Blog Archives

Learnings from our journey: from creation to acquisition

Learnings from our journey: from creation to acquisition

Five years ago, we launched the High Meadows Graduate School of Teaching and Learning, a new institution focused on competency-based STEM teacher preparation.  Envisioned as both a graduate school and a design lab, High Meadows sought to develop, pilot, and launch innovations in education. Our goal was to create a proof of concept that could […] … learn more→

3 ways cryptocurrency is changing the way colleges do business with students and donors

3 ways cryptocurrency is changing the way colleges do business with students and donors

Until about 2020, universities used cryptocurrencies only to pay ransoms to criminals attacking their networks. A fast payment to criminals helped victim universities restore their networks quickly. With increasing public adoption of cryptocurrencies, especially among young consumers, universities are exploring them, too. As of early 2022, 20% of U.S. consumers had used cryptocurrencies. According to an April 2022 report, 28% of 13- […] … learn more→

Have your say in Australia’s university review

Have your say in Australia’s university review

The title says it all: Australia’s university system is under review. The review will lead to what is being called the “Universities Accord”. First, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page. Most universities in Australia are publicly funded by the federal government. That’s 36 public universities—plus four local private unis, and three international […] … learn more→

Discrimination and racism at university: an alarming finding

Discrimination and racism at university: an alarming finding

At the end of 2018, based on the observation of a low production of knowledge on discrimination in higher education and research, a team of researchers in social sciences initiated a vast victimization survey on this subject, entitled ACADISCRI, of which here we provide the first statistical results. The project aims to measure the experiences […] … learn more→

Student loan cancellation got blocked. Now what? 3 questions answered

Student loan cancellation got blocked. Now what? 3 questions answered

When the Biden administration announced in August 2022 that it was canceling up to $20,000 in student loan debt per borrower, it said the idea was to provide families with “breathing room as they prepare to start repaying loans after the economic crisis brought on by the pandemic.” But two federal courts recently blocked President Joe Biden’s […] … learn more→

Don’t cut them off: low-performing students benefit from continued access to loans

Don’t cut them off: low-performing students benefit from continued access to loans

Over the past decade, there has been a growing debate about the value of student loans and the long-term impact of debt for those entering the workforce – particularly for students who struggled to complete their studies. In the United States, where the average student loan is US$30,000 per borrower, the Biden administration recently announced […] … learn more→

With record numbers of students cheating, unis should revert to old school in-person exams

With record numbers of students cheating, unis should revert to old school in-person exams

Contract cheating – where commercial cheating services provide assignments for university students – has become a global problem. Australia is not immune. According to the latest data, record numbers of Australian students are paying someone else to do their assessments. This comes amid broader concerns about rising levels of cheating during COVID. Last week, the University of […] … learn more→

Retraining: those bac+5 who turn to crafts

Retraining: those bac+5 who turn to crafts

An interior designer turned baker, an ex-banker at the head of his cheese factory, or a marketing manager turned electrician… such professional trajectories, if they remain atypical, are less and less surprising today. On the one hand, professional retraining is normalizing: according to the third Center Inffo/CSA training and employment barometer , 21% of working people were preparing for […] … learn more→

Why I teach a course connecting Taylor Swift’s songs to the works of Shakespeare, Hitchcock and Plath

Why I teach a course connecting Taylor Swift’s songs to the works of Shakespeare, Hitchcock and Plath

What prompted the idea for the course? This class is part of a group of introductory English offerings that focus on basic methods of literary analysis and research. It fulfills different requirements for potential English majors and the general student population, so I am always looking for news ways to engage them. For a few […] … learn more→