EDU.DIGG

UK - International student fees 'overpriced'

2007-07-16T20:25:00.000-07:00

The UK is in danger of losing precious international students by universities pricing themselves out of the market, the Higher Education Policy Institute warned today.
According to Hepi's latest report on the economic benefits of international students, the UK's market share of such students is still second only to the US, but it dropped to around 11% in 2004 from 16% in 1998.

Bahram Bekhradnia, director of Hepi, told EducationGuardian.co.uk: "There is a real possibility that we may price ourselves out of the market - last year's Hepi survey of the student experience showed that over 25% of overseas students think they get poor value for money.

"It could well be in the national interest to lower the fee charged of overseas students, in order to maximise their number."

While the actual number of international students in the UK is increasing overall, the report said universities should not presume this would continue.

As other countries begin to teach in English and market themselves more aggressively, and students get better information to compare the value for money of courses "it is quite possible that UK universities will begin to struggle to maintain numbers while charging the sorts of prices that are charged at present", the report warns.

Hepi argues for the government to subsidise international students to maximise their numbers and "provide the greatest benefit to the country as a whole, looking beyond the narrow interests of universities".

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Ten indicted in Manhattan cash-for-grades scheme

2007-07-16T19:52:00.000-07:00

It happens in USA as Well ??

A former admissions director at a New York City college was one of 10 people indicted on Monday, accused of forging transcripts and altering grades, prosecutors said.

Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said the investigation is ongoing and could be part of a larger scheme that included selling fraudulent credentials to physicians' assistants, who assist doctors in surgeries.

From January to March, a former director of admissions at Touro College, a Jewish-sponsored school based in Manhattan, and the former director of the computer center at Touro's Brooklyn campus improperly altered, created and deleted at least seven transcripts in a cash-for-grades scheme, according to the indictment.

The suspects found a transcript from a legitimate Touro student on the college's computer server and used it as a template to create the forged documents, prosecutors said. Individuals who never attended classes at the college paid between $3,000 to $25,000 for transcripts.

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2007-07-02T01:29:00.001-07:00

Questioning the Admissions Assumptions

2007-06-20T21:28:00.000-07:00

A major study released Monday by the University of California suggests that high school grades may be good at predicting not only first-year college performance, as commonly believed, but performance throughout four undergraduate years. The same study suggests that the SAT adds little predictive value to admissions decisions and is hindered by a high link between SAT scores and socioeconomic status — a link not present for high school grades.

And further, the study finds that all of the information admissions officers currently have is of limited value, and accounts for only 30 percent of the grade variance in colleges — leaving 70 percent of the variance unexplained.

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The report is available online at University of Berkeley:

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SDSU is named top research university

2007-06-10T03:39:00.000-07:00

More than three decades after San Diego State took the first steps toward discovering solutions to today's problems, from cancer and global warming to bioterrorist hazards, it has been named the top small research university in the nation.
A new index released by Academic Analytics, a for-profit corporation in Stony Brook, N.Y., places SDSU above 60 institutions including the College of William and Mary, Indiana State University and the University of Nebraska at Omaha. The ranking system was based on faculty productivity, which includes publications, citations in scholarly journals, research grants and honorary awards.
SDSU, California State University's flagship research campus, has about 800 ongoing studies at any given time focused on everything from analyzing local water quality to salvaging the heart muscle after a heart attack. Other university research includes the development of ultrasensitive laser detection methods for uncovering diseases earlier and finding ways to decrease smoking, drug use and obesity in the local Hispanic community.
The SDSU Research Foundation, an auxiliary that manages the finances supporting this research, generates more than $100 million annually in grants and contracts – equivalent to half the amount of funding SDSU receives from the state.
Tom Scott, vice president for research and interim chief executive officer of SDSU's research foundation, said the ranking helps solidify the university's reputation as a research hub.
“We're not at the plane that Stanford and Berkeley are at. We're not stealing their faculty. But we're at the plane that would be equal to the flagship universities of most states, like the University of Missouri or the University of Kansas,” he said.
Eric Frost, co-director of the SDSU Visualization Center and the university's homeland security master's program, has done enormous amounts of research involving the use of technology for humanitarian purposes.
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India Calling - ASSOCHAM

2007-06-09T05:13:00.000-07:00

Less than 3% students, mostly belonging to middle income families in India avail of education loans against
85% in UK,
77% US and
70% in Germany and France,
according to the Study by ASSOCHAM.

The study highlights, that though there are many schemes for providing financial aid to poor students, the amount given is awfully low and procedure to get are very cumbersome and that is why the percentage for education loan seekers is extremely low.

According to Study, US spends nearly $ USD 80 billion on higher education annually mostly in the form of students aid, India has allocated about $ 3.5 million USD for its flagship merit-cum-means scholarship schemes.

The study also says that:
the number of engineering graduates in India is 3,50,000 annually,
compared to 70,000 engineering graduates in US
and 100,000 engineering graduates in Europe.
India also produces 60,000 MBAs every year.
Engineering colleges in the country have been growing at 2% a year while business schools have grown at 60% annually.
With 348 universities and over 17,973 colleges spread across the country.
In the year 2005, more than 2 million graduates were added that included 25,000 doctors and 6 lakhs science graduates and postgraudates.

The scenario was almost similar in 2006 also but the number of students that sought loan from various financial institutions, their percentage was less than 3%.

The study also highlights that Singapore and Malaysia attracts high quality higher education institutions from many advanced countries which augment their domestic capacity of quality higher education serving their own citizens. Singapore and Malaysia have the presence of about 1 lakh foreign students against 1,40,000 foreign students in China. The number of foreign students is continue to be in the range of less than 20,000.

The Study has projected that by 2012, India will contribute an additional 44 million to the global labour pool. During this time, the US workforce will expand by 10 million.

The ASSOCHAM Study also claims that higher education in India has expanded rapidly over the past 2 decades. This growth has been primarily driven by the private sector initiative. Public expenditure on higher education is not even 0.5% of the GNP (Gross National Produce) and it has been falling in recent year.

The study suggests that education needs additional investment of nearly Rs. 1 lakh crore to Rs.1,20,000 crore against present investment of Rs. 91,000 crore per year. The new education cess will hardly generate Rs.3,500 crore per annum and the total amount of cess collected by the government would be in the range of about 10,500 crore. This includes the cess amount of 7000 crore per annum @ 2% imposed couple of years ago. A 1% additional cess was imposed in the Finance Act of 2006-07.

The amount collected through cess as per findings of Study should be utilised for spread of primary and partly secondary education and there should be specific guidelines issued to all financial institutions including banking mechanism to liberally extend education loans to meritorious candidates particularly in the professional category.

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Graduation Cermonies - Yes or No

2007-06-09T04:27:00.000-07:00

Excerpts from a letter written in Chicago Tribune

I applaud the measures that the administration took to ensure that every graduate had the opportunity to hear his or her name called over the microphone.

And I wanted to add that graduating high school is not the same as it once was.

Yes, the ceremony, the pomp and circumstance, the party at the house, etc., are all things that graduating seniors enjoy upon completing four tumultuous years of secondary school, yet we tend to emphasize this event way too much.

Americans look to high school graduation as the end of our educational journey, yet with manufacturing jobs being outsourced to other countries, securing a job without even some college is becoming more and more impossible.

So in an age when countries such as Sweden and Germany are blowing us out of the water in regard to science and math, why do we put so much emphasis on an old rite of passage?

I understand that college is not for everyone, but then there are trade schools and even technology schools that are set up to help the non-mainstream, college-bound student.

With the number of college-bound students increasing every year, and with financial aid becoming more readily available, there is a way to go to college, no matter who you are or where you come from.

Don't blame graduate

I don't believe that it is the graduates' fault that their friends and families failed to obey the rules.

You cannot control the audience.

What the school should do is put the rude people out.

Before the commencement exercise begins, the school should announce that if anyone is rude, he or she will be escorted out of the graduation.

When that person does what he or she wants, then put the person out, no questions asked.

Don't punish the person who has waited and worked hard all those years to get what is rightfully his or hers.

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New Option for Foreign Interns

2007-06-06T04:03:00.000-07:00

After years of lobbying on the part of international education leaders, the Department of State posted a proposed change to its J-1 exchange visitor regulations Tuesday that would create a new subcategory specifically for student interns.

“The question is, what happens if a student who is enrolled in a foreign institution of higher education wants to pursue an internship at a U.S. institution of higher education or an affiliated organization like a research institute as part of their studies,” said Victor C. Johnson, associate executive director for public policy at NAFSA: Association of International Educators, which has advocated for such a change for six or seven years now.

“At the current time, it’s not that it’s impossible to do that, but there’s no category in the regulations that applies to those people. So they’ve had to be shoehorned in under other regulatory categories that weren’t created to apply to interns.”

Under the proposed change, foreign students enrolled in accredited postsecondary institutions outside of the United States, or graduates who have completed a program of study within 12 months of starting an exchange, would be eligible to participate in one year-long internship program per degree level. Potential international interns must be able to describe how the internship — which can be paid or unpaid — would enhance their educational programs in their home institutions. The regulations prohibit sponsoring institutions from placing interns in unskilled or casual labor positions, or in those that involve aviation, child or elder care, and patient care or contact (including dentistry, early childhood education, nursing, psychological counseling, social work, speech therapy, sports or physical therapy, and veterinary medicine).

Several international educators said they were still reviewing the proposed rules Tuesday. But overall they were pleased to see that a proposal — long delayed after September 11, Johnson said — was finally in play. “[I]n general this is an extremely positive and significant addition to the college and university student category of the J1 exchange visitor program,” Ann Kuhlman, director of Yale University’s Office of International Students and Scholars, said via e-mail Tuesday. “U.S. institutions of higher education have suggested this addition for the past few years — as we began to see an increase in requests from students, particularly from Europe and Asia, who were seeking internships in their fields at U.S. colleges and universities.”

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Australia targets UK students

2007-06-05T05:13:00.000-07:00

Three years ago, William Sheane turned down a place at King's College London to study maths and management. Instead, Sheane, originally from Oxford, "threw in" an application to the University of Sydney. "I was over the UK student lifestyle of getting smashed," he says. "I'd spent five years working in bars, beaches and diving centres. I thought it was a really good opportunity to go abroad, keep doing what I wanted, but also have a more serious side to my life. I thought I'd see what happened."

Now, at 26, with a degree in economics behind him and an honours degree - equivalent to a year of research and a thesis - on the way, he has no regrets. At least, none that come to mind as he walks to class after a quick surf, something he does almost every day.

Natasha Krichefski, 22, from London, is spending a year at the University of New South Wales as part of her Edinburgh University undergraduate music degree. "A masters out here has great appeal," she says. "I'm seriously considering music therapy at the University of Western Sydney, although an equivalent course is also offered in London."

In the first semester of 2006, there were 1,801 UK students like Sheane and Krichefski on undergraduate, postgraduate or exchange programmes in Australian universities. This is peanuts compared with the numbers of students from China (40,292), Malaysia (24,952) and Singapore (20,714). But Australian universities are paying more attention than might be expected to their UK student numbers.

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Brain Drain at University of Wisconsin

2007-06-05T04:43:00.000-07:00

University of Wisconsin-Madison has long been an attractive target for elite schools like Harvard and Stanford looking for top academics. But now other public universities are among the faculty poachers, and school administrators are worried.

Dozens of professors have left in the past two years, and Chancellor John Wiley said a growing number are going to schools that traditionally could not compete with the state's flagship university. More than 115 professors reported receiving outside offers last year, the most in 20 years and more than double the number from five years ago.

Administrators at Wisconsin, traditionally ranked among the nation's top public schools, say some departments are in crisis because of the losses. They worry about the school's quality and ability to draw research dollars.

Faculty say the departures accelerated as professors' salaries hit rock bottom among their peers and morale sagged amid state-imposed budget cuts.

In response, lawmakers are expected to consider Gov. Jim Doyle's plan on Tuesday to create a $10 million fund to retain faculty at Madison and other campuses in the UW system. UW-Madison is lobbying hard for the plan.Read the Article----

Related Article
University of Wisconsin-Madison has long been an attractive target for elite schools like Harvard and Stanford looking for top academics. But now other public universities are among the faculty poachers, and school administrators are worried.

Dozens of professors have left in the past two years, and Chancellor John Wiley said a growing number are going to schools that traditionally could not compete with the state's flagship university. More than 115 professors reported receiving outside offers last year, the most in 20 years and more than double the number from five years Article At----

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Gates gives $105 million to University of Washington

2007-06-05T04:39:00.001-07:00

Bloomberg News

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest charitable fund, gave $105 million to create a health-research institute at the University of Washington.

The institute will conduct evaluations of health programs worldwide, the Seattle-based Gates Foundation said today in a statement on its Web site. The university's main campus is also in Seattle.

The new Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation will collect and analyze data on health trends, conduct evaluations of individual health programs' effectiveness and make the data available to policymakers, researchers and the public. The institute will also offer fellowships to train junior researchers.

"Health policy must be based on evidence, not speculation," said Tachi Yamada, the president of the Gates Foundation's Global Health Program. "With high-quality data, we can ensure resources go where they are needed most, and dramatically improve health care delivery."

The donation is the largest private gift in the school's history, Mark Emmert, the president of the university, said in the statement. The university, which has established a Department of Global Health, will contribute an additional $20 million to the project, Gates officials said.

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Seibel founder gives University of Illinois $100 mln

2007-06-03T03:12:00.000-07:00

The University of Illinois said it has received a gift commitment of $100 million from the founder of software maker Siebel Systems, the Chicago Tribune reported on Saturday.

The university said that graduate Thomas Siebel, 54, will write into his will a $100 million gift for the science and engineering programs on the Urbana-Champaign campus, but the university expects to begin using the money during his lifetime, the paper reported.

Siebel's gift was announced Friday night at an event to begin the school's $2.25 billion fund-raising campaign, according to the paper. It came days after the University of Chicago announced an anonymous donation of the same size to be used for scholarships for low- and moderate-income students.

Siebel told the paper he plans to set up a task force with faculty and administrators to decide how to best use the money, including possibly new buildings, endowed professorships, research and public policy programs.

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So What Did You Learn in London?

2007-06-02T07:32:00.000-07:00

With assessment and accountability at the center of policy discussions in Washington and elsewhere, international educators emphasized an increased need for research on measurable study abroad outcomes and what particular program characteristics cause student learning gains at several sessions during this week’s annual NAFSA: Association of International Educators conference in Minneapolis.
“It is no longer a fringe activity,” with more than 200,000 American college students going abroad each year and new federal funding initiatives for international study, Richard C. Sutton, senior advisor for academic affairs and director of international programs for the University System of Georgia Board of Regents said Wednesday afternoon. “But that money will not be free. It will come at the price of accountability and assessment measures.”
In a session on “Changes That Occur Abroad,” Sutton highlighted Georgia’s systemwide research of study abroad outcomes, the Georgia Learning Outcomes of Students Studying Abroad Research Initiative (or GLOSSARI). The ambitious six-phase, six-year-old project covers a lot of ground, including:
1.Comparing learning outcomes of study abroad participants with those of their peers who stay stateside.
2.Tracking learning outcomes of study abroad participants by administering pre- and post-tests.
3.Comparing the experiences and learning of students taking a particular course abroad versus those taking that same course at home.
4.Performing a statistical analysis on graduation and persistence rates relative to study abroad participation.
5.Identifying and conducting case studies on study abroad programs that produce strong results in student learning.

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Understanding the Class of 2015

2007-05-31T04:42:00.000-07:00

By Russell Olwell
For most college and university faculty, recruitment and admissions are a black box. We see the students who are admitted and enrolled in our classrooms, we read statistics about those students (GPA, SAT, ACT) but we do not have a lot of contact with the process itself. Outside of major lawsuits or referenda about admissions policies (such as the cases in Michigan, California and Texas) college faculty may not even know how admissions decisions are made, and may find themselves unable to explain the rationale behind them to members of the public.
Whole sections of the admissions and recruitment process might not even be part of the division of academic affairs, but part of an enrollment services division, staffed by people who are experts in marketing, admissions, financial aid and more conversant in “yield management” than in the language of academia. Faculty often talk about admissions, financial aid, and recruiting, but rarely run across or seek out the people responsible, and are not often involved enough in the process to understand it.
Up until a year or two ago, I would count myself in this category. However, last year I received a federal six-year grant to work on a project to help middle school students make a successful transition to college, and I was suddenly in the college admissions and recruitment business (though we sell college, not a college), and I began to better understand what the competitive world of college recruitment is like.
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Understanding and Engaging the International Student

2007-05-30T05:02:00.000-07:00

In a session on “Understanding and Engaging the International Student,” representatives from Hobsons, a student recruitment and enrollment management firm, presented data from a 2006 survey of about 28,000 prospective international students worldwide. The survey looks at such questions as why students wish to study abroad, their perceptions of various English-speaking destinations and why some appeal more than others, their expectations, and their key concerns.

The landscape for recruiting and retaining international students is changing, said Line Verbik, research manager at Hobsons. Given changes in student mobility — Verbik pointed to declines in international student enrollment in the United States post September 11 and the slowing of growth in international enrollments in the United Kingdom and Australia in recent years — presenters stressed the need to have greater information about prospective students’ decision-making processes and the factors they consider.

Not surprisingly, the Hobsons survey found commonalities among international students from around the globe, as well as some country-specific distinctions. Among the highlights presented Tuesday, which focused exclusively on the approximately 11,000 survey responders from China, Germany, India, Japan and Nigeria:

When asked their reasons for wanting to study internationally, students across the board emphasized improving their opportunities for careers abroad and gaining experiences and better preparing for future careers in their home countries, as well as a sense that the standard of education is better abroad. But Verbik pointed out that students from countries with developed and less developed economies had different priorities: While students in Germany and Japan were most likely to list gaining new experiences as their top priority, Chinese, Indian and Nigerian students were more likely to stress getting a better education and preparing for their careers.
When it comes to perceptions, international students typically cited the strength of the education system and career preparation as top reasons to study in the United States and United Kingdom. While they mentioned Australia’s academic reputation, they were also more likely to point to other factors drawing them there — among them a more attractive lifestyle and the belief that it’s easier to get a student visa to study down under than in Europe or the United States, Verbik said.
Business and administration programs proved particularly popular with international students across the board. Information technology and engineering were especially popular with Indian and Nigerian students, whereas in Japan, for instance, social studies and art and design were the preferred fields after business.
Frequently cited expectations for education providers across countries included a safe location, responsive staff and good service, good sources of funding, good facilities and a strong institutional reputation for a course of study, although regional variations did persist. (Among them: German and Nigerian students were most likely to cite good facilities as the most important factor, while Chinese students pointed to reputation).
Chinese and Indian students said scholarships were their most important source of funding, while German, Japanese and Nigerian students pointed in greater proportions to relatives. Other popular sources of funding included bank loans (particularly popular in India, Verbik said), grants, sponsorships, savings and part-time work.
Confirming the conventional wisdom that word of mouth matters most, Hobsons found that in every country but Japan, friends were the most valued source of advice. In Japan, the teacher/lecturer was the preferred source (and in Germany, the teacher tied with friends for the top spot). Students returning home with stellar experiences are, Verbik said, “the best ambassadors.”
The cost of living and cost of tuition and fees were the most common barriers expressed in all countries, with concerns about visas cited by a much smaller proportion of students, Verbik said (although Nigerian students were most apt to mention visas as a barrier).
Steve Berridge, director of the international education office at the University of Westminster, in London (which has 6,000 international students), praised the Hobsons survey results for offering valuable information on prospective international students, while emphasizing the difficulty of reading the results in context. He added the caveat that a survey of interest among prospective students may not always signal market demand. For instance, Hobsons found that Nigerian students were far more interested in pursuing undergraduate study abroad. “I know for a fact,” Berridge said, “that Nigeria is a postgraduate market.”

The NAFSA conference, with sessions and plenary addresses on a wide variety of topics involving international students and study abroad, continues through Friday. More than 7,000 participants from 90 countries are expected to attend.

FROM
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Top 10 percent college admissions law will stay as is

2007-05-28T03:32:00.000-07:00

Web Posted: 05/28/2007 12:48 AM CDT

Polly Ross Hughes and Lisa Sandberg
Express-News

AUSTIN — In a surprise move, the Texas House shot down a bill Sunday night that would have limited automatic admissions at the University of Texas at Austin for students graduating in the top 10 percent of their class.

A cheer went up in the chamber with the final vote, 75-64, against adopting a compromise bill that would have let public universities cap admissions of high-ranking students at 50 percent.

"The top 10 percent (law) has worked well. We should keep it because it says all of our high schools are created equal," said Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston.

The Texas Legislature passed the law 10 years ago to encourage racial and ethnic diversity after a court temporarily banned racial preferences in college admissions.

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Stanford U. discovers impostors on campus

2007-05-27T22:42:00.000-07:00

2007/5/28
PALO ALTO, California, AP
Days after discovering a woman posing as a student, Stanford University officials have discovered a second impostor who managed to pass herself off as a member of the campus community for months.

Elizabeth Okazaki had made herself at home in Stanford's Variant Physics Laboratory, where she used computers, attended seminars and sometimes spent the night, students told the San Francisco Chronicle.

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Taking Action to Admit

2007-05-27T22:37:00.000-07:00

UCLA tweaks its admissions process to stop the black student enrollment decline
By Samantha Levine
Posted 5/27/07
It was a self-described crisis. In the fall of 2006, only 103 black students said they planned to enroll as freshmen at the University of California-Los Angeles. That's the lowest black enrollment in 30 years—just 2 percent of the flagship public university's incoming class of about 4,800 first-year students. "We were devastated, and that was an understatement," says Janina Montero, vice chancellor for student affairs at UCLA.
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Internet-controlled Robots Anyone can Build

2007-05-25T03:26:00.001-07:00

Carnegie Mellon University researchers have developed a new series of robots that are simple enough for almost anyone to build with off-the-shelf parts, but are sophisticated machines that wirelessly connect to the Internet. The press release says that the robots can take many forms, from a three-wheeled model with a mounted camera to a flower loaded with infrared sensors. They can be easily customized and their ability to wirelessly link to the Internet allows users to control and monitor their robots’ actions from any Internet-connected computer in the world.

The new tools that make this possible are a single piece of hardware and a set of “recipes” that people follow to build their ’bots. Both are part of the Telepresence Robot Kit (TeRK) developed by Associate Professor of Robotics Illah Nourbakhsh and members of his Community Robotics, Education and Technology Empowerment (CREATE) Lab. Their goal is to make highly capable robots accessible and affordable for college and pre-college students, as well as anyone interested in robots.

At the heart of each TeRK robot is a unique controller called Qwerk that combines a computer with the software and electronics necessary to control the robot’s motors, cameras and other devices. Qwerk, developed by the CREATE Lab and Charmed Labs of Austin, Texas, also connects the robot automatically and wirelessly to the Internet so it can be controlled by any Internet-connected computer. Read On......

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Finger Length Predicts SAT Performance

2007-05-23T00:56:00.000-07:00

By LiveScience Staff

A quick look at the lengths of children's index and ring fingers can be used to predict how well students will perform on SATs, new research claims.

Kids with longer ring fingers compared to index fingers are likely to have higher math scores than literacy or verbal scores on the college entrance exam, while children with the reverse finger-length ratio are likely to have higher reading and writing, or verbal, scores versus math scores.

Scientists have known that different levels of the hormones testosterone and estrogen in the womb account for the different finger lengths, which are a reflection of areas of the brain that are more highly developed than others, said psychologist Mark Brosnan of the University of Bath, who led the study.

Exposure to testosterone in the womb is said to promote development of areas of the brain often associated with spatial and mathematical skills, he said. That hormone makes the ring finger longer. Estrogen exposure does the same for areas of the brain associated with verbal ability and tends to lengthen the index finger relative to the ring finger.

To test the link to children's scores on the College Board's Scholastic Assessment Test (for which the name has changed a number of times in the past 100 years), Brosnan and his colleagues made photocopies of children's palms and measured the length of their index and ring fingers using calipers accurate to 0.01 millimeters. They used the finger-length ratios as a proxy for the levels of testosterone and estrogen exposure.

The researchers then looked at boys' and girls' test performances separately and compared them to finger-length ratio measurements. They found a clear link between high prenatal testosterone exposure, indicated by the longer index finger compared to the ring finger, and higher scores on the math SAT.

Similarly, they found higher literacy SAT scores for the girls among those who had lower prenatal testosterone exposure, as indicated by a shorter ring finger compared with the index finger.

The researchers also compared the finger-lengths ratios to all the children's SAT scores and found that a relatively longer ring finger-indicating greater prenatal exposure to testosterone-meant a wider gap in scores for math versus literacy (writing and critical reading).

"Finger ratio provides us with an interesting insight into our innate abilities in key cognitive areas," Brosnan said, in a prepared statement. The results will be detailed in an upcoming issue of the British Journal of Psychology.

In the future, his team will see if finger-length ratios are related to other cognitive and behavioral issues, such as technophobia, career paths and possibly dyslexia.

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Beyond Research Rankings

2007-05-21T04:43:00.000-07:00

Research competitiveness and productivity are complex subjects that should inform the development and oversight of R&D programs at the national, state and institutional levels. From a national policy perspective, studies of our national innovation ecosystem – of the factors that promote discovery and innovation – are important to America’s economic vitality.

Ironically, rather than advance our knowledge and discussion of these important topics, many university presidents seem more inclined to debate the shortcomings of available measures such as the rankings of U.S. News & World Report, sometimes even threatening to boycott the surveys. What is more, these same presidents defend the absence of adequate measurements of institutional performance by saying that the strength of American higher education lies in the diversity of its institutions. So why not develop a framework that characterizes institutional variety and demonstrates productivity understandably, effectively and broadly throughout the spectrum of our institutions?

Of course, it is not easy to characterize the wide range of America’s more than 3,500 colleges and universities. Even among the more limited number of research universities, institutional diversity is so broad that every approach to rank or even classify institutions has been rightly criticized. Most research rankings use only input measures, such as amount of federal funding or total expenditures for research, when funding agencies would be served better by information about outcomes — the research performance of universities.

The Center for Measuring University Performance, founded by John Lombardi, has compiled some of the most comprehensive data on research universities. Its annual studies examine the multi-dimensional aspects of research universities and rank them in groups defined by relative performance on various measurable characteristics — research funding, private giving, faculty awards, doctorate degrees, postdoctoral fellows and measures of undergraduate student quality.

The 2005 report of the Center and a recent column on this site by Lombardi note the upward or downward skewing of expenditure rankings by the mere presence or absence of either a medical or an engineering school, thereby acknowledging the problems of comparability among institutions. Lombardi hints at a much-needed analysis of research competitiveness/strengths and productivity, stating, “Real accountability comes when we develop specific measures to assess the performance of comparable institutions on the same measures.” Read On.....

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Documentation for the Undocumented?

2007-05-21T04:26:00.000-07:00

s Marie Nazareth Gonzales puts it, “Life in limbo is no way to live.” A junior at Westminster College in Missouri and a Costa Rican who came to the United States at the age of 5, Gonzales is living here on borrowed time. Her parents were deported in 2005, and her own deportation has now been deferred three times, each deferral good for one year. “Last month, when they gave me until June of 2008, they told me it would be the last renewal. If the DREAM [Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors] Act doesn’t pass by then, I will have to leave,” Gonzales told the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law during a hearing on undocumented student issues Friday morning.
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“My life since April of 2002 can be easily compared to a roller coaster,” Gonzales said. “There have been times when I have felt like I was on top of the world, living out mine and my parents’ dream of being a successful young woman in her college career, only to be brought down by the realization that at any moment it can be taken away.”

The plight of undocumented college students attracted virtually unprecedented attention in Congress last week, when Democratic and Republican Senate leaders, with President Bush’s backing, announced a comprehensive immigration reform package that would include a DREAM Act provision providing a path to permanent residency for college students and military personnel under 30 who came to the country illegally as children. Passage of the Senate plan — already derided as an amnesty bill — is in no way a sure thing. Still, advocates for undocumented students say they have good reason to be hopeful.

“This seems to be the most optimism that we’ve been allowed to have in quite some time, certainly in the seven years that I’ve been working on this issue,” said David Hawkins, director of public policy for the National Association for College Admission Counseling. He cited not only the bipartisan Senate plan but also the willingness of the House subcommittee to hold a hearing on undocumented students Friday. That same hearing, Hawkins said, never would have happened even one year ago (when Republicans were in control).

“I don’t want to jinx ourselves, but if you have [the support of] the administration, a bipartisan agreement in the Senate and a committee in the House that seems willing to take this on, in addition to some very compelling testimony from students this morning, I have to feel that the outlook is good, certainly better than it has been in some time,” Hawkins said Friday afternoon. He added that he thinks the Senate plan will spur the House to come up with a package of its own to send to the floor by summer.Read On....

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Studies suggest public schools do as well, sometimes better, than private

2006-07-25T13:29:00.000-07:00

Public schools got some good news this past week in the release of a major statistical study, commissioned by the US Department of Education, that found that public school students performed as well, on average, as students in private schools.
The study is a politically-sensitive one, as drafters of the report have acknowledged, and it was clearly viewed as bad news by the Bush White House, which followed its usual strategy in such cases, by quietly releasing the news without comment or press conference late on a Friday afternoon, when most reporters have left the office for the weekend.

Even so, the newsworthy report did get some media attention, and it was deserved, because it suggests that public schools aren’t doing so badly after all, and are even doing better than some private schools, most notably conservative Christian schools. For the Bush White House and others who support the use of tax dollars to fund private religious schools, the study offers at least a minor setback.

For years, conservatives have railed against “failing” public schools and, especially, teachers’ unions, that they accuse of stifling educational innovation. Conservatives have long pointed to the superior performance of private school students, which is undeniable, as evidence that such schools offer a better approach to education. Those on the other side have long argued that private school students are a self-selected group, one whose parents generally have the means and the interest in education to pay for private schooling. It is no secret that the children of such parents perform better in school, whether in public institutions or private.

The study, which examined test scores for students in fourth and eighth grade, was designed to correct for such self-selection and all of the other demographic differences between students in public and private schools. And when those corrections were made, the differences between public and private school performance all but vanished. The only exceptions were in fourth-grade math, where public school students actually performed better than those in private schools, and in eighth grade reading, where private students performed better. The study also found that students in private Lutheran schools performed above the average, while those in conservative Christian schools performed at the bottom.

The results differed little from another recent study, which found little or no difference in math scores between public and private school students. The findings were also consistent with studies of charter schools, which have been found to provide no detectable difference in academic achievement.

If teachers’ unions were really the problem that conservatives claim, you would expect both private and charter schools to perform better, since most operate outside a union structure and don’t have to meet a number of mandates that regular public schools must. So far, studies have yet to demonstrate that claim.

Not surprisingly, the Bush administration took pains to emphasize that studies comparing public and private schools are of little utility and they warned against drawing too many conclusions from the research. But such advice sounds a little ridiculous coming from the administration that ordered the study. It’s probably safe to assume that the White House position would be completely the opposite had the research found that, all things being equal, private schools do a better job.

An administration spokesperson said the study will likely have little impact on policy, which is not surprising coming from a White House that has ignored scientific findings for years. But if education is as important as policymakers across the board like to claim, recent comparisons of public and private schools should at least give everyone pause. Before abandoning a public school system as the dysfunctional institution that conservatives like to claim, perhaps we should know for sure whether anything better actually exists.

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IT back on the MBA agenda

2006-07-25T06:32:00.000-07:00

By Della Bradshaw

Published: July 23 2006 17:27 | Last updated: July 23 2006 17:27

When the dotcom bubble burst in 2000 it was not just budding entrepreneurs and investors who had their fingers burnt. Business school professors who had pinned their hopes on teaching e-commerce and information technology courses also felt the pain. These days, though, it would seem that IT is increasingly creeping back on to the agenda in US business schools.

A recent survey by two professors at the Stern School of Business at New York University revealed that 43 out of 45 US business school deans interviewed believed that it was critical for executives of the future to have a clear understanding of how IT affected business and society.

Nearly half the deans interviewed believed IT was central to accelerating globalisation and was a significant contributor to wealth creation, according to Vasant Dhar, professor of information systems, and Arun Sundararajan, assistant professor, the authors of the report.

Some 27 per cent of those questioned believed that investment in IT was critical to the success of organisations and that successful managers needed to be able to make those decisions, while more than one-quarter also believed that being a successful executive depended on the creative use of electronic data

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Leading Medical Research Studies: Percentage Rises, But Still Lags Behind

2006-07-24T23:45:00.000-07:00

The number of women with leadership roles in research studies published in major medical journals has increased significantly over the past three decades, but women remain under-represented among medical science investigators. In the July 20 New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), a group from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) reports that, among U.S. physician-researchers leading original studies published in some of the country's most prestigious medical journals, the proportion who are women increased almost fivefold from 1970 to 2004.

"We found that women have come a long way, but that there is still a long path ahead," says Reshma Jagsi, MD, DPhil, lead author of the study and formerly chief resident in the MGH Department of Radiation Oncology. "Although women are now entering the medical profession at the same rate as men, my colleagues and I had a sense that few of the studies and editorials in journals we read were authored by women, which might be discouraging to young women physicians and students. When we realized that no one had looked over time at the percentage of authors who were women, we decided to do it ourselves." Jagsi has now joined the faculty of the University of Michigan Medical School.

The MGH team analyzed the number of women with the key roles of lead or senior author in papers published in six leading U.S. medical journals: NEJM, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Annals of Internal Medicine, Annals of Surgery, Journal of Pediatrics, and Obstetrics and Gynecology. They reviewed all original research reports published in 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2004 to determine the gender as well as the academic degrees and institutional affiliations of the lead and senior authors, restricting their analysis to authors holding MD degrees from U.S. institutions. They also reviewed editorials written by invited experts in NEJM and JAMA.
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