Chancher Redhar (Pakistan) (AFP) - In a decrepit white-walled classroom in southern Pakistan, Bushra valiantly struggles to keep discipline as a dozen girls run and scream around her. Authorities have not appointed a new one, making Bushra's situation typical for a student at one of Pakistan's 7,000 so-called "ghost schools", where no formal classes can be taught. "The last teacher told us she would stop coming if we did not pay for her transportation to the village," said Salim Samoon, who has seven granddaughters at the school catering for the roughly 600 residents of Chancher Redhar, a village two hours drive from Karachi in the south of Pakistan. The southern village is far from the notoriously conservative parts of northwest Pakistan near the Afghan border, where Taliban attacks against public schools are commonplace.

By Bill Cotterell TALLAHASSEE, Florida (Reuters) - Students attending public universities in Florida can keep weapons in their cars while on campus, a state appeals court has ruled. The ruling by the 1st District Court of Appeals came in a case brought by a University of North Florida (UNF) student who challenged the school's policy barring firearms because she wanted to store a gun in her car for self-defense. In a 12-3 ruling on Tuesday, the appeals court said the Florida Legislature ultimately holds the power to regulate guns, trumping local governments and universities. For decades, the Legislature has spurned tighter gun control.

Democrats who control California's Assembly said on Wednesday their priorities for the next state budget include more spending on early childhood and higher education and leaving $2 billion in reserve at the end of the next fiscal year. The plan suggests they would like to tap much of the state's expected surpluses and comes as Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, prepares his initial budget plan for the 2014-2015 fiscal year beginning next July. He will present his plan to the legislature next month, followed by a revised plan in May. After the state's budget watchdog agency last month projected a $5.6 billion reserve for California's next fiscal year if the state's finances improve and its current fiscal policies do not change, Brown urged lawmakers to be cautious in calling for spending increases. California is seeing a budget surplus after years of deficits following austerity measures and tax increases approved by voters last year.

Schools should be ?open all hours? to offer parents the kind of childcare choice that fits in with modern living, the Government declared on Thursday.

Schools should be ?open all hours? to offer parents the kind of childcare choice that fits in with modern living, the Government declared on Thursday.

More than 700 primary schools have failed to reach minimum government standards in the three Rs and could face being forced to become academies, according to official figures published today.

Linking the words "genetics" and "education" can bring the hardiest of educationists out in a rash.

Genetics has a more powerful influence on pupils' GCSE exam results than teachers, schools or family environment, according to a new study published tonight.

Genetics has a more powerful influence on pupils' GCSE exam results than teachers, schools or family environment, according to a new study published tonight.

“Everyone should have an opportunity to participate in higher education.”

With those words, Michael K. Young, President of the University of Washington, opens a new video from his institution’s AccessComputing Project, IT Accessibility: What Campus Leaders Have to Say. Developed with support from the National Science Foundation, this video presents university presidents, chief information officers, and other higher education leaders who stress the importance to higher education of accessibility for persons with disabilities, and of having campus technology environments that support it.

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“When we were doing our studies for the National Academies, the typical first response of university presidents or CFOs or provosts was to say: ‘I understand things are changing very rapidly, but I'll ask my CIO to take care of it. The CIO usually can.’ We would then ask: ‘Suppose you wake up in the morning and come in to your office and nothing works anymore. You can't access e-mail. All of your course systems have collapsed. Who fixes the problem?’ They begin to scratch their heads, and pretty soon it's like the five phases of grief. They start off with denial and anger, move through bargaining and depression, and finally reach acceptance.” — James J. Duderstadt, Change and the Research University

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EDUCAUSE Top 10 IT Issues, 2012

The EDUCAUSE annual publication of top IT issues has long resonated as a yearly snapshot of the most pressing issues for IT leaders in higher education. At the top of list for 2012:

1. Updating IT professionals’ skills and roles to accommodate emerging technologies and changing IT management and service delivery models
2. Supporting the trends toward IT consumerization and bring-your-own device
3. Developing an institution-wide cloud strategy

Below are the EDUCAUSE Review article summarizing the IT Issues Panel's findings for 2012 and accompanying resources.

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This free hour-long session, “Rolling Out a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) Program,” will offer ideas, sample policy statements and guidelines, and lessons learned for campuses interested in implementing a BYOD strategy for mobile devices on campus.

Those unable to attend may wish to visit the archives after the event or browse related resources.

Interact on Twitter at #EDULive.

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As someone who has a vested interest in higher education IT, you are part of a dynamic and close-knit community where we share new ideas, network with peers, and work toward the common good of the profession.

EDUCAUSE provides opportunities to be an active member by volunteering in a variety of roles, either short- or long-term, throughout the year. These opportunities include:

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Gartner predicts that by the end of 2012, agile development methods will be used on 80 percent of all software development projects. Project Management Institute’s research shows that agile project management tripled from December 2008 to May 2011, and can help decrease product defects, improve team productivity, and increase business value.

Read the latest article release on agile project management from the Project Management Institute.

To help you apply project management processes at your organization, EDUCAUSE members have access to a selection of professional development resources:

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?The high school performer who was playing Horton during this rehearsal was delivering the material as if he were reading it rather than writing it ? he was not LIVING in the role and, therefore, transported neither him nor us. I told him that his promise to this dust speck, this time, had to be an ABSOLUTE commitment ? that he had failed them before but that he had now learned his lesson. He was given a rare second chance.

?I explained that if you don?t connect to your character in a natural way, you sometimes have to use your own history as your character?s history. I told this particular actor that the dust speck and the Whos ARE Newtown. The world failed to protect Newtown one day and it is our duty to those who were lost and should be our promise to all those around us that we will never let Newtown down again. I said to him, ?Protect that dust speck as if you were protecting your hometown. Because it is, and you are.??

"This suspension comes pending the investigation of allegations of University policy violations by the chapter on the night of Friday, December 6, 2013 including providing alcohol to minors, drinking games, hosting an unregistered social event, and irresponsible distribution of alcohol. Additionally, the chapter will be facing Interfraternity Council recruitment violations for allegations of potential new members being present at the facility where alcohol was present the night of December 6."

Recent data shows American students and adults lagging behind their peers abroad in terms of important skills. It suggests that the long-predicted peril has arrived... A particularly alarming report on working-age adults was published earlier this month by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a coalition of mainly developed nations. The research focused on people ages 16 to 65 in 24 countries. It dealt with three crucial areas: literacy -- the ability to understand and respond to written material; numeracy -- the ability to use numerical and mathematical concepts; and problem solving -- the ability to interpret and analyze information using computers...Americans were comparatively weak-to-poor in all three areas.


In literacy, for example, about 12 percent of American adults scored at the highest levels, a smaller proportion than in Finland and Japan (about 22 percent). In addition, one in six Americans scored near the bottom in literacy, compared with 1 in 20 adults who scored at that level in Japan...American numeracy skills were termed "very poor." The United States outperformed only two comparison countries: Italy and Spain.Nearly one in three Americans scored near the bottom in numeracy. That Americans were slightly below average in problem solving using computers was especially discouraging.

The general public often views colleges and universities as the purest symbols of American democracy because of the essential role they have played in promoting upward social mobility. Indeed, they have been outstanding vehicles for untold millions to achieve a better life than the one enjoyed by their parents. If they were ever pure, however, that is certainly not the case today.

Currently, many colleges and universities resemble nation-states. Some colleges and universities are economic powerhouses, with endowments in the billions; some have intercontinental ballistic missiles disguised as football and basketball teams; some get together to form loose alliances which you may recognize as the Ivy League, the Big Ten, the Southeastern Conference, and the Pacific 12, just to name a few. These alliances are predicated on the same goal- increase income. When a college or university feels it would be able to do better financially, it follows its self-interest and its former partners be damned.

Today, America's universities and colleges are expanding even beyond the nation's borders by establishing campuses abroad. For example, New York University has established a campus in Abu Dhabi, in the Middle East, for the purpose of attracting talented students from throughout that region. Other universities have set up shop in Asia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The stated goal is to develop a global university aimed at attracting a talented student body and world-class faculty from the international academic community. In our opinion, profit is the driving force in the expansion of American universities abroad. Such expansion is also predicated on enhancing the reputation of that specific university. No university wants to be left behind. In this respect, higher education is coming to resemble major corporations in the same industry, which compete with each other in order to keep or expand their share of the market. This situation also reminds us of the Cold War during which the Soviet Union and United States were constantly trying to outdo one another in weaponry development.

As universities have become more competitive with one another, the nature of the professoriate has evolved. The days of earning a doctorate, securing a position at the university in one's area of expertise, achieving tenure, and reaching the rank of full professor is now much less frequent an occurrence than it was 10 or 20 years ago. Although colleges are increasing in size, there has not been a commensurate growth in the size of faculty. We define faculty as those individuals occupying tenure track lines. Currently, instead of adding faculty lines, there is now tremendous reliance on adjuncts, part-time, and so-called clinical faculty (individuals who are not on tenure track lines but do have experience in the fields in which they are employed. These individuals need not publish, are employed full time, by contract for a specified period of time usually ranging from two to four years. Tenure track, but not yet tenured, faculty see this and are now aware of their precarious position in the university.

Competition in higher education has also increased because of the growth of self-proclaimed profit-making institutions. Whether or not institutions of higher education specifically proclaim their profit-making goal, they are all entrepreneurial as they are in the business of selling their product, raising funds, advertising, and even pretending that this enhances their abilities to offer a better quality education to students. The internal operation of higher education has many flaws, and what the public sees does not convey how institutions of higher education are managed, supported, and promoted. All universities and post-secondary schools compete with each other, and the form of that competition depends on where that institution sees itself in the academic pecking order.

Colleges reflect our economic system and, in doing so, they make the playing field uneven in terms of ease of achieving social and economic mobility. The richest and most influential institutions get the lions' share of financial support from tuition federal grants, gifts from alums, and foundations. In today's economic market, the status of a student's college is acutely reflected in the job market. Admission to Harvard or Yale can be heavily weighted by a combination of economic status, legacy and academic achievement. Thus, only a small portion of the population from the lower social classes can overcome their background and gain admission to such elite schools. Yes, affirmative action programs exist as a showplace of university integrity and equal opportunity, but always remember that admission by legacy is a reality and far outstrips the number the admissions allocated to minority and economically deprived students. This point was made by a Harvard researcher in the January 5^th, 2011 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education. Michael Hurwitz, a doctoral candidate at Harvard, examined "the impact of legacy status at 30 highly selective colleges and concluded that, all other things being equal, legacy applicants got a 23.3 percentage point increase in their probability of admission. If the applicant's connection was a parent who attended the college as an undergraduate, a 'primary legacy,' the increase was 45.1 percentage points." Hurwitz concluded that a legacy applicant had four times greater chance of admission at an elite institution than an identical applicant without a legacy.

Entrepreneurship is a paramount consideration in the world of colleges and universities. Over the years, such questions as, "How many students are enrolled? Will we make our budget projections? How are we doing compared to our sister institutions? Do we have too many small classes?" A special fear occurs among college faculty administrators when enrollment in a school decreases. This can lead to faculty downsizing or even elimination of some programs. Panic then permeates the ranks of faculty and staff and resumes are soon mailed out.

From an institutional point of view, the race to increase the university's endowment never ceases. As the economy stagnates, universities will provide guidebooks for students and their families informing them where they can go for loans and grants so that the particular school can receive its tuition. Although students and their families continually express dissatisfaction with tuition increases far beyond inflation, most college administrators believe that their institution must continue to expand.

In August of 2012 Annalisa Iadicicco and I travelled to a small Shapibo-Canibo village deep along the Ucayali River in the Amazon at the Brazilian-Peruvian border. We were accompanied by educators Geremia Iadicicco from Centro de Educación y Desarrollo Comunitario and Padre Carlos, a Fidei Donum priest living for over 30 years in that region of the jungle.

We arrived by permission of the village Chief to discuss the school they had built for their community and to meet with some of their teachers. Our local guide for the day had gone to college in a nearby town of Atalaya, 10 hours away by canoe. He had come back to his village to change the education being delivered there. He explained to us that he wanted to bring education to his people, but not to teach them our [Western] ways; he'd seen how we lived and didn't like it. He wanted to use education to improve their lives, not change their way of life. They live simply and want to continue living their way, education would give them strength, he said.

Our journey took us to the shantytown of Villa el Salvador outside Lima, then deep into the Peruvian jungle near the Brazilian border to meet with indigenous tribes and finally to Cuzco to work with child domestic servants known as trabajadoras del hogar. We traveled deeper into the heart of education than we could ever imagine, showing us the thin, fragile and often contested line that marks what a good and effective education consists of and the various shades of grey involved in delivering it. We began to understand the damage misguided attempts at education can wreak on a community.

"Do you think that bringing books from Spain, or from North America or another country to these kids and telling them: This is what you need to learn, helps them to identify their role? No, it simply confuses the situation," argued Geremia.

School policy in most countries assumes that all children should be educated in the same manner and conform to mainstream society. They seek assimilation and a shared common ground on issues of ethics, politics and economics. This often ignores the fact that indigenous people have their own traditions, knowledge, history and social issues going back thousands of years. An education out of context and delivered from a foreign point of view usually attempts to impose ideals and goals that are alien to people living outside of mainstream society. Many western organizations and missionaries believe that education is a way out of poverty and that the knowledge they bring is a gift to the less sophisticated. This colonial approach to education is ineffective precisely because it does not give weight to existing knowledge but rather sees it as something to erase for the sake of modernization.

The goal of education should not be to drive people to urban settings, thereby changing their value systems, cultural norms and traditions, but to use education to strengthen and uphold communities and give them the tools they need to manage and if necessary defend their way of life. Education should empower people to navigate a changing world effectively and successfully, to adapt to the extent necessary without sacrificing who they are as a people.

Education is circumstantial and environmental and cannot be delivered from the outside. It requires a grassroots effort that is geared to the specific problems challenging the community in question. We found that in most cases those communities seem to have their own ideas about what education should entail. Yet in many cases we have managed not to pay attention, instead choosing to implement education like a colonial directive, often damaging the delicate balance that exists in traditional societies. An education imported from far off cities or countries is often seen as intrusive, coercive and labeled as a tool of oppression. This serves to alienate the local population, increasing drop-out rates and backlash. We need to learn how to listen to people on the ground who are aware of the unique challenges facing their communities, and we need to address the problem as a whole.

Education can make a major difference in a person's life and in the path of a nation. I believe that if we educate one person we change a household, if we educate a dozen we change a community and if we educate a nation we change the world. It is time to revisit our intentions when it comes to education. Is it our place to decide what value system or aspirations a people should adopt? Is it for us to decide what society should look like in terms of its socio-economic structure? People have a right to live within their own cultural context and to demand equality. The true gifts of education are the freedom to live our lives according to the traditions and beliefs of our culture and the power to navigate and adapt to a changing world without surrendering who we are as people. Most people when given a choice want education, and use it to their benefit. Our goal for education must be to give people the tools they need to realize their own dreams and to protect their aspirations, not to urbanize, modernize and westernize.

This BS/MD program has actually been around for some time but it applies to so few students that I have resisted discussing it. However, in an attempt to be as complete as possible, I have decided that it needs to be reviewed. This 8 year program is for students of the Debakey High School, the […]

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Debakey High School BS/MD Program with the Univeristy of Houston and Baylor Medical College

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Temple University School of Medicine now has a BS/MD program with Temple University Undergrad. This is known as the Pre-Med Health Scholar Program. To be eligible for the program students need a minimum 3.8 unweighted GPA although the average GPA of accepted students is a 3.95.  A minimum SAT score of 1,350 on critical reading […]

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Temple University BS/MD Program

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Most students applying to college understand that they will need to take on at least some amount of debt to pay for college. But no one wants to have more debt than absolutely necessary. So many ask, what is the average student debt upon graduating and is that something that can be easily paid off? […]

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What is the Average Student Debt Graduating from College?

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Caldwell College has a new BS/MD program with the American University of Antigua College of Medicine.  This program is known as the Health Professions Affiliation Program Medicine.  Caldwell has two other BS/MD programs including one with Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences and one with St. George’s University School of Medicine. All three programs are known […]

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Health Professions Affiliation Program Medicine at Caldwell College with American University of Antigua College of Medicine

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The Stanford University alumni magazine recently had an article discussing admissions to Stanford and what the admissions office was looking for in admitting students. While the article discusses admissions at Stanford, you could easily substitute the name of any highly selective college and the article would read the same. The article reinforces what I tell […]

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What Does it Take to Get Admitted to Stanford?

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I just wanted to drop all of my clients and faithful readers a note to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. It has been another wonderful year here at College Admissions Partners and I know that I owe it to all of you. The picture of the cranberries is in honor of my wife who is […]

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Happy Thanksgiving

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