News

In its modern American form, the meritocratic idea owes much to James B. Conant, the Harvard president who, beginning in the 1940s, worked to eliminate the advantages of inherited status in Harvard undergraduate admissions. He began recruiting nationally and selecting for accomplishments rather than lineage, relying heavily on standardized tests. Harvard’s practices gradually spread throughout the Ivy League and beyond. Meritocracy was a revolutionary idea at the time it was introduced, and it worked as intended — at least for a while.

As if remote learning, quarantines and sick family members were not enough, hundreds of thousands of California’s most financially vulnerable college students now face an additional challenge: surprise debts owed to their community colleges and public universities.

When growing numbers of low-income students left college in the middle of the school year during the pandemic, their financial aid awards became “institutional debts” owed and due for payment to their schools effective immediately.

The invasion and brutal attack by Russian forces on Ukraine has brought tremendous suffering to millions of Ukrainians, including those in the higher education sector. Dozens of universities have been bombed and hundreds of thousands of students and academics have fled their homes.

Research and teaching have been disrupted almost everywhere across Ukraine. The global academic community stands in solidarity with Ukrainian scholars and is working together on initiatives to protect and support them.

Abstract

In the annals of American history, Benedict Arnold has held the title of the most infamous traitor. But he is about to be eclipsed by a more devious and consequential seditionist, Donald (“Benedict”) Trump. Such will be the judgment of historians and hopefully a mindful public, if not the current boosters of his autocratic desires.

Arnold served as an extremely successful military officer in the American Continental Army before switching sides to the British in a gambit to land on the winning side and to gain position and authority. He bet on the wrong horse.

The UC Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education, or CSHE, published a study Dec. 6 showing that major restriction policies cause racial inequity and resource inefficiency.

The study analyzed major restriction policies at the 25 top public universities in the United States, according to Zachary Bleemer, co-author of the study and research associate at CSHE. The study found that 75% of the five most lucrative majors were restricted, and none or less than 10% of major restrictions were imposed at private and for-profit universities.

CSHE NEWS RELEASE
Center for Studies in Higher Education
University of California, Berkeley

In recent weeks, elite universities announced some of their largest-ever endowment investment returns. In the Ivy League, MIT led with a 56 percent annual return, growing its endowment from $18 billion to $27 billion. Brown University’s returns also topped 50 percent, and Dartmouth, Cornell, University of Pennsylvania and Yale University were all above 40 percent.

To varying degrees, universities are feeling the brunt of the rise in neo-nationalist movements and governments, usually led by powerful political demagogues.

Since the late 1970s, when China started re-opening to the West, Chinese universities have made important contributions to the country’s economic development through global engagement: they have increased research productivity, risen in the world rankings and served as the headwaters for downstream commercial development.

In order to achieve these goals, the Chinese state has given universities substantial autonomy when it comes to global engagement and transnational research collaboration.

From party faithful imposed as leaders to scholars sent into ‘civilian death’, institutions face a range of grave threats, argues editor of new collection. Registration required.

Mustafa Özben, an academic, was walking towards his car in Ankara, the Turkish capital, in broad daylight when he was seized and forced into a black transporter van.

“They pulled me out of the van and stripped my clothes off,” the academic told judges of the Turkey Tribunal, a civil society-led symbolic international tribunal established to adjudicate recent human rights violations in Turkey, on Monday.

Özben was locked up in a small cell with just enough light for the camera inside the room to operate.

In assessing the current and future role of universities in the nation-states in which they are chartered and largely funded, it is useful to ask: When are universities societal leaders, and when are they followers – reinforcing the existing political order?

Neo-nationalism is on the rise–a term that describes the emergence, and in some cases revival, of extreme right-wing movements in key areas of the world, often characterized by anti-immigrant and xenophobic rhetoric; economic protectionism; constraints on civil liberties; attacks on critics, including journalists and academics; denial of science related to climate change, the environment, and even vaccines; and the emergence and empowerment of demagogues and autocrats.

In many parts of the world, neo-nationalism is on the rise – a term that describes the emergence, and in some cases revival, of extreme right-wing movements in key areas of the world, often characterised by anti-immigrant and xenophobic rhetoric; economic protectionism; constraints on civil liberties; attacks on critics, including journalists and academics; denial of science related to climate change and the environment; and the emergence and empowerment of demagogues and autocrats.