Academicienii din Iaşi vor protesta în faţa Universităţii „Alexandru Ioan Cuza“ faţă de modificările legilor justiţiei

Membrii comunităţii academice din Iaşi, printre care şi câteva zeci de profesori de la Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza” din Iaşi (UAIC), vor protesta joi, începând cu ora 12.00, în faţa instituţiei de învăţământ superior faţă de modificările aduse în ultima perioadă legilor justiţiei.

Comunitatea academică a lansat vineri, 8 martie, o petiţie online care vizează Ordonanţa de Urgenţă 7/2019, semnată de Tudorel Toader, ministrul Justiţiei, care este şi rector suspendat al UAIC. Scrisoarea a adunat până în prezent 240 de semnături ale academicienilor.

Redăm mai jos conţinutul integral al petiţiei:

De peste doi ani, odată cu adoptarea de către Guvernul României a Ordonanţei de Urgenţă nr. 13, sub pretextul amendării legislaţiei penale şi de organizare a sistemului judiciar, are loc un asalt continuu asupra statului de drept. Încă de la începutul lunii februarie 2017, numeroase organizaţii nonguvernamentale, asociaţii profesionale şi grupuri cetăţeneşti au cerut, prin apeluri publice şi proteste de stradă, oprirea acestei agresiuni, care ameninţă fundamentele sistemului politic, ordinea constituţională şi viitorul societăţii noastre. În loc să abandoneze un demers profund toxic, coaliţia actuală de guvernare a trecut la modificarea brutală, fără o consultare autentică a magistraţilor, a partidelor de opoziţie şi a opiniei publice, a cadrului legal privind organizarea sistemului judiciar, îndeosebi a legislaţiei referitoare la combaterea corupţiei.

Această adevărată operă de inginerie legislativă, la limita prevederilor Constituţiei, aşa cum reiese inclusiv din decizii ale Curţii Constituţionale, din care au rezultat legi, ordonanţe sau hotărâri de guvern, anulează, în fapt, independenţa justiţiei în raport cu puterea politică şi face aproape imposibilă lupta împotriva celui mai periculos flagel care macină societatea românească, corupţia. În mod natural, cele mai multe dintre prevederi au fost respinse atât în fond cât şi în formă de comunităţile profesionale din justiţie, de opinia publică naţională, precum şi de organismele internaţionale din care România este parte.

Cea mai recentă probă a faptului că acest uriaş efort urmăreşte demantelarea ideii de justiţie ca proces instituţional legitim, predictibil şi independent în România, o constituie Ordonanţa de Urgenţă nr. 7/2019. Criticat atât de corpul magistraţilor din România cât şi de instituţiile europene, actul normativ aduce grave atingeri independenţei justiţiei şi separaţiei puterilor în stat, după cum induce şi o stare de confuzie generalizată cu privire la funcţiile justiţiei într-un stat democratic.

Conştienţi de faptul că atacul asupra justiţiei reprezintă începutul alunecării României către un sistem oligarhic, iliberal, în care întreaga putere va aparţine unui grup restrâns de persoane, după modele deja consacrate în ţări din estul Europei, America Latină, Africa şi Asia, subsemnaţii fac un apel public către cetăţenii României de a se implica, prin mijloacele legale şi democratice garantate de Constituţie, în apărarea statului de drept, a democraţiei şi a valorilor europene.

Semnatarii petiţiei şi-au arătat chiar de săptămâna trecută intenţia de a protesta împotriva legilor propuse de rectorul suspendat al UAIC.

Publicație : Adevărul și Ziarul de Iași

The US admissions scandal: have any mediocre students ever ended up at Oxbridge?

What’s the best path to a top education in the UK if your grades fall short? History suggests family ties, a private education and a lot of rugby practice

It is hard to say what’s most epic about the US university admission scandal, between the lies (faked special needs certificates, young slackers Photoshopped into sporting triumph); the money involved (huge sums, often more than $1m (£758,000), which parents are said to have paid to score their kids scholarships in fields wherein they have no merit); and the sight of all those famous people, their heads floating in a limbo-confusion, as society decides how much damage this peculiar business will do to their careers.

“I don’t understand,” UK academic Prof David Andress remarks: “Why these rich people didn’t just make strategic donations, perfectly legally, to achieve the same end …” You couldn’t get away even with making a donation in return for a place in the UK, where it would be so unusual as to be immediately seized upon. But that doesn’t mean you cannot blag your way into the right university; you just need to start further up the pipeline …

The Toby Young

Estimated cost £50,000 (not adjusted for inflation).

Method Take one mediocre student who wouldn’t know how to apply himself even if he had the humility, enter him for Oxford, watch him fail to get the grades. Then, as that student’s father, call up the admissions tutor and, using your social capital, heavily leverage an administrative error into an obligation. This is the expensive bit: you need to sound as though you know a lot of important people, which will involve a private education, whether you eschew the principle or not.

The Boris Johnson

Estimated cost That of an Eton education (you can adjust this for inflation yourself).

Method Take one cavalier and uninspiring student and force-feed them with expensive learning like you’re trying to make intellectual foie gras. Don’t worry if it doesn’t go in: they should generally emerge able to sound like it has. People always talk about how Russell Group universities should open their minds to state-educated students. I would look at this a different way: they should build more resilience to the charms of the privately educated, so that they can differentiate between talent and bluster. This would free up a huge number of places, and the unwashed could just stroll in.

The Never-Mind-Who-This-Is

Estimated cost £140,000, plus ineffable social capital.

Method It is actually quite hard to bust thick kids into private schools nowadays – trust me, we are victims of our own success – however much money you have. This is where the “rugby/running” scholarship comes in, which many schools reserve for the children of the famous or somehow renowned. Realistically, no kid at 11 is that good at rugby.

Publicație : The Guardian

Academic freedom: why do protections not apply to university leaders?

As universities become ever more wary of negative publicity, leaders who speak out on contentious issues are increasingly finding themselves in hot water. Ellie Bothwell reports

When the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse invited porn star-turned-sex educator Nina Hartley to speak on campus last year, he expected that there would be “some controversy”.

Something Joe Gow did not anticipate, however, was the reaction it provoked from his boss, the university system president Ray Cross, who claimed in a letter that the event “puts all of our funding at risk” given the potential pushback from politicians opposed to pornography.

A month later, the board of regents announced pay rises for 10 of the 13 chancellors in the system. Of the three who missed out, one had already received a raise earlier in the year. Another was under investigation by the system in connection with her husband’s alleged sexual harassment of a former student and former employees, and resigned shortly afterwards. The third was Gow.

“I’m curious to see, over time, whether they rethink that [decision], because the symbolism of it would suggest that they didn’t like a speaker I invited and they wanted to be punitive,” says Gow, a journalism and speech communication expert, who invited Hartley to speak as part of National Freedom of Speech Week. “We have a very clear policy on freedom of expression and what I did was entirely consistent with that.”

He adds that “when you bring in an interesting and controversial speaker, that enhances the reputation of the institution”. And he also notes the contrast between Hartley’s defence of pornography, which was “not hurtful to anyone”, and the insults to various minority groups dished out by right-wing activists Ben Shapiro and Milo Yiannopoulos during their campus tours.

The last-minute cancellation of the latter’s planned appearance at the University of California, Berkeley in 2017 on public safety grounds drew the condemnation of the recently inaugurated Donald Trump. “If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view – NO FEDERAL FUNDS?” the president tweeted, while the university’s then-chancellor Nicholas Dirks came in for heavy criticism from right-wing groups for his supposed repression of free speech.

But Gow’s treatment could be argued to raise questions about how much free speech and academic freedom university leaders themselves should be permitted. After all, Hartley had previously spoken at other university campuses, including Berkeley, Harvard University and Dartmouth College, “without attracting the same level of controversy and scrutiny”.

“I am pretty confident that if a [rank-and-file] faculty member or a staff member invited Nina Hartley to come – which certainly could have happened – and used money from their department to fund it – which, again, would not be that unusual – they would not be sanctioned in the way that I have been,” Gow says. And while he issued an apology for inviting her, and personally reimbursed the university for her $5,000 (£3,925) speaking fee, he was only “sorry about the media sensationalism”, and not about his choice of speaker.

The question of whether the norms of academic freedom should apply to senior managers is not new but has become more pertinent in recent years in light of the increasing marketisation of higher education, the prominence of university rankings and the rise of social media – all of which combine to make universities ever more sensitive about their reputations.

The fundamental academic values of free speech and truth-searching, which can be “controversial and inefficient”, are “in contrast to the market values of efficiency and getting people prepared for the workplace”, Gow says. “There’s no denying that when one is a leader of a university or college you are part of the establishment. And I think that does make people in my kind of role more conservative and [anxious] to avoid controversy in general. With the marketisation of higher education, we’re likely to see more of that caution, I would think.”

According to Jeffrey Flier, distinguished service professor of physiology and medicine at Harvard Medical School and former dean of the school, it is “substantially more difficult now to speak out as an institutional leader in any fashion that varies significantly from the standard opinion of the community than it was [20 or 30 years ago]. When I became a dean, many people said: ‘Oh wow, you have the ability to do this or that to advance public views on various topics’. That’s not exactly what I’ve found.”

Flier blames “the tribalist separation of different perspectives engendered and furthered by social media”, as well as the “more severe” enforcement of “politically correct thinking” on campus for making modern academic leaders less likely to speak out. Even now, three years after standing down from his deanship, he is still told by some to be careful what he says, on the grounds that people will still associate his opinions with Harvard Medical School.

Another notable illustration of the perils of speaking out can be seen in Andrew Potter’s forced resignation as director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada in 2017 after writing an article for Maclean’s magazine that described the overnight stranding of 300 cars on a Montreal highway in the middle of a blizzard as reflective of Quebec’s “pathologically alienated and low-trust society”.

The article’s perceived slight to French Canadians provoked outrage. In his resignation letter, Potter said “the ongoing negative reaction within the university community and the broader public to my column” had forced him to “come to the conclusion that the credibility of the institute will be best served by my resignation”.

The university agreed. In an interview in the Globe and Mail newspaper, McGill principal and vice-chancellor Suzanne Fortier claimed that “when you’re an academic administrator, there are things you must be more prudent about doing”. In an echo of Potter’s own statement, she added that “the credibility of the institute” had been “deeply affected” by his article, which she worried could cause some politicians to steer clear of future public policy events at the university.

However, an investigation by the Canadian Association of University Teachers concluded in November that, in promulgating such a justification, the university had undermined the freedom not just of Potter but of its entire academic staff. David Robinson, executive director of the CAUT, told Times Higher Education at the time that “it seems that we are in an age when institutions see their foundational value not as academic freedom but as reputational protection. Institutions, certainly in Canada, see themselves more and more as business enterprises. They rely upon tuition fees and private financing to conduct their work and they see their primary goal as keeping donors happy and keeping students happy.”

Such instances reflect the “hypocrisy of legislators who say ‘we support free speech but not this free speech’ ”, according to Will Creeley, senior vice-president of legal and public advocacy at the US-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (Fire). They also shed light on a broader trend for university leaders to confine themselves to “inoffensive, heavily sedated statements so as to not rock any boats” or “upset one of the many stakeholders they have to reckon with when the microphone is turned off”, he adds.

“As an attorney working with faculty, I wish universities would sometimes [do] more to protect faculty and student speech and maintain universities as a place where ideas are celebrated rather than tamped down…Universities are exceptional places because you can hear speakers like Nina Hartley rather than in spite of that.”

However, he adds, the most recent Supreme Court ruling on the speech rights of government employees suggests that academic leaders at public US institutions, whatever their academic backgrounds, are not protected by legal guarantees around academic freedom if they no longer teach or conduct research.

Meanwhile, university administrators risk endangering their institutions’ tax-exempt status if their political endorsements are deemed to have been made on behalf of the institution, he says: “The general rule is that, at public universities, the higher up someone is in the chain of authority, the more likely it is that what they say will be attributed to the institution as a whole.”

Emmett Macfarlane, associate professor of political science at Ontario’s University of Waterloo, says that academic freedom provides scholars with “the right to criticise our own institutions, but certain university administrators are basically required to walk the party line on university policies”.

Yet that distinction remains highly contested and attempts to enforce it can, themselves, pose reputational risks. That was aptly demonstrated at the University of Saskatchewan in 2014, when Robert Buckingham, executive director at the School of Public Health, was fired, stripped of his tenure and banned for life from campus after publicly criticising the institution’s president, Ilene Busch-Vishniac, for telling senior leaders not to publicly question her cost-cutting plan for the institution. Buckingham told a newspaper that the injunction was unheard of in his 40-year career and marked a “sad” day: “Of all places, a university should be a place to disagree and disagree publicly and not have repercussions of being fired from your job because you speak out,” he said.

In his termination letter, provost Brett Fairbairn wrote that Buckingham’s “egregious conduct and insubordination” had “destroyed” his relationship with the university’s “senior leadership team”. It has also damaged “the reputation of the university, the president and the school” and “the university’s relationship with key stakeholders and partners, including the public, government and your university colleagues”.

However, following a public outcry over the perceived violation of Buckingham’s academic freedom, he was quickly reinstated as a tenured academic – though not as a dean. Meanwhile, Fairbairn resigned ahead of an emergency board meeting a week later, and Busch-Vishniac was fired on the grounds that “the university’s ongoing operations and its reputational rebuilding efforts will be more effective with new leadership”. The board reiterated its commitment to “the principles of academic freedom and freedom of expression”.

Harvard’s Flier says that the potential for university leaders to be public intellectuals, offering their opinion on a variety of topical issues, has always sat outside their primary mission of managing people, programmes, budgets and fundraising. He also acknowledges that controversial speech can “diminish” administrators’ ability to carry out those duties. And he notes that “the combination of processes that lead to the selection of leaders” from among academic faculty now typically “involves some assessment of how likely they are to have heterodox opinions…on some issues”. Those who score highly on that measure are eliminated from the running, he says.

Academic leaders are also more likely to self-censor in today’s environment, Flier suggests: “Don’t expect your university presidents or other major academic leaders to be expressing ideas that would be surprising or maybe cause you to think differently about a subject. Because if they do that, they may not be in the position very long,” he says.

An obvious example may be the economist Lawrence Summers, who was forced to resign as Harvard president in 2006 after – among other flashpoints – suggesting in a speech that women’s underrepresentation among maths and science academics might be the result of a lower genetic aptitude for the subjects, reflected in the fact that more males earn the very top scores in tests (as well as the very bottom scores). The Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ Standing Committee on Women responded that “it is obvious that the president of a university never speaks entirely as an individual, especially when that institution is Harvard and when the issue on the table is so highly charged.”

Indeed, it is a common view that a certain loss of freedom to speak out is an intrinsic quid pro quo of moving up the scholarly ranks. Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania, told THE in December that her general strategy was to “speak out on policies but not on people”. That was why she had said little publicly about Penn’s most famous alumnus, Donald Trump.

“That’s both an ethical and a pragmatic strategy. It fits our values that we are allowed to be a non-profit institution on the basis that we are non-partisan, but…I feel a responsibility to speak out [about] and work hard [on] those policies that are critical to our mission,” Gutmann said.

Sandro Galea, Robert A. Knox professor and dean of Boston University’s School of Public Health, takes a broadly similar view. He sees it as the job of academic leaders to create environments in which a faculty member “can engage in any issue that she thinks is important and say whatever she wishes to say and is protected for saying it”. However, any academic leader who is not careful about what they themselves say “is probably not thinking about it hard enough” given the necessity of “balancing multiple responsibilities and multiple competing priorities and representing constituencies that are not monolithic on any one issue”.

But it is appropriate, he believes, for academic leaders to “speak out” when the core values of universities are being challenged – and Galea himself is the author of regular articles in the national press, often on public health. However, “I feel that I walk a very careful line and I hope every day that I walk it right,” he concedes. “I am very careful in my writing that I never speak on behalf of the institution. I’ve communicated that time and time again.”

According to Linda Lim, professor emerita of corporate strategy and international business at the University of Michigan, senior academics may even be obliged to self-censor their own research projects if they could have institutional consequences, such as offending a foreign government.

“Your primary obligation is to the administrative responsibility that you took on because it affects a lot more people than your own research,” she says. “If you don’t write an article for three years that’s nothing compared to 50 students not being able to have an in-country experience because they can’t get a visa.”

Senior academics are also more likely to sit on corporate boards, she adds, which can impact on their level of freedom: “As a board member, you have a legal obligation to your shareholder. So you can’t, for instance, criticise Chinese government policy if it might make China pay attention to your company, deny you a licence and then shareholders lose a lot of money. You could be sued for that in the US.”

Similar constraints on academic leaders’ ability to speak their minds in public are also in evidence beyond North America.

Peter-André Alt, president of the German Rectors’ Conference, says that, formally, senior administrators in Germany have the same level of freedom as other scholars. However, in practice, they do not “because we are all acting in public spheres that are full of mirrors and are permanently reflecting what we are doing. If you take a look at the older system in Germany, someone who was a rector or president…had some kind of formal authority but was not really a leader and had no extended responsibility for any kind of decision making, which was left to the deans or to the individuals. This has completely changed and has created new types of obstacles for those who are in charge.”

Richard Ashcroft, professor of bioethics and deputy head of the department of law at Queen Mary University of London, says that UK universities are also “having to be more businesslike”, which “can mean that senior executives in universities are more cautious about what they say”.

Athene Donald, master of Churchill College, Cambridge, comes across as fairly outspoken on Twitter, on her blog and in the numerous opinion articles she has written for media outlets – often on gender issues and science policy. But she thinks “very hard” about what she says or writes.

She was able to be forthright in her opposition to Brexit prior to the UK’s EU referendum because she “knew perfectly well where my fellowship stood” on the issue, and she also had explicit permission from the college’s council and governing body to speak out about it. However, she regrets retweeting something that someone else had written about euthanasia several years ago, not because there was any fallout but because she “realised it could get me into sticky territory”.

“It’s self-censorship undoubtedly, but that’s fair enough,” she says. “It seems to me that if I am going to lead an organisation I have to be conscious that we are a loose-knit community with different views – and it is, I think, really hard to say: ‘This is my personal view and I am not speaking for anyone else.’ I don’t think people will be that subtle when they read what you write.”

But David Price, vice-provost for research at UCL and another active Twitter user, thinks that his personal comments on the current political environment are “very much viewed as the action of an individual”. And, of his 55,000 tweets, he would, with the prudence of hindsight, rephrase just two: “One was an academically related judgement on how one interprets research finances. And the other was an observation about a political prisoner.”

Nevertheless, he concedes that there are often “many more facets to problems than may be originally obvious”, and his appreciation of the “complexities” of university politics, funding and pensions, for instance, has led him to try to be “more measured or slightly less extreme in what I say” about such issues.

“I do believe that the role of academics is to speak truth unto power,” he says. “But if that truth-speaking turns out to be biased or unbalanced then it is actually detrimental…and gives ammunition to those who want to undermine universities.”

For his part, Flier would love to see universities become “more tolerant of discussion, debate and questioning, even when the things being questioned are viewed by a substantial fraction of people as closed questions. If that happens more generally then it will follow that university leaders will be able to do that more often.”

However, he recently spoke with a “prominent former university president” who left his position “because of something he wrote”. That person told Flier that if he were still a university president and were hiring a new dean, he would spell out to the successful candidate which public opinions on which topics would get them fired, and stipulate that they must not write or speak about anything controversial outside their own area of academic expertise.

Flier’s view is that it is becoming ever more likely that this kind of conversation actually takes place. “What this ex-president told me was that the world won’t lose anything if university leaders can’t tell you what they think on various topics while they’re in their leadership positions. You could say that’s fine. Or you could say: ‘That’s kind of a depressing thought.’

Publicație : The Times

We must make sure care leavers are supported to succeed at UK universities

Subsidising accommodation and providing bursaries for student essentials can go a long way in helping care leavers realise their potential, says UK universities and science minister Chris Skidmore

Going to university can be a big leap for anyone to make. But what happens if you don’t have the emotional and financial support of family behind you to help you on your way?

Although this government has transformed access to university for the most disadvantaged groups in our society, it is the most damning statistic in higher education that only 6 per cent of care leavers will participate in higher education and are nearly twice as likely to drop out once there.

Just putting this down to a lifetime of upheaval taking its toll on academic performance or failing to raise aspirations shirks our responsibility both as the “corporate parents” of these children and as a government that wants to ensure everyone can achieve their full potential and succeed.

The fact of the matter remains that unnecessary practical barriers still exist that put care leavers off from going to university. For example, it can be near to impossible for young people leaving a residential children’s home or foster care to find the money to pay a rental deposit upfront on student accommodation.

The term-time nature of student rental agreements can also present a major obstacle for care leavers, who do not have family homes to return to during the university holidays and may be daunted by the prospect of making alternative arrangements for the interim periods.

I know there are plenty of higher education providers that are taking steps to bring down the barriers facing care leavers during application and enrolment.

The University of Leeds, which I visited last week, is just one of the providers offering year-round student accommodation to care leavers and waiving upfront deposit requirements. The University of Nottingham, which I visited last month, also provides students leaving care with a welcome goodie bag of necessities and personalised support, including help with the first supermarket shop.

Supporting care leavers to get in to higher education is, however, just one part of the equation. The other is supporting them to get on, meaning that we need to be mindful of the fact that these students do not have a family to turn to in times of financial or psychological need.

Kingston University is leading the way through its KU Cares team in supporting students who have been in care throughout their time at university and beyond. The university offers care leavers a bursary per progressive year of study, a designated member of support staff to advocate on their behalf and signpost opportunities, plus a generous graduation package at the end of their degree to help them celebrate their achievements.

I am pleased to have spoken to students being supported by the KU Cares team earlier this week to see first-hand how this service is transforming their lives and opening up opportunities.

Initiatives like this are just a small part of a university’s day-to-day life, but they can make a big difference to the prospects of some of the most vulnerable young people in our society.

This is why, today, I am proud to launch the Higher Education Principles alongside children and families minister Nadhim Zahawi, which seek to help care leavers aged 16 to 25 live more independently and realise their potential.

The new Higher Education Principles set out an expectation on the level of support that universities should offer to students leaving care – including providing them with personal support through a dedicated higher education professional, giving them money for course materials and assisting them in all aspects of student life.

The principles ask the most selective and well-resourced universities to go the furthest and set a high bar for the sector overall, by providing subsidised and year-round accommodation for care leavers, as well as bursaries to cover student essentials such as books, laptops and subscription fees. This is in addition to the access and participation guidance issued last week by the Office for Students, which specifically highlights the need to provide support for care leavers.

As universities minister, I want to see higher education providers across the country getting behind the principles and the Care Leaver Covenant they support. I also want providers to think about what more they could do to increase the number of care leaver students in higher education and ensure that they are providing them with the support they need. I encourage all providers to follow the set of principles we have released today to help develop their offer for students leaving care.

The UK is lucky to have one of the most diverse and inclusive higher education systems in the world. I want to see this system further welcoming care leavers, not closing the door on their ambitions.

Publicație : The Times

The Augar review should beware of pandering to political whim

Cutting the number of people who benefit from a university education will do nothing to improve the lot of those who do not, says Graham Galbraith

The Augar review into post-18 educational funding in England is a political review that will have to offer the government policies that have electoral appeal. But it is also a critical opportunity to ensure that the widest range of students can develop the right skills to address both the immediate post-Brexit challenges and the rise of technology and artificial intelligence.

In response to that last point, people will need to update their skills across their working lives, so it makes sense to have a more flexible and joined-up approach to higher and further education. But post-18 education cannot be improved without taking account of how pre-18 education sifts young people. For instance, if T levels, the new technical alternative to A levels, are used to categorise young people according to a flawed distinction between “technical” and “academic”, their options will be constrained by the time they turn 18.

In reality, these streams of activity overlap. There is no undertaking at the same time more technical and academic (not to mention vocational) than medicine. But because it is studied at a “high” level, it is accepted that universities should teach it. This is the crucial point that the review should grasp: the difference between higher and further education is the level of study, not the content.

Equally, the review should not agonise over where education occurs. We need more people with pre-degree qualifications. We also need more graduates. Universities will not be the best places to deliver higher-level qualifications for everyone; contrariwise, they may be the right places for some to do pre-degree qualifications: indeed, this is already happening. The key point for the review is to improve access to all of these different levels of education.

It has been suggested that people with fewer than three Ds at A level should not be entitled to financial support through the Student Loans Company. If this is one of Augar’s recommendations, we will want to see the evidence that the young people affected lack the capacity to benefit from university. I have had many conversations with University of Portsmouth graduates who believe that their lives were transformed by their experience, but who came to us with low prior attainment.

Some politicians think that increasing the number of people who don’t go to university will somehow improve the educational opportunities of that group of people. But it is not clear how reducing the opportunities of some of the 50 per cent who currently benefit from a university education will help those who get a raw deal. The review must focus more directly and realistically on improving the options of those not currently in higher education, and then let all young people decide which options suit them best.

Nor should that choice be made for young people by bureaucrats, however well-intentioned their concern to promote the “national interest”. The UK has never been very good at manpower planning, and I don’t believe our crystal ball-gazing has improved.

Remember that universities were mocked for developing degrees in games technology and virtual reality. Yet it is these areas of the economy that have enjoyed the greatest growth in recent years. The UK is now a world leader. A manpower planning-based approach within Augar’s recommendations will doom them to irrelevance within six months.

The review’s political imperative was England’s headline tuition fee – which the Labour Party pledged to abolish entirely in the last general election campaign. There is clearly a problem with public perception in this area. The public subsidy is not clear; it exists only as a write-off of unpaid “debt”. The Office for National Statistics’ recent reclassification of some loan funding as public spending may help to address this problem.

But whether it does or not, it would be foolish for the review to overreact and, in an attempt to give the prime minister the report she wants, recommend university funding cuts. This would threaten the existence of some of the very institutions on which the country’s long-term future depends. Many of the most vulnerable institutions are located in “left behind” areas that rely disproportionately on the social, cultural and economic role of their university: losing that institution could have serious consequences.

We live in difficult political times, and Philip Augar must certainly be sensitive to them. But if his review responds too closely to politicians’ current whims, then, whatever its short-term political dividend, we will be looking at precisely the same issues in a few years’ time.

Or worse, when future historians look for pivotal moments in the trajectory of the UK during the early 21st century, their focus on 2019 will not be confined to Brexit.

Publicație : The Times

Gold standard of PhD ‘under threat’, professors claim

Debate sparked by criticism of growth of PhDs by publication, and allegations that corruption and nepotism are undermining the reliability of the academic doctorate

Academics have provoked debate by claiming that increased pressure to pass substandard candidates, nepotism and the rise of the “PhD by prior publication” are endangering the doctorate’s reputation as the “gold standard” of academia.

In a scathing critique of PhD practices worldwide, David Alexander and Ian Davis, from UCL and Oxford Brookes University, said that “corruption”, “negligence” and other failings “risk causing quality to be compromised”.

The pair are particularly concerned by the increasing prevalence of the practice of awarding a PhD on the basis of prior publications, arguing that it is “fraught with risk” and often sees “slightly different versions of the same work” submitted in lieu of a thesis.

The PhD candidate is often only “one of numerous authors and has not had a dominant role in the writing of the paper”, they have claimed.

Speaking to Times Higher Education, Professor Alexander, professor of risk and disaster reduction at UCL, said that he had “misgivings” about the so-called “staff doctorate”, which is mostly used by academics to gain a PhD while working.

“I recently examined a ‘thesis’ with six papers in it and only two were published in kosher peer-reviewed journals,” he said, adding that all six articles were “minor variations of the same, rather limited argument”.

Professor Alexander added that a recent PhD examination, conducted by correspondence regarding a candidate in Australia, where there are no vivas, finished with the question: “Is the candidate good enough to pass?”

“I wrote that ‘if [your standards] are slightly below rock bottom, the candidate is good enough,” he said, adding that the candidate was “passed for the PhD immediately”.

Professor Alexander said that a good PhD thesis composed of published papers was possible, but it should have “at least four or five major, single-authored articles in it, all of them in leading peer-reviewed journals” and “a strong, 50-page introduction that provided a guide to how the papers tightly fitted together”.

About three-quarters of universities surveyed by the UK Council for Graduate Education in 2015 offered PhDs incorporating prior publication, although the traditional thesis route remained most popular.

However, Rosemary Deem, dean of Royal Holloway, University of London’s doctoral school, rejected the notion that PhDs by publication should be a cause for alarm.

“I took my PhD at The Open University in this way and, alongside a long piece written specifically for it, I had nine single-authored publications and a book,” said Professor Deem, who added that this format can “often show a much higher level of engagement with a discipline than a normal thesis”.

In a recent paper in Quality Assurance in Education, Professor Alexander and Professor Davis also claim that “nepotism” within universities, where PhD students are employed by their university or are married to staff members, and “corruption” involving insufficiently independent external examiners, were eroding standards.

But Professor Deem argued that these concerns were also “exaggerated”. When staff candidates are supervised by a colleague, it is normal to have two external examiners, she said.

“I do not dispute that we need to keep an eye on these issues, but there are regulations and I’m not convinced the system is as rotten as they make out,” she said.

The authors also flag other instances where advice to fail PhD students was ignored either at appeal or “summarily” and how many supervisors selected external examiners who “can be relied upon to yield to pressure to pass the candidate regardless of the quality of the thesis. When a student has paid very high fees for three or four years, there may be pressure to justify the expenditure by passing the thesis,” they state.

Chris Cowton, professor of financial ethics at the University of Huddersfield, was unconvinced by this argument, but said that the authors were right to raise the issue of “cliques and reciprocal examining practices”, in which supervisors seek out “people who they think will give candidates an easy time” and then themselves return the favour.

“It can be tricky because often there are not many academics in particular topics, but I don’t think we pick up on reciprocality enough,” said Professor Cowton, who added, however, that “cosiness between examiners” was worse decades ago when universities collected less data on this area.

Bruce Christianson, emeritus professor at the University of Hertfordshire’s Centre for Computer Science and Informatics, who led UKCGE’s review of PhDs by publication in 2015, said that there were “good reasons to encourage candidates to ‘publish as they go’, especially in STEM disciplines”, adding that there is a “huge opportunity cost [for requiring] students to spend a large chunk of time rewriting their outputs into a monograph-style dissertation that will not be widely read”.

“When papers replace a monograph like this, the way the viva is handled becomes even more important: examiners need to verify the candidate’s contribution, and their understanding,” added Professor Christianson, who called for “a more open process than it has traditionally been in the UK, for example by allowing attendance by other members of the department, as is common on the continent”.

Publicație : The Times

UK universities shift to teaching-only contracts ahead of REF

Latest Hesa data reveal universities where teaching-only numbers have increased the most

A number of UK universities appear to have made significant shifts towards classing many more academics as “teaching only”, figures reveal.

Data released by the Higher Education Statistics Agency show that about a fifth of institutions have increased the share of full-time teaching-only academics by 5 percentage points or more since 2015. Twelve universities now class at least a quarter of full-time academics in such terms.

The figures could fuel concerns that the rise in the use of teaching-only contracts is a response to the next research excellence framework, which is set to use the type of role as the main basis for whether staff must be entered. Universities will be expected to submit research for academics classed as “teaching and research” or research-only, but not those in teaching-only roles; moving academics who are perceived to be underperforming on to such contracts would be a way of improving an institution’s ratings.

Overall, 12.3 per cent of full-time academics were classed as teaching only in 2017-18, up from 9.6 per cent in 2014-15.

Of institutions employing more than 100 full-time academics in 2017-18, 11 saw the proportion of staff classed as teaching only rise by at least 10 percentage points, with the share climbing by more than 50 points at two, the University of the Arts London and the University of Gloucestershire.

Of UAL’s 490 full-time academics in 2014-15, only 45 were classed as teaching only, but this had risen to 450 out of a total of 550 (more than 80 per cent of staff) by 2017-18. Gloucestershire now has 58 per cent of its full-time staff classed as teaching only after moving from having 10 teaching-only academics to 180 over the period.

Although research-intensive universities were much more likely to submit staff to the last REF, the data show that some of these institutions have also been increasing their teaching-only numbers by relatively large amounts.

Queen Mary University of London had 105 full-time academics classed as teaching only in 2014-15 (representing 6.5 per cent of all staff), a figure that had risen to 245 in 2017-18 (13.2 per cent).

All three institutions were asked by Times Higher Education about the extent to which the approaching REF played a role in the changes, but none addressed this issue. A formal proposal that all research-active staff be submitted to REF 2021 first emerged in July 2016 as a recommendation of the review chaired by Lord Stern.

A spokesman for the University and College Union said that the figures raised serious questions about the potential for universities to “game the system”. Taken alongside the recent decision by research funders to allow universities to submit the work of staff who had been made redundant, it was “little wonder staff have little confidence in the REF”, he said.

A UAL spokeswoman said that its figures reflected the results of efforts, started in April 2016, to ensure that staff “were coded appropriately” for Hesa purposes. Only staff on the university’s research excellence “pathway” – classed as being active in teaching and research – are required to publish scholarship.

Gloucestershire said that it had “devoted significant time and effort” to “improving the clarity, completeness and consistency of our staff record, so that it more accurately reflects the actual profile of our academic staff”.

A Queen Mary spokesman said that it was committed to “ensuring fair and appropriate employment practices for all our staff”, and added that the Hesa figures on full-time teaching-only staff were “comparable with much of the rest of the Russell Group”.

Publicație : The Times

Careers intelligence: can stalled PhDs be rehabilitated?

Queen guitarist Brian May completed his PhD after enjoying rock stardom. Jack Grove looks at how doctoral dropouts can land second chances – and supervisors can help

Brian May’s reason for abandoning his PhD in 1974 was unique. The guitarist, then aged 26, had realised that he could not complete his astrophysics research at Imperial College London while also touring with Queen.

But his decision to restart his studies at Imperial 32 years later was less singular. Many PhD candidates pick up their studies, or consider doing so, after an extended break, although few wait as long as Dr May did to return to their PhD, which was awarded in 2007.

With doctoral candidates often taking a new job before writing up is complete, struggling with research or having to deal with illness or family issues, PhDs can be interrupted for many reasons. But the desire to gain a doctorate may remain strong.

However, restarting a PhD after a hiatus poses many challenges for doctoral candidates and their supervisors, said Chris Cowton, professor of financial ethics at the University of Huddersfield, whose paper on “delayed doctorates” was recently published in the International Journal of Management Education.

In it, Professor Cowton reflects on Dr May’s unlikely PhD journey and the revived doctorates of three students under his supervision, one of whom returned to empirical data collected 20 years earlier.

Reviving a PhD using old data – as the Queen guitarist did – is not always possible, acknowledged Professor Cowton. “It is likely, in some disciplines, that the field has moved on,” he told Times Higher Education. “If you are operating in an area where there are big teams of active researchers working, all of your original research questions may have already been answered.” Updating data may also prove “impractical, if not impossible” given the time lapse, he added.

This scenario is, however, less likely in the social sciences where researchers have often collected novel datasets that can still prompt worthwhile discussions, argued Professor Cowton.

“Even if the descriptive data might not be current, the relationships which they describe might have relevance to advancing understanding of an area,” he said. In one case discussed in his paper, a PhD study on NHS management structures started 15 years earlier still had contemporary resonance despite massive organisational and technological changes in the sector.

Modifying the original research question posed is one way to get around the difficulties of working with old data, although this approach can be risky, said Professor Cowton. A thesis can feel “contrived, perhaps even dishonest” if it does not reflect how the research was planned, although such “messiness” in adapting a study is not unusual for research projects, he added.

These issues can, however, be overcome if they are acknowledged and the data’s relevance to current literature is fully set out, Professor Cowton continued. In Dr May’s case, he was required to comment on new zodiacal dust observations made using satellites after 1974, and the links to his own research, before his doctorate was accepted.

Accepting that your PhD’s conclusions might be different, perhaps even more modest, than those you envisaged years earlier is wise, suggested Professor Cowton.

“It might not turn out to be the great PhD you expected to write, but many PhDs turn out this way,” he said, adding that “it probably won’t be as bad as you feared, but it might be the passable PhD you need”.

And doctoral examiners might not be as resistant to the idea of a thesis based on old data as candidates might fear, he said. Many will be used to reviewing for journal papers that have been a long time in writing and revising, and may themselves quote literature referencing older data.

That said, supervisors should check whether doctoral examiners are happy to judge a paper where candidates are focused on mainly old data, Professor Cowton advised. “I think it’s perfectly reasonable to put them on notice that old data is being used and if they have a fundamental objection to this, they can make it clear,” he said.

With concern growing over PhD dropout rates, academics should be more open to the idea of helping students to rehabilitate an interrupted doctorate, Professor Cowton argued. About a third of PhD students in Europe are failing to complete their PhD in six years – with an unknown amount of these stopping altogether, a European Universities Association survey revealed in January.

“We need to recognise that, in some fields, the major part of a doctorate is assembling a decent body of data,” said Professor Cowton, adding that supervisors must be “wise and sufficiently courageous to encourage candidates [to continue] where appropriate”

Publicație : The Times

The Story of Myth, by Sarah Iles Johnston

Book of the week: Robert Segal on a work that strives to restore the centrality of narrative to tales as old as time

The title of this book is likely intended as a pun. Not only is the book a study of myth, but it argues that myth is itself at heart a story – or as the author, like others these days, prefers, “narrative”. Sarah Johnston, a well-known classicist at Ohio State University, maintains that the narrative element of myth has sometimes lost its centrality, and she strives to restore it. For her, one key to narrative is ritual. Myth must be appreciated for more than its content. Myth is not like a book in the library. It is, or was, “performed”. Myth, for Johnston, is like a play. It must “engage” the audience and must entertain. The ritualistic aspect of myth is the connection of the text to its enactment.

The author enlists many experts on fiction and uses them most helpfully. But she seems unfamiliar with the contemporary focus on narrative among philosophers – most grandly, Hayden White and Louis Mink. They assert that philosophical explanations, such as myths for Johnston, should be seen as akin to fiction. The figures whom she cites for ignoring the narrative aspect of myth are the old-timers, E. B. Tylor and J. G. Frazer. But she misses the reason they do so: they see myth as the primitive counterpart to science, which is modern. They ignore narrative because they see myth as a causal explanation of physical events rather than as a story. For them, myth is not like literature.

A concentration on narrative means a concentration on context. The importance of context is scarcely new and really goes back to Bronisław Malinowski, for whom myth cannot be grasped when merely read; myth is recognised as other – or more – than scientific-like explanation when seen live in action by field-working observers. That is why he downplays the explanatory, or intellectualist, function of myth. Johnston mentions him but might have accorded him more credit. It is he, arguing against “armchair anthropologists” such as Tylor, who pioneers the study of myth as performance.

Johnston has a shaky familiarity with theories of myth and ritual. For William Robertson Smith, the undisputed pioneering “myth ritualist”, myth eventually becomes independent of ritual and therefore advances beyond its initial dependence. Myth becomes an explanation of the world, just as for Tylor, whom Smith was originally opposing. For Frazer, the chief myth-ritualist, myth-ritualism does not, as Johnston asserts, emerge between his first and second stages of culture. In the first stage, there is magic and therefore ritual, but no gods and therefore no myths. In the second stage, there are gods and therefore myths, but myths do not operate in conjunction with rituals. Myth-ritualism comes after, not between, the stages of magic and religion, despite their purported incompatibility. In this third pre-scientific stage, myth-ritualism brings back the first of Frazer’s laws of magic, that of imitation, and combines it with the myth, from the stage of religion, of the death and rebirth of the god of vegetation.

For Frazer, myth is equal in importance to ritual. Yet Jane Ellen Harrison, the leader of the group of classicists who developed the myth-ritualist theory for Greece, makes myth even more important. For her, myth itself, not just ritual, has magical efficacy. For Frazer, myth offers only the script for ritual. Johnston misses the big irony in Harrison’s dependence on Frazer, if also her independence of him. Frazer comes to repudiate Harrison and the other ritualists – above all in his translation for the Loeb Classical Library of The Library by the mythographer Apollodorus. Frazer becomes a Tylorean – the nemesis of the ritualists.

Presenting dozens of theorists of myth and ritual in her first chapter, Johnston gets them mostly right but sometimes slips up. For example, the heart of the myth-ritualism of the structuralist Claude Lévi-Strauss is his pitting myth against ritual rather than, like every other myth-ritualist, paralleling them. They become an opposing binary pair.

The author continually castigates those who take myth out of its ritualistic performance for thereby “essentialising” it. But this is a misuse, albeit a common one, of the term “essence”, which, strictly, is a metaphysical and not an empirical claim. Theorists of anything seek the similarities that account for the origin and function of, here, myth. These similarities amount to the basic nature of myth, but not thereby to its essence. The essence of water, to use the conventional example, is H2O. It is not the fact that all water is wet. That in all myths, let us claim, the agents are gods is still not its essence.

The focus on similarities, according to Johnston, eliminates the particularities of any myth – for example, the names of its characters – and thereby misses exactly the way myth makes an impact on listeners and spectators. True, myths, unlike fairy tales, do name their figures rather than generalise about them by calling them, for example, “the old man” or “the beauty”. But then the naming of figures becomes a common characteristic of all myths. Furthermore, theories of myth must logically eliminate the differences between one myth and another in order to be able to encompass them all. Theories do not deny particulars. They deny the importance of particulars.

On the one hand, Johnston surveys the study of myth per se. On the other hand, she writes almost entirely on just Greek myth. She notes that Greek myth differs from myths elsewhere, but then why not put “Greek” in the title? As applicable to the study of myth worldwide as her book is, it is not itself a study of myth.

There are brilliant chapters on myth as narrative. Johnston maintains that the world of gods – the secondary world, to use a term from J. R. R. Tolkien – is not as rigidly separate from the human, or primary, world as is often assumed. Gods are not humans, but they are close to humans. Myth becomes real because gods are plausible and because myth takes place in a time and a place not so far removed from the present, human one. The world of myth is not the world of, say, science fiction.

The book distinguishes between five kinds of character in Greek myth. Johnston also works out a spectrum of heroes, who range from those close to gods to those far away. She observes that heroes were far more numerous in Greece than in other ancient Mediterranean cultures. She also discusses a characteristic found much more often in Greek than in even Hindu mythology: metamorphoses, or the transformation of humans into animals, plants and minerals.

While she covers many theories, Johnston ignores psychological ones, especially Freudian and Jungian ones. Their focus on the projection of the reader’s or spectator’s mind on to mythic characters explains much more fully the impact of myth. The real hero or god is the reader or spectator. Myth is autobiography.

Still, Johnston’s is an excellent overview of Greek myth and is much more sophisticated than G. S. Kirk’s Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and other Cultures (1973) or Eric Csapo’s Theories of Mythology (2005).

The author

Sarah Iles Johnston, professor of Classics and comparative studies (and distinguished professor of religion) at The Ohio State University, was born in Bowling Green, Ohio, but grew up all over the Midwest and Upper East Coast of the US. Although she was always interested in Greek mythology, it was during a BA in Classics and then a BS in magazine journalism at the University of Kansas that she discovered “ways to look at myths that were completely new to me” and acquired “a deep respect for well-constructed stories (factual or fictional), which, years later, helped me think about the importance of how myths were narrated in Ancient Greece”.

In earlier books such as Ancient Greek Divination (2008), Johnston has written about religious practices but, given that “for the past 30 years or so, myth has been largely disregarded by people who study Ancient Greece”, she “decided to buck that trend and return to what had always been my deepest interest. New work on how such things as TV shows, films and novels are narrated encouraged me to do so…”

Since most people are unaware of the contexts Johnston describes in her new book, why are many of us still haunted by the stories of Greek mythology? “Because when Greek myths are skilfully narrated,” she replies, “they are among the most exciting stories ever created. The characters are engaging because they are complex and motivated by their emotions to make difficult choices. Remarkable – even marvellous, unbelievable! – things happen: gigantic nine-headed snakes are battled, heroes wear magical sandals to fly through the air, witches use potions to turn men into pigs. And, finally, all of this takes place within a single larger story-world in which the people and their adventures are interlaced with one another, much as they are today in a long-running TV series such as Nashville or Scandal.”

Publicație : The Times

Creatures of Cain: The Hunt for Human Nature in Cold War America, by Erika Lorraine Milam

The ‘killer ape’ theory of violent behaviour managed to grip the public imagination for many years, learns Marcia Holmes

In the 1960s, three books would capture Americans’ imagination about humankind’s evolutionary past. Konrad Lorenz’s On Aggression (1963), Robert Ardrey’s The Territorial Imperative (1966) and Desmond Morris’ The Naked Ape (1967) had important differences in emphasis and scientific rigour. Yet together they effectively introduced the notion of humans as “killer apes”, sweeping aside anthropological accounts that emphasised the endless adaptability of human cultures. Drawing on studies of ethology with a pronounced enthusiasm, Lorenz, Ardrey and Morris portrayed human behaviour – from tool use to social relations – as traceable to humans’ (specifically, men’s) biological impulse to be violent. Erika Lorraine Milam’s Creatures of Cain tells the story of the intellectual rise and fall of this evolutionary account of human aggression, and its popularisation within post-war US culture.

These three books – with their highly gendered and outré interpretation of human behaviour – would likely not have had the impact they did, Milam argues, if it were not for the cultural environment in which they circulated. Writing for popular audiences rather than scientists, the purveyors of the killer ape theory not only made use of Americans’ post-war demand for mass market paperbacks on scientific topics, but also benefited from the growing number of films, television shows and magazines, produced for niche audiences, in which provocative ideas could be aired. As controversial films such as Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs and Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange would attest, by the early 1970s many Americans were familiar with essentialist explanations of humans’ capacity for violence (even if they disputed them from a variety of political perspectives).

According to Milam, what sank the killer ape theory was not waning popular interest in biological theories of human nature, nor the progressivist critiques mounted by feminists, anti-racists and others. What did the trick was new evidence from primatologists that humans are hardly alone in their murderous behaviour. However, the intellectual foundation (some would say flaw) of the killer ape theory, its biological determinism, survived into the 1970s and beyond by taking new form within the genetic arguments of an emerging field, sociobiology. Sociobiological accounts of human nature appeared just as retrograde and unjustified to the scientists who had rallied against the killer ape theory. However, the battlefield changed in at least one significant way: while earlier controversies were hammered out in popular as well as scientific circles, both proponents and critics of sociobiology insisted on distinguishing between popular accounts of their ideas and professional academic arguments.

Milam’s book provides a nuanced intellectual history of the debates about human nature that emerged at the interface between anthropology, biology and ethology – debates that largely played out during the 1960s and 1970s in the wild and woolly area between US scientific and popular cultures. She follows a large cast of colourful personalities, setting their actions against a teeming backdrop of popular media, academic politics and social unrest. Since she sometimes seems agnostic about the bigger picture in her detailed reconstructions, this can sometimes make for slow going. Nonetheless, Creatures of Cain provides a multifaceted and original discussion of the curious life of the “killer ape” theory within American culture.

Publicație : The Times

 

Parcoursup: nos conseils avant la fin des vœux le 14 mars

Les élèves de terminale et étudiants en réorientation n’ont plus qu‘un jour pour faire leurs vœux sur la plateforme d’orientation Parcoursup. La date limite a été fixée au 14 mars à 23 h 59.

Les lycéens de terminale et les étudiants souhaitant changer d’orientation n’ont plus qu’un jour pour s’inscrire sur la plateforme Parcoursup, légèrement amendée après les critiques dont elle fut la cible lors de sa première édition en 2018. Passé jeudi 14 mars minuit, heure de Paris, il sera trop tard pour émettre des vœux de formation dans l’enseignement supérieur.

Jusqu’à 10 vœux et 20 sous-voeux

Comme l’an dernier, les jeunes désirant entamer des études après le bac peuvent inscrire jusqu’à dix vœux, avec possibilité de sous-vœux (jusqu’à 20) pour certaines formations (par exemple un BTS «Métiers de la chimie» dans plusieurs établissements).

Le candidat inscrit ses vœux mais ne les classe pas. C’est la grande différence avec le dispositif précédent, APB, qui obligeait le candidat à décider, plusieurs mois avant le bac, de la formation qu’il plaçait au-dessus des autres, avec la mise en œuvre de stratégies pas toujours payantes.

Une fois passée l’échéance de jeudi, les élèves de Terminale et étudiants en réorientation ne pourront pas rajouter de vœux mais pourront en revanche en supprimer, jusqu’au 3 avril.

Il est recommandé de faire plusieurs vœux

Derniers conseils pour ceux qui n’ont toujours pas créé de dossier sur Parcoursup ou inscrit de vœux: les jeunes doivent entrer une adresse électronique qui leur permettra de recevoir des informations tout au long de la procédure, ainsi qu’un identifiant figurant sur les bulletins de notes. Les jeunes en situation de handicap peuvent, s’ils le souhaitent, remplir une fiche de liaison.

Pour les vœux, il est recommandé d’en inscrire plusieurs (l’an dernier, les lycéens en avaient inscrit huit en moyenne) et de ne pas candidater qu’à des filières sélectives (classes prépa, BTS, IUT).

Avec Parcoursup, tous les dossiers peuvent être, en théorie, classés par les universités, y compris pour les filières non sélectives que sont les licences générales. C’est un des points les plus contestés par les opposants à Parcoursup qui dénoncent l’instauration d’un système de sélection.

Anonymisation partielle des dossiers

Comme l’avait révélé le Figaro Étudiant, la grande nouveauté de cette année est l’anonymisation des dossiers.

Le nom, le prénom, l’adresse et l’âge du candidat ne seront pas dévoilés aux formations auxquelles le jeune postule, «dès lors que ces données ne sont pas nécessaires à un examen éclairé du dossier», a récemment annoncé le ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur.

Ainsi, les données ne seront pas anonymisées pour les formations qui proposent un internat, prévoient un entretien ou un concours, ou recrutent par la voie de l’apprentissage.

Dans tous les cas, le sexe et le lycée d’origine du candidat resteront visibles. Or les détracteurs de la plateforme réclamaient justement le retrait des informations sur le lycée du futur bachelier car ils soupçonnent les formations post-bac de pondérer les notes en fonction de la bonne ou mauvaise réputation de l’établissement.

Prochaine échéance: le 3 avril

Parcoursup regroupe quelque 14 000 formations publiques et privées (85% du total des formations). Il a intégré cette année les 350 instituts de formations aux soins infirmiers (Ifsi) et les 150 établissements de formation en travail social (EFTS). En 2020, toutes les formations reconnues par l’Etat auront l’obligation d’être sur la plateforme.

La prochaine échéance est le 3 avril: les candidats devront d’ici cette date confirmer leurs vœux, écrire quelques lignes pour motiver leur projet de formation et compléter leur dossier pour les formations qui le réclament.

Les réponses commenceront à tomber, au fil de l’eau, à partir du 15 mai, et ce jusqu’au 19 juillet pour la phase principale. Elles seront suspendues pendant les épreuves écrites du bac du 17 au 24 juin. La phase complémentaire, ouverte aux candidats qui n’ont essuyé que des refus ou qui changent de vœux, est elle ouverte du 25 juin au 14 septembre.

Publicație : Le Figaro

Le classement 2019 des écoles de commerce du Figaro

EXCLUSIF – Le Figaro dévoile en exclusivité son classement 2019 des écoles de commerce. Il valorise cette année l’excellence académique, les relations entreprises et le rayonnement international des écoles.

Ces 38  écoles de commerce sont les meilleures de France. Toutes ont le grade master et sont donc habilitées à délivrer des diplômes de niveau bac + 5. Si elles n’ont pas toutes le même niveau, elles peuvent toutefois se targuer de la qualité de leur enseignement: leurs taux d’insertion professionnelle très élevés et les salaires de leurs diplômés à l’embauche en attestent d’ailleurs.

» LIRE AUSSI – Le classement complet des écoles de commerce

Cette année encore, Le Figaro ne déroge pas à la règle et publie son classement des écoles de commerce 2019. Comme chaque année, l’indétrônable HEC conserve sa première place grâce, notamment, à la qualité de son corps professoral et à son ultradomination dans les classements internationaux. Derrière, le trio de tête est complété par l’Essec (2e), et l’ESCP Europe (3e), toutes deux toujours au top en ce qui concerne l’excellence académique.

Derrière, plusieurs écoles se distinguent. C’est par exemple le cas de Skema(7e) et Kedge (9e), qui, comme l’an dernier, améliorent leur position grâce à leur forte présence internationale ainsi qu’à leurs excellentes relations avec les entreprises. Autre progression cette année: Neoma, l’école présidée par Michel-Édouard Leclerc, le PDG du groupe Lerclerc, intègre le prestigieux top 10 du Figaro.

Labels et classements internationaux

Parmi les critères utilisés pour élaborer ce classement, l’excellence académique (labels internationaux, nombre d’enseignants-chercheurs et de publications académiques, etc.) et le rayonnement international (pourcentage de professeurs étrangers, durée des stages et expatriations hors de France, classements internationaux, etc.) occupent une place très importante. Une cinquantaine de responsables d’entreprise ont également donné leur avis sur les différentes écoles françaises. Car une fois leur diplôme obtenu, ce sont bien à eux que les étudiants d’écoles de commerce auront à faire.

* Classement réalisé par Sophie de Tarlé, Wally Bordas, Camille Lecuit accompagnés par la junior entreprise de l’ENSAE.

 Le top 10 du classement des écoles de commerce en France

Le Figaro établit un palmarès des écoles de management en France délivrant le grade de master. Parmi ces 38 «business schools, voici les dix meilleurs établissements, toutes accessibles après un concours sélectif.

Publicație : Le Figaro