I’m Goldie Blumenstyk, a senior creator at The Chronicle of Higher Education, masking innovation in and around academe. For greater than two years, I’ve been curating the weekly Re: Learning e-newsletter. Now I’m using it to proportion my observations at the humans and thoughts reshaping the higher-schooling panorama. Subscribe right here. Here’s what I’m thinking about this week;
The return of the ‘education governor’?
“Education governors” was once a element. Especially in the 1980s and ’90s. Then, Bill Clinton, going for walks in Arkansas, was driven for better requirements for teachers and colleges. Ray Mabus, in Mississippi, and Buddy Roemer, in Louisiana, dared to speak about elevating taxes to make their instructional systems attractive to employers thinking about moving to the one’s states.
Come November, the electorate in 36 states will pick out governors. The final primaries for those races are this week. And in line with the National Governors Association, education-governor candidates are lower back — even though they’re using specific language than their predecessors. Often, says Aaliyah Samuel, director of the schooling division for the governor group’s Center for Best Practices, entails tying education to their states’ paintings-force needs.
Samuel and her colleagues have been following the races — and the 70 or so applicants walking. Along with work-pressure issues, they found, the topics that came up most usually have been higher-ed affordability, instructor retention and blessings, and how to fund primary and secondary schooling.
I’m now not amazed that work-pressure problems are hot, especially with the thousands and thousands of skilled jobs now going unfilled. The teacher dilemma, although, is a fascinating one. Do a Google look for information about coaching programs (as I did while scripting this), and you’ll discover a circulation of articles about falling enrollments in such applications over the past several years. (Of direction, if you Google “instructor moved in 2018,” you would possibly get a feel of why the one’s enrollments are losing.) According to a brand new ballot, most parents now say they don’t need their kids to end up as public-faculty teachers.
This is a challenge for governors — and the kingdom. It’s additionally essential for colleges, especially people who have lengthy taken into consideration their trainer applications as a mainstay. I’ve written earlier than about exciting new techniques to teacher training, maximum significantly the fingers-on Woodrow Wilson Academy of Teaching and Learning at MIT, championed through Arthur Levine. I’ve also heard about an exciting software in Florida, via which neighborhood school boards assure coaching posts to graduates of the teaching program at Nova Southeastern University.
I’m sure many greater improvements are brewing on this front. And perhaps a number of these new ideas could need a touch nudge from the country to get going. So please percentage them with me. Perhaps I can characteristic some of them in a “letter to the governors” in a destiny publication.
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, sIn last week’s publication, I defined the worries I felt — and heard from many in academe — about the extensive nondisclosure agreement Purdue University Global has become requiring its school to signal. Last week, the college announced in a message to the organization that it would ditch the agreement. It becomes a holdover document from its days as Kaplan University, Purdue Global officers stated, that was no longer aligned with the policy and way of life of Purdue University. So apparently, university colleges shouldn’t be required to signal corporate-style NDAs.
Were the issues raised a issue publicly? You decide. Betty Vandenbosch, chancellor of Purdue Global, said that “properly earlier than” media reviews surfaced approximately the agreement, the college had started inspecting whether it becomes nevertheless necessary to make college individuals signal it. (The Century Foundation soon followed with more details on Purdue Global’s authentic agreement with Kaplan.) but it’s really worth noting that Vandenbosch’s first announcement, approximately the NDA — which she positioned out on August 22, whilst the American Association of University Professors first agreed public — supported the coverage and indicated nothing about an internal exam.
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Before announcing that the college might scrap the NDA, Vandenbosch despatched another letter to the Purdue Global faculty. That letter didn’t point out the AAUP or any organization through the name. But it left few questions on how she felt approximately the complaint. “Sadly, a small minority of outsiders is attempting to create divisiveness and distrust to serve their own political agendas,” she wrote within the letter, which Purdue officers provided to me. “We should now not permit that distract us from the crucial work we do on behalf of the thousands of students we serve every day. These attempts to misinform and divide are a part of a properly-installed — and historically unsuccessful — playbook to hinder the development we continue to make to create a better gaining knowledge of enjoy for our college students.”
As for the fate of every other of those holdover rules, which states that scholars should resolve any felony troubles with the group thru pressured arbitration … nicely, that’s now beneath evaluate too. It has been mentioned with a choose committee of the Purdue University Senate. A college spokesman informed me and is now “being examined” using Purdue Global’s leaders and Board of Trustees. Ultimately, he said, Purdue University’s Board of Trustees will make the call on that one.
Quote of the week.
“Nursing apprenticeships have the ability to open a pathway to the bachelor’s diploma that is extra powerful, and extra equitable, than simply presenting financial resource to nurses to move returned to high school on their very own time.”
