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  4. Mar2017

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    The vice-chancellor of the University of Nairobi has asked the government to review the budgetary allocation to his university after the treasury failed to meet public universities’ requisitions for the forthcoming fiscal year. The total allocation to all public universities, which is US$200 million less than the amount requested, has dashed the hopes of several institutions facing a crippling cash crunch. The government has allocated US$982 million to her public universities for the 2017-18 financial year in the budget to be unveiled in parliament on 30 March. University administrators say the allocation is over US$200 million lower than the amount they had requested for the period. At US$721 million, however, the amount is 36% higher than the allocation in the current financial year. The research and innovation kitty for public universities has been set at US$42 million, up from US$37 million – a 13% increase. However, the lower-than-expected allocation means the universities themselves will have to effect budget cuts at a time when they are facing a series of challenges. Public universities agreed last week to increase salaries for lecturers by 17.5% after a 54-day strike that paralysed the sector. The agreed increase means universities will have to seek more funds to finance the increment. Professor Peter Mbithi has asked parliament to reconsider a budget cut of US$17 million slapped on the University of Nairobi. “We acknowledge that we have been facing financial challenges like any other public entity due to declining budgetary support. We have asked parliament to review the allocation,” Mbithi told reporters two weeks ago. New funding model Defending the budget cuts to universities, treasury said they were based on the new financing model known as the differentiated unit cost model, in terms of which state funds are allocated on the basis of the courses being taught at specific universities. Under the new policy, subsidies for science courses are relatively higher than those for arts. Data shows th
    7 years ago by @prophe
     
      tuition_riseMar2017privatebudget_cutgrowth_KenyaEnglish
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      Generally, prestigious private universities with hundreds of students don't get shut down over fairly minor, six-month-old technical issues that have since been resolved. But that is precisely the predicament facing the European University at Saint Petersburg, a bastion of Western liberal arts, which has been ordered closed by a district court after a furious conservative assault against it, writes Fred Weir for The Christian Science Monitor. The university’s problems began last June, when an ultra-conservative lawmaker from Saint Petersburg, Vitaly Milonov, lodged an official complaint against it, which under Russian law requires an official investigation to be launched. Milonov is a key author of Russia's "anti-gay propaganda" law. Reached by telephone, Milonov, now a deputy of the State Duma, insisted that he merely passed along complaints made to him by citizens, including a letter he allegedly received from five students of the university. The students "raised a bunch of issues about the quality and services of the school", he said. "I can't remember most of them, but one was the teaching of gender studies at the school. I personally find that disgusting; it’s fake studies, and it may well be illegal," he said. "But I'm not qualified to judge, so I handed it on to the proper authorities."
      7 years ago by @prophe
       
        Mar2017privateclosureEnglishRussia
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        The Uganda National Council of Higher Education says it is being frustrated by the tendency of some private universities to seek remedy from the courts rather than engage with the regulator in the interests of preserving quality. The National Council of Higher Education, or NCHE, Executive Director Professor John Opuda-Asibo told University World News that some private universities seek to use "power plays", delaying tactics and tend to "politicise" matters instead of holding talks directly with the regulator to rectify faults. He said with increased engagement between NCHE and universities, it would be possible to adhere to the rules agreed in order to maintain academic quality as well as separate the interests of management from the interests of private owners. A recent example of institutions turning to the courts is that of Busoga University, a private institution founded by the Church of Uganda under the Busoga Diocese in eastern Uganda. Fraudulent graduations In December the NCHE revoked the provisional education licence held by Busoga University. Last month, the latter approached the Constitutional Court seeking orders to reverse the revocation. The NCHE clamped down on the university after investigations into fraudulent graduations. According to media reports, the university fraudulently graduated 1,000 students after only five months of study. Some of these were Nigerians, while the majority were South Sudanese government officials and army generals. It was claimed that some of the students did not meet entry requirements and were admitted under unclear circumstances and that some were enrolled in unaccredited courses. The students, eager to keep their jobs backed by academic qualifications, allegedly each paid US$1,000 dollars to get their degrees after five months, instead of paying the usual US$300 per semester. The students were transferred from Star University College in Juba, South Sudan, which is affiliated to Busoga University. Another 70 students from Nigeria who were stud
        7 years ago by @prophe
         
          politicslobbyMar2017EnglishUganda
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          Several of the region's private colleges say Gov. Andrew Cuomo's proposal for free state college would have a negative effect on their schools. WBFO's Senior Reporter Eileen Buckley says members of the Medaille College community are being encouraged to write to state lawmakers to consider an increase for the Tuition Assistance Program instead of supporting the tuition-free plan for SUNY. “The lobbying efforts that we have are in full force. We are doing it individually from our desks at our various campuses,” said Dr. Kenneth Macur, president at Medaille College. Macur said he remains skeptical about how much Cuomo's plan would cost the state and taxpayers. The Governor wants students in families earning $125,000 or less to receive tuition free scholarships to all state colleges and universities. Macur is more concerned about how it might effect a student's "right to choose" a college. “More than being worried about what happens to Medaille, I’m worried about students who are forced into huge lecture halls. Forced into schools where the graduation rates aren’t as good, where the care and concern doesn’t exist as it does at Medaille and what’s going to happen to those kids,” Macur remarked. Medaille’s tuition is a little more than $27,000. About 922 of the college's students did received $2.5 million in TAP toward their tuition. “Sticker price goes up on an annual basis two, three percent, but the actual net tuition, on average, has been going down over the last three to four years,” Macur explained. “And so even though we’ve done a great job making college affordable for students in the region, we’d be penalized by the governor’s plan.” When the governor appeared last month at rally Buffalo State College to seek support his idea, he made a remark about the cost of private education. “Average student debt $29,000, $29,000 – you just can’t do it,” said Cuomo. “One of the problems with using the debt statistics in that way, you miss that the fact that private college graduates have lower default rate
          7 years ago by @prophe
           
            Mar2017Free_tuitionUSANew_YorkEnglish
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            BENGALURU: Chennai and Gurgaon-based Great Lakes Institute of Management has launched the Great Lakes International University (GLIU) in Andhra Pradesh, making it one of the first few private universities being set up in the state.
            7 years ago by @prophe
             
              Mar2017first_privateEnglishIndia
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              I've warmed up to Gov. Andrew Cuomo's plan to make the state's public colleges and universities tuition-free for families with an income of $125,000 or less, and here's why: Private colleges don't like it. Since the governor announced his plan in January, private colleges have expressed concern. They argue that it would limit students' choices and place private schools at a competitive disadvantage. "Taxpayers should have the opportunity to have choice and to make a decision about what would be best for themselves and their kids," College of Saint Rose President Carolyn Stefanco told The Daily Gazette last month. Please. These schools aren't concerned about student choice. They're concerned about their bottom line. Making tuition free at SUNY and CUNY schools will boost their enrollment, as parents and students carefully evaluate return on investment and opt for the more affordable option. Elite private schools might not see a huge impact, but lower-ranked schools almost certainly would. Private colleges don't want to disrupt a system that serves them reasonably well, but if there's any industry that could benefit from some disruption, it's higher education. For decades, colleges and universities have been jacking up tuition and fees at an unsustainable rate. The cost of tuition at the small private college I graduated from 19 years ago has more than doubled, and there's no justification for it. Private schools have long excused their outrageous cost increases by pointing to the generosity of their financial aid offices, and noting that many students do not pay full price. But fewer people are satisfied by this explanation, largely as a result of soaring student loan debt. In a piece in the New Republic published last August, journalist David Dayen writes that private colleges are the real enemy when it comes to reforming higher education, because they "do incredibly well under the status quo. ... At the public level, states have pulled back funding for higher education, causing some of the [cost] incre
              7 years ago by @prophe
               
                Mar2017Free_tuitionNew_YorkEnglish
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                We need to focus more on the disadvantages that poor students face much earlier in their lives The proposal to fully subsidize tuition fees in all state universities and colleges (SUCs) is not as straightforward as it seems. On the one hand, proponents in Congress say that this will help improve the plight of “financially disadvantaged but deserving students.” After all, the Constitution states that the State shall provide “accessible” and “quality” education to all (see House Bill 5905 and Senate Bill 1304). On the other hand, critics say that subsidizing college tuitions will be fraught with many problems. Not only will it be inequitable (serving as a subsidy for rich students), but also distortive (inducing some rich students to shift into SUCs) and unsustainable (requiring enormous fiscal resources yearly). In this article we argue that, although well-intentioned, the free tuition policy alone cannot make SUCs significantly more accessible to poor students. Instead, we need to focus more on the disadvantages that poor students face much earlier in their lives. Inequality of access It’s true that poor students today have a harder time gaining access to education in SUCs. Figure 1 shows the distribution of college students across income groups, both in public and private colleges. The gray bars show that – as one would expect – students in private colleges are likelier to come from richer than poorer backgrounds. If public colleges were an “equalizer” of sorts, one would expect to see an opposite trend in SUCs: students there should be likelier to come from poorer backgrounds. But as the orange bars show, this is not the case: SUC students are likelier to come from the richest income group (17.2%) than the poorest income group (12%). The share of the poorest income group is particularly lower in Luzon (7.5%) and in NCR (just 2%). Simply put, the poorest students are underrepresented in our SUCs. Subsidy to the richest students The data above point to the glaring disparity between the rich and poor’s a
                7 years ago by @prophe
                 
                  Mar2017Free_tuitionUSAEnglishAccess
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                  For Democrats, the one great policy legacy of 2016 was the party’s embrace of free tuition for public colleges and universities. After Bernie Sanders made it a signature policy proposal and proved its political potency (especially with millennials), Hillary Clinton adapted and adopted it when she won the nomination. Over the course of the campaign, the idea evolved from a progressive pipe dream into a concept with massive momentum. This thing was going to happen! But when Donald Trump won and Republicans took control of Congress, a federal free-tuition program became a pipe dream again. The only chance for free college was to start at the state level—in one of the few remaining blue states—and create a model that could spread nationally. Given the popularity of the idea, it’s not surprising that two ambitious Democratic governors–both presidential prospects for 2020—have taken up the call. Both New York’s Andrew Cuomo and Rhode Island’s Gina Raimondo are vying to be the governor who made free college happen—and both their plans are running into resistance from their own party’s lawmakers. Some of the controversy was to be expected: It’s no surprise that fiscal conservatives think it’s another costly social program with uncertain returns. Other legislators and educators worry about how it will affect enrollment at state schools. But for liberals, the legislative battles have exposed a series of tricky policy trade-offs that cut to the heart of a larger national debate: What kind of “progress” should Democrats be fighting for? Should a new social program benefit everyone equally, like Social Security, or help low-income families the most? And how valuable is tuition relief, really, if the state doesn’t help students with other college expenses, like room and board and books? The surface simplicity of the whole idea is one of its great calling cards: Free college. How complicated could that be? The debates in New York and Rhode Island have sometimes been acrimonious and divisive. But that’s far from a bad thing:
                  7 years ago by @prophe
                   
                    Mar2017Free_tuitionUSAObamaNYEnglish
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                    The House of Representatives has called on the National Universities Commission to regulate the role of visiting lecturers in Nigerian universities. This followed a motion on Wednesday sponsored by Abbas Tajudeen (Kaduna APC). Arguing the motion, Mr. Tajudeen stated that many universities, especially state-owned and private ones, rely too much on the services of either visiting or sabbatical lecturers. “This reliance poses a great challenge to quality of services rendered by the lecturers with regards to mentoring, research, publication of journals and the general academic wellbeing in the universities,” he said. Mr. Tajudeen said he was concerned that the situation affects the quality of education being provided owing to the fact that lecturers usually abandon their duties in their places of primary employment and spread their services thinly across other universities that they visit. “The activities of those visiting lecturers are not regulated by any supervisory or academic body, either to ensure compliance with their terms of engagement or limit the number of commitments they engage in to ensure quality education in Nigeria,” the lawmaker added. Contributing to the debate, Nicholas Ossai (Delta-PDP) however expressed a contrary view, stating that visiting lectureship is a universal practice and that lecturers use the medium to develop themselves and the students. “It does not make sense for us to prohibit what is acceptable internationally,” Mr. Ossai said. But when the motion was put to vote, it was accepted by the majority of the house. The speaker thus mandated the committee on Tertiary Education and Services to interface with the National Universities Commission and other relevant agencies concerned with tertiary education with a view to formulating policies to aid the regulation and supervision of the practice of visiting lectureship in Nigeria and report back within eight weeks for further legislative action.
                    7 years ago by @prophe
                     
                      Mar2017visiting_lecturerNigeriaEnglish
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                      The financial pressure on university students has been growing across the U.S. for several decades. At the national level, inflation-adjusted tuition and fees at a public four-year university rose 270 percent from 1977 to 2017, while the federal minimum wage fell by 24 percent. While standards of living generally rose over those 40 years, the financial pressure on university students sharply accelerated. Earlier generations were more fortunate. Summer work plus part-time work no longer enable graduation debt-free. From 2001 to 2017, tuition and fees for undergraduates at the University of Montana are up 103 percent with the CPI rising 39 percent. In 2001, a student working 40 hours for 12 weeks at the Montana minimum wage could cover 81 percent of annual tuition and fees. By 2017, even with a rise of 58 percent in the minimum wage, such summer work covered less than 63 percent. The price of textbooks is up 150 percent in the same period. Data from 2014 show 67 percent of Montana graduates with debt averaging $26,946. Whereas students may be paying their share, the state is not. Students pay more and get less. Unrestricted revenue (tuition, fees, state allocations) per full-time-equivalent student in the Montana university system in 2015 was $10,783 – second-lowest nationally. The national average was $2,100 higher, with neighboring states Idaho, North Dakota and Wyoming higher by $1,069, $3,671 and $9,550, respectively. The percentage of the total covered by student tuition in Montana was significantly higher than in neighboring states. Moreover, legislatures in 13 states with lower median household incomes (including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Maine, New Mexico, Oklahoma and North Carolina) allocated substantially more state funds per FTE than Montana’s legislature. Montana is winning the race to the bottom. University funding in Montana lags a national field that is itself lagging. If other state university systems were healthy it would be less of a problem. Unfortunately, public hi
                      7 years ago by @prophe
                       
                        Mar2017USAthreatEnglish
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