AIAPublic Boosts Scholarship Funding to RM4.8 Million

The True Cost of the PGDA: Moving Beyond the "Will to Succeed" The Postgraduate Diploma in Accounting (PGDA) is widely known as one of the toughest academic hurdles in South Africa. It is the gatekeeper to the CA(SA) designation. But for many Black students, the barrier isn't just the grueling academic workload—it is the crippling financial architecture required just to enter the room. When we discuss transforming the financial sector, we often focus on academic support and mentorship. We rarely discuss the immediate, upfront capital required before a student even opens a textbook. Consider the day-one financial math for a typical PGDA programme: Tuition Fees: R70,000 Upfront Registration Deposit (10%): R7,000 Prescribed CTA Textbooks & Reference Materials: R9,000 The Day-One Hurdle: R16,000 For a student balancing family responsibilities, full-time work, or navigating life without generational wealth, finding an upfront R16,000 just to register is an impossible mountain to climb. Hard work and late-night studying can pass exams, but they cannot pay a registration deposit or buy vital reference books. Education is meant to be the great equalizer, but systemic financial barriers keep the starting line vastly unequal. If we truly want to accelerate transformation, our funding models must address these upfront gatekeepers. I do not know how, but I am going to it... #CASA #PGDA #CTA #TransformationInAccounting #BursaryOpportunities #SkillsDevelopment #SouthAfrica

This weekend, I spent quite a lot of time thinking about my daughter’s education. Not how to maximize her exam score. Not how to make sure she becomes a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or anything else. I realized my responsibility as a parent is much simpler, and much harder: Give her enough capability, judgment, confidence, and opportunity that one day she can make her own choices. I cannot force an academic outcome. I cannot decide what her talents will be. I cannot manufacture a 45-point IB student. What I can do is give her the best environment I reasonably can, expose her to different possibilities, help her learn how to think, and make sure she has enough options when the important decisions arrive. That is also why I increasingly like the philosophy behind IB education. Not because IB guarantees better results. But because, at its best, it asks students to question, research, form an argument, make choices, and defend their thinking. In Hong Kong, I sometimes see a strange outcome: A student gets an exceptional score, and suddenly everyone thinks the answer is obvious. “Study medicine.” Why? Because the score is high enough. To me, that gets education backwards. A high score should create more freedom, not a stronger obligation to follow the most prestigious path available. If one day my daughter gets an exceptional score and decides she genuinely wants to study medicine, great. If she decides she wants computer science, history, design, research, entrepreneurship, or something I would never have chosen for her, that can also be great. What matters is whether she understands herself, understands the trade-offs, can think independently, and is capable of owning the decision. My goal is not to choose a successful life for her. My goal is to help her become capable enough to choose her own.

Managing the cost of graduate school can feel like a lot, but you don’t have to figure it all out at once. For National Financial Awareness Day, we’re sharing a few practical ways to get a clearer picture of your finances from completing the FAFSA and exploring scholarships to estimating costs and building a budget that works for you. Whether you’re just getting started or already well into your graduate program, a little planning can go a long way. 🔗 Check out the tips and resources: https://t.gsu.edu/3SpoUxi #GraduateStudents #FinancialPlanning #GeorgiaStateUniversity

IC has launched a scholarship programme for students in the Bahamas, with two students eligible to receive $7,500 in funding for their university studies https://lnkd.in/esvJ8mhP

When the Government of Québec launched its Bourses Perspective Québec scholarships in 2022, the roll-out was warmly welcomed by many media outlets and postsecondary representatives as a generous investment into students. Behind the scenes, however, some in the sector were concerned about how the investment was being delivered. CBC/Radio-Canada has the full story below. Read this and more in today's Top Ten: https://ow.ly/pk3s50ZFRZs #CDNPSE #HigherEd #Education #News

Many foundation programmes are available in Sri Lanka. But when choosing one, the most important question is: “where does it lead?” At Royal Institute Campus, our Foundation Programme is designed with a clear outcome in mind. We're delighted to see our very first batch of Foundation students pass with flying colours and progressing directly to their degree programmes without any delays to their studies. For many students, it's an opportunity to save a year by progressing without A Levels, while having the confidence that there's a clear and secure pathway to a recognised university degree. Choosing a foundation programme isn't just about the year you save—it's about the future you build.

"Europe’s biggest for-profit higher education group has said it is eyeing financially distressed British universities as takeover targets, arguing that private money could help transform a struggling sector." What can I say? Maybe these guys are better at budgeting than the average British VC and their team of decision makers. So that would be a win. And they have taken over one place already: Regent's University London, a small (2,500 students) teaching-focussed university. Students don't seem to mind, judging by the NSS scores, although they have to pay £24,500/year as opposed to the £9,250/year elsewhere. And they don't offer any lab-based courses there, because these are more expensive to run. So thats the type of organisations they will be going for. Or they will restructure anything they take over in this way. Archive link: https://archive.ph/lPWC1

Agree. There is much research about the impact on human capabilities of these changes, much of it negative. Automating human decision making meds very careful monitoring and in education and research very careful reforms to ensure situational awareness, and learning, by the humans in the system.

Are we starting to see the reasons for the mass destruction of the university slowly emerge from the noise of AI, rising exposure of a lack of integrity everywhere, and other stuff? Many of the public universities appear to be deliberately putting themselves into a financial mess and intentionally offloading unmarketable areas such as the Arts and Humanities, transforming others into more engineering training, such as Science, to be able to privatise, encouraged by an entangled network likely involving government and private interests - same is happening here in Australia, where some are starting to relocate offshore. The common factor explaining the near-identical issues seems to be the consultants such as Nous, KPMG, and others. As far back in 2019, I recall warning of the inevitable commercialisation sell-off route through what others described as incompetent downgrading of human resources in institutions here, of note bneing the downgrading of academic titles, and of academics themselves into employee status, especially one institution in particular caught up in recent inquiries - I think now people can see this was not incompetence alone but an actual plan to privatise and make more personal monies as well as destroy legitimacy in quality education. As usual, the UK is one step ahead on that murky road but the playbook is identical, given the consultants involved guiding it. A prediction: as AI evolves, they will then be bought out by the AI giants to destroy completely any separate body of knowledge to AI, an extension of what is being done with books, to ensure total subservience and dependency on AI companies in a future world controlled by a few... the problem for these tontos is that those few may end up being AIs themselves... If you don't want this future being shaped right before your eyes, now is the time for the young people still retaining some cognitive consciousness to take back their societies before they won't culturally and cognitively be able to... change is not working from within the system, with visibility really due to whistleblower actions. It won't be enough - that much is clear. (where's Mr Robot when you need him? 🤖 https://lnkd.in/gdNZ6Bc8)

This is the single biggest risk for higher education. Something that was built with tax dollars, ideally for highly accessible education, with ethical guardrails against corporate influence (ie. the ability to conduct independent research and make sovereign decisions and not be ‘owned’). As I was part of some discussion this summer, the biggest threat to higher education if they do not leverage AI is that corporations will take over training their future employees themselves. It looks like this is already underway in the UK. Some might ask, why it would be such a bad thing, and I can tell you that although institutions are flawed, they are built to have rigorous oversight (something Dr Hinton strongly supports in this volatile time). If anyone wishes to know what a corporation is built to act like, watch the Canadian Oscar-winning documentary, The Corporation. Then determine if you want a company to run all of education. Ps. This is not a drill. I am not being alarmist. This is very real. We need to pay attention.