PhD completion times

A piece in the latest Higher Ed reports on Harvard University’s new rules for PhD completions: departments will lose one PhD slot for for every five students taking more than eight years to complete. Part of the changed emphasis is on the way academics engage their PhD students. The Graduate Dean, Theda Skocpo argues that:

professors need to have “realistic” expectations about dissertations, and to factor in the value of getting done along with the value of exploring every possible nuance. “You have to get to a point in a dissertation where you say it’s good enough. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It’s time to get it done as good enough.”

The article further adds that:

Another change she advocates is that departments view entering cohorts of Ph.D. students as true cohorts, such that there is a goal of students taking their generals at roughly the same time. Treating the process as entirely individual, she said, seems to encourage a slower pace.

New library books

 

I mentioned a while ago the LibraryThing widget for looking at new books coming into the library. You are able to look at the whole list and the tag cloud for different subject areas,  but here also are some links for some new books around various subject headings

• leadership
• literacy
• numeracy
• early childhood
• higher education
• inclusion
• e-learning
• teaching
• phys ed
• research

ABS education items

The National Centre for Education and Training Statistics have just released the second edition of its newsletter, Education and Training Matters. It reports on recent developments in education and training statistics, including the

• Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey
• Survey of Education and Work
• Adult Learning Survey
• education module in the 2006 Census of Population and Housing
• update of A Directory of Education and Training Statistics, 2007
• education and training chapter in Australian Social Trends
• annual survey of Education and Work
• information paper, Measuring Learning in Australia: A Profile of Participation and Outcomes, June 2006

You can access new ABS releases in education on their Education and Training Releases page.

Another ABS release to catch my eye (via edna education news) is a new release indicating a doubling of internet access since 2001. As it says:

In 2001, just over a third (35%) of homes across Australia had internet access; in 2006, that had grown to nearly two-thirds (63%).

Unsurprisingly education and income were important to internet access.

Summer reading

The Library has a good collection of novels available for summer reading. Keep an eye out for books we have on order from this year’s Booker shortlist, including the winner Anne Enright’s Gathering, as well as Nicola Barker’s Darkmans, Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Lloyd Jones’s Mr Pip.

Remember that any items not held at your home campus can be transferred across simply by placing a hold on them through the catalogue. Here are some suggestions from things published in recent times:

• J.M. Coetzee Diary of a Bad Year
• Alexis Wright, Carpentaria
• Haruki Murakami, After Dark
• Dave Eggers, What is the What
• Peter Carey, Theft: A Love Story
• Andrew O’Hagan, Be Near Me
• David Mitchell, Black Swan Green
• Philip Roth, Everyman
• Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

Are you preparing an online course?

Just a reminder that if you are preparing course material and wish to create links from Blackboard to our e-resources there are instructions available in the Library’s online course Lib2000. Log into the learning hub and select Lib2000 RMIT University Library and your online course. I am also very happy to assist with these links.

The other thing to remember is that if you want to request readings be digitized then the earlier the better when submitting such requests to our Digitization Unit. The turn-around-times become longer the closer we get to the beginning of semester.

Education in the news

From the Australian Higher Education: the election and the RQF in Doubters expect Labor to kill the RQF; a dissenting view on tertiary teaching programs in No point in learning to teach and a reply in Teacher’s duty is to enable learning; on the different languages of schools and universities in The culture shock of campus life; Rudd’s education revolution and early childhood education in Long lead time for early education scheme.

From the Age Education: praise for the creative instincts of the teacher in Put the love back into learning; the call for merit pay in Rising chorus backs merit pay; specialisation and the primary school teacher in Time to end the general rule; Morag fraser views the education system from America in We need results, not rhetoric.

From the SMH Education: a new report on the living standards of apprentices in Apprentices in poverty; young people choosing the workforce over further education and training in Skills crisis yet rate of training stagnates; staff and parent revolt at Sydney’s Conservatorium High School in Top music centre rocked by staff revolt.