News: Visa Changes for Anyone Working in Critical Industries

by Insider Guides: https://insiderguides.com.au/visa-changes-critical-industries/

Image: Insider Guides

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Australian Government has introduced a new visa – the Temporary

Activity (subclass 408) visa – that is available to international students in Australia. 

This is a temporary visa that allows you to stay in Australia if you are employed in a ‘critical industry sector’, including health care and food processing. There is no visa application charge for Subclass 408 (although you may need to pay other costs for requirements such as health checks and police certificates) and the visa allows approved applicants to stay in Australia for up to 12 months. 

What can I do on the Subclass 408 visa?

With the Temporary Activity visa, you can:

• Remain in Australia, if you have no other visa options (for example, if your studies have finished during this time) and are unable to depart Australia due to COVID-19 travel restrictions
• Remain in Australia to continue your work in critical sectors. These include agriculture, food processing, health care, aged care, disability care and child care during the COVID-19 pandemic. Medical professionals making employment arrangements in the health care sector are also able to apply for this visa.

This visa is not open to visitors to Australia who are unable to support themselves during this time – these people must make arrangements to return home.

Who can apply?

There are certain requirements and conditions that must be met for people applying for the Subclass 408 visa. These include:

• Having a current visa that expires in 28 days or less or your last substantive temporary visa expired less than 28 days ago,
• Either having evidence from your employer that you have ongoing work in a critical sector and that an Australian Citizen or Permanent Resident cannot fill the position, or demonstrating you can’t meet the requirements of any other visa,
• Maintaining adequate health insurance during your stay in Australia.

You can find the full list of requirements here.

Applicants can also include family members in the application.

Please note, this visa is only available to people currently in Australia.

For more information and to apply for this visa, visit the Department of Home Affairs website.

What Will Higher Education Look Like 5, 10 or 20 Years from Now?

by Donna Fuscaldo, Good Call: https://www.goodcall.com/education/future-of-higher-education/

Free college, online-driven education and aligning skills with in-demand jobs are just some of the ways college may change in the future.

After all, with student loan debt in the trillions, college graduates unprepared for entry-level positions and many people dropping out before earning a degree, it’s become clear that something has to be done to address higher education’s problems.

That’s not to say change isn’t already happening. Approaches to tackling the outsized student debt and better preparing students for the rigors of the real world are underway. But what will emerge from the fruits of these labors depends on who you talk to.

With that in mind, GoodCall spoke with experts across the higher education landscape to get a sense of what college will look like in five, ten and twenty years. In some cases, they agreed,  while at other times their visions were very different. But one thing is for sure - twenty years from now, higher education won’t going to look the same as it does today.

More Focus on ROI

Students and families will focus more on college return on investment, affordability and student loan debt

Change takes time. And for higher education, there won’t be a complete revolution in five years. However, there should be a lot of progress, whether it’s in how students evaluate schools or how the student debt crisis is handled. Take shopping for college, for starters. During the next five years, students and families are expected to become more savvy shoppers, weighing attributes that historically haven’t been considered when deciding on what school to attend or what kinds of degrees to pursue.

“For 300-plus years, we evaluated the quality by the square footage of the library or what exclusivity it has,” says Carol D’Amico, executive vice president of National Engagement and Philanthropy with USA Funds, the non-profit focused on increasing access to higher education. “The quality of the consumer experience has not been part of the equation.”

Over the next five years, D’Amico sees a shift happening, where potential students will weigh college return on investment, including the outcomes of the past students, job prospects upon graduation and the overall college experience more seriously than whether a school has a state-of-the-art gym. Similar to how people get real-person reviews of restaurants, doctors and other services, the same diligence will be applied to shopping for college.

Becoming more discerning shoppers is also expected to help with the student loan debt crisis. After all, students will know upfront that spending $100,000 for a particular degree may not be worthwhile based on the outcomes of the students before them.

During this election season, much has been discussed about the cost of a college education and the more than $1.3 trillion in student loan debt. Presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders extolled the benefits of free college, while politicians have been putting forth bills to help students with their mounting debt. That progress is only going to continue during the next five years, although it remains to be seen what dent it will make in the overall problem (or whether free college will become a reality.

“We’ve seen real improvement on college affordability in the last five years,” says Natalia Abrams, executive director at StudentDebtCrisis.org, the non-profit focused on changing the way we pay for college. “I’m hopeful that we will have free college and completely debt-free college, and we will see a strengthening of consumer protections on the loan servicers’ side and a streamlining of repayment programs.” Abrams also expects more of a crackdown on the cost of college during the next five years in which state funding will be tied to certain limits on what schools can charge for tuition.

Blending the Traditional and the Technological

Internet will play bigger role in learning

While the debate rages on about the need for a traditional college degree, progress will continue to be made in marrying a traditional college education with online classes. The Internet is increasingly becoming a tool for colleges and universities around the country who see the value it can bring.

“About 50 percent of all private colleges have some kind of online program,” says David L. Warren, president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. “A vast majority are blended courses that utilize online education opportunities, but the brick and mortar continues to be there.”

According to Warren, while the Internet will increasingly play a larger role in how college students learn, schools will maintain a tight connection between the online world and their physical campuses and communities. What’s more, over time Warren sees an increase in one-on-one learning with faculty members and the flexibility of how the courses are offered.

Still, that doesn’t mean the blending of these two mediums will be easy sailing. According to Avi Flombaum, dean of Flatiron School, the New York-based coding school, the challenge will be in making sure schools are creating programs that truly reflect how people learn. “Learning is social and knowledge is almost always transferred from person to person,” says Flombaum.

“In the future, the idea of community should be built into every digital learning experience - students across the world supporting each other, content improving the more people use it. And then, that should seamlessly transition into the offline experience in the form of co-learning, similar to today’s co-working spaces, where we know people thrive,” Flombaum says.

But online learning won’t be the only driver of change to higher education. Decreased funding on the part of states could create more debt for low-income students attending public 4-year schools. This, in turn, could drive students to look for cheaper alternatives. One that may emerge as a big player, says Dr. Katherine Bihr, Vice President of Programs & Education at the Tiger Woods Foundation, is community colleges, which will increasingly come up with models that include offering bachelor’s degrees.

What’s more, as families look to curb the cost of a college degree, high school can become more important in fighting student debt. “I can envision a movement towards dual enrollment between secondary school and college, where students can take college courses receiving credit satisfying high school graduation requirements and eliminating the need to take general education courses,” says Bihr.

Greater Accountability

Schools will be more accountable to students and graduates

For decades, colleges and universities have focused on churning out graduates that are well-rounded individuals. But increasingly they are dropping the ball when it comes to giving employers graduates with the skills needed to succeed. That has prompted employers to spend money training their new hires – or looking outside the pool of college graduates for qualified workers.

As a result, in the next few years, experts expect colleges and universities to be more accountable to what they are teaching their students. There will be greater collaboration with corporations to ensure students are gaining the correct skills for the in-demand jobs. There will always be a time and place to analyze Thoreau, but a lot of focus will also be placed on communications and technical skills.

“Employers are finally signaling that what they are getting is just not good enough,” says D’Amico of USA Funds. “Only about 11 percent of employers think that higher education is doing a good job.” According to D’Amico, there are an increasing number of startups that are emerging to close the gap between what employers say they want from graduates and what they are getting from the experience.

Whether or not in twenty years’ time we get to the point where college is free or debt-free is still up for debate. But it is clear that if we do nothing, tough times are ahead - not only for college students but the nation at large.

“If things proceed according to the status quo, we are likely to see a path that we’ve seen in the past almost fifteen years,” says Robbie Hiltonsmith, senior policy analyst at think tank Demos.  “The cost of tuition goes up even more, and we will likely see increasing amounts of student debt, which will be a damper on their financial future. We pretend that certain paths are an inevitable result of economic forces beyond our control, but in reality through policy, we have a say in what the future can look like.”

Expert Commentary

We spoke to 8 experts from various parts of the higher education world, and compiled their thoughts on the future of higher education in this report.

Donna Fuscaldo

Donna Fuscaldo is a freelance journalist hailing out of Long Island, New York. She has also written for Bankrate.com, Glassdoor.com, SigFig.com, FoxBusiness.com, Business Insider, Dow Jones Newswires and the Wall Street Journal.

Egyptian Academic: "The Egyptian Regime's Charges Against Me are Baseless and Politically Motivated"

Emad Shahin, American University in Cairo (Moawad)

by Emad Shahin, American University in Cairo

Egyptian academics and students are now in the front line of the political struggle gripping a country currently run by a military-backed government.

Emad Shahin, a widely respected professor of public policy at the American University of Cairo and contributor to The Conversation, has been told he faces espionage charges. 

Here, in a letter published with his permission, he vehemently refutes the claims against him.

It was with severe shock that I received news that I have been named in a case known as the “Grand Espionage,” which also included former president Mohamed Morsi and senior leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. These claims are baseless and politically motivated.

The indictment listed far-fetched charges that my friends and associates would regard not merely as improbable, but as beyond preposterous.

The charges include: espionage, leading an illegal organisation, providing a banned organisation with information and financial support, calling for the suspension of the constitution, preventing state institutions and authorities from performing their functions, harming national unity and social harmony, and causing to change the government by force.

I categorically and emphatically deny all the charges, and I challenge the State Security Prosecutor to present real evidence to substantiate these fabricated charges.

I am an academic and have been independent throughout my life. I am an advocate for democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and a fervent supporter of the main objectives of the January 25 Revolution in Egypt, namely freedom, dignity, and social justice.

For the record, I definitively state that I have never been a member of the Society of the Muslim Brothers at any point in my life, and I have never provided it with any financial or material support as alleged in the so-called indictment.

Furthermore, the indictment stated that I was “at large”. This could not have been farther from the truth, as I have never been subpoenaed by any prosecutor even though I have been living in Egypt since 2011.

I have openly traveled abroad many times during this period to participate in conferences and attend academic events without ever being stopped or prohibited from leaving or entering the country, especially over the past few months.

My workplace, the American University in Cairo, is well known to the authorities.

I have never left or changed my place of residence, which is also well known to the government, and I have never been banned from travel or placed on a watch list as I left and entered the country several times during the past month.

I appeared on television interviews as an analyst and a commentator to discuss the delicate political situation in Egypt and have always maintained a public presence.

I am neither at large nor was I unwilling to appear before any interrogator had I received a formal subpoena and guarantees for fair proceedings, due-process of law, and a fair trial.

Though I have always been a fervent critic of authoritarian rule in Egypt, I have always expressed strong support for peaceful protests to restore democracy and express popular opposition against government repression.

Needless to say I am a well-known academic and intellectual with a long record of teaching and scholarly achievements.

I received my PhD from the Johns Hopkins University (SAIS) and have been a faculty member at prominent universities in the US, Egypt, and the Middle East, including the American University in Cairo, Harvard, Georgetown, Notre Dame, George Washington, and Boston Universities.

I have produced major scholarly works including being the editor-in-chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Politics.

I have been critical of the course of political events in Egypt since last summer and can only conclude that such criticism - entirely restricted to word and utterly unconnected to any organised group, faction, or party - is my true offense.

Like many fellow Egyptians, I am supportive of peaceful mobilisation in defence of democracy, freedom, equal rights, and inclusion.

I will continue to advocate such values, exercising a right to protest that is enshrined in Egyptian law and, in recent years, deeply ingrained in Egyptian practice.

Emad Shahin does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.


This article was originally published at The Conversation. Read the original article.

Common Core Failure

by Best Education Degrees: http://www.besteducationdegrees.com/common-core-failure/


Source: BestEducationDegrees.com

Are Genes REALLY the Reason More Poor Kids do Badly at School?

Image from www.shutterstock.com

by Catherine Scott, University of Melbourne

A news report recently informed readers that the reason children from poorer backgrounds struggle is due to genetic “inherited abilities”.

According to the article, a new Productivity Commission report had ranked genetics ahead of other factors when explaining variations in school achievement and life chances.

But the news article didn’t get it quite right; it was a simple interpretation that overestimated the influences of genetics on human intelligence.

But when it comes to putting too much stock in “nature over nurture” and human intelligence, this is really nothing new.

Born or made?

The Productivity Commission report looked at the origins of “deep and persistent disadvantage”. The aim was to better understand (and rectify) some citizens’ incapacity to “do well” in contemporary Australia.

The report cited various social and familial reasons behind disadvantage that make it more likely that children from poor families will not perform well in school, are more likely to drop out and less likely to go on to further education or training.

It also discussed possible genetic differences between social classes as causative of disadvantage. In other words, the report included class-based inherited differences in intelligence as being at least a partial explanation of why some do better in school and in life than others.

But can we really blame genes, even in part, for “deep and persistent” disadvantage?

Measuring intelligence as an occupation began in France in the early years of the 20th century. The development of mass schooling raised many issues one of which was the learning difficulties experienced by a minority of children.

French psychologist Alfred Binet was commissioned to develop a test that would help identify children who were unable to thrive in ordinary classrooms but needed special educational assistance.

The Binet-Simon Intelligence Test did this very well and set the mould for intelligence tests that followed, including establishing the convention that “IQ” has an average of 100.

Significantly, Binet himself regarded his test as measuring current performance only and certainly not future attainment or “potential” of any sort.

Despite Binet’s beliefs about the malleability of intelligence when intelligence testing was taken up by psychologists in the US, attitudes to cognitive ability rapidly changed. Intelligence came to be seen as innate, genetically based and immutable.

Tests were used to “prove” the inferiority of African Americans and non-Anglo immigrants (including the Irish) to the US. Advocates of “racial inferiority” still vehemently defend a view of intelligence as genetically caused and immutable.

Moving intelligence

The idea that an IQ score represents a measure of an unchanging human characteristic has been subjected to testing - and falsification - by a gigantic natural experiment.

The enthusiasm for testing intelligence has resulted in the amassing of vast quantities of data on the intellectual characteristics of whole populations, stretching across now several decades.

Rather than intelligence remaining static over the time that it has been measured the average intelligence of populations in a range of countries has gone steadily up, at the rate, in the US, of 0.3 points per year, resulting in a gain of 30 points since trends have been tracked.

Academic James Flynn has studied the phenomenon and it is named after him: The Flynn Effect. These astonishing gains have even been found on intelligence tests that are supposedly free of the effects of experience and “pure” measures of innate ability, such as the Raven’s progressive matrices test.

Also, the gains have occurred across all segments of the “intelligence” range, so that those who scored at the low end have improved as much as those from the middle and the top.

The steady increase in the average result on intelligence tests has meant that these have to be regularly “re-normed” to keep the average at 100.

If earlier norms are used the results can be extraordinary: for example, if the current population was tested using norms from the 1950s, 75% would be classified as gifted.

The news is also good for group differences. While disadvantaged groups - including African Americans - do indeed score lower on average on intelligence tests than advantaged groups, their average score not only been increasing it has done so more quickly than the white average score.

This has meant that the gap between white Americans and African Americans has been shrinking. If the difference is genetically based then this would not happen. The time span involved is simply too brief to allow for major changes in genetic endowment.

Blaming the victim

There now exists a great deal of evidence that intellectual performance is highly influenced by the environment, including the family learning environment. The compulsion to include unsupported speculation about class differences in genetic endowment explaining disadvantage is lamentable.

It is likely to not only incense those from groups stigmatised as “inferior” but also to license “blaming the victim” when children from disadvantaged groups fail to achieve well at school.

Catherine Scott does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.


This article was originally published at The Conversation. Read the original article.

Raising Capital: The Problem of Philanthropy and Funding in Australian Universities

by Timothy Devinney, University of Technology, Sydney

In the last few weeks, we have seen a number of universities begin to push for extra funding from Australian philanthropists.

While this move to broaden the revenue base of universities is welcome, to be successful in changing their funding mix, universities will need to become both more transparent and accountable to those investing in their institutions.

University capital raising is not philanthropy: it is a way for individuals to co-invest in an asset that is valuable to both themselves and society. This is where Australian universities are missing the boat.

Looking overseas

If we compare the way Australian universities raise funds to those in the United States, we see a profound and fundamental difference. Of course, Australia is not the US but increasingly our universities are beginning to follow the US model - either in full or in a modified form.

In the US, individuals who come to the university are bound to the university for life. Their time at the university is not only time spent integrating into a community but also one in which there is a significant bonding between students and others at the institution.

The institution views you not as a consumer of a product but as someone in which the institution has co-invested.

Indeed, it was telling when entrepreneur David Booth gave US$300 million to the Chicago’s Graduate School of Business - it was not a “gift”, according to Booth, but a return on Chicago’s investment in him. The alumni networks and other activities work to imbue this later in one’s life.

In Australia there is no such co-investment. For the most part the university treats the student as a purchaser of a product for which a service is delivered and once that service is delivered the transaction is effectively at an end. This spills over into all aspects of what the university does.

In the US system, most universities operate on a model known as “every tub on its own bottom” - this means the faculty keeps the revenues it generates minus a tax paid to the university on its program revenues (at Chicago this tax is approximately 10% of revenues). If the faculty earns a profit, it gets to retain the earnings in its capital account.

In the Australian system the allocation of faculty budgets is nebulous. In the case of business schools, most faculties are given a budget that is approximately 50% of the revenues they generate (a 50% tax rate). If the faculty manages to underspend its budget, the excess is returned to the central administration.

The perverse incentives this creates are clear. In the US deans are under very strong pressure to generate external funds and to facilitate relationships with alumni and the community.

In the Australian system, the deans would be foolish to raise funds since anything raised over and above what the university chooses to give them will simply disappear.

Foolish gifts

In fact, you would need to be a fool to actually give money to an Australian university unless you knew exactly how that money was going to be used. This is why the vast majority of the funds raised by Australian universities have been for building projects.

In the US case, the majority of capital funds raised go to endowed professorships and student scholarships rather than building projects. Suppose that I am one of 10,000 alumni being asked to invest in my alma mater. How do I know what the university did with my investment?

In the US it is quite clear as each faculty publishes an annual report outlining who gave money and detail on the finances of each division of the university.

In the Australian case, very little if any information is provided as to the funding of the individual faculties. In the case of the business schools, we know that the universities in Australia take on the order of A$1 billion per year from these faculties to cross-subsidise other activities.

So why would I bother to give the university my money when they are already taking millions of dollars from the faculty I want to support? The implication of this should be clear.

More transparency needed

Universities also need to change their governance structures to give investors a say in the management of the university. University councils are mixtures of political appointees and internally elected representatives that have little power to counter the university administrative structure.

You only need to look at the mixture of your local university council and compare it to the Board of Trustees at the University of Chicago (this group represents over US$1 billion of investment in the university, with more than 50% of the trustees being alumni).

In most American institutions, all alumni receive a report on how funds are used. The Stanford report is even called Report to Investors.

My point is that there is a naive belief associated with external capital raising by universities that does not take into account that such an activity is only one small part of a larger open system of co-investment by the university, its faculty and staff, students, alumni, and interested external partners.

To be effective Australian universities will need to move from a transactional model of education to one of life-long relationships that require co-investment and engage the individual as an integral part of the university’s existence.

This will require them to be open and transparent and give up administrative power to investors while also requiring that governments do the same.

Timothy Devinney receives funding from the Australian Research Council.


This article was originally published at The Conversation. Read the original article. 

Students Tackle Poverty in NZ

by Ciara Pratt, Stuff.co.nz: http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/western-leader/8863688/Students-tackle-poverty-in-NZ

Massey High School students combatting poverty in New Zealand

Students from Massey High School plan to combat extreme poverty in New Zealand one step at a time. A group of four year 13 students have entered the Social Enterprise Competition where they will have one month to contribute ideas to address poverty throughout the country.

The entrepreneurial competition gets groups of four students from years 11, 12 and 13 to identify a social issue relating to the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals. With the help of a mentor they then have to come up with a practical solution to the social issue.

The Massey team entered the competition last year and made it to the Auckland finals with its plan to provide more education options to primary children in Afghanistan. This year the team is focusing efforts a bit closer to home.

Shirin Zakeri says she wants to encourage more young people to get involved in helping the needy in their own backyard. "If a person has the potential and opportunity to be part of something like this they should do it. We can make something happen and change someone's life."

Regional winners will go on to the Social Enterprise Competition National Finals Conference where they can win up to $1500 to action their idea.

After seeing poverty issues discussed in the media and by the Government, Jemma Mounter says she decided she wanted to be part of the process to fix poverty."I want to be able to help someone other than myself. Working on these issues really opens your eyes to what is happening in our country."

Social Enterprise Competition national project manager Simran Poonia says the event engages students with world issues and is a great way to develop their potential.

"At P3 Foundation we believe young people can come up with amazing ideas for addressing social issues both at home and internationally. The Social Enterprise Competition gives them a chance to actually make the world a better place."

To register participants or for more information, visit p3foundation.org. Registrations close July 3.

© Fairfax NZ News

BOOK REVIEW: "Raising the Stakes": Unis Up Against the Odds on a Heavy Track

University of Queensland, Brisbane (Wikipedia)

by John Harrison, Online Opinion: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=14945&page=0

When Peter Coaldrake was deputy vice-chancellor at Queensland University of Technology he visited every school once or twice a year to meet with staff.

He would come in, talk briefly to 10 minutes about "how the joint was going", and then say: "I'm here to take your questions on anything except parking".

In the real world, where I was employed before coming to higher education over a decade ago, we called that "management by walking around".

Coaldrake has also been one of the key drivers of QUT's creative industries precinct in the inner-city Brisbane suburb of Kelvin Grove.

While the jury may still be out on 'creative industries', and there are those who regard it as an ideology, rather than a sound academic platform for post-disciplinarity, Peter Coaldrake deserves full credit for being a risk taking innovator, and modelling the behaviour we all say is needed in academic leadership.

So it is encouraging to see Coaldrake as an Australian vice-chancellor, not bowed down by random budget cuts, brawls with staff, and battling increasingly intrusive bureaucracies, and producing a book length reflection on the state of universities in Australia, co-authoring with his long time academic sidekick Lawrence Stedman.

The book, published by UQP and launched this week is called Raising the Stakes.

The key to solving the many and varied problems within our universities according to Coaldrake and Steadman lies within the institutions themselves. As it has always been for much of the seven centuries universities have existed. 

 

Arguably, it was only with the advent of what is called the "new public sector management" that bureaucrats and bureaucracies, and more importantly their political masters, began to exert influence on universities.

Take, for example, the recent argument in The Australian (23 April) newspaper that four science ministers in the last 16 months is stultifying scientific research in this country.

Absolute rubbish, of course, from an organ of the press that holds academics and the Academy in great esteem, and is basically clueless about what really happens in universities.

However, in the good old days, the golden age of universities that never existed, scientists would have simply carried on with their work irregardless of who sat around the cabinet table wearing a hat labelled Minister for Science.

Coaldrake and Stedman start out by looking at a number of myths about higher education. These myths, according to the authors, include:

· University vice chancellor are spineless and complicit in the destruction of public universities;
· Research and teaching are inextricably linked;
· Universities can regain the golden age by resisting neoliberalism and managerialism;
· The advent of new massive online courses from prestigious universities are about to hollow out the traditional university model.

Some of the most useful discussion in the book is about the rise of performance metrics in higher education - global ranking systems, the Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) exercise, and the development of instruments to evaluate graduate outcomes.

Given we now live in the world of "big data", there is an inevitability about the use of performance metrics, not just in higher education, but across government, business and the not-for-profit sector.

This is to be welcomed when it leads to evidence-based practice, and moreover when it leads to the exposure of the myths that Coaldrake and Stedman have identified.

Anyone interested in how clever universities are in using the existing available data to enhance teaching and learning should read the article on "Penetrating the fog: Analytics in learning and education", in Educause Review, 46(5), 30-32 by George Siemens and Phil Long.

Coaldrake and Stedman's other useful discussion is about the changing nature of university teaching, and rise of MOOCs, massive open online courses. There is a meme in my university that "if you are afraid of being replaced by a video, then perhaps you should be."

Implicit in this aphorism is the principle that genuine and transformative value is added in higher education through face to face interaction with students (whether in person or mediated). In this context, one of the most interesting observations (p.243) is about the blurring of distinctions between academic and professional staff.

This book is not a clarion call to arms to rescue universities from the four horsemen of MOOCS, budget cuts, government interference and dodgy systems of rankings. It is a sober, accurate and thoughtful reflection on the current situation in higher education.

And while the writing is not scintillating, the authors at least unpack the issues without hyperbole. Given this, I hope we are smart enough to figure out the answers for ourselves.

About the Author

Dr John Harrison teaches journalism and communication at The University of Queensland. An award winning journalist and higher education teacher, he is at the forefront of the development of new ways of learning using digital mobile media.

SPECIAL REPORT: The U.S. is the Only Developed Country Where Younger Generation Will Receive Less Education than Their Parents

by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov.com: http://www.allgov.com/news/us-and-the-world/us-is-only-developed-county-where-younger-generation-will-receive-less-education-than-their-parents-121204?news=846374

The expectation that young Americans will always be better educated and more successful than their parents is no longer true.

A new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says the United States is now the only major economy in the world where the younger generation will not surpass the preceding generation in terms of schooling.

Andreas Schleicher, special adviser on education at the OECD, told the BBC News: “It’s something of great significance because much of today’s economic power of the United States rests on a very high degree of adult skills - and that is now at risk.”

Today, only about 20% of young adults will reach a higher level of education than their parents, a rate that’s among the lowest rates in the developed world, according to the OECD. Schleicher says that a major problem in the U.S. is that the skyrocketing cost of going to college has created a barrier for many young Americans who do not come from wealthy families.

To Learn More:

Downward Mobility Haunts US Education (by Sean Coughlan, BBC News)

Education at a Glance 2012 (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) (pdf)

College Graduate Unemployment Depends on Your Major (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

Turkey’s Last Armenian Schools

Ortaköy Mosque, along the Bosphorus, in Istanbul, Turkey (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

by Aziz Oguz, Le Monde Diplomatique: http://mondediplo.com

Aziz Oguz is a journalism student at François-Rabelais University, Tours, France.

Turkey has never banned the Armenian schools that teach the community’s language and culture. But its support is marginal and the schools, like the language, are losing their place.

“Don’t close the door,” Mari Nalcı, who has been head of the Tarmanças school for 25 years, told me as I went into her office; she seemed not to trust me. Armenians in Turkey are cautious, especially when you ask questions about education.

“The problem of security for schools has become very important, especially since Hrant Dink was assassinated,” Garo Paylan, an Armenian schools representative, had told me. The murder of this well-known Armenian journalist by a Turkish nationalist in 2007 revived old fears (1).

Mari Nalcı’s school bristles with CCTV cameras; there are bars on the windows and a security man, Attila Sen, at the door. Sen is friendly, but as intransigent as a prison guard: nobody gets in without an appointment. “We’ve never had a problem,” he said, “but some local people are suspicious of the school. Fortunately, prejudices disappear when they get to know us.”

The school is in Ortaköy, near the Bosphorus Bridge that links Istanbul’s two halves. Ortaköy used to be one of the most cosmopolitan districts of the Ottoman Empire’s capital, and was home to many Jews, Greeks and Armenians. There are two mosques, four Christian churches and two synagogues.

Today Kurds have replaced the Armenians, and only a few Armenian families remain. The school’s 500 pupils are ferried here by minibus from all over the city.

There are 16 Armenian schools in Turkey, five of them secondary schools, with around 3,000 pupils in all. They are all in Istanbul, where most of Turkey’s 60,000 Armenians live. The only admission requirement is that pupils must have at least one parent of Armenian origin.

These schools date back to the Ottoman Empire, when every community was responsible for organising its own education system and there were thousands of Armenian schools.

After the Armenian genocide of 1915-16, in which one to 1 to 1.5 million people perished (nearly two-thirds of the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian population), and later massacres and exoduses, there are relatively few Armenians in Turkey, and just these 16 schools.

To read further, go to: http://mondediplo.com/2012/12/14armenia

Judge Grants Reprieve To Student Expelled For Refusing To Wear Tracking Device Badge

Planned insertion point for Verichip device (Wikipedia)

by Craig Bannister, CNSNews.com: http://cnsnews.com/blog/craig-bannister/judge-grants-reprieve-student-expelled-refusing-wear-tracking-device-badge

Andrea Hernandez won’t have to leave her high school for refusing to wear a badge designed to track her every move there - yet - her attorneys announced today.

A district court judge for Bexar County, Texas, has granted a temporary restraining order to prevent Northside Independent School District from removing a Hernandez from John Jay High School’s Science and Engineering Academy because she refused to wear a name badge designed to use a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chip to track students’ precise location on school property, the Hernandez’s attorneys announced today.

“The court’s willingness to grant a temporary restraining order is a good first step, but there is still a long way to go - not just in this case, but dealing with the mindset, in general, that everyone needs to be monitored and controlled,” said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute.

“Regimes in the past have always started with the schools, where they develop a compliant citizenry. These ‘Student Locator’ programs are ultimately aimed at getting students used to living in a total surveillance state where there will be no privacy, and wherever you go and whatever you text or email will be watched by the government,” Whitehead warned.

The school had reportedly offered to allow Hernandez to wear a non-functional badge, giving the appearance of support for the program, but she declined.

Record Shares of Young Adults Have Finished Both High School and College

by Richard Fry and Kim Parker, The Pew Research Centre: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org

Overview

Record shares of young adults are completing high school, going to college and finishing college, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of newly available census data. In 2012, for the first time ever, one-third of the nation’s 25- to 29-year-olds have completed at least a bachelor’s degree.

These across-the-board increases have occurred despite dramatic immigration-driven changes in the racial and ethnic composition of college-age young adults, a trend that had led some experts to expect a decline in educational attainment.

College completion is now at record levels among key demographic groups: men and women; blacks, whites and Hispanics; and foreign-born and native-born Americans.

Also, a record share of the nation’s young adults ages 25 to 29 (90%) has finished at least a high school education. And another record share - 63% - has completed at least some college.

Some of the “credit” for recent increases appears to go to the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and the sluggish jobs recovery since. With young adults facing sharply diminished labor market opportunities, their rate of high school and college completion has been rising slowly but steadily since 2007, after having been stagnant during better economic times earlier in the decade.

Changing public attitudes about the importance of going to college to succeed in an increasingly knowledge-based labor market may also have played a role. In 1978, the public was evenly divided over whether a college education was necessary to get ahead in life.

Roughly 30 years later, a lopsided majority firmly endorsed the necessity of a college degree. In a 2009 Pew Research Center survey, 73% of American adults agreed that, in order to get ahead in life these days, it is necessary to get a college education.

Similarly, when the Gallup Organization asked about the importance of college in 2010, 75% of Americans said a college education is “very important.” In 1978, only 36% said the same.

The nation’s college-age population is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse - today some 44% of 18- to 25-year-olds are non-white, up from 17% in 1971. Historically, Hispanic and black youths have trailed white and Asian youths in educational attainment. That remains the case, but rates for all four groups are rising at a similar pace.

The trends on college attainment are not all positive, however. The recent increases in the U.S. come at a time when other advanced economies are registering similar or greater gains, leading experts and college presidents to question whether the U.S. has been losing its competitive position as the global leader in higher education.  

In 2011 the Pew Research Center conducted a survey of more than 1,000 college presidents nationwide. Among those college presidents surveyed, only 19% said the U.S. system of higher education is currently the best in the world, and just 7% said they believe it will be the best in the world 10 years from now. A plurality of presidents (51%) described the U.S. system as one of the best in the world.

That same survey also found that college presidents are concerned about the quality, preparedness and study habits of today’s college students. Overall, 52% of presidents say college students today study less than their predecessors did a decade ago; just 7% say they study more.

About the Report

Estimates of educational attainment in this report are based on the March Current Population Survey (CPS). The specific files used in this report are from March 1971 to March 2012. Conducted jointly by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the CPS is a monthly survey of approximately 75,000 households (in March) and is the source of the nation’s official statistics on unemployment.

With the exception of an important change in the educational attainment question in 1992, the Census Bureau has consistently collected educational attainment data in the CPS since 1947. The Census Bureau’s long-standing historical series on educational attainment are based on the March CPS (http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/education/data/cps/historical/index.html).

The CPS is nationally representative of the civilian non-institutionalized population, and therefore does not include people living in institutions or Armed Forces personnel (except those living with their families). Exclusion of the military does not materially alter the estimates because it is a relatively small proportion of the population.

Exclusion of the institutionalized population does not bias overall estimates of educational attainment. But the exclusion of the institutionalized population does affect estimates for specific demographic groups, in particular black males (Heckman and LaFontaine, 2007).

The CPS microdata used in this report are the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) provided by the University of Minnesota. The IPUMS assigns uniform codes, to the extent possible, to data collected in the CPS over the years. More information about the IPUMS, including variable definition and sampling error, is available at http://cps.ipums.org/cps/documentation.shtml.

This report was written by Richard Fry and Kim Parker, senior economist and associate director, respectively, of Pew Research Center’s Social and Demographic Trends project. Paul Taylor, executive vice president of Pew Research Center and director of Pew Social and Demographic Trends project, provided editorial guidance.

Research assistant Seth Motel provided assistance with preparing charts and formatting the report. The report was number-checked by research assistant Seth Motel. The report was copy-edited by communications associate Molly Rohal.

Notes on Terminology

College completion: College completion refers to those who have completed at least a bachelor’s degree or four-year college degree. Prior to 1992 it refers to those who have completed at least four years of college.

Some college completion: Persons finishing some college have finished at least some college education, including those completing associate degrees and bachelor’s degrees. Prior to 1992 the person must have completed at least one year of college. Since 1992 those completing any college at all are designated as finishing some college.

High school completion: A high school completer refers to those who have at least obtained a high school diploma or its equivalent (such as a General Educational Development (GED) certificate). Prior to 1992 it refers to those who have completed at least four years of high school.

Race/Ethnicity: Hispanics are of any race. Whites, blacks and Asians include only non-Hispanics. In order to have a consistent series on Asian educational attainment, Asian refers to those of Asian or Pacific Islander origin.

Nativity: Native born refers to persons who are U.S. citizens at birth. Foreign born or immigrant refers to those who are not U.S. citizens at birth.

To read further, go to: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/11/05/record-shares-of-young-adults-have-finished-both-high-school-and-college/2/

SPECIAL EDUCATION REPORT: The Girl Who Wanted to Go to School

Portrait of a Pakistani Schoolgirl (Photo credit: United Nations Photo)

by Basharat Peer, The New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/10/the-girl-who-wanted-to-go-to-school.html

On Tuesday afternoon, Taliban militants attacked and seriously injured Malala Yousafzai, a fourteen-year-old campaigner for education for girls in Mingora, a town in Swat Valley, in Pakistan’s North Western Frontier Province.

Malala was returning home from school when the men attacked; a fellow-student and a teacher were injured as well. “A bullet struck her head, but her brain is safe,” a doctor told the Express Tribune newspaper.

Malala was flown in a military helicopter to a military hospital in Peshawar, the insurgency-torn capital of North Western Frontier Province; Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has arranged for her to be flown out of Pakistan to get the complex surgery needed to save her.

Malala was not a random target. A Pakistani Taliban spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, claimed responsibility and threatened to attack her again, if she survives: “She was pro-West, she was speaking against the Taliban and she was calling President Obama her idol.” He added, “She was young but she was promoting Western culture in Pashtun areas.”

“She was just the girl who wanted to go to school,” Mirza Waheed, the former editor of the Urdu Web site of BBC World Service, told me.

One foggy winter afternoon in early 2009, when Mirza was working out of the BBC World Service’s Bush House offices in London, he got a proposal from one of his reporters in Pakistan, who was covering the takeover of Swat Valley by the Taliban militants led by Maulana Fazlullah, or “FM Mullah.”

Fazlullah had banned TV, music, and girls’ education; bodies of beheaded policemen were hanging from town squares. Abdul Hai Kakkar, the reporter, had first approached Ziauddin Yousafzai, a local school director, to get a female teacher to write about life under the Swat Taliban. No teacher agreed, but his eleven-year-old daughter, a seventh-grade student, was interested in writing a diary. “Would they publish the diary?” the reporter asked.

“We had been covering the violence and politics in Swat in detail but we didn’t know much about how ordinary people lived under the Taliban,” Mirza said (he left the BBC to be a full-time novelist; his book “The Collaborator” is about the war in Kashmir). “We unanimously decided to publish the diary, but her safety was of utmost concern to us and we decided to use a pseudonym,” Mirza said.

“The Diary of a Pakistani School Girl,” written by Malala Yousafzai, was published under the byline Gul Makki. “Malala passed on hand-written diary pages to our reporter and he would scan and email or fax them to me,” Mirza said. “I would edit it to retain its directness, its raw texture, and at times, as I edited her, I would well up.”

I first read Malala’s diary in the summer of 2009, while reporting on the refugee crisis in North West Frontier Province following the battles between the Swat Taliban and the Pakistani Army. Like thousands of others, I knew her by the pseudonym. The scale of her courage struck me, as did the importance of her bearing witness.

As I travelled through refugee camps and in villages and towns, I often read and reread her diaries online. A haunting entry, which was also translated into English (the diaries in Urdu are more detailed) described the psychological price that life under tyranny, and amid violence, exacted:

On my way from school to home I heard a man saying “I will kill you.” I hastened my pace and after a while I looked back if the man was still coming behind me. But to my utter relief he was talking on his mobile and must have been threatening someone else over the phone.

And another:

I had a terrible dream yesterday with military helicopters and the Taliban. I have had such dreams since the launch of the military operation in Swat. My mother made me breakfast and I went off to school. I was afraid going to school because the Taliban had issued an edict banning all girls from attending schools. Only 11 students attended the class out of 27. The number decreased because of Taliban’s edict.

The Taliban had blown up more than a hundred girls’ schools. A video feature by the Times, published in 2009, describing the life of Malala’s family, shows her in her school, a girl with a fair, round face, hazel eyes, carrying a satchel with a Harry Potter picture on it.

She would be featured in two Times videos, which brought her considerable attention, but Malala became a celebrity in Pakistan in October, 2011, when Desmond Tutu announced her nomination for an international children’s prize.

It seems to have been the first time that her identity as the writer of the BBC diary became known to the broader public; the citation for her nomination mentioned her use of “international media to let the world know girls should also have the right to go to school.”

Her public profile rose further after the Pakistan government awarded her the first National Peace Prize, in December 2011. “In a situation where a lifelong school break was being imposed upon us by the terrorists, rising up against that became very important, essential,” she told a Pakistani television network.

When the interviewer asked her about fear and danger, Malala, speaking in a clear, forceful voice, said that her father, who worked for women’s education and fully supported his daughter, had inspired her, and that her mother had told her to speak up for her rights. And then, in a rather prophetic moment, she envisioned a confrontation with the Taliban.

I think of it often and imagine the scene clearly. Even if they come to kill me, I will tell them what they are trying to do is wrong, that education is our basic right.

The growing fame and her determination to speak out for girls’ education put her on the Taliban radar. Malala was active on Facebook under her own name, and the extremists would threaten her online. “They created fake profiles for her,” Nighat Daad, a Lahore based women’s-rights specialist with U.N. Women told me.

“She had to delete her personal Facebook page and was worried about digital security.” Malala attended several digital-security sessions with Daad and became part of a campaign “Take Back the Tech,” which focused on violence against women in online spaces. Unfazed by the threats, she had told Daad that she would “never stop working for education for girls.”

“She said that she wants to build schools for girls in Swat where they can get education without any fear. This is her biggest dream ever, but at the same time she was extremely focused on her studies as well,” Daad said.

The cover photo of a public Facebook page dedicated to her is an exhortation to primary education, a cause she embraced and lived from a very young age: “One in ten of the world’s children who don’t go to primary school live in Pakistan.”

And a flood of messaging is expressing support, saying prayers for her. “plz stay with us. we need the girls like u fo betterment of Pakistan,” a young girl wrote. Pakistan will be richer, if Malala Yousafzai makes it.

SPECIAL EDUCATION REPORT: Why the Taliban Fears Teenage Girls

by William J. Dobson, Slate.com: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/10/10/taliban_shoots_14_year_old_girl_here_s_why_malala_yousafzia_scares_them.html

This photo is caught from a video film that has been filmed by RAWA in Kabul using a hidden camera. It shows two Taliban from department of Amro bil mahroof (Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, Taliban religious police) beating a woman in public because she has dared to remove her burqa in public. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Pakistan is a beautiful country that often bleeds with the most horrible news.

Yesterday was no exception, as word spread that Malala Yousafzai, a 14-year-old girl and well-known advocate for female education, had been shot in the head and neck on her way home from school.

No-one was surprised who was behind the vicious attack on the ninth-grader.

The Pakistani Taliban quickly took responsibility, claiming she was guilty of “promoting Western culture in Pashtun areas.”

According to another girl injured in the attack, Taliban gunmen stopped their school bus. A militant asked which girl was Malala, and then opened fire.

Even in a place that has experienced no shortage of violence, like the Swat Valley in northwest Pakistan where Yousafzai lives, yesterday’s attack was met with disbelief. The young Pakistani activist made a name for herself when she began blogging about life under the Taliban for BBC Urdu at age 11.

The Pakistan government awarded her its first National Youth Peace Prize last year. After the attack, Yousafzai was airlifted to a hospital in Peshawar. As of Wednesday morning, surgeons had removed the bullet from her head and she was listed in stable condition. If she does indeed recover, Taliban militants promise they will try to kill her again.