How do you get under served students access to Universities?

One of the major challenges of getting under served high school graduates into universities has been access, recruitment, and after being admitted, keeping students for the full term of their undergraduate studies.

The Center for Research on Educational Equity, Assessment, and Teaching Excellence--also known as CREATE--has launched a program that targets one of the key roots of the dilemma in increasing access and sustainability, namely pre-university education. As their mandate suggests, the challenge rests in their preparation for university and not university entrance systems or processes alone. To address this issue, they state that CREATE aims to:

Forming collaborations between UCSD and local elementary and secondary school districts

Offering the highest quality of education to 700 students at their on-campus model school (The Preuss School).

Conducting research on improving educational opportunities for underserved students

Offering innovative teacher education and professional development opportunities for local educators.

With an array of educationalists and university faculty members at the University of California, San Diego, CREATE offers a promising model of community engagement and educational solidarity which seems to be fragmented for the most part and disconnected between K-12 and univesrity levels throughout the United States. Not only do professors and instructors share their cutting edge research and experience, but UCSD students also get involved as mentors in encouraging and helping youth foster ideas of higher education.

For more information about CREATE visit their website at http://create.ucsd.edu/index.htm.

The End of the University?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html

Social Cohesion and Development Aid

An Interesting Randomized Field Study Causally Linking Development Aid and Social Cohesion in Liberia

http://www.aeaweb.org/assa/2009/retrieve.php?pdfid=485

President Barack Obama's Education Speech Today

U.S. president Barack Obama today addressed several challenges facing the American education system. Obama made the comments before the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Among the problems Obama talked about - high college and high school dropout rates. Near the end of his speech, Obama stressed the importance of factors outside of school, in particular parental involvement and supplemental education, in ensuring students succeed in school. Obama also reminisced about the crucial role his mother played in his own early education.



http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g8-DEMtAE9q4i4ySQ0eV_qZefmRQD96R8VA01

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2009/03/obama_thinks_big_on_education.html?hpid=topnews

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/10/obama-administration-education

Education For All - Inequity: Why Governance Matters

In 2000, world leaders made two sets of major development commitments. The first was the Dakar Framework for Action, where governments from 164 countries adopted six ambitious targets for education for all children, youth and adults for 2015. The second, also for 2015, was the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): eight wide-ranging commitments for areas including education, child and maternal health, nutrition, disease and poverty.

The EFA goals and the MDGs are mutually interdependent. Not only a right in itself, education plays a crucial role in reducing poverty and inequality, improving child and maternal health, and strengthening democracy. Conversely, progress in education depends on gains in other areas, such as the reduction of poverty and disadvantages, and increased gender equality. (EFA 2009)

The most recent EFA report, produced under the auspice of UNESCO, entitled “Inequality: Why Governance Matters” (2009), asserts that universal primary education (one of six goals) WILL NOT be met by the 2015 deadline.

The main barriers, the report explains includes disparity related to wealth, gender, ethnicity, and location. They warn that if governments are to take the Education for All goals seriously, they will need to grapple with the challenges of inequality.

The report theme is framed by the role of governance in achieving the goals. On the one hand, developing countries do not allocate enough funds to education (while NGOs and donors have fallen short on their part as well). On the other hand, financing alone, the report contends, is not sufficient; equity issues are at the heart of the disparity between the rich and poor, boys and girls, and various ethnic and regional divides.

The authors of the report make several clear suggestions about how governments can contribute toward: (1) breaking the cycle of disadvantage, (2) improving access, (3) raising quality, and (4) enhancing participation and accountability. Yet, a shortfall of efforts on the part of governments’ in addressing inequity remains an unavoidable obstacle.

In the following posts, I will discuss the latest EFA Report and its evaluation of the status and recommendations related to the six goals, which include: (1) early childhood care and education; (2) universal primary education; (3) meeting the lifelong learning needs of youth and adults; (4) adult literacy; (5) gender; and. (6) quality.

Link to the EFA report: click here.

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Education for Prisoners Too?

An organization (non-profit) based out of Chicago, Illinois (in the United States) has rallied efforts in launching "Education Justice Project"--an initiative to offer college education to those in prison. Educational opportunity is not only the right of all humans, but it is a fundamental means for personal and social development.

This short introduction gives a very brief overview of what they're all about and why they feel encouraging college courses in prison is not only helpful to convicts but also to society at large:

Research is clear. College-in-prison programs reduce arrest, conviction, and reincarceration rates among released prisoners. Evidence has also linked the presence of college-in-prison programs to fewer disciplinary incidents within prison, finding that such programs produce safer environments for prisoners and staff alike. College-prison programs also have benefits for inmates' families and, hence, their communities. The strongest predictor of whether a given person will attend college is whether her or his parents did. When an incarcerated person receives a college education, whether or not s/he is eventually released, his or her children are more likely to pursue their own educations. In spite of these significant benefits, there has been a precipitous drop in college-in-prison programs around the country. There were over seven hundred degree-granting programs at their height, in the early 1990s. In 1994 the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act eliminated the use of Pell Grants for prisoners, and most prison college programs closed, including Illinois' BA-granting programs. Bachelor degrees have not been offered in Illinois prisons since 2002.

Check this out:

November 19 to 25

The November New Tactics on-line dialogue will feature “Human Rights in Higher Education: Incorporating practical experience”. This dialogue will specifically feature ideas, experiences and methods from human rights higher education programs for incorporating practical experience into human rights curriculums to better prepare human rights advocates for doing “on the ground” and “in the trenches” human rights work.

Go visit there website (click here)to participate or observe the on-going dialogue.

Little Steps Big Progress: Collaborations beween Intl. and Local

In the Gansu Province, demographically representative of China's Muslim population, educational quality and access has been a significant challenge. With funding from the British Government Department for International Development (DFID) and management by the Gansu Provincial Education Department (and support from a team of international and national consultants provided by Cambridge Education Consultants), the Gansu Basic Education Project was launched in 1999--serving a school-age population of about 110,000 children. Poverty and access are the greatest obstacles that had impeded development on the education front. While participation is always a targeted goal, strategies to strengthen an overall school system through a variety of means is essential. Some of the main tenets and components of the Gansu Basic Education Project (GBEP) includes:

- School Development Planning
- Participatory Approaches to Teaching
- Early Years Education
- Special Education Needs
- Teacher Training
- Financial Reform
- Location Planning
- Civic Works Program
- Monitoring and Evaluation

The following video clip provides a snapshot of some of the challenges facing the province's school and education issues, and how the GBEP has set out to address them.


The progress is staggering. More importantly, the project's implementation of monitoring and evaluation and collaborating with local administrators, educators, and stakeholders has really rooted the program in sustainibility. For more information about the project, visit GBEP Website.

Does Increase in Higher Education Access = Access to more Equality

I just read an interesting article by Mitra Shavarini (Research Fellow at the Aga Khan foundation), entitled "Admitted to college, restricted from work: A conflict for young Iranian women." Shavarini did a survey of higher educated young women in Iran and their access and success in securing jobs after graduation. While Shavarini found that access to higher education for Iranian women has risen over the years under the Islamic Republic of Iran, employment opportunities have not. Granted, it should be noted that job opportunities in general have declined for both women and men in Iran, but women's access remains lower.

There are several reasons for a gap between high educated women graduates and low employment after graduation by different accounts; although not exhaustive here are a few that come to mind: (1) the "bread-winner scenario" - if job opportunity is low, one of the spouses will work while the other remains at the homestead and become domestic worker (in most cases the woman); (2) socioeconomic culture preferences - society values male over female in workforce for numerous and often complex reasons, including (but not limited to) mother as the core of family unit, man as the provider, etc.; (3) the objective of higher education is different for women and men; etc.

Shavarini identifies several key factors for this disparity between higher admission / graduation rates for women in Iranian universities AND employment after graduation, which harp on the last of the three reasons stated above. She writes:

Why are young Iranian women drawn to higher education like no other institution in the society? The findings reveal four reasons that Iranian college women name as their motivation for pursuing higher education. First, and most important, these women say that a college education guarantees them respect. Second, higher education gives them a haven in which they can experience temporary autonomy. Third, college is a context in which they learn about the opposite sex, which they say provides important lessons for their future, especially marriage. Finally, they are drawn to higher education because a college credential increases their social value in marriage.

The strength of her article is that she points to an issue that doesn't see much attention among gender equality hype out of Iran--namely, does increasing higher education access REALLY correlate to increased equality of genders in the workforce. It's a subject worth greater exploration. For example, the issue of Muslim Feminism is raised as an answer to the question, but the theory is seemingly unsatisfactorily. The thesis of her argument opens a revisited discussion about educational statistics and their meaning. In other words, what would we have to see in order to believe that equality was truly promoted in Iran? Would it have to look like Western equality? Or as noted in other places, could it exist in a different way? Maybe higher educational access does equal more equity, and maybe it doesn't? It's worth more poking and prodding.

One thing I would have liked to have seen, is a move away from economics as the core reason for education. The article seemed to be moving in this direction, but at the end, Shavarini contends that it may be worth asking the question whether higher education has a purpose if not to gain jobs. This is a classical Western notion of education (return in economic gains). While the point is well taken and has substantial argumentative leverage, it would be nice to see education and learning benefits measured outside of workforce economics alone. For example, what if the four reasons Shavarini gave for why women seek higher education were valid enough? Not that I agree, but it would make a juicy and refreshing debate.

At the end of the day, read the article--it's concise, well written, backed by both qualitative and quantitative data, and well it's about Iran (who doesn't want to know more about Iran!).