GAPS Bulletin - Global Access News, May/June 2017

News

Welcome to the GAPS Bulletin, May/June 2017:

GAPS Global Access News (May/June 2017)

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The GAPS Bulletin

Welcome to the GAPS Bulletin (May 2017)

In the May edition of the GAPS Bulletin you will find the following sections:

GAPS Feature Story
Why GAPS
Global Access News
Latest GAPS Publications
About GAPS – Who is the GAPS Target Audience?
Online Library
GAPS Calendar

If you would like to access one of the articles in this GAPS Bulletin, just click the headline (or wherever else indicated) and you will be automatically forwarded.

If you would like to provide us with feedback or contribute to the next GAPS Bulletin, please send us an email by clicking here.

We are building a global access community. Sign on and spread the news! We encourage you to share or tweet using the buttons below to connect others in your networks to GAPS and to help us expand our reach.

GAPS Feature Story

Is it Time for a Radical Shift in Education?

In her latest blog post for the GAPS community, Diya Khanna asks if it is time for a radical shift towards education that is lifelong, less ‘formal’ and more inclusive.

Why GAPS?

Be part of the global awareness raising campaign ‘Why GAPS’ and let the world know why global access to postsecondary education is important. Joining the campaign is as easy as 1,2,3:

You need a high quality picture
You need to list your affiliation
You need one short sentence answering the question ‘Why GAPS?’

Send us your submission by clicking here.

You can also support the campaign by sharing the campaign photos through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.

Global Access News

Access and diversity are at risk in higher education legislation under Trump
Following the 2016 election, the Republican Party gained majority control of the 115th Congress and put a president in the White House, providing a prime opportunity to advance their agenda. To date, President Donald Trump has signed two Congressional bills into law which retract Obama-era regulations on teacher preparation standards and state educational accountability requirements.

Ensuring higher education for the poor
A study by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) shows that governments across the world are struggling to keep pace with the rapidly rising demand for higher education as many families are unable to afford it.

Path Founder

(to access the video click picture)
Synopsis: Aristopher is a pupil with special needs. With the care and love of his teacher and fellow classmates, he is able to catch up with his studies and become a bright student.

Graduation Rates and Race
College completion rates vary widely along racial and ethnic lines, with US black and Hispanic students earning credentials at a much lower rate than white and Asian students, according to a report by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

Universities should be flexible on admitting refugees
National authorities and higher education institutions should take a flexible approach to the recognition of degrees, periods of study and prior learning of refugees, in line with the Lisbon Recognition Convention, according to a new study by the European Students’ Union (ESU).

Province announces increased funding for postsecondary mental health service
The government of Ontario has announced a CAN$ 6 million increase to annual funding for college and university mental health services. Mental health professionals in Ontario say that the number of students seeking help, and the severity of issues they need help with, are growing.

To share your initiatives or news with access & success colleagues from around the world Click here

Mentoring programs and equity groups: The Australian story
Australia-wide mentorship programs structured for equity students are reporting exceptional performance against evidence-based benchmarks. Mentorship programs offered by 39 universities were mapped across three stages: enabling, engagement and employment. All of the surveyed equity group programs demonstrated good or exemplary practice. Seven recommendations were made for university practice in relation to mentoring programs and further research, including an examination of the specific support for disadvantaged students during and nearing course completion.

Call for pact to tackle affordable student housing shortage
The German Student Welfare Service (Deutsches Studentenwerk, DSW) representing Germany’s 58 student service organizations, has made an urgent appeal to federal and state governments to provide more housing for students.

SFU student pans new pathway for aboriginal education
A specialized educational program at Simon Fraser University that helped dozens of aboriginal students pursue a postsecondary degree has been cut, a move faculty says runs counter to the university’s decision to put CAN$ 9 million into reconciliation efforts.

At the vanguard of an HE privatization wave?
Brazil has the world’s ninth largest gross domestic product, a population of around 195 million inhabitants, distributed across more than five thousand cities in 26 states and one federal district. The country has an unusual higher education system, with a relatively small number of public research universities and a large number of private institutions.

Latest GAPS Publication

The GAPS Think Piece Issue 22
Equity building blocks: Six tools for affordable access

Taya Louise Owens & Michaela Martin (UNESCO)
To access the GAPS Think Piece Series click here.

About GAPS

Who is the GAPS Target Audience?

The issues that must be addressed to achieve greater equity in higher education opportunity are complex and can most effectively be tackled through the collaborative intervention of many stakeholders in and beyond education systems and their pathways. The GAPS Initiative has as its objective to become a collaborative, multi-sectorial network made up of many players whose combined efforts will make a difference locally and globally in higher education outcomes.
To build this collaborative global network, the GAPS Initiative is looking to four main target audiences:

The existing ‘access and success community’ (A & S) across the world: individuals, institutions and organizations actively working on widening access to higher education and increasing student success at the local, regional, national and international levels. This may include local, state and national access networks; access practitioners; researchers; young people, students and student groups active on these issues; policy-makers; the leadership and faculty of higher education institutions and their associations; actors working within and outside of formal learning systems; as well as access programs operating in the pathway to post-secondary studies, with specific underserved populations or in communities.

Higher education institutions and policy-makers that define the policies, systems, pedagogies and resources with which the access community works on issues of access and success for underrepresented groups at the global, regional and local levels, and that shape the prevailing culture surrounding higher education opportunity.

Not-for-profit and voluntary sectors and civil society groups: individuals and organizations that are working to eliminate barriers to further education and to enhance educational opportunities for disadvantaged groups in their communities and other social determinants of health. Barriers come in many different forms and while they are most frequently attributable to birth and gender, race and circumstance, there are also academic, cultural, disability, financial, geographic, institutional, political, social, systemic and other factors.

People and organizations that are not necessarily working at the forefront of the access movement but whose objectives are generally aligned with those of GAPS: other education and social innovation networks, governments at all levels including civic leaders and economic and regional development officials, employers and employer groups, public and private sector actors that provide infrastructure, innovation, enabling technologies, the media, as well as the philanthropic community and social entrepreneurs.

Online Library

Thanks to the GAPS community our online library is growing!

Click here, to view the latest submissions.

If you would like to add to this library, please send us an email.

GAPS Calendar

June 6-10, 2017: World Learning Summit 2017 – Smart Universities. Kristiansand, Norway. For more information, click here.

June 8, 2017: Book Launch Frist-in-Family Students, University Experience and Family Life. University of Newcastle, Australia. For more information, click here.

June 8-9, 2017: NEON Summer Symposium 2017 – Widening Access in Higher Education – Are we there yet? Leeds, UK. For more information, click here.

June 9, 2017: Exploring a sense of belonging’ and why it matters in higher education. London, UK. For more information, click here.

June 12-14, 2017: M-Enabling Summit – Promoting Accessible Technologies and Environments. Washington (DC), USA. For more information, click here.

June 12-13, 2017: Connecting Indigenous Peoples in North America: Crafting a Community of Shared Knowledge. Regina, Canada. For more information, click here.

June 12-13, 2017: Refugees’ Impact on Bologna reform – Recognition of Prior Learning and inclusion in the light of increased migration. Malmö, Sweden. For more information, click here.

June 14-16, 2017: 6^th International Congress on Education and Learning. Milan, Italy. For more information, click here.

June 20-23, 2017: Virtual Educa: Innovación, Desarollo, Unclusión. Bogotá, Colombia. For more information, click here.

June 21-23, 2017: GlobalMindEd – ENLARGE YOUR WORLD. Denver (Co), USA. For more information, click here.

June 21-23, 2017: ICETIC Innovative and Creative Education and Teaching International Conference. Badajoz, Spain. For more details click here.

June 21-23, 2017: HEAd’17 3^rd International Conference on Higher Education Advances. Valencia, Spain. For more information, click here.

June 26-29, 2017: CICE Canada International Conference on Education. Mississauga, Canada. For more details click here.

June 28-30, 2017: HETL: Creating Inclusion and Diversity in Higher Education. Paisley, UK. For details click here.

June 30 – July 2, 2017: The European Conference on Education – Educating for Change. Brighton, UK. For more information, click here.

July 11-12, 2017: 4^th International Conference on Business, Law, Education and Corporate Social Responsibility (BLECSR-17). Bangkok, Thailand. For more information, click here.

July 19-21, 2017: 24^th International Conference on Learning – New Media for New Learning. University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, USA. For more information, click here.

August 30 – September 3, 2017: Magna Charta 29^th Anniversary. Pécs, Hungary. For more information click here.

September 12-15, 2017: EAIA 2017 – A mosaic of cultures. Seville, Spain. For more information click here.

September 13-16, 2017: 36^th Annual Conference, Council for Opportunity in Education. Washington (DC), USA. For details click here.

September 18-19, 2017: International Conference on Sustainable Development Goals: Actors and Implementation. Barcelona, Spain. For more information, click here.

September 20-22, 2017: 26^th EAN Annual Conference. Gießen, Germany. More information is available here.

September 28-29, 2017: 1st European Learning & Teaching Forum – Meeting Challenges Together. Paris, France. For more information, click here.

October 16-17, 2017: Shaping Ethics in Academia and Society: Practices in the Baltic Sea Region. Vilnius, Lithuania. For more information, click here.

October 17-19, 2017: 14^th PASCAL International Conference, Trends 2017 – Which way to go? Skukuza (Kruger National Park), South Africa. For more information, click here.

October 27-29, 2017: Inclusive Education Summit 2017. University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia. For more information, click here.

November 1-3, 2017: 2^nd World Congress on Global Access to Postsecondary Education, Working together for a democratized postsecondary education: a key to sustainable development, São Paulo, Brazil. For more information, click here.

November 20, 2017: NCSEHE 2017 Fellows Forum, Brisbane Australia. For more information, click here.

December 6-8, 2017: SRHE Research Conference 2017 – Higher Education rising to the challenge: Balancing expectations of students, society and stakeholders. Celtic Manor, Newport, Wales. For more information, click here.

March 2-3, 2018: 11^th International Conference on e-Learning & Innovative Pedagogies. St John’s University – Manhattan Campus, New York/USA. For more information, click here.

June 6-8, 2018: 18^th International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations. University of Texas at Austin, USA. For more information, click here.

June 21-23, 2018: 25^th International Conference on Learning. Athens, Greece. For more information, click here.

To access the complete Events Calendar click here.
Your event for the access & success community is missing? Contact us!

To share initiatives or news with access and success colleagues from around the world send an
email to [email protected] or tweet @gapseducation

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