Tag Archives: Higher Education

Hidden Figures: Women in Higher Education

Posted on by

I must admit that when I first heard about Hidden Figures I doubted going to see the movie at the theater. My first thought was: mmm a movie about space and engineers… not sure if I want to go. However, when I read about the movie and learned that it was about three women that worked at NASA in the 60’s that helped send men to the moon for the first time, I started to get curious about it. I convinced my husband and a lot of friends to go and have a nice afternoon watching the other side of the coin of how NASA developed space exploration. After 2 hours and 7 minutes, a few cries and a lot of excitement and emotions, the movie ended. Most of us, including men in the group, concluded that this was one of the best or even the best movie nominated to the Oscars for best picture that we had seen.

This movie was a huge success despite being far away from the Hollywood prototype. It is not big on special effects or science fiction, it is violence free, not a romantic comedy and not lead by men (in 2016 females made up just 29% of protagonist in the top 100 films at the U.S. box office). Instead Hidden Figures uses chalkboards, old calculators, and human computers to tell us the story of three brilliant African-American women; Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, who changed United States history despite the dominant racial segregation of the time.

It was wartime and the American government needed all the support to win the race to space. White mathematician women graduated from the best colleges in the country, found work at Langley Research Center and were part of the East Computers group. Their counterparts, the West Computers could not use the same bathroom, nor sit at the same table in the cafeteria during times of racial segregation. However, they helped send the man to the moon. They challenged the country’s educational statistics and gave more than 40 years of life to NASA. The strength and dedication of these women is incredible.  They lived in a United States in which only 2% of African American women studied a career and of them, 60% became teachers of primary and secondary public education. With a brutal self-esteem, they explained to their boss, a white man, that their calculations were more precise and that they could, in fact, reach the moon. What was most remarkable for me was to see these talented women devoted in helping their country protect the US political hegemony during the Cold War, despite the fact that each day of their lives, especially at work, they felt like outsiders in their own country. Regardless of this, they never gave up. On the contrary they worked even harder to get there since they knew that was their only way to achieve professional success.

The three of them had Higher Education. Katherine Johnson started College at the age of 14, she entered West Virginia State College (now West Virginia State University), a historically black college, from where she graduated with degrees in Mathematics and French at the age of 18. Later, she enrolled in a graduate math program and was the first African-American women to attend graduate school at West Virginia University. However, she quit after one year, because she became pregnant and choose to focus on her family. Mary Jackson earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physical science from the Hampton University from Hampton, Virginia, also a historically black University. While working at NASA with the engineer Kazimierz Czarnecki, she enrolled in a night program by the University of Virginia, held at the all-white Hampton High School. After winning her petitioning to the City of Hampton to allow her to attend classes, she took graduate-level courses in math’s and physics in order to qualify to be promoted to and engineer. Once she completed the courses, she was promoted to aerospace engineer, and became NASA’s first African-American female engineer. Finally, Dorothy Vaughan graduated with a B.A. in mathematics at the age of 19 from Wilberforce University, also a historically black college.

Today we have a more even number of women and men in higher education, even in some countries like the U.S. more women than men attend university (60.1% versus 57.6% in 2015), however when talking about STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) we see low female participation. This movie is a huge incentive to get more high school students, especially women and minorities, to pursue STEM careers. Many schools took their students to see Hidden figures in order to try to boost interest in engineering and STEM careers in general, showing them that if those three women were able to do at times of race and gender discrimination, they are more than capable of succeeding at NASA or the STEM world nowadays.

There is still a lot to achieve in terms of gender equality, and the fact that it took us more than 50 years to know this story proves that gender equality is still an underlying issue and there is much room for improvement. I would like to thank Margot Lee Shetterly, the author of the book “Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race”, the book in which the movie was based. Thanks to her we were able to know this remarkable and inspiring story that serves as an example and inspiration for every woman and minority around the world, showing them that with higher education and hard work they can achieve their goals and dreams.

Press here if you would like to see the movie trailer

Source: Educational Attainment in the United Sates: 2015. By Camille L. Ryan and Kurt Bauman. March 2016. Retrieved from: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/demo/p20-578.pdf

Higher Education, MOOCs, and Illiberal Governance

Posted on by

In the same way that debates are presently taking place regarding the organization and administration of systems of higher education, discussion as to the organization of states themselves and their relationship with each other is likewise occurring. In those nations where governmental power is derived through the ballot box, much attention has been paid to whether there is a correlation between a person’s education level and their support for policies that promote cultural openness and liberalism. Analysis of voter preferences in several recent polls seem to indicate that individuals who have completed higher education tend to be more positively disposed toward policies which promote openness and inclusion than those who have not. At the same time, recent elections have given rise to leaders that threaten the liberal order, as in the Philippines, and elsewhere, once-democratic leaders have tended towards illiberalism in countries like Hungary, Turkey, and the Ukraine.

Recently, these two debates came to a head in Hungary, where illiberal Prime Minister Viktor Orban used a parliamentary majority to pass a law targeting academic freedoms. One university, in particular, has been the target of Orban’s ire for several years. Central European University in Budapest, was founded in 1991 by George Soros’ Open Society Foundations to reintroduce liberal thought in post-Soviet Eastern Europe. Orban, meanwhile, most often makes headlines for his government’s staunch opposition to EU migration policy and for closing Hungary’s borders to refugees. Technically, the university is accredited to award graduate and doctoral degrees in both the U.S. and Hungary, however, the sole physical campus is in Budapest. Orban’s new law forbids this practice: now foreign universities must have a campus in their country of origin to operate a satellite campus in Hungary.

Orban’s persecution of CEU has inspired outrage throughout the academic community. Michael Ignatieff, former professor at Harvard and Oxford, leader of the Canadian Liberal party, and current President of CEU, has been an outspoken critic of Orban at the global level. Outside of CEU staff, Cas Mudde, noted scholar on European populism, used an editorial in The Guardian to call upon the EU to intervene on behalf of liberal freedoms. After 70,000 people protested the move in Budapest last month, the EU presented Orban with an official notice this week, calling on his government to explain the ‘breach of EU law.’ This is considered the first step in bringing a legal penalty against Orban, however, it is largely contingent upon Hungary’s cooperation in the process. As a result, CEU’s fate remains unclear.

Orban’s effort, while posing a threat to democracy and intellectual freedom, could well be undermined by today’s unprecedented individual mobility and global technological integration. Orban can shut down an American university, but he cannot stop the flow of ideas from America and other countries to Hungary. Just take China as an example. While the Chinese government banned Facebook, Twitter and popular Western social media sites, people in China found ways to access these sites and spread their know-hows on the Internet. Meanwhile Turkey, where some 5,000 academics have been fired or arrested in response to the failed July coup, is an ongoing case study in whether the global knowledge sharing economy can actively overcome illiberal domestic policies.

In today’s technological landscape of high-speed internet and free social media sites, ideas can spread cheaply and almost instantaneously. Governments can shut down the physical form of a university, but the function of the university – a democratic hub for idea exchange and intellectual development – has been shared by the Internet, even before the rise of MOOCs. The most effective way to stop the exchange of global ideas, perhaps, is by completely shutting down the Internet, which is not something that China, Turkey, or Hungary would seriously attempt.

The Universality of Literature: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

Posted on by

– Angélica Creixell

Literature has the power to transport readers to different times in the history of a country. Rather than stating facts and chronological events, authors situate and educate readers about a reality through characterization, metaphors, settings and, essentially, the plot. A novel can be a form of expression for authors to subtly, or not so subtly, protest against historic periods or governmental regimes. It can enhance higher education by teaching indirectly through narratives and imagery. Such is the case of Dai Sijie.

Born on March 2, 1954, in Putian, China, he was sent to the Sichuan Providence for his re-education during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Afterward, he sought refuge in France and became a filmmaker. Years later trying to succeed in this form of art, he found the magic and universality of literature. In “Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress,” he portrays the re-education reality of two young men, Luo, and the narrator, who are sent to the countryside to learn from illiterate farmers in a semi-autobiographic novel. Together they share the hardships of their new life and then fall in love with the same girl, a seamstress.  They also meet Four Eyes, another young man from the same town who has a secret trunk full of books of Western literature – banned by the Communist regime. It is through literature that they discover the meaning of love, new ideas and the power of imagination. In the novel, literature represents freedom as it gives faith to the characters to overcome any obstacle. It becomes their channel of education in the middle of the mountains.

The novel’s subtle criticism was enough for it to be banned by the Chinese government. When talking about this, Dai Sijie stated, “It wasn’t that I touched the Cultural Revolution … they did not accept that Western literature could change a Chinese girl. I explained that classical literature is a universal heritage, but to no avail.” This novel about literature and love is an ode to the universality of literature and education. After its worldwide success, Dai Sijie directed the movie of the book. For me, it is one of the rare cases where the movie might be better than the book. As a filmmaker, Dai converts the novel’s simple language into beautiful images and palpable nostalgia as the two young men discover themselves in literature, Balzac, and love for the same seamstress. The film ends differently from the novel, as the two young men meet again in Beijing years later, possibly after completing graduate degrees in the United States and Europe, as did Dai Sijie with his former companions after the Cultural Revolution.

Sources and reviews:

Allen, Brooke. “A Suitcase Education.” The New York Times. Sept. 16, 2001. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/16/books/a-suitcase-education.html

Riding, Alan. “Artistic Odyssey: Film to Fiction to Film.” The New York Times. July 25, 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/27/movies/MoviesFeatures/artistic-odyssey-film-to-fiction-to-film.html

 

The share of private institution in HE across Asian countries

Posted on by
Hi class,
As this class comes closer to the end, I feel like delving into another important factor of HE across Asian countries – the role of private institutions.
For comparison, I attached data from Asian Development Bank (https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/29869/private-higher-education-across-asia.pdf) about private enrollment and institutional share.
Moreover, it presents a kind of typology classifying each country in Asia into 3 categories (see below).
To me it seems that each country’s situation reflects not only on their economic situation but also on social and political contexts and government policies related to HE.
Here are questions for discussion;
1. How do you relate each country’s situation to government policies that we covered or not in the class?
2. This data is in late 2000s – do you see drastic changes to this trend nowadays and if so, what’s the driver?
Thanks for reading!
Hiro

Characterizing the Globalized African University

Posted on by

This week I found an article which analyzes the station of higher education in Africa. We haven’t yet dealt with African cases in class, so I figured that this might be a topic of interest. The article “The African University as ‘Global’ University” was written by Isaac Kamola, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Trinity College.

Kamola argues that, despite a low matriculation rate of 3% in sub-Saharan Africa, it is intellectually valuable to analyze African universities as global universities. The main thrust is that the ‘globe’ has had an indelible effect on the development of the African university- whether by colonization or the international finance regime- and that the objective for policymakers today is to distinguish between what is African about the university system and what is not.

Perhaps the most interesting point Kamola raises, concerns the role of the World Bank in impeding the development of African higher education. In the years following decolonization, many African states faced financial crises, which they sought to solve with loans from the World Bank. As a condition of the loan, the World Bank mandated austerity measures targeting, among other things, higher education spending. The cuts inspired street protests by university students who were met with violent crackdowns by military and police forces. Today however, the World Bank prioritizes higher education as an essential pathway in economic development. All this provides an interesting backdrop for Kamola’s thesis: that despite it’s low domestic enrollment, lack of research, and lack of international students, African universities are wary of anymore globalization.

For me the piece raises interesting questions about the proper course of higher education policy in developing countries. Should states prioritize creating national universities, which may be directed towards addressing domestic policy problems and fostering locally-sourced solutions, or prioritize university globalization? Is it even possible to make that decision as a developing country when the Western model and its emphasis on internationalization is so dominant globally? How else do you foster a culturally-specific intellectual tradition?

With these questions, I’m reminded of the discussions we had early on this semester regarding the significance of a university’s ‘legacy’ when making admissions decisions. At the time, we were concerned with how a recently established, campus-less university would attract students compared to a similarly ranked conventional university. From Kamola’s perspective, similar questions apply to universities with a colonial legacy, and also to more recently established institutions that continue to be patterned on the Western model. While, he is less concerned with admissions decisions than with cultural cohesion, his answer is that establishing an African university is more important to the continent’s long-term development than simply establishing universities in Africa.

Comparative Data Show that Chinese Progress in Higher Education yet to Turn Tide

Posted on by

In the past few weeks, we talked about higher education in Japan, South Korea, China, and India. Recently, THE DataPoints (Times Higher Education) provides a set of useful and interesting comparative data between China and three major Asian countries respectively: India, South Korea, and Japan.

Here is the news published on THE:

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/chinas-universities-significant-progress-more-do

The article reveals where Chinese universities are starting to outpace their rivals, as well as illustrating where China is still relatively lagging behind.

China VS India

chinavindia1500

The China-India chart shows that China has surpassed India on most measures. It can be attributed to several reasons:

  • The higher HE investment of the Chinese government
  • Successful and dynamic policies attracting its talents back home and international students studying in China
  • The development of research collaborations between industry and academia

However, one metric proves a blog posted two weeks ago that India has a higher number of doctorates awarded than China.

China VS South Korea

chinavsouthkorea1500

The article gives a high rating to South Korea’s HE system. THE data scientist said that “South Korea was the shining example to any education ministry about how to improve their university sector.” There are two key aspects that China needs to catch up:

  • The diversity of money sources – the government, industry, and student fees
  • International collaboration – a key way to improve citation impact

However, although there is a gap between the two countries now, the article is optimistic about the future development of China’s higher education because of the outpouring of support from the Chinese government.

China VS Japan

chinavjapan1500

I remember that Sho talked about the evolution of the balance between private and public funding in Japan’s HE. The China-Japan chart shows that Japan’s universities are behind both China and South Korea on the amount of income that universities are attracting from industry.

It is very interesting that Japan has a much higher staff-to-student ratio than China. However, the article claims that it is because of the collapse of the youth population in the country and it brings serious challenges for Japan to keep its leading role in Asia and globally.

 

Questions: Do you think that the data and metrics THE Data picked up reflect the real situation in your country? Why? Does this article present the future layout of Asian HE?

“Nationalizing” Higher Education Curriculum

Posted on by

RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat speaking during the conference in Delhi University

Article: https://thewire.in/119147/rss-du-workshop-indian-values/

In a conference organized by the RSS (a right-wing Hindu volunteer organization linked to the ruling party of India) at the Delhi University and attended by over 700 academics from universities across the country, one of the discussion topic was about how to instill “a true nationalist narrative in [India’s] educational system”, “reach out to students with an Indianized form of educational content”. Some conference participants believe that the content taught in Indian university “is all about the west” and fails to teach students the achievements and contributions of Indians to the world.

From your personal experience or otherwise, do you agree that university curriculums or the teaching of academics in higher education tend to be overly western-centric?  In fact, recently, there was a campaign by students from London’s School of Oriental and African Studies to “decolonize the curriculum”[1] as they claimed that white/western philosophers and their theories/view dominated what is being taught at the university. If intellectual diversity along cultural lines is desirable, how can we ensure this in universities?

The article also raises the larger question on the purpose of education, especially from the perspective of the government. Do you agree that universities should play a role in fostering nationalism strengthening the sense of national identity? If so, what about foreign students in the universities? Has your country tried to “nationalize” the higher education curriculum in any way?

[1] See: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/soas-university-of-london-students-union-white-philosophers-curriculum-syllabus-a7515716.html, https://www.soas.ac.uk/blogs/study/decolonising-curriculum-whats-the-fuss/, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/10/soas-students-study-philosophy-africa-asia-european-pc-snowflakes

Gender Parity Index and more

Posted on by
Hi class! This time our data team focuses on Gender Parity Index across countries.
Gender Parity Index (GPI) is a socioeconomic index usually designed to measure the relative access to education of males and females. It is calculated as the quotient of the number of females by the number of males enrolled in a given stage of education. (If the value is less than 1, then it means that the number of males enrolled is greater than that of females enrolled)
Here is the source from UNStats.
https://unstats.un.org/unsd/mdg/SeriesDetail.aspx?srid=614

And this is my summary!
U.S.A.: 1.37 (in 2013)
China: 1.15 (in 2013)
Peru : 1.09 (in 2010)
Pakistan: 0.98 (in 2013)
Mexico: 0.96 (in 2013)
India: 0.92 (in 2013)
Japan: 0.90 (in 2012)
Viet Nam: 0.90 (in 2013)
Korea: 0.75 (in 2014)
Singapore: – (no data found)
To be honest, I’m very surprised by the fact there is less differences across Asian countries than I thought and there is almost no correlation with gross enrollment ratio that I posted last time (http://edblogs.columbia.edu/inafu6653-001-2017-1/2017/02/08/international-comparison-gross-enrollment-ratio/). Another striking fact is Korea and Japan is lagging behind even within Asian countries.
And rather than just showing this alone, we also wanna share World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Rankings in 2016. This index is composed mainly of four factors (economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment)
U.S.A.: 45th
Singapore: 55th
Viet Nam: 65th
Mexico: 66th
Peru : 80th
India: 87th
China: 99th
Japan: 111th
Korea: 116th
Pakistan: 143rd
Anything strikes you? Please share and discuss it!