Therapeutic Laughter in Higher Education

William C Andress
In 2000 a report came out of the University of California, Los Angeles, indicating that students feel more overwhelmed and stressed than just 15 years ago. The following year an American College Health Association survey suggested that 33% of students felt hopeless, with 22% suffering severe depression at least three times within the previous year.
Nor does the situation seem to be improving. Just last year, the director of campus student health services at Washington University in St Louis stated that "depression and suicide are the largest health issues facing students at this time".
In response to such dire findings, while an assistant professor at Oakland University, 64 kilometres north of Detroit, I submitted a proposal for a course in 'therapeutic laughter'. Its purpose was to use a novel approach to teach students lifelong stress management skills. Support for such a course was strengthened by the increased attention researchers were giving to the subject at such diverse universities as Indiana State, Raleigh Dickinson and Loma Linda.
Interest in laughter's therapeutic value stems from 1979 when Norman Cousins published a personal testimony, An Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient. While editor-in-chief of the Saturday Review, Cousins contracted ankylosing spondylitis, a crippling inflammation of the vertebral column. This left him virtually immobile and in extreme pain with a one in 500 chance of recovery.
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Source: University World News, Issue No: 0161, 6 March 2011

Role of Professors Mired in Confusion

Geoff Maslen
Professors in Britain are not alone in seeing their role very differently from the universities that employ them. But a new report, based on a survey of 200 UK professors, confirms what many in the professoriate around the world privately believe: significant ‘expectation gaps’ exist between them and their universities regarding the importance of income generation versus mentoring staff and the leadership of their departments or faculties. In an exclusive commentary on our webpage this week, survey author Professor Bruce Macfarlane says the lack of clarity about the role of a professor is partly a symptom of the way appointment criteria at the professorial level have broadened in recent years. Almost one in 10 UK academics is now a full professor.
Full report on the University World News site
Source: University World News, Issue No: 0066 08 March 2009

Universities Socially Engineer Intakes

In a move that critics claim filters out middle class students, admission tutors at leading institutions are being told to give interviews and make offers to working class candidates who have attended low performing schools or who live in postcodes where few go on to higher education, writes Julie Henry in The Sunday Telegraph. It comes as more universities, including Suss ex, Worcester, Dundee and the University of East Anglia, have decided not to use the new A* grade at A-level in offers from 2010 amid fears that independent school pupils will win more places.
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Source: University World News, Issue No: 0066 08 March 2009

Female Domination to Strengthen

John Gerritsen*
Women will account for more than 70% of higher education students in Austria and England and for an average of 59% across the developed world by 2025, a new OECD report indicates. The report, Higher Education to 2030, said in 2005, 55% of higher education students in the 30 OECD nations were women and women accounted for 60% or more of higher education enrolments in Norway, Sweden and Iceland. But by 2025, 10 nations would have student bodies that were 60% or more female and the OECD average would be 59%, the report said.
Full report on the University World News site
Source: University World News, Issue No: 0057 14 December 2008

Poor Funding Hits Higher Education Enrolment

Poor funding hits higher education enrolment Poor funding and lack of quality and quantity of teachers have affected the enrolment of students in higher education in India, a recent report has said. The Ernst & Young-EDGE 2008 report on Globalising Higher Education in India found low levels of funding of higher education in India compared with other developing nations such as China, Brazil and Russia, reports Zee News.
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Source: University World News, Issue No: 0053 16 November 2008

Keberdayaan Masyarakat Peternak dalam Perspektif Sosiologi Berparadigma Fakta Sosial

Nugraha Setiawan
Jurnal Sosiohumaniora, Vol.10, No.1, pp.58-67

Abstract.
The study is aimed at understanding of peasant community power phenomena in rural of Indonesia. The anlyzing used sosiological approach with “social facts” paradigm, what argued that its were external to, and coercive over, individuals, and then analyzed by the force relations phenomena of power theory of Foucault. The result of the study showed, peasant still has been powerless, because the dominating of urban community and institution of rural outsider. The conditions made peasant powerless more and more..
Keywords: power, peasant, rural, social fact.

Abstrak.
Tulisan ini bertujuan untuk memahami fenomena keberdayaan masyarakat peternak di wilayah pedesaan Indonesia melalui pendekatan sosiologis. Analisis dilakukan dengan memakai paradigma “fakta sosial” yang memandang masyarakat sebagai kenyataan atau fakta yang berdiri sendiri terpisah dari individu, namun mempengaruhi individu tersebut, kemudian dikaji lebih jauh melalui pemahaman mengenai force relations dengan memakai teori kekuasaan Foucault. Hasil studi menunjukkan, telah sejak lama bahkan hingga saat ini, masyarakat peternak di pedesaan masih menjadi objek dan sasaran kekuasaan dari masyarakat kota maupun pranata-pranata dari luar wilayah pedesaan. Keadaan tersebut menyebabkan mereka makin terkungkung dalam kondisi tidak berdaya dalam kehidupan sosial-ekonominya.
Kata Kunci: keberdayaan, peternak, pedesaan, fakta sosial.