The article discusses Covenant University in a town outside Lagos, Nigeria. As a privately run, Christian university, it breaks with a Nigerian tradition of free public higher education. The demand among Nigerian youth for higher education is beyond what the state can provide, leaving an opening for private institutions.
The article reports on a study from Moody's Investors Services showing that institutions of higher education in the United States, especially private colleges and universities, face stiff challenges in 2009 and beyond. The areas of greatest challenge were identified as increasing pressure on tuition and financial aid, losses in endowments, liquidity pressures, and volatility in variable-rate debt markets.
With tuitions, fees, and room and board at dozens of colleges now reaching $50,000 a year, the ability to sustain private higher education for all but the very well-heeled is questionable. According to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, over the past 25 years, average college tuition and fees have risen by 440 percent — more than four times the rate of inflation and almost twice the rate of medical care.
Armed with a Sh500 million war chest in funds, partly raised through a private placement, the Kenya School of Professional Studies is set to expand its facilities after getting the green light to operate as a private university.
Malaysian Association of Private Colleges and Universities president Dr Parmjit Singh calls for regular dialogues between the Higher Education Ministry and private education providers with a view to blurring the boundary that separates public and private tertiary institutions.
Two and a half years after announcing the largest gift in school history, Florida Atlantic University (FAU) will have to settle for less than a third of the donation.
Private colleges bolstered financial aid and decreased selectivity to help sustain enrollment in a downward economy, but a significant number still expect tuition and fee revenues to decline this year, according to a survey released today by Moody’s Investors Service.
His presence on Monday at the annual meeting for the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities here indicated that broad fears about the economy—even about aspects only tangentially related to higher education—are a top concern of college administrators.
N. Brgulja, R. Kusber, K. David, and M. Baumgarten. 2009 IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Intelligence and Computing (PICom 09), page 246-253. Chengdu, China, (December 2009)