Initial findings suggest that students in Udacity courses performed poorly compared with students in traditional classes. Fewer than half of the Udacity students were enrolled in San Jose State; many were high school students from low-income communities. A large group were enrolled in the Oakland Military Institute, a college prep academy. Many of them didn’t have access to a computer — a fact that course mentors didn’t learn about until three weeks into the semester, Junn said. She acknowledged that educators did a poor job of explaining upfront what students should expect.

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by Carla Rivera, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: July 18th, 2013, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

When Janet Napolitano, the departing U.S. secretary of homeland security, becomes president of the University of California, her leadership may be exactly what the struggling institution needs to propel itself forward during a time of painful budget cuts. Or it could signal an unusual candidate without much higher-education experience sweeping in and furthering the downward spiral of a 10-campus system that is considered by some to be the nation’s crown jewel of public higher education. That’s been the range of responses from faculty members, administrators, students, and higher-education experts to the choice of Ms. Napolitano, who was confirmed as president on Thursday by the university’s Board of Regents. She is expected to begin her tenure in late September.

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by Seth Zweifler, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Posted: July 18th, 2013, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Christopher Newfield, a UC Santa Barbara professor who studies higher education issues, wrote a blog post criticizing UC for its interest in what he called the nation’s “top cop.” “Meritocracies define ‘being qualified’ for the biggest job in a field as requiring prior experience in other jobs in the field. One is co-pilot before being pilot, a medical intern before being a licensed physician, Provost at Columbia before being Chancellor of UC Berkeley, and so on,” Newfield wrote. “Ms. Napolitano has no experience with university life or management and no known body of organized thought on the subject. It is not easy to make up for this. Being a political heavyweight is not a qualification for being a university president. Earning President Obama’s trust is not a qualification.”

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by Laurel Rosenhall, The Sacramento Bee.

Posted: July 17th, 2013, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The providers of massive open online courses have rapidly expanded in the past year, aided in part by a series of potentially lucrative no-bid deals with public colleges and universities, including for services that may extend beyond the MOOC model… The deals include contractual language that could be used to divert untold amounts of taxpayer or student tuition money to outside vendors… “We’re in this situation that is sort of nonsensical,” Hill said. “So you have very strict procurement processes for pretty easy decisions, like a $30,000 piece of software. Yet at the same time you have a multimillion-dollar decision that is completely going outside of the procurement process.”

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by Ry Rivard, Inside Higher Ed.

Posted: July 17th, 2013, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

The University of California’s governing board plans to vote Wednesday on a new student member who would be the first practicing Muslim to hold the post and whose nomination is being vigorously opposed by some Jewish groups. UC Berkeley senior Sadia Saifuddin was picked from a field of 30 applicants to serve on the UC Board of Regents during the 2014-15 academic year… The Simon Wiesenthal Center, StandWithUs, conservative commentator David Horowitz and others have called on the board to reject Saifuddin’s appointment, alleging that some of her political activities as a student senator and member of the Muslim Students Association at Berkeley make her unqualified to represent the University of California system’s more than 222,000 students. Those activities included co-sponsoring a bill calling for the divestment of university funds from companies with economic ties to the Israeli military or Israeli settlements on the West Bank, and authoring a resolution condemning a UC Santa Cruz lecturer who had linked the Muslim Students Association with terrorism “for inciting racist and Islamophobic rhetoric.” … Jonathan Stein, a Berkeley law school graduate who recently completed a one-year term as the UC student regent and was part of the five-member committee that recommended Saifuddin, said her critics have overlooked Saifuddin’s work to build bridges, which included bringing Muslim and Jewish students together during the divestment debate and founding the Berkeley campus’ first interfaith worship space.

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by Lisa Leff, The San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: July 17th, 2013, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Despite more than a year of bargaining, a two-day strike and union accusations that its medical facilities are understaffed and poorly managed, the University of California’s contract talks for its 15,000 hospital workers remain deadlocked. Now the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299 says it’s prepared to make concessions on pensions, including higher contributions from all workers and later retirement ages for future hires, but it wants the UC to hire more hospital employees and cap high-end pensions.

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by Jon Ortiz, The Sacramento Bee.

Posted: July 16th, 2013, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Patrick Callan, president of the Higher Education Policy Institute, in San Jose, called Napolitano’s hiring “a radical departure” for the university system, which he called “a very insular place in the way it looks for leadership.” Faculty groups sometimes question appointments of non-academics to presidencies. But Robert Powell, the faculty representative to the Board of Regents — who had the opportunity to talk with Napolitano during the search process — endorsed the selection… “She has deep respect for the faculty and she will listen to what we say,” Powell said… Not all faculty members agree, Christopher Newfield, professor of American culture at the University of California at Santa Barbara, outlined several objections, and rejected the idea that success in a political career necessarily made someone qualified to lead a university.

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by staff, Inside Higher Ed.

Posted: July 15th, 2013, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Unfortunately, secrecy and springing an appointment on the Friday before the regents’ Thursday meeting, with no hint in the agenda of the upcoming presidential decision, do nothing to help the nominee’s credibility. That’s why, in Texas, the names of University of Texas presidential finalists must be made public at least 21 days before the Board of Regents decision. That’s why the University of New Mexico, University of Utah, University of Minnesota, University of Vermont, University of Nebraska, University of Florida, University of Wisconsin and others announce presidential finalists and have the candidates meet and interact with faculty, staff, students and community members in open public forums.

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by The Editorial Board, The Sacramento Bee.

Posted: July 13th, 2013, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Some faculty watchdogs predicted that UC will develop a cozier relationship with the defense industry as a result of having Napolitano at the helm. “It’s something we need to watch,” said Bob Meister, president of the Council of UC Faculty Associations and a frequent UC critic. “If it’s not done transparently, it will be a bad thing.” Sherry Lansing, who chairs the Board of Regents, called Napolitano a “distinguished and dedicated public servant who has earned trust at the highest, most critical levels of our country’s government.” Lansing chaired the 10-member presidential search committee and said it unanimously endorsed Napolitano’s nomination.

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by Nanette Asimov, The San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted: July 13th, 2013, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Lawmakers there are considering a proposal that would allow students to replace some introductory courses with MOOCs in the state’s three higher education systems, which together enroll nearly 1 million students. Proponents of the plan, including California Gov. Jerry Brown and State Sen. Darrell Steinberg, say it could relieve stress from overenrolled classes, but it passed through the State Senate despite resistance from faculty leaders. Opponents say MOOCs cannot always replicate engagement students receive in a physical classroom, and that the online classes are not the answer to years of budget cuts that have devastated state universities’ funding. One of those opponents, University of California Academic Senate Chair Bob Powell, said at a State Senate hearing that the system is already moving toward effective use of online education — without MOOCs. But at the same hearing, Steinberg hinted at a different reason some professors might oppose his bill: He thinks they fear for their jobs.

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by Sean McMinn, USA Today.

Posted: July 12th, 2013, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.