May 24, 2012, 12:57 pm
By Guest Writer
The following is a guest post by Susan Carvalho, associate provost for international programs at the University of Kentucky. The university has been home to a Confucius Institute since 2010.
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Students from a high school in Louisville, Ky., receive a Tai Chi lesson at the U. of Kentucky's Confucius Institute.
The U.S. State Department’s recent Guidance Directive 2012-06, regarding the use of exchange-visitor visas for Confucius Institute staff, offers yet another example of the ways that international initiatives across higher education are multiplying at a rate that creates challenges for regulatory agencies. As higher-education institutions’ goal of graduating world-ready students becomes not an option but an imperative, we…
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May 24, 2012, 12:53 pm
By Jason Lane and Kevin Kinser
Chinese Confucius centers in the United States are at the center of a confusing decision recently made by the U.S. government. To the surprise of nearly everyone, the State Department announced that center staff teaching language courses in primary and secondary schools required a different visa than what many currently possess. The teachers have until the end of June to get the correct visas or they will be deported – mostly back to China. This situation occurs at an interesting time in the relationship between China and the United States, having just wrapped up the delicate diplomatic negotiations which led the Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng to come to the United States.
The specifics of the visa issues are outside of our expertise, but we note that the U.S. Department of State is the nation’s chief diplomatic agency and is obviously fully aware of the current situation with …
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May 23, 2012, 10:00 pm
By Guest Writer
The following is a guest post from Mandy Reinig, director of international education at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
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Studying abroad has become an increasingly important role within American higher education. The administrators who run study-abroad offices and faculty members hold a key responsibility in this process. However, there is often a divide in the understanding of the functions they play in the process of turning students into global citizens. This tension can be particularly pronounced between education-abroad professionals and professors since it crosses that ever-contentious faculty/staff divide.
This post addresses the misconceptions education-abroad (EA) professionals feel that faculty have about our role in the study-abroad process. I informally asked a variety of EA professionals about…
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May 21, 2012, 4:12 pm
By Guest Writer
The following is a guest post by Claudia Frittelli, a program officer at the Carnegie Corporation of New York who helps oversee its effort to strengthen African higher education. The grant maker has supported several of the organizations mentioned in the opinion article.
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Cloud computing—which in its most basic form is a virtual server available via the Internet—is growing rapidly as the next transformational stage of computing. Although most users may be unaware, everyday programs like Hotmail, Google Docs, and recently announced Google Drive, operate on the cloud principle of fully mobile, instantly accessible, and transferable data.
The educational and social implications for cloud computing in the developing world, particularly for the rapidly expanding education sector in Africa, are also…
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May 21, 2012, 11:15 am
By Francisco Marmolejo
Niños de la escuela en la India
Recientemente escribí una columna en torno a los retos y oportunidades asociados con la creación de nuevas instituciones de educación superior, en la que me refería al caso específico de la Universidad Internacional Albukhary en Malasia. Esta segunda entrega describe interesantes experiencias similares en India.
Considerando que India será en el año 2030 el país más poblado del mundo, su gobierno enfrenta tremendos desafíos al tratar de atender las necesidades educativas de sus ciudadanos. Para contextualizar la magnitud de tal reto, vale la pena considerar que hay más de 370 millones habitantes en la India en el grupo de edad para estudiar (6-23 años de edad) lo cual representa un segmento poblacional más grande que el total de la población en los Estado…
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May 17, 2012, 3:15 pm
By Ben Wildavsky
For anybody who missed it, there was an edu-wonk brouhaha this week over an embarrassing error in the New York Times’ big series on student debt. The Times vastly overstated the percentage of students with debt – a particularly significant mistake given that this statistic was the linchpin of the story – then ran a rather defensive correction three days later. In a Facebook dialogue with several academics and journalists, a former colleague known for her care with data reminded me that we all live in glass houses, and that sometimes bad things happen even to good writers.
Her comment was a useful cautionary note (even though I still think the Times’s error was pretty horrendous) and it got me thinking about some of the mistakes I made in The Great Brain Race. There were more than one or two, I’m sorry to say. And while none were too awful, I’ll mention some here, both to…
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May 16, 2012, 12:36 pm
By Nigel Thrift
Over a long time, it has become clearer and clearer that the explanation of how we live has to feature not just the clash of “large” social forces, but also all the “little” things that keep us mobile, that run relay on our lives, the scaffolding that is also the building. The life of an academic is not just supported by these little things but made possible by them. Things like the feel of favorite pens (I can’t stand ballpoint pens), the kind of paper that can stand up to exclamations and repeated crossings out, the various software packages (from the ubiquitous Word and Outlook to Endnote, RefWorks or Zotero).
Then there is the study space, which is often an unholy mess which only the occupant can make sense of (there have been numerous photographic exhibitions based on this conceit: see here for example). The study space is full of books arranged just so, and desks located so…
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May 15, 2012, 3:28 pm
By Guest Writer
The following is a guest post by Ellen Hazelkorn, vice president for research and enterprise and head of the Higher Education Policy Research Unit at the Dublin Institute of Technology. She is the author of Rankings and the Reshaping of Higher Education: The Battle for World-Class Excellence (Palgrave Macmillan).
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The university rankings debate is heating up – again. Hopefully, this time it will be different and with better outcomes for everyone.
At a time when many nations are experiencing high levels of public and private debt and higher education is in great demand, university rankings have encouraged a preoccupation with the trials and tribulations of a handful of “world class” universities. This is having a profound–and perverse–effect on higher-education policy making, universities, and…
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May 14, 2012, 4:47 pm
By Francisco Marmolejo
School children in India.
Recently, I wrote a column discussing the challenges and opportunities associated with the creation of new higher-education institutions, in which I made reference to the specific case of Albukhary International University in Malaysia. This second article describes interesting experiences of a similar kind in India.
Poised to become the most populous country in the world by 2030, India is facing tremendous challenges in addressing the educational needs of its citizens. To put into context the magnitude of the educational challenge that confronts India, there are more than 370 million Indian school-age citizens (ages 6-23) representing a cohort larger than the entire population of the U.S. and three times the total population of Mexico.
Considering the fertility rates in India,…
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May 10, 2012, 4:06 pm
By Jason Lane and Kevin Kinser
A bit of a warning: This blog will touch on politics outside of the usual dimensions of our forum here. But we do so to address what is a constant issue for universities seeking to expand overseas: How do institutions manage risk in their foreign operations? The politics we are broaching involve the recent diplomatic tensions over Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng.
Chen Guangcheng with U.S. officials in Beijing.
Chen is a prominent civil-rights activist in China who has been under house arrest or in prison since 2005 for criticizing the enforcement of China’s one-child policy. Reports indicated that he was denied legal representation, his family was harassed, and his communication with the outside world was cut off. Chen’s dramatic escape from his home in Shandong Province to the U.S. Embassy in…
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