The rate at which Latino high school graduates enrolled in college reached a record high in 2012, and it exceeded that of Whites for the first time, a new Pew Research Center analysis has revealed. 

…The Pew Hispanic Center reports that 69 percent of Latino high school graduates in the class of 2012 enrolled in college compared to 67 percent of Whites, a jump from 49 percent of Latinos graduating in 2000.

My Coursera course, “The Modern and the Postmodern,” might have been labeled “course least likely to become a MOOC.” In many ways, it is an old-fashioned “great books” course, although I prefer to call it a “good-enough books” course, and in the 20 years I’ve been teaching it, it has always relied heavily on student interaction in the classroom….I was surprised that almost 30,000 people enrolled in the course, but I also found the number intimidating. I was used to facing a room full of eager faces, and we usually came to enjoy one another’s company as we studied together.

Secretary Duncan has said that we cannot rest until all schools are schools we would be proud to send our own children.  Unfortunately, for too many schools across our country, this imperative is not yet a reality.

However, in schools like Lee High School in Houston, TX, things are beginning to change dramatically.  As you will see in this video about the improvement story at Lee, too many parents were “scared” to send their children to school.  Too many students said things like, “I never thought I would actually go to college.”

In the past decade, the rate of growth in online enrollments has been “extremely robust,” but holding steady, according to the report, Changing the Course: Ten Years of Tracking Online Education in the United States. When the Babson Survey Research Group of Babson College, a private institution in Massachusetts, and the College Board released the report in January, close to 70 percent of administrators surveyed said that online education was critical to the future of their institution. In 2002, that number was less than half.

By Guest Writer

The following is a guest post by Madeleine F. Green, a senior fellow at Nafsa: the Association of International Educators and a senior program consultant at the Teagle Foundation.

For many, if not most, institutions, “success” in internationalization is a bit of a numbers game. It is defined by the number of students going abroad, the number of international students and the amount of revenue they generate, and the number of campuses abroad or courses offered with an international focus.

But what do these numbers mean for student learning? Although many colleges and universities cite producing “global citizens” as a goal, few have a clear set of learning outcomes associated with this label, a map of the learning experiences that will produce this learning, or an assessment plan in place to determine what students are actually learning and what that means for curricular improvement. Clearly, institutional performance and the student-learning perspectives can be related to each other, but one cannot assume causality in either direction. As anyone who has tried to assess student learning knows, a given set of institutional activities or the participation rates in various courses or programs does not tell you anything about what knowledge students are obtaining.

By Caralee Adams on March 6, 2013 10:27 AM

Two wealthy new Saudi research institutions focused on the kingdom’s energy future are on a hiring spree in the United States, luring away the president of Cal Tech and signing up advisors that include two influential energy market analysts, the CEO of one of Washington’s biggest think tanks and even MIT professor Ernest Moniz, President Obama’s nominee for energy secretary.

AMIDEAST Education Abroad Programs

AMIDEAST’s Education Abroad summer and semester programs, which offer undergraduates credit for Arabic language study and coursework in area studies, attracted 26 students for its intensive Arabic program this summer in Morocco, while applications for its Arabic program in Jordan had to be cut off after reaching the maximum capacity of 70 accepted students.  Enrollments in programs in both Morocco and Jordan are strong as the fall semester gets underway.  

The uptick in interest is additionally evident in Egypt, where 14 American undergraduate students returned for spring semester, marking a resumption of the program that was suspended and its students evacuated from Cairo within days of the January 25th Revolution. And the interest continues. An Arabic language and service learning program was offered this summer, and enrollment in fall is exceeding the spring term.
That’s not the only good news. AMIDEAST was pleased to reach an agreement in principle with the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) in May. Under it, students from ACM colleges will be eligible for a new joint program planned for Jordan beginning in fall 2013.

Customized Programs

Besides AMIDEAST Education Abroad programs, which are offered on an open-enrollment basis, AMIDEAST has for many years designed and implemented customized programs in coordination with a variety of sponsoring institutions. In Morocco alone, AMIDEAST/Rabat offered a dozen such programs this summer, enrolling some 160 students in all.  Arabic language training was popular, accounting for 35 students in the U.S. Department of State-funded Critical Language Scholarships Program, and some 75 others from a variety of institutions including the Defense Language Institute, Marquette University, and the Universities of Iowa and Virginia. 

AMIDEAST/Rabat also worked with several institutions to customize programs with a specific academic focus. This year it hosted students in a public health course from the University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee, as well as students from the Lauder Institute of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania seeking to strengthen their Arabic and French proficiency and understanding of local business conditions in support of the dual focus of their joint MBA/master’s degree programs in area studies. It was also pleased to work with Penn State’s Engineering Leadership Development Program for the sixth consecutive year in support of a unique cross-cultural collaborative program focused on development of engineering solutions that meet local needs.

In addition to programs for college students, AMIDEAST helped implement programs in Oman, Morocco, and Jordan that expanded the horizons of nearly 75 high school students through cultural immersion, homestays, language study, and opportunities to explore special interests such as traditional Islamic arts and conflict resolution. They included 35 American teens who spent six weeks studying intensive Arabic (20 in Morocco and 15 in Oman) on scholarships awarded through the U.S. Department of State-funded National Security Language Initiative for Youth.

“Interest in studying Arabic continues to grow by leaps and bounds, as does a deeper interest in understanding Arab society and culture.  The trend line began before 9/11 and has received another boost from the Arab Spring,” says Jerry Bookin-Weiner, AMIDEAST’s Director of Education Abroad.  “We are delighted that so many students are able to have deep and meaningful experiences through our programs.”

This month the University of Wisconsin’s Board of Regents heard from Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council of Education, who spoke about “Higher Education at the Crossroads: Multiple Challenges, Innovation and Learning.” Then she gave a similar talk, which I moderated, at the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education, this time to faculty, staff, and students.

I’m grateful to her for joining us, and I’d like to show her the respect of fully engaging with her comments.  Let’s begin with Broad’s assessment of higher education.