"U.S. faculty: Civic engagement, diversity important goals for undergrad education"

The following is an excerpt of an article from UCLA, highlighting changing attitudes among faculty about the importance of civic engagement:

Compared to just three years ago, a significantly greater number of today's college teachers consider civic engagement and appreciation of racial and ethnic diversity important educational goals for undergraduates, according to a UCLA report on teaching faculty at the nation's colleges and universities.

The majority of college faculty (55.5 percent) nationwide now consider it "very important" or "essential" to "instill in students a commitment to community service," an increase of 19.1 percentage points since the survey was last conducted in 2004–05, and 75.2 percent indicate that they work to "enhance students' knowledge of and appreciation for other racial/ethnic groups," a gain of 17.6 percentage points over three years.

The report, "The American College Teacher: National Norms for the 2007–08 HERI Faculty Survey," is issued by the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) at the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at UCLA, which puts out the national faculty report triennially.

"Civic engagement and diversity are among the core values that many institutions articulate in their mission," said Sylvia Hurtado, a co-author of the report and director of HERI. "It is important that faculty now view this as essential in their work because they are charged with preparing students to live in today's diverse world. Students represent our best hope for social progress."

Read the rest of the article, which examines other findings from the report:
http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/greater-number-of-college-faculty-83029.aspx

Access to and Equity in Higher Education

The University World News issued a special report on access of higher education by poor, disabled, indigenous, and migrant young people. The series of articles address the access and equity situation in the US, UK, France, Greece, Australia, South Africa, and Spain, focusing primarily on government policy in each case study.

Besides the government, the other crucial actor in the access and equity debate is, of course, the universities themselves.

Tell us: what responsibility do you think universities have in ensuring accessibility to low-income and marginalized groups? What steps can they take to open their doors to these groups? What success stories can we point to as examples of best practices?

E-mail us (ayers@icicp.org) or post a comment.

Visit the University World News website>>

Ministerial Conference on Higher Education in Africa: "Engaging African Universities in the Development Agenda"

Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) in partnership with the organizations listed below, convened a conference in Lusaka, Zambia on February 23-27.

On the agenda were the following topics:
1. Mobilise political commitment for increasing investments in Higher Education in Africa;
2. Facilitate networking at all levels to spur and sustain high quality Higher Education in Africa;
3. Mobilise African universities to re-engineer their human resource development programmes through proactive engagement in the continent's development agenda and to make their due contribution to research and innovation; and,
4. Highlight the importance of higher education to Africa's development.

Below is more information from the conference organizers:
"Despite significant increases in both student intake and number of tertiary institutions, Africa lags behind the rest of the world in investing in its people. There are already warnings of a 'missing generation of African scientists', and the institutions charged with capacity building themselves are in a sorry state. African innovation capacity remains curtailed, retarding progress towards attainment of the Millennium Development Goals in the Continent. The limited capacity means that Africa will not be in position to sustainably tackle the persistent problems of widespread poverty and food and nutritional insecurity, particularly in light of emerging global challenges such as climate change and increasing food and fuel prices. A recent World Bank study notes that African universities and other institutions of higher learning will ultimately be responsible for replenishing the stock of human capital, and for providing them with the required broader set of skills necessary to grow agriculture in the 21st century. Unfortunately, they are ill prepared at the present to train the continent's next generation of agricultural scientists, professionals and technicians. In realization of this, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) notes in its Framework for African Agricultural Productivity that 'urgent action must be taken to restore the quality of graduate and postgraduate agricultural education in Africa'."

Partner organizations:
New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD)
Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA)
Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA)
Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FARNPAN)
African Network for Agriculture, Agroforestry and Natural Resources Education (ANAFE)

Click here for more information.