Ever since China re-emerged on the global higher-education stage following the Cultural Revolution, it has had a close, sometimes symbiotic with the United States. American universities helped China rebuild its educational infrastructure, while talented Chinese students and scientists have filled U.S. classrooms and laboratories. For the past several decades, academics in each country have frequently regarded the other as key research and scholarly partners. But in recent years, the relationship between the two knowledge super-powers has become competitive and at times contentious. The speakers will look at how student mobility, research cooperation, and other forms of Sino-American academic collaboration have been complicated by a host of issues including domestic political pressures, geopolitics, economic imperatives, the safeguarding of intellectual property, and concerns about academic freedom.
Colleges sell themselves by the numbers—rankings, returns on investments, and top-ten lists—but these often mislead prospective students. What numbers should they really be paying attention to? Zachary Bleemer and co-authors’ new book Metrics That Matter explores popular metrics used by future and current college students, with chapters focusing on colleges’ return on investment, university rankings, average student debt, average wages by college major, and more. The authors draw on decades of scholarship from many academic fields to pair each metric with a concrete recommendation for alternative information, both qualitative and quantitative, that would be more useful and meaningful for students to consider.
Most markedly in Florida and Texas, but now in many other states across the country, legislation aims to restrict what can be taught in universities, what topics and issues can be the subject of research or campus programming, and what analyses of history and social conflict are permissible to discuss. In the face of this national attack on academic freedom and university autonomy, how might we better respond? How might university leadership, faculty, staff, and students organize and fight back against the multiple right-wing attacks on university curricula, programs and services?
How do higher education institutions in seven national and economic environments define and pursue excellence? This study looks at the disparate ways institutions define and enact their purposes, how they align institutional behaviors with their stated values and institutional goals, the practices they use to uphold their key principles, and the ways in which they seek to foster these values within these academic communities. These institutions are doing compelling work and offer important alternative concepts of excellence—ones that run counter to rankings schemes and world class university models. The variety of approaches by these institutions can be emulated by other institutions.
In their self-proclaimed “war on woke,” Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis and his supporters employed increasingly inflammatory rhetoric, “pushing back against the tactics of liberal elites." The Florida House and Senate passed legislation and the DeSantis administration took executive actions that further aimed to censor the teaching and learning of certain historical topics; potentially criminalize some discussions of race, gender, and sexuality; stigmatize, marginalize, and exclude transgender people; curb labor rights; restrict immigration; and stringently limit access to abortion. In light of these development, reflecting a national movement largely led by conservative Republicans, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) initiated a formal report by a special committee: Political Interference and Academic Freedom in Florida’s Public Higher Education System.
In a world where the workforce is changing and the attainment of a higher education credential is essential; the need to build connections, establish effective communication, and cultivate partnerships between employers and academia is critical. Are your student’s ready for the workforce, and how would you know? What skills are important to employers and do they mirror what institutions value as important skills? Are employers aware of different frameworks institutions are using to build curriculum and evaluate learning? This webinar will provide a brief background on learning and employability frameworks, the current use of the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) essential learning outcomes, share findings from focus groups with line managers supervising recent graduates, discuss instructional strategies to improve skills identified by the line managers as important but weak, and consider opportunities for collaboration between employers and academia.