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Is charter school fraud the next Enron?

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Teenagers who are both bully and victim are more likely to have suicidal thoughts

Indicators of Higher Education Equity in the United States: 2017 Trend Report

Title: Indicators of Higher Education Equity in the United States: 2017 Historical Trend Report

Authors: Margaret Cahalan, Laura W. Perna, Mika Yamashita, Ramon Ruiz, &, Khadish O. Franklin

Source: The Pell Institute & PennAHEAD

The Pell Institute and PennAHEAD recently released the annual Indicators of Higher Education Equity in the United States report for 2017. According to the report, equity gaps remain in American higher education.

The cost of college has continued to increase, yet Pell Grants do not cover the same proportion of the average cost of college as they once did. The report includes data on enrollment by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status; the types of institutions in which students enroll; the role of financial aid in eliminating barriers to paying for college; how students pay for college; and how educational attainment rates and early income outcomes vary by family characteristics.

This year’s edition also includes a website which acts as a hub of information to connect the data to current policy dialogue. The Equity Indicators website also includes links to the data, supplemental essays and presentations, and previous editions of the report.

To read the full report and review supplemental essays and presentations, please see the Equity Indicators website.

The Victorians taught children about consumerism – and we can learn from them too

Federal role in education has a long history

SHEEO Releases Annual State Higher Education Finance Report

The State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) recently released its annual State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) Fiscal Year report for 2016. According to the report, state and local governments provided nearly $90 billion in FY 2016 to support higher education, marking the first decline in overall state and local support in four years.

Overall, 33 states increased their support per student, while 17 states, DC and Puerto Rico reduced support. In addition, the authors note that the overall decrease in spending per student was caused by an 80 percent reduction in support in Illinois.

The report also includes data on state and local funding, tuition revenue, enrollment trends and degrees for public higher education. The report’s website features more information including links to an interactive visualization of the SHEF data, links to download the data and technical papers.

To read the full report and view the interactive SHEF data, please see SHEEO’s website.

How electro and techno could help to revolutionise school music lessons

English language bar for citizenship likely to further disadvantage refugees

Citizenship applicants will need to demonstrate a higher level of English proficiency if the government’s proposed changes to the Australian citizenship test go ahead.

Applicants will be required to reach the equivalent of Band 6 proficiency of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS).

To achieve Band 6, applicants must correctly answer 30 out of 40 questions in the reading paper, 23 out of 40 in the listening paper, and the writing paper rewards language used “accurately and appropriately”. If a candidate’s writing has “frequent” inaccuracies in grammar and spelling, they cannot achieve Band 6

Success in IELTS requires proficiency in both the English language, and also understanding how to take – and pass – a test. The proposed changes will then make it harder for people with fragmented educational backgrounds to become citizens, such as many refugees.

How do the tests currently work?

The current citizenship test consists of 20 multiple-choice questions in English concerning Australia’s political system, history, and citizen responsibilities.

While the test does not require demonstration of English proficiency per se, it acts as an indirect assessment of language.

For example, the question: “Which official symbol of Australia identifies Commonwealth property?” demonstrates the level of linguistic complexity required.

The IELTS test is commonly taken for immigration purposes as a requirement for certain visa categories; however, the designer of IELTS argues that IELTS was never designed for this purpose. Researchers have argued that the growing strength of English as the language of politics and economics has resulted in its widespread use for immigration purposes.

Impact of proposed changes

English is undoubtedly important for participation in society, but deciding citizenship based on a high-stakes language test could further marginalise community members, such as people with refugee backgrounds who have the greatest need for citizenship, yet lack the formal educational background to navigate such tests.

The Refugee Council of Australia argues that adults with refugee backgrounds will be hardest hit by the proposed language test.

Data shows that refugees are both more likely to apply for citizenship, and twice as likely as other migrant groups to have to retake the test.

Mismatched proficiency expectations

The Adult Migrant English Program (AMEP), where many adult refugees access English learning upon arrival, expects only a “functional” level of language proficiency.

For many adult refugees – who have minimal first language literacy, fragmented educational experiences, and limited opportunities to gain feedback on their written English – “competency” may be prohibitive to gaining citizenship. This is also more likely to impact refugee women, who are less likely to have had formal schooling and more likely to assume caring duties.

Bar too high?

The challenges faced in re/settlement contexts, such as pressures of work and financial responsibilities to extended family, often combine to make learning a language difficult, and by extension, prevent refugees from completing the citizenship test.

Similar patterns are evident with IELTS. Nearly half of Arabic speakers who took the IELTS in 2015 scored lower than Band 6.

There are a number of questions to clarify regarding the proposed language proficiency test:

• Will those dealing with trauma-related experiences gain exemption from a high-stakes, time-pressured examination?

• What support mechanisms will be provided to assist applicants to study for the test?

• Will financially-disadvantaged members of the community be expected to pay for classes/ materials in order to prepare for the citizenship test?

• The IELTS test costs A$330, with no subsidies available. Will the IELTS-based citizenship/ language test attract similar fees?

There are also questions about the fairness of requiring applicants to demonstrate a specific type and level of English under examination conditions that is not required of all citizens. Those born in Australia are not required to pass an academic test of language in order to retain their citizenship.

Recognising diversity of experiences

There are a few things the government should consider before introducing a language test:

1) Community consultation is essential. Input from community/ migrant groups, educators, and language assessment specialists will ensure the test functions as a valid evaluation of progression towards English language proficiency. The government is currently calling for submissions related to the new citizenship test.

2) Design the test to value different forms and varieties of English that demonstrate progression in learning rather than adherence to prescriptive standards.

3) Provide educational opportunities that build on existing linguistic strengths that help people to prepare for the test.

Equating a particular type of language proficiency with a commitment to Australian citizenship is a complex and ideologically-loaded notion. The government must engage in careful consideration before potentially further disadvantaging those most in need of citizenship.

NOVA-Mason Partnership Provides Guided Pathways for Transfer Students

Many students transferring from a community college to a four-year institution can attest that it is a decidedly complicated process. And while many schools have transfer agreements, not all provide “guided pathways” for a smooth transition. George Mason University (Mason) (VA) and Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) have expanded upon an existing partnership to provide just that through ADVANCE: A NOVA Mason Partnership.

Mason’s Grace Billingsley is a junior majoring in conflict analysis and resolution and a transfer student from Northern Virginia Community College. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Creative Services/George Mason University.

The story began two years ago when Mason launched a bachelor’s program in mechanical engineering. Administrators knew many students in the past had been frustrated by attempts to transfer community college credits, so the university forged a compact with NOVA, offering dual enrollment for mechanical engineering students and enabling faculty to develop curricula in tandem.

This month, Mason and NOVA announced this compact would be expanded to other majors in 2018. ADVANCE creates a single point of admission and financial aid, a dedicated advisor from admission to NOVA through graduation from Mason, realignment of curricula to ensure students don’t lose credits when they transfer, and financial incentives for in-need students.

The partnership begins this fall with students in Mason’s Volgenau School of Engineering, and will add programs from the School of Business, the College of Science, and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences in the fall of 2018.

The ultimate goal of the expanded partnership is to increase graduation rates and smooth the pathway to completion for students, while helping fulfill the workforce needs of Northern Virginia businesses. Mason estimates that students who earn a four-year degree two years after transferring from NOVA can save a full year in tuition.

The ADVANCE partnership comes at a time when practitioners, researchers and policymakers have been concerned that too few students successfully navigate the complex process of transferring from a two-year to a four-year institution. A recent ACE report examines how to improve this pipeline.

At a Glance

ACE Member Institutions: George Mason University (VA) and Northern Virginia Community College

Program: ADVANCE: A NOVA Mason Partnership

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Become a member: As a member of ACE, you join nearly 1,800 organizations that collectively promote, protect and advocate for students, faculty and administrators in higher education. ACE is the most visible and influential higher education association in the nation, and we are at the center of federal policy debates concerning legislation that affects campuses across the country. See more on the ACE website.

457 visa changes won’t impact on wider temporary education workforce. And maybe that’s deliberate

US business schools failing on climate change

Study Abroad (At Home)

By John O’Brien, president of EDUCAUSE. Originally posted on EDUCAUSE Review. 

The ACE COIL Leadership Academy is scheduled for April 27-28 in Washington, DC. Registrations will be accepted through April 21. Discounts are available to representatives of HBCUs.

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I count myself among the luckiest in the world. I grew up in a small town, and for the first two decades of my life, a “long trip” was a drive of around two hours, to visit family or to go to the nearest small city. Then, when I was in my mid-20s, my life was changed by the opportunity to study abroad as a graduate fellow of Rotary International. For the first time, I got on a plane. I flew to Ireland, where I earned my master’s degree in Anglo-Irish literature at Trinity College, Dublin, founded by Queen Elizabeth in 1592. I walked through the stunning Long Room of the Old Library every morning while doing research for my dissertation, and I sang with the chapel choir at choral evensong services whenever I could. And while I was there, I exponentially broadened and deepened my world through conversations and new ideas. The experience changed how I thought and who I was. It changed my life.

Not surprisingly, as my higher education career has unfolded I’ve been a consistent advocate for study abroad. And as the internet changed how I thought yet again, I became convinced that there is more than one way to experience a bigger world.

Study abroad whenever you can. And internationalize the curriculum whenever you can, including using established and emerging technologies to create international experiences. I was an early promoter of the SUNY COIL model, and I am thrilled to learn that our friends at ACE share this interest. In fact, they have been advocating for using technology to expand access to global learning for over a decade, understanding that less than 10 percent of our students are actually studying abroad.

Participants of the April COIL Leadership Academy will learn how online international collaboration can help their institutions reach their international goals, drawing on the programs and research of ACE’s Center for Internationalization and Global Engagement.

In addition to providing access for those who can’t study abroad because of financial constraints or other commitments, COIL is more cost-effective and scalable than traditional study abroad. Participants of the Academy will learn how a COIL course or module can be developed using their institution’s existing online communication technology, however simple or elaborate.

Facilitators of the ACE COIL Leadership Academy are experienced practitioners and senior campus leaders who can help those new to COIL avoid common missteps. They include the SUNY COIL Center founder and former director, Jon Rubin; Chancellor of Penn State Beaver Jenifer Cushman, who has introduced COIL programs at three different institutions; Jan McCauley, Assistant Director, SUNY COIL Center, who has developed and taught multiple COIL courses; and Keiko Ikeda, founder of the Japan COIL Center based at Kansai University.

There’s no question that nothing is quite the same as actually studying abroad. Navigating unfamiliar streets, enjoying the smells of new foods, and hearing the music of other languages offer a one-of-a-kind experience. But technology offers another dimension of ways to experience other cultures and to study abroad—without the expense of actually getting on a plane and traveling abroad. For some, it is a way to plant a seed for the future.

The myth of the college dropout

Institutions, Students and Degree Production: Increases Over the Past Decade

ACE’s Center for Policy Research and Strategy has released an updated version its Basic Facts About U.S. Higher Education Today infographic as part of the Higher Ed Spotlight series. This analysis examines the diversity of the higher education landscape, student outcomes and the widespread payoffs of a college education.

The analysis found increases in the number of institutions, students enrolled and credentials conferred over the past decade.

See the full infographic here.

Who Gets Pell Grants and Why It Matters

Title: Who Gets Pell Grants and Why It Matters

Author: Ben Miller

Source: Center for American Progress

Four in 10 students receive Pell Grants to help fund their college education. A new infographic recently released by the Center for American Progress explores who receives Pell Grants and the role these grants play in higher education for low-income students.

According to the data, Pell Grants helped nearly 8 million students attend college in 2015. The infographic also includes information on where Pell recipients enroll, the average and maximum awards students receive, and the demographic breakdown of recipients.

To view the full infographic, please see the Center for American Progress website.

LGBTQ Presidents in Higher Education to Hold Two-Day Institute in Seattle

Essential to creating a more inclusive, safe environment for LGBTQ students, faculty and staff are building representation at the highest level of senior leadership in higher education. Today, there are approximately 4,000 colleges and universities in the United States, yet fewer than 75 gay/lesbian presidents.

So how do we remove barriers in the pathways to the presidency and leadership for LGBTQ leaders?

This question will be the subject of a two-day Institute this June in Seattle, drawing educators from around the country. The Institute, an annual event hosted by LGBTQ Presidents in Higher Education, is the premier gathering space for thought leaders on the landscape of LGBTQ issues in higher education. It is designed for participants throughout higher education, including academic affairs, student affairs, finance and development. Faculty, staff and students are all welcome.

The 2017 Institute will be hosted by Ana Mari Cauce, president of the University of Washington; Isiaah Crawford, president of the University of Puget Sound (WA); Mac Powell, president of Bastyr University (WA); and Timothy Stokes, president of South Puget Sound Community College (WA).

The conference will include opportunities for mentorship, with keynotes from Gregg Goldman, past president of NACUBO, and Seattle Storm President Alisha Valavanis. There will be breakout sessions and discussion groups on topics ranging from leadership development to campus climate issues, as well as a women’s panel discussion with current and former presidents.

Since 2010, the mission of LGBTQ Presidents in Higher Education has been to advance effective leadership in the realm of postsecondary education, support professional development for LGBTQ leaders, and provide education and advocacy regarding LGBTQ issues within the global academy and for the public at large.

For information or to register for the Institute, see http://bit.ly/2onAWDW. For more information about LGBTQ Presidents in Higher Education, visit http://bit.ly/2o4dKyN.

All aboard for a train ticket to bring Europe together again

How do we learn to read?

The sign on the public car park in the tiny Tasmanian town of Wynyard reads,

Egress from this carpark is to be via the access lane in the rear.

“Egress?” I wondered.

As my 21-year-old son quipped, perhaps the council had called in the local duke to write its signs. Or at least the local lawyer.

I could say all the words on the sign with very little effort, and with impressive fluency.

That is called decoding.

I had to work a little harder to understand what the sign was saying.

That is called comprehending.

The aim of reading is, of course, comprehension.

In essence, debates around how to best teach reading have been about which comes first, the decoding or the comprehending.

Research concludes these debates are redundant because comprehension and decoding are codependent.

The federal government’s recent proposal, however, for a Year 1 Phonics Screening test – which tests a child’s ability to decode made-up words – appears to support the view that decoding comes before comprehension.

Comprehension, therefore, is deemed irrelevant – at least initially.

So who is right? The researchers or the politicians?

Let’s take a look at what the research tells us about how we learn to read.

Tackling unknown words

It was the first word in the car park sign that threw me. “Egress.”

I used my knowledge of how sounds map on to letters in English to decode it. However, because I couldn’t remember ever hearing the word said out loud, I wasn’t sure if I was decoding it correctly.

It might be EE-gress or ee-GRESS, EGG-ress, or egg-RESS. It is the first, apparently. I Googled it later.

In any case my decoding efforts didn’t help me understand what the word means. In order for decoding skills to be of any use in reading, children need an excellent vocabulary to which they can cross reference as they attempt to decode.

Tip 1: teach phonics through words already in the children’s vocabulary.

Building children’s vocabularies

Before we rush out and start teaching children lists of vocabulary, words in lists are not enough.

If someone had shown me “egress” by itself on a flashcard, I might have guessed it was a bird.

Luckily, “egress” was in a full sentence on a sign in front of a car park, and all of that context helped me comprehend the word.

Without context, words are just letters on a page. This is because all words in English are polysemic – they have multiple meanings depending upon the context.

The wind in my hair. My baby has wind.

And some words keep their spelling but change their pronunciation as well as their meaning.

I’d like to wind you up. I need to wind my clock. Why do I always **wind **up doing the dishes.

Tip 2: build your children’s vocabulary by talking and reading to them so that they encounter words in all their many and varied guises. Seeing a word in many different contexts is more important than just seeing the word flashed at you many times.

Grammar matters

The grammar of the parking sign in Wynyard also helped my comprehension.

I had figured out from the context that “egress” meant either entry or exit. I hear a lot of language so I understand how words “collocate” in English – that is, how some words always hang out together grammatically. My experience with the language meant I knew that we exit “from” and enter “into”.

The more we hear and read real language, the more we learn about how word order works in English.

Tip 3: teach reading through real books with real language so that children learn the rhythm and patterns of English grammar.

Experience counts

I relied on my experience as a driver to look around and see that a median strip in the road would make “egress” from the front of the car park tricky. Life experience helps us read too.

If I write I live in a studio apartment in San Jose, your interpretation of where I live will depend upon whether you understand a studio apartment to be a basement bedsit, or penthouse bachelor pad. It will depend on whether you understand San Jose to be an affluent tech hub or an working class industrial city.

The words alone cannot carry all the meaning of my message. You bring your life experience to the task of reading my words.

Tip 4: give children lots of real life experiences and talk to them about what they see. Trips out and about, and chats about things beyond their everyday environment are important.

Are we giving poor readers the help they need?

Good readers have a full repertoire of skills, each dependent upon the other.

• They have excellent oral language and a wide vocabulary. They know what words mean and this helps them decode.

• They can decode and this helps them locate the word in their existing vocabulary.

• They know the structure of English through exposure to authentic complex written and spoken language.

• They use rich life experiences to support their comprehension of written texts.

Poor readers need all of these skills too. Yet our interventions for poor readers typically only address one skill – decoding.

Our declining results in international tests of literacy show us that our 15 year olds can decode but they can’t comprehend.

Until we pay full attention to all the other reading skills, the decline will continue.

Degrees of separation: companies shed degree requirements to promote merit over qualifications

At the end of 2016, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) revealed that close to two-thirds of all Australians had completed a degree or apprenticeship.

The growth in the number of people attending a university or TAFE has risen out of a cyclical demand-driven system called “academic inflation”.

Think supply and demand. If an employer can hire someone with a degree or someone without, they’ll hire the person with a degree because they are seen as the superior candidate. This puts pressure on everyone to get degrees. But once everyone has one, the value of having a degree goes down.

A couple of decades ago, a high school diploma was sufficient to get a job in journalism or business. Now a bachelor’s degree is required.

Where a bachelor’s degree was sufficient to get a job in research, now a master’s degree is required. Where a master’s degree was sufficient to get a job in university tutoring, now a PhD is required.

The number of people gaining master’s degrees has doubled from the early 1980s to the late 2000s. The PhD, once a niche qualification for the few, has become the definitive qualification of what it means to be an expert today.

For a young millennial, this means they might have to study three to six years longer than their parents did to get the same job. That’s three to six years of debt, without any increase in wages at the end of it. If that job requires only basic skills such as photocopying or research, then the millennial will not necessarily have any greater skills than their parents had with a high school diploma in the 1970s.

This is borne out by data from the US, showing that in 1973 only 28% of jobs required a degree, compared to 59% in 2008.

When companies demand more and more degrees for very basic jobs, they cut off access for unskilled workers to break into the job market. In many professions, the traditional route into a job was through an apprenticeship, which required no professional training or degree, no private tuition or cost on behalf of the student.

Even a degree like law, which is today seen as a prestigious qualification, used to be taught exclusively by students apprenticing in legal offices. The cost was borne out by the business, rather than the student, meaning students could come from a variety of backgrounds, including former convicts.

As a result, universities are increasingly being blamed for cementing privilege, by entrenching the positions of the wealthy in the job market, as those with the most access to degrees.

In response to concern over diversity and equality of access and opportunity, top firms including Ernst & Young and Penguin Random House have recently abandoned degree requirements altogether.

Ernst & Young got rid of all degree requirements in 2015, explaining that a candidate’s degree had no correlation to their future job performance. A year later, Penguin Random House followed suit, citing the need to hire applicants from more diverse backgrounds.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Ogilvy Group, Apple and Google have all relaxed their degree requirements in recent years, lowering required grades or targeting poor performing and non-college students. The idea is to hire people based on merit, rather than credentials, often by assessing candidates with psychometric testing or other performance based tests.

Instead of abandoning degree requirements altogether, some firms, including professional services firm Deloitte, have chosen to hide which university an applicant graduated from. The aim is to limit the “prestige” associated with an institution, so as to more accurately test the abilities of the applicant.

What matters in both this and the broader debate is a refocus on ability over credentials.

That some companies are relaxing degree requirements raises new questions about the value of a university education. The question is whether these few companies are outliers or the forerunners of a new trend of preferencing merit over qualifications. If the trend does persist, then the job market of the future may have as little barriers to entry as the job market of the 1970s.

Tax credits, school choice and ‘neovouchers’: What you need to know

Most Students Hold Less Than $30,000 in Debt

ACE’s Center for Policy Research and Strategy has released an updated version its Paying for College infographic as part of the Higher Education Spotlight series. This analysis unpacks information on the cost of college and how students pay for their education.

Among the findings: Most undergraduate students have less than $30,000 in cumulative debt:

See the full infographic here.

Urban Institute’s New Website Explores What College Affordability Actually Means

What does college affordability mean? Is affordability the same for all students? A new website from the Urban Institute, with support from the Lumina Foundation, serves as a hub of data and information to answer these questions.

Through interactive data visualizations, Sandy Baum, Martha Johnson and Victoria Lee break down various aspects of college affordability, including the cost of educating students, expenses to consider when planning for college, financial aid, and employment and debt repayment after college.

The website also includes profiles of students to show how college affordability differs by socioeconomic and dependency status.

To learn more, please see the Understanding College Affordability website.

What the attack on CEU says about the rise of ‘illiberalism’ in Europe

Seeking Calm in the Middle of an Imperfect Storm

By Thomas J. Botzman

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The pace of change in higher education used to be seen as glacial, slow or barely perceptible. Today it is more akin to a hurricane, and winds and water are changing the landscape as we speak.

The forces at play are a demographic shift that includes fewer high school graduates, increased regulatory and governmental interventions, new competitors that do not adhere to traditional geographic and pricing boundaries, and, of course, technology that changes nearly every day. It is, as many have noted, a perfect storm. So, can our ships crest the wave? I believe that they can. I’ve decided that my preference is to see the rapid changes as part of an “imperfect” storm with a brighter future on the other side.

Self-preservation, for both universities and those who work there, demands that we stay away from both perfect and imperfect storms. But with a shared vision, interdisciplinary planning, wise investments in technology, and diversification in the students we serve, I believe we can navigate an imperfect storm successfully. One of my favorite places to model a storm, without the danger of actually entering a hurricane, is Grand Central Station. Standing completely still near the big clock during rush hour, one is surrounded by the constant commotion that results in, oddly enough, an ability to calmly think about the rapidly moving world. It’s a great place to contemplate our imperfect future.

Navigating the Intersections

 One of the first observations as the commuters move by is that they don’t often bump into each other but do meet at the appropriate intersections to continue their journeys. In higher education, academic and administrative departments are often organized as silos, or “cylinders of excellence,” that seek to avoid collisions; however, we need to encourage them to intentionally meet at the correct spots to travel to a shared destination. For example, at Misericordia University, we recently completed a new mission and values statement and strategic plan that point us all in the same general direction.

Our university has a strong historical commitment to the allied health sciences, including nursing, physical therapy, medical imaging, occupational therapy and speech-language pathology—over 40 percent of our students are in a health care field. Within a focus on expanding our allied health care offerings, we added a new patient navigation certificate that educates those who will help patients and their families understand the sometimes-complex treatment options and recommendations for their situation. A new certificate in sonography extends our already successful medical imaging offerings. With the new offerings, we are able to extend our competitive advantage in those fields to related career and learning opportunities, increasing both admissions and degree completions.

In a different twist, our new medical and health humanities program was built with an interdisciplinary approach among diverse fields such as philosophy, literature, science and history, to educate students with an awareness of the ethical and practical challenges facing health care. This degree is innovative, rare and expands opportunities for our students to apply a liberal arts base to real challenges and problems in a number of career paths, including medicine, dentistry, physical therapy, pharmacology, health law, public health, public policy, biomedical ethics, medical anthropology, health education, medical/pharmaceutical sales, health care administration and safety, medical/healthcare writing and related humanities disciplines.

Truly interdisciplinary majors, minors, certificates, and programs are both novel and will be a driver for change in the higher education model. Fields such as biotechemisty, cyber security, neuroscience, environmental science, and medical and health humanities are becoming increasingly widespread and accepted as new domains of study. As our world becomes more specialized, we can fully expect that the boundaries that divided academic departments will become the fountain for faculty research and scholarship that will lead to exciting and growing fields of study, just as the original liberal arts grew from the trivium to the quadrivium into its current longer list of academic pursuits.

Watching, but Not Talking, on the Cell Phones

Back at Grand Central, it is easy to spot another trend. Everyone has a cell phone. Each commuter seamlessly moves between a text, getting directions, and any number of other tasks.

The technology can be used to open a path, both practically and figuratively. In higher education, less than 10 percent of students were enrolled in an online, or technology-driven, class at the turn of the millennium. Yet less than two decades later, about 30 percent of all college students nationwide are taking an online course or degree program. At Misericordia, we offer blended courses with both in-person and online instruction, fully online degrees up to the doctoral level, and an innovative array of technology in the traditional classroom. We are not unique, but by leveraging our great strength in providing personalized attention to students with an investment in online staff and technology, our small university can serve more students in better ways.

As recently as a decade ago, most colleges and universities could clearly identify a peer-competitor group. The competitors could be geographic, perhaps within 50 or 100 miles of an institution. Large ivy-covered buildings and groups of young students signaled that we were indeed on a college campus. Today, there are offerings in shopping centers, online and even on handheld devices. The place of education has become more portable, and with it, students are more frequently moving between higher education institutions and alternative locations.

While the residential component is still prominent on many campuses, the modern student is increasingly older and has an adult life outside of the campus. Coupled with the downturn in students graduating high school, Misericordia turned to a historic strength of serving the education needs of working adults. Corporations have negotiated agreements to have their employees return to school. With support from foundations and donors, we have attracted scholarships for adult students too. Our traditional campus of about 1,800 full-time students now hosts an additional 608 part-time undergraduates, 373 of whom in the fall semester of 2015 took at least one online course (61 percent), and 471 part-time graduate students, 202 of whom took at least one online course (43 percent).

What the Future Holds

 Misericordia University is 92 years old; however, we are young and idealistic in our approach to education. For now, pointing our community toward a shared journey, encouraging interdisciplinary cooperation, and recognizing that we can—and must—serve an evolving student base, keeps the waters calm. Our approach will continue to change just as the weather does.

Higher education must monitor its environment and continue to seek new paths to explore as we seek truth and knowledge. Those paths are very likely to include new fields, domains and areas of study that we haven’t yet imagined. Nonetheless, the mission of higher education is and will continue to be driven by providing students with the tools to successfully shape the future, even in the middle of Grand Central Station or a future imperfect storm.

Building jobs in the Rust Belt: The role of education

ACE’s Lorelle Espinosa Joins National Academies Committee to Study STEM Programs at MSIs

Lorelle Espinosa, assistant vice president for ACE’s Center for Policy Research and Strategy, has been tapped to serve on a new committee of higher education diversity scholars, STEM faculty, and STEM workforce professionals for the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine.

The “Closing the Gap: Revitalizing STEM Education and Workforce Readiness Programs in the Nation’s Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs)” committee will determine what policies, programs, and curricula and lab experiences at MSIs effectively increase minority participation and graduation in the STEM fields—science, technology, engineering and mathematics—and prepare them for success in STEM careers.

The study will conclude in a report that will offer recommendations for policymakers; business and industry; and college and university administrators, faculty and staff to close equity gaps in STEM education and workforce readiness.

To read the full announcement, including the list of committee members and sponsors, please see the National Academies’ website.

How learning empathy can help build better community projects in Africa

Empathy is one of the most important skills any leader can have. A huge 2015 research project across 38 countries found that empathy makes leaders more effective and their businesses more successful.

But how do you teach empathy? How can it be cultivated in students who will become leaders in future? And could it be done in a way that foregrounds ancient, indigenous knowledge and practices which might have been sidelined by colonialism?

For instance, in 2005 Unicef developed a plan to hand out mosquito nets to help curb malaria in Malawi. But instead of using the nets to cover themselves while sleeping, people used them for fishing – a phenomenon that’s been seen elsewhere in Africa, too.

Unicef assumed that the need for protection against malaria was among Malawians’ priorities. But actually, the most urgent need was for basic sustenance. This is an example of how developing a better understanding of the local context can assist in coming up with solutions that meet users’ needs.

Organisations also need to understand that knowledge already exists in communities which must be considered when coming up with solutions for social challenges. In parts of Africa like Kenya and Sudan, as well as in India, for example, villagers use cow urine around their houses’ perimeters to ward off the mosquitoes that carry malaria. Cow urine and dung is also used as a pest repellent mixed into the lining of houses’ walls.

It’s these kinds of contextual considerations that have informed my work with Unicef in a design thinking programme that focuses on empathy and respecting indigenous knowledge.

Putting people first

Unicef deals with issues related to children all over the world. In 2016 it approached the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design Thinking (the d-school) at the University of Cape Town to develop more human-centred solutions to some of the complex challenges facing vulnerable children and families, particularly on the African continent.

Design thinking is a human-centred approach to problem solving. It develops an understanding of problems through engaging with those affected – the users. Its approach to solving problems is participatory, involving the users in finding solutions.

Unicef is involved in solving a number of complex challenges, and realised that it’s critical to put humans at the centre of that work. It wanted to ensure that the solutions designed would contribute to local communities’ sustainability and resilience. Unicef too often goes into communities offering solutions without considering local ideas, approaches and knowledge – as the Malawi mosquito net project showed. Its employees don’t spend time, really understanding the problems they’re trying to solve before designing solutions.

That’s where instilling empathy comes in: organisations need an empathetic mindset that leads to better understanding not just of what the problem is, but also what caused it in the first place.

That’s what informed my ongoing design thinking programme with Unicef. It’s a customised programme that helps train organisations in design thinking. I’m working with Unicef Malawi and some of its partners – and developing empathy forms a big part of the course.

Empathy in design thinking

There are two types of empathy in design thinking: emotional and cognitive. Emotional empathy centres on instinct, emotions and shared experience. The emotional aspect includes assessing our own thoughts and actions for the purpose of personal learning and development. Design thinking encourages students to cultivate curiosity and challenge prejudice to discover commonalities with other people who may be different from them. Listening is extremely important, too.

Emotional empathy is a starting point for individual team members in any design thinking programme before they shift focus towards the user for whom they’re designing solutions.

The second dimension of empathy is cognitive. Here, one comes to understand how others may experience the world from their point of view. Cognitive empathy includes the mental process of acquiring and understanding through thoughts, experience and senses. It includes processes like knowledge, memory, judgement, reasoning and decision making.

Understanding different points of view requires humility: we may have been trained as experts in our various disciplines but that hardly means we know everything. Each person possesses very little knowledge, which becomes valuable when a team comes together.

All the participants in a design team need to be empathetic with the users they’re designing for if their solutions are to be relevant. This informed my planning for the Unicef course.

Immersion

The participants include Unicef employees and people from organisations that implement the solutions Unicef develops. I started by taking participants through a three day introduction to design thinking. They had to work collaboratively in a multidisciplinary team. They had to learn the value of empathy for the user – that’s, people affected by the problems they’re trying to solve.

They took part in an immersion experience at the Cape Town Society for the Blind. This took them into a very different context and forced them to experience the physical world as blind people do. It was a powerful way to help them understand the implications of navigating a world not designed to facilitate their access. They ate dinner in the dark and were forced to use all their other senses in the same way blind people must.

All this helped participants to understand that even those they might consider less knowledgeable have experiences, emotions and aspirations. This understanding helps with the development of true empathy.

Empathy for others and understanding their context could go a long way in helping organisations to come up with relevant solutions. An understanding of context allows us to learn from others’ experiences and to arrive at an informed solution with the users. This allows organisations to solve the right problems – and, in the long run, to help communities become more resilient and self-sustaining.

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Bringing “America’s Promise” to Rural Communities in West Virginia, Maryland and Virginia

By Steven Taylor

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Tucked in the hills of rural Hardy County, West Virginia lies a small college with a big vision: to breathe life and bring jobs to the Appalachia region.

Eastern West Virginia Community & Technical College in Moorefield is one of the latest recipients of a $3.6 million America’s Promise Grant from the U.S. Department of Labor, given through the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission.

The grant, known as the America’s Promise 220 (AP 220) Corridor Project, is a joint endeavor between Eastern WVCTC, Allegany College of Maryland and Dabney S. Lancaster Community College in Virginia.

I talked recently with Charles “Chuck” Terrell, president ofEastern WVCTC, about the project.

Q: Can you share some background on the education and employment landscape in the region served by the colleges in the AP 220 Corridor Project?

Allied health and advanced manufacturing sectors are job growth opportunities for the region. Employers and job seekers do not identify state borders as barriers, so the goal of the grant is to remove real and perceived barriers between these three rural community colleges. Regional workforce education strategies will support existing employers to increase their workforce and encourage new businesses to locate to the AP 220 region.

Q: Describe the AP 220 Project. How does it benefit students in rural Appalachia specifically?

For students, tuition aid is available through the grant where students are otherwise not eligible for state or federal aid. Students may also benefit from taking courses across state lines at participating colleges without paying out-of-state tuition. We are also removing some of the barriers that traditionally exist with interstate course registration and transfer of credit.

Q: How are programs under AP 220 aligned with workforce needs? Does the project address a specific skills gap?

Building on the success of other public-private partnerships, the project will involve industry partners from the region, workforce and economic development representatives from the respective regions, and academics to create and offer credentials that have currency in the marketplace and at low- or no-cost to students.

Q: Explain more about how the three-college consortium will work.

The three colleges will combine their resources and reach to build a pipeline for students to earn industry-aligned credentials in allied health and advanced manufacturing fields. The participating colleges improve their institutional efficiency by pooling equipment and resources through the grant.

Q: How is AP 220 different from other efforts to increase education attainment?

The cross-state regional approach of the America’s Promise 220 Corridor Project brings much-needed opportunities to rural areas through building an education-to-work pathway. Results from this program could pave the way for future education and industry partnerships that provide students with shorter-term, skills-based credentials tied to in-demand jobs in their communities.

LGBTQ Students on Campus: Challenges and Opportunities for Higher Education Leaders

By Kristen Renn

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Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) students are more visible than ever on U.S. college campuses. Yet they remain both sexual-orientation and gender-identity minorities (that is, as a numerical proportion of the student body) and minoritized (that is, targets of discrimination and oppression by those in power). Referring to these students as minoritized on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity highlights the role of societal heterosexism, which privileges heterosexuals, and cisgenderism, which privileges people whose gender identity aligns as society expects with the sex they were assigned at birth. Although it is common on campus to conflate people with these minoritized identities into one “LGBTQ” group, in reality, sexual orientation and gender identity are different concepts.

In the last decade, LGBTQ people in the United States—particularly in K-12 and higher education—have gained increasing visibility and some civil rights, including open service in the U.S. military, marriage equality, and some state- or local-level protection against bullying and hate crimes. Yet problems remain. There are no federally protected rights to employment non-discrimination, and the application of Title IX protection against discrimination for transgender students is currently under review in the U.S. court system. In higher education, we face a particular challenge in understanding our needs and progress vis-à-vis LGBTQ students because we lack accurate institutional and national data on student sexual orientation and gender identity.

Key Issues for Higher Education Leaders

Of the many important concerns higher education leaders need to be aware of regarding LGBTQ students, three core issues are 1) identity development, 2) campus climate, and 3) state and national social and policy contexts.

First, higher education has historically been and remains a positive location for students’ identity development. For some students, increased independence from their home community and family creates a space for exploring sexuality and gender in privacy and safety. For others, college may provide academic opportunities to learn about LGBTQ history, culture and people. Meeting peers, faculty and staff who are openly LGBTQ provides additional opportunities to explore identity, and student organizations and LGBT resource centers create spaces to interact with others.

Abundant literature supports the positive value of postsecondary curriculum, role models and communities in facilitating LGBTQ identity development. It also is important to remember that for some LGBTQ students, sexual orientation or gender identity are not the most salient identities during their time in college; racial, political, religious or other identities (e.g., veteran status, parenting situation, social class) may draw more of their attention. Acknowledging such diversity within the LGBTQ community is as important as recognizing sexual orientation and gender diversity within the campus community as a whole.

A second key issue is LGBTQ campus climate. Most LGBTQ students report that the climate—their feelings of belonging, safety and inclusion—in college is better than the one they experienced in high school. And evidence exists that overall, campus climate has improved over the last 15 years.

Yet this progress is not consistent across institutions. Reports of harassment and discrimination, especially for transgender students, remain a problem at a time when student learning and persistence are central issues for higher education leaders. Of particular concern are student reports of harassment in classrooms and other learning contexts, of widespread cyber bullying, and of the amplification of racism and sexism through homophobic and transphobic harassment. Research on campus climate generally and LGBTQ climate specifically points to the negative consequences of hostile climates for student learning, persistence in college and mental health and wellness.

A third issue is the state and national social and policy context for individuals with minoritized sexual orientations and/or gender identities. No federal laws protect students or employees against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, though some states include one or both categories in state law. The application of Title IX, which prohibits discrimination based on sex, to include transgender students is unfolding at the time of this writing. A few states are enacting laws specifically to deny protections to transgender students, though these laws are likely to face legal challenges.

Campus leaders have an opportunity and obligation to act to maintain higher education as a location for LGBTQ student development and learning, as well as to improve campus climate and increase inclusion. To that end, I offer recommendations in the areas of policy, practice, programing and pedagogy.

Campus Policies: Don’t Wait for Government Mandates

Given uneven legal protections for LGBTQ students it is incumbent on institutions to create and maintain policy environments that ensure full inclusion and prohibit discrimination.

• Include sexual orientation and gender identity in institutional policy, whether or not federal or state law mandates against discrimination. The policies at Georgetown University, Purdue University and Santa Ana College offer examples. Policies provide direction for institutional actors as well as signal to prospective and current students that campus leaders stand against discrimination.

• Ensure that non-discrimination policies include admissions, employment, educational programs, athletics, student health insurance, gender-inclusive facilities (e.g., locker rooms, restrooms, residence hall rooms) and prohibition of harassment. Recent studies of transgender college students show that gender-inclusive policies are a critical facilitator for their success in college.

• Conduct an audit of gender inclusion in policies and a process mapping exercise to illuminate additional policy obstacles to transgender inclusion. For example, walk through the process of a student changing their name and gender on institutional documents or obtaining trans-inclusive healthcare. There may be some simple adjustments in administrative processes that would eliminate substantial obstacles for individual students.

• Establish a campus-wide steering committee or commission to oversee LGBTQ issues across student and employee policies. Engaging stakeholders from multiple communities increases the likelihood that the institution will stay ahead of emergent matters of equity and inclusion.

Good Practices for an Inclusive Community

Institutional activities and services, from admissions through alumni/ae relations and communications, should routinely include LGBTQ students and graduates.

• Advocate that campus healthcare and counseling be inclusive of students of all sexual orientations and include coverage for the needs of transgender students. Student health insurance should specifically include transgender healthcare and not exclude transgender-related treatment. Equitable access to healthcare increases student success by decreasing time lost to chronic or acute physical and mental health needs. The American College Health Association provides guidelines for transgender inclusion.

• Offer information on LGBTQ students in orientations for new faculty and staff and discuss best practices for creating equitable learning environments. Lambda Legal provides a set of best practices for supporting transgender students, and the Consortium of Higher Education LGBT Resource Professionals offers recommendations for supporting trans and queer students of color. Their recommendations include approaching LGBTQ student support through an intersectional lens that accounts for students’ multiple identities (e.g., race, SES, age, veteran status); collaborating with resource providers for students of color; and providing leadership development opportunities specifically for LGBTQ students of color that do not require them to prioritize one identity over another.

Programs That Work

In addition to including LGBTQ issues with other diversity-related programming on campus, there is some specific programming that can increase inclusion and improve campus climate.

• Take administrative responsibility for providing support and education. Hundreds of institutions now have LGBTQ campus resource centers staffed by professionals or graduate students, and the kinds of programs and services these centers offer can be provided in other ways even when a stand-alone resource center is not available. Graduate students, faculty and staff can be assigned responsibility for LGBTQ programs, services and student organization advising. Although there can be value for LGBTQ students in providing student leadership in this area, relying on LGBTQ students themselves to provide professional-level services at scale is an untenable and irresponsible stance.

• Design and fund co-curricular campus programming, such as new student orientation, diversity education and ongoing student activities to support LGBTQ students and educate others on campus about LGBTQ inclusion. A comprehensive programming effort includes both support for LGBTQ students and education for others about LGBTQ students.

• Include LGBTQ topics among other multicultural diversity and equity efforts on campus and offer stand-alone educational programs to provide opportunities for deeper exploration. Common offerings such as LGBTQ Speakers Bureaus (for example, the longstanding one at the University of Massachusetts Amherst) and Safe Zone programs educate the campus community broadly and aim to increase support for LGBTQ students.

Bringing LGBTQ Inclusion Into the Classroom

The core of LGBTQ college students’ experience is the curriculum. Bringing LGBTQ topics and LGBTQ-sensitive pedagogy into the curriculum increases inclusion.

• Make LGBTQ topics visible in the curriculum. Inclusive instruction and curriculum offer LGBTQ students and others the opportunity to engage intellectually across academic fields with topics related to their identities. Minoritized students report that they are motivated to learn when their identities are affirmed and included in the curriculum. Such curriculum has been available in the humanities and social sciences for several years, but even an introductory statistics course could incorporate LGBTQ material.

• Encourage faculty, staff and departments to become an information clearinghouse for areas of interest to students and scholars. John Younger, a scholar at the University of Kansas, has since 1997 maintained a list of LGBT/queer studies programs, including study abroad opportunities. This is a valuable starting point for faculty interested in developing an LGBTQ major, minor or academic program.

Conclusion

There is little question that life on campus has generally improved for LGBTQ students since the days of secret and immediate expulsion of students suspected of same-sex attraction. Yet students still face harassment, discrimination and other obstacles to full inclusion. At the same time, students explore and develop LGBTQ identities through leadership, involvement, coursework and activism. Aligning policy, practice, programming and pedagogy to support LGBTQ students remains a challenge and an opportunity for higher education leaders.

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Why it’s the right time for Australia and India to collaborate on higher education

In 2060, India will be the most populous country, and likely have the largest economy, in the world. Roughly 20 million young people turn 18 every year, and according to some estimates, India’s middle class now numbers 300 million.

We have about 40 years in Australia to become a key partner of this future global centre. And there is no better starting point than higher education.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Education Minister Simon Birmingham are currently visiting India, in part to promote higher education collaboration. Minister Birmingham has stated that his key objectives will include developing opportunities for Australian providers to deliver quality higher education in India, and emphasising Australia as an international education destination.

As higher education providers from competitor countries such as the UK are deepening their involvement in the Indian education sector, now is a crucial time for Australia to act.

University system in India

India contains a complex higher education landscape, with 760 universities and around 38,000 colleges.

Central government universities absorb just 3% of students and are relatively good quality. A wide range of state universities affiliate private and state colleges, which also award degrees. There is also a class of “deemed university” which was introduced fairly recently to cover private institutions established usually by business entrepreneurs.

…and the challenges it faces

As former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stated – and as a new book shows in clear terms – the Indian higher education system faces major challenges.

This partly reflects a decision by India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to channel research funds to independent non-teaching institutes, which has left central and state universities relatively starved of funds.

Indian universities – even elite institutions such as the Indian Institutes of Technology – do not feature in the top 100 universities in global rankings.

The upshot for the ordinary Indian student is that he or she is unlikely to be taught by a research active faculty member, unlikely to be able to acquire a good education with up-to-date curricula, and unlikely to have access to excellent facilities either in terms of teaching or extra-curricular activities.

Such deficits particularly affect the poor, women, rural areas, and north India.

So how does Australia fit into the picture?

The prospects for Australia to engage successfully with Indian higher education institutions are therefore not very high.

Certainly, the focus to date has been on working with the top institutions. But this means the mass of state-level universities and colleges do not typically receive the benefits of foreign collaboration.

Added to the problems are a relatively low knowledge base in Australia on Indian higher education and legal restrictions on foreign universities opening up campuses in India.

The Foreign Providers Bill, which would change the law in this regard, has been stalled. But India’s current government is keen to reform higher education.

Push for collaboration

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has indicated his desire to develop foreign collaborations.

The flow of Indian staff and students to Australia, and the beginnings of revitalisation of Indian studies in Australia, bodes well in terms of the development of partnerships and joint working.

There are success stories, too, such as joint PhD programmes at Monash University and the University of Melbourne, as well as comprehensive ties with Indian higher education developed at Deakin University – among a fairly wide range of examples.

Still, there is no sense in fudging. Such examples are – to use an Indian phrase – like the cumin seed in the camel’s mouth.

Five ways to do this

Australia, with a strong higher education sector and a particular strength in terms of the development of world-class full-spectrum universities, could expand collaborative efforts in several ways. These include:

1. Agree on the mutual recognition of qualifications in India and Australia. There are currently issues with the recognition of Indian students’ prior learning when they come to study in Australia. India also does not recognise some Australian qualifications, such as accelerated masters’ degrees.

2. Lobby the Indian government to allow Australian universities to open campuses in India where there is a compelling rationale for doing so. Apart from the direct benefits this would bring in terms of making foreign education available more cheaply to Indian students, it would allow the Indian government to benchmark their institutions against Australian counterparts.

3. Develop a wide range of staff and student champions of the Australia-India relationship, building on programmes already running and activity already being generated among staff.

4. Develop a comprehensive scholarship scheme for non-elite Indian students to facilitate the flow of talented students to Australia. This could be funded using a small percentage of the money universities receive from international students. It would help to build understanding of India in Australia, and also increase the diversity of Australian universities. A key advantage of this scheme is that it would allow Australian universities to develop reach into “ordinary India”.

5. Develop a set of specialist collaborative research institutes in India around key challenges facing India and Australia, for example around water, infrastructure, poverty, security, health, and governance. These could serve as a basis for full spectrum campuses in the future.

Given the inventiveness of other countries in devising ways of collaborating with India, there will be real costs if Australia does not engage with these ideas in terms of opportunities for research collaboration and offering valuable learning experiences to Indian students.

The UK, in particular, has made great strides in this space, such as the Research Councils UK partnership with India, even as its visa restrictions hobble efforts to develop student mobility between India and the UK.

India and Australia have complementary strengths in higher education. A strategic approach could yield major benefits for both countries.

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No mandatory novels or poetry – what you need to know about the new HSC English curriculum

The release of the new English syllabus for Years 11 and 12 students in New South Wales reveals a potentially less rigorous curriculum, which is likely to encourage students to study the easier course option now available.

The syllabus applies to all students in NSW undertaking the Higher School Certificate (HSC). It is set for implementation in 2018 and will be examined in 2019.

The new syllabus includes few changes in the design, rationale, aims or learning outcomes expected of students in Year 12.

A major shift, however, means that students:

• will now study fewer texts (from four to three for Year 12 students on the standard English course, and from five to four in the advanced course)

• are no longer required to study a novel or poetry in Year 12

• can now receive an ATAR if they study the English Studies course – the least challenging English course (previously a non-ATAR course).

Why do we need a new curriculum?

The reasons given for this most recent curriculum change have been largely based on the NSW government’s Stronger HSC Standards “blueprint”. However, the assumption that a review of the senior English curriculum was necessary because of declining standards and the neglect of literary study cannot be supported by any research-based evidence.

According to the NSW Education Standards Authority’s (NESA) own statistics, the achievement levels of students in senior English have increased since the so-called McGaw reforms were introduced in 1999.

More students are undertaking the more demanding English courses and more students are achieving Band 6, the highest level possible in their HSC.

There is no evidence for declining standards in the ATAR senior English courses as a reason for this reform.

Of course, curriculum renewal is an essential and welcome process for ensuring optimal learning experiences and engagement for each new generation of students – provided that this renewal is based on evidence that clearly demonstrates the need for such reforms.

What’s missing?

The syllabus was released without two vital components that teachers need to fully evaluate and interpret the syllabus: the prescribed text list and the examination specifications. Without these, it is impossible to speculate on the range of texts available for study or subject to examination.

What is apparent in the syllabus, however, is that students will be required to study fewer texts.

Fewer texts

It has come as quite a surprise to English teachers to read that “the Bard is back”, given his drama has been a compulsory part of the higher-level English courses in NSW since 1911.

The Bard never went AWOL in NSW. Likewise, the claim that “classic” texts will now be mandatory is simply misinformation when the English text lists for the past 20 years have included more than 60% of titles that can be categorised as “great literature”.

In the previous Standard English course, students studied four mandatory texts: fiction, drama, poetry and either nonfiction or film or media or multimedia.

In the new syllabus, this has been reduced to three mandatory texts, with the removal of the mandatory study of fiction and poetry. Fiction and poetry are now options for Year 12 students.

In the Advanced English course, where students previously studied five mandatory texts (fiction, Shakespearean drama, poetry, drama or film, and either nonfiction or media or multimedia), they will now study only four mandatory texts. Again, fiction and poetry are optional.

Since 1911, all senior students in NSW have been required to study the core literary categories of fiction, poetry and drama. Now, for the first time in our history, students can complete Year 12 without having read a novel or poetry.

The syllabus and other documents pertaining to the reforms do not provide any evidence-based rationale for the removal of this requirement.

It is curious that we will now have an English curriculum in NSW that requires more literary engagement and rigour in Years 7-10 than in Year 12.

Repeating history?

The previous reforms to the HSC (in the 1990s) were prompted by serious concerns about the flight of students from the more challenging senior English courses to the “soft” option of a theme-based course that did not require sustained textual study.

Many of us can recall the crisis surrounding this two-unit contemporary English course, whereby very capable students were opting for the less rigorous course, earning high marks and thus maximising their HSC English result and ATAR.

Since the McGaw reforms, no such option has been available to students. Rigour had been maintained and in fact strengthened. The NESA website provides enrolment statistics showing increases in candidature in the more rigorous, higher-level English courses, including strong enrolments in English Extension courses.

This new syllabus, however, will rewind the clock and trigger a repetition of the disastrous situation played out in English in the 1980s and 1990s.

Students can now elect to study the English (Standard) or the English (Advanced) courses.

Rather than electing to enrol in the more rigorous Advanced and Standard HSC English courses, students can undertake a far less demanding English Studies course. Prior to this new syllabus, this was a non-ATAR course. It was designed for students not wishing to proceed to university. There was no external examination in this course.

Now, any student can elect to enrol in the English Studies course and will be eligible for an ATAR.

In the high-stakes crucible of the HSC, it is a no-brainer that we will again see a stampede of students choosing the less rigorous English course to attain their two units of English.

They’d be mad not to. There is no incentive to undertake the more rigorous courses. NESA has not provided any reason for proceeding with this change, which flies in the face of research evidence and informed advice from the profession.

The full extent of the revisions, and their implications for teachers and students, will only be apparent when the syllabus can be read in concert with the prescribed text list and examination requirements, which ultimately drive the quality of teaching and learning in senior English in NSW.

Too hot to learn – why Australian schools need a national policy on coping with heatwaves

Many parts of Australia have been experiencing a long-running heatwave, with temperatures soaring above 40 degrees in some areas. So what impact is this having on schools? And is it time for the government to roll out a national policy on heat protection?

Research shows that extreme heat can result in physical (cardiovascular and thermoregulation), cognitive (acquiring and retaining information) and emotional difficulties (motivation and negative feelings towards set tasks). And let’s not forget ruined school lunches!

Currently, the main policy in place to protect students from outdoor weather extremes is the Cancer Council’s SunSmart program.

The SunSmart program has had a successful foundation policy for school staff and students to ensure enough shade is provided and to wear sun-protective clothing, a hat, sunscreen and sunglasses for all outdoor activities when UV radiation is at level 3 or higher.

But there is no consistent educative policy across Australian schools for heat protection.

Many schools have site-specific or varying state guidelines. There is, however, little school policy relating to school activities during specific heat conditions (according to a set temperature and humidity).

Impact of intense heat

In the US, emergency department admissions revealed that children were the most reported age group to go to hospital with heat cramps, heat exhaustion, heat stress and heat stroke.

In Japan, between 1975 and 2009, 133 children died of heat stroke while doing outdoor school activities.

School children depend on adults and carers to keep environments at suitable temperatures. There is an ongoing risk of Australian children being exposed to dangerous heat conditions.

Students can often forget to drink enough water, which has an impact on concentration, cognition and memory processes from high sweat loss in extreme heat.

Mandatory requirements for children to do a minimum of 100 minutes of timetabled physical education each week increase the risk of heat exposure.

With fixed times and locations for physical education, this can leave children more vulnerable to heat exposure – especially when this is in addition to recess and leisure time, which are often outdoors.

Students are less active when temperatures are above just 22 degrees, which can impact on meeting physical education objectives and guidelines.

What such a policy would look like

To ensure existing and potential strategies for heat protection could be identified, I conducted a recent review of the various heat-protection implementations, investigations, reports and/or guidelines in schools.

Here I outline five key action areas from the research of what a national school heat policy could look like.

School policy

• Adopt flexible scheduling of outdoor activities according to the heat conditions by duration/intensity. Start earlier or later in the day when the heat is less intense and ensure children have more rest breaks. The school should have alternative venues to modify and relocate activities during extreme heat when temperatures exceed 30 degrees and humidity levels exceed 60%.

• Schools should consider modifying uniforms to combine UV protection with cooling fabrics and ice vests to reduce body temperatures and “thermal stresses” during extreme heat.

• Schools need to be set up to deal with incidences of heat illness and emergencies and to encourage regular rotations to shaded/cooler areas. This includes developing communication procedures (text, internet, email, social media) to notify staff and students of high-risk heat conditions.

Environment

• Ensure extra shade from both man-made structures (tents, sails and umbrellas) and natural features such as trees to provide cooler environments for outdoor activities during extreme heat.

• Use large industrial fans and ensure indoor spaces have open doors/windows or air-conditioning access during activities, especially during rest periods.

• Provide more water fountains, cooled water facilities and electrolytes for fluid retention and regularly monitor outdoor weather conditions. Ice and water spray bottles could also be used as cooling aids.

• Display heat guidelines and charts in prominent locations in the school for reminders about hydration and feelings according to the temperature.

Training

• Develop personal skills so staff and students know how and where to access heat protective strategies in the school. This includes maintaining adequate nutrition, keeping food safe (at lower temperatures to prevent being spoiled), gaining adequate sleep and monitoring hydration practices and fluid loss.

• Develop communication methods within schools relating to heat illness and where to access support or facilities through a developed heat-protective resource map and guide. Train staff how to detect heat illness in others and to treat, mentor, role-model and protect others.

Prevention

• Teachers to take into account medical characteristics of students, age, fitness and level of acclimatisation when undertaking activities in hot conditions. Regularly monitor any students or staff who appear distressed from the heat.

• Implement heat-protective policy according to relevant Australian Curriculum content of “being healthy safe and active”, demonstrate heat-protective behaviours for safety, and identify actions, plan and promote heat strategies to develop health, safety and wellbeing.

Community

• Notify parents about school heat conditions and ask them to provide their children with cooled water and modified uniforms during heatwaves. Also give parents an insight into the school procedures in place to protect the students from the heat.

• Include information on the school’s heat-protective procedures in school newsletters. Parents can use this beyond the classroom. Schools should gain feedback from the community on strategies and ideas for further protection of staff and students during heatwaves.

• Put on events to help raise funds for heat-protective facilities in schools. Include parents to have different heat-protective roles and responsibilities during outdoor school events.

The typical university student is no longer 18, middle-class and on campus – we need to change thinking on ‘drop-outs’

The federal government released its latest figures on completion rates at Australian universities earlier this year. It shows that students who study off campus, are on a part-time course, are older, Indigenous, from disadvantaged backgrounds or regional areas of Australia are less likely to complete their university course.

Many journalists rushed to decry the “fact” that these “drop-out” rates in some universities are shocking. But, in addition to misunderstanding and therefore misrepresenting the data, the assumptions underpinning how completion rates are calculated are woefully out of date.

Who is the average student?

The current Australian student cohort is different from the one that many readers might imagine – and from the one that existed when mechanisms to measure attrition were created.

While a large number of students (670,000) are in the 18-22 years age bracket, latest available figures from 2015 show there were over 181,000 students aged 30-39; almost 90,000 aged 40-49; over 36,000 aged 50-59; and almost 10,000 aged 60 and over.

As indicated by government statistics on mode of attendance, a growing number of university students have never actually set foot on a campus, having undertaken online and other external modes of study.

These same figures show an increasing number study part-time. Many start, stop and start university study over a very long time. Some take almost a decade to complete a three-year degree.

How should this change how we measure drop-out rates?

Despite the world having shifted and student bodies having changed significantly, we persist in measuring drop-out rates as if the whole Australian university sector is the same as it was last century. Back then, students were more commonly 18 years old, middle-class, child-free, unencumbered school-leavers who often had financial support from their family to attend university.

So how do we currently measure drop-out rates? Based on reports from individual higher education providers, the government annually counts the number of commencing students in year one at census date, then counts them again a year later, subtracting those who have graduated – and that calculation determines our attrition rates.

We do a second calculation that adjusts for students who move programs or universities but who are still in study.

Many assume that the people who aren’t there a year later have dropped out. Indeed, they may have. They may have done so permanently. But they may also have left temporarily, to come back to that program and institution, or others, at a later date.

That is certainly what students from working-class backgrounds who study at regional universities do.

A soon-to-be-released national study of these students found significant evidence that regional students dip in and out of study. On average, they take longer than metropolitan and higher socio-economic status students to complete their programs of study.

Calculating attrition rates in the way we currently do ignores those students who may have formally or informally withdrawn from university, but who may later return to study, as many working-class regional students do.

Why do students drop out of study?

This latest research shows that these students often have complex lives and competing priorities.

Many are parents and many have other caring responsibilities. They must balance academic study with these caring and related responsibilities, which often include the need for paid employment while studying.

Many are also the first in their family to attend university. This means they lack familiarity with the peculiarities of university life and expectations of them as students. It also means they are unlikely to receive financial support from their family.

While better academic support may help some students in some cases, the answer is not that simple.

Many of these students experience significant financial pressure. The costs of study materials, long-distance regional travel to university campuses on top of the usual expenses of living – including sometimes supporting a family, often while on a reduced income – mean they may have to make difficult choices about their priorities, choices that other more traditional students do not ever have to make.

The research shows that some students step out of study because they get a job that meets immediate short-term needs, such as paying for accommodation and food.

They often return to study later when the immediate needs are met. Rather than the full-time study load a traditional student would take, these students often take on a part-time load, sometimes the minimum load of one subject a semester. This is because that is all they can manage on top of their family, caring and/or employment responsibilities.

It is often not possible, nor desirable from a personal point of view, for these students to study full time, nor to complete their undergraduate program in a single time period, or within the minimum completion time.

Our thinking needs to change

The assumptions and mechanisms for measuring and monitoring attrition of students need to take into account the realities of all students’ experiences and responsibilities, and the choices they have to make about study in the context of their complex lives and competing priorities.

The long journey from a refugee camp to an Australian school

Younger is not always better when it comes to learning a second language

It’s often thought that it is better to start learning a second language at a young age. But research shows that this is not necessarily true. In fact, the best age to start learning a second language can vary significantly, depending on how the language is being learned.

The belief that younger children are better language learners is based on the observation that children learn to speak their first language with remarkable skill at a very early age.

Before they can add two small numbers or tie their own shoelaces, most children develop a fluency in their first language that is the envy of adult language learners.

Why younger may not always be better

Two theories from the 1960s continue to have a significant influence on how we explain this phenomenon.

The theory of “universal grammar” proposes that children are born with an instinctive knowledge of the language rules common to all humans. Upon exposure to a specific language, such as English or Arabic, children simply fill in the details around those rules, making the process of learning a language fast and effective.

The other theory, known as the “critical period hypothesis”, posits that at around the age of puberty most of us lose access to the mechanism that made us such effective language learners as children. These theories have been contested, but nevertheless they continue to be influential.

Despite what these theories would suggest, however, research into language learning outcomes demonstrates that younger may not always be better.

In some language learning and teaching contexts, older learners can be more successful than younger children. It all depends on how the language is being learned.

Language immersion environment best for young children

Living, learning and playing in a second language environment on a regular basis is an ideal learning context for young children. Research clearly shows that young children are able to become fluent in more than one language at the same time, provided there is sufficient engagement with rich input in each language. In this context, it is better to start as young as possible.

Learning in classroom best for early teens

Learning in language classes at school is an entirely different context. The normal pattern of these classes is to have one or more hourly lessons per week.

To succeed at learning with such little exposure to rich language input requires meta-cognitive skills that do not usually develop until early adolescence.

For this style of language learning, the later years of primary school is an ideal time to start, to maximise the balance between meta-cognitive skill development and the number of consecutive years of study available before the end of school.

Self-guided learning best for adults

There are, of course, some adults who decide to start to learn a second language on their own. They may buy a study book, sign up for an online course, purchase an app or join face-to-face or virtual conversation classes.

To succeed in this learning context requires a range of skills that are not usually developed until reaching adulthood, including the ability to remain self-motivated. Therefore, self-directed second language learning is more likely to be effective for adults than younger learners.

How we can apply this to education

What does this tell us about when we should start teaching second languages to children? In terms of the development of language proficiency, the message is fairly clear.

If we are able to provide lots of exposure to rich language use, early childhood is better. If the only opportunity for second language learning is through more traditional language classes, then late primary school is likely to be just as good as early childhood.

However, if language learning relies on being self-directed, it is more likely to be successful after the learner has reached adulthood.

Politics podcast: Ken Coates on the future of higher education

With university graduates finding it harder to find jobs, questions have been raised about the merits of a typical tertiary qualification. Dr Ken Coates, Canada research chair in regional innovation at University Saskatchewan Campus, says by 2050 we’re going to have hundreds of more specialised, boutique institutions.

“We’ll have a smaller number of what we call these ‘multiversities’ – the large scale enterprises that have the 30, 40, 50,000 students offering everything to everybody. I think we’re going to see a much larger shift towards private education,” Coates says.

As it stands, graduates are left with what Coates calls “a huge dose of career paranoia”.

“We have significant challenges in different countries with the unemployment of university graduates. It’s very high in places like Spain and Greece and other countries. We have a larger problem with graduate underemployment. … They get a job, but the job doesn’t require a university degree.

“I think one of the issues is that we have too few good jobs. So it’s actually a function of the fact that we’re losing jobs on the left hand, we’re over-producing people for jobs that no longer exist on the other hand, and you’re creating a growing level of dissatisfaction – sometimes anger.”

One of Coates’ interests has been how the rise of automation and artificial intelligence will affect tertiary education and the career prospects of future generations of students.

“This whole issue of automation, artificial intelligence, digital technology, robotification has a lot of people worried, but not enough. So the estimates are – depending on which economy you’re in – 30 to 50% of the jobs we currently have will disappear somewhere by 2025/2030. That’s not that long down the line.

“That is actually where the global conversation about a guaranteed annual income has really picked up speed. It used to be a kind of marginal, left-wing kind of idea that sort of found a certain amount of currency in places like Scandanavia. Now people are talking about it all over the place.”

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Music credit: “Medium Leaker”, by Tab and Anitek on the free music archive

Vice Chancellor Barney Glover says universities must stand up for facts and the truth – ‘if we don’t, who will?’

University sexual assault policies are often ‘inconsistent’ and ‘confusing’

A number of scathing reports have brought much needed attention to the issue of inappropriate polices and practices for responding to student reports of rape, attempted rape and sexual assault at Australian universities.

In a 2017 report to the Australian Human Rights Commission, the advocacy group, End Rape on Campus (EROC) Australia, with co-author, journalist and advocate Nina Funnell, point to the high numbers of sexual assaults occurring against Australian university students – both on and off campus.

Although we do not currently have reliable statistics on the victimisation rates of sexual violence in Australian universities, figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) more broadly report that 1 in 5 women have experienced sexual violence since the age of 15, compared to 1 in 22 men.

ABS and police data show that women aged 16 to 24 are at most risk of sexual violence, most commonly at the hands of a known man.

How do universities tackle the issue?

Much concern has been expressed about the ways in which reports of sexual violence are being handled by Australian universities.

In one notorious case in 2015, James Cook University came under fire for promoting a staff member who had been charged with raping an Indigenous student and then continuing to employ him for three months after he had pleaded guilty and was awaiting sentencing.

A spokesperson for the university told The Conversation: “At the time he took on the new role, in early 2016, the university was unaware he had been charged with the offence.”

JCU has since commissioned an external, independent investigation to confirm the timeline of events and what actions were taken within the university.

In 2016, Channel 7’s Sunday Night program investigated reported rates of sexual assault and harassment at Australian universities through freedom of information (FOI) requests, showing that over the past five years, there have been 575 official complaints of sexual assault and harassment recorded (145 reports specifically on rape).

Yet out of 575 reports, only six of these resulted in the expulsion of the perpetrator from the university.

The inappropriate handling of these cases contributes to underreporting, regardless of whether the violence occurs on or off campus.

Few students formally report sexual assaults

In 2016, Sydney University found that only 1% of their students who had experienced a sexual or indecent assault ever made a formal report to their university.

The National Union of Students survey from 2015 likewise reported that just 6% of victims reported the incident to their universities, and less than 5% reported the incident to police.

These figures are perhaps not surprising since rape survivors are among the least likely of all crime victims to report to the police, with some studies revealing that between 15-20% of survivors end up making a formal complaint to police.

Universities advise on ‘how not to get raped’

The EROC Australia report also points to problematic advice, information and support given to sexual violence survivors who disclose to university staff.

These might include accusatory statements, inappropriate questioning about the details of the assault, minimisation, blame, telling the survivor what to do, and overstepping the boundaries. According to one survivor:

“The first person I told asked me how much I had been drinking. The second person I told said that I would be ruining his life. The third person I told said it wasn’t a university issue. The fourth person I told asked me why I had waited so long to tell anyone.”

There is also concern about the university safety tips that “often employ ‘stranger danger’ myths, focus heavily on alcohol consumption, and fail to address commonly-held, dangerous beliefs about gender”.

For example, universities advise students to “not give mixed messages” with eye contact, voice, posture and gestures. They are told to avoid getting intoxicated or to pay half of the bill on a date to reduce obligations.

Students are also advised to walk in well-lit areas, carry personal alarms and “rape whistles” and “be prepared to scream and shout if attacked”.

The problem is that these prevention messages are often directed at the victim and what she or he can do to avoid being raped, rather than the perpetrator.

The danger in this advice is that many survivors may be deterred from reporting since they may feel they are at fault, or that what happened to them doesn’t really count as “rape”, particularly if the perpetrator is a known person.

Is this a university responsibility?

Australian universities have a patchwork of policies and practices for responding to reports of sexual violence. According to EROC Australia:

“Australian universities’ policies and procedures regarding sexual assault and harassment are often overlapping, confusing, inconsistent, incomplete, or in some cases non-existent. This means that it is extremely difficult for students who have been sexually assaulted to identify where they can get help at the university, who they can report the assault to, and what formal complaint procedures are”.

The reporting policies and processes vary between different Australian universities.

Some universities require that all reports of rape and sexual assault are reported to police, which might be directly against the survivor’s wishes.

In other cases a survivor wants the incident to be reported to police, but has been discouraged either formally or informally to do so.

Some universities advise survivors to meet informally with the perpetrator.

On the University of Sydney’s website on Student Complaints Procedures, students are advised that before making a formal complaint they should seek to resolve the issue informally by approaching “the person you believe is responsible and tell[ing] them what the issue is; ask[ing] them to stop; or to behave differently”.

This advice is highly inappropriate in rape or sexual assault cases and can lead to further harms.

In all Australian universities, survivors have the option of going through an internal process that investigates an alleged breach of the institution’s disciplinary code or code of conduct, often through inviting the student to appear before a panel to give evidence.

An internal investigation cannot involve forensic evidence and a perpetrator cannot be deprived of his or her liberty. However, an alleged perpetrator can be reprimanded, suspended, expelled or dismissed from the university if the panel decides on the “balance of probabilities” that the act occurred.

If conducted appropriately, these internal procedures can ensure fairness to both the survivors and the alleged perpetrators.

While not all survivors will want to pursue this avenue, it should be made available as one of range of different options.

Universities can also implement interim measures to exclude an alleged perpetrator from university premises pending the outcome of a formal complaints process.

Overall, the EROC Australia report criticises the “inappropriate outcomes” and “lenient punishments” that universities impose on perpetrators in internal investigations.

FOI data reveal that punishments have variously involved: fines, community service, apology letters, or moving the perpetrator to a different residential hall. In other cases, the perpetrator received a formal warning or a “note on file”.

Promoting pro-active and supportive university environments

As educational centres, universities are well placed to address the problem of sexual violence.

Measures should focus on: awareness, support, education and prevention, and responses or remedies.

When students report that they have been a victim of a rape or sexual assault, it is important that these disclosures are received in a supportive and caring environment.

Training and support needs to be provided to staff members so that they give reassurance and information about the avenues available to survivors to empower them to make the right choices.

Emphasis needs to be placed on listening, and above all, protecting the confidentiality of survivors.

Universities have a duty of care to students and staff, regardless of where the rape or sexual assault took place, and regardless of whether the perpetrator was a student or staff member at the time of the assault.

What can universities do better?

Above all, universities need to take a proactive approach to tackling sexual violence on campus. Recommendations include:

• Clear and consistent institutional policies on how to respond to, and report on, disclosures of sexual violence, regardless of whether the incident occurred on campus and regardless of whether the perpetrator was a student or staff member at the university. These policies should be trauma-informed and survivor-centric.

• A designated person (or team) with special expertise on sexual violence and who can conduct internal investigations.

• Mandatory training for university counsellors in responding to disclosures of sexual assault; and training to help support staff and student leaders that is delivered by qualified expert services.

• Clear referral pathways, that includes knowledge of external local services and an array of different options for survivors.

• Transparent and publicly available data reporting.

• Removal of reporting/lodging times for internal misconduct processes.

• Greater communication to all parties about the processes and outcomes.

• Appropriate advice and information to survivors through a comprehensive and trauma-informed website.

• Primary prevention campaigns that: focus on consent and respectful relationships; raise awareness of the nature, scope and prevalence of sexual violence (both off and on campus); and promote proactive bystander intervention to challenge problematic behaviours and attitudes.

• Support of further research into sexual violence.

These strategies will contribute to lesser rates of offending, greater reporting of victims and more transparency for universities.

EROC Australia also recommends that national standards be created for best practice responses to sexual violence.

This is alongside the establishment of a national complaints mechanism where an individual can complain to a federal agency about inappropriate responses to rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment by their university.

•If you or someone you know is impacted by rape or sexual assault, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit http://bit.ly/2oLqRRZ. In an emergency, call 000.

• Correction: The original version of this story contained an inaccurate sentence about the promotion of a then James Cook University staff member charged with rape. This article was updated and corrected on March 2, 2017 with additional details including information about an external review into the case.