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Octubre 31, 2009
Estado y mercado en las reformas a la educación superior: tendencias, políticas y experiencias en perspectiva comparada
En archivo más abajo encontrarán el Programa del 6o Taller Internacional sobre Reformas en la Educación Superior "El Estado y el mercado en las reformas a la educación superior: tendencias, políticas y experiencias en perspectiva comparada", que se realizará en la Ciudad de México del 9 al 11 de noviembre de 2009, bajo los auspicios del Departamento de Investigaciones Educativas, del Centro de Investigaciones y de Estudios Avanzados (DIE, Cinvestav).
Ver el Programa aquí
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Octubre 29, 2009
Ranking mundial de universidades 2009 según su desempeño en la Red
Se ha dado a conocer el Ranking WEB de universidades en el mundo (6 mil universidades). Más abajo se muestran los resultados para las 100 universidades top de Amèrica Latina.
Metodología
The unit for analysis is the institutional domain, so only universities and research centres with an independent web domain are considered. If an institution has more than one main domain, two or more entries are used with the different addresses.
The first Web indicator, Web Impact Factor (WIF), was based on link analysis that combines the number of external inlinks and the number of pages of the website, a ratio of 1:1 between visibility and size. This ratio is used for the ranking, adding two new indicators to the size component: Number of documents, measured from the number of rich files in a web domain, and number of publications being collected by Google Scholar database.
Four indicators were obtained from the quantitative results provided by the main search engines as follows:
Size (S). Number of pages recovered from four engines: Google, Yahoo, Live Search and Exalead.
Visibility (V). The total number of unique external links received (inlinks) by a site can be only confidently obtained from Yahoo Search.
Rich Files (R). After evaluation of their relevance to academic and publication activities and considering the volume of the different file formats, the following were selected: Adobe Acrobat (.pdf), Adobe PostScript (.ps), Microsoft Word (.doc) and Microsoft Powerpoint (.ppt). These data were extracted using Google, Yahoo Search, Live Search and Exalead.
Scholar (Sc). Google Scholar provides the number of papers and citations for each academic domain. These results from the Scholar database represent papers, reports and other academic items.
The four ranks were combined according to a formula where each one has a different weight but maintaining the ratio 1:1:
The inclusion of the total number of pages is based on the recognition of a new global market for academic information, so the web is the adequate platform for the internationalization of the institutions. A strong and detailed web presence providing exact descriptions of the structure and activities of the university can attract new students and scholars worldwide.
The number of external inlinks received by a domain is a measure that represents visibility and impact of the published material, and although there is a great diversity of motivations for linking, a significant fraction works in a similar way as bibliographic citation.
The success of self-archiving and other repositories related initiatives can be roughly represented from rich file and Scholar data. The huge numbers involved with the pdf and doc formats means that not only administrative reports and bureaucratic forms are involved. PostScript and Powerpoint files are clearly related to academic activities.
Resultados 2009
The 2009 edition of the Ranking Web of World Universities (http://www.webometrics.info) shows important news. Most of them are due to changes done to improve the academic impact of the open web contents and to reduce the geographical bias of search engines. As a result, the US universities still lead the Ranking (MIT with its huge Open Courseware is again the first, followed by Harvard, Stanford and Berkeley), but the digital gap with their European counterparts (Cambridge and Oxford are in the region’s top) has been reduced. Even more important, some of the developing countries institutions reach high ranks, especially in Latin America where the University of Sao Paulo (38th) and UNAM (44th) benefits from the increasingly interconnected Brazilian and Mexican academic webspaces.
Several countries improves their performance including Taiwan and Saudi Arabia with strong web oriented strategies, Czech Republic (Charles), the leader for Eastern Europe, Spain (Complutense) and Portugal (Minho, Porto) with huge repositories and strong Open Access initiatives. Norway (NTNU, Oslo), Egypt could be also mentioned.
On the other side, the underrated countries are headed by France, with a very fragmented system, Korea, whose student-oriented websites are frequently duplicated, New Zealand, India or Argentina.
Africa is still monopolized by South African universities (Cape Town is the first, 405th), as well as Australian Universities are the best ranked for Oceania (Australian National University, 77th)
Other well performing institutions include Cornell or Caltech in the USA, Tokyo (24th) Toronto (28th), Hong Kong (91st), or Peking (104th). On the contrary, in positions below expected we find Yale, Princeton, Saint Petersburg, Seoul and the Indian Institutes of Science or Technology.
Check out also:
Ranking Web of Research Centers http://research.webometrics.info/
Ranking Web of Repositories http://repositories.webometrics.info/
Ranking Web of Hospitals http://hospitals.webometrics.info/
Ranking Web of Business Schools http://business-schools.webometrics.info/
Número de rankin latinoamericano - Institución - Número de ranking mundial
1 Universidade de São Paulo 38
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2 Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México ** 44
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3 Universidade Estadual de Campinas 115
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4 Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina Brasil 134
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5 Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul 152
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6 Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro 196
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7 Universidade de Brasília 204
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8 Universidad de Chile 227
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9 Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais 241
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10 Universidade Estadual Paulista 269
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11 Universidad de Buenos Aires 291
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12 Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México 348
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13 Universidade Federal do Paraná 352
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14 Pontificia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro 354
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15 Universidad de Guadalajara 385
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16 Universidad de Costa Rica 386
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17 Tecnológico de Monterrey * 391
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18 Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte 419
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19 Universidade Federal da Bahia 422
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20 Universidad de los Andes 459
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21 Universidad de Concepción 497
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22 Universidade Federal do Ceara 503
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23 Universidade Federal Fluminense 517
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24 Universidade Federal de Pernambuco 522
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25 Universidad de la República ** 530
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26 Universidad Nacional de Colombia 541
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27 Universidad de los Andes Mérida 564
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28 Pontificia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul 566
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29 Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile * 633
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30 Universidad Nacional de la Plata 659
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31 Instituto Politécnico Nacional 716
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32 Universidad Simón Bolívar Venezuela 729
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33 Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro 733
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34 Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana 744
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35 Universidade Federal de São Paulo 759
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36 Universidad de Antioquia 761
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37 Universidad Nacional de Cordoba 762
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38 Universidade do Vale do Rio Dos Sinos 768
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39 Fundação Getulio Vargas 773
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40 Universidade Estadual de Maringá 777
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41 Universidad de Puerto Rico Mayaguez 779
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42 Universidade Federal de Lavras 807
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43 Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú 827
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44 Universidade Federal de Viçosa 856
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45 Universidade Federal de Uberlândia 862
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46 Universidade Federal de Goiás 870
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47 Universidade Federal de São Carlos 900
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48 Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos 906
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49 Universidade Federal de Santa Maria 909
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50 Universidad Austral de Chile 932
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51 Centro Universitário Senac Servico Nacional de Aprendizagem Comercial 949
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52 University of the West Indies 951
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53 Pontificia Universidad Javeriana 975
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54 Pontificia Universidade Católica de São Paulo 981
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55 Universidade Estadual de Londrina 984
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56 Universidade Federal da Paraíba 990
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57 Universidad del Valle 994
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58 Universidade Federal do Pará 998
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59 Universidade Regional de Blumenau 1,006
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60 Universidade de Santa Cruz do Sul 1,007
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61 Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso * 1,027
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62 Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral 1,059
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63 Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León 1,065
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64 Universidad Tecnológica Nacional 1,069
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65 Universidad Nacional del Nordeste 1,095
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66 Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo 1,098
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67 Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María 1,146
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68 Universidade de Passo Fundo * 1,178
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69 Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina 1,181
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70 Universidad Veracruzana 1,183
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71 Universidade Federal de Campina Grande 1,198
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72 Universidad de Puerto Rico 1,224
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73 Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora 1,227
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74 Pontificia Universidade Católica do Minas Gerais 1,231
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75 Universidade de Taubate 1,234
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76 Universidad de Sonora 1,252
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77 Universidad Autónoma de Baja California 1,257
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78 Universidad Nacional de Rosario 1,262
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79 Universidad Nacional de Colombia Medellín 1,277
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80 Escuela de Administración Finanzas y Tecnología Medellín 1,294
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81 Universidad Nacional Costa Rica 1,316
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82 Colegio de México 1,317
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83 Universidad Católica Argentina 1,343
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84 Universidad de Santiago de Chile 1,350
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85 Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala 1,351
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86 Universidad de Talca 1,385
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87 Universidade Federal do Rio Grande 1,391
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88 Universidad Iberoamericana 1,396
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89 Universidad Autónoma de Puebla 1,399
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90 Universidad Nacional de Cuyo Mendoza 1,414
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91 Pontificia Universidade Católica do Paraná 1,415
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92 Universidad Central de Venezuela 1,416
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93 Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo 1,425
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94 Universidad de Colima 1,437
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95 Universidad Nacional del Sur 1,444
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96 Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas * 1,447
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97 Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie 1,454
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98 Senac São Paulo 1,462
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99 Pontificia Universidade Católica do Campinas * 1,470
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100 Universidad de las Américas Puebla 1,478
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Universities 1 to 100 of 100
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Octubre 28, 2009
El proletraiado académico: los profesores "adjuntos" o "meros" docentes
El caso de los profesores adjuntos, como se les llama en los Estados Unidos --quienes hace unos días eran caracterizados allá de la siguiente forma y interrogados así: "They don't make much money, they don't have health benefits, and they don't have job security. So why do adjuncts keep showing up to teach in college classrooms semester after semester, year after year?"-- representa un fenómeno que acompaña casi inevitablemente a los procesos de masificación de la matrícula y de continua e ilimitada expansión de las funciones docentes.
Surge entonces una capa de docentes o profesores sin posiciones estables, frecuentem ete sin adscripción real ni a una disciplina ni a una institución, que proveen docencia a granel y son remunerados escasamente y tratados, la mayoría de las veces, sin mayor cuidado ni reconocimiento por su labor.
A continuación: el estado del debate sobre estos asuntos en la academia de los EE.UU. visto a través de dos artículos de revistas especializadas.
Seeking Tenure 'Conversion' Inside Higher Ed, October 28, 2009
In discussions about the use and abuse of adjunct faculty members, "conversion" is a controversial topic. Typically it refers to a decision by a college or university to convert some number of adjunct positions into a number (typically a smaller number) of tenure-track positions. The idea of conversion has been key to the reform proposals of national faculty groups. Some colleges actually have bucked the trends and converted slots to the tenure track in various ways.
The American Association of University Professors on Tuesday entered the conversion debate in a significant way with a new draft policy on the treatment of adjunct faculty members.
A cursory look at the draft might suggest that it is just another statement from a faculty group calling for better treatment of adjuncts and the creation of more tenure-track lines. But it actually reflects an attempt to shift how conversion might take place -- by calling for a switch not of slots, but in the status of those currently working as adjuncts, whom the AAUP wants tenured (or converted).
Specifically, it calls for these faculty members to be considered for tenure based on their teaching contributions (assuming that like most adjuncts they focus on teaching), even if they are at research universities. Further, while the AAUP praises the tactic used by many academic unions and some individual colleges of providing adjuncts with more job security and better benefits and pay, the association goes on record as saying that anything short of tenure can't be viewed as a substitute.
"As faculty hired into contingent positions seek and obtain greater employment security, often through collective bargaining, it is becoming clear that academic tenure and employment security are not reducible to each other," the draft statement says. "A potentially crippling development in these arrangements is that many, while improving on the entirely insecure positions they replace, offer limited conceptions of academic citizenship and service, few protections for academic freedom, little opportunity for professional growth, and no professional peer scrutiny in hiring, evaluation, and promotion."
Many parts of the AAUP policy are likely to find favor with adjuncts and other faculty members, many of whom fear the impact of the shift at many colleges to reliance on adjuncts as opposed to those on the tenure track.
But parts of the draft could be controversial. For instance, the theory behind the draft is that anyone who has been teaching year after year at a college should be qualified for a tenure track job. At the vast majority of colleges that are teaching oriented, the AAUP can argue that the adjuncts are in fact performing the duties of faculty members just as those down the hall (with tenure) do.
But the issue is more complicated at research universities -- which led to some disagreements on the AAUP panel that drafted the report. Most research universities look for evidence of research potential when hiring for the tenure track, and most adjuncts -- by virtue of spending all of their time teaching, and much of it rushing from campus to campus, with little if any support for attending conferences and other research activities -- don't tend to have the same publication records as others.
So universities that in fact employ the same adjuncts year after year to teach freshman composition might never seriously consider those individuals for a tenure-track line in English. How would conversion take place there?
The AAUP draft isn't specific on the issue, because of the disagreements about what to do. One vision -- outlined by Marc Bousquet, co-chair of the committee that wrote the draft and a professor of English at Santa Clara University -- is to push for the creation of dual tenure track lines at research universities. Bousquet said that there is "a mistaken idea that tenure should be reserved for research-intensive" careers. "The foundation for academic freedom" that tenure provides is just as important for those teaching, so they should be offered tenure as teaching professors at research universities, he said. The bottom line, he said, is that anyone teaching at a college or university needs academic freedom that only comes with tenure.
While Bousquet acknowledged that there are concerns associated with having multiple tenure tracks at the same universities, he said that the most important thing was to provide full academic freedom protections to everyone, not just those who can get jobs based on their research. It would be problematic if research universities in such a system treated those on the research-oriented track better than those on the teaching-oriented track, he said, "but there are hierarchies now. They already exist." The difference is that those on the bottom of today's hierarchies don't have any tenure rights.
While many on the committee endorsed Bousquet's vision of dual tenure tracks to allow for the conversion of slots, one member who did not is Cary Nelson, national president of the AAUP. Nelson said that a "two-tiered class structure" would be "incredibly destructive" to morale among research university faculty, and that he can't support such a measure. Nelson said that a majority of members of the committee that drafted the policy probably agree with Bousquet and that the issue would probably be addressed as the policy is refined.
At the same time, Nelson said that it is disingenuous for research universities to say that they can't hire adjuncts to the tenure track because of standards. "How can they say that about adjuncts they employ for 25 years?" he asked. So Nelson said that he would propose that research universities hire their adjuncts into tenure-track lines "as a stopgap measure, to get justice for the contingent faculty members," but then stop using contingent faculty members. So future hires would be on a common tenure track, with research and teaching obligations expected of all hires.
To permanently create separate tracks for teaching- and research-oriented faculty, he said, "would undermine the very nature of the research university."
While the AAUP draft doesn't explicitly endorse the two track system, it comes awfully close.
It says: "The best practice for institutions of all types is to convert the status of faculty serving contingently to eligible for tenure with only minor changes in job description. This means that faculty hired contingently with teaching as the major component of their workload will become tenure-eligible primarily on the basis of successful teaching. (Similarly, contingent faculty with research as the major component of their workload may become eligible for tenure primarily on the basis of successful research.) In the long run, however, a balance is desirable for most faculty. A tenure bid by a person in a teaching-intensive position is unlikely to be successful in the absence of campus citizenship and professional development, so even teaching-intensive tenure-eligible workloads should include service and appropriate forms of engagement in research or the scholarship of teaching."
Beyond recommending this course of action as a means to "stabilize" the faculty, the draft statement outlines various college policies that it endorses. And it offers reasons why the current system of increased use of non-tenure-track faculty members hurts the academic freedom of all professors.
"In short, tenure was framed to unite the faculty within a system of common professional values, standards, and mutual responsibilities," the draft says. "By 2007, however, almost 70 percent of faculty members were employed off the tenure track. Many institutions use contingent faculty appointments throughout their programs; some retain a tenurable faculty in their traditional or flagship programs while staffing others — such as branch campuses, online offerings, and overseas campuses — almost entirely with contingent faculty. Faculty serving contingently generally work at significantly lower wages, often without health coverage and other benefits, and in positions that do not incorporate all aspects of university life or the full range of faculty rights and responsibilities. The tenure track has not vanished, but it has ceased to be the norm for faculty."
While experts on the academic workforce have only started to look at the document, many offered praise and others were critical (for varying reasons). The American Federation of Teachers offered support, calling the draft "a welcome contribution to the cause shared by the two organizations." The AFT's Faculty and College Excellence project has as its twin goals the improvement of adjunct working conditions and the creation of more tenure-track positions. While the AFT has said that adjuncts deserve fair consideration for those positions, it has not suggested that the the individuals should be moved to the tenure track in the same way being suggested by the AAUP.
Maria Maisto, president of the Board of Directors of New Faculty Majority: The National Coalition for Adjunct and Contingent Equity, praised the AAUP draft, and she drew particular attention to the way the AAUP proposes to get adjuncts into the tenure track. "It's not just a question of creating more positions, but you have to take advantage and reinvest in the resources you already have," she said. "We're really pleased with that."
Maisto said that when colleges simply add tenure-track positions, adjuncts frequently lose jobs, unfairly. She noted, for example, that many colleges routinely hire those without Ph.D.'s to teach certain courses, but then -- after adding a tenure-track slot for the courses -- say that a doctorate is a requirement. "That's the kind of scenario that the report recognizes," she said. "We think the conversion of persons rather than positions is the way to go."
But for others, that's reason to question the AAUP draft. KC Johnson, a historian at Brooklyn College, spoke out against a conversion plan similar to what the AAUP is suggesting when the City University of New York faculty union sought one. (While the union didn't win the conversion plan as it proposed, CUNY did create numerous new tenure-track positions.)
Johnson said he opposed the AAUP draft for the same reasons he opposed the idea proposed by the CUNY union. "The AAUP statement is deeply troubling," he said. "Adjuncts are not hired through competitive, national searches, nor (with very, very rare exceptions) does an adjunct position contain any expectation of scholarly production. Converting them en masse to tenure-track faculty status would send a message to graduate students entering the field -- much less to state legislators, donors, and alumni -- that institutions no longer have any interest in ensuring that tenure-track positions result in the hire of the best candidate, drawn from a national pool to include consideration of the candidate's scholarly publications."
Keith Hoeller, co-founder of the Washington State Part-Time Faculty Association, said that he thinks the AAUP draft is based on a presumption that tenure is the only way to protect faculty rights. Since Hoeller -- a long-term adjunct, who teaches at several colleges in the Seattle area -- believes that he and many others will work without tenure, he thinks that's the wrong approach. "I think the AAUP is trying to put their fingers in the holes of the dike, but they don't have enough fingers," he said.
Specifically, Hoeller said that the conversions envisioned by the AAUP draft will not take place at any kind of level to employ most adjuncts. "This would end up pitting adjunct against adjunct to compete for these new slots, and will leave the tenured faculty in control," he said. If research universities created the new track that Bousquet suggested for teaching-oriented faculty members, "they would be a little above the other adjuncts, but not at the same level of the tenured faculty," Hoeller said. "Adding more tracks is not going to solve the problem."
If the AAUP and other faculty groups cannot bring tenure-track options to everyone, Hoeller said, they should look for new ways to protect academic freedom. "There has to be a whole new look at the system," he said. "They need to think outside the box, but they can't. I'm not surprised that an association that's 90 percent tenured faculty would decide that the solution is more tenured faculty."
— Scott Jaschik
© Copyright 2009 Inside Higher Ed
Love of Teaching Draws Adjuncts to the Classroom Despite Low Pay
A 'Chronicle' survey of part-timers in Chicago provides insight into their motivations and concerns
By Audrey Williams, The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 18, 2009
They don't make much money, they don't have health benefits, and they don't have job security. So why do adjuncts keep showing up to teach in college classrooms semester after semester, year after year?
Adjuncts who teach part time are now about half of the professoriate, making them a crucial sector of academe. But information on their daily jobs, their qualifications, and their motivations is sparse. To help fill the gap, we focused, both in a survey and in intensive reporting, on adjuncts in the Chicago metropolitan area. The region's rich mix of public and private four-year institutions and community colleges provided a lens through which to view the variety of adjunct employment.
Our survey was answered by more than 600 adjuncts who work at 90 institutions. Their responses, though not a random sample, gave us a detailed look at their educations—most do not have doctorates—and their compensation—annual salaries of $20,000 or less are the norm. Students are likely to pay more than that at some of the area's colleges, like Loyola University Chicago, which charges about $30,000 in tuition alone.
We also learned that full-timers who work off the tenure track at a large university share some of the same concerns as part-timers, and why adjuncts feel marginalized on the job.
Answers to that all-important question of why they do it came in many forms, but rarely in purely financial terms. "It's not the money," says Festus Mwinzi, who has been a physics instructor at Kishwaukee College for five years. "It's about giving back to the community and seeing the students excel."
Following a Dream
Some part-time adjuncts are still trying to hold onto the dream of a full-time or tenure-track position. But they find that doing so becomes increasingly difficult.
James Davis, for instance, has worked as an adjunct for a decade and began teaching part time as a way to network his way to a better faculty job. "I'm hoping that I acquire enough experience teaching and get to know enough of the right people to get a full-time position," says Mr. Davis, an English instructor at the City Colleges of Chicago's Truman College with a master's of fine arts in creative writing. "The competition for jobs is so tough out there. I'm up against people with Ph.D.'s who are trying to get jobs at community colleges." Mr. Davis is 47 and says that at his age, he has no plans to pursue a doctorate.
About eight years ago, shortly after arriving in Chicago from New Orleans, Mr. Davis applied for a teaching job at Loyola University Chicago but didn't hear back. So he visited the institution to follow up and was given two classes to teach on the spot.
The schedule suited him. "I would rather do this and struggle than be a slave to some office job," Mr. Davis says. "I think that's what motivates a lot of people. It's the promise of a full-time job, and on the other hand you've got some freedom when it comes to your time."
Until this semester, Mr. Davis had usually taught five courses between Loyola and Truman. But this fall, the three courses he taught at Truman were cut down to two at the last minute. And he didn't get any classes from Loyola.
He expects to earn about $18,000, in all, this year from teaching and additional work as a tutor in the writing center at Roosevelt University. The recent downturn is forcing him to re-evaluate his career goals. He admits that if he were "a little bit more aggressive I could probably have more classes right now because of all the colleges that are here." But without a car, he says, he's limited to teaching at colleges that are close to one another.
And after applying for three or four full-time jobs each year around the country, "I'm getting tired of chasing the carrot at the end of the stick," says Mr. Davis. "It's disappointing because you're taught all your life if you work hard, you'll be rewarded." He has been dabbling in other money-making opportunities, such as freelance writing or publishing, from which he might fashion a new career. "I'll look at teaching part time to help supplement whatever I end up doing, instead of the other way around."
The pragmatism that Mr. Davis has reluctantly begun to embrace was an underlying factor in Paul V. Anderson's decision to teach as an adjunct in the first place. While pursuing a Ph.D. in comparative literary studies at Northwestern University, he had to string together adjunct teaching jobs in the area for several years to support himself as he completed his dissertation. As an adjunct, he learned firsthand that "the single most important thing to have was health insurance," says Mr. Anderson, who worked in college admissions before going to graduate school.
Shortly after defending his dissertation, he started work as an academic adviser at the University of Chicago, in August 2006. A year later, the City Colleges of Chicago's Wilbur Wright College, where he had previously applied for a full-time teaching job, contacted him about being an instructor for an evening introduction-to-humanities course.
Teaching there was particularly attractive to Mr. Anderson because the college's curriculum focuses on using primary texts, just like his alma mater, St. John's College, in Maryland.
"I thought, This is a place where I could fit into the culture," says Mr. Anderson, whose teaching experience began about 15 years ago when he was a graduate student. "It was always difficult for me to turn down an opportunity to teach a class. It's part of who I am as a professional."
Mr. Anderson, 46, also teaches a core humanities course at the University of Chicago twice a week during his lunch hour. That work, he says, helps him in his job as an adviser because he sees students as students, not advisees with abstract problems.
A Balancing Act
Using adjunct teaching to provide balance in their lives, like Mr. Anderson does, is a common theme among adjuncts, particularly those seeking to level the work-life seesaw.
Nancy Christensen, who has a Ph.D. in chemistry, first worked as an adjunct when her son, now in high school, was a baby. She taught a night chemistry class at Waubonsee Community College that met twice a week. Her husband, also a chemist, worked during the day. "We did that so we wouldn't have to leave him with anybody," she says.
Ms. Christensen, who also has a middle-schooler and another child in high school, taught at Waubonsee for eight years before her family moved to Texas. She didn't teach there, but instead homeschooled her children. Then her family moved back to the Chicago area, and with her children enrolled in school, Ms. Christensen she came back to Waubonsee. This time around she teaches two classes that meet during the day so she can be at home when her children return from school.
"Between lectures and labs, I'm out there every day even though I only have two classes," says Ms. Christensen, who lives about 10 miles from the college. Still, the flexibility can't be beat. Once, Ms. Christensen was scheduled to teach classes that conflicted with her children's schedules. She was able to make a switch almost immediately. "Once they get people they really like, they really work to get a schedule that works for you," she says.
At some point, when her children are out of the house, she would like to work full time at a community college. But for now, "my working as an adjunct is the trade-off we've chosen," Ms. Christensen, 48, says. "It's really working well for us."
Others seeking harmony between work and life find that a part-time teaching job can be an important link to the career they chose to forgo. Vicky Bush-Joseph left behind a law career seven years ago. The lawyer and mother is now in her 12th year of teaching an adoption-law class at Loyola University Chicago's School of Law. Her alma mater asked her to teach the course as a way to build up the school's child-law program.
"I stopped working in my downtown firm, but I kept teaching the class," Ms. Bush-Joseph says. "It was my contact with work."
Ms. Bush-Joseph says the class keeps her "intellectually challenged and stimulated. I have to keep on top of everything so I can teach my students." Her Thursday evening class of 23 students is also a conversation starter. "When I say I teach a law-school class, people always want to know what adoption law is," Ms. Bush-Joseph says. "I'm happy to explain it."
Jennifer O'Riordan also relishes the stimulation. Her first foray into teaching as an adjunct, back in 2002, stemmed from a desire to "keep her mind active," she says. "I was driving my kids around one day, right before they got driver's licenses, and I thought, I have a master's degree in psychology. Why am I a taxi driver?"
A friend suggested that she teach psychology as an adjunct, and Ms. O'Riordan, although doubtful that she could get hired, applied at Joliet Junior College, about 25 minutes from her home. Two weeks before the start of the semester, two sociology courses—what was available at the time—were hers to teach. "I found out that this was really my gift," says Ms. O'Riordan, who now teaches psychology.
But what began as a way to expand her life beyond motherhood has morphed into a platform for a cause: better pay and work conditions for adjuncts. Ms. O'Riordan is now active in the adjunct-faculty union at Joliet.
"My work with the union has put me in touch with issues in higher education that I wasn't really familiar with," Ms. O'Riordan says. "I've learned so much, and it's exciting and interesting to me. That's another reason why I keep teaching. I like being a part of that big picture."
Ms. O'Riordan, whose husband works as a clinical psychologist, doesn't have to rely on the money she makes as an adjunct. Still, she finds it "personally fulfilling" to stand up for those for whom a bigger paycheck makes a difference.
Teaching vs. Money
The desire for more money is shared by many adjuncts, of course. But for some, it can be overpowered by the desire to teach. Bettina Maravolo, who has taught political and social science at Truman College for five years now, wasn't sure at first, after earning a master's degree in political science, that she wanted to teach. So instead she opted to join corporate America and took a job as a community-relations manager at a national bookstore chain. "As I was working with educators to put together educational programs back then, I realized that I wanted to be the educator myself."
It was a timely realization. She was already applying for teaching jobs when her company laid her off in the summer of 2003. In the spring of 2004, Ms. Maravolo, 46, taught her first class at Truman.
Sometimes Ms. Maravolo isn't in the classroom but is teaching just the same. She teaches two online classes for the City Colleges Center for Distance Learning and is working to earn a master online teaching certificate.
But her enthusiasm about her work has been dampened somewhat by the uncertainties that go along with being an adjunct. This semester was the third in a row in which her typical three-course load at Truman was cut to two.
Ms. Maravolo also works as an assistant at a small library in the area, designing fliers and posters for its youth-services department, and the money she earns there helps. "I'm fortunate because I also have other skills," says Ms. Maravolo
But still she is drawn to the classroom. "Seeing the students that come there ready to learn and overcome their circumstances—it's inspiring," Ms. Maravolo says. "Their diversity is just incredible, and you have all sorts of age groups in the mix. I love to meet them. I love teaching and being in the classroom."
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Octubre 27, 2009
¿Por qué se incrementa el costo de formar abogados? El caso de los EE.UU.
Artículo --también de interés local-- publicado en The Chronicle of Higher Education, 26 octubre 2009.
Law-School Cost Is Pushed Up by Quest for Prestige, Not Accreditation, GAO Survey Finds
By Eric Kelderman
Critics have sometimes blamed the accreditation standards of the American Bar Association for driving up the cost of law school and making it more difficult for students of color to be admitted to those programs.
But a report released on Monday by the Government Accountability Office says that most law schools surveyed instead blamed competition for better rankings and a more hands-on approach to educating students for the increased price of a law degree. In addition, the federal watchdog agency reported that, over all, minorities are making up a larger share of law-school enrollments than in the past, although the percentage of African-American students in those programs is shrinking. The GAO attributed that decrease to lower undergraduate grade-point averages and scores on law-school admissions tests.
Law-school accreditation is technically voluntary but practically important: 19 states now require candidates to have a degree from an institution approved by the bar association to be eligible to take the bar examination. And a degree from an ABA-accredited institution makes a student eligible to take the bar exam in any state.
The costs of getting a law degree, however, have increased at a faster rate than the costs of comparable professional programs, says the report, "Higher Education: Issues Related to Law School Cost and Access." In-state tuition and fees at public law schools averaged $14,461 in the 2007-8 academic year, 7.2 percent higher than the cost 12 years earlier. In comparison, the cost of a medical degree from a public institution increased 5.3 percent over the same period, to $22,048 annually.
Law-school costs for nonresidents and at private institutions also increased at a slower rate over that period, but now total about twice as much or more in dollars compared with residents' costs at public institutions.
The reasons for the fast-rising costs are that law schools are providing courses and student-support programs that require more staff and faculty, the federal survey found. In addition, law schools spent more on faculty salaries and library resources, among other things, to boost their standing in the U.S. News & World Report annual rankings, law-school officials told the GAO.
Those findings stand in contrast to some criticisms that the accreditation standards for faculty and facilities are a major factor in the cost of law schools. "Officials from more than half of the ABA-accredited schools we spoke with stated they would meet or exceed some ABA accreditation standards even if they were not required," the report says.
Law-school officials also cited recent declines in state appropriations as a reason for rising tuition, federal researchers reported.
Accreditation standards also were not widely blamed for the declining share of African-American law students, most of those surveyed said. Between the 1994-95 and 2006-7 academic years, the percentage of black students has shrunk from 7.5 percent of law school students to 6.5 percent, even as the number of blacks earning bachelor's degrees has grown by two percentage points.
"Most law-school officials, students, and minority-student-group representatives we interviewed focused on issues such as differences in LSAT scores, academic preparation, and professional contacts, rather than accreditation standards, to explain minority access issues," the report says.
But the report also noted that some officials blamed not only accreditation, but also rankings by U.S. News & World Report for lower or static enrollment rates of minorities: "Schools are reluctant to admit applicants with lower LSAT scores because the median LSAT score is a key factor in the U.S. News & World Report rankings."
The study was a requirement of the Higher Education Opportunity Act, passed in 2008, and was meant to compare the costs and level of minority enrollment at law schools to similar professional-degree programs, including medical, dental, and veterinary colleges. Federal researchers surveyed officials at 22 institutions, including three that are not accredited by the ABA, and students in two law programs, one of which did not have the ABA's stamp of approval.
Copyright 2009. All Rights reserved
The Chronicle of Higher Education
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Octubre 25, 2009
Nuevo Ranking Chileno de Universidades: Revista América Economía
Circulan los resultados del Ranking de Universidades de la revista América Economía (Nº 42, octubre 2009), el primero de esta revista y con algunas interesantes inniovaciones respecto de rankings anteriores producidos en Chile, como se desprende la metodología que sirvió para su elaboración (ver más abajo).
Ver resultados del ranking de instituciones universitarias de América Economía 2009 y los rankings para diversas carreras universitarias aquí19,1 MB
Las 10 primeras universidades de ac uerdo a su índice dalidad en este Ranking son:
U de Chile
PUC
U de Concepción
U Santiago de Chile
U Técnica Federico Santa María
PUC-V
U Austral de Chile
U Diego Portales
U Adolfo Ibáñez
Metodologíapara la elaboración del Ranking de Universidades de América Economía
Tomado del sitio del Ranking.
Se tomó como muestra las 57 universidades consignadas como tal en el Consejo Superior de Educación (CSE).
Finalmente sólo se evaluaron las 55 que poseían información completa y fiable.
El ranking final se definió a través del promedio ponderado de ocho dimensiones:
• Alumnos (25%)
• Docentes (25%)
• Acreditación (14%)
• Investigación (10%)
• Infraestructura (8%)
• Internacionalización (5%)
• Apoyo al ingreso (5%)
• Apoyo a la innovación (4%)
• Vida de campus (4%)
A continuación se explican cada una de estas dimensiones:
Alumnos:
• Puntajes (30%): Ponderación de acuerdo al porcentaje de alumnos en los distintos tramos (sobre 800 puntos, 701 a 800, etc.), premiándose a los planteles con mayor porcentaje de alumnos en los tramos de puntajes superiores.
• AFI (70%): Monto total recibido por la Universidad de Aporte Fiscal Indirecto (AFI).
Docentes:
• Tamaño (50%): Indicador que mide el volumen total del profesorado, con diferentes ponderaciones de acuerdo al régimen de contratación: jornada completa (50%), jornada media (35%) y jornada hora (15%).
• Jornada Completa (25%): Se evaluaron los profesores jornada completa, ponderándose de acuerdo su último grado académico (doctores, magíster, profesionales y especialidades médicas).
• Jornada Parcial (20%): Se evaluaron los profesores jornada media, ponderándose de acuerdo su último grado académico (doctores, magíster, profesionales y especialidades médicas).
• Jornada Hora (5%): Se evaluaron los profesores jornada hora, ponderándose de acuerdo su último grado académico (doctores, magíster, profesionales y especialidades médicas).
Acreditación:
Se promedió la información de cuántos años fue acreditada la institución, como las áreas que consiguió acreditar.
Investigación:
Se analizó y comparó el número de papers ISI publicado cada año desde 2002 a 2009, lo que permitió obtener un indicador de la capacidad investigativa de los planteles de tiempo completo de cada universidad.
Infraestructura:
Se analizaron las variables de metros construidos de bibliotecas, y talleres y laboratorios, más el número de inmuebles declarados. La construcción final no fue a través de ponderadores, sino de la percepción de los datos.
Internacionalización:
• Ranking SJTU (25%): Se premió con un 25% del indicador de internacionalización a las dos universidades chilenas presentes en el ranking de las 500 mejores universidades de la Shangai Jiao Tong University
• Presencia en la web (75%): Se aplicó una escala puntuable de acuerdo a la posición conseguidas por las universidades chilenas en el ranking de presencia en la web de universidades desarrollado por Cybermetrics
Apoyo al ingreso
• Beneficiarios crédito del Estado (50%): Se calculó el porcentaje de alumnos que obtuvieron crédito con aval del Estado durante el año 2008.
• AFI (50%): Se dividió el número de alumnos totales de la universidad por el monto total recibido por la universidad por concepto de apoyo fiscal indirecto.
Apoyo a la innovación:
Se analizaron y cuantificaron los proyectos totales FONDEF e INNOVA que obtuvo cada universidad en 2008
Vida de Campus:
Se puntuó con un 75% la existencia de federaciones de estudiantes dentro de la universidad, y con 25% a las instituciones que desarrollaban trabajos voluntarios.
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Octubre 23, 2009
¿Es cara la educación superior?
Reportaje televisivo (Tele 13) sobre el costo de los estudios de educación superior en Chile.
Ver el reportaje aquí.
Recursos asociados
Política universitaria: una encrucijada estratégica, 18 octubre 2009
Costo de la educación superior: ¿quién paga?, 27 septiembre 2009
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Octubre 22, 2009
Resultados del Primer Congreso de Investigadores en Educación Superior
Presentaciones y textos de las ponencias hechas durante el Primer Congreso de Investigación en Educación Superior, realizado en Santiago el día 20 de octubre de 2009.
Ver aquí.
Educación Superior y Políticas Públicas
Giselle González, Políticas públicas en educación superior: estructura de los sistemas, financiamiento público, regulaciones estatales, aseguramiento de la calidad. Ponencia completa // Presentación
Daniel López, Patrones funcionales en las organizaciones internacionales de cooperación universitaria de América Latina y el Caribe Ponencia completa // Presentación
Carlos Romero, Relación entre la evaluación / acreditación de programas e instituciones Ponencia completa // Presentación
Sebastián Donoso, Economía Política del Financiamiento de los Estudios Universitarios: Análisis del caso chileno Ponencia completa // Presentación
Soledad Álvarez, La acreditación de carreras de Medicina en Argentina sometida a estudio Ponencia completa // Presentación
Educación Superior: Gestión y desarrollo
Julieta Claverie, La carrera docente en Universidades Nacionales de la Argentina: Posibilidades de acceso, permanencia y promoción en la profesión académica Ponencia completa // Presentación
María Rosa Lissi, Creencias y actitudes de docentes y estudiantes sin discapacidad respecto a la inclusión de estudiantes con discapacidad en la educación superior Ponencia completa // Presentación
Rodrigo Fernández-Donoso, Criterios para la Evaluación de Planes Estratégicos de Unidades Académicas en una Universidad Compleja Ponencia completa // Presentación
María Luisa Díaz, Empleabilidad de los Trabajadores Sociales y los nuevos desafíos para la formación profesional: El caso de la carrera de Trabajo Social de la Universidad Católica Silva Henríquez Ponencia completa // Presentación
Gonzalo Zapata, Mercado, Accountability e Información Pública en Educación Superior Ponencia completa // Presentación
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Octubre 20, 2009
Seminario Internacional: La Formación Práctica en el Proceso de Aprender a Enseñar
Escuela de Psicología, Facultad de Filosofía y Educación, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso
Noviembre 26 y 27, Viña del Mar
Programa
Jueves 26 Noviembre
8:30 - 9:00 Inscripción
9:00 - 9:15 Bienvenida
Dr. Nelson Vásquez Lara
Decano de la Facultad de Filosofía y Educación
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso
Dra. Carmen Montecinos Sanhueza
Profesora de la Escuela de Psicología
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso
9:15 - 9:30 “El Programa Inicia y los desafíos de la formación práctica en profesores de formación inicial”
Dra. Erika Castillo Barrientos
Directora del Programa Inicia. Ministerio de Educación
9:30 - 10:30 Ponencia: “Estudio de la formación práctica en 21 carreras de pedagogia”.
Carmen Montecinos Sanhueza, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso
Inés Contreras Valenzuela, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Claudio Nuñez Vega, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Sylvia Rittershaussen Klaunig, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
María Cristina Solis Zañartu, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Horacio Walker Larraín, Universidad Diego Portales
10:30 - 11:00 Café
11:00 - 13:00
Panel. Utilización de los resultados de la investigación “El impacto de la formación práctica en el proceso de aprender a enseñar desde las diez universidades participantes”.
1. Qué resultados han sido más relevantes para el análisis de su formación práctica
2. Una propuesta de mejoramiento que surge de este análisis.
Universidad de Playa Ancha
Universidad Metropolitana de Ciencias de al Educación
Universidad Andrés Bello
Universidad Diego Portales
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Universidad de Concepción
Universidad del Bío Bío
Universidad de la Santísima Concepción
Universidad Católica de Temuco
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso
13:00 - 14:30 Presentación del libro Las Muestras de Desempeño Docente: Un instrumento para evaluar la calidad de la enseñanza y su impacto en el aprendizaje. Editorial Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
Recepción
15:00 - 16:30 Ponencia La Práctica Docente como Currículo para la Formación Docente en los Establecimientos Educacionales
Dra. Marilyn Cochran Smith, Boston College, EEUU.
16:30 - 18:00 Ponencia Vinculación Universidad-Comunidad- Sistema Escolar para la Formación Inicial Docente
Dra. Christine Sleeter, California State University-Monterey Bay, EEUU
18:00 Café cierre del día
Viernes 27 de Noviembre
9:00 - 10:30 Ponencia De la Enseñanza a la Mentoría: Desarrollando Conocimientos para pasar de la enseñanza de niños y niñas a la mentoría de los estudiantes de pedagogía en la práctica profesional
Dra. Lily Orland-Barak , Universidad de Haifa, Israel
10:30 - 11:00 Café
11:00 - 12:30 Talleres
A. Sobre el currículo para la formación práctica facilitado por la Dra. Cochran-Smith
B. Sobre la vinculación sistema escolar facilitado por la Dra. Sleeter
C. Sobre la formación profesores mentores facilitado por la Dra. Orland-Barak
12:45 - 13:30 Plenario de Cierre
Dr. Avalos, Dra. Cochran-Smith, Dra. Orland-Barak y Dra. Sleeter
Moderador Dr. Claudio Nuñez
INFORMACION GENERAL
Lugar:
Jueves 26 Aula Media de la Facultad de Filosofía y Educación de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso. Campus Sausalito. Avenida el Bosque 1290, Viña del Mar
Viernes 27 Aula Media de la Facultad de Filosofía y Educación de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso. Campus Sausalito. Avenida el Bosque 1290, Viña del Mar
CONTACTOS
Teléfono: Nelson Vasquez L. 032- 2274398/ 2274353
Fax: 032- 2274359
Correo electrónico: decfiled@ucv.cl
nvasquez@ucv.cl
Teléfono: Silvia Rittershaussen K. 02- 6865399
Correo electrónico: sritters@uc.cl
Inscripción y participación Gratuita
Costo de la certificación: Académicos : 20.000 pesos
Estudiantes: 5.000 pesos
Patrocinado por: Vice Rectoría de Asuntos Docentes y Estudiantiles, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Facultad de Filosofía y Educación-PUCV, Fundación Andes, Centro de Investigación Avanzada en Educación (CIAE) y la Facultad de Educación, Universidad Diego Portales
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Octubre 19, 2009
Educación para el futuro: Políticas y prácticas - una visión desde la OCDE
Palabras del Secretario General de la OCDE, Angel Gurría, con ocasión de la mesa redonda de Ministros de Educación que tuvo lugar en la UNESCO, 10 octubre 2009.
Education for the future - Promoting changes in policies and practices: the way forward
Remarks by Angel Gurría, OECD Secretary-General, delivered at the Education Ministerial Round Table, UNESCO
10 October 2009 - UNESCO, Paris, France
Director General, Madame Chair, Ministers, Ladies and Gentlemen, good morning:
I am pleased to be part of this session on “How to promote changes in policies and practices”, as this is one of the greatest challenges to improve education and the very essence of OECD work in this field. Thank you very much for the invitation. We have brought with us the ”highlights” of our yearly publication, “Education at a Glance”, as well as some very specific publications on, for example, “Education for students at risk and those with disabilities in the Baltics and South East Europe”, or “Green at Fifteen”.
The current financial and economic crisis is one of the biggest transformations of our lifetime. It is defining a tough new world. Thus, we need to revise our educational policies, to adapt them to such new reality where factors like high unemployment, growing inequalities, stronger competition, fewer jobs, enhanced interdependence, new business ethics, constant innovation and, if we get it right, “green growth” are becoming the new pointers for our societies of the future.
We therefore need to prepare for such a challenging future. This is where education comes in and becomes critical.
1. Rising skills: a first crucial target
We are currently facing the greatest job crisis of our lives. The average unemployment rate in the OECD area could approach 10% by 2010. Youth unemployment has soared to 20-30% in some countries. This figure translates into 57 million people out of a job in the OECD zone. The number of unemployed is even larger in developing countries, and is sometimes hard to track because of the phenomenon of informality.
Education and training are key elements to our response to this crisis. If we want to provide jobseekers with the re-employment assistance they require, and minimise long-term unemployment, we need to emphasize training.
As we documented in the most recent edition (the 29th) of our “Employment OutlooEmployment Outlook”, the job prospects for those with few qualifications are deteriorating rapidly in this crisis environment. Across OECD countries, over 40% of young people who have not completed secondary school are not employed. This is more than the double of the youth unemployment rate. Many of those who become unemployed stay unemployed for a long time. New graduates face serious difficulties in finding jobs and enterprises cut training opportunities in the vocational area. All because of the crisis.
And yet, we have powerful evidence that education is the key to addressing the economic and social challenges of our times, including a way to get out of the crisis faster. We continue to see rising economic and social benefits for those who are skilled, as well as deteriorating opportunities for those without adequate education.
We have made calculation on how worth it is for one to get higher education. It is enormously positive. Actually, there is a considerable earnings premium for people with degrees over their working lives, which averages now $186,000 across OECD countries. Even when you hold such benefits against what governments and individuals spend on education, the net public return from an investment in tertiary education is highly positive. For individuals, it pays to invest in education. You clearly have a very positive costs / benefits ratio.
You can look at the other side of the coin too: the economic loss imposed by poor educational performance might be even greater than the output shortfall in the current economic crisis. For example, if the United States had closed the gap regarding performing education systems such as Finland and Korea, GDP in 2008 could have been $1.3 trillion to $2.3 trillion higher (equivalent to 9 – 16% of GDP).
There is no doubt that education systems have responded to the rising demand for better skilled people. Indeed, the volume of educational activity has expanded at an unprecedented pace. University graduation rates doubling from 20% in 1995 to almost 40% in 2007, in the OECD area. In China and other emerging markets, the rate of expansion has been even faster.
Producing more of the same qualifications cannot be the answer when the nature of the skills that matter is changing too.
2. Education systems have to put greater emphasis on 21st Century skills
Our economic growth is increasingly driven by innovation, making skills obsolete at a much faster pace than before. This is why Ministers called upon the OECD to develop an Innovation Strategy that looks, among other things, at how education and training can develop the skills that matter for the world to come. They also more recently gave us a mandate to develop a Green Growth Strategy. Innovation and Green Growth clearly go hand in hand.
How can schools and universities prepare people for a world where work can be digitized, automated, outsourced and green?
The response lies in education. The key to success is no longer simply whether you can reproduce something you have learned, but whether you can extrapolate from what you know and apply your knowledge in a novel and changing setting. This shows that if students learn merely to memorise and reproduce knowledge and skills, they risk being prepared for jobs that are in fact disappearing. The problem is that this is precisely what many schools have focussed on for so many decades.
Of course, state-of-the-art skills in a field will always be important. Innovative and productive people generally have specialised skills. But there are other important competencies that education needs to focus on. Let me mention three:
First of all, in our schools, students typically learn individually and thus, at the end of the school year, we certify their individual achievements. But the more globalised and inter dependent the world becomes, the more we need great collaborators and orchestrators, not isolated individuals, no matter how well they do. We need to form people for a more inclusive world: people who can appreciate and build on different values, beliefs, cultures. Inter-personal competencies to produce inclusive solutions will be of growing importance.
Second, the conventional approach in school is often to break problems down into manageable bits and pieces and then teach students how to solve each one of these bits and pieces individually. But in modern economies, we create value by synthesising different fields of knowledge, making connections between ideas that previously seemed unrelated. That requires being familiar with and open and receptive to knowledge in other fields rather than our own field. But apart from Japan and perhaps the Nordic countries in Europe, there are few incentives for teachers to collaborate across disciplines.
Third, if we log on to the Internet today, we can find everything we are looking for. But the more content we can search and access, the more important it is to teach our students to sort and filter information. The search for relevance is very critical in the presence of abundance of information. We also need the capacity to explain content in one area to people working in other areas.
The 21st century schools therefore need to help young individuals to constantly adapt and grow, to develop their capacity and motivation, to expand their horizons and transfer and apply knowledge in novel settings.
This crisis is exposing the gaps in our education system. For example, nowadays people need a much better financial literacy. They need to be able to think in terms of scenarios, weigh risks and probabilities, and assess the short-term and long-term economic impact of today’s decisions.
Our relation to climate change is another example. Technological innovation and well-targeted policy instruments are essential. But ultimately, green growth will rely on people’s behaviour and on their own individual understanding of its social and environmental impact.
We can extend the list further but the point is that, whatever competencies are considered relevant for success in modern societies, our educational policies and our schools need to adapt to them but mostly, to provide them.
One important issue for example is that children nowadays don’t want to become scientists, they prefer to become football players or rock stars. We are running out of vocation, out of the future.
3. The importance of education reform: learning form each other
And thus, we must ask how efficiently are our educational policies adapting to the new global circumstances? Not very well, I should say. This is a key question for the future of our nations.
In OECD countries, political leaders have demonstrated a commitment to reforming education systems. But if we are to keep public policy credible, it is important to make sure that reforms actually do change policies and practices. And here is where we have some worries.
A growing body of evidence and statistics on education systems and outcomes ─ from sources like the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) ─ show that the goals of education reforms are not always materialising. There is a broad consensus on the goals but the degree of execution is not the same. But there are surprising gaps in our knowledge of how to make that happen. The political economy of reforms in the field of education is enormously difficult. Breaking the status quo is not easy.
Overcoming active resistance to change in educational policy is one of our central challenges. We have much to learn from each other to address this challenge.
At the OECD, we have been comparing the effectiveness of our educational policies and reforms for many years. These international comparisons have helped us identify our common challenges and best practices.
We have learned, for example, that teachers and school leaders are still not being systematically prepared to use performance measurement and diagnostic tools to identify students in difficulty and constructively address their learning needs. And they spend too much time in administration issues or in addressing discipline problems of individual students.
But we have also learned that change is possible: by shifting public concern away from the mere control over the resources and content of education toward a focus on outcomes; by moving from “hit and miss” policies to establishing universal high standards; by moving from uniformity to embracing diversity and individualising learning. And we have identified the best practices to produce these changes.
We have seen, for example, good success stories: like the Scottish government’s major reforms, earlier this decade, which started with an overhaul of the teachers training and salaries. Teachers then became advocates and agents of further reform.
We have seen countries like Mexico where the government recently embarked on a series of far-reaching reforms to curriculum, examinations, and teacher training, evaluation and certification, based on OECD benchmarks and exchange of best practices.
We have seen countries like Finland whose reforms focused on teachers’ selection, remuneration and standing in society, with the results that Finland always comes out at the top. There is usually a trade-off between teachers’ pay and the size of the classes, which requires a careful balancing act.
It is no longer enough for national education policy makers to gauge education improvement against their own past outcomes. They have to keep an eye on how much other countries are improving as well. This is the value of multilateral cooperation. This is why these international conferences are so important. This is why we will continue our fruitful collaboration with UNESCO to provide the cross-cutting policy expertise needed to support governments in addressing these challenges.
Dear Ministers, Ladies and Gentlemen:
We need to empower the future generations with new tools to produce a better world; to adapt our educational policies to a new, more competitive and globalized reality; to identify our leads and lags, compare our know-how and prepare to learn from each other through enhanced multilateral cooperation. Remember: “In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” May these words by Eric Hoffer stay in our minds as we try to prepare for the future. This is probably an exaggeration, as being learned is of great importance to become a learner.
I will close my speech by thanking Mr Matsura, with whom I had the privilege and satisfaction to work. I am proud of the work we shared with you. Together we have made a difference. I wish you good luck and present you my congratulations.
Thank you very much for your attention.
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Octubre 18, 2009
Política universitaria: una encrucijada estratégica
Columna publicada en la página de Educación del diario El Mercurio, 18 octubre 2009.
Palabras claves: rankings universitarios, universidades de clase mundial, financiamiento, Consejo Rectores
Política universitaria: una encrucijada estratégica
El que sea efectivo que el Estado entrega pocos recursos a la educación superior no lleva a concluir que éste deba financiar a unas pocas universidades que quieren convertirse en instituciones de estatus mundial.
José Joaquín Brunner
La reciente aparición del ranking de las 200 "mejores" universidades del mundo que publica anualmente la revista inglesa Times Higher Education -en el cual no aparece ninguna universidad chilena- ha vuelto a activar la demanda por una mayor inversión de recursos fiscales en este sector. En particular, autoridades de algunas de nuestras universidades que aspiran a ser reconocidas internacionalmente insisten en la idea de que sin un mayor apoyo del Estado es imposible que sus instituciones puedan convertirse en entidades de clase mundial.
Este tipo de planteamiento merece ser discutido con atención, incluso si uno es escéptico (como lo soy yo) respecto de la calidad, consistencia, rigurosidad y utilidad de los rankings globales y de la importancia que suele otorgárseles.
Ante todo, porque es efectivo que el presupuesto nacional destina una cantidad reducida de recursos a la educación superior y la investigación académica; de hecho, una de las más bajas entre los países con un nivel de desarrollo similar al nuestro. Sin embargo, de allí no se sigue, automáticamente, que el gobierno deba invertir en unas pocas universidades que anhelan alcanzar un estatus internacional.
Más bien, una estrategia equilibrada para el desarrollo de la educación nacional debiera impulsar, con prioridad máxima, un sustancial y rápido incremento de la subvención escolar para los niveles básico y medio, sin disminuir el esfuerzo que se viene haciendo para extender la cobertura y calidad de la educación preescolar y la atención temprana de niñas y niños. De esto depende en gran medida la posibilidad de hacer retroceder las desigualdades sociales.
En el nivel de la educación terciaria, en tanto, el Estado debe preocuparse principalmente de financiar becas para jóvenes talentosos provenientes de familias de menores ingresos y créditos para todos aquellos jóvenes y adultos que no están en condiciones de financiar sus estudios superiores.
Sólo después de satisfacer estas necesidades fundamentales, la política pública podría con legitimidad y eficacia atender a las necesidades de las instituciones de educación superior, a condición de que éstas cumplan con los estándares de la acreditación y se sujeten a reglas más rigurosas de información al público.
Al efecto, todas las universidades acreditadas y dispuestas a informar con transparencia debieran conformar una agrupación que pueda interactuar con el Gobierno y participar en la definición de las políticas para el sector.
El Consejo de Rectores hace rato dejó de cumplir esta misión. Todas esas universidades debieran estar facultadas además para postular competitivamente a convenios de desempeño y para obtener recursos basales (AFD) en caso de que sus proyectos resulten seleccionados por una instancia independiente. Asimismo, para competir por fondos destinados al mejoramiento de la calidad docente y el fortalecimiento de las capacidades de investigación académica. Sólo de esta forma se podría nivelar el campo de juego para todas las instituciones sin discriminación.
Por el contrario, no tiene sentido aspirar a que el país cuente mañana con una o dos universidades de aquellas llamadas equívocamente de clase mundial, cuyo costo de desarrollo y mantención resulta prohibitivo y que terminarían sirviendo apenas a una fracción ultra-minoritaria de estudiantes, la mayoría proveniente, inevitablemente, de hogares dotados de un alto capital económico, social y cultural.
Una estrategia tal llevaría nada más que a reeditar las tradiciones elitistas que en el pasado caracterizaron el desarrollo de la educación chilena, y cuyos negativos efectos -en términos de segmentación escolar, privilegios estamentales y jerarquías no meritocráticas, patrocinadas estatalmente- perduran hasta hoy.
Recursos asociados
-- ¿Para qué sirven los rankings de universidades?, 17 octubre 2009
-- A propósitio de rankings universitarios, 9 octubre 2009
-- Ranking inglés 2009 de las mejores universidades del mundo, 8 octubre 2009
-- Universidades de Clase Mundial: nuevo libro de Jamil Salmi, 5 abril 2009
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Primer Congreso de Investigación en Educación Superior
Organizado por el Programa Anillo (SOC01-Conicyt) de Políticas en Educación Superior, que cuenta con la participación de las Universidades Alberto hurtado, de Talca, Nacional Andrés Bello y Diego Portales, se realizará el próximo día martes 20 de octubre el Primer Congreso de Investigación en Educación Superior.
Tendrá lugar el Campus Santiago de la Universidad de Talca, Québec 415, esquina Condell 188, Providencia - Santiago.
Ver aquí el Programa.
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Octubre 17, 2009
¿Para qué sirven los rankings de universidades?
Apareció en Boletín Nº 6 del Programa Anillo(SOC01) de Políticas en Educación Superior, dedicado esta vez al tema de los rankings de universidades. Fue editado por Judith Scheele con la colaboración de Felipe Salazar, ambos del Centro de Políticas Comparadas de Educación de la UDP.
Algunas de las preguntas que busca responder son:
¿Para qué sirven los rankings de universidades?
¿Cuáles son los rankings más importantes?
¿Cuáles son los argumentos críticos respecto a los rankings?
¿Cuáles son los parámetros en que se basan los rankings de universidades?
¿Qué estándares internacionales existen acerca del ranking de instituciones de educación superior?
¿Cómo se puede mejorar la calidad y fiabilidad de los rankings?
Bajar el Boletín aquí266 KB
Ver números anteriores aquí.
Introducción
Los rankings son un fenómeno relativamente nuevo en la educación superior. Fueron introducidos hace un cuarto de siglo en los Estados Unidos por la revista US News and World Report con el objetivo de proporcionar información clara y práctica sobre las diferencias de calidad y prestigio entre las instituciones de educación superior (IES) a los futuros estudiantes y otros actores interesados.
En virtud del rápido crecimiento en el número y variedad de IES, los rankings se han popularizado durante las dos últimas décadas, convirtiéndose en un mecanismo universal para el fomento de la transparencia y la accountability de las universidades. Dado que la elección de una universidad es una decisión crucial para los estudiantes y sus familias, y que ella implica una significativa inversión de recursos, los rankings satisfacen una necesidad importante, proporcionando datos comparables que ayudan a los estudiantes a elegir la institución que mejor se adecúa a sus preferencias.
A pesar de la popularidad de los rankings existe un fuerte debate sobre su uso. Varios académicos y, sobre todo, instituciones, cuestionan la calidad y la fiabilidad de los rankings. Basan sus críticas en el hecho de que los productores de rankings seleccionan y ponderan los indicadores de manera subjetiva (y “arbitraria” en la opinión de los críticos), mostrando los resultados como una clasificación objetiva. Asimismo, ponen en duda la verificabilidad de los datos utilizados para elaborar los rankings. A menudo los rankings se construyen sobre la base de datos entregados por las propias universidades sin control ulterior o en base a los resultados de encuestas entre instituciones pares, lo que les resta confiabilidad y los vuelve susceptibles de manipulación.
Vista la popularidad y la rápida expansión del número de rankings de universidades, es necesario evaluar su calidad e impacto en la educación superior. Existen varias maneras de mejorar la calidad de los rankings y de hacer su uso menos polémico. La introducción de nuevas formas de ranking y mecanismos para controlar la fiabilidad de los datos, satisfaría gran parte de las exigencias de los críticos.
EL PRESENTE BOLETÍN ANALIZA LA FUNCIÓN DE LOS RANKINGS DE UNIVERSIDADES, SU INFLUENCIA EN EL SISTEMA DE EDUCACIÓN SUPERIOR, SUS VENTAJAS Y DESVENTAJAS COMO MECANISMO DE EVALUACIÓN, Y LAS MANERAS EN QUE SE PODRÍA FOMENTAR LAS BUENAS PRÁCTICAS EN SU ELABORACIÓN.
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Octubre 14, 2009
Políticas de Educación Superior: Tendencias Internacionales
Presentación sobre el tópico de las tendencias internacionales en la educación superior empleada como base para una clase dentro del módulo ofrecido por el Programa Anillo(SOC01) de Investigación sobre Políticas de Educación Superior para alumnos de maestría de la Universidad Católica Silva Henríquez, 14 octubre 2009.
Bajar la presentación aquí 2,9 MB
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Octubre 10, 2009
CRUCH: Pasos en falso
Columna publicada en el diario La Tercera, 10 octubre 2009.
Pasos en falso
José Joaquín Brunner
Director, Centro de Políticas Comparadas de Educación, UDP
El Consejo de Rectores de las 25 universidades subsidiadas por el Estado (CR25) es un organismo reconocidamente defectuoso. No representa al conjunto de las instituciones de educación superior del país; ni siquiera a la mayoría de las universidades. Está dividido en grupos antagónicos y entre personalidades que pugnan por orientar las decisiones del organismo. Éstas, sin embargo, son habitualmente sobre asuntos secundarios. Por lo mismo, el CR25 no influye sobre las políticas del sector y se limita a defender intereses corporativos. Lo preside la Ministra de Educación pero, en la práctica, el Gobierno no lo conduce ni posee el Consejo capacidad de auto-gobernarse. De sus deliberaciones y acuerdos no hay constancia disponible públicamente en el sito-web de la entidad, cuyos estándares de calidad y transparencia parecen ser poco exigentes. La comunidad académica juzga con escepticismo el rol del CR25 y la OCDE, en su revisión de la educación superior chilena, recomendó reemplazarlo por un organismo abierto a todas las instituciones acreditadas.
A estas patentes fallas, el Consejo acaba de asociar una sucesión de desatinadas decisiones, la que dio lugar a una verdadera guerra en torno al período para postular a las universidades. En efecto, sin mayor consideración por los derechos y el bienestar de los 280 mil jóvenes que rendirán la PSU y de sus familias, el CR25 decidió entregar los resultados de dicha prueba a la cero hora del 24 de diciembre, forzando a los interesados a materializar sus postulaciones durante los días 24, 25 y 26 de diciembre. Tras una refriega verbal entre sus integrantes, conducida a través de los medios, con mutuas imputaciones de conductas irresponsables, el Consejo resolvió adelantar en 24 horas la publicación de los resultados de la PSU. El prorrector de la PUC calificó como una “insensatez” también a esta decisión y, junto con otras voces disgustadas, reclamó nuevamente revisar el calendario. “No estoy disponible para un nuevo cambio de fecha”, respondió el Presidente del Consorcio de Universidades Estatales. Pero cambio hubo, gracias a la Ministra de Educación. Ella hizo ver a los rectores (entre ellos varios científicos, ingenieros y tecnólogos) el menoscabo que experimentarían aquellos jóvenes que decidieran postular el día 25 de diciembre, día en que el acceso y uso del Internet se tornan más gravosos. Así pues, la fatídica fecha se fijó definitivamente para la cero hora del 21 de diciembre, pudiendo los jóvenes postular hasta el día 24 a mediodía.
¿Qué motivó este curioso baile de pasos en falso? No, por cierto, un mero asunto de fechas ni menos el deseo de proteger el derecho a elegir de los estudiantes sino, más bien, la voluntad de algunos integrantes del CR25 de evitar que instituciones no-miembros pudieran matricular un número creciente de alumnos con puntajes relativamente altos. Según reconocieron varios rectores del Consejo, mientras más tarde se den a conocer los resultados de la PSU, menos posibilidades tienen las universidades privadas para reclutar buenos alumnos. “Si ellos [las universidades privadas] quieren usar los resultados de la PSU tienen que ponerse en la fila en el momento que corresponda”, acotó un rector integrante del Consejo. ¡Y no chistar! ¿Cómo puede justificarse tan cruda y poco académica pretensión? La justificación esgrimida por los integrantes más combativos del CR25 fue acusar a las universidades ajenas al club de captar alumnos “gracias a ofertones que nosotros no podemos hacer” (sic).
En breve, un deprimente espectáculo donde, al final, sale mal parado el bien público y se deteriora aún más la imagen ya alicaída del Consejo de Rectores.
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Octubre 09, 2009
A propósitio de rankings universitarios
A propósito del ranking 2009 del Times Higher Education que mostrábamos ayer, vale la pena leer el siguiente artícula de Ellen Hazelkorn, de marzo pasado, en que aborda la fascinación u obsesión que se ha ido instalando en el mundo en relación con las world calss universities. Hazelkorn es Directora de Investigación y Decana de la Escuela de Graduados del Dublin Institute of Technology, Irlanda. Es uademás una reputada investigadora de la educación superior.
The problem with university rankings
Ellen Hazelkorn
Universities that do well in the rankings often see rising student applications
Flickr/mark.taber
Our obsession with top-rated universities is denying us a 'world-class' global higher education system, says Ellen Hazelkorn.
Few people in higher education (HE) are unaware of university rankings. They measure a university's ability to attract talent and produce new knowledge — usually using the number of publications or citations to determine research quality.
The US News and World Report (USNWR) began providing information about US universities in 1983. Since then, national rankings have been created in over 40 countries. Global rankings may be more recent but they have become more influential; the Shanghai Jiao Tong Academic Ranking of World Universities (SJT) began in 2003, followed by Webometrics and Times Higher Education QS World University Ranking (THE–QS) in 2004, the Taiwan Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for Research Universities in 2007, and USNWR's World's Best Colleges and Universities in 2008 (which uses Times QS data). The European Union has announced a 'new multi-dimensional university ranking system with global outreach' to be piloted in 2010.
Race for the top
Despite over 17,000 HE institutions worldwide, there is a near-obsession with the status of the top 100 universities. None of these are in Africa or South America.
Rankings were initially aimed at undergraduate students and their parents. Indeed, international research shows that high achieving students believe a high university rank carries special benefits, positively affecting their career opportunities and quality of life. Universities that do well in the rankings often see rising student applications while those going lower can suffer a decline.
Yet rankings today influence the opinions and decisions of a wide range of stakeholders. And universities themselves use rankings in many ways, some positive and some perverse.
Who uses rankings?
Rankings affect universities' decisions about their international partnerships. Such partnerships have become strategically important for research, academic programmes, and student/faculty exchanges. According to an international survey, 57 per cent of respondents said their institute's ranking was influencing whether researchers in other HE institutions partnered with them, and 34 per cent said they felt rankings were influencing whether academic or professional organisations would accept their membership.
Universities are also using rankings internally to inform decisions about which institutions to partner with. For example, Ian Gow, former provost of The University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China has suggested that government authorities are urging local institutions to limit partnerships to the top 20 foreign institutions. Academics elsewhere have also confirmed they are unlikely to consider research partnerships with a lower ranked university unless the person or team is exceptional. This could pose significant disadvantages to new HE institutions, or institutions in developing countries.
Donors also refer to rankings when considering which university offers the best brand image and return-on-investment. Deutsche Telecom admits it used rankings to influence its decision about professorial chairs, while Boeing said it will be using performance data to determine "which colleges...share in the US$100 million that [it] spends...on course work and supplemental training."
Universities are setting priorities and allocating resources to academic disciplines and research fields which can help improve their rank. Many governments use rankings when deciding resource allocation and institutional accreditation.
Rankings can also affect students seeking government sponsorship to study abroad — in Mongolia and Qatar, scholarships are restricted to students admitted to highly ranked international universities.
And they can decide whether governments recognise foreign qualifications — Macedonia automatically recognises qualifications from the top 500 universities listed in the THE–QS, SJT or USNWR.
Employers are another group who often use rankings to measure probable graduate success, making them less likely to recruit graduates from universities that are not well placed.
Unintended effects
Because of these effects, not being ranked can mean a university becomes invisible to international PhD students, 'world-class' researchers, academic partners, philanthropists and donors.
Rankings based on citations best record the bio-sciences, making the arts, humanities and social sciences vulnerable. Professional disciplines, such as engineering, business and education, which do not have a strong tradition of peer-reviewed publications, are also under pressure.
Rankings have placed a new premium on status and reputation, with a strong bias towards long-established and well-endowed institutions, usually with medical schools, in developed countries. This system makes it impossible for developing country universities to compete with the big players in the United States or Europe. The gap between elite and mass education and between universities in the developed and developing world is likely to widen.
One particular problem is that rankings perpetuate a single definition of quality at a time when HE institutions, and their missions, are diversifying. By focusing primarily on research intensity, other dimensions, such as teaching and learning, community engagement, third mission and innovation, and social and economic impact are ignored.
In addition, HE institutions are complex organisations with strengths and weaknesses across various departments and activities. Excellence can be defined differently depending upon the criteria or indicators/weightings which are used. By aggregating the score across the various indicators, rankings reduce the complexity of higher education to a single digit score, and exaggerate differences.
Despite these criticisms, governments such as China, India, Japan and Korea are looking to build their own world-class universities.
World class
Of course, rankings can help to reform and modernise higher education, encouraging universities to professionalise services and management, and improve the quality of their programmes and facilities for students and faculty.
But rather than concentrating resources in a small number of elite universities, the aim should be a world-class HE system. Governments should aim to develop a diverse range of universities each with specialist world-class expertise, to attract high-achieving students and high-skilled labour. Building such a world-class HE system would enable countries to mobilise and leverage the potential of the whole system for the benefit of society at large.
Ellen Hazelkorn is Director of Research and Enterprise, and Dean of the Graduate Research School at the Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland.She also leads the Higher Education Policy Research Unit.
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Octubre 08, 2009
Ranking inglés 2009 de las mejores universidades del mundo
Sólo una universidad latinoamericana --la Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) se cuenta entre las 200 top del ranking del Times Higher Education dado a conocer hoy. Durante el último año, sin embargo, cayó 40 lugares, quedando en el lugar 190 este año.
Brasil y Argentina, los otros países latinoamericanos que el año pasado anotaban una de sus universidades en la tabla de las 200 de calidad mundial, desaparecen.
Las dos universidades chilenas --la UCH y la PUC-- no aparecen entre las 200 primeras sino bastante más abajo, y ambas pierden posiciones con respec to al año 2008.
Las universidades de Estados Unidos mantienen su pedominio pero en descenso, mientras ascienden las universidades de países asiáticos.
En Europa se mantiene el liderazgo de las universidades del Reino Unido seguidas de las universidades Holandesas (11 entre las 200 top del mundo) y Alemania (10).
Australia mantiene también su participación con 9 universidades, al igual que Nueva Zelanda con 3.
Ver listado de las 200 mejores universidades y sus puntajes aquí
Ver listado de las 50 mehjores en:
-- Ciencias sociales aquí
-- Artes y humanidades aquí
-- Ciencias naturales aquí
-- Ciencias de la vida y biomédicas aquí
-- Ingenierías y tecnoklogías de información aquí
Principales aspectos y metodología
World University Rankings 2009
Rankings 09: Talking points
8 October 2009
By Phil Baty
The World University Rankings are compiled using a mixture of quantitative indicators and informed opinion
What makes a world-class university? When Times Higher Education asked the leaders of top-ranked institutions this question last year, one response stood out for its inspirational qualities.
Robert Zimmer, president of the University of Chicago, said that his institution was "driven by a singular focus on the value of open, rigorous and intense inquiry. Everything about the university that we recognise as distinctive flows from this."
He said that Chicago believed that "argumentation rather than deference is the route to clarity", that "arguments stand or fall on their merits" and that the university recognised that "our contributions to society rest on the power of our ideas and the openness of our environment to developing and testing ideas".
His answer prompted much praise. One Times Higher Education reader said that Zimmer's "glorious affirmation" was "marvellously refreshing" and had "brought joy to my heart, tears to my eyes and a renewed sense of commitment to the life of the mind".
But glorious as Zimmer's statement was, it also served to highlight the problem faced by the increasing number of people and organisations now in the business of ranking higher education institutions: how on earth do you measure such intangible things?
The short answer, of course, is that you cannot. What you can do, however, and what we have sought to do with these rankings, is to try to capture the more tangible and measurable elements that make a modern, world-class university.
When Times Higher Education first conceived its annual World University Rankings with QS in 2004, we identified "four pillars" that supported the foundations of a leading international institution. They are hardly controversial: high-quality research; high-quality teaching; high graduate employability; and an "international outlook".
Much more controversial are the measurements we chose for our rankings, and the balance between quantitative and qualitative measures.
To judge research excellence, we examine citations - how many times an academic's published work is cited.
We calculate this element - worth 20 per cent of the overall score - by taking the total number of citations for all papers published from the institution, and then dividing the figure by the number of full-time equivalent staff at the institution. This gives a sense of the density of research excellence on a campus.
Our proxy for teaching excellence is a simple measure of staff-to-student ratio. It is not perfect, but it is based on data that can be collected for all institutions, often via national bodies, and compared fairly. Our assumption is that it tells us something meaningful about the quality of the student experience. At the most basic level, it at least gives a sense as to whether an institution has enough teaching staff to give students the attention they require. This measure is worth 20 per cent of the overall score.
To get a sense of a university's international outlook, we measure the proportion of overseas staff a university has on its books (making up 5 per cent of the total score) and the proportion of international students it has attracted (making up another 5 per cent). This gives an impression of how attractive an institution is around the world, and suggests how much the institution has embraced the globalisation agenda.
But 50 per cent of the final score is made up from qualitative data from surveys of informed people - university academics and graduate employers.
The fundamental tenet of this ranking, as we have said in previous years, is that academics know best when it comes to identifying the best institutions.
So the biggest part of the ranking score - worth 40 per cent - is based on the result of an academic peer review survey. We consult academics around the world, from lecturers to university presidents, and ask them to name up to 30 institutions they regard as being the best in the world in their field.
Responses over the past three years are aggregated, although only the most recent response from anyone who has responded more than once is used. For our 2009 tables, we have drawn on responses from 9,386 people. With each person nominating an average of 13 institutions, this means that we can draw on about 120,000 data points.
The ranking also includes the results of an employer survey of 3,281 major graduate employers, making up 10 per cent of the overall result.
Scorecard
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Rankings 09: Asia advances
8 October 2009
By Phil Baty
America's superpower status is slipping as other countries' efforts to join the global elite begin to pay dividends. Phil Baty reports
The US domination of the top ranks of global higher education is not as strong as it has been in previous years. The Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings 2009 show that institutions in Asian countries such as Hong Kong and Japan are growing in stature.
Although Harvard University is still ranked number one in the table of the world's top 200 universities - for the sixth consecutive year - American supremacy seems to be slipping.
While the US still has by far the most institutions in the top 200, with a total of 54, it has lost five institutions from the top 100 and four have dropped out of the top 200 altogether.
The country's decline comes amid improved showings by institutions in Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Malaysia.
Philip Altbach, director of the Centre for Higher Education at Boston College in the US, says several factors are behind the surges by Asian institutions.
"These countries have invested heavily in higher education in recent years, and this is reflected in the improved quality in their top institutions," he says. "They have also attempted to internationalise their universities by hiring more faculty from overseas ... this helps to improve their visibility globally.
"These universities have also stressed the importance of their professors publishing in international journals, which has no doubt increased the visibility of their research."
But he adds that this drive for internationalisation and success in global rankings may be "debatable in terms of good policy" for Asian institutions. For example, he says, stressing the importance of publishing in international journals may "tilt research away from topics relevant for national development", and fostering the use of the English language "may have a negative impact on intellectual work in the local language".
Japan counts 11 institutions in the top 200, among them two new entrants: the University of Tsukuba sharing 174th place and Keio University making an impressive debut at 142nd. Japan's representatives in the top 100 rose in number from four to six, led by the University of Tokyo at 22nd place (down from 19th).
Despite having a total of only eight government-funded tertiary institutions, Hong Kong has five institutions in the top 200, up from four last year.
Its tally includes three in the top 50: the University of Hong Kong (up two places to 24th); Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (up four to 35th); and the Chinese University of Hong Kong (down four to 46th). City University of Hong Kong rocketed up the table to 124th, from joint 147th, in its 25th anniversary year. Hong Kong Polytechnic University made the top 200, reaching 195th place.
South Korea now has four universities in the top 200, with new entrant Yonsei University in at joint 151st. Seoul National University is the country's highest-placed institution, sharing 47th place.
Malaysia returned to the top 200 with its Universiti Malaya entering at 180th place.
China replicated its standing from last year, with two institutions in the top 100 and a total of six in the top 200. The country's top-rated institution, Tsinghua University, climbed from 56th place to joint 49th, while Peking University slipped from 50th to joint 52nd. Fudan University moved up to joint 103rd from 113th.
The rise of Asia is in direct contrast to the US' fortunes. The most dramatic illustration of its slide is apparent in the top ten. Although America still claims six of the top ten spots, Yale University has slipped from second to third place in the past year - overtaken by the University of Cambridge - and the California Institute of Technology has fallen from number five to number ten.
This slide lends credence to the predictions of several international higher education experts that the US will soon lose its international ascendancy.
Don Olcott, head of the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education, spoke in August about the rise of the "new global regionalism" threatening Anglo-American dominance.
"Are we really naive enough to think that China, India, Malaysia, South Korea, the Gulf states and others do not want to build long-term, high-quality, sustainable university systems?" he told Times Higher Education.
At an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development conference earlier this year, it was suggested that the US and the UK would be hit far harder than most countries by the need for future public spending cuts because both will need to reduce massive budget deficits. A number of countries in Asia, including Japan and Korea, will face an easier ride. Delegates spoke of a resulting major "redistribution of brains".
According to Ben Sowter, head of research at QS, which compiles the tables for Times Higher Education, the fallout caused by America's economic problems may ultimately result in its institutions sliding even lower in subsequent rankings. As 40 per cent of the overall ranking score is based on a survey of academics' opinions (see "Talking points", page x), the US' slip in 2009 may have more to do with the improvement in the reputation of Asian institutions brought about by better marketing and communication, he says.
"In the six years of conducting this study, we have seen a drastically increased emphasis on international reputation from institutions in many countries, particularly those in Asia," he notes.
Like its southern neighbour, Canada's overall position in the rankings also dropped. It registered 11 institutions in the top 200, compared with 12 in 2008. Its two best performers both rose - McGill University climbed from 20th place to 18th, while the University of Toronto shot up from 41st to 29th - but others slipped.
Australia has nine institutions in the top 200, the same number as last year, but it increased its representation in the top 100 from seven to eight.
The Australian National University, the highest-placed institution outside the US and the UK, slipped from 16th to 17th, but Melbourne, Sydney, Queensland and Monash all improved their positions.
Russia has two institutions in the top 200, with new entrant Saint-Petersburg State University in at joint number 168.
Sweden also has one new entrant; the University of Gothenburg moved up to 185th place to lift Sweden's tally to five in the top 200. Brazil and Argentina, which had one university each in the 2008 rankings, both fell out of the top 200 altogether.
Comentario desde los Estadops Unidos
U.S. Decline or a Flawed Measure?
Inside Higher Education, October 8, 2009
Most higher education leaders say that institutional rankings are highly questionable, given the many intangibles in what make a college or university “best” for a given person or course of study. But what about national trends? Can international rankings of universities provide a picture of the relative rise and fall of nation’s universities?
The Times Higher Education/QS rankings, out today, suggest that there are national patterns that can be discerned – and the picture is one of decline for American institutions. Since narratives about American decline always attract attention, these rankings are likely to cause a stir
Some of the patterns are striking, and there is abundant evidence that the rise of universities in other countries will inevitably broaden the global leadership. But some experts on rankings say that this study shouldn’t be taken too seriously because of its reliance (even more than the rankings of U.S. News & World Report) on reputational surveys. And even a top editor at the Times Higher acknowledged in an interview that some of the measures used favor institutions in Europe and Asia over those of the United States.
Here’s what this year's Times Higher rankings found:
•The United States and Britain continue to dominate the very top ranks with one university in Cambridge, Mass., leading the rankings and one in the original Cambridge in second place.
•The number of North American universities in the top 100 fell to 36 from 42 in just a year.
•The list saw increases in universities from Europe (39, up from 36) and Asia (16, up from 14 last year).
In ranking universities, Times Higher uses this formula:
•20 percent is based on a per capita analysis of citations of research conducted by faculty members at each university. This provides an indication of “the density of research excellence on a campus,” Times Higher says.
•20 percent is based on faculty-student ratio, to provide “a sense as to whether an institution has enough teaching staff to give students the attention they require.”
•5 percent is based on the percentage of international faculty members.
•5 percent is based on the percentage of international students.
•40 percent is based on a worldwide survey of academics, who are asked to name the 30 institutions they consider the best in the world.
•10 percent is based on another international survey – this one of employers of graduates.
The 50 percent of the formula based on reputation exceeds even the much-criticized percentage used by U.S. News (25 percent).
And that’s part of why rankings experts question the methodology. The Institute for Higher Education Policy has conducted extensive research both on rankings and on the evolution of a global higher ed infrastructure in which the U.S. is not as dominant as it once was. Alisa F. Cunningham, vice president of research for the institute, said that the Times Higher’s rankings are of “limited value” and that all the much discussed flaws of reputation surveys (voting based on old information, voting to favor your own institution, voting on criteria that aren’t those being used, etc.) are only accentuated in international surveys.
“You’ve got entirely different contexts in different parts of the world, and you don’t know what those contexts are,” she said.
Reputational surveys are “the least reliable way to do these comparisons,” she added.
Another reason to be wary of these rankings, Cunningham said, is their volatility (which is of course what gets them more attention). Cunningham said that the great universities of the world – whether in the United States or elsewhere – change gradually, not radically, from year to year. So any methodology that suggests that universities that are centuries old are notably better or worse from year to year is questionable, she said. “They don’t change that way,” she said.
Phil Baty, Deputy Editor of the Times Higher, said in an e-mail interview that some of the measures do favor certain regions. For example, he noted that the citations index favors institutions where most faculty members are in medicine or hard sciences, while putting at a disadvantage institutions where much of the faculty scholarship is in the humanities or social sciences (a characteristic that applies to most American universities). Likewise, he noted that European and Asian universities are more likely than others to have large percentages of foreign faculty members.
But as to the criticism about relying on surveys, Baty said that was a strength of the Times Higher rankings.
“When the rankings were conceived six years ago, a guiding principal was that academics know best when it comes to identifying the world’s best universities. So we were happy to include a heavy element of opinion in the rankings formula," Baty said. "In some ways, giving a strong weighting to the academic opinion survey helps meet some of the biggest criticisms of the university rankings in general – that you can’t reduce all the wonderful and less tangible things that a university does into a simple scientific formula. Universities are always about more than the sum of their parts."
Robert M. Berdahl, president of the Association of American Universities, said that at his association (which includes research universities in the United States and Canada), "we don’t generally place a great deal of stock in the public rankings of universities, but we don’t ignore them either. They are important to the extent that shape public perceptions of the qualitative hierarchy of institutions, but they all have flaws and biases."
Berdahl said that a "heavy reliance on reputational surveys, for example, is not terribly reliable, in part because it depends so heavily on who is surveyed."
The best way to do international comparisons, he said, is "program by program, using the most objective criteria possible."
The issue raised by the Times Higher about an erosion of U.S. dominance is an important one, Berdahl said, even if he doesn't agree with the findings about specific universities or the methodology.
"The United States has to be concerned about this. We know that other nations are investing substantial amounts in building research universities, while the U.S. has been disinvesting," he said. "If we cease to be the nation of choice for the best and brightest international students, or even the best American students, we will quickly cease to have the universities that are the choice for the best faculty and we will be caught in a downward spiral."
But Berdahl, a former chancellor at the University of California at Berkeley, said he just can't buy the numbers in the Times Higher's survey. "While I think that there has been some relative slippage as a result of a decline in funding in the U.S. and the investment elsewhere, the rankings indicated by the Times seem to me to be wildly off the mark," he said. "No one I know would rank Berkeley anywhere near as low as 39th in the world. I admit I’m biased; but this is too far from the mark to be taken terribly seriously."
— Scott Jaschik
Posted by jjbrunner at 10:40 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Octubre 07, 2009
CRUCH vuelve a tropezar con la misma piedra y desata polémica de primavera
El Consejo de Rectores (CRUCH) ha vuelto por sus fueros y provocado una tormenta en un vaso a propósito de la fijación de la fecha en que se darán a conocer los resultados de la PSU 2009 y el período en que los jóvenes podrán postular a las universidades.
A continuación una reseña de prensa. Mi opinión personal aparecerá en los próximos días en La Tercera y será transcrita aquí.
Anteriores postings sobre el Consejo de Rectores ver aquí
Reseña de prensa en orden cornológico
-- Rectores acusan abandono por parte del Estado y fijan reunión con el Mineduc por presupuesto 2010, La Tercera, 24 septiembre 2009
-- Ues. estatales no aceptan ingreso de privadas a Consejo de Rectores, La Tercera, 25 septiembre 2009
-- Resultados PSU en Navidad: rectores indignados por fecha, calificada por sicólogos como inoportuna, El Mercurio, 26 septiembre 2009
-- Mineduc se reunirá con Demre para analizar fecha de PSU: La Prueba de Selección Universitaria tendrá su proceso de desarrollo durante la Navidad, La Tercera, 27 septiembre 2009
-- Zolezzi aclara que entrega de puntaje PSU se fijó en agosto, La Nación, 28 septiembre 2009
-- Zolezzi aclara polémica por fecha de entrega de resultados PSU, La Tercera, 28 septiembre 2009
-- Rector Zolezzi defiende rol de las ues estatales en polémica por PSU, Universidad de Santiago de Chile - Universia, 29 septiembre 2009
-- Consejo de Rectores revisará fecha de inicio de postulaciones tras PSU, Emol, 30 septiembre 2009
-- Universidades privadas reclaman por resultados de PSU: El Mineduc y los rectores analizarán hoy las fechas de la PSU, La Tercera, 30 septiembre 2009
-- Fech pide regularizar "ofertón" de universidades privadas, La Tercera, 1 octubre 2009
-- Ues. estatales no aceptan ingreso de privadas a Consejo de Rectores, La Nación, 1 octubre 2009
-- Y ahora... ¿colusión de universidades?, Tomás Flores, Decano Facultad de Ciencias Económicas - Universidad Mayor, El Mercurio, columna de opinión, 2 octubre 2009
-- Ministra Jiménez pide a Consejo de Rectores adelantar postulaciones a universidades, Radio Universidad de Chile, 6 de octubre 2009
-- Resultados de la PSU estarán disponibles el 21 de diciembre, Universia, 6 octubre 2009
-- Rector de la Usach pidió a universidades privadas que ''se abstengan'' de captar alumnos en Navidad, La Segunda, 6 de Octubre de 2009
-- Rectores adelantaron entrega de puntajes PSU, La Nación, 6 octubre 2009
-- Universidades adelantan resultados de la PSU, El Mercurio, 6 octubre 2009
-- Rector Bravo (U. Frontera) molesto con Rosso (UC), El Mercurio, 6 octubre 2009
-- Competencia desleal en la educación superior, El Mercurio, opinión editorial, 6 octubre 2009
Rectores acusan abandono por parte del Estado y fijan reunión con el Mineduc por presupuesto 2010
La Tercera, 24 septiembre 2009
El titular de la Usach, Juan Manuel Zolezzi, dijo que el "financiamiento que tiene hoy día el Estado para sus universidades es extremadamente bajo".por latercera.com - 24/09/2009 - 22:08
"El Estado tiene que hacerse cargo de sus universidades, porque son las únicas instituciones estatales a las cuales el Estado tiene abandonadas". Estas fueron las palabras expresadas por el rector de la U. de Santiago, Juan Manuel Zolezzi, quien ayer presidió el Consejo de Rectores, desarrollado en Talca, al referirse al exiguo presupuesto asignado para la Educación Superior, Ciencia y Tecnología para el año 2010.
El rector agregó que aún no se han definido cifras en torno al presupuesto, pero que de acuerdo al informe entregado por la Comisión Económica del Consejo de Rectores "los antecedentes no son muy promisorios, dicen que viene muy muy estrecho, incluso recortado en algunas partidas". Agregó que "no tenemos detalles, pero se dice que los aranceles de referencia podrían disminuir, cosa que preocupa a las instituciones". Por ello, agregó Zolezzi, el Consejo solicitó de inmediato una entrevista con la ministra de Educación, Mónica Jiménez, que se concretará el próximo miércoles.
En cuanto al financiamiento de las universidades estatales, Zolezzi recalcó que "los niveles de financiamiento que tiene hoy día el Estado para con sus universidades es extremadamente bajo, y eso no ocurre en ningún otro país del mundo, pues acá tenemos ues que reciben un aporte de menos del 5%, lo que ha incidido en un debilitamiento de las ues estatales porque no podemos hacer lo que tenemos que hacer, como otorgar becas, mayor difusión cultural, más doctorados".
Zolezzi planteó dos puntos al respecto: "el Estado tiene a sus universidades abandonadas, porque no les dice nada, ni siquiera nos invitan a conversar sobre lo que quiere de sus Universidades. Y tiene que haber un financiamiento adecuado para las universidades, porque hay temas sobre los cuales el mercado no va a resolver".
Para avanzar en ambos temas se creó una mesa de trabajo con la Dirección de Educación Superior, convocada por la ministra Jiménez, que ya se ha reunido cinco veces y se reunirá, este viernes por sexta vez.
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Ues. estatales no aceptan ingreso de privadas a Consejo de Rectores
La Tercera, 25 septiembre 2009
Mientras no se dirima tema del lucro, el Consejo de Rectores de las universidades tradicionales se niega a aceptar que ues. privadas integren el conglomerado.
El rector de la Universidad de Santiago de Chile -y presidente del Consorcio de Universidades Estatales-, Juan Manuel Zolezzi, dijo que "nuestra postura no es favorable a que ingresen universidades privadas al Consejo de Rectores. Eso, mientras que no se dirima el tema del lucro, sin perjuicio de que consideramos que existen universidades privadas de muy buena calidad y algunas muy comprometidas con aspectos sociales, que son los que nos interesan a nosotros".
Sobre la ofensiva de las universidades privadas para captar estudiantes de colegios municipales, Zolezzi puntualizó que no se trató el tema en especifico en la sesión del Consejo de Rectores.
Informó que lo que si se trató es "el tema de la gestión de las becas de excelencia académica por parte del Demre, que, de alguna medida, incide en este otro tema, del cual la Usach había presentado reclamos por escrito a la forma en que se estaba operando en la asignación y forma de publicación de estas becas, que es un aspecto de gestión del DEMRE. Hubo un acuerdo unánime de corregir rápidamente, porque es un problema de cómo se gestionan estas becas y la selección para cada una de las carreras".
En la sesión de ayer del Consejo de Rectores, realizada en Talca, el académico de la Usach, Francisco Javier Gil, dio a conocer la gestión de los alumnos que tienen becas de excelencia académica y que postulan a las universidades del Consejo de Rectores.
En tanto el vicerrector académico de la Usach, Rodrigo Vidal, presentó un proyecto de modelo académico para el Consejo de Rectores, basado en el sistema de créditos transferibles, en el marco de los acuerdos establecidos por Chile con la Comunidad Europea y Estados Unidos.
"Es un modelo compatible con las miradas globales y que permite mejorar probablemente lo que estamos haciendo hoy en temas académicos, y formación de estudiantes y postgrados" señaló Zolezzi, a quien le correspondió presidir esta reunión de los rectores de las universidades tradicionales.
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Resultados PSU en Navidad: rectores indignados por fecha, calificada por sicólogos como inoportuna
M. G. DALGALARRANDO Y P. REED, El Mercurio, 26 septiembre 2009
Muy molestos están los rectores de un gran número de universidades privadas y algunas de las tradicionales con la decisión del Consejo de Rectores de entregar los resultados de la PSU el 23 de diciembre a las 00 horas y, en consecuencia, realizar la postulación a los planteles el 23, 24 y 25 de diciembre.
Paralelamente, los planteles privados inician su proceso de matrícula el mismo día que se dan a conocer los resultados (y que puede extenderse hasta marzo), por lo tanto el personal de las instituciones y los futuros alumnos deberán asistir durante la Navidad a las universidades.
El rector de la UC, Pedro Pablo Rosso, manifestó su desacuerdo con la medida y la calificó de "desafortunada", explicando que las universidades regionales abogaron por esas fechas, ya que así acortan el tiempo que hay entre el día en que se conocen los puntajes y el día en que se publican los resultados de la selección de los planteles del Consejo de Rectores, que será el 4 de enero.
"El calendario está muy influido por algunas de las universidades estatales regionales, que aducen que algunas de las universidades privadas con sedes en esas ciudades utilizan malas prácticas para inducir a estudiantes con buenos puntajes a ingresar a esos planteles, y lo que se trata de evitar es la pérdida de alumnos que potencialmente pudieran optar por ellos", explicó Rosso. El timonel de la UC agregó que, en un principio, el Demre de la Universidad de Chile -que administra la prueba- propuso un calendario en el cual los puntajes se daban a conocer el 20 de diciembre y las postulaciones alcanzaban a realizarse antes de la Navidad, pero éste fue objetado.
"Es un día feriado y hay muchos jóvenes que no tienen computador en su casa, con lo cual hay familias que se van a ver afectadas", dijo Rosso.
"Es un escándalo", exclamó el rector de la U. Alberto Hurtado, Fernando Montes, quien calificó el actuar del Consejo de Rectores como "jugar con triquiñuelas". Y asestó: "No les creo que sean universidades estatales, porque ellas debieran ser garantes del bien común, y aquí las veo compitiendo suciamente".
Coincidió con Montes el rector de la U. del Desarrollo, Ernesto Silva, quien señaló que "se trata de días de fiesta, y no de hacer colas para matricularse, lo cual se agrava cuando el alumno se traslada desde regiones".
Pero el rector de la U. de La Frontera y partidario de la iniciativa, Sergio Bravo, defendió las fechas explicando que las universidades privadas tendrán todos los días a partir del 23 de diciembre para matricular a sus nuevos alumnos, mientras que ellos tienen que esperar los resultados de la selección del 4 de enero. "Hay una fuga enorme de estudiantes de regiones a Santiago. Nosotros empezamos a matricular 15 días después de la entrega de resultados: a nosotros eso no nos sirve", sentenció.
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Mineduc se reunirá con Demre para analizar fecha de PSU: La Prueba de Selección Universitaria tendrá su proceso de desarrollo durante la Navidad
La Tercera, 27 septiembre 2009
El subsecretario de Educación, Cristián Martínez, anunció que se reunirá durante la próxima semana con el Departamento de Evaluación, Medición y Registro Educacional (Demre) de la Universidad de Chile, para analizar los efectos que tendrá el desarrollo del proceso de postulación a la universidad durante la Navidad.
En la última reunión del Consejo de Rectores se acordó que los resultados de la PSU se entregarán a las 00.00 del día 23 de diciembre y los estudiantes deberán postular a las casas de estudios hasta el 25 de ese mes.
Martínez dijo que el ministerio está en constantes reuniones con las universidades y el Demre.
"Vamos a esperar el lunes para ver en qué está el proceso. Hay que evaluar qué problemas genera, y si hay inconvenientes más estructurales, tendremos que conversarlo con ellos", dijo.
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Zolezzi aclara que entrega de puntaje PSU se fijó en agosto
La Nación, 28 septiembre 2009
Rector de la USACh manifestó que ningún integrante del Consejo de Rectores expresó en esa reunión, efectuada en Santiago, su desacuerdo de que los resultados del test se liberaran a las 00:00 del 24 de diciembre.
El presidente del Consorcio de Universidades Estatales y rector de la USACh, Juan Manuel Zolezzi, precisó ayer que en la sesión de agosto pasado del Consejo de Rectores, efectuada en Santiago, se acordó entregar los resultados de la PSU a partir de las 00:00 horas del 24 de diciembre. Añadió que en esa ocasión ningún rector expresó su desacuerdo. “Fue unánime”, agregó.
En una declaración emitida ayer, Zolezzi se manifestó visiblemente molesto por la polémica que ha generado la fecha de entrega de los puntajes. Añadió que las reacciones en contra de esta medida “han sido duras e injustas”, porque se ha interpelado a las universidades estatales en términos poco apropiados.
Añadió el rector de la USACh que “en la sesión anterior del Consejo de Rectores de agosto, se discutió el calendario de admisión a las universidades del consejo y se aprobó unánimemente una fecha, que a partir de a las 00:00 horas del 24 de diciembre se entregarían los puntajes para que los estudiantes postularan el 24, 25 y el 26 de diciembre. Eso se aprobó en forma unánime en el consejo, y así consta en el acta. El rector Rosso (de la UC) salió de la reunión justo en el momento en que se iba a abordar el tema y no regresó por razones que se desconocen”, se indicó. Con posterioridad, el rector de la UC hizo llegar una carta al consejo en que solicitó cambiar la fecha.
En la sesión que el Consejo de Rectores efectuó en Talca el jueves pasado, la UC fue representada por su vicerrector académico, Juan José Ugarte, quien ya había solicitado días antes a Zolezzi considerar la solicitud expresada por Rosso. Se indicó que en la sesión se plantearon dos alternativas: adelantar en 24 ó 48 horas esta propuesta sostenida por el vicerrector académico de la UC. En votación dividida el consejo decidió adelantar en 24 horas la entrega de los resultados, por lo que se aprobó que a partir de las 00:00 horas del 23 de diciembre se conocerán los puntajes y en forma inmediata los jóvenes podrán efectar sus postulaciones.
Falta de interés
Sobre las declaraciones que hiciera ayer, en la sección cartas al director de El Mercurio, el prorrector de la UC, Carlos Williamson, quien increpa al Consejo de Rectores, calificándolo incluso de “irresponsable” por fijar esa fecha, Zolezzi sostuvo que “si alguien se retira de la reunión de agosto, antes de tratar el tema que estaba en tabla relativo al calendario del proceso de admisión, y no es capaz de plantear y discutir el tema, sobre todo si es tan relevante para él, como ha quedado en evidencia a través de la prensa, demuestra que no está interesado o que le da lo mismo”. LN
Docentes comparten malestar
El presidente del Colegio de Profesores, Jaime Gajardo, en tanto, dijo ayer que comparte el malestar que ha provocado la fecha fijada por el Consejo de Rectores para entregar los resultados de la PSU. “Compartimos que la fecha no es la más apropiada pues estamos en pleno período de Navidad. Pero no nos llevará a tanta sorpresa desde el punto de vista de los resultados”, sostuvo.
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Zolezzi aclara polémica por fecha de entrega de resultados PSU
La Tercera, 28 septiembre 2009
En el consejo del pasado jueves, los rectores decidieron adelantar la fecha de entrega de los resultados PSU, quedando para las 00:00 horas del 23 de diciembre.
Tras la polémica generada por la fecha en que se darán a conocer los resultados de la PSU, fijada por el Consejo de Rectores en la última sesión sesión celebrada en Talca, el presidente del Consorcio de Universidades Estatales y rector de la Usach, Juan Manuel Zolezzi, manifestó que las reacciones en contra de esta medida han sido duras e injustas y se ha interpelado a las universidades estatales en términos poco apropiados.
Zolezzi se refirió al tema, a raíz de las declaraciones del rector de la U. Alberto Hurtado, Fernando Montes, quien habló de una competencia sucia de parte de los plantes públicos. Montes, calificó el actuar del Consejo de Rectores como "jugar con triquiñuelas", y señaló que "no les creo que sean universidades estatales, porque ellas debieran ser garantes del bien común, y aquí las veo compitiendo suciamente".
El rector Zolezzi rechazó los dichos de Montes, pero lo aseguró que lo "disculpa", ya que cree el rector Montes no tenía toda la información a la mano cuando hizo sus comentarios.
CAMBIO DE FECHA
En la sesión del jueves del Consejo de Rectores, que presidió Zolezzi, la UC fue representada por su Vicerrector Académico, Juan José Ugarte, quien días antes ya había solicitado a Zolezzi, considerar la solicitud expresada por Rosso a través de una carta que hizo llegar al Consejo de Rectores, en la que solicitó cambiar la fecha de entrega de los puntajes PSU.
A esta petición, Zolezzi respondió manifestando que, aunque no era una cuestión simple -ya que había un acuerdo unánime en la materia y éste no podía ser modificado ya que no estaba en tabla-, se consideraría la solicitud. En este consejo, también los Registradores Académicos de las universidades hicieron ver sus reparos a la fecha mediante una carta al Cruch, en la que plantean la inconveniencia de la fecha.
Finalmente en la sesión se plantearon dos alternativas; adelantarla en 24 o 48 horas, esta última propuesta sostenida por el Vicerrector académico de la PUC.
Finalmente, en votación dividida, el Consejo de Rectores decidió adelantar en 24 horas la entrega de los resultados, por lo que se aprobó que a partir de las 00:00 horas del 23 de diciembre se conocerán los puntajes y en forma inmediata los jóvenes podrán efectuar sus postulaciones.
POLÉMICA CON RECTOR ROSSO
El rector Usach aclaró que que las universidades estatales no se han coludido en este tema. "En la sesión anterior del Consejo de Rectores, de agosto, se discutió el calendario de admisión a las universidades del Consejo de rectores y se aprobó unánimemente que este iniciaría a partir 00:00 horas del día 24 de diciembre, cuando se entregaran los puntajes para que los estudiantes postularan el día 24, el 25 y el 26 de diciembre.
"Eso se aprobó en forma unánime en el Consejo de Rectores, y así consta en el acta. El rector Rosso salió de la reunión justo en el momento en que se iba a abordar el tema y no regresó por razones que no se conocieron. No estuvo en la discusión del punto, según se me informo" señaló Zolezzi, haciendo alusion a la carta de Rosso.
Sobre las declaraciones a un medio de comunicación, en que el prorrector de la UC, Carlos Williamson, increpa al Consejo de Rectores, calificándolo incluso de "irresponsable", Zolezzi refirió: "si alguien se retira de la reunión de agosto, antes de tratar el tema que estaba en tabla -relativo al calendario del proceso de admisión-, (Rector Rosso) y no es capaz de plantear y discutir el tema, sobretodo si es tan relevante para él -como ha quedado en evidencia a través de la prensa-, demuestra que no está interesado o que le da lo mismo".
Y agregó que, "después no asiste a la reunión del Consejo en Talca, habiendo enviado la carta solicitando el cambio de fecha y envía a su Vicerrector Académico, que por lo demás, lo hizo muy bien, queda claro que las irresponsabilidades no provienen de los rectores que asisten a las reuniones, plantean sus puntos de vista, hacen propuestas y acatan los resultados de las votaciones. Las palabras de Williamson no son correctas ni adecuadas", concluyó Zolezzi.
El rector Zolezzi sostuvo y aseguró que las Universidades del Estado de Chile, "sí somos y seremos garantes del bien común de las familias chilenas, más aun cuando se trata de un paso tan trascendental y clave para nuestra juventud".
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Rector Zolezzi defiende rol de las ues estatales en polémica por PSU
Universidad de Santiago de Chile - Universia, 29 septiembre 2009
"No estoy disponible para un nuevo cambio de fecha", dijo categórico el rector de la Universidad de Santiago de Chile.
Serán 280 mil los estudiantes que estarán expectantes a las 00:00 horas del 23 de diciembre. Fecha definitiva en que el DEMRE dará a conocer los puntajes de la Prueba de Selección Universitaria en su versión 2009, y que permitirá las postulaciones a las Universidades del Consejo de Rectores los días 23,24 y 25 de diciembre.
Una fuerte ofensiva comunicacional ha llevado adelante el rector de la Universidad de Santiago de Chile y presidente del Consorcio de Universidades Estatales, Juan Manuel Zolezzi, respecto de la polémica suscitada por la fecha definitiva que estableció el Consejo de Rectores para difundir los resultados de la próxima Prueba de Selección Universitaria.
El rector de la Usach reivindicó el rol de los planteles estatales. “Hemos tenido que estar en la palestra porque, a través de la prensa se ha tergiversado el tema y se han planteado juicios de muy bajo nivel, como es tratar de irresponsables a los miembros del Consejo de Rectores, que es una falta de respeto, o acusar que las universidades estatales están usando ‘triquiñuelas’ en contra del sistema”, señaló.
Respecto a los reparos a la fecha de entrega de resultados de la PSU, plantados por la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile y la Universidad Alberto Hurtado, el rector Zolezzi aseguró que las Universidades del Estado de Chile, “sí somos y seremos garantes del bien común de las familias chilenas, más aun cuando se trata de un paso tan trascendental y clave para nuestra juventud. No estoy disponible para un nuevo cambio de fecha, ya se realizó un adelanto en 24 horas solicitado por la UC, y si hay una situación especial donde se vuelva a solicitar un cambio, yo no concurriré con mi voto”.
En la sesión del Consejo de Rectores (CRUCH) del mes agosto, se discutió el calendario de admisión a las universidades del Consejo de rectores y se aprobó unánimemente como fecha, las 00:00 horas del día 24 de diciembre. Finalmente, en la última sesión del CRUCH, realizada en la Universidad Católica del Maule, en votación dividida el Consejo de Rectores decidió adelantar en 24 horas la entrega de dichos resultados, por lo que se aprobó, en forma definitiva, que a partir de las 00:00 horas del 23 de diciembre se conocerán los puntajes y en forma inmediata los jóvenes podrán efectuar sus postulaciones.
Zolezzi calificó esta fecha como adecuada, ya que “si un estudiante tiene buenos resultados, qué mejor que compartir la buena noticia con su familia, y en el caso contrario de tener malos resultados, poder contar con el apoyo de su núcleo familiar”.
Para el rector de la Universidad de Santiago de Chile el tema va más allá de las minucias de esta polémica y tienen que ver con una situación desigual en el proceso. “Las universidades privadas que no tienen aporte del Estado pueden matricular en cualquier fecha. Ellos podrían usar cualquier tipo de pruebas o modo de selección, así que si ellos quieren usar los resultados de la PSU tienen que ponerse en la fila en el momento que corresponda”.
Además, Zolezzi fue tajante en descartar que esto se haya producido por una denominada “guerra por captar alumnos”, en una competencia desatada, exacerbada por las universidades privadas, con ofertones y otras tácticas de marketing. “Nosotros no estamos en eso, y como universidades del Estado, nos preocuparía que existiera una situación así, en especial cuando existen planteles donde no existe claridad de su calidad. Esto sería lamentable, porque el único perjudicado sería el país”, aclaró.
Edición: Universia / RR
Fuente: Universidad de Santiago de Chile
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Consejo de Rectores revisará fecha de inicio de postulaciones tras PSU
Emol, 30 septiembre 2009
La ministra Mónica Jiménez solicitó revisar el acuerdo porque los alumnos podrían tener "problemas de conectividad" aquellos días de Navidad.El Mercurio Online Miércoles 30 de Septiembre de 2009 14:06 Zolezzi, en un principio, no está de acuerdo en cabiar la fecha.
SANTIAGO.- El Comité Ejecutivo del Consejo de Rectores de Chile accedió a revisar la decisión que programó para el 23 de diciembre el inicio del proceso de postulaciones a las universidades, y la próxima semana dará una respuesta definitiva al respecto.
Tras la reunión, el rector de la Universidad de Santiago de Chile y presidente del Consorcio de Universidades Estatales, Juan Manuel Zolezzi, explicó que la ministra de Educación, Mónica Jiménez, solicitó revisar el acuerdo debido a que podría haber alumnos que tuvieran "problemas de conectividad", sobre todo los días 24 y 25 de diciembre.
En base a eso, dijo Zolezzi, "tomaremos una decisión, que puede ser ratificar la fecha actual o puede ser ver cómo solucionamos el tema de la conectividad, o bien puede ser adelantar el período. No hay definido ningún mecanismo de resolución respecto de eso".
La reunión extraordinaria de los rectores del CRUCH se llevará a cabo el próximo lunes y Zolezzi reiteró que en principio él no está de acuerdo en cambiar la fecha, aunque "bastaría que hubiera un alumno que tiene problemas de conectividad y yo cambiaría mi posición".
El rector de la Usach pidió que no se confunda esto con un tema religioso, porque "es inaceptable que haya comercio funcionando hasta las 12 de la noche del día 24 y esa gente se tenga que ir a su casa después de las 2 ó 3 de la mañana; si cuidamos los valores y los derechos, cuidémoslos por igual para todos", sentenció.
La reunión entre el CRUCH y la ministra Jiménez fue convocada para analizar el presupuesto 2010 para la educación superior, tema que preocupa a los rectores debido a que podría haber una merma en los recursos destinados para ayudas estudiantiles y proyectos de investigación. Sin embargo, todo quedó postergado para este viernes, una vez que el gobierno oficialice dicho presupuesto y vuelvan a reunirse en el Mineduc.
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Universidades privadas reclaman por resultados de PSU: El Mineduc y los rectores analizarán hoy las fechas de la PSU
La Tercera, 30 septiembre 2009
Los resultados de la PSU se informarán el 23 de diciembre y las matrículas serán los días siguientes, lo que, según las universidades privadas, las perjudica, pues tardarán más en matricular a alumnos de excelencia.
Aunque esperan que la fecha se modifique y los resultados se publiquen 3 días antes, también piden saber, al mismo tiempo que las entidades del Consejo de Rectores, los resultados del test de evaluación.
Según los directivos, reciben los datos del Demre 6 horas después que los alumnos, previo pago de unos $ 3 millones.
Para el rector de la U. Finis Terrae, Roberto Guerrero, "las Ues. del Cruch se ven beneficiadas al tener la información primero. Les permite contactar antes a los mejores puntajes y los 'amarran'. Así, las privadas siempre van atrás, lo que constituye una discriminación"
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Fech pide regularizar "ofertón" de universidades privadas
La Tercera, 1 de octubre 2009
En relación a la polémica sucitada por la fecha de entrega de los resultados de la PSU, el presidente de la Fech pidió que se anlice el problema de fondo.
por Orbe - 01/10/2009 - 09:45
El presidente de la Fech, Federico Huneuus, aseguró que "no es deseable" que se deje para el 23 de diciembre el inicio del proceso de postulaciones a las universidades, sin embargo consideró que el problema de fondo es regularizar los "ofertones" de las universidades durante esas fechas.
En relación a ello, el dirigente estudiantil aseveró que "no es deseable que estas fechas de descanso sean utilizadas para postulaciones, pero este no es un tema de vida o muerte, el problema real es que se esté tratando de evitar que las universidades privadas, tengan menos tiempo de reclutar a los mejores alumnos".
Cabe recordar que el Comité Ejecutivo del Consejo de Rectores de Chile accedió a revisar la decisión de cambiar las fechas de postulación, en vista de los "problemas de conectividad" que pudieran suscitarse, según explicó la ministra de Educación, Mónica Jiménez. Por ello la próxima semana darán una respuesta definitiva al respecto.
Para Huneuus, "lo mejor que podemos hacer, como sociedad, no está en adelantar las fechas de postulación y esconder el problema de fondo", manifestó.
A juicio del líder de la FECH, parte de la solución "es poner una política que sea capaz de impedir que las universidades privadas con sus campañas publicitarias, engañen a las familias, ya que éstas no se basan en entregar una educación de calidad, prestigio y trayectoria, sino más bien, en entregar ofertas comerciales. En este sentido, esa es una de las tareas del Consejo de Rectores".
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Consejo de Rectores fija sesión extraordinaria por PSU
Por Beatriz Michell/La Nación, 1 octubre 2009
Mónica Jiménez solicitó adelantar la entrega de resultados en un par de días por lo que el CRUCh se reunirá el lunes a zanjar el tema y a fijar una posición ante el Presupuesto 2010.
Más de una hora y media estuvieron reunidos ayer los rectores con la ministra de Educación, Mónica Jiménez.
“No soy comentarista del rector Rosso”. Con estas palabras, y visiblemente molesto, el vicepresidente del Consejo de Rectores (CRUCh) y titular de la Universidad de Chile, Víctor Pérez, respondió a una periodista que le preguntó ayer por las declaraciones del rector de la Universidad Católica.
Pedro Pablo Rosso aseguró que la fecha de la entrega de resultados de la PSU se habría fijado el 23 de diciembre, a la cero hora, para evitar que las universidades privadas capten a los estudiantes con mejores puntajes, en desmedro de las instituciones estatales.
La decisión implica que 281 mil estudiantes van a conocer los resultados de la prueba el 23 de diciembre, y podrán postular a las universidades del consejo desde ese día hasta el 25, o sea, la Navidad.
El 3 de enero estarán los resultados de las postulaciones y al día siguiente comenzarán las matrículas.
La polémica por la fecha, iniciada por la Universidad Católica, provocó que la ministra de Educación, Mónica Jiménez, solicitara ayer a los rectores que reconsideren adelantar este proceso un par de días.
Durante una hora y media permaneció reunida la titular de la cartera con ocho representantes del consejo.
“La ministra manifestó su preocupación respecto del porcentaje de alumnos que se inscribiría el día 25. En ese sentido, debemos decir que, según la práctica que tenemos hacia atrás, durante el primer día se inscribe el 70% de los alumnos. El segundo día lo hace un 25% y el tercer día no más de un 5%. Ese 5% es el que le preocupa a la ministra, ya que muchas veces sucede que en esas fechas la comunicaciones por los saludos de Pascua se copan”, explicó Pérez a la salida de la reunión.
El Consejo de Rectores citó a una reunión extraordinaria para el día lunes, donde se volverá a discutir el tema para zanjarlo de manera definitiva.
Juan Manuel Zolezzi, rector de la USACh, y presidente del Consorcio de Universidades Estatales, dijo que no está disponible para cambiar la fecha, aunque dejó abierta la posibilidad. “Si hay un alumno que no tenga conectividad (en internet), eso a mí me haría cambiar de opinión”, sostuvo.
Los planteles privados también han criticado la fecha que escogieron los rectores, ya que ellas históricamente han hecho coincidir el proceso de matrículas con las postulaciones del CRUCh.
“Nos extraña que se cuestione la labor del consejo por universidades que empiezan a matricular el primer día que se tiene conocimiento de los puntajes, independientemente de qué puntaje tenga. Tenemos un sistema de postulación que es impersonal, por mérito y no por la capacidad de pago del estudiante”, criticó Pérez.
FONDOS PARA EDUACIÓN
La reunión de ayer había sido solicitada por los rectores para conversar sobre el presupuesto de 2010, que los tiene bastante inquietos después de que la ministra, en una cena informal, comentó que los fondos para educación superior se verían disminuidos.
Víctor Pérez manifestó la preocupación del CRUCh por los recursos para ayudas estudiantiles, para el Mecesup y con respecto a los aranceles de referencia.
En la cita, Jiménez los escuchó y les dijo que se reunieran a conversar el tema después de que el gobierno entregue el presupuesto.
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Ministra Jiménez pide a Consejo de Rectores adelantar postulaciones a universidades
Francisco Mardones, Radio Universidad de Chile, 1 de octubre 2009
El Consejo de Rectores se abrió a la posibilidad de adelantar un día las postulaciones a las universidades, fijadas actualmente para los días 23, 24 y 25 de diciembre, en una intensa reunión sostuvieron los representantes del Consejo de Rectores con la ministra de Educación, Mónica Jiménez.
Los rectores de los planteles tradicionales, inicialmente, iban a plantear ciertas demandas de cara a la elaboración del presupuesto 2010, pero terminaron abordando la polémica Prueba de Selección Universitaria (PSU).
La ministra Jiménez aprovechó la visita para solicitar que el organismo revise las fechas de postulación a las universidades, puesto que muchos alumnos podrían tener dificultades para el uso de Internet durante el día 25, producto de los saludos navideños.
El rector de la Universidad de Chile, Víctor Pérez Vera, argumentó que el próximo lunes la situación se analizará en una reunión extraordinaria del Consejo de Rectores de las Universidades Chilenas (Cruch), pero aseguró que esos resguardos ya estaban tomados al momento de votarse unánimemente las fechas en agosto pasado.
“La práctica que tenemos hacia atrás, indica que el primer día postula un 70 por ciento de los alumnos, el segundo día alrededor de un 25 por ciento y el tercer día no más allá de un 5 o 6 por ciento y es ése porcentaje el que le preocupa a la ministra que no vaya a tener dificultades. Tenemos que asegurarnos que aunque sea un pequeño grupo, puede ser de los sectores más vulnerables”, aclaró.
Sin embargo, Pérez no se quedó ahí y aprovechó de responder duramente los planteamientos concernientes a que, con la programación de postulaciones, se desvirtúa el sentido religioso de las celebraciones de Navidad.
“Quisiera recordarle a la ciudadanía que el día 24, hasta las 24 horas de la noche los locales comerciales están abiertos, afectando también a los funcionarios y a los empleados que trabajan ahí. Si queremos preocuparnos porque el día 24 se un día de tranquilidad, un día de la familia, preocupémonos por todas aquellas personas que están trabajando hasta las 24 horas el día 24, que no aparecen en esto”, declaró.
Luego de que se fijara la controversial fecha para que los estudiantes hagan sus postulaciones a las universidades tradicionales, desde el mundo de la educación privada surgieron una serie de voces que aseguraban que el Consejo de Rectores había implementado una estrategia para impedir que esas casas de estudio captaran alumnos con buenos puntajes.
Pérez se manifestó extrañado por el cuestionamiento al trabajo del Cruch, por parte “de universidades que se ponen a matricular el primer día en que se conocen los puntajes, independiente de qué puntaje tengan”. Dijo que el del Consejo, se trata de “un sistema de postulación impersonal, por mérito y no por la capacidad de pago”.
Respecto de esta polémica, el rector de la Universidad de Santiago, Juan Manuel Zolezzi, indicó que se debe respetar un proceso que, asegura, es transparente y que ninguna otra institución que no participa de la decisión debe descalificar el trabajo del Cruch.
“No andamos haciendo regalos, no regalamos autos, no hacemos ninguna cosa, hay universidades que están preinscribiendo hace mucho tiempo. Tenemos un proceso que no obliga a nadie más que las 25 universidades del Consejo de Rectores, ninguna otra universidad privada está obligada a usar esos resultados, y si los quieren usar y no quieren usar el día 24, 25 y 26, pueden empezar a matricular el día 28, que es lunes. Nosotros recién vamos a empezar a matricular el día 4 de enero”, señaló.
Mientras, en la Cámara de Diputados se aprobó por 62 votos a favor un proyecto de acuerdo que pide al ministerio de Educación realizar gestiones para que el bullado proceso se retrase.
La idea es que la PSU se rinda entre 31 de noviembre y el 1 de diciembre. El texto agrega que la actual fecha de postulación permite que los planteles privados capten a los mejores puntajes, puesto que comienzan su proceso de admisión inmediatamente después de conocidos los resultados.
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Y ahora... ¿colusión de universidades?
Tomás Flores, Decano Facultad de Ciencias Económicas Universidad Mayor
El Mercurio, columna de opinión, 2 octubre 2009
En los últimos días, se ha producido un debate sobre la fecha de entrega de los resultados de la PSU 2009, debido a que en una primera decisión del Consejo de Rectores de las Universidades Chilenas (Cruch) se acordó que a las 00:00 horas del 24 de diciembre estarían disponibles los puntajes de los jóvenes, de manera tal que pudieran postular durante los días 24, 25 y 26. Es curiosa la elección de dicha fecha, dado que el Departamento de Evaluación, Medición y Registro Educacional (Demre) señaló que el 20 de diciembre ya tendrá el proceso terminado. Esto motivó la protesta de algunos rectores, decidiéndose en una segunda reunión del Cruch adelantar en un día la fecha de entrega, es decir, a las 00:00 horas del día 23.
Entre los motivos aludidos para justificar la fecha original estaría la molestia que les produce a algunas universidades del Cruch que existan instituciones privadas, excluidas del Cruch, que inducen a estudiantes de buenos puntajes a ingresar a sus planteles, por lo cual la fijación de una fecha como el 24 de diciembre les permitiría evitar la pérdida de dichos alumnos.
El organismo técnico, Demre, tendrá los resultados el día 20, por lo cual es difícil de entender que no sean entregados inmediatamente, lo que permitiría iniciar el proceso de matrícula a partir del lunes 21, tal como lo han señalado varios rectores. Dado que en la elección de la fecha no participan todas las universidades chilenas, hay que preguntarse si el organismo que la establece tomó su decisión en función del bienestar de la sociedad o del suyo en particular.
Si la decisión se fundamenta en el deseo de tener acceso preferencial a determinados estudiantes, en desmedro de las demás instituciones, estaríamos ante un comportamiento que la legislación antimonopolio denomina "abuso de posición dominante", lo que forma parte de una amplia gama de prácticas comerciales en las que puede incurrir una empresa o un conjunto de empresas a fin de limitar la competencia entre ellas y, por lo tanto, conservar o reforzar su posición relativa en el mercado y elevar las utilidades sin tener obligatoriamente que bajar los precios ni mejorar la calidad de los bienes y servicios que ofrecen.
El Tribunal de Defensa de la Libre Competencia ha tenido que analizar muchas controversias similares y debería tomar un rol más activo en el funcionamiento del mercado de la educación superior, solicitando los acuerdos adoptados por el Cruch y evaluando las justificaciones que deberían presentar los que estuvieron a favor de la entrega de resultados el día 24 de diciembre a las 00:00 horas.
La educación superior en Chile ha tenido un crecimiento sustancial en los últimos años, donde operan instituciones con diferentes orígenes y motivaciones; donde un grupo de ellas tienen acceso a financiamiento fiscal directo no concursable, sin el cual varias casas de estudio entrarían en cesación de pagos. Esto genera una anomalía en términos de libre competencia que aún no se ha resuelto, por lo cual la agregación de decisiones como la comentada en este artículo parece llevar a esta industria a una situación donde hay menos competencia, y no más.
Los economistas creemos que la libre competencia es buena para todos los mercados y, por tanto, hay un papel para la autoridad en procurar que en las industrias exista un alto grado de desafiabilidad, ya que ello redundará en mayor bienestar para los consumidores e incrementará de manera sostenida la calidad de los servicios prestados.
En el reciente episodio de la industria de las farmacias, el mayor rechazo de la ciudadanía se generó al quedar en evidencia que los principales afectados por estas prácticas habrían sido los propios consumidores. En la actual polémica, aquellos que deciden la fecha de entrega de los resultados, lejos de pensar en el bienestar de los estudiantes, estarían anteponiendo sus intereses particulares en desmedro de la competencia.
Los estudiantes, de altos y bajos puntajes, tienen derecho a elegir libremente la institución en la cual realizarán una de las inversiones más importantes de su vida. El rol de la autoridad es procurar que dicho derecho no sea vulnerado y puedan elegir en un ambiente donde la competencia y transparencia sean cada vez mayores.
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Resultados de la PSU estarán disponibles el 21 de diciembre
Universia, 6 octubre 2009
En tanto, las postulaciones para las universidades del Consejo de Rectores se extenderán hasta el mediodía del 24 de diciembre. Visita Preuniversia y el Buscador de carreras.
El Consejo de Rectores de la Universidades Chilenas, CRUCH, anunció que la entrega de resultados de puntajes de la Prueba de Selección Universitaria (PSU) se efectuará el lunes 21 de diciembre, a las 12 horas (mediodía) a través de los portales habilitados.
Las postulaciones, en tanto, se desarrollarán entre las 12 horas del 21 de diciembre y las 12 horas del jueves 24 del mismo mes, a través del sitio web del DEMRE.
Cabe recordar que todos los inscritos deben imprimir su Tarjeta de Identificación, que será el documento obligatorio, junto a la cédula de identidad, para la rendición de la prueba los días 30 de noviembre y 1 de diciembre.
Para obtener copia de esta tarjeta, los estudiantes deben volver a ingresar al Portal del Postulante mediante su Usuario (cédula de identidad) y la nueva Clave. Ésta será el número de folio del cupón de pago, en caso que se haya pagado el arancel, o el folio de la Constancia de Beca si obtuvo la Beca Junaeb para la PSU.
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Rector de la Usach pidió a universidades privadas que ''se abstengan'' de captar alumnos en Navidad
La Segunda, Martes 6 de Octubre de 2009
La decisión de adelantar los resultados de la PSU fue destacada por el rector de la Universidad de Santiago, Juan Manuel Zolezzi, quien recalcó que una de las razones que primó para esta iniciativa fue evitar que los estudiantes deban postular el 24 y 25 de diciembre.
"Hubo mucha inquietud de parte de todos, algunos grupos más interesados que otros, y finalmente eso hizo pensar. Pero creo que fundamentalmente fueron aspectos técnicos, y el hecho de que algún alumno pudiera no tener conectividad, ya que como somos chilenos muchas veces esperamos hasta el final para todo", explicó a ADN Radio Chile.
La Iglesia católica, algunas universidades privadas y el propio Ministerio de Educación pidieron que se adelantara el proceso que inicialmente iba a empezar a las 00:00 horas del 23, para extenderse hasta el 25, para evitar que hubiese actividad el día de Navidad.
Y aunque Zolezzi admitió que esa situación "tiene mucho sentido" en lo personal, recalcó que aspectos como la menor disponibilidad de internet para estudiantes de menos recursos primaron en la decisión.
Pero junto con destacar que se haya adelantado la fecha de entrega de los resultados y de postulación online, que se extenderá hasta las 00:00 horas del 24 de diciembre, el rector de la Usach pidió a las universidades privadas que respeten este plazo.
"Sí estuvieron presentes los mecanismos que usan las universidades privadas para matricular, y así lo hace ver la declaración. Nosotros esperamos que el día 24 y 25 ellos también se abstengan de hacer cualquier tipo de proceso de este estilo", manifestó, para señalar que la declaración del Consejo de Rectores hay reparos a la forma en que actúan los centros privados.
"Apunta a que a veces la integridad respecto de la información que se entrega no es muy confiable, ni se es tan íntegro al momento de comprobar esas cosas. Si usted piensa que el segundo que invierte más como industria en publicidad es la educación superior privada, eso ya muestra un signo preocupante", indicó.
"Lo otro es que los procesos no son tan claros, nunca se sabe cuántas son las vacantes que tiene una determinada carrera en una universidad privada", sentenció
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Rectores adelantaron entrega de puntajes PSU
Por Beatriz Michell/ La Nación, 6 octubre 2009
Estudiantes conocerán los resultados el 21 de diciembre al mediodía, y no a las 00:00 del 23, y podrán postular hasta las 12 horas del 24. CRUCh llamó a las universidades privadas a la transparencia y a seguir “criterios éticos”.
El rector de la Universidad de Chile, Víctor Pérez, llamó ayer a las instituciones de educación superior a realizar un proceso de selección en el que primen, entre otros, los criterios académicos.
Foto: Leandro Chávez
Los clamores de la Iglesia, del Ministerio de Educación y de los diputados llegaron a los oídos de los rectores.
Ayer, en una reunión extraordinaria del Consejo de Rectores (CRUCh), éstos decidieron adelantar la fecha de la entrega de resultados de la Prueba de Selección Académica (PSU) para el 21 de diciembre al mediodía, por lo que los estudiantes podrán postular a las universidades del consejo desde ese momento, hasta el mediodía del 24 de diciembre.
La fecha inicial establecía la entrega de resultados el 23 de diciembre a partir de las cero horas y las postulaciones durarían hasta el 25 de diciembre.
El rector de la Universidad Católica, Pedro Pablo Rosso, fue el primero en manifestar su discrepancia por la fecha, argumentando que se topaba con la Navidad. A
la crítica se sumaron la ministra de Educación, Mónica Jiménez; el obispo de Chillán y presidente del área educación de la Conferencia Episcopal, Carlos Pellegrin; las universidades privadas y la Comisión de Educación de la Cámara (que incluso ofrecieron mediar en la discusión).
El CRUCh, en boca de su vicepresidente y rector de la Universidad de Chile, Víctor Pérez, explicó que la decisión de adelantar la fecha obedece “a la preocupación ante la eventualidad de que algunos jóvenes tuvieran problemas para postular por la saturación de la red o por la falta de lugares públicos para acceder a internet”.
Durante los días que precedieron a esta reunión -que se fijó después de una cita con Mónica Jiménez el miércoles pasado- los rectores pidieron un informe a la Subsecretaría de Telecomunicaciones (Subtel) para constatar la saturación de la web durante los días 24 y 25 de diciembre.
Para mantener discusión de fondo, el rector Víctor Pérez hizo un llamado a las instituciones de educación superior a “que realicen un proceso de selección y matrícula en el cual primen la información transparente, los criterios académicos y la estricta sujeción a los criterios éticos que se esperan de un proceso de tanta trascendencia para los 288 mil estudiantes que rinden la prueba este año”.
Además pidió a todos los actores que se manifestaron para solicitar la modificación de la polémica fecha, que también llamen la atención sobre “ciertas prácticas publicitarias y de marketing que inducen a los estudiantes a matricularse en universidades que les hacen promesas académicas, profesionales y materiales difíciles de cumplir, con el daño que eso significa para ellos y sus familias”.
CELEBRAN CAMBIO
El presidente de la Corporación de Universidades Privadas (CUP), Daniel Farcas, celebró el hecho de que se adelantara la fecha de la entrega de resultados de la PSU.
Ante un emplazamiento de Pérez, dijo que “es un desafío que todos tenemos mejorar los mecanismos de información y de gestión. En ese marco estamos dispuestos a conversar y aunar criterios”.
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Universidades adelantan resultados de la PSU
M. GRACIA DALGALARRANDO, El Mercurio, 6 octubre 2009
Más de cuatro horas y media tardaron ayer los rectores de las universidades del Consejo de Rectores en zanjar la nueva fecha de entrega de los resultados de la PSU, la cual se adelantó en 36 horas sobre el día original definido para el 23 de diciembre.
Finalmente y tras momentos de tensión, el Consejo de Rectores acogió la solicitud de la ministra de Educación, Mónica Jiménez, y adelantó el cronograma. Ahora, los resultados se conocerán el 21 de diciembre al mediodía, y las postulaciones se extenderán desde ese momento hasta el jueves 24 de diciembre a las 12 horas.
De esta forma, los estudiantes no tendrán que postular en Nochebuena y Navidad como estaba previsto, idea que originó un fuerte crítica de las universidades privadas, Iglesia y alumnos.
Según el vicepresidente ejecutivo del Consejo de Rectores y rector de la Universidad de Chile, Víctor Pérez, el cambio de fecha "obedece a la preocupación de la eventualidad de que algunos jóvenes pudieran tener dificultades para postular el 24 por la tarde y el 25 de diciembre, ya sea por la saturación de la red o la falta de disponibilidad de lugares públicos para acceder a internet".
Pese a que el Demre de la Universidad de Chile -organismo que administra la prueba- había propuesto un calendario original con fecha de entrega de los resultados para el 20 de diciembre, el rector Pérez aseguró que el día lunes 21 es la fecha que garantiza que "no se va a poner en deterioro ni la rigurosidad ni la eficiencia (del proceso)".
Pero la decisión del cambio no fue fácil. En la sesión extraordinaria del Consejo de Rectores de ayer, las 23 autoridades asistentes expusieron sus puntos de vista y analizaron dos opciones: adelantar la fecha de los resultados para el 21 de diciembre a las 00 horas, o ese mismo día a las 12 horas. Esta última opción primó, con la votación de la mayoría, salvo dos abstenciones.
Y también hubo espacios para un mea culpa. "Reconocimos que cometimos el error de no haber evaluado bien la conectividad el día 25 (de diciembre)", dijo el rector de la U. Católica del Norte, Misael Camus.
Ues tradicionales piden "buenas prácticas" a Ues privadas
Duras palabras destinó ayer el rector de la Universidad de Chile, Víctor Pérez, al resto de las universidades del sistema.
En clara alusión a las universidades privadas y como vicepresidente del Consejo de Rectores llamó "a las buenas prácticas de los procesos de inscripción, matrícula y registro de los estudiantes". Y les pidió que los planteles se manifestaran sobre "ciertas prácticas publicitarias y de marketing que inducen a los estudiantes a matricularse en universidades que les hacen promesas académicas, profesionales y materiales difíciles de cumplir".
Por último, el rector Pérez pidió que todas las universidades transparenten sus procesos de selección, con información sobre las vacantes, matrículas, puntajes promedio y de corte para cada carrera.
Frente a estas críticas, las autoridades de los planteles privados respondieron fuertemente. "Desconozco a qué universidad se estará refiriendo el rector de la U. de Chile. Nosotros publicamos nuestros cupos y criterios de admisión y se lo comunicamos a todas las entidades que nos la piden. No hay tales malas prácticas", manifestó el rector de la U. del Desarrollo, Ernesto Silva. Y agregó: "(La crítica de Pérez) Me parece una disculpa para justificar la revisión a la que se vieron obligados por tomar una mala decisión (fecha PSU)".
El rector de la U. Alberto Hurtado, Fernando Montes, también rechazó la imputación de malas prácticas en la inscripción de alumnos. "No se puede generalizar; en universidades estatales ha habido abusos tremendos y no puedo decir que son todas fraudulentas", dijo.
Y el rector de la Universidad de los Andes, Orlando Poblete, coincidió con sus pares. "Estoy de acuerdo en transparentar los puntajes de corte y la U. de los Andes lo hace. Si hay malas prácticas en esta o en otras materias, ellas no son privativas de unas universidades".
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Rector Bravo (U. Frontera) molesto con Rosso (UC)
El Mercurio, 6 octubre 2009
Muy enojado se retiró ayer de la reunión extraordinaria del Consejo de Rectores la máxima autoridad de la U. de La Frontera, Sergio Bravo.
El rector era un acérrimo defensor de la idea de entregar los puntajes de la PSU el 23 en la mañana y dejar las postulaciones para ese día y el 24 y 25 de diciembre. Incluso, fue uno de los únicos en admitir que existía una desventaja para los planteles regionales frente a los privados, ya que éstos últimos pueden matricular a estudiantes desde el día que se conocen los resultados. En cambio, las universidades tradicionales deben esperar los resultados de la postulación del 4 de enero.
Por eso, el rector Bravo se abstuvo en la reunión de votar a favor del adelanto de las fechas, lo que daría ventaja a las instituciones privadas, porque tendrían más tiempo para matricular alumnos. Y, según trascendió, Bravo increpó al rector de la U. Católica, Pedro Pablo Rosso, por haber "filtrado" su reclamo sobre las fechas de las postulaciones a la prensa.
Luego, se retiró anticipadamente y no participó de la conferencia de prensa junto al resto de las autoridades.
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Competencia desleal en la educación superior
El Mercurio, opinión editorial, 6 octubre 2009
"...Hablar de libre competencia hoy requiere considerar todos los aspectos señalados y no circunscribirlo a la fecha en que se entregan los resultados de la PSU...".
A raíz de la discusión sobre la fecha de entrega de resultados de la PSU, el decano de la Facultad de Ciencias Económicas de la U. Mayor, Sr. Tomás Flores, insinúa una supuesta colusión de las universidades agrupadas en el Consejo de Rectores, entre ellas 16 estatales, para impedir a las privadas captar y matricular estudiantes con buenos puntajes. Y ha señalado que estamos ante un comportamiento que la legislación antimonopolio denomina "abuso de posición dominante", explicitando con todo detalle este concepto.
Desde hace 28 años, los planteles públicos se han visto perjudicados por una feroz competencia desleal. Para las universidades privadas, las condiciones son del todo favorables para su crecimiento y expansión, sin límites. Mientras que una serie de limitaciones, trabas legales y administrativas han impedido a las estatales participar en igualdad de condiciones en esa competencia, atomizándolas hasta llegar a ser hoy un 20% del total de los alumnos en la educación superior.
Las universidades estatales se pueden endeudar con la banca sólo por el plazo correspondiente al período presidencial o lo que quede de él; deben someterse a procesos de adquisiciones excesivamente burocráticos, que dificultan una gestión competitiva. Todo acto administrativo debe contar con la aprobación de la Contraloría General de la República, lo que a veces toma meses.
En recursos humanos, las universidades estatales están sujetas a reglamentos de la administración pública y de estatutos orgánicos. Ello les impide renovar su planta académica o su planta administrativa, si fuese necesario. Los académicos y funcionarios tampoco tienen derecho a indemnización. Como si fuera poco, los planteles públicos están impedidos, jurídicamente, para destinar funcionarios universitarios a entidades como consorcios tecnológicos, redes de investigación o proyectos de investigación conjuntos. También hay trabas para contratar extranjeros en la administración pública, lo que perjudica la docencia y la investigación.
Las universidades estatales hoy no tienen más del 20%, en promedio, de aporte fiscal en función de sus ingresos totales, y deben financiar el 80% restante a través de aranceles y recursos autogenerados. Caso aparte es el Aporte Fiscal Indirecto (AFI). Para incrementar su AFI, las privadas ofrecen a los mejores puntajes incentivos económicos, como rebaja de aranceles, becas, costosos regalos, lo que las universidades estatales no hacen.
Si todo lo anterior no genera competencia desleal, ¿entonces qué? Hablar de libre competencia hoy requiere considerar todos los aspectos señalados y no circunscribirlo a la fecha en que se entregan los resultados de la PSU, mecanismo de selección que sólo las universidades del CRUCH se han autoimpuesto, no las privadas.
El CRUCH ha entregado al país un sistema de admisión universitario serio y transparente, al que las instituciones privadas debieran aspirar, el cual ha permitido a miles de estudiantes postular y acceder a la educación superior conociendo, a priori y de manera transparente, las vacantes para las distintas carreras y los cupos efectivamente llenados de dichas vacantes declaradas, entregando puntajes máximos y de cierre de matrícula, los aranceles y los programas de ayuda estudiantil, elementos que no se modifican siguiendo los vaivenes del mercado.
Nos inspira el bien común de la nación, y nuestro compromiso es en especial con los sectores más vulnerables. Tenemos la convicción de que el Estado, como ocurre en todos los países del mundo, tiene el deber de garantizar el derecho a la educación de calidad y excelencia, promoviendo la movilidad social en el nivel terciario y valores como el pluralismo, la diversidad, la democracia y el derecho a formarse profesionalmente en un ambiente que refleje la realidad social y económica de los jóvenes de todo Chile.
Estamos convencidos de que el mercado no es el mejor asignador de recursos en educación. Sin embargo, algunas universidades del Estado evaluamos seriamente la posibilidad de devolver el AFD a cambio de gozar de los beneficios y libertades que tiene el resto de las instituciones del "mercado de la educación superior chileno", para poder profundizar más aún en calidad, excelencia, equidad e inclusión. En la medida en que se les flexibilicen las trabas administrativas y legales, podremos contribuir al mejoramiento de dicho mercado, ya que los usuarios o demandantes, en este caso preferentemente jóvenes y sus familias, podrán acceder a un mercado más competitivo, con menos asimetrías de información, con mejores precios, y con ello un aumento del excedente del consumidor; asimismo, mejorarán los incentivos para competir en calidad, en innovación educativa, aumentando el beneficio social.
Si se cree que no hay libre competencia en la educación superior debido a una supuesta colusión o abuso de posición dominante, emplazo a llevar estas materias al Tribunal de Defensa de la Libre Competencia, para que de una vez los chilenos conozcan la realidad del llamado "mercado" de la educación superior en nuestro país.
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Octubre 05, 2009
Cómo cortar el presupuesto universitario sin afectar el futuro de la institución
The Unkindest Cut of All
By Gary A. Olson, The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 5, 2009
Over the last year or so, the various online discussion groups devoted to academic administration have been abuzz with chatter about how to manage state-mandated budget cuts. Deans and provosts asked one another for advice about how to handle wide-ranging—and in many cases, unprecedented—rescissions.
As might be expected, each state-supported institution approached the budget crisis from a different perspective on how to maintain—or at least not impair—its mission. Some institutions announced across-the-board pay cuts. Others instituted mandatory furloughs. Still others dismissed or "nonreappointed" adjuncts and full-time temporary faculty members. A few even cut some tenured and tenure-track positions.
A new dean who had never faced state "givebacks" before desperately asked the online group how to go about determining exactly what to cut. Clearly frustrated, she wrote, "We have so little to begin with, everything we have left is important. I can't see how we can prioritize when we have already been cut to the bone."
Another dean replied with what I found to be singularly unhelpful advice. "Simply pass on to your departments the obligation to cut their areas at whatever percentage your state is requiring," she advised. "This places the real responsibility where it belongs—on the individual units."
I agree that when faced with state budget cuts, individual colleges, departments, and units should participate in determining their priorities and recommending what should be eliminated from their own budgets. However, enforcing the same level of cuts across the board is counterproductive. Requiring your very best and most productive programs to be reduced at the same rate as your least productive areas shows a lack of imagination and an absence of strategic thinking.
A more strategic approach would be to analyze which areas of the university are contributing least to its mission and which are helping to propel it forward. When an institution approaches the process from that perspective, it is even conceivable that some areas might gain funds at the very moment that other areas are being trimmed or eliminated.
As you can sense from the frustration of the neophyte dean asking for advice, any budget-cutting process is a fraught time, not only for those experiencing cuts in their departments, but also for those charged with overseeing the reductions. It is painful to eliminate programs, lay off people, or require furloughs. That's why so many institutions take what seems to be the easy way out by imposing across-the-board cuts, as if spreading the pain evenly would somehow mitigate it.
Perhaps more difficult but potentially more rewarding is to make budget reductions disproportionally. While each institution has its own specific priorities and challenges, some general principles are worth considering. Here are a few:
•Protect the revenue generators. One college I know always experienced robust summer-school enrollment, which generated much-needed revenue for the institution, yet it chose to eliminate its summer-school budget in a recent round of cuts. The administration was attempting to avoid making other unpleasant cuts, but by eliminating its summer budget it effectively eliminated a source of revenue.
•Protect and even nurture your principal programs. Especially protect those that bring national visibility to your institution or help define its distinctiveness. If you must reduce or eliminate programs, it's better to cut ones that are duplicates of those at other institutions than to cut the very areas that set you apart from the pack.
•Protect core faculty members. Cutting everyone's salary may seem egalitarian, but it disadvantages the very people who you hope will help move the university forward after the cuts. At my own university, we chose last year to protect the jobs of core faculty members (including clinical faculty members), and instead to eliminate a number of vacant positions and not renew the contracts of a sizable number of full-time temporary faculty members. That was not an easy decision to make. We understood that some of those "temporary" faculty members had actually been employed for many years and had developed close relationships with many people on the campus. But given the university's mission and position as a doctoral research university, our decision to focus the cuts on temporary employees seemed the most reasonable.
•Eliminate nonessential personnel and programs first. Careful analysis is likely to demonstrate that any organization employs a number of people whose role is peripheral to the key functioning of the organization. In tight times, those positions should be the terminated first. Close down unproductive centers, institutes, and other ancillary enterprises. Many institutions tend to accumulate a surfeit of such enterprises over time, and it is necessary (and healthy) to ask periodically, "Do we really need this center, or has it lost its usefulness?"
•Reduce departmental commitments. Just as institutions tend to accumulate centers and other ancillary enterprises that have long since lost their usefulness, some departments accumulate an overabundance of programs. Reducing underperforming majors and minors, for example, can both save money and free up faculty members to engage in more central activities.
•Consider mergers. Some departments and programs might thrive if joined together while also saving the university money by eliminating redundant administrative overhead. It might make sense, for example, to combine several small departments into one unit rather than let them limp along as separate entities. An added advantage might be increased collaboration among faculty members.
•Seek to reduce the number of administrators when possible. Administrative posts sometimes proliferate just as unnecessary programs do. This is a key area deserving scrutiny whenever budgets are tight. Do we really need a graduate director in our department? Or an associate chair? Does the dean really need a third associate dean?
Institutions tend to grow in an ad hoc fashion, sometimes spawning new programs, employees, and administrators indiscriminately. But the fact that an institution has grown in a certain way does not mean that it must remain that way.
If the budget-cutting exercise of recent months has any silver lining, it is that an institution can pay focused attention to its priorities and potentially emerge leaner but stronger in the end. The "unkindest cut of all" is the one that slices evenly and indiscriminately across all programs without any attention to priorities.
Gary A. Olson is provost and vice president for academic affairs at Idaho State University and co-editor, with John W. Presley, of the newly published "The Future of Higher Education: Perspectives From America's Academic Leaders" (Paradigm). He can be contacted at golson@isu.edu.
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EE.UU., Asia emergente y los europeos en la arena global de la educación superior
Sobre la nuevas relaciones de poder y participación en la arena global de la educación superior, especialmente entre Estados Unidos y el Asia emergente, y entre el reinop Unido y los EE.UU., tratan los dos artículos que reproducimos a continuación, publicados en el Chronicle of Higher Education.
America Falling: Longtime Dominance in Education Erodes
The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 5, 2009
By Karin Fischer, Washington
Henry T. Yang, a prominent engineer, is one of a half-dozen American academics and entrepreneurs who sit on an international panel that advises Singapore's government on its higher-education and research efforts. At its last meeting, the group reviewed plans for a new public university, the country's fourth.
Back at home, where Mr. Yang has been chancellor of the University of California at Santa Barbara since 1994, the situation is one of contraction, not expansion. Facing the deepest state-budget cuts in decades, public-university officials in California have slashed salaries, furloughed employees, and reduced enrollments.
"Our faculty, staff, and students are deeply concerned about the survival of the University of California as a world-renowned institution," Mr. Yang told a meeting of the university's regents in July.
Although the situation has been grimmest in California, higher education across the United States is in a period of retrenchment. That decline has been greeted with dismay by many higher-education experts, who say the United States can ill afford to scale back investment in colleges when Singapore and many of its Asian neighbors are plowing money into higher education and research.
The recent economic crisis, they say, at once exacerbates and masks a continuing and more systemic problem: While the United States remains a world leader in virtually every measure of academic and research quality, its dominance is eroding.
The American share of "highly influential" papers published in peer-reviewed journals fell to 58 percent in 2003, from 63 percent in 1998. Just 4 percent of American college graduates major in engineering, compared with 13 percent of European students and 20 percent of those in Asia. The United States ranks 10th in the proportion of its adults ages 25 to 34 who hold at least an associate degree, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Despite the disturbing trends, many observers fear that there is little appetite to confront the challenges facing U.S. higher education. Even before the current financial troubles, public colleges were chronically at the back of the budgetary line, among the first to be cut in difficult times. What's more, with 50 state systems and 4,400 public and private institutions, responsibility for dealing with problems like college access or completion is diffuse, and finding a comprehensive approach to tackling such issues can be difficult, if not impossible.
Whether the current system, if unchanged, can weather recessionary storms and increased competition from overseas is an open question. Unlike their counterparts in Asia, Americans have simply not felt the same sense of urgency to reinvigorate and reinvest in higher education as a means of better positioning the country in a competitive and shifting global economy, says Charles M. Vest, president of the National Academy of Engineering and a former president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"China, Korea, Singapore—they're going for broke because they're hungry. They know they have to do it," says Mr. Vest, who served on a national panel that produced a widely cited report, "Rising Above the Gathering Storm," which warned that America was slipping behind other countries in science and technology.
"I'm worried we won't realize what's at stake until it's too late, that we'll be too slow on the draw. Look what happened in the manufacturing sector when the Japanese got serious. We've only partially caught back up."
From Upstart to Superpower
It was not long ago that the United States was the hungry one. Already an accomplished upstart, the country cemented its position as an academic superpower in the years after World War II, its laboratories staffed by European scientists who fled the conflict and its classrooms filled with former GI's. Research spending, spurred by wartime defense needs, shot up again after the Soviet launch, in 1957, of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite. Federal support for academic research quadrupled in the seven years following Sputnik, while doctoral ranks swelled, from 8,611 degrees awarded in 1957 to 33,755 in 1973.
In many ways, the United States remains pre-eminent: Its scholarly papers are still the most cited, and it remains the top destination for foreign students. American universities dominate international college rankings.
When countries like China, Korea, and Singapore seek to build up their higher-education systems, their model is the United States. "The United States is overwhelmingly the reference point for what they want to happen," says Aims C. McGuinness Jr., a senior associate at the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, who has advised both states and countries on educational reform.
Indeed, some observers say warnings that the United States is losing its global standing are unduly alarmist. Some measures, such as the numbers of engineers produced in India and China, are overstated, they say, because the course work there often does not meet American standards. They say that, as a whole, indicators suggest that other countries have raised their performance, not that the United States is slumping.
"It's not a zero-sum game," says Philip G. Altbach, director of the Boston College Center for International Higher Education. "It's not as if they grow, we get weaker. It's good for the world for more countries to do better."
Thus far, in fact, the United States has largely been a beneficiary of the educational advances made in Asia and elsewhere. Half of all students who earn doctorates in key science and technology fields come from overseas. (Two Chinese universities, Tsinghua and Peking, supply more students to American Ph.D. programs than any other institution, foreign or domestic.) A quarter of American college faculty members today are foreign-born.
But educators worry about what will happen if more top international students elect to remain in or return to universities in their home countries, as those institutions improve. Deepening their concern is evidence that the American talent pipeline has sprung leaks, and in many places: American high-school students post below-average scores on international science tests. Those who do well are less likely today to go to college—just half of low-income high-school seniors who were "highly qualified" in mathematics enrolled in a four-year institution in 2004, twenty percentage points lower than the Class of 1992.
Even at the graduate level, many students who start doctoral programs, particularly women and members of minority groups, fail to finish.
Part of the problem, says Patrick M. Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, based in California, is that the U.S. system was never designed to educate most Americans. That orientation leads Americans to measure success based on the performance of its institutions. But attention to evaluations like college rankings, Mr. Callan argues, deflects the focus from the very real weaknesses in the system's foundation.
"We're still stuck on having the best higher-education system of the 20th century, when it's almost a decade into the 21st century," says Mr. Callan, whose nonprofit group publishes a biennial report card on the higher-education performance of the states and the country as a whole.
By contrast, he says, "many of the countries that have made the biggest gains are those that see institutions as a means to an end, of achieving social and economic policy."
There are some signs of a shift in American thinking. The economic-stimulus bill approved by Congress this year included money for student aid and academic research. "Economists tell us that strategic investments in education are one of the best ways to help America become more productive and competitive," stated a summary of the plan distributed by Congressional leaders.
In a speech to Congress, President Obama urged all Americans to pursue "a year or more" of higher education, or career training, and set a goal for the nation to have the world's highest proportion of college graduates by 2020. Education, said Mr. Obama, who has proposed spending $12-billion to improve programs, courses, and facilities at community colleges, is one of "three areas that are absolutely critical to our economic future."
In state capitals, governors and legislatures also are embracing the concept that higher education can be an economic driver. A panel appointed by New York's governor called for establishing a $3-billion academic-research fund to support economic development. North Carolina's public universities have adopted economic outreach as a central mission.
International Competition
Still, economists and others say the belief, embraced in Asia, that educational investment leads to economic growth is overly simplistic and fails to account for other ingredients, like fiscal and trade policies, that nourish a financial system. The Soviet Union produced a lot of scientists, notes Michael S. Teitelbaum, a program director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, "but it was hardly a productive economy."
What's more, the United States has never set economic-development or educational policy at the national level, seeing each as falling under state or local purview. Indeed, many Americans have a profound mistrust of federal involvement in education, at both the secondary and postsecondary levels.
But as countries in Asia and elsewhere improve their universities and modernize their economies, that approach can undercut America's standing. "These are national concerns," says Irwin Feller, an emeritus professor of economics at Pennsylvania State University's main campus, "but we're not having a national discussion about what the stakes are for the country as a whole."
As a result, Mr. Feller says, the competition is not just international, but internal, as states and institutions vie with one another for talent and resources. Universities in states that are weathering the current recession, for example, may take the opportunity to poach top researchers from institutions in hard-hit states. Such actions might benefit individual states but not the country's relative position.
The mobility of talent also can act as a disincentive for states to spend more to train the next generation of Ph.D.'s, says Ronald G. Ehrenberg, director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute. "Every university's economic-impact statement talks about the economic benefit of their graduates," says Mr. Ehrenberg, a professor of industrial and labor relations and economics, "but the argument doesn't really hold if the graduates don't stay in the state."
And whatever rhetorical support higher education receives risks being undermined by fiscal reality. Even before the current recession, public colleges have been among the last to get increases and one of the first to be cut, as federal and state requirements put other government programs, like Medicaid and elementary and secondary education, largely off-limits to reductions.
Over time, shaky state support for higher education could weaken American universities, says Mr. Feller. "It's like deferred maintenance—one day the roof caves in," he says.
There's evidence that that has already happened. James D. Adams, an economist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has documented the link between a slowdown in scientific publications by American researchers and sluggish growth in state appropriations to public research universities. No other variable accounted for the fact that growth in papers by researchers at public universities came to a standstill in the 1990s, the period Mr. Adams studied, despite the fact that scientists at these institutions pulled in more new federal research dollars than their private-college counterparts.
Even research, the one area of academe largely supported by the federal government, has not seen the huge infusions of support that East Asian countries have made. While federal spending for all academic research has grown steadily since Sputnik, most of that growth has come for biomedical research financed by the National Institutes of Health. Money for all other scientific disciplines has stayed flat since 1970. The America Competes Act, passed in 2007 in response to warnings that the United States needed to produce more scientists and engineers, authorized a doubling of spending over seven years on physical-sciences research supported by the National Science Foundation and the Energy Department, but Congress has not provided the full funds.
First Mover or Fast Follower
Most higher-education experts, however, are reluctant to suggest that throwing dollars at American colleges will solve their problems. After all, points out Jamie P. Merisotis, president of the Lumina Foundation for Education, the United States already spends a larger share of its gross domestic product on education than most of its competitors.
Nor do they advocate embracing the top-down, government-driven model practiced in most Asian countries. Even the biggest critics of the current system wince at the idea of a controlling ministry of education.
"The disadvantage central planners have is that if they get it wrong, they get it wrong," says Paula E. Stephan, a professor of economics at Georgia State University who studies the careers of scientists and engineers.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican and sponsor of the America Competes legislation, says it is wrong to view the decentralized American approach as an impediment. Several years ago, Mr. Alexander recalls, he met with Premier Wen JiabaoPresident Hu Jintao of China on the topic of economic competitiveness.
The Chinese solution, says Mr. Alexander, a former governor and president of the University of Tennessee, was to "decree" greater investment in research and academics. In the United States, by contrast, a panel appointed by the National Academies debated, deliberated, and produced the "Rising Above the Gathering Storm" report. That report led to the America Competes bill, which was argued over and amended before finally reaching the president's desk, several years later.
"It was a messy, democratic, consensus-building effort," Mr. Alexander says. "But it worked."
Still, C.D. Mote Jr., who is president of the University of Maryland at College Park and helped write the National Academies report, says the United States could learn something from the efforts of Asian countries, namely that the government can play a role in seeding innovation. "That's something we said never could work in the United States," he says.
He and others would like to see the federal government do more to encourage research directed at meeting critical social or economic needs. As an example, Mr. Mote and others pointed to a proposal by the Department of Energy to spend $280-million to create eight "energy innovation hubs," based largely at American universities, to help make breakthroughs in renewable and sustainable sources of energy.
Kris Olds, a professor of geography and one of the authors of the GlobalHigherEd blog, says that when he came to the University of Wisconsin at Madison from the National University of Singapore in 2001, he was surprised by the lack of "strategic thinking on a five-, 10-, 20-year horizon." The United States could benefit, he suggests, from consultative groups, like Singapore's international academic advisory panel, which could provide a broad, global, and long-term perspective on educational policy. The Lumina Foundation has already provided grants to three states to study how aspects of the Bologna Process, the European effort to harmonize its university systems, might apply to the American system.
Or the United States could look to its own recent history, says Mr. Ehrenberg, of Cornell. One model for federal involvement, he said, is the National Defense Education Act, which was enacted in Sputnik's wake and provided student loans and fellowships to educate thousands of scientists and engineers.
Still, many experts argue that the most meaningful action federal officials could take would be to spark a serious national discussion about the critical role of education in the country's future. To a certain extent, Mr. Obama has done that, by proposing an ambitious goal for educational attainment. Senator Alexander, meanwhile, has pressed for another national panel, this one to examine the future of the research university.
The setting of national goals could help spur the entrepreneurism and competition that has long been the hallmark of American higher education, says Mr. McGuinness, the educational consultant. "The way the United States gets its act together is not through the bureaucracy handing down a report," he says. "Once universities get going, it's like a whole herd of horses coming down a path, and unless you get moving, you'll get trampled."
But perhaps, says Kent Hughes, director of the Project on America and the Global Economy at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Americans will have to adjust their thinking. "In many cases, we can be the first mover," Mr. Hughes says. "But in many cases, we'll need to learn to be a fast follower."
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America's Academic Arms Race With Britain
By Donald E. Heller, The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 5, 2009
As higher education becomes more international, it is important to evaluate how the global recession has affected British universities compared with those in the United States. Seventeen of the 20 top universities in the world, as ranked by The Times (of London) Higher Education, are from Britain (four) or America (13). Both countries strive to maintain that distinction and are keenly aware of the status of the other. They often compete for students and research support, especially from industry sources.
In today's difficult economy, both countries also share a fundamental challenge: Budget shortfalls have constrained how much money is available for supporting their operations. In America many states rescinded appropriations for public universities last fiscal year—even as applications to those institutions rose significantly—and many governors and legislators have already made further cuts this year. Meanwhile private universities, as well as public institutions with significant private fund-raising operations, have seen their endowment values plummet.
Britain is experiencing a somewhat similar scenario. Demand for higher education is rising amid a national goal of increasing the university-participation rate, now about 35 percent, to 50 percent in order to compete more effectively economically with other countries with higher educational-attainment rates. Applications to British universities have jumped by nearly 10 percent this year over the same period last year. Yet the British government—which supports all of the country's 130 universities—announced that it will provide funds for only an additional 10,000 full-time undergraduate students this fall and just a 2-percent increase over this year's budget for instruction. In response, many universities have announced the possibility of layoffs.
There are also important differences between the two countries. Students in America can select among institutions with varying tuitions and fees. In Britain the government gave colleges and universities the flexibility to determine their own tuition charges five years ago, as long as they stayed within a government-mandated cap. While an important goal of the legislation was to create a new revenue stream to help institutions strengthen the quality of education and their research capacity, another objective was to allow students to choose among different prices for their education. But establishing a price competition has been elusive, with virtually every institution charging the government-capped fee level of £3,145—approximately $5,000—this past year.
The government is already putting universities on notice that the years after next are likely to be tough, as financial support for higher education will grow slowly, if at all, given the economic situation and the competition for public money. That will lead to pressure from institutions to raise the fee cap substantially so they can increase revenues. In March, Universities UK, an advocacy organization for British universities, issued a report laying out scenarios for an increase in the fee cap to £5,000 or even £7,000.
The elite research-intensive universities have sufficient demand that they could raise their fees to the maximum with little concern for filling seats. Many less-prestigious institutions would set their fees below the cap to compete for students on price, but at the risk of increasing the gap in resources between them and their wealthier peers.
Given the circumstances, which country's higher-education system is likely to come through the recession more unscathed? A sustained recession of any depth could possibly affect the British institutions more because of their greater reliance on government support. The economic crisis will also heighten the already widespread public resistance to raising tuition. In addition, government student aid in Britain is more tightly linked with tuition—politically, if not statutorily—than in America. Any increase in tuition would also push up the amount the government needs to put into student aid, which would further limit the appropriations available for universities.
But to create an adequate revenue stream for institutions, the government may have little alternative other than raising the fee cap. British universities will also probably have to solicit private money in a significant fashion for the first time, as well as seek out increased industry support for research to supplement government appropriations. While that sort of fund raising has a long way to go to match what is happening in the United States, it is already under way in a few elite institutions—signaled in some cases by the hiring of administrators who have fund-raising experience in America.
The choices required to maintain adequate levels of support—to substantially increase appropriations from the government or tuition revenue (or both), or to do more fund raising—will be difficult. Yet if Britain is going to compete in the world economy, it must somehow find the political and economic will to rise to the challenges.
British universities will also probably try to enroll more international (non-European Union) students and part-time students—none of whom are subject to the fee cap, so they have much more flexibility to establish tuition rates for those students. That would conflict with the goal of expanding access in the country, as traditional-age British students could find themselves squeezed out.
Increased recruitment of international students could also come at the expense of foreign enrollments in the United States, particularly if British research universities—which compete most directly with America's elite institutions—become more aggressive. Indeed, the challenges confronting British universities have important implications for the United States. If Britain is able to overcome the financial constraints it faces, then its universities may gain ground on their American counterparts. In the global economy, where universities in each country compete not just with one another but with their peers in other countries, that may threaten the status that American higher education enjoys worldwide.
Yet it is unlikely that American universities will not respond to the challenges from British institutions. Even in the face of financial constraints, American institutions will probably ramp up their efforts to enroll international students as well as solicit research sponsorship from companies around the world. That will undoubtedly heighten the arms race between British and American universities.
Donald E. Heller is a professor of education and director of the Center for the Study of Higher Education at Pennsylvania State University. This past spring he was a visiting professor at Birkbeck College of the University of London.
Copyright 2009. All Rights reserved
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Octubre 03, 2009
La ley de bronce de las desigualdades en el acceso a la educación superior
Artículo de Sigal Alon, de la Universidad de Tel-Aviv, publicado en el American Sociological Review, 2009, Vol. 74, pp. 731 - 755, sobre las persistencia en las desigualdades de clase en el acceso a la educación superior de los EE.UU., a pesar de la enorme expansión experimentada durante la segunda mitad del siglo XX. Analiza el peso del origen socio-económico de los alumnos y su capital cultural, el papel de las pruebas tipo SAT y la reproducción clasista de las ventajas de acceso.
Ver resumen del artículo (5 pp.) aquí
Ver más abajo Abstract y Comentario aparecido en Inside Higher Ed.
Abstract
The Evolution of Class Inequality in Higher Education: Competition, Exclusion, and Adaptation -- Sigal Alon, Tel-Aviv University
Why is There Such a Large Class Divide in Admission to Selective U.S. Universities? Which high school students are best poised to go to college, especially the most selective universities? While we like to think that college admissions depend on individual attributes such as hard work and individual merit, in reality, college admissions are far more biased. Students from the lowest classes are substantially disadvantaged compared with students from more privileged backgrounds, and this disadvantage only increases the more selective and elite the college. This inequality is partly due to adaptations made by middle- and high-income students and their parents. With more resources at their disposal, higher-income students can afford private schools, tutors, and preparatory SAT classes. These adaptation strategies matter because colleges strongly emphasize test scores and grades. Tests that appear to be objective measures of merit and skill are actually biased toward upper-class students who can use their greater resources to better prepare for them. The result is that upper-class students gain an advantage in college admissions that effectively maintains inequality in higher education. One solution to lessening this inequality in admissions to four-year and selective institutions is for schools to consider class-based affirmative action.
Class Advantage
Inside Higher Ed, October 2, 2009
Between 1955 and 2005, college enrollments increased to 17.5 million from 2.6 million -- and the percentage of high school graduates seeking some higher education increased to 70 percent from 45 percent.
According to sociological theories of modernization, such a "massive expansion of higher education" should have disproportionately helped the less privileged in society, promoting their upward mobility, according to a paper just released in the American Sociological Review. But that didn't happen. And the paper -- by Sigal Alon, a sociologist at Tel Aviv University who has conducted extensive work on American college-going patterns -- suggests the reasons why.
The key factors, she writes, are that demand for higher education outpaced supply (even with all of that growth in available slots), that testing became a more important factor in admissions at more institutions, and that wealthier families are much speedier to adapt to changes in admissions rules.
While the findings make her sympathetic to some recent trends in admissions -- such as the movement to go SAT-optional -- they also leave her skeptical that such shifts will be enough to change class divides in higher education.
Alon's study is based on three large national surveys of students that provide data on what happened to the high school graduating classes of 1972, 1982 and 1992. She finds that much of the growth in enrollment of students of lower income socioeconomic groups came at two-year colleges, while gains at four-year institutions over all and selective four-year institutions were quite modest.
During the 1970s, she found, there was more progress, and this is a period when colleges that greatly expanded capacity (individually and in their entirety) during the 1960s to meet swelling enrollments found a dropoff in the number of new applicants. From the most elite institutions to open admission colleges, institutions became less competitive -- and the ability of low-income students to get in grew.
But from the 1980s on, that stopped happening. During that period, she writes, the trend was one of greater emphasis on standardized tests -- not just at the most competitive colleges, but across higher education. While this process was gradual and started before the 1980s, it took off then.
Looking over a longer period of time, she notes that in the 1950s, only a few hundred colleges even considered test scores in admissions, while doing so is the norm today. She suggests another comparison: Between 1947 and 2001, the number of enrolled students increased by seven times, while the number of SAT takers rose 70-fold. (She details evidence about the increasing weight given to test scores in admissions, a topic on which she has written previously, in an online supplement to the article. While the article isn't available online, the supplement is and may be found here.)
In more recent years, she notes, tutoring and coaching services have proliferated, and the correlation between SAT scores and family wealth has been consistent. Beyond the obvious economic issues at play, Alon writes that this is part of the sociological theory of "adaptation." Parents of all economic classes want their children to succeed, but the wealthier ones "better understand the postsecondary landscape and competitive admission process and they invest in resources to promote college attendance," she writes. As a result test score gaps of high school seniors -- grouped by economic background -- have grown during recent years.
Alon writes that as long as college admissions remains competitive, such trends will continue -- with wealthier parents finding ways to improve performance for their children, no matter what measures colleges use to sort applicants.
As a result, she predicts that if more colleges go SAT-optional, which many colleges report has led to increases in applications from and admission of a more socioeconomically diverse set of students, that increased diversity may not last. "Providing that the demand for postsecondary education surpasses the supply of slots, exclusion of some sort will persist as institutions look to screen swelling applicant pools. Under such conditions, the covert process of adaptation will continue to promote the expansion of class inequality," Alon writes.
Her solution? Class-based affirmative action, in which current and future adaptation by wealthy families is balanced by an admissions edge given to those without the means to match those advantages.
"By offsetting the depressing effect of home disadvantages on test scores, an edge in admission to low-[socioeconomic status] seniors will merely match the competitive advantages that accrue to the privileged through adaptation," she writes. "Those most damaged by adaptation, talented underprivileged seniors, would benefit the most from a policy that cultivates dreams, aspirations, and ambitions for a type of education that is beyond reach without preferential treatment."
— Scott Jaschik
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Efectos de la expansión de la educación superior sobre la formación internacional de capital humano avanzado
En el artículo The global expansion of higher education publicado en la serie NBER- Working Papers /(14962), Richard B. Freeman explora los efectos de la expansión de la educación superior sobre el sistema de los EE.UU., particularmente en la formación de posgrado, concluyendo que "while foreign-born scientists and engineers who remain in the United States contribute to U.S. economic growth, they also reduce the payoff for investing in higher education in science and technology for those born in the United States".
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Abstract
This study documents the rapid spread of higher education around the world and the consequent reduced share of the US in the world's university students and graduates. It shows that the proportion of young persons who go to college has risen in many advanced countries to exceed that in the US while human capital leapfrogging in the huge populous developing countries has produced massive increases in their university educated work forces. One result of the expansion of higher education overseas is that the US has come to rely extensively on the immigration of highly educated persons to maintain a lead position in science and technology. International students make up roughly half of university graduate immigrants to the US, which makes policies toward those students a key determinant in the country's success in attracting immigrant talent.
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Comentario pubklicado en el sitio del NBER
In 1970, approximately 29 percent of the world's college students attended school in the United States, even though the United States accounted for only 6 percent of the world's population. Over the last four decades, higher education in the rest of the world has expanded rapidly, so that in 2005-6 the U.S. share of the world's college students had dropped to 12 percent. From 1995-2004, the U.S. share of bachelor's degrees in all fields fell by 5.5 percent and the share in natural science and engineering declined by 1.3 percent.
In 1966, 23 percent of science and engineering PhDs awarded by U.S. universities went to students who were born outside the United States. By 2006, that proportion had increased to 48 percent. In 2004, the European Union granted 78 percent more science and engineering PhDs than the United States. By 2010, China is expected to graduate more science and engineering doctorates than the United States.
In What Does Global Expansion of Higher Education Mean for the U.S.? (NBER Working Paper No. 14962), author Richard Freeman observes that the foreign-born are "an important source of immigrant scientists and engineers" in the United States. Historically, about 75 percent of foreign-born doctoral recipients have pursued post-doctoral employment in the United States. This highlights the United States's reliance on immigration to maintain its lead position in science and technology. While foreign-born scientists and engineers who remain in the United States contribute to U.S. economic growth, they also reduce the payoff for investing in higher education in science and technology for those born in the United States.
In the short-term, the growing number of college students in other countries increases the demand for places in U.S. graduate and professional schools. If U.S. graduate schools admit applicants without regard for their country of origin, and available places in graduate schools grow more slowly than demand, then the proportion of U.S. students admitted to U.S. graduate programs is likely to decline in future years. In the longer term, rising quality at foreign universities will increase the competition for U.S. universities that are seeking to attract the most talented students, regardless of their country of origin.
Freeman concludes that the worldwide increase in the number of highly educated engineering and science workers will raise productivity in countries outside the United States, accelerating worldwide technological and economic progress but eroding the comparative advantage of the United States in the R and D that produces innovative products. Over the long term, Freeman predicts that the prices paid for U.S. exports in high tech and other knowledge-intensive sectors will decline.
Although U.S. consumers of high tech and knowledge intensive goods will benefit from lower prices, the United States also may "lose its position as the major producer of high tech goods or of the research and development on which they are based" to countries with highly educated workers and lower labor costs. Freeman concludes that since "most of the rest of the world is in catch-up mode in mass higher education, the decline in the U.S. advantage in the proportion of the population with university training is likely to continue for some time."
-- Linda Gorman
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