Higher Ed Beat: What Are the Top 10 Stories on College Campuses?
I’ll admit it – I look forward every fall when Scott Jaschik
shares his “cheat sheet”of story ideas at EWA’s annual Higher
Education Seminar.This year we met at Northeastern University,
and Scott didn’t disappoint.We asked journalists who attended the
seminar to contribute posts, and today’s guest blogger is Michael
Vasquez of the Miami
Herald.For more on higher education issues, including
community
colleges, MOOCs and
affordability,
check out EWA’s Story Starters.
Just how jam-packed with news is higher education these days?
During the always-popular “The 10 Higher Ed Stories You Should Be
Covering” session at EWA’s recent
Higher Ed Seminar, the list unexpectedly expanded into a Top
13. (To catch the the last three, check out the
video of the session.)
Session host Scott Jaschik, an editor and co-founder of Inside Higher Ed, told the
gathered reporters that there are lots of good things happening
in higher ed, but he also added that 2013 is “a period of
tremendous tension, tremendous challenges, and in too many cases,
I think not all the facts are known…we really need you guys!”
And, now, we give you this year’s list of important stories:
1. International students – particularly Brazil. Colleges all
across the country are seeing a massive influx of students from
Brazil, Jaschik said. The Latin American nation is suffering from
overcrowding at its own universities, and Brazil’s government is
tackling the problem by paying for its students to attend U.S.
institutions. For cash-strapped universities, international
students are typically welcomed because of the higher tuition
they must pay. But Jaschik warns it is “dangerous” for
universities to rely too heavily on foreign students for revenue
– if Brazil’s economy suddenly took a nosedive, would these
colleges be prepared?
2. International partnerships – such as Confucius Institutes. There are
hundreds of colleges that have formed Confucius Institute
partnerships with the Chinese government, but Jaschik said these
partnerships have aroused concern from faculty in some Asian
Studies departments. With schools receiving money from China to
participate, there are worries about autonomy when colleges enter
into these deals. “The whole area of international needs
scrutiny,” Jaschik said.
3. Competency-based
education. The traditional credit-hour concept in higher
education is increasingly being questioned. One alternative that
is gaining steam is competency-based education, which awards
credits to students based on what they know rather than how long
they have been in a course or school. It’s worthwhile for
reporters to check on how their local institutions are responding
to this debate, Jaschik said.
4. The
Obama plan on college accountability. Though there are still
a lot of details to be worked out, President Obama is pushing a
rating system for colleges that will judge them on both quality
and affordability. It’s too soon to know which schools will
benefit (or be harmed) by the president’s proposal, but Jaschik
said reporters should be asking what type of rating criteria
would work as good measuring sticks. Also worth a look: Do
students even want these ratings?
5. The fudging and faking of rankings. The U.S.News
& World Report rankings are well-read and highly influential
– but they’re also beset by a never-ending string of cheating
scandals. Things such as average student SAT scores can be
calculated in ways that are deliberately misleading – all in the
hopes of boosting a ranking. Ask your local colleges: How do you
calculate the numbers that you send to U.S.News?
6. Affirmative action. Don’t take it for granted that the Supreme
Court’s
Fisher v. Texas decision means affirmative action will
survive, Jaschik warns. He also suggests reporters check with
their local schools to see if they are standing pat in the wake
of the court decision, or if administrators at these colleges are
taking the initiative and changing how they handle race in
college admissions. Asian-American students are also an
interesting story within the realm of affirmative action, Jaschik
says, because Asian-American students’ test scores have increased
across all categories, while every other race has seen their
scores go down. This dynamic means white students can sometimes
become the beneficiaries of affirmative action, Jaschik said.
7. Undermatching.
Why do highly talented, low-income students often fail to apply
to the most prestigious colleges? One possible cause that Jaschik
suggests reporters examine is the practice of colleges visiting
only a handful of well-known “magnet” schools when they are
trying to attract low-income or minority students. Though
colleges only have so many recruiters to go around, this pattern
of always recruiting at the same schools means that academically
strong students at other high schools tend to get ignored. What
high schools do your colleges visit on a regular basis?
8. Adjunct professors.
The story of an adjunct professor at Duquesne University who
died poor and without health insurance (after teaching at the
university for 25 years) recently has garnered national
attention. Is it fair to pay a longtime professor $10,000 a year
with no benefits? Reporters should be trying to localize the
story. “Look at your local colleges,” Jaschik said. “How do they
use adjuncts? How do they pay adjuncts? Is there a union
movement?”
9. Sex-assault policies. Jaschik told reporters “write about this
at your colleges that aren’t well-known.” Much has been written
about the inadequate job that colleges do when investigating
sexual assault, but many of those stories focus on nationally
prominent schools. Are the same problems – such as schools
placing pressure on victims or choosing to handle the crime
through ill-equipped campus disciplinary boards – happening at
lesser-known schools?
10. MOOC-like
entities. Partnerships such as Georgia Tech’s deal with
Udacity (which will offer a bargain-priced online master’s degree
in computer science) may represent the next phase of the MOOC
experiment (Massive Open Online Courses). Such efforts signal a
shift away from offering courses completely free of charge. Will
these new discounted programs threaten the survival of
more-traditional (and more expensive) online degree offerings?
With all the hoopla and hype surrounding MOOC-like entities,
Jaschik advises taking a good look at whether the numbers behind
these initiatives truly add up.