Public Education

Ten percent of students who left UK colleges last year were unable to find work, according official figures, up from 8% the year before.

The jobless rate among 2009 graduates is the highest in seven years, says the Higher Education Statistics Agency.

And the number of students who managed to find employment within six months has dropped from 62% to 59%.

The figures also reveal how the chances of students finding work depend on their choice of college subject.

The agency’s figures are based on the experiences of 205,000 students six months after graduation.

This snapshot suggests that no medical students are out of work, but that 9% of language students are unemployed, rising to 14% of communications students, and 17% of those on computer science courses. Read the rest of this entry »

Kaplan University has an offer for California community college students who cannot get a seat in a class they need: under a memorandum of understanding with the chancellor of the community college system, they can take the online version at Kaplan, with a 42 percent tuition discount.

The opportunity would not come cheap. Kaplan charges $216 a credit with the discount, compared with $26 a credit at California’s community colleges.

Supporters of for-profit education say the offer underscores how Kaplan and other profit-making colleges can help accommodate the mushrooming demand for higher education.

The number of California students choosing for-profit schools has been increasing rapidly, state officials say.

At the same time, government officials have become increasingly concerned that students at for-profit colleges are far more likely than those at public institutions to take out large loans — and default on them.

For better or worse, the tough times for public colleges nationwide have presented for-profit colleges with a promising marketing opportunity. “We thought, in light of the budget crisis and the number of community college classes which are being canceled, if we have that same class here, we would give students the opportunity to take it at Kaplan,” said Greg F. Marino, president of Kaplan University Group, a profit-making business owned by the Washington Post Company. Read the rest of this entry »

Thousands of students at the University of Puerto Rico who went on strike two months ago to oppose severe budget cuts declared victory on Thursday after reaching an agreement with administrators.

As part of a deal brokered by a court-appointed mediator, students would end their strike — one of the largest and longest such walkouts in Puerto Rican history — in exchange for a number of concessions. Most notably, the university’s Board of Regents has agreed to cancel a special fee that would have effectively doubled the cost to attend the university’s 11 public campuses.

The deal also includes a promise that there will be no sanctions against strike organizers, who clashed at times with the police at the main Río Piedras campus outside San Juan.

The accord must still be approved by a general assembly of university students, which is expected Monday. Christopher Powers, a literature professor at the Mayagüez campus, said it was “nearly a complete victory for the students,” noting that they failed to get a promise that there would be no large tuition increase next year. Professor Powers said planned cuts later this year to the salaries and benefits of professors could set off another round of conflict. Read the rest of this entry »

Stanford University, an incubator for dozens of Silicon Valley companies, has become the focus of a grass-roots effort to pressure the technology industry to crack down on “conflict minerals.”

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, armed groups force villagers to mine minerals like wolframite and cassiterite. Metals processed from such minerals are used in consumer electronics products, including laptop computers, MP3 players, cellphones and digital cameras.

On Thursday, a committee of Stanford’s trustees considered a resolution to create a new proxy voting guideline for the university’s investments. The guideline would support shareholders’ efforts to make companies trace the supply chain of the minerals used in their products.

The board, which met privately, has not announced its decision.

“This is a huge humanitarian crisis, and if Stanford can have an impact at all, we should try to,” said Nina McMurry, a senior and a member of Stand, a student organization that raised the conflict minerals issue with the university.

If Stanford adopts the guideline, it would be the first university in the country to take such action on the issue, according to the Center for American Progress, a policy institute in Washington. Read the rest of this entry »

Nearly half (45%) of final-year students at the UK’s top universities view their career prospects as “very limited”, a survey suggests.

The poll of 16,000 finalists found a third feared last year’s graduates would take up most of the vacancies.

One in six said they would not have gone to university if they had known how tough the jobs market was going to be, the research by High Fliers found.

In total, 26% plan further study, 16% plan to travel and 14% are undecided.

The survey of finalists at 30 leading universities found just 36% expected to start or look for a graduate-level job after leaving university this summer.

And 8% intended to take up temporary or voluntary work. - reports BBC News.

Salary expectations

The media, teaching and marketing were the top three graduate career choices for students graduating in 2010 - as they were for 2009.

Applications for jobs in information technology (IT) and engineering were down 5% and 11% respectively on last year.

For the second year running, graduate salary expectations have dropped, with final year job hunters expecting to earn an average of £22,000 for their first job - 3.1% less than in 2008. Read the rest of this entry »

The coalition government has pledged to create more university places in England but stopped short of saying whether tuition fees will rise.

It would instead await the findings of Lord Browne’s independent review of student funding.

These would be judged against the impact of student debt and the need to widen university access.

The Liberal Democrats, who wanted to scrap fees, would be allowed to abstain in a vote on the issue.

The government has not yet said how many extra places would be funded.

The coalition’s Programme for Government says it will review Lord Browne’ s review of higher education before making a decision on the future of university funding.

Abstentions

But it pledges to “judge its proposals against the need to - increase social mobility; - take into account the impact on student debt; - ensure a properly funded university sector; - improve the quality of teaching; - advance scholarship; and - attract a higher proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds.”

It adds: “If the response of the government to Lord Browne’s review is one that the Liberal Democrats cannot accept; then arrangements will be made to enable Liberal Democrat MPs to abstain in any vote”.

The issue is a policy difference between the two parties in government.

The Lib Dems campaigned on a ticket of phasing out tuition fees over six years, while the Tories said they would await the official review of fees. Read the rest of this entry »

Young people from poorer backgrounds are still struggling to get into top universities, says the agency in charge of widening access to higher education.

The wealthiest 20% of youngsters are seven times more likely than the most disadvantaged 40% to get places at England’s most selective universities.

The Office for Fair Access (Offa) says there has been no significant change since the mid-1990s.

This “weak point” must improve, says Universities Minister David Willetts.

The report from Offa considers how to widen accss to the top universities.

Tuition fees

Sir Martin Harris, director of Offa, says that bright disadvantaged youngsters need to be identified and supported at an earlier age.

This should happen before the age of 14 when pupils are making their decisions about GCSE options, he says.

“Right at the heart of the matter is the need to ensure that those young people with the potential to succeed in a research-intensive university, but who do not currently choose to apply, are identified as early as possible,” says Sir Martin.

Offa was set up to protect access to university for poorer students when tuition fees were increased four years ago.

It is now submitting a report to the review of university funding chaired by Lord Browne, which could recommend a further increase in fees.

The report says that while more students from poorer families are getting into university, there remains much less progress in the most sought-after university courses.

Access from the 40% least disadvantaged youngsters has been “almost flat since the mid-1990s”. Read the rest of this entry »

Students should pay higher fees to go to university in England, says the Russell Group of leading universities.

The group’s submission to Lord Browne’s funding review sets out how the £3,225-a-year fee could rise to £9,000 without extra costs in taxpayers’ subsidies.

“An increase in graduate contributions is the fairest and only viable option for addressing the funding shortfall,” says the Russell Group statement.

Students described the proposals as a “nightmare scenario”. - reports BBC News.

The National Union of Students said this lifting of the cap on fees would mean “mortgage-style debts” of more than £40,000.
Higher repayments

The UCU lecturers’ union said that such an increase in tuition fees would be “the most regressive piece of education policy since the war” which would “price a generation out of higher education”.

The Russell Group wants the level of tuition fees to be high enough to create a range of different charges for different courses - and for students to re-pay loans at a higher interest rate.

This combination of higher fees and reduced subsidies would mean that fees could be raised to £9,000 per year, without extra cost to the Treasury, says the report.

Lord Browne’s cross-party review, set to report later this year, is considering how universities in England should be funded.

This includes asking whether there should be any limit on fees - and whether the current maximum of £3,225 per year should be lifted.

The influential Russell Group, representing 20 prestigious universities, has now told the review that the only practical way of funding higher education is to have higher charges for students.

There would also be a reduction in the subsidy on student loans, with repayments at more of a commercial rate. Read the rest of this entry »