News

June 28, 2016 - In an era of significant disinvestment in public higher education by state governments, many public universities are moving toward a “progressive tuition model” that attempts to invest approximately one-third of tuition income into institutional financial aid for lower-income and middle-class students. The objective is to mitigate the cost of tuition and keep college affordable. But is this model as currently formulated working? What levels of financial stress are students of all income groups experiencing? And are they changing their behaviors?

Ana Maria Carneiro, Higher Education Scholar from Brazil, to Discuss the Research University Advantage for Undergraduates at the University of Campinas (Unicamp)

BERKELEY, CA, June 3, 2016 – On 6/7, at Berkeley, Samuel Sponem, Visiting Scholar from HEC Montreal, will present a talk on his paper titled, Is Collegiality Eroded by Performance Metrics? In the past decades, universities worldwide have experienced an increasingly pervasive “audit culture”. The proliferation of university rankings, the extensive use of bibliometrics in the evaluation of research, and the definition of performance indicators by states and universities offer ample evidence of this movement of quantification in higher education.

BERKELEY, CA, May 16, 2016 - The Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) is delighted to announce that Michael Nacht has been appointed as Interim Director, effective May 16th. He will replace Carol Christ, former CSHE Director, who was named the University’s Interim Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost on May 1st.

BERKELEY, CA, May 9, 2016 – On 5/10, at Berkeley, Grace Taneri, Visiting Scholar from North Cyprus, will present a talk on how higher education reforms around the world and globalization efforts by higher education institutions (HEIs) have generated on-going debates about academic freedom in Asia and the Middle East and value protection in HEIs of the West (North America, Canada, and Western Europe). While some Western universities and colleges have been concerned about risks to their reputations should they engage in joint projects in these regions, many Western HEIs have launched globalization efforts, including new universities, liberal arts colleges, branch campuses, alliances, and research and teaching partnerships. Taneri’s studies in this area are part of her co-research, with the Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley, titled Globalization in Higher Education: Intentions, Conditions and Effects.

BERKELEY, CA, May 3, 2016 – Stephanie Beyer, Visiting Scholar at Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley, will present findings from her research on how U.S. university rankings shape faculty career trajectories and their academic perceptions in the disciplines of sociology and chemistry, on May 4th, at Berkeley. Rankings, which sociologist Val Burris has described as a “caste system”, have a long tradition in the U.S. higher education system, and are used by the most elite universities for recruiting faculty. Prestigious divisions not only shape the institution itself but also the visions of academics within different prestigious departments.

May 2, 2016 – A new CSHE analysis proposes eliminating the SAT in Berkeley admissions. Based on UC admissions data dating back over two decades, the analysis finds that SAT scores have become almost entirely redundant and add little to the large body of applicant data now employed in Berkeley’s holistic admissions process. After taking that information into account, SAT scores predict less than 2 percent of the variance in students’ first-year grades at Berkeley.

BERKELEY, CA, April 22, 2016 – Mary Willingham, co-author of the controversial new book, Cheated, which recounts the largest academic fraud scandal in the NCAA history at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, will give a talk on April 26th, at Berkeley.

BERKELEY, CA, April 14, 2016 – Laura T. Hamilton, author of a groundbreaking new book, Parenting to a Degree: How Family Matters for College and Beyond, will present a talk on April 18th, at Berkeley, on the effects of “helicopter” parenting on students and the universities they are attending.

Ami Zusman Will Discuss the Creation and Expansion of New Doctoral Degrees in Health Fields BERKELEY, CA, April 13, 2016 – In a growing number of fields, particularly in health areas, professionals now need a doctorate. For example, new U.S. audiologists and physical therapists, who until recently just needed master’s degrees, now must have doctorates to enter professional practice. As a result, doctoral enrollments in these areas have skyrocketed since 2000. On April 14th at Berkeley, Ami Zusman, Research Associate at the Center for Studies in Higher Education, will give a talk on who and what are driving these new degrees and how they compare to older doctoral degrees. Zusman will examine the outcomes and implications of these new doctorates for access to the professions, institutional missions and resources, and costs and benefits to clients and the public.

BERKELEY, CA, April 8, 2016 – Student evaluations of teaching (SET) are widely used in academic personnel decisions as a measure of teaching effectiveness. On April 11th at Berkeley, Philip B. Stark, will present findings from joint work, with graduate student Kellie Ottoboni and research fellow Anne Boring of OFCE-Sciences Po, that indicate student evaluations of teaching (SET) are biased against female instructors by an amount that is large and statistically significant. Gender biases can be large enough to cause more-effective instructors to get lower SET than less-effective instructors. Stark will argue that relying on SET in employment decisions can work against women’s career advancement in academia.

BERKELEY, CA, April 1, 2016 – No issue in American higher education is more contentious than that of race-based affirmative action. In light of the ongoing debate around the topic and recent Supreme Court rulings, some analysts suggest basing affirmative action policies on class. On April 5th, at Berkeley, Sigal Alon will present findings from her book, Race, Class, and Affirmative Action, in which she evaluates the ability of class-based affirmative action to promote social and economic mobility of disadvantaged populations at selective postsecondary institutions, as compared with a race-based policy. She uses the United States as a case study of race-based preferences, and Israel as a case study of class-based preferences. For each country she compares the model that has actually been implemented to a simulated scenario of the alternative policy type.

BERKELEY, CA, March 28, 2016 - As American higher education struggles to adapt to the downward spiral of public support in the wake of the Great Recession of 2008, the reaction has been a steady stream of proposals that argue for redesigning universities from the inside out. Economic models of university organization have been especially influential. On March 30 at Berkeley, Patricia Pelfrey, Senior Research Associate at UCB’s Center for Studies in Higher Education, will discuss the University of California’s unique governance principle, known as the one-university idea, and whether it remains viable in the landscape of 21st century higher education. Its premise is simple: that a large and decentralized system of ten campuses, differing in size, resources, aspirations, and stage of development, can nevertheless be governed as a single university.

Graduate students writing dissertations focusing on higher education are invited to apply for membership in a research seminar, co-sponsored by the Center for Studies in Higher Education and the Social Science MATRIX. The seminar will enable students to meet and work with colleagues in other disciplines and departments. Its goal is to provide the opportunity for participants to engage with work from a range of disciplines on the subject of higher education and thus understand contributions of different disciplinary tools, to have the opportunity to present their own dissertation work, to hear scholars of higher education from both on and off campus discuss their current research, and to learn about career opportunities in the field. The seminar will meet seven times a semester, for two hours at lunch. A workshop in the spring will be devoted specifically to career paths for people in the field.

BERKELEY, CA, February 3, 2016 – The Center for Studies in Higher Education, at the University of California at Berkeley, the Chancellor’s Office, and the Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) Consortium, are co-sponsoring a major symposium that explores the distinct advantages and challenges that research universities face in providing a high quality undergraduate education, on March 10th-11th, at Berkeley.

Jan 14, 2016 – It is a familiar if not fully explained paradigm. A World Class University (WCU) is supposed to perform highly influential research and retain a brand name that transcends national borders. Perhaps, most importantly, the particular institution needs to sit in the upper echelons of one or more world rankings generated each year by nonprofit and commercial enterprises. In his new book, The New Flagship University: Changing the Paradigm from Global Ranking to National Relevancy (Palgrave Macmillan 2016), CSHE senior research fellow John Aubrey Douglass argues that this is a narrow and detrimental window for the understanding the value, breadth of activities, and societal impact of the best and most influential universities.

BERKELEY, CA, December 21, 2015–The Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley, has launched a new publication series, titled Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education Studies and Proceedings, on California Digital Library’s eScholarship component. The first paper in the series presents findings from research, conducted by James A. Hyatt, that addresses growing concerns about the long-term viability of university retirement programs. The study, titled Pension Reform in Public Higher Education funded in part by a grant from Fidelity Investments, examines changes to retirement and post-retirement benefit programs around the country. James A. Hyatt is the Associate Director and a senior research associate and principal investigator at the Center for Studies in Higher Education.

BERKELEY, CA, December 4, 2015 – Peter F. Biehl, anthropology professor at the University of Buffalo, will present a talk on strategies for public research universities to better integrate and engage international students into campus life, on Dec. 9th at Berkeley. The number of international students at American universities has risen by 73 percent in the past 10 years. The benefits of having more international students on American campuses are clear: apart from contributing billions of dollars to the US economy, international students bring a diverse set of experiences to the American campus and community. This allows for the sort of unique environment where students from diverse backgrounds can exchange ideas on and off campus. But the question remains whether the American public research universities are prepared for including and engaging with such large numbers of international students, especially in STEM and professional schools.

BERKELEY, CA, Nov. 16, 2015 – Saul Geiser, research associate at Center for Studies in Higher Education, will present surprising findings from his new study, which indicate that race is now the most influential factor of all the socioeconomic background factors that account for variation in SAT scores, on Nov. 17th at Berkeley. The study, “The Growing Correlation Between Race and SAT Scores: New Findings from California” is based on a sample of over 1.1 million California residents who applied for admission to UC between 1994 and 2011. The author, Saul Geiser, is former director of research for admission and outreach at UC’s Office of the President. The study uses a statistical method known as regression analysis to examine the relative influence of different socioeconomic back ground factors on SAT scores, after controlling for other factors.