“The higher education bubble is a speculative boom and bust phenomenon in the field of higher education. According to the theory, while college tuition payments are rising, the rate of return of a college degree is decreasing, and the soundness of the student loan industry may be threatened by increasing default rates. College students who fail to find employment at the level needed to pay back their loans in a reasonable amount of time have been compared to the debtors under sub-prime mortgages whose home are worth less than what is owed to the bank.”

I think it is safe to say that the higher education revolution is underway. Actually, when student loan debt passed credit card debt, we should have smelled a rat.

All I can say is, it’s about time. As I approach the end of my time in graduate school I have compiled quite a collection of thoughts on higher education. Definitely not all bad, but a revolution is long overdue.

“Developing countries spend hundreds of billions of dollars each year on schools, educational materials and teachers, but relatively little is known about how effective these expenditures are at increasing students’ years of completed schooling and, more importantly, the skills that they learn while in school. This paper examines studies published between 1990 and 2010, in both the education literature and the economics literature, to investigate which specific school and teacher characteristics, if any, appear to have strong positive impacts on learning and time in school. Starting with over 9,000 studies, 79 are selected as being of sufficient quality.”

That is from the abstract of a working paper titled, “School Resources and Educational Outcomes in Developing Countries: A Review of the Literature from 1990 to 2010.” I haven’t finished reading the paper yet, but so far it is very interesting and quite comprehensive. Highly recommended if you work in education in developing countries.

“The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has agreed to launch the country’s first scientific journal, which they expect to attain international standards and become a reference point within central Africa.” via @SciDevNet

I am a strong advocate for investment in research and development in developing countries. Professional journals are a part of that ecosystem of brilliant thinking and discussion. At least they should be. Africa needs this badly if it is going to be a hub and incubator of scientific knowledge, particularly with its vast resources of indigenous knowledge.

No word yet on how open/closed this journal will be, however. My hopes are that it is open access all the way. Time will tell.

Things have done a 180°.

The chair of my session has asked me to reconsider and I have obliged. Being embarrassed that my research is not complete, I didn’t want to pass up on this great opportunity. Eleven years ago I attended that same conference in D.C. where the theme focused on the use of technology in Africa.

This year the theme is “50 Years of African Liberation.” I will be discussing my paper on the historical context of gender disparity in education in Nigeria and how colonialism affected not only economic development policy, but also education policy. Should be interesting.

This one month break will no doubt give me some time to catch up on some blogging that I have put off since April. Not much time, though, since I am taking two trips during that month and will be moving to a larger apartment. Nevertheless, I am halfway finished with school and anxious to pick up writing again.

In the meantime, here are some interesting pieces on Brazil from my Twitter account:

• Brazil Created More Jobs Than US in 2011 via @Forbes
  Job creation is good news for Brazil. The real question about Brazil’s economy is, how long will it last before it begins to overheat?
• Rio City Government in Brazil Offers IT Courses for Disadvantaged Residents via @onlinefinance
  Great to hear that IT training is being valued as a viable career opportunity for the poor. Information technology is increasingly becoming accessible to all social classes. More of this please. And kudos to Cisco Brazil.
• Minorities now officially a majority in Brazil via @CNNWorld
  Interesting take on when minorities become the majority in an emerging economy. Indeed, a big social experiment.
• From LAN To Scam? – Regulating Cyber Cafes
  A new law being proposed will require all of Brazil’s cybercafes (aka LAN houses) to register with the government. Obvious concerns are 1) regulation for taxation and control, and 2) surveillance of Brazilian citizens. Not a welcoming step for Brazil’s government and net privacy.

I have a few posts in the works, most of which will have to wait until my semester officially ends in two weeks. Some of what I’m working on:

• Recap of my March trip to Brazil. With luck, I will summarize my daily writing while on the trip. Each day will be a blog post, connecting you to pictures of what I did and the places (schools, NGO’s, etc) I visited.
• Information about my research on Guatemala I performed for a recent paper. Topic is roughly gender disparity on indigenous females of Guatemala and the examination of some policy initiatives over the past decade.
• Information about my research on Brazil. This is what I’m primarily working on over the next two weeks. I’m very excited about this research into AfroReggae, civic education within the favelas of Rio, respect and youth crime prevention.

When the semester ends, expect posts on all of the above. In the meantime, listen on Twitter.

I will be presenting my research on “A Comparison of Educational Development in North and South Nigeria: Implications of Gender Disparity” during Session C on Saturday, March 5th from 1:15 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. (Room 403). You are welcome to join me and participate in this exciting symposium.

The full ESRI schedule is now available here.

The focus of my research over the course of the next few months will be non-formal civic education in Brazil, particularly among Brazil’s economically marginalized in the favelas. Some of the themes I will be exploring in my research are:

• What initiatives, governmental and non-governmental, are being pursued to increase civil engagement within the favelas?
• How are civil society organizations (CSO’s) reaching out to the marginalized to increase civil participation? Are they getting support from the government? Pressure?
• In regards to non-formal education, how is creativity being used in civic education to reach out to the uneducated? (i.e. music, arts, technology, etc.)
• And last but not least, how is civic education defined in Brazil?

As you can see, my ideas for research are still in the early stage of formation, but I’m increasingly intrigued by civic education and community empowerment/participation among the marginalized of society. It is an issue that translates to nearly every culture in every society around the world.

As I refine my research on Brazil, I will post my findings here and the ultimate direction I chose to go. Hope you enjoy it.

Image credit: Boletin

I am working on two research papers at the moment, the first which is on gender issues in the education of indigenous Guatemalan’s. While gender disparity within educational access and achievement is not something of a huge problem in Latin America, unlike in most of Africa, Guatemala is an exception.

Having a significant indigenous population of around 40% (give or take depending on who you ask) and giving among the lowest percentages of GDP towards education both contribute to the quandary that is poor quality education for indigenous people of Guatemala. But is this all there is to it? No.

While the peer group I’m doing research with is taking a three-prong approach to this problem, focusing on the socio-economic and pedagogical aspects of the gender problem, I’m focusing on policy responses of the Guatemalan government.

How are indigenous Guatemalan’s helped or hurt through educational policy? What kind of initiatives are being promoted by the Colom administration to support indigenous education in Guatemala? This is the start of my research into the gender disparity that persists within Guatemala.

Ever since I performed in-depth research on gender disparity in Northern Nigeria, I’ve been somewhat captivated by disparity, whether through gender, income, race, or any other measurable social factor. But gender has taken a sweet spot in my heart as I firmly believe that girls/women have not been integrated wholly into the development of their societies. They have been excluded, neglected, used, abused, and simply taken for granted in what they have to offer society. It is, in my opinion, one of the greatest injustices of mankind.

As I had the opportunity to focus on gender in Latin American education, my findings were showing girls ahead of boys in many places, quite the opposite in most of Africa. But I wasn’t deterred. I knew as well as anyone else that the opportunities for women often stopped at the higher education level. In society, women were experiencing disparity on multiple levels.

While the focus of my research is on gender disparity within indigenous populations of Guatemala, it is a necessary discourse that needs to be had before educational programs can even begin to be considered. Many people who work in development where practice is actually implemented on the ground fail to see the purposes for academic research within gender disparity and education in general. Yet, the lack of knowledge about cultural context is typically why programs are repeatedly failing on the ground, not to mention millions of dollars wasted. There is a place for academic research, although this is a topic for further discussion.

Ok, I’ll stop now that I’m on a tangent. You have my first research topic. The second research topic to follow soon thereafter.

Image credit: Boletin

Some interesting themes have appeared:

• Community-based Participation & Power Sharing/Civil Society
• Language Education Policies/ Indigenous Education/ Education for Marginalized Communities/ Multiculturalism
• Accountability Policies/ Organization of School Systems
• Conditional Cash Transfers/ Voucher Programs
• Citizenship Education
• Education in Emergencies
• Higher Education Access/ Internationalization of Higher Education
• Non-formal Education/ Adult Education/ Alternative Models for Education
• Gender Issues in Education
• Social & Cultural Policies in Education
• Migration and Education
• Urban & Rural Education
• School Attendance and Retention in Alternative Programs
• Distance and Online Education
• Early Childhood Education

Of special note is the great interest in the themes: Education in Emergencies, Migration and Education, Gender Issues in Education (my suggestion), Accountability Policies, and Language Education Policies/Multiculturalism. The most popular theme so far has been Education in Emergencies, not surprisingly.

My contribution to the themes was Gender Issues in Education, specifically the GAP Report on Latin America, which studies gender parity in girls’ education throughout the world.

As you may remember, I studied gender disparity in education in Northern Nigeria in one of my prior classes and found the subject to be engrossing. I am going to continue my trend of focusing on gender parity in this course, but try to add a twist to the theme of Gender in Education.

Let’s see what I come up with…