Tỉ lệ giáo viên (GV) tiếng Anh chưa đạt chuẩn lên tới gần 75% ở bậc tiểu học và 90% ở bậc THPT mà Bộ Giáo dục và Đào tạo (GD-ĐT) vừa công bố là con số gây lo lắng. Trong khi đó, nhiều chuyên gia giáo dục cho rằng tình trạng GV tiếng Anh không đạt chuẩn là dễ hiểu bởi từ trước đến nay, đào tạo GV... không có chuẩn.

Nhiều sinh viên đã "lỡ" kỳ tốt nghiệp vì chưa đạt chuẩn đầu ra tiếng Anh. Các trường đại học đánh giá chuẩn ngoại ngữ bằng các chuẩn kiểm tra khác nhau. Sinh viên lúng túng, nhà trường tìm cách linh hoạt nhưng quá nửa sinh viên tốt nghiệp vẫn không đáp ứng yêu cầu ngoại ngữ của nhà tuyển dụng.

A longtime government professor at Harvard lashed out Tuesday at what he deemed a system of rampant grade inflation after learning that students are receiving mainly A's at the college.
"It's really indefensible," Harvey C. Mansfield, a faculty member for more than five decades, "I thought the most prevalent grade was an A-minus, which is bad enough," said Mansfield. "When I asked the question [about the most frequently given grade], it was worse."
Harvard's dean of undergraduate education informed Mansfield at the meeting that the most frequent grade is an A, citing data from fall 2012 and several prior semesters, the Harvard Crimson reported.

The Department of Agriculture said Wednesday that it had fined Harvard Medical School $24,000 for repeated animal welfare violations at its research centers that have resulted in the deaths of four monkeys since 2011. The fine comes after a lengthy investigation into

The American Studies Association's national council voted unanimously on Dec. 4 in favor of a boycott resolution, and put the matter to a vote of its almost 5,000 members, who had until Sunday night to cast their ballots online. The group's stance has pitted scholars and organizations against one another in a heated debate about the ethics of academic boycotts, the motives behind the campaign and whether Israel is being singled out unfairly.

An association of American professors with almost 5,000 members has voted to endorse an academic boycott of Israeli colleges and universities, the group announced Monday, making it the largest academic group in the United States to back a growing movement to isolate Israel over its treatment of Palestinians.
The group, the American Studies Association, said that its members approved the boycott resolution by a 2-to-1 margin in online balloting that concluded Sunday night, with about a quarter of the members voting.

An American organization of professors on Monday announced a boycott of Israeli academic institutions to protest Israel's treatment of Palestinians, signaling that a movement to isolate and pressure Israel that is gaining ground in Europe has begun to make strides in the United States.

David Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor at Stanford University. His most recent book is "The Deliverance of Others: Reading Literature in a Global Age."

Cary Nelson is Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

At American colleges, few values are as sacred as open debate and few issues as contested as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But Hillel, whose core mission is to keep the next generation of Jews in the fold, says that under its auspices one thing is not open to debate: Those who reject or repudiate Israel have no place.
This month, the students at the Swarthmore Hillel rebelled, declaring themselves the first "Open Hillel" in the nation.