Higher Education News

World & Nation
A recent study by a City University of New York professor finds that many high-achieving students from elite high schools were less likely to be admitted to the most selective colleges than were comparable students from other high schools.

A report of the study, "The Winner-Take-All High School: Organizational Adaptations to Educational Stratification," appeared in the October issue of Sociology of Education.

The problem for students attending the elite schools: These schools reserve admittance to Advance Placement courses for top-performing students, shutting out students who may have been admitted to those courses if they attended a non-elite school.

Because colleges tend to admit students who've taken AP courses over students with similar SAT scores who haven't, non-elite school students enrolled in the AP courses have an advantage.

Senior faculty members at Israel's seven public universities went on strike this fall in a dispute over faculty salaries. The union is demanding a 16 percent wage increase in order to keep up with the salaries of senior government employees. The tenure and tenure-track professors have been working for the past two years without a contract.

The last time the senior faculty unions struck—in 1994, for 11 weeks—they effectively shut down classroom instruction.

Africa has lost a third of its academic professionals in recent years, according to a researcher at the University of Natal.

The report, prepared for the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, contends that the "brain drain" has "delayed economic growth and nurtured poverty."

Nearly 23,000 qualified academic professionals have left the continent due to persecution or the lack of financial support for their institutions, the report notes.

Some African leaders view Western countries' "raids" on their academies as the problem. The countries hardest hit: Egypt, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa.

Faculty & Staff
A new group that will monitor violations of university autonomy and academic freedom in Europe has been formed at University of Bologna, in Italy.

The Observatory of Fundamental University Values and Rights will comprise seven European educators and will consider cases, either on the basis of a complaint or on the members' own initiative.

Temple University has agreed to drop a legal challenge to its recently formed graduate student union and negotiate a contract. The teaching assistants union is the first in Pennsylvania to win recognition as a collective bargaining agent.

The recognition, approved by Temple's Board of Trustees last week, came when the union and the employer agreed on the issues that would be subject to collective negotiations. The scope-of-bargaining agreement attempts to draw the line between teaching assistants' roles as students and as employees.

Professional News
The nation's high schools are not adequately preparing young people for college, says the National Commission on the High-School Senior Year.

The group's report, "Raising Our Sights: No High School Senior Left Behind," notes that while 70 percent of today's high school graduates go on to enroll in postsecondary education, only half of those who enroll at four-year institutions leave with a degree.

The problem: Students weren't prepared in high school for the rigors of college academics, the report notes.

"Too many of our students leave high school unprepared for further study or work," said Gov. Paul E. Patton of Kentucky, chairman of the commission.

The report's authors call for the restructuring of high school curriculums to better prepare students for the rigors of college and a closer alignment of high schools' curriculums with college standards. The report is available free at www.commissiononthesenioryear.org/.