Consider this scenario: as an editor of a scholarly journal, you are informed that an anonymous blogger has publicly accused your journal of publishing an article with allegedly numerous ethical violations and acts of misconduct from 20 years before you became editor. Your journal has no archives or records from that long ago, but you are being contacted by current authors and the media to respond. Who ya gonna call? If you are one of the approximately 11,500 members of a voluntary organization called COPE (the Committee on Publication Ethics), that’s probably who you’ll call.
Problem: you are a highly trained, skilled professional, but the academic job market is less than rosy.
Solution: the market for online, nonacademic courses is large and growing. For “academic entrepreneurs” willing to
retool their courses, this market represents an opportunity to build an independent business or supplement income
from teaching.
According to some estimates, by 2020 the worldwide market for self-paced online learning will be between $27.1 billion and $47.9 billion. The trends driving this growth in the United States involve shifts in the ways that companies hire and train employees, as well as changing expectations about the role of educational institutions.
Several studies suggest that graduate students are at greater risk for mental health issues than those in the general population. This is largely due to social isolation, the often abstract nature of the work and feelings of inadequacy -- not to mention the slim tenure-track job market. But a new study in Nature Biotechnology warns, in no uncertain terms, of a mental health “crisis” in graduate education.
For many years, critics of the SAT have cited a verbal question involving the word "regatta" as an example of how the test may favor wealthier test-takers, who also are more likely to be white. It's been a long time since the regatta question was used -- and the College Board now has in place a detailed process for testing all questions and potential ques questions that may favor one group of students over another.
Abstract
Various studies acknowledge the uncertainty many doctoral graduates face when beginning their search for full-time employment within the academic sector. Recent graduates face a job market where the likelihood of obtaining full-time permanent positions in academia is perceived to be declining, and the mobility of graduates within the sector is unclear. Drawing on Statistics Canada’s 2013 National Graduates Survey, this paper assesses whether graduates who pursued a doctoral degree to become a full-time professor achieved their goal within three years of graduation. The results suggest that although a large portion of doctoral graduates pursued their degrees to become full-time professors, relatively few reported obtaining such positions within three years of graduation, regardless of field of study.
Résumé
Plusieurs études attestent de l’incertitude que doivent affronter les titulaires d’un doctorat quand ils entament leurs recherches pour un poste à temps plein dans le secteur universitaire. En effet, les récents diplômés font face à un marché de l’emploi où on plein dans le secteur académique s’amenuisent, et où la mobilité professionnelle des titulaires d’un doctorat de ce secteur demeure floue. À partir des données de l’Enquête nationale auprès des diplômés 2013 de Statistique Canada, cet article examine la propension des titulaires d’un doctorat souhaitant devenir professeurs à temps plein à réaliser leur objectif sur une période de trois ans après leur collation des grades. Indépendamment du domaine d’étude, les résultats démontrent que, bien qu’une grande proportion de titulaires d’un doctorat aspire à devenir professeurs à temps plein, peu d’entre eux rapportent avoir obtenu de tels postes trois ans après leur remise de diplôme. perçoit que les chances d’obtenir un poste permanent à temps
The focus of this paper is on the importance of early educational engagement in the retention of postsecondary students. Tinto (1975, 1987) argues that greater academic and social integration in college leads to higher rates of retention. Empirical tests of the claim have been mixed and a frequent criticism of such studies is that the variables used to construct the academic
and social integration measures are not consistent across studies, making it difficult to replicate the results of individual studies. Questions on the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), however, offer a way around the difficulty of generalization. NSSE, administered nationally to freshmen and seniors by the Center for Postsecondary Research and Planning at Indiana University, is designed to measure student engagement. Since many of the questions about engagement are concerned with various aspects of students’ integration, by using the questions on NSSE to measure social and academic integration we hope to provide an easy and replicable way to examine the effect of integration on student retention.
Young Ontarians are more concerned than older people about the impact of teaching by parttime university professors, according to a poll released Wednesday by the province’s faculty association.
Seventy-one per cent of people between 15 and 17 said they want to see a permanent instructor at the front of the class, compared with 64 per cent of all Ontarians, a result that the group that commissioned the survey says shows support for measures that would improve the working conditions of part-time faculty.
Even if the adjunct movement for better working conditions succeeds, most adjuncts will lose. That’s one bold claim
of a recent paper on the costs associated with a number of the movement’s goals, such as better pay and benefits.
While activists and scholars have been quick to criticize what they call the paper’s inherently flawed logic, the
study’s authors say it is a first step in a more critical dialogue on the adjunct “dilemma.”
Conversations with 14 sitting college and university presidents reveal a belief that the “busines s model” of higher education today is irrevocably altered, and that presidents and their senior staff leaders must take bold, creative
approaches to secure their schools’ futures. The following report summarizes seven key themes we heard during candid one-on-one interviews with these leaders about how leadership is changing in higher education; it also presents concrete suggestions for how presidents and their administrative peers can reshape their roles and strategies to help their institutions thrive in a dramatically different academic
OTTAWA — Federal officials believe the largest federal program aimed at helping aboriginal students pay for postsecondary
education faces numerous issues, including a financing cap which limits the fund's ability to keep up with rising tuition costs.
A federal review from summer 2015 suggests the support program needs more money, because a two-per-cent annual escalator is not in step with the increasing cost of tuition.
I'm in charge of campus life at Good Little College, where we pride ourselves on working harmoniously and making everyone happy with dorm life and student activities. My assistant director, "Etta," a recent college graduate in her first professional job, is in charge of the arts program, which brings speakers, writers, and entertainers to our isolated little town. She oversees a student intern, who gets a chance to learn to do publicity, catering, and other arranging.
"Franny," this year's intern, had spectacular qualifications but has been an almost total flake. She's under the thumb of a boyfriend, "Petey," whose demands have controlled her life. ("I can't come to any meetings this week—Petey keeps texting me that he's feeling lonely. He needs me.")
Here's the last straw. Franny (who told us all this) washed Petey's laundry as usual and brought it to his room, where she found a classmate, "Germa," naked in his bed. (Petey'd gone out to buy beer.) Franny was so distraught that she didn't write the press release or contact the caterer or do anything for the appearance of Mr. Bigwig Political Figure—who wound up with an audience of 20 people. There wasn't even a microphone.
Carol Dweck is a psychology professor at Stanford University whose ideas on education have swept through schools. She insists that children who have a “growth mindset”, a belief that through effort they can overcome problems and improve their own abilities, perform radically better in class – and in life.
In a TED talk that has so far garnered more than 4 million views online, she shares inspiring tales of pupils in tough,
inner-city areas who have zoomed ahead after being trained to believe that their talents are not fixed.
Universities have a major role to play in closing Canada’s Indigenous educa tion gap and supporting the reconciliation process. The Indigenous community in Canada is young, full of potential and growing fast – but still underrepresented at universities across the country. Our shared challenge is to ensure that all First Nations, Métis and Inuit students can achieve their potential through education, which will bring meaningful change to their communities and to Canada as a whole.
Canada’s universities recently adopted a set of principles to improve Indigenous student success and strengthen Indigenous leadership throughout the university community.
The College Standards and Accreditation Council is presenting Ontario’s Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology with an important challenge. CAATs must comply with CSAC requirements, among which is an overall commitment to general education. CSAC has voiced the employers’ need for graduates who combine vocational skills with demonstrable communicative competence, social awareness, and critical thinking. It has recognized that vocational training alone cannot foster personal growth and enrichment.
When I visit with teachers employed in public schools, I often hear, “You are already where I want to be. College. That’s where we all want to be.”
Many public school teachers consider pursuing master’s degrees with the goal of someday teaching college. Unfortunately, many of them are under misconceptions. More than once, someone has applied for a position at Howard College who was not aware of certain realities. For those who have considered teaching at a community college, here are a few things of which to be aware.
Technology’s potential to transform education has become a mantra of the 21st century. Much has been said about the tools and solutions that can provide opportunities for enhanced student learning. Frequent discussions have focused on the need for schools to have a robust infrastructure that supports continually evolving educational models. However, not as much has been written about the teacher’s role in this dynamic environment and the fundamentally new and different functions teachers
may have.
The days of teachers covering a defined number of pages in a textbook and assigning work at the end of a chapter are quickly disappearing. Instructors are leveraging technologies that give students access to interactive content from myriad sources. In this digital classroom, the teacher is more than a static oracle of information who delivers lectures. Instead, he or she is an active participant and facilitator in each student’s path of discovery and exploration.
With tuition prices continuing to climb and middle-class America’s earnings stagnant for more than a decade, colleges and universities continue to face pressure from government, governing boards, students and their families to provide proof of the value of a bachelor’s degree. Students historically have had little more to go on than anecdotal information when it came to the jobs and earnings they could expect upon graduation from a specific college or university.
We are often warned against being judgemental. “Judge not, lest ye be judged”, for example, reminds us how vulnerable we are to others’ estimations of us, and how likely those estimations are to be biased.
Nevertheless, we continue to make judgements, both positive and negative, because we have evolved to do so. Human brains have been “domesticated” by our need to live in groups to survive. We assess others carefully, and monitor their views of us; if those views are negative, we may be cast out of the group.
For a guy hauling around almost $300 billion of debt, Charles Sousa was in a buoyant mood. Ontario’s finance minister had just announced that families making less than $50,000 would soon have free post-secondary education, and when we spoke, it was as if he were daring me to find fault in the idea. After all, he said, the Liberals were removing a critical barrier to higher education, the
looming threat of a massive student debt. The idea was instantly applauded by a syllabus of education groups.
The increasing scarcity of women within higher academic ranks is troublesome, especially as associate and full-professors with tenure are generally those tapped for leadership positions. This study surveyed female administrators in distance education in an effort to thematically analyze their perceptions of distance learning in higher education. Themes that garnered more input from the women included the following: assumptions of gender disparity, the optimistic viewpoint that in the future more women will succeed as administrators in distance education, and the belief that the role of administrators was to provide value and goals in distance education but that change in this arena was too slow and obstructions to the quality of distance learning needed to be eliminated. In addition, it appears that Caucasian (non - Hispanic) women are more prone to suggest that gender disparity is a problem and women who hold a higher level of administration spoke less often about problems with gender disparity and appeared to have a more positive attitude.