Learning Accountability From Bologna: A Higher Education Policy Primer

Outlines issues from the European Higher Education Area's Bologna Process, a framework for standardizing degree qualifications, credits and curriculum reform, and supplementary documentation. Suggests changes to raise accountability in U.S. institutions

The Spaces Between Numbers: Getting International Data on Higher Education Straight

Argues that the participation and attainment data used in international comparisons do not reflect the performance objectives of higher education systems. Suggests economic and demographic frameworks for interpreting data and changes in data collection

The impact of transcranial direct current stimulation on inhibitory control in young adults

In recent years, many important discoveries have been made to challenge current policy, guidelines, and practice regarding how best to prevent stroke associated with atherosclerotic stenosis of the origin of the internal carotid artery. TheUnited States Center forMedicare andMedicaid Services (CMS), for instance, is calling for expert advice as to whether its current policies should be modified. Using a thorough review of literature, 41 leading academic stroke-prevention clinicians from the United States and other countries, have united to advise CMS not to extend current reimbursement indications for carotid angioplasty/stenting (CAS) to patients with asymptomatic carotid stenosis or to patients with symptomatic carotid stenosis considered to be at low or standard risk from carotid endarterectomy (CEA). It was concluded that such expansion of reimbursement indications would have disastrous health and economic consequences for the United States and any other country that may follow such inappropriate action. This was an international effort because the experts to best advise CMS are relatively few and scattered around the world. In addition, US health policy, practice, and research have tended to have strong influences on other countries. © 2012 The Authors. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc

Use and problems in the language of discipline-based qualification statements: learning from Tuning and its analogues

This essay is an empirical account of English language use, across three continents, in 40 Tuning and analogous discipline-based statements of desired demonstrated competences and learning outcomes in higher education. It is primarily concerned with lexical and semantic matters, takes the perspective of the student as the primary reader and beneficiary of these statements, and is as much proscriptive as it is analytical. It provides frequencies of verbs used in such statements, flags commonly but unacceptable verbs and syntax, offers a different grouping of competence-oriented verbs from that inherited from Bloom et al’s Taxonomy, and suggests what we should do in revisiting statements of learning outcomes that have taken root in the literature

What Happens to Graduates? Contrasting Views of Two Systems

Two surveys of college graduates in large higher education systems, the U.S. and Europe, are presented in terms of their purposes, structural differences, thematic variations, and divergences.  The U.S. system has been operating since 1993; the European Graduate Survey is, at present, only a design, completed in 2016. Both are necessary for system accountability and student guidance