of advancing the goal of the global education agenda to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.”

Fuente: http://bangkok.unesco.org/content/mongolia-targets-higher-education-quality-assurance-and-accreditation-overcome-skills

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England: Cambridge ranked last in university fair access table

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England/ 09.04.2018/ From: www.theguardian.com.

A new measure looking at how successful individual universities have been in trying to widen participation to students from all backgrounds has ranked University of Hull as the best-performing institution and Cambridge the worst.

The experimental fair access rankings, drawn up in a research paper by the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi), rate the University of Derby, Edge Hill, Chester and Plymouth School of Art as among the top performers.

Close to the bottom are some of the country’s oldest and most prestigious universities, including St Andrew’s, Bristol, Oxford and Aberdeen, which perform only marginally better than Cambridge on this measure.

While overall university participation rates among young people have gone up from 10-15% of the population in the 1980s to more than 45% today, there are still wide discrepancies in intake, with fewer students from disadvantaged backgrounds attending the most elite institutions, the Hepi paper points out.

Written by Iain Martin, the vice-chancellor of Anglia Ruskin University, which comes ninth in the rankings, the report advocates the use of the Gini index – a statistical measure of distribution developed by the Italian statistician Corrado Gini in 1912 – in conjunction with so-called Polar measures of university participation in different local areas.

“Widening participation and ensuring that students from all backgrounds are provided opportunities to study at a university that matches their talents and aspirations has been a pivotal part of English higher education policy and strategy for many years,” said Martin. “While much has been achieved, it remains that we do not have an educational level playing field.

“Benchmarking fair and equitable participation using the Gini index – a well-understood and recognised measure of the equitable distribution of resource – provides a single way to measure our transition to a higher education system where all students attend a university that matches their talents and aspiration.”

Cambridge University said its admission rate for state school students had gone up to more than 63% and the proportion of successful applicants from postcodes with the lowest rates of participation in higher education had also increased, from 3.3 % in 2016 to 4.5 % last year.

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From: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/apr/05/cambridge-ranked-last-in-university-fair-access-table

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