Article: “At Public Universities:Less for More “

An article at the New York Times shows the way in which the economic crisis have exacerbated the trends towards privatization of public universities in the United States.  After reading the article, it is still to me difficult to understand the logic of public federal and state funding policy of financing private institutions in the current environment while public flagships  are receiving state “contributions largely flat or down over the last 15 years” which forces then to become increasingly private to cope.  A trend exacerbate with the current economic crisis.  In other words, the economic environment and public policy financing of higher education is leading to a rise in costs of public affordable options to access the university in a current context presently characterize by high levels of unemployment. In this context, many students of wealthier families increasingly look for public options as affordable alternatives which is use in the article to partially to explain the justifications for the raise of tuition fees while public universities are force to provide less and less  services and academic options for students.

Thanks to Daniel Araya for the link

New York Times By Paul Fain, Published: October 26, 2009:

SUSAN LI’S senior year at the University of California, Los Angeles, was fast approaching, and she was running out of time. She needed at least three classes to qualify for financial aid. But a week before classes began, she had registered for only one course. “They’re not offering the classes I need,” said Ms. Li, a history major. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”[...]

In this particularly hard year, in which university endowments have been hammered along with state coffers, federal stimulus money has helped most avoid worst-case scenarios. The 10-campus University of California system, for example, has received $716 million in stimulus funds to offset its $1 billion gap. But that money is a temporary fix. A quip circulating among collegepresidents: The stimulus isn’t a bridge; it’s a short pier.

This fall, flagships still had to cut costs and raise tuition, most by 6.5 percent or more. And virtually all of the nation’s top public universities are likely to push through large increases in coming years.

“The students are at a point of rebellion, because they’re paying more and getting less,” says Jane V. Wellman, executive director of the Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity and Accountability. [ read full here]

 

Research Paper: Citizenship Education at School in Europe

From Politika Public Policy Website:

Year: 2005
Financed by: Directorate – General for Education and Culture
Publisher: Eurydice
Language: English

ABSTRACT

This publication deals with the provision of citizenship education in schools and covers 30 European contries participating in the Eurydice Network. The comparative survey focuses on different national approaches to citizenship education and examines whether a European or international dimension has been officially incorporated into teaching of subject in schools. However, progress in the training of those who teach citizenship and more effective promotion of active participation by pupils in society at large arguably two major challenges in the years ahead.

Citizenship Education at School in Europe

(English, PDF)

 

News_East Asia Summit calls for the revival of Nalanda University: thinking and acting beyond the nation?

A really interesting post by Kris Olds at the Global Higher Education Blog discuss the proposal for the revival of the  Nalanda University  and the implications of  the construction  of transnational spaces of higher education. My impression to this and other process and institutions, such as the Mercosur’s  Universidade Federal da Integração Latino-Americana (UNILA) is that they are not yet really operating outside the framework of nation states. For the moment, the most important players setting the policies of transnational exchange  are nation states with the capacities to impulse knowledge production in specific directions that are deemed favorable to their respective national interests. This seem a fair assessment especially in the case of institutions that are create as part of regional integration initiatives (e.g. UNILA). This does not mean that these configurations cannot become, eventually,   mainly driven by transnational dynamics. It would be interesting to see the eventual ways in which those transnational configurations develop in the coming years.

From Global Higher Education, October, 2009:

The emergence of new supra-national movements with respect to higher education and research continue apace. From the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), through to international consortia of universities, through to bits of universities embedded in others within distant territories (e.g., Georgia Tech’s unit within the National University of Singapore), the higher education landscape is in the process of being reconfigured and globalized. Yet, is it really that novel in an historical sense? Today’s call at the East Asian Summit for the revival of Nalanda University (see below) draws upon development outcomes in higher education that took place well before the establishment of medieval universities like Oxford, Bologna, or Lund. As Sashi Tahroor notes: Founded in 427 A.D. by Buddhist monks at the time of Kumaragupta I (415-455 A.D.), Nalanda was an extraordinary centre of learning for seven centuries. The name probably comes from a combination of nalam (lotus, the symbol of knowledge) and da, meaning “to give”, so Nalanda means “Giver of Knowledge”. And that is exactly what the university did, attracting prize students from all over India, as well as from China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Persia, Sri Lanka, Tibet and Turkey. At its peak, Nalanda played host to more than 10,000 students — not just Buddhists, but of various religious traditions — and its education, provided in its heyday by 2,000 world-renowned professors, was completely free. The establishment of new types of universities in like Nalanda University, Øresund University, or the recently opened Universidade Federal da Integração Latino-Americana (UNILA), remind us that there is an emerging desire for novel spaces of knowledge production that think and act beyond the nation. A related question, then, is how effective will these new configurations be, and can supporting stakeholders (including nation-states) really act beyond the nation? (read here)

 

Video: Slovenian Philosopher Slavoj Zizek on Capitalism, Healthcare, Latin American “Populism” and the “Farcical” Financial Crisis

This interview with Zizek  is quiet interesting. I think that he may have a very good point on his commentary of the current  financial crisis.

Thanks to Ergin Bulut for the link

From Democracy Now Website:

Dubbed by the National Review as “the most dangerous political philosopher in the West” and the New York Times as “the Elvis of cultural theory,” Slovenian philosopher and public intellectual Slavoj Žižek has written over fifty books on philosophy, psychoanalysis, theology, history and political theory. In his latest book, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, Žižek analyzes how the United States has moved from the tragedy of 9/11 to what he calls the farce of the financial meltdown. [includes rush transcript]

 

World of Work Report 2008 – Income Inequalities in the Age of Financial Globalization (ILO)

The new report, entitled World of Work Report 2008: Income inequalities in the age of financial globalization, produced by the ILO’s International Institute for Labour Studies contain a number of assertions in relation to education investment for development. I sometimes wonder if assertions like this are verifiable in all cases

When spending on primary and secondary education is low in comparison to spending on tertiary education, children from low-income households will have
fewer chances to obtain the secondary education that is a prerequisite for attending university. (p. 25)

From Preface to World of Work Report  2008:

Income inequalities are pervasive and growing in virtually all countries. Public debates and policies have focused on this challenge. Opinion surveys illustrate how people link the downsides of globalization to rising income inequalities. It is only appropriate therefore for the International Institute for Labour Studies to apply its analytical expertise to a trend of direct relevance to the world of work. The outcome is a comprehensive overview of key factors underlying unbalanced
income developments. It shows that income inequality has risen more than can be justified by economic analysis and entails major social and economic costs. What emerges is an evidence-based critique of the way financial globalization has occurred so far. The findings assembled here provide analytical support to the ILO’s view that the growth model that led to the financial crisis is not sustainable. It confirms that a rebalancing between economic, social and environmental goals is vital both to recovery and also the shaping of a fair globalization. (p. vii)

• Executive summary of the World of Work Report 2008 – Income Inequalities in the Age of Financial Globalization
• World of Work Report 2008 – Income Inequalities in the Age of Financial Globalization

 

The complexity of Government 2.0: EU Ministerial eGovernment Conference

Posted on Jun 19 2009 on Complexity and Social Networks Blog by By Alexander Schellong,

[...]In November 2009, the EU Ministerial eGovernment Conference will take place in Malmoe, Sweden. It is planned to present a ministerial declaration on eGovernment in the EU for the next seven years. This declaration will be the result of back-room dealings between EU Member States (MS).

However, this year a group of people led by two companies decided to use a
social media facilitated bottom-up approach to create a declaration alongside the official one in Malmoe for eGovernment 2015 It is also their goal to get official endorsement of their version from the European Commission. As the content of the platform is openly accessibly, ideas might even find their way into the official document. The group’s motivation is probably a mix of self-marketing, fascination for social media and spirit to influence policy making.

So far, 75 individuals participated in the activity. It will be interesting to see how many people will sign the declaration. It will also be interesting to see whether and when the media will pick-up the story of alternative agenda and how much pressure this will exert on policy makers. Considering the total population of 500 Mio EU citizens, legitimacy of this initiative is questionable.

Nevertheless, the EU is at a crossroads: If it does not open up more, it will further strip itself of legitimacy. Gov 2.0 type activities provide one avenue to strengthen the EU and its institutions.

Finally, with regards to research, I see two issues. First, old and new research from various disciplines relating to Government 20 is not connected. Second, researchers can hardly keep pace with the current output of Government 2.0 policies and projects being implemented. [ read full here]

 

Article:”The Costs of Failure Factories in American Higher Education” by Mark Schneider, October 2008

From Inside Higher education, November 2008

[...]The paper, “The Costs of Failure Factories in American Higher Education,” posits that American colleges and universities have thus far largely gotten a free pass from politicians and policy makers despite the fact that “the low high school graduation rates that have long been decried as a failure of America’s education system are mirrored in even lower college graduation rates,” writes Schneider, a distinguished professor of political science at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Comparing American higher education unfavorably to its peers internationally as well as to U.S. high schools, he zeroes in, particularly, on about 408 four-year institutions that graduate fewer than one third of their students, and calculates the cost of those “failure factories,” as he calls them, at about $770 million in federal grant aid and lost tuition payments, to the government and families. How much longer, he asks, can the country abide such poor performance? [read more here]

Link: The Costs of Failure Factories in American Higher Education

 

Video: Dartmouth – Thaddeus Stevens as a Good White Man, Randall L. Kennedy

From YouTube, Dartmouth, Rockefeller Darmouth Center:

Randall Kennedy, author and Harvard Law Professor, discusses the cause of racial equality. He highlights Thaddeus Stevens, Dartmouth class of 1814, who contributed to this cause. (4/10/08)

 

Privatization of Education Bibliography

From the The British Columbia Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) Website:

Prepared by BCTF Information Services Department
The following bibliography includes books, publications, journal articles, and reports on privatization issues(…..)
Issues
Corporate sponsorship/marketing to children
Education management organizations/companies
Fundraising / charging fees
Globalization
International students
Ownership of teacher-produced materials
Privatization – general
Privatization – international
Public funding of private schools
Public-private partnerships
School district business companies
Selling online / virtual education
Teachers spending own money on resources
Vending machines / selling junk food

 

Article:”Minerva Takes Flesh: Pentagon and Science Foundation Sign Social-Science Deal”

More news about the Minerva project. I mentioned in a previous post my deep skepticism on this direct involvement of the DOD in sponsoring social science research. This is related with the ethical problematic of instrumentalizating social research to follow military purposes. In a recent article at the Chronicle of Higher Education News Blog it is mention a essay which points out to one of the main criticisms on the Minerva initiative. In this essay , “David H. Price, an associate professor of anthropology and sociology at St. Martin’s University, warned that military-financed social science will crowd out other forms of academic inquiry”. I still believe that the participation of the NSF may not preclude some the inherent problems of this type of initiatives. For instances, Minerva final objectives may not be different from those found  in the 1960’s DOD project: Camelot.  Camelot was seen  as a component of a larger behavioral science project of social engineering whose contributions had very narrow instrumental purpose, oriented by a ‘conservative’ agenda of research,  of  finding effective instruments and knowledge to operationalize a notion of ‘order’ (e.g. anti-insurgency, etc) . The adverse reaction against Camelot in Latin America ended in a backlash against US scholars doing field research in Latin American countries.

From Chronicle of Higher Education News Blog, June 30, 2008 by David Glenn”

In a memorandum of understanding that was signed today, the Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation have agreed to work cooperatively to support social-science research on topics of interest to the Pentagon.

As widely expected, the NSF has agreed to help review proposals submitted to the Pentagon’s Minerva Research Initiative, a fledgling program that will offer grants to university-based scholars to study the Chinese military, the records of Saddam Hussein’s regime, and other specific topics.

The two agencies will soon — possibly within a week — release a joint request for Minerva-related proposals. Those proposals will be judged by the NSF’s typical merit-review panels, though the Pentagon has the right to nominate experts to serve on those panels. (The Pentagon is also accepting Minerva proposals through a separate pathway known as a broad agency announcement. Proposals that are submitted via this second track will reviewed through the Defense Department’s usual processes, not by NSF panels.)

But Monday’s agreement is broader than Minerva: It also creates a mechanism through which the Department of Defense can help to finance other national-security-related proposals submitted to the NSF. In such cases, scholars will have the option to decline the Pentagon’s money. (read full here)

The Pentagon as already started to invite universities to apply for grants of research for the Minerva initiative.