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Colleges have benefited from a bull market for almost 11 years. But bull markets do eventually end.

In the face of ever-stronger headwinds, colleges look to their leaders to steady the ship. This guide will help you navigate troubled waters.

A job ad stirs up long-simmering concerns that the humanities get no respect.

Appalachian State University is one of several public institutions that have parlayed good reputations and nonflagship tuition prices into more students. But growth can bring other problems.

Officials at the University of California at Santa Cruz said they were ├ó┬Ç┬£left with no choice├ó┬Ç┬Ø but to fire the students, who say they need a cost-of-living adjustment in order to live nearby.

Italian language schools in Italy are open and “regularly working” despite cases of coronavirus in some areas of the country, according to the president of the Association of Schools of Italian as a Second Language.

Speaking with┬áThe PIE News, the association’s president, Wolfango Poggi, explained that although associated schools had seen cancellations from both school groups and individuals, language providers are doing their utmost to support students.

“All our school centres are open for business and are working”

“All our school centres are open for business and are working regularly,” he explained, adding that the country remains safe.

The global media’s portrayal of Italy during the coronavirus has caused issues for schools seeking to teach Italian to visiting students from around the world, Poggi added.

“Our country is absolutely safe and…because of the mass media’s terrible way of communication, our market will be affected for several weeks, maybe including summertime and longer,” he said.

The whole of the Italian language industry has been affected, he noted, with some schools suspending education program between February 24-29.

“Some students have cancelled or postponed their trips especially in our schools in Northern Italy,” Poggi told The PIE.

US universities have started repatriating students from some areas of Italy, he noted. Other programs beyond Italy have also been suspended.

“Until now there are no official restrictions imposed by our government. Borders are open, flights, trains and buses are operating as usual except direct flights from and to China,” he continued.

Like other education providers, Italian language schools are running or planning to introduce online classes to “give students the opportunity not to miss classes”.

One school ÔÇô┬áIstituto Dante Alighieri Milano ÔÇô said students were “gladly accepting” Skype lessons it has proposed.

Support from institutions is now needed “more than ever”, Poggi stressed, adding that the loss of bookings and cancellations are “a huge issue”.

“Our industry needs support from our institutions, now more than ever. We represent a relevant part not only of the economic income but, above all, of the cultural exchanges of the country,” he said.

“Italy is always a destination that students long to visit. We want to reassure everyone that, also under these circumstances, Italy remains an absolutely safe place, as is our schools.”

The post Italian language schools “open for business” appeared first on The PIE News.

A University of California conference on free speech turned into a microcosm of the free speech battles regularly taking place on American college campuses after student activists showed up at the event in Washington Thursday and interrupted speakers to advocate for raises for the system’s graduate teaching assistants.

The handful of undergraduates representing COLA for All, a group pressing for a $1,412 monthly cost of living adjustment, or COLA, for teaching assistants at all UC campuses, at times stood in front of and interrupted speakers and panelists at #SpeechMatters2020, which was hosted by the UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement. The protesters, who are studying at the university system’s Washington center, said it was ironic that the conference was addressing how institutions should allow campus activists to respectfully express themselves while, at the same time, conference organizers were moving the protesters to the side of the stage to keep their posters from blocking audience members' views of the speakers on the stage.

The protesters held signs outlining information about striking teaching assistants back in California and calling on UC president Janet Napolitano, who sat in the front row, to resign.

Michelle Deutchman, executive director of the center, told the students they could remain but could not disrupt speakers. She used the recommended language UC Irvine includes in its policy for “preventing and responding to disruptions in real time.”

It was “fitting” to witness a live demonstration at a conference centered around campus protests and how they are handled, said Akshita Gandra, a UC Davis student who attended the conference and is a recipient of a Valuing Open and Inclusive Conversation and Engagement grant from the UC National Center. Gandra said she understands the protesters' frustration about graduate student salaries, which has been an ongoing issue since she came to the Davis campus four years ago.

“It may have been good to let them have five minutes with the mike to talk about the cause,” Gandra said of the protesters.

Protestors Missy Hart and Jazleez Jacobo accused leaders of the conference of silencing them.

“Why are you censoring me?” Jacobo said of being ushered to the side of the conference stage. “It goes along with the tactics that the university uses to silence us. Yeah, everyone has access to free speech, we're allowed to demonstrate, but did we make it in the frame?”

The protesters compared their treatment at the conference to clashes between police and protesters at UC Santa Cruz, such as earlier this month when 17 protesters on the campus were arrested for unlawful assembly and failure to disperse. The graduate teaching assistants have been protesting and striking since December and demanding an increase in pay to help them meet the high costs of living in California.

Graduate students at UC Davis and UC Santa Barbara on Thursday joined in on the strike -- labeled a “wildcat” strike because it was not endorsed by the United Auto Workers Local 2865, the union representing 19,000 student workers in the UC system. UC Santa Cruz graduate students participating in the strike refused to submit grades for the fall 2019 term, and UC Davis graduate students will follow suit for the winter term, The Sacramento Bee reported.

Jacobo said the strike, now spreading to other UC campuses, will have a ripple effect on undergraduate students, some of whom have not received their fall grades and risk having classes canceled.

“As undergraduate students, we’re not protected by anything,” Jacobo said. “So when I can't get my classes, or anybody else cannot continue their education … they’re not going to account for that.”

Hart and Jacobo said they and others were frustrated by Napolitano’s refusal to engage with them at the conference, which Jacobo called a “show.”

Administrators who confront protests on their campuses are “navigating treacherous waters,” Deutchman said during an interview before the start of the conference. She said she's sympathetic to institutional leaders who struggle with balancing students’ rights to express themselves and protecting the rights of students who feel harmed by certain types of speech.

“I have a lot of admiration for them, not just because they're the ones that are sometimes being criticized, but sometimes they're in the position of having to defend the right of somebody to come to campus,” Deutchman said.

Napolitano did not address or acknowledge the protesters who stood silently and held up signs during her opening remarks at the start of the conference. But in an interview the day before the conference, she discussed some of the challenges university administrators face when planned events and speakers spark controversy.

“Sometimes the protest activity takes the form of actually shutting down the speech,” Napolitano said. “It's a difficult problem for university administrators -- do you bring all the students up on student conduct charges? Do you try to do arrests? Do you just apologize and move on? That's a decision-making framework that university presidents have to go through.”

When it was time for the conference’s final panel, in which Napolitano and others were scheduled to discuss “executive perspectives on campus free speech,” Deutchman announced that the conference had gone over its allotted time and the panel was canceled. The protesters said they had planned to use the panel as an opportunity to confront Napolitano about the raises for the teaching assistants.

"Protest and participation aren't always easy, and they can often reshape our agendas, as they did today," Deutchman said after the conference concluded. "But they remain critically important to the smooth functioning of our democracy, and today we had an opportunity to see it live in action."

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It happened again -- this time at the University of Oklahoma. Two more professors used the N-word during class, angering students who say it was pedagogically unnecessary and hurtful.

But what started as a protest over those incidents has escalated into a student sit-in Oklahoma’s central administration building and calls for Provost Kyle Harper to resign. The university says it won't happen.

“Our demands still have not been met, so we will continue to do a sit in, we will continue to do a hunger strike,” organizers of the campus group Black Emergency Response Team, or BERT, said in a statement Thursday from their position in Evans Hall. That was after the university’s interim president, Joseph Harroz, met with protesters late Wednesday and after Oklahoma released a statement saying that both parties “identified areas of agreement that will move our university forward.”

The administration’s letter was signed by two vice presidents and by Harroz, who released a similar statement on his own earlier in the week promising mandatory diversity, equity and inclusion training for all faculty and staff members and a new incident response protocol. Students had been seeking that first change, among others, including the creation of a new multicultural center on campus.

Harper, the locus of students’ disaffection, didn't sign either letter. He did not respond to a request for comment.

Harroz said in another statement late Thursday that he "cannot engage the demand for the immediate resignation of the provost." While he listened to BERT’s "concerns and will always listen to concerns from our students," he said, "I am confident in Provost Harper’s abilities and willingness to work constructively to advance the university." What many do not know, Harroz continued, is that nearly a year ago, "Harper requested to return to the faculty," to his professorship in classics and letters.  

"I personally asked him to continue to serve through an important period of transition and to help us complete and launch the strategic plan," Harroz said of Harper, who is a graduate of Oklahoma. "He put his personal pursuits on hold to serve his alma mater. There is no doubt that he loves our university and serves it tirelessly."

BERT organizers said they'd met with administrators again and planned to issue new demands for "checks and balances" within the offices of the president and provost.

A separate memo Harroz’s office released late Thursday promised to present the following to Oklahoma’s Board of Regents for consideration next month: the mandatory equity training for all faculty and staff members, to start in the fall; a semester-length equity and inclusion general education course to "promote respect for all" students; expanded student mental health resources; and an exploratory committee for the requested multicultural center.

Questions About ‘Commitment’ to Equity

Students fault Harper for what they call his long record of “silence” on matters of diversity and inclusion.

Campaigning for Harper’s resignation on social media under the hashtag #HarperHasToGo, campus groups -- including BERT, the Black Student Association and OU UnHeard -- say that Harper was silent in 2015 when students told Oklahoma to do more to hire and retain black professors and staff members. They say Harper was silent when students made similar demands following a 2019 incident in which a student wore blackface and used a racial slur. And he has been silent over the past two weeks with respect to two professors using racial slurs in the classroom, they say.

In each of these instances, the university addressed students’ concerns with various comments and actions. But the protesters describe Harper’s individual, at least publicly muted, reaction to these matters as disqualifying for a chief academic officer.

That Harper has been “silent” on the recent N-word controversies isn’t quite accurate -- at least not as of this week. In a statement first reported by the OU Daily student newspaper, Harper said that his office would work with others on campus to “ensure that our students feel safe and respected in the classroom, and that our actions honor the fundamental boundaries of the First Amendment and academic freedom.”

Right now, Harper said, “we are listening to students directly impacted and actively working on the action items around training and incident response described by President Harroz.”

As for what Harper has said, student protesters and others also criticize a 1999 article he wrote for a student publication called The Fountainhead when he was studying at Oklahoma. It describes the women's studies program as "the hiding place place of the likes of Patricia Ireland, Barney Frank and Ellen Degeneres who tear at the time-honored values of Western civilization."

Adding fuel to the fire, a partially redacted 2015 document written by the provost’s search committee to then president David Boren surfaced on social media Thursday. The document describes then interim provost Harper as “enthusiastic, energetic, innovative and ambitious.” But it also describes him as "relatively inexperienced in higher education administration" and at times "evasive." Most relevant to the current protest, the document from the search committee notes lingering “concerns by a few about Dr. Harper’s commitment to issues of equity.”

The document does not provide any detail about those concerns, and the search committee co-chairs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Saying the N-word in class, even when it appears in a historical text, has gotten a number of professors into trouble -- either with students, their administrations or both -- in recent years. Experts have differing opinions as to whether the word is ever appropriate, and institutions have been called out for both allowing professors to say it under the auspices of academic freedom and for sanctioning professors who do.

Many scholars say using the N-word does more harm than it can possibly do pedagogical good in any learning environment -- especially if you’re a white professor, and because it’s easy to say “N-word” instead. Some believe that avoiding any word that appears in historical and literary texts is censorship.

At Oklahoma of late, one professor of journalism saw his duties reassigned away from teaching after he compared the snarky phrase “OK, Boomer,” as in baby boomer, to the N-word. Most recently, this week, a professor of history read from a historical document that contained the word. She gave a “trigger warning” in advance, according to Harroz’s Monday memo, but her “recitation does not lessen the pain caused by the use of the word.”

For students in the class, Harroz said, “as well as members of our community, this was another painful experience.” He called it “common sense to avoid uttering the most offensive word in the English language, especially in an environment where the speaker holds the power.”

Harroz’s memo did not contain the professor’s name. Through a university spokesperson, the professor, Kathleen Brosnan, Paul and Doris Eaton Travis Chair of Modern History, shared the apology she sent to her class. 

"My goal was to convey the depth of racism that existed in the U.S. in 1920 when the U.S. Senate debated the League of Nations," Brosnan wrote. "By directly quoting a U.S. senator, James Reed, I wanted all the students in class to recognize an ugliness in U.S. history that is unfortunately still part of some students’ lived experience."

The explanation doesn't diminish "the pain any students felt," she said, and "I also recognize that apologizing in advance for the offensive language and placing it in this historical context did not alleviate the injury. And for that I am deeply sorry."

Sentiments surrounding race at Oklahoma may be especially raw due to past events. In 2015, for instance, video footage of students singing a violent, racist song prompted the closure of a fraternity chapter.

Eleven of 13 members of the university's Faculty Senate Executive Committee released a statement in support of this group of student protesters.

Beyond Oklahoma

Students at the University of Richmond are also protesting several racist incidents on that campus, including slurs found on or around the doors of a black student and a student from Pakistan. President Ronald Crutcher has called such actions "disgusting," and the university is investigating. Some are calling for the creation of a department of Africana studies, in part to bring greater awareness of difference to campus. (Oklahoma has a department of African and African American studies.)

Cynthia Price, a spokesperson for Richmond, said Thursday that "interest has been expressed for this program, and conversations have begun on campus.”

Atiya Husein, assistant professor of sociology, and Armond Towns, assistant professor of rhetoric and communication studies, endorsed the proposal in a recent op-ed for Richmond’s student newspaper, The Collegian.

Africana studies, they wrote, “is an area of study that exceeds the naming of violence and blame. It considers what this otherwise familiar story has done to all of us: It has categorized some as more human (as buyers and sellers) than others (particularly as living, breathing commodities).” This has implications “for what it even means to be human -- one of the most enduring philosophical questions of Africana Studies.”

European colonialism and “chattel slavery” are major part of Virginia’s own history, Husein and Towns added. Even so, they say, an Africana studies department “does not necessitate that we focus on one group’s struggles over another.” Possible frameworks include critical race theory and race or ethnicity, and “We support all these efforts and do not view them as being in conflict or competition.”

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Cities in California and Minnesota both have growing medical technology manufacturing industries, but job seekers in those states need different skills to be competitive in the industry.

In California, the jobs focus more on programming and life science skills, while the jobs in Minnesota focus more on product development and industrial engineering.

Emsi, a labor market analytics firm, uses data tools to identify these nuances. It also determines the skills gap between what employers need and what prospective hires have, so policy makers and institutions of higher education can address those challenges.

The firm used data from postings for job openings and profiles uploaded by job seekers to identify key skills industries want. Emsi hopes to provide a tool to improve regional economies by using better information to align training programs and language to address skills that are needed.

In a new report that analyzes the landscape in Minnesota, for example, Emsi found large gaps between supply and demand for discrete skills in med-tech manufacturing, including lean manufacturing, Six Sigma methodology and statistical process controls.

"We’re picking up the keywords that employers are saying they’re struggling to find," said Rob Sentz, chief innovation officer at the firm. While some professions -- nursing, for example -- might not require detailed postings because most people know what the job consists of, other industries that are changing quickly are asking for very specific skills that might not be traditionally implied with the job, he said.

This may be the furthest a firm has gotten in accurately assessing the gap between supply and demand for jobs and skills, according to Jim Fong, lead consultant at the University Professional and Continuing Education Association.

“Their ability to link labor … and education data, apply their forecasts, and link the external databases is impressive, and the job analytics they are producing are very good,” Fong said. “They’ve taken these external databases and organized them in a way that allows them to cross-reference so much data, including skills asked of employers for specific jobs, by occupation, industry and various levels of geography.”

Continuing education programs could use these data to find areas to explore further, he said. For instance, Fong said he would want to convene area businesses to discuss the demand for certain skills, which would differ based on whether he was in Minnesota or in California.

For postsecondary education, the data can be used to shape curricula, Sentz said.

Western Governors University uses Emsi data as a baseline to do its skills mapping, said Marni Baker Stein, the university's provost and chief academic officer. While many of the skills employers look for are enduring -- like critical thinking and communication -- sometimes technical skills have a shorter lifespan, she said.

With Emsi and the university's other tools, WGU can keep abreast of what's needed and update its master curriculum appropriately.

"We are, relatively speaking, fairly agile in our ability to adapt programs to industry needs," Baker Stein said.

in the future, WGU hopes to use the additional geographic data to tell students about real-time, local demand for the skills they're learning. It would also like to provide information about the demand of programs in different geographic areas before students choose what to pursue.

Finding skills gaps isn’t anything new for community colleges, said David Baime, senior vice president of government relations and policy analysis at the American Association of Community Colleges. Two-year institutions have tended to be heavily focused on the immediate and upcoming needs of regional businesses, he said.

Now, the data they can use are just more sophisticated.

“The report is just one very good example of the type of analytical work that colleges are undertaking across the country,” Baime said.

But what about traditional four-year colleges?

"They’re all very interested in ensuring their curriculum is relevant and valuable," Sentz said. Several four-year institutions already work with Emsi, including Boise State University and California State University, Dominguez Hills.

One of the first steps, he said, is aligning the language of the curriculum with the skills employers say they need. If a college is teaching a skill but describes it differently in the curriculum, or doesn't call it out at all, then employers won't know the skill is being taught and students may not know how to express that skill on a résumé.

"I think the beauty of skills-based education is you can tag the attainment of skills to any achievement," Baker Stein said. This approach doesn't need to be a big shift even for a small liberal arts college, she said -- the institution should just learn how to signal to employers what skills students are learning in a way they'll understand.

A second, larger step is filling in the gaps between what employers need and what students are being taught.

Whole programs don't need to change to close the gap, Sentz said. Rather, colleges can use this information to better ensure what they offer is up-to-date with labor market needs.

Boise State uses Emsi to explore the feasibility of new programs, to see what skills employers are looking for and to understand employment trends, according to Carl Melle, new program planning manager at the college's eCampus Center.

By using Emsi, the college gets ready-made reports on job markets, which cuts down the time it takes to determine feasibility for programs, Melle said. But the college relies on faculty members to interpret the data they receive and determine areas to explore.

Emsi doesn't want to be breaking apart liberal arts programs, Sentz said, especially since some research has shown that students who study in a broader field rather than a narrowly focused one do better in the long term.

"But we do know that the tension that so many schools feel today is the criticism that the market has toward liberal arts programs, in that they don’t apply to the market well," he said.

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For all of President Trump’s controversial policies, it has been rare for the Republican Senate to formally condemn the administration. But lobbyists on both sides of the debate over U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos's borrower-defense rule say it’s increasingly possible that the Republican Senate could join the Democratic House in rebuking the administration over the rule critics say makes it harder for defrauded students to have their education loans forgiven.

Lobbyists representing groups who support as well as oppose the rule stop short of predicting that the resolution sponsored by Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois will pass. But they say several Republicans are on the fence, making it possible that the proposal could get the four Republican votes needed to pass.

Indeed, none of the eight moderate Republican senators, or those facing tough re-election races, contacted this week would say they will oppose the proposal. Instead aides either said the senators are undecided or declined to say where they stand.

“I’m hearing the resolution is in play,” said Steve Gonzalez, senior vice president of government, military and veterans' relations at Career Education Colleges and Universities. The group, which represents for-profit institutions, supports the rule and is lobbying against the resolution of disapproval.

The same assessment came from the other side. “In a time where partisan politics often is the headline of media stories, we are encouraged by the number of Republican offices who are willing to stand with service members, veterans, and their families,” emailed Carrie Wofford, a former Senate health committee aide and now president of Veterans Education Success, which is leading an effort by veterans' groups to lobby in favor of the resolution. Though all types of students are affected by the rule, it has faced particular opposition from veterans' groups.

Federal regulations require that no more than 90 percent of a for-profit institution's revenue come from federal student aid. But veterans have been particularly targeted by for-profit institutions, according to Wofford's group, because military education benefits do not count as student aid.

The resolution, which passed the Democratic House in January, is likely to be vetoed by Trump anyway. And Gonzalez dismissed it as mostly political grandstanding.

“For Senator Durbin and many of its supporters, it’s just an opportunity to throw egg on the administration’s face instead of doing the right thing,” Gonzalez said in an interview. “This is more a gotcha moment than actually trying to legislate.”

The resolution has substance, Veterans Education Success vice president Tanya Ang responded. “This is not about the administration or about partisan politics but rather about protecting students from schools who have taken advantage of or lied to student veterans.”

Beth Stein, senior adviser at the Institute for College Access & Success, wasn't willing to concede it would be vetoed. "The bipartisan support for defrauded students and veterans demonstrated in the House vote shows that the stories [members of Congress] from both parties hear from borrowers who have been lied to matter to them. We will see if the Senate and maybe even the President agree," she said in a statement.

Giving supporters of the measure hope is that six Republicans crossed party lines and backed the House measure. The Senate is required to vote on the resolution, though it’s uncertain when, an aide to Durbin said.

The Senate has passed similar resolutions opposing Trump’s policies over at least three issues. Eleven Republicans in November 2019 backed a resolution over his emergency declaration to access funds for a border wall. In June 2019, seven Republicans voted in favor of a resolution opposing arms sales to Saudi Arabia and other nations. Five of them also supported a resolution against arms sales benefiting Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and other nations.

In March 2018, three Republicans joined Democrats to disapprove of the Trump administration's replacement of net neutrality rules created during the Obama administration.

While it would be unusual for Republicans to openly reject a Trump administration policy, Gonzalez said some Republican senators facing tough re-election races might be worried about opposing a measure generating heated rhetoric.

In fact, Arizona Democratic Party spokesperson Brad Bainum on ThursdayÔÇï attacked Republican senator Martha McSally, who hasn't disclosed her position on the resolution and whose race against Democrat Mark Kelly is considered a "toss-up" by the Cook Political Report. "Martha McSally puts her party leaders and corporate interest donors first in Washington, so it's no surprise that she's willing to let Betsy DeVos sell out defrauded student borrowers after taking thousands from for-profit schools and over $72,000 from DeVos' extended family," BainumÔÇï said in a statement. Neither McSally's campaign nor her Senate office returned requests for comment.

The debate stems from a flood of loan-discharge applications after the collapse of the for-profit chain Corinthian Colleges in 2015. In response, the Obama administration clarified the government’s rules in 2016 to make it easier for students to get discharges.

For-profit institutions represented by Gonzalez’s group complained about being singled out. Some institutions worried the rule would put them on the hook for inadvertent marketing mistakes, as opposed to intentionally misrepresenting such things as the employability of graduates.

Balking, as well, at the Education Department's estimates that the rule could cost $42 billion over the next decade, DeVos in August announced her own rule.

While discharge applications currently fall under the Obama rule, those made after July 1 will come under DeVos’s tighter rules.

However, the rule is facing attack in Congress and the courts. Last week, the Project on Predatory Student Lending and Public Citizen Litigation Group jointly filed a federal lawsuit in New York that would block it.

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The University of Southern California will make "sweeping changes" to its procedures for managing sexual assault cases under a new agreement with the U.S. Department of Education, which investigated the university's mishandling of serial sexual abuse of students by a former campus gynecologist.

In addition to requiring USC to "overhaul its Title IX processes," the agreement with the department's Office for Civil Rights also mandates that the university "conduct a formal review of current and former employees to determine if they responded appropriately to notice of possible sex discrimination" and submit to monitoring by OCR for three years to assure compliance.

The agreement announced Thursday is the result of the investigation by OCR, which was prompted by revelations in May 2018 that George Tyndall, a longtime gynecologist at the university student health center, had repeatedly sexually assaulted women students as far back as 1989. OCR found that USC "failed to protect students" from Tyndall despite getting complaints about his behavior.

“This total and complete failure to protect students is heartbreaking and inexcusable,” U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said in a press release announcing the agreement. “Too many at USC turned a blind eye to evidence that Dr. Tyndall was preying on students for years. We are grateful to every survivor who came forward to share their story with our OCR investigators. Because of your bravery, we can now work with the university to ensure this never happens to another student on USC’s campus.”

Title IX, the federal civil rights law passed as part of the Education Amendments of 1972, protects people from sexual discrimination in education programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance. OCR began investigating USC in 2018 to determine if it had violated the law.

"OCR investigated whether the university received notice of allegations of misconduct by Tyndall, whether the university failed to respond appropriately, and if so, whether the failure allowed any female student to be subject to continuing sex discrimination," according to the department's press release. "OCR found that the university failed to respond appropriately to notice of possible misconduct by Dr. Tyndall and that the university’s failure to respond appropriately may have allowed female students to be subjected to continuing sex discrimination. OCR also found that USC failed to maintain a recordkeeping system to identify and monitor incidents of possible sex discrimination by its employees."

Kenneth L. Marcus, assistant secretary for civil rights, called the findings “shocking and reprehensible” in a written statement included in the press release. “No student should ever have to face the disgusting behavior that USC students had to deal with.”

His office sent a 51-page letter to USC president Carol Folt outlining the findings of the investigation.

“We share OCR’s mission to foster a campus environment free from discrimination and harassment,” Folt said in a written statement. “There is no higher priority for me than protecting the health, safety and well-being of our students, faculty, staff and patients. I will continue to work diligently to restore trust in this institution and build a strong foundation of integrity and accountability. By signing this agreement, we are confirming our commitment to work in partnership with OCR to further a culture and climate where students, faculty and staff can learn, work and thrive.”

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The department will require changes throughout the university’s handling of Title IX cases, according to a resolution agreement released on Thursday.

├ó┬Ç┬£Social mobility├ó┬Ç┬Ø is the talk of the sector. But are college leaders, policy makers, and funders pulling the right levers?

├ó┬Ç┬£Social mobility├ó┬Ç┬Ø is the talk of the sector. But are college leaders, policy makers, and funders pulling the right levers?

It’s important to reform gateway courses, but to really improve student success, one professor argues, you need to re-evaluate the entire pathway to a degree.

MEXICANS HAVE been outraged this month by two brutal murders: one of a woman whose body was mutilated by her partner, the other of a seven-year-old girl who was kidnapped and seemingly tortured. Needless to say, neither of these cases was the fault of MexicoÔÇÖs president, Andr├®s Manuel L├│pez Obrador (known as AMLO). But he is the man in charge. When questioned at his early-morning press conferences about the wave of violence against women in his country, his first response was to blame a ÔÇ£progressive degradation [in Mexican society] which had to do with the neoliberal modelÔÇØ that he accuses his predecessors of adopting. He then claimed that feminist groups, who blame the violence on patriarchy and lawlessness, had been infiltrated by conservatives, and tried to change the subject.

This episode conforms to the pattern of AMLOÔÇÖs 15 months in the presidency. If the motto of Porfirio D├¡az, MexicoÔÇÖs dictator from 1877 to 1911, was ÔÇ£little politics, much administrationÔÇØ, AMLOÔÇÖs guiding formula seems to be almost the opposite. He inherited three big problems: rampant crime, including violence against women; slow economic growth; and corruption. On the first two issues, Mexico is at best treading water.

A 12-year war with drug gangs drove the murder rate up and helped spread insecurity across the country. AMLO promised to stop...

THUNDERSTORMS OFTEN show up uninvited to Carnival in Brazil. The authorities in Rio de Janeiro used to share meteorological data with a group of spiritual mediums who claimed to have rain-dispelling powers. That ended with the election of an evangelical mayor in 2016. 

This yearÔÇÖs attempt to sway the skies took place in S├úo Paulo as part of a publicity stunt by the partyÔÇÖs official sponsor, Skol, a Brazilian beer brand. ÔÇ£The fun stops when it rains,ÔÇØ says Pedro Adamy, SkolÔÇÖs marketing director. So do beer sales. 

Enter a company called ModClima. A ModClima aeroplane painted with SkolÔÇÖs logo spritzed water droplets into cumulus clouds to make rain fall before the clouds reached the city. According to a zippy YouTube video that has been viewed 12m times, ÔÇ£Giro na ChuvaÔÇØ (roughly, Reverse the Rain) is a ÔÇ£mission worthy of science fictionÔÇØ.

Whether itÔÇÖs science or fiction is up for debate. The use of cloud-seeding to increase rainfall dates back to the 1940s. But the United States government stopped funding it in the 1980s due to a lack of ÔÇ£scientific proof of the efficacy of intentional weather modificationÔÇØ, according to the National Research Council. A new paper based on experiments in Idaho found that seeding clouds with silver iodide increased snowfall on three occasions, but the authors say that more...

AT ELECTION TIME, it is easy to tell which ethnic group dominates each of the villages strung out along GuyanaÔÇÖs Atlantic coast even without looking at the people. Where Afro-Guyanese are the main group, the green-and-yellow banners of the ruling coalition flutter. In Indo-Guyanese villages, itÔÇÖs the red, gold and black of the opposition PeopleÔÇÖs Progressive Party (PPP). Voting in GuyanaÔÇÖs general election, due to be held on March 2nd, is likely to follow ethnic lines, as it has done for decades. This year the stakes are unusually high. That is because Guyana, South AmericaÔÇÖs third-poorest country, is about to be transformed by the petroleum that has begun to flow from vast offshore reservoirs.

Oil could change Guyana as radically as did sugar, which brought African slaves in the 18th century and indentured labourers from India in the 19th. By 2024 it could lift income per person from $5,000 to $19,000, nearly the same as in Poland. The IMF expects the economy to grow by 85% this year. By 2030 the governmentÔÇÖs share of earnings from oil could reach $10bn in real terms, more than double last yearÔÇÖs GDP. This could ÔÇ£change us once and for all into a Singapore kind of country,ÔÇØ says the finance minister, Winston Jordan. Whichever party takes charge of the bounty could govern for decades. Mr Jordan calls the vote ÔÇ£the mother of all...

Global media reports are sending conflicting messages as to whether tech companies are set to either suffer losses from factory shutdowns in China as the coronavirus epidemic continues or enjoy a surge in purchases as parents scramble to buy devices so their children can study online.

Much of the edtech community is cautiously optimistic that the uptake of online education products in China will reach a ÔÇ£tipping pointÔÇØ that sees products retain wider market access when the virus subsides.

Classes are continuing online for the countryÔÇÖs 180 million students through apps and online platforms. In addition to private providers, the state has itself launched a massive “National Online Cloud Classroom”.

“The coronavirus epidemic is a crisis to our society, but also a good chance to promote and develop technology and solutions”

ÔÇ£The government contracted tech companies like Baidu, Huawei, and Alibaba, along with telecom providers China Telecom, China Unicom, and China Mobile, to work together to provide the cloud capacity and bandwidth,ÔÇØ explained the Ministry.

ÔÇ£The platform is now operating with 90 terabytes of bandwidth and uses over 7,000 servers. It has been built for simultaneous use by 50 million students.ÔÇØ

While the government’s ability to create such a platform in a short space of time is impressive, it has also had to broadcast lessons on state television to service the 40% of the country without internet and the 400 million people still using 2G or 3G networks.

ÔÇ£The coronavirus epidemic is a crisis to our society, but also a good chance to promote and develop technology and solutions for online learning and teaching, which is the future direction of education,” said Feng Xudong, head of Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University’s┬áManagement Information Technology and System Office.

“It will accelerate the pace of XJTLU’s massive online education as well.”

Many universities, XJTLU and Duke Kunshan among them, are now operating all of their classes online.

ÔÇ£These are courses that in some cases haven’t been taught before,ÔÇØ added┬áMatthew Rascoff, who leads Duke University’s digital education efforts.

ÔÇ£Technology is often seen as cold, but in this case, weÔÇÖre using it to recreate the student community, give people support and help engage them.ÔÇØ

People’s experiences using online education in China during the coronavirus shutdown is likely to offer a wealth of information and feedback, providing companies with invaluable data as to how to achieve wider popularity.

In 2018, the market size of ChinaÔÇÖs online education industry was valued at 230 billion yuan (┬ú25 billion) with a market penetration rate of 10%.

Data from the last few years shows that the majority of students are now likely working from phones and tablets as opposed to desktop computers and laptops.

There have been complaints about weak signal for live video conferencing, as well as parents worrying about the effect of spending so many hours staring at a screen could have on their childrenÔÇÖs eyesight.

Apps such as DingTalk and Cloud Class, used by schools to deliver classes remotely, have also suffered unintended consequences as a result of their sudden popularity: through online stores, students have been downvoting the apps en masse for ÔÇ£stealing their extended holidayÔÇØ.

DingTalk itself responded by commissioning a song about the benefits of the app in which it asks everyone to rate it five stars. It currently has 2.7 on the Huawei app store and reviews have been disabled.

The post China: Edtech surge during COVID-19 crisis appeared first on The PIE News.

Aileen Kane is the COO for the Boarding SchoolsÔÇÖ Association and director of┬áthe Safeguarding and Child Protection Association. With a background in international marketing, she moved into the boarding school sector after becoming passionate about independent education. Her work also focuses on safeguarding, where she says there is much to be done around the mandatory reporting of abuse. Kane spoke to┬áThe PIE┬áabout the challenges, trends and successes of the UK’s revered boarding school sector.

 

The PIE: What is your background? Were you always in education? 

Aileen Kane: My background was in international marketing and then I worked for a couple of independent schools both of which had boarding. Six years ago I joined the BSA and quite quickly I got involved with a lot of policy and safeguarding.

“Quite often there’s the misconception that boarding schools are only for the rich”

BSA has been driving a lot of the safeguarding work for the sector, and two years ago we employed our first head of safeguarding, Dale Wilkins. It is a very interesting sector to work in. 

The PIE: Tell me why you decided to move to BSA.

AK: I joined BSA as the head of communications in March 2015. My role in the organisation has changed since, but what is really interesting for me, from a personal point of view, is that I was state educated in Scotland. So this world wasn’t necessarily a natural pathway for me. But having worked in two independent boarding schools, I saw the real opportunity that boarding gave to all students.

Quite often there’s the misconception that boarding schools are only for the rich. But I have done a lot of work with children on the edge of care, I’ve worked with refugee partnerships and as a sector, weÔÇÖre trying to broaden the horizon of people who are in boarding schools.

Being able to see firsthand the opportunities for children, it gave me a real passion for the boarding sector. So when the role came up at BSA, it felt like a good natural progression to then go forward and represent the whole sector, and not just one or two schools.

“Our boarding schools are trying to prepare students for a world of work that probably doesn’t exist to you and me now”

The PIE: What does BSA do? 

AK: We are the largest association for boarding schools in the world. We currently have just over 600 boarding schools. Approximately 500 of those are here in the UK, the other hundred are international. Then in England, there are also 40 state boarding schools.

BSA works with the government on everything from representing the sector including on immigration and policy such as the National Minimum Standards for boarding. We also provide training for boarding staff. The pastoral staff will come through our training program called the BSA Academy.

We run regular webinars, one day events and residential conference. In addition, we also run accredited training courses. That ranges from your entry into the boarding world with the two year accredited course, right the way up to a master’s in residential education [that is] run in conjunction with Buckingham University. The whole idea is that there is continual learning and that the people who are looking after children in boarding houses, are well trained and able to support the pupils in their care.

The PIE: How important are international students to British boarding schools?

AK: Oh they’re hugely important. Our boarding schools are trying to prepare students for a world of work that probably doesn’t exist to you and me now. Having that global outlook and having a global network that they can look to, and being able to be accepting and understanding that there are different cultures and different ways of working in the world, I believe this is really valuable for any young person.

Also, they get the opportunity to spend time and have friendships with people from across the globe. I think, equally, thatÔÇÖs the case for international students coming to the UK. They gain access to our world-class education system, but also to network with children from across the globe. ItÔÇÖs a fantastic opportunity.

The PIE: What are the biggest challenges being faced by boarding schools at the moment? 

AK: I think the immediate challenge is the coronavirus. We have a very broad international community who could potentially be at risk because of the coronavirus and because our children come from all over the world, but also because our parents travel extensively. So while it is a huge benefit to our community that there are children from every single country in the world in our schools, itÔÇÖs equally a risk at this time.

“We have a very broad international community who could potentially be at risk because of the coronavirus”

However, ItÔÇÖs been great to see schools, parents and pupils all working together to try and make sure that the children and their families are safe and, depending on which way the virus goes, that everybody has got somewhere to go where they are safe and supported. Not just in terms of their health but also their well-being as well. We are likely to have some students in our schools who have family in affected regions and itÔÇÖs good that our boarding community is able to support those children who are going to be clearly worried at this time.

The PIE: What are the biggest trends for boarding schools? 

AK: One thing I have seen over the last 10 years of boarding, is that our schools are far more receptive to changing family dynamics. There are a lot more first time buyers in the market now then there was in the past and the emerging trend seems to be that pupils in the younger years will start by flexi-boarding or boarding on an occasional basis, to suit family demand.

I live in London and I quite often see children crossing London to go to music lessons, sporting lessons, etc. which is tiring for them. So the advantage of flexi-boarding is that you can do those extracurricular activities and then it means the next time you go home, it’s just quality family time.

When family demands are so busy today, I think that’s a real advantage. As the children move through the school and move towards GCSEs and then sixth form, we see that the trend moves more towards weekly and then full boarding in preparation for university. So I think our schools are definitely looking at those demands from parents and helping to support the family network.

The PIE: Tell me about your role as director of SACPA.

AK: BSA have done a lot of work on supporting the mandatory reporting of abuse. In the past there has been abuse in boarding schools and what we wanted to do is look at what’s happened in the past, and try and learn some lessons. We as a sector support the mandatory reporting of abuse, which currently is only the law in Northern Ireland and not the rest of the UK.

“At BSA we were starting to get calls from organisations who weren’t boarding schools…asking for our help when it came to safeguarding”

We’ve worked with survivors of abuse, we’re working with the independent enquiry into sexual abuse as well. As part of our work, we’re running training, we’re providing advice and support. But at BSA we were starting to get calls from organisations who weren’t boarding schools, such as sporting and voluntary organisations and charities asking for our help when it came to safeguarding. It struck us that there was nowhere for people to go and gain advice, share best practice and network. As a solution, at the end of January, we launched a sister association called SACPA, which stands for the Safeguarding and Child Protection Association.

It is for anybody who’s involved in safeguarding and child protection. That can be anyone from a childminder, right the way up to say university or a children’s or an old people’s home. It doesn’t really matter.

The idea is that it’s a hub, to share knowledge, share policies and to provide training and guidance for people who require that support.

The post Aileen Kane, COO, Boarding Schools’ Association, UK appeared first on The PIE News.