All Posts Tagged With: "private university"
New Brunswick shuts down private online university
There are certain standards that have to be abided to that are not the same standards as you may have for a little convenience store
A private online university based in New Brunswick will close by the end of the year after questions arose about its administration and finances, but the school says the shutdown is unfair. The province’s Department of Post-Secondary Education ordered Lansbridge University to close after three reviews found problems with the school’s operations.
The concerns over Lansbridge date back to December 2007, when a review by the Maritime Provinces Higher Education Commission was launched. It found that Lansbridge had failed to meet 10 of 16 benchmarks for post-secondary schools, including dispute resolution, student protection and financial stability. In February 2009, the post-secondary education minister ordered that Lansbridge comply with four conditions: inform its students that it had failed the assessment, address the commission’s concerns, implement a student protection agreement, and pay for a second review.
Rene Boudreau, New Brunswick’s director of post-secondary affairs, says the department did not immediately shut down the school after the first assessment because it believed the university had potential to improve.
Lansbridge underwent the second review, which concluded the school had not made sufficient progress. The department then ordered an investigation conducted by academic governance experts, which confirmed the findings of the first two reviews. The department ordered the school effectively shuttered.
Lansbridge president Ernest Smith did not return calls seeking comment. But in a statement, the school disputed the department’s decision. “We are stunned as to why the (degree-granting) license was revoked. Our programs have been deemed by our students and faculty as above average,” Lansbridge said in a statement. The school said it will prepare a response to the department.
Mireille Duguay, CEO of the commission that carried out the first two reviews, said Lansbridge lacked credibility. “If you’re going to be granting degrees in this province, the institution that will grant those degrees … has to be credible in the pan-Canadian perspective,” she said. “As such, (there) are certain standards that have to be abided to that are not the same standards as you may have for a little convenience store.”
The business school had been offering MBA programs to more than 150 students, most of whom are Canadian.
The Canadian Press
The sneaky way universities are privatizing teaching
UWindsor rejects deal with for-profit company to teach international students; UManitoba criticized for similar program.
Thousands of students from all over the world come to Canada every year to pursue a coveted western credential and the accompanying promise of economic success. Yet, for every student who makes it to a Canadian university, there are many who don’t qualify because their grades aren’t up to snuff or their English skills are lacking. Some of these students instead enroll in the countless ESL schools that cater to international students, some of which offer high quality English training and others, well, not so much.
Recently, however, some Canadian universities have begun offering a new option for these students: the private prep college that offers a year of intensive studies with the chance to get into the real university in second year. The catch is that the colleges are run by for-profit companies, and that is attracting the ire of university professors who see the move as privatizing the public system.
Fraser International College, which is affiliated with Simon Fraser University, was the first college of its kind. Run by the Australian company Navitas, it offers first year courses in business, computing science, arts and social sciences that are designed for international students who need extra support; the program boasts class sizes under 40 students, additional learning and language support and longer classes. Students who earn the requisite GPA in these courses progress to second year as a regular international student at SFU.
While programs like FIC may sound like a dream come true for bright students with borderline English abilities and marks, faculty associations at universities across the country are raising concerns. They say that the practice of bringing in a for-profit company to teach international students equates to “outsourcing” and they have questions about the quality of education these students are receiving.
“It’s a form of contracting out jobs,” explained Brad McKenzie, president of the faculty association at the University of Manitoba, where Navitas opened its second Canadian location in 2008. He worries that Navitas instructors, who are hired by the company and are not employees of the university, aren’t given the same academic freedom, fair pay or benefits to which UManitoba faculty are entitled.
These concerns were echoed by Brian E. Brown, president of the faculty association at the University of Windsor, where a similar company is facing opposition. “Our main concern is the quality of education,” he said. “What are faculty to do with these students if they get into second year and aren’t prepared?”
Last week, the UWindsor senate voted against contracting a company called Study Group International (SGI) to set up a program to prepare international students for its business programs. The decision represents a major blow to SGI’s Canadian expansion plans; SGI claims to be “the largest single provider of international students into the U.K” and has similar programs in Australia, New Zealand and the U.S.A.—UWindsor would have been its first Canadian foothold.
Religious university head defends student aid program
N.B. program would limit student debt at graduation, even for private institutions
The CBC is reporting that the president of one of the New Brunswick’s three religious universities is defending the province’s decision to include the school’s students in a new debt-limiting program, despite the fact that the institution is private.
Critics argue that private universities shouldn’t be getting financial help while public universities are starved for cash.
The provincial government announced the Timely Completion Benefit in May. In the program, all post-secondary students who qualifies for the benefit will not have to pay back more than $26,000 in federal and provincial student loans as long as they graduate within the program’s set timeframe.
David Medders, the president of Bethany Bible College in Sussex, told the CBC that the the debt-cap program benefits students and not the school’s operating budget. He said it’s absurd to say the religious school shouldn’t be eligible for any government programs just because it’s private.
“If you took that [argument to its] logical conclusions, we shouldn’t receive city water because part of the taxpayers money in Sussex supports a town water system,” says Medders. “So you have to have some common sense, somewhere along the line in this. And I think where the government has struck that line — we call it a pluralistic society, and it’s mutual respect.”
Miriam Jones, a professor at the University of New Brunswick in Saint John, told the CBC that the decision to allow these religious school to have access to the student debt-cap policy is a bad idea. She says the colleges are allowed to have Christian-only hiring policies because they’re private and that status should extend to funding.
“They shouldn’t get any public money unless they’re part of the public system and willing to subscribe to the standards and meet the criteria that the rest of us have to meet,” she says.
For more on this story, click here.
Incentives for benevolence
Like any business, private universities rely on keeping their customers happy
Today, I received an email from the president of the the University of Rochester. I’ll quote some tidbits:
“…the University of Rochester’s endowment investments are estimated to have declined by approximately 25 percent during the [recent market troubles].
…
In the current circumstances, tuition increases are likely to be smaller than in past years.
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I have informed our Board of Trustees that I do not wish to receive a pay increase next academic year.
…
Separately, the budget for the Office of the President for this academic year already has been reduced by approximately 5 percent.”
It’s a really long letter, discussing the university’s construction plans, potential areas for funding cuts if the market doesn’t recover, areas being targeted for cost savings, so on and so forth. I was really surprised to see it show up in my inbox.
Then I thought about it, and I wasn’t. Private universities have to depend on their students for tuition and alumni for donations. Thus, the majority of the funding of the university depends on keeping everyone as happy as possible, both while they’re at the school and afterwards. This includes spreading warm fuzzy feelings about cutting the president’s salary in hard times.
Conversely, the public university doesn’t rely on students/alumni nearly as much. It’s incentive is to squeeze the government, instead of charging profit-maximizing tuition fees and chasing donations more aggressively. Of course, it may be more prone to encouraging grade inflation and other such things, but it’s tough to argue that as a long-term strategy.
Like any business, private universities rely on keeping their customers happy. In the presence of public universities, that means that some people find them superior than the government product, high tuition fees or not.
