Monday 28 July 2008

University World News 0038 - 27th July 2008

SPECIAL REPORT: Commercialising research
For some, the commercialisation of university research represents an elusive pot of gold – the promise of revenue that will help an institution face new challenges. But for others, the pursuit of commercial success from basic research is anathema to the university mission by stifling free exchange of ideas as discoveries are kept secret to protect all-important patent applications.

Increasingly, governments are trying to create the right environment to ensure universities’ discoveries make the leap from the lab to commercially successful products and companies. Measures range from direct financial help to tax breaks and legislative change.

For America, the powerhouse of research commercialisation, one of the biggest boosts came, not so much from government intervention, as government taking a step back from the sector. In December 1980, the federal government approved an act that gave US universities, small businesses and non-profit organisations intellectual property control of their inventions and other intellectual property that resulted from federal government funding.

Now, nations around the world are trying to create their own boom-times for research commercialisation. In Australia, the new Labor government is reviewing the national innovation system while in Europe, the European Commission’s European Research Area Green Paper has an emphasis on knowledge transfer.

Meanwhile, Ireland’s government recently decided to invest more than €30 million (US$47.6 million) in developing technology transfer offices at Irish universities. The British government has a similar approach – its higher education innovation fund distributes £110 million (US$219.5 million) a year, rising to £150 million by 2010, to higher education institutions in England to help them commercialise research.

The UK has also set up a technology strategy board to promote university and business interaction and has a knowledge partnerships scheme to help businesses improve their competitiveness and productivity through the better use of knowledge, technology and skills that can be found in higher education institutions.

Elsewhere, New Zealand's government has a variety of funds aimed at encouraging research organisations, including universities, to undertake research with economic benefit. In particular it has NZ$1.3 million (US$960,000) a year available as pre-seed funding specifically to bridge the gap between research and commercialisation.

Despite disquiet from some quarters, universities around the globe are under increasing pressure to commercialise the great ideas of their researchers. In this edition, our correspondents report on trends in America, Australia, Europe and New Zealand. They canvass opinion on both sides of the commercialisation debate and look at why an investor might risk millions on commercialising university research.
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AUSTRALASIA: Investing in a risky business
John Gerritsen
For many investors, the early-stage commercialisation of university research is just too risky to touch. But for big investors such as pension funds, the ability to back a range of projects makes universities' intellectual property a viable investment opportunity. One such investor is the Australian pension fund Westscheme, which has more than A$215 million of A$2.79 billion (US$2.9 billion) in assets committed to commercialising university research.
Full report on the University World News site

US: Decline in commercialising research
Subbiah Arunachalam
Research in American universities resulted in nearly 700 new products coming onto the market in 2006 alone and more than 4,350 between 1998 and 2006. That amounts to 1.32 new products based on academic inventions every single day over those nine years. Recently, however, a decline has occurred in the pace of research commercialisation.
Full report on the University World News site

EUROPE: Forum calls for easier technology transfer
Rebecca Warden
Europe must get serious about technology transfer. This was one of the conclusions of From the lab to the market, a special programme looking for ways to bridge the gap between industry and academia at the EuroScience Open Forum in Barcelona from 18 to 22 July (www.esof2008.org). Researchers, heads of university technology transfer offices and R&D managers from industry discussed what changes universities needed to make to ease the pathway from the laboratory to the marketplace.
Full report on the University World News site

UK: A thriving market
Diane Spencer
Universities make a major contribution to the British economy in collaborative research projects with industry, spin-out companies and consultancies. A recent survey showed that in 2006-07, income from collaborative research rose by 12% from the previous year to £670 million (US$1,336 million). The UK government's higher education innovation fund distributes a total of £110 million a year, rising to £150 million by 2010, to all higher education institutions in England to help them commercialise research.
Full report on the University World News site

AUSTRALIA: Research tail wags industry dog
Geoff Maslen
Successive Australian governments have demanded the nation's universities focus on research that has money-making possibilities. 'Pure' research has become a lost dream for many academics as the emphasis has increasingly been on the commercial applications of research discoveries, especially those likely to generate export income. But, as critics point out, by forcing universities to deliver commercially and economically-relevant research, the R&D 'tail' is expected to wag the 'dog' - the innovation capacity of Australian business and industry.
Full report on the University World News site

NEW ZEALAND: Value of commercialisation grows steadily
John Gerritsen
The value of research commercialisation is growing steadily at New Zealand universities, but the exercise is more for the public good than the benefit of institutions' balance sheets. Latest figures from Uconz, New Zealand's national sector group for university commercialisation offices, show the country's eight universities earned more than NZ$60 million (US$45 million) in cash and shares from the licensing of their academics' research in the four years up to and including 2006.
Full report on the University World News site

NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report

EUROPE: Higher education's global role
Alan Osborn
As a demonstration of how the top higher education people from across the world can meet, debate, agree and disagree without ever losing sight of their common goals as academic leaders, you would find it hard to better the four-yearly conference of the UNESCO-based International Association of Universities.
Full report on the University World News site

FRANCE: Big budget increases - and big job cuts
Jane Marshall
Academics and researchers reacted with alarm to an announcement by French Higher Education and Research Minister Valérie Pécresse that their institutions faced significant losses of tenured posts next year. They accused the government of endangering French research by replacing permanent jobs with short-term contracts, and of striking "heavy blows" against scientific employment.
Full report on the University World News site

GREECE: Coimbra Group critical of Bologna
Makki Marseilles
Not everyone is enamoured with the Bologna agreement or with the way it is set up and is operating. The Coimbra Group, an association of traditional universities, is extremely sceptical of the process despite the fact Bologna is gaining friends and admirers within and outside the European Union.
Full report on the University World News site

AFRICA: New initiative to boost science
Three networks of universities in sub-Saharan Africa have been named as the first to benefit from a new partnership initiative to build scientific capacity in Africa. The Regional Initiative in Science and Education, RISE, will provide grants - each worth $800,000 - over two-and-a-half years to the three networks which are based in South Africa, Malawi and Tanzania but also involve universities in eight African countries.
Full report on the University World News site

ACADEMIC FREEDOM:

SAUDI ARABIA: SAR demands action for detained professor
Jonathan Travis
Scholars at Risk is gravely concerned about the arrest and detention of Professor Matrouk al-Faleh, a political scientist at the King Saud University in Riyadh. Al-Faleh was arrested on 19 May following the publication two days earlier of a report he wrote critical of conditions in the state security prison system.
Full report on the University World News site


BUSINESS:

EUROPE: Supercomputer tackles the tough questions
Chris Chinnery
The supercomputer has changed the world we live in. For most people, the big story in computing is that of its shrinking from a machine the size of a house to a chip in a mobile phone. But modern science, technology and medicine still depend on the monsters of the computing world. Supercomputers have transformed most scientific disciplines and created new ones, such as modelling climate, new molecules, quantum mechanics and the simulation of earthquakes. Famously, the daily weather forecast relies on supercomputers. Now European computer scientists have banded together to better manage future projects.
Full report on the University World News site

UK: Not-for-profit sector gets special research centre
Diane Spencer
Britain's Birmingham University is to lead a new, three-site Third Sector Research Centre to strengthen academic services available for non-profit organisations such as charities, social enterprises and small community organisations.
Full report on the University World News site

US: New pill camera overcomes gagging
Monica Dobie
Endoscopy the old fashioned way - often uncomfortable, expensive and time consuming - is still widely used in hospitals for oesophageal cancer scans. Now, however, American university scientists have developed a pill-on-a-tether scanning device that enables physicians to control its movement, maybe replacing the camera-on-a-tube that makes patients gag.
Full report on the University World News site

FACEBOOK:

With the recent launch of our own Facebook group, University World News has entered the sphere of internet social marketing. Readers who would like to meet and communicate directly with academics and researchers who receive the first global higher education newspaper should join. Click on the link below to visit the group.
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HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY:

US: New digest of sustainability in higher education
The new and freely-available annual digest of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, or AASHE, documents growth in campus sustainability efforts across the US and Canada. The 230-page report features more than 800 examples of higher education institutions working towards greater sustainability, and covers education, research, campus operations, administration and finance. According to an AASHE statement: "The Digest offers ample evidence of a broadening and deepening of campus sustainability efforts, with more institutions of all types getting involved and campuses undertaking more significant measures than ever before to improve their sustainability performance."
Full report on the University World News site

PEOPLE:

GLOBAL: Last adventure for maverick polymath
Geoff Maslen
Obituary: Lyall Watson: 12 April 1939 - 25 June 2008
He was born in South Africa, lived in Ireland and died in Queensland: Lyall Watson led such a remarkable and varied life it would have seemed unbelievable even as a work of fiction. Except it was probably almost all true. A hero to the 1970s New Age and alternative lifestyle hippies, Malcolm Lyall Watson has been described as a maverick scientific polymath and explorer who became famous for his best-selling book Supernature and his wacky ideas that plants are sentient, dull razor blades will sharpen if left overnight under a cardboard model of a pyramid and that oysters possess a tidal memory.
More on the University World News site

WORLD ROUND-UP:

GLOBAL: Cyberspace abuzz over Medpedia
Cyberspace is buzzing with news of Medpedia, a global collaboration wikipedia-type project that will offer a massive amount of up-to-date medical and health information for free to anyone with an internet connection, reports Medical News Today. Among the groups that have already agreed to provide information to the initiative described as the "world's largest collaborative online encyclopaedia of medicine" are Harvard Medical School, Stanford School of Medicine, the University of California at Berkeley School of Public Health and the University of Michigan Medical School.
More on the University World News site

US: Libraries taking the (really) long view
As libraries shift more of their resources to holdings that either originate as digital or become digital through scanning, it has become clear that just because something lives in the virtual stacks does not mean it will be around forever, writes Andy Guess in Inside Higher Ed. Anyone who has ever suffered through a hard drive crash (or tried futilely to save a scratched DVD) has faced the inherent physical limitations of digital storage. Now librarians are doing the same as they determine how digital holdings fit into their central mission: preserving works so that they can be accessed not just today, not just tomorrow, but indefinitely.
More on the University World News site

CHINA: Chemical education in need of reform
China's university chemistry departments are struggling to attract students despite the rapid expansion of the country's higher education system, reports Chemistry World. China currently offers 198 chemistry-related science degrees and 224 chemical engineering-related technology degrees but they are failing to entice students taking national college entry exams. Many undergraduates end up on chemistry courses because they have simply failed to make the grades needed to get onto their first choice of degree course.
More on the University World News site

INDIA: States must spend more on education
The ministry of human resource development (HRD) has said the country's gross enrolment ratio, or GER, cannot be achieved unless state governments increase their expenditure on education by at least three times, reports The Statesman.
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AFRICA: Low enrolment impedes development
Low enrolment in higher education poses a series of impediments to Africa's development, according to the Director-General of UNESCO Koichiro Matsuura, reports This Day. Speaking at the opening of the Microsoft-organised Education Leaders Forum titled "Success and Sustainability: Tertiary education's global challenge", at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, Matsuura observed that "while higher education enrolment in Africa rose by some 66% between 1999 and 2005, the average enrolment rate is still a mere 5%."
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US: Governor backs student loan plan for New York
Governor David A Paterson has called for a publicly financed, low-interest student loan programme, saying New York had fallen behind other states in making college more affordable for its residents, reports Newsday. The loan programme, a version of which was approved by the State Senate last month, is among recommendations - also including hiring 2,000 faculty and creating a $3 billion science research grant programme - from the state Commission on Higher Education, which delivered its report last week.
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UK: Debt-ridden students get reality pay check
Students are running up substantial debts but earning less than they expect on graduating, research indicates. The authors of a study say that government ambitions to push half of all school-leavers into higher education could be to blame for the mismatch between expectations and reality, reports The Times.
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UK: Universities boosting Olympic medal prospects
Following the finalising of the British team for the Beijing Olympics, Universities and Colleges Sport (Bucs) has hailed higher education's influence on the current crop of athletes, reports Manchester.com. Bucs chief executive Karen Rothery claims that 57% of athletes in the Olympic team are either students or graduates - and that a number of Beijing athletes trained with students at universities "due to the quality of facilities and coaching on offer".
More on the University World News site

Sunday 20 July 2008

University World News 0037 - 20th July 2008

NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report

GLOBAL: Future of higher education research
Diane Spencer
Higher education around the world has expanded massively in recent decades so that its character and performance have significant implications for all members of society, not only economically but for social cohesion, equity, mobility and integration, says a new report by the European Science Foundation. The report says more needs to be known about how universities and other higher education institutions are changing in the 21st century. It says that expansion of the sector has implications locally, nationally and globally, as well as how it shapes the lives of individual citizens.
Full report on the University World News site


EUROPE: First Mediterranean university launched
Keith Nuthall
A new Euro-Mediterranean University based in Slovenia has been launched with higher education courses that will focus on issues of importance to European, African and Levantine countries bordering the sea. Creation of the new institution was part of a joint declaration issued by heads of state and government from 43 countries at a Paris summit establishing a Mediterranean Union organisation.
Full report on the University World News site

US: Weak dollar draws foreign students
Subbiah Arunachalam
The faltering US dollar may be bad for the American economy but has proved a boon for foreign students who are flocking to American universities. The favourable exchange rates have resulted in the number of foreign students on US campuses rising to about 583,000 last year - the most since 2002 when tighter visa restrictions following the 9/11 tragedy caused enrolments to decline.
Full report on the University World News site

FRANCE: More super-campuses announced
Jane Marshall
Valérie Pécresse, Minister for Higher Education and Research, has announced the four remaining locations for Operation Campus - a plan aimed at making French universities internationally competitive through substantially increased funding for a selected few. While Paris was conspicuously absent among the first six projects chosen at the end of May, three of the four new campuses will be situated in the capital or the surrounding Ile-de-France region. But a decision has been postponed on which of two inner Paris proposals will go ahead.
Full report on the University World News site

ZIMBABWE: Students look east
Clemence Manyukwe
Zimbabwean students are turning to Asian universities following Australia's decision to deport eight youngsters whose fathers are accused of propping up the government of President Robert Mugabe - and more students might yet be deported. The United States has also said five students involved in "anti-democratic" activities would be deported, but has not said when or given their names. Unlike in the past, local papers are now awash with advertisements offering students places at Asian universities, mostly in Malaysia.
Full report on the University World News site


NIGERIA: Nearly 300,000 denied university places
Tunde Fatunde
More than a million Nigerian youngsters wrote qualifying tests conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, hoping to clinch a university place. But universities can accept only 153,000 out of 448,000 successful candidates, meaning that 295,000 qualified would-be students will be denied admission to higher education when the 2008-09 academic year begins in October.
Full report on the University World News site

MOZAMBIQUE: New research institutions planned
Charles Mangwiro
Mozambique is planning to increase the number of scientific institutions as part of a strategic bid to enable better use of trained staff and to fight grinding poverty currently affecting half of its 20 million people. The Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Heath have formalised a five-year memorandum of understanding aimed at promoting science and technology research.
Full report on the University World News site

SCIENCE SCENE

ASIA: Increase in exchange of scientists
Subbiah Arunachalam
The Japanese government has drawn up a plan to promote exchanges of scientists and joint research among 16 Asian countries to boost the level of the region's science and technology to that of the United States and Europe. The plan, proposed by Fumio Kishida, state minister in charge of science and technology policy, comes at a time when China and India are witnessing remarkable advances in both the economy and scientific research.
Full report on the University World News site

AUSTRALIA: Internet speeds up to 100 times faster
It has taken four years to develop but now, thanks to a small scratch on a piece of glass, University of Sydney scientists say the internet is set to become up to 100 times faster than current networks. The scratch will mean almost instantaneous, error free and unlimited access to the internet anywhere in the world.
Full report on the University World News site

UK: Room temperature superconductivity
Scientists at the University of Cambridge have for the first time identified a key component to unravelling the mystery of room temperature superconductivity, according to a paper published in the scientific journal Nature on 9 July. The quest for room temperature superconductivity has gripped physics researchers since they saw the possibility more than two decades ago.
Full report on the University World News site

NEWSBRIEFS:

UK: Green naming and shaming
The universities of Gloucester, Plymouth and the West of England topped a "Green League" table published by the student campaigning organisation People and Planet. The group noted a remarkable improvement in environmental management and performance as universities had increased their environmental staff by 25% but more action was needed, it said.
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GERMANY: Leopoldina given National Academy status
Europe's oldest academy for medicine and natural sciences, the Leopoldina, has become Germany's first National Academy of Sciences. It was officially awarded this status, putting it on a par with Britain's Royal Society or France's Académie des Sciences, at a ceremony in Halle, Saxony-Anhalt, on 14 July.
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UK: Russell Group contributes to economy
A survey by the Higher Education Business and Community Interaction organisation found the British Russell Group of research intensive universities generated £800 million from research in partnerships with business during 2006-07 - an increase of £100 million from the previous year.
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ALGERIA: More universities, more freshers, fewer teachers
As Algeria completes a five-year university expansion plan, more than half the candidates who took the baccalauréat this summer passed the examination which entitles them to a place in higher education.
More on the University World News site

FACEBOOK:

With the recent launch of our own Facebook group, University World News has entered the sphere of internet social marketing. Readers who would like to meet and communicate directly with academics and researchers who receive the first global higher education newspaper should join. Click on the link below to visit the group.
Visit the University World News group on Facebook

FEATURES:

AUSTRALIA: International quality assurance
David Woodhouse
As universities around the world internationalise their curricula and their research links, or offer courses abroad or enrol foreign students, these activities should be subject to internal quality assurance. By the same token, external quality assurance agencies must be able to assess the nature and effect of these internal processes. This is the "QA of internationalisation".
Full report on the University World News site

EUROPE: Raising education standards
Alan Osborn
The 27 EU member states will have to speed up their educational progress if they are to meet a range of self-imposed targets deemed necessary if the Lisbon strategy for growth and jobs is to be successful by 2010. A report by the European Commission* acknowledges that progress has been made in five key areas (though not in low achievement in reading) and that long-term reform processes have been launched. "Although progress towards... targets is slow, it is mostly going in the right direction," said Ján Figel, Commissioner for Education. "But much work still needs to be done," he warned.
Full report on the University World News siste

HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY:

US: Exploring academic salaries globally
A small number of studies have attempted to compare faculty salaries internationally, but only a few have cast a wide geographic net and included countries of varied levels of national and economic development, write Iván Pacheco and Laura E Rumbley in the latest edition of International Higher Education. In 2007 the Boston College Center for International Higher Education launched an exploratory project attempting to do just that - collecting and comparing salary data (in World Bank PPP dollars) from 15 countries and one territory, including Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, France, Germany, India, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, the UK, US and Palestine. The study found that overall average monthly salaries ranged from $1,182 in China to $6,038 in Canada. These findings produced an international average of $4,856 per month.
Full report on the University World News site

PEOPLE:

SENEGAL-FRANCE: Death of web pioneer
Jane Marshal
Obituary: Rose Dieng-Kuntz - 30 June 2008
Scientists in France, Senegal and around the world are mourning the death of Rose Dieng-Kuntz, specialist in artificial intelligence, prize-winner of the prestigious Irène Joliot-Curie award for women scientists and the first African woman to attend the elite French grande école Polytechnique.
full obituary on the University World News site

WORLD ROUND-UP:

US: 'Emergency' data request raises suspicion
Stymied in its efforts to alter federal laws and regulations to make it easier for students to transfer academic credits from one institution to another, the US Education Department plans an "emergency" survey of federal Pell Grant recipients that seems designed to build a case that changes are necessary, reports Inside Higher Ed. The request has agitated some higher education officials, who questioned both the premise and the purpose of the department's information expedition.
More on the University World News site

INDIA: Doors shut on top UK universities
Since it began market reforms in the early 1990s, India has rolled out the red carpet for many British corporations, reports The Independent. Vodafone, British Telecom and Rolls-Royce all have operations there, helping to push foreign direct investment to nearly £8 billion (US$16 billion) last year. But while Britain's phone companies, cars and expertise in higher education are welcomed, its universities are not.
More on the University World News site

UK: Universities shun A-levels for admissions
At least 18 universities are setting their own admissions tests because they believe they can no longer rely on A-level results alone to gauge a candidate's ability, a report reveals today. Universities UK - the body representing vice-chancellors - estimates that one in seven of its 132 members has introduced such exams, reports The Independent. Its findings are a further blow to the credibility of A-levels, and have angered critics who claim the university entrance tests will help middle-class students whose parents can afford coaching for them.
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UK: Hawking 'mulling over' Canadian invitation
Professor Stephen Hawking is "mulling over" an invitation to quit Britain because government policy is making the country the home of "dull science", colleagues have said, reports The Telegraph. Last month the 66-year-old scientist accused the government of making "disastrous" £80 million (US$160 million) cuts to research funding.
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SOUTH AFRICA: Poor performance rewarded with grants
Top research universities are upset about being "penalised for over-performing" by a government subsidy system designed to help former polytechnics and historically black institutions to catch up on research capacity, reports the Mail & Guardian. Academics and officials at three of the country's leading universities say they are unhappy about the Education Department's allocation this year of R174-million (US$23 million) in research development grants to several universities which did not meet their research targets in 2006.
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SOUTH AFRICA: At least six more universities needed
Mergers between black and white universities in South Africa to transform higher education after apartheid have been "difficult and messy" and distracted attention from expanding student numbers, the country's vice-chancellors believe, reports Education Guardian. South Africa will need at least six more universities to raise participation in higher education from the current 15% and the sector was asking whether the mergers ordered by the government (known in some quarters as the "murders") had been necessary, said Roy du Pré, vice-chancellor of Durban University of Technology and spokesman for Higher Education South Africa which represents the heads of the country's universities.
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KENYA: Income drive at expense of quality
Lack of adequate facilities is the greatest challenge facing the privately sponsored students programme, reports the Daily Nation. Often, universities admit more students than their limited facilities can cater for. "There is so much thirst for money among our public universities that they sometimes overlook issues of practicalities when admitting students," acknowledged Professor Everett Standa, secretary of the Commission for Higher Education.
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KUWAIT: Students banned from key universities
Kuwaiti students have allegedly been barred by their Education Ministry from attending three universities in Bahrain and others in Egypt, reports Gulf News. The Kuwaiti Education and High Education Minister Nouriya Al Subaih issued a decision to temporarily stop sending Kuwaiti students to certain universities and institutes in Bahrain and Egypt, according to Kuwait's Al Watan daily.
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US: University apologises to KKK book-reading janitor
A janitor whom a university official accused of racial harassment for reading a historical book about the Ku Klux Klan on his break has received an apology, months later, from the school, reports Associated Press. Charles Bantz, chancellor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, apologised to Keith John Sampson in a letter, saying the school is committed to free expression. "I can candidly say that we regret this situation took place," Bantz wrote.
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Monday 14 July 2008

University World News 0036 - 13th July 2008

SPECIAL REPORT: Women in higher education
Western Europe is generally regarded as having more equal relations between the sexes than many other regions in the world. Yet even here, marked differences exist between the career advancements available to women and those of men. Male academics continue to dominate the upper ranks in universities and hold the reins of power in many faculties. If this is the situation in Europe, it can be assumed that inequality between female and male academics and graduates is a global problem.

In this special report, University World News writers look at the experiences of women in higher education around the world and at some initiatives designed to level the gender playing field. Clearly a lot of work needs to be done before men and women academics, graduates and students, get to compete on equal terms. See also our People section for a profile of British-born educationist Janice Shiner.
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GLOBAL: A tougher time for women
Keith Nuthall
It is almost a truism that women have a tougher time in most professions than men, and academia is no different. But consider the absurdity of this statement: in the 21st century, it is still quite normal to assume that the success of an academic or student is likely to be affected by their gender.
Full report on the University World News site

EUROPE: Women lag in scientific research
Alan Osborn
A new European gender survey has confirmed the findings of other recent reports that women lag significantly behind men in scientific research and that the higher the position, the fewer women are found. The new survey finds that while roughly equal numbers of men and women start off in science, relatively few women make it to the top: thus 83.6% of men are employed on a permanent basis while only 56% of women are. Also women tend to concentrate on subjects like biology and medicine while male scientists are much more diversified.
Full report on the University World News site

INDONESIA: Cultural and historical baggage
David Jardine
It's not just misogyny. Women academics often have to overcome cultural difficulties and prejudice engrained by centuries of experience and tradition that favour their male colleagues. Indonesia is a case in point: any historical assessment of its educational development for women must take into account two broad things - the record of Dutch colonialism and the often turbulent record of the post-independence period.
Full report on the University World News site


RUSSIA: A success story in Moscow
Nick Holdsworth
Professor Svetlana Ter-Minasova, founder and head of Moscow State University's faculty of foreign languages and area studies, is one of three women deans out of the 40 at Russia's top university. Although she describes progress in her long academic career - she started teaching as soon as she graduated from the university in 1961 - as "natural", the fact that so few women scale the heights of academia in Russia makes her exceptional.
Full report on the University World News site

SPAIN: Motherhood and finishing a thesis not easy
Rebecca Warden
Anna Garriga, a 28-year-old PhD student at Barcelona's Pompeu Fabre University, did not experience any problems as a woman in higher education until she gave birth to her son last August. "I feel I am being discriminated against not as a woman but as a mother," she says. "When you are young and living on a grant, you realise that the system does not allow you to have a child."
Full report on the University World News site

SPAIN: Technical university tackles gender imbalance
Rebecca Warden
The Technical University of Catalunya or UPC in north-eastern Spain has special reasons to try to attract more female students and academics. Women make up more than half of students in Spanish higher education but at the UPC, with its focus on applied science and engineering, they account for just 27%.
Full report on the University World News site

NIGERIA: Hard work earned progress for registrar
Tunde Fatunde
Omotayo Ikotun, 54, the current registrar of University of Ibadan in Ni geria, is a good example of how women can succeed in higher education. But they have to overcome obstacles that men do not face.
Full report on the University World News site

US: Improved recruitment processes work
Monica Dobie
A study at the University of Pennsylvania school of medicine suggests that improving recruitment processes can increase the number of women in academic departments where they are under-represented. Women are still markedly under represented in American medical academia and the research, published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, notes that less than one third of physicians holding an academic appointment are women. This is despite female student numbers equalling or exceeding those of men in most medical schools.
Full report on the University World News site

SOUTH AFRICA: Gender equity measures mooted
Karen MacGregor
The South African government, vice-chancellors and the country's Council on Higher Education are due to report at the end of this month on concrete sets of proposals to advance gender equity at senior levels in universities. It is hoped higher education leadership organisations, and especially the government, will be able to shake loose obstacles to women taking up top academic posts that remain despite a decade of affirmative action laws and policies.
Full report on the University World News site

NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report

EUROPE: Needed: flexible professionals

Jane Marshall
More than a quarter of Europe's working graduates say the skills they learned in higher education are under-used by their employers, according to a wide-ranging study into the role of universities within the knowledge society. But researchers also found that higher education graduates generally do well in the labour market in most European countries.
Full report on the University World News site

UK: Fears over privatisation

Diane Spencer
Britain's main lecturers' union is campaigning against the growing trend of universities forming partnerships with private education companies. The University and College Union is opposed to what it sees as the creeping privatisation of higher education. Several universities have links with companies such as INTO, Navitas and Kaplan for recruiting and teaching overseas students on preparatory programmes for English language and study skills, usually with a guarantee of progression to a degree course.
Full report on the University World News site

EUROPE: Special visas for foreign students

Alan Osborn
A committee of the European Parliament is seeking improvements in the EU's Erasmus Mundus university cooperation and student mobility programme, including a specific visa for students. The committee says that if tuition fees are claimed by universities taking part, these should always comply with national legislation - making it possible to include countries such as Denmark where the fees are not allowed.
Full report on the University World News site


NEWSBRIEFS:

RUSSIA: Billionaire plans science foundation
Mikhail Prokhorov, one of Russia's richest men, is planning to set up a foundation to support scientific research and innovation. The 43 year old self-made billionaire, who is Russia's fifth-richest man with a fortune estimated at more than $20 billion, told the annual conference of the Russian Union of Entrepreneurs and Industrialists that stronger links between business, science and the state were key to the country's future.
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UK: Protest at scholarship cuts
Germaine Greer joined protests at the British government's decision to cut funds for student scholarships from eight older Commonwealth countries. At a meeting at London's Commonwealth Club, the Australian-born academic and journalist said: "This so-called financial saving amounts to little more than the price of a property in Bayswater, yet its withdrawal will waste untold talent. More and more Australian students will simply study in the US - this has got to be to the detriment of Britain."
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GLOBAL: New editor for OECD journal
Australian higher education consultant and commentator Professor Vin Massaro has been appointed editor of the OECD journal, Higher Education Management and Policy, the first Australian to hold the position. Massaro is a professorial fellow in the LH Martin Institute for Higher Education Leadership and Management at the University of Melbourne and a professorial fellow in Melbourne's centre for the study of higher education.
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FACEBOOK
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ACADEMIC FREEDOM:

UK: Academic faces censure for revision class
Jonathan Travis
A senior academic at Birbeck College, University of London, is facing disciplinary action for holding an end-of-module revision session. The Guardian reports that Dr Bernard Casey has run his extra economics session for the last 18 years and has never been paid for his time - all he has asked of the university was the use of a room for an hour or two which, up until now, has been supplied. But this year, things were different and Casey faces disciplinary action for the potential 'detrimental impact' caused by his holding the revision session.
Full report on the University World News site


BUSINESS:

UK: Research centre for world's top financial district
Diane Spencer
The City of London, home to the world's leading financial institutions, will soon be housing an International Centre for Financial Regulation (IFCR). Kitty Ussher, Economic Secretary and City Minister within the UK government, announced last month that the independent, industry-led centre would open later in the year. Barbara Ridpath, Executive Managing Director of global financial ratings agency Standard & Poor's, will be its chief executive officer.
Full report on the University World News site


EUROPE: 'COST' group to speed reforms
Alan Osborn
Top European scientific research officials have agreed on measures to improve the effectiveness of the EU's Lisbon strategy - a slew of policies designed to make the EU a global leader in technology and innovation by 2010. Meeting in Belgrade last month, senior officials of the COST organisation, or European Cooperation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research, agreed on the need to "improve flexibility and speed up rapid response capacity to enhance the impact of the Lisbon strategy."
Full report on the University World News site

CANADA: Extracting natural gas from dried up wells
Monica Dobie
A team of scientists from British and Canadian universities who discovered that a mixture of bacteria, nutrients and water can convert solidified heavy oil deposits into natural gas flows have begun trials of this potentially lucrative energy technology in western Canada.
Full report on the University World News site

FEATURE:

EUROPE: Preparing graduates for the workplace
Jane Marshall
Are higher education institutions equipping their graduates with the skills they need? Representatives of the European Commission and national governments will discuss this and other such questions in Brussels on Tuesday when members of the multi-country Research into Employment and Professional Flexibility (Reflex) project present the conclusions of their investigations into the role of universities within the knowledge society.
Full report on the University World News site

HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
The following presentation by Sir John Daniel was delivered at the annual Australian Universities Quality Forum, Quality and Standards in Higher Education: Making a difference, which was held in Canberra last week.

AUSTRALIA: New QA approaches for new learning forms?
Sir John Daniel
So my title is: New Approaches to Quality and Standards for New Forms and Modes of Learning? There is a question mark at the end of the title. Whether new forms and modes of learning actually require new approaches to quality and standards is a basic question. Some would argue that quality is quality and standards are standards; so that if you assure quality and measure standards properly, new modes and forms of learning should not require new approaches.
Full report on the University World News site

PEOPLE

NEW ZEALAND: British reformer completes her mission
John Gerritsen
When British-born Janice Shiner leaves New Zealand's tertiary education funding agency at the end of July, she brings to an end a period in which all three of the government's main education bodies were headed by women. Shiner took over the Tertiary Education Commission in mid-2005 when it was still a relatively young organisation. She restructured the agency to help it implement government reforms of the tertiary education sector and justify its place in the world.
Full report on the University World News site

WORLD ROUND-UP
US: Universities strive for work-life balance
It's called the 'unfinished revolution'. The women's liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s changed the landscape of the working world, but feminist leaders feel the changes did not go far enough. Now universities are on the forefront of a growing trend, searching for solutions to balancing work and life with children, reports ABC News. This is the topic of a new book by Mary Ann Mason, who became the first woman dean of Berkeley's graduate schools in 2000, titled Mothers on the Fasttrack: How a new generation can balance family and careers. It covers not only academics, but women with advanced degrees in professions like law and medicine.
More on the University World News site

US: Animal rights protesters torment scientists
In the hills above the University of California's Berkeley campus, nine protesters gathered in front of the home of a toxicology professor, their faces covered with scarves and hoods despite the warm spring weather, writes Associated Press. One scrawled "killer" in chalk on the scientist's doorstep, while another hurled insults through a bullhorn and announced, "Your neighbour kills animals!" Someone shattered a window. Borrowing the kind of tactics used by anti-abortion demonstrators, animal rights activists are increasingly taking their rage straight to scientists' front doors.
More on the University World News site

AUSTRALIA: League tables 'inevitable'
Research policy experts believe the federal government's proposal to measure academic research performance will result in unofficial university rankings, despite the exercise being designed to prevent this occurring, reports The Australian Higher Education. But research commentators are also closing ranks in support of the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) programme in the face of intense criticism from disgruntled academics.
More on the University World News site

SOUTH AFRICA: Poor will pay for free higher education
The university vice-chancellors' association, Higher Education South Africa (HESA), has challenged the concept of free higher education, arguing that all South Africans - including the poor - will have to foot the bill, reports the Mail & Guardian. The ruling African National Congress-linked South African Students' Congress (Sasco) and the South African Union of Students (SAUS) have called for free university education.
More on the University World News site

KENYA: PhDs rare in African universities
Lack of enough lecturers with PhD degrees in public and private universities is diminishing the value of higher education, reports The Standard. Outside South Africa, many universities in Sub-Saharan Africa are lucky to have 10 PhDs in their ranks. In Kenya, with the exception of the University of Nairobi where about 50% of faculty have PhDs or equivalent qualifications, doctorate cadres are thinly spread in 24 accredited and licensed universities.
More on the University World News site

UK: Art and computing students face jobless risk
Students taking creative arts degrees and computing courses are 50 times more likely to be left unemployed than those studying medicine, according to official figures, reports The Telegraph. One-in-12 graduates from courses including fine art, drama, dance and music were not in work or further study six months after leaving university.
More on the University World News site

SAUDI ARABIA: Revamp for higher education
Forty-five health colleges and five health institutes for girls that were hitherto under the Health Ministry will be brought under universities in various cities, reports Arab News. Higher Education Minister Dr Khaled Al-Anqari said King Abdullah had also approved the establishment of 17 new colleges in different parts of the country.
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UAE: Government to fund extra 3,000 students
Thousands of Emiratis who faced missing out on places at government universities will now be admitted after the Cabinet approved funding for an additional 3,000 applicants, reports The National. Students who meet entrance requirements will be able to take up places in September.
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KOREA: Lawyers, universities urge end to protests
The Korea Council of University Education and the Korea Bar Association have called for a return to law and order and an end to street protests against the import of American beef, reports Chosun. The council, an association of presidents of 198 universities nationwide, issued a resolution and an open letter from university presidents. "We are gravely concerned that society is in a touch-and-go situation. The government and politicians must bear the responsibility for it," they said.
More on the University World News site

Sunday 6 July 2008

University World News 0035 - 6th July 2008

NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report

GLOBAL: 'Blue card' could intensify brain drain
Keith Nuthall
Serious concerns have been raised about a European Union plan to attract highly qualified immigrants because it is likely to fuel the African brain drain. At a European Parliament hearing late last month on 'blue card' visa proposals, fears were expressed that easing immigration procedures for academics, researchers and scientists from developing countries would cause economic damage to their home states.
Full report on the University World News site

US: SAT a poor predictor of academic success
Geoff Maslen
The SAT test commonly used by American universities and colleges to select students for entry is a poor predictor of how well the students will actually perform on campus, a new study has found. An analysis of a decade of research at the University of California has produced compelling evidence that the SAT does not identify the students most likely to succeed in college.
Full report on the University World News site

UK-FRANCE: University signs English certification contract
Jane Marshall
The University of Paris-3, Sorbonne-Nouvelle, and Cambridge ESOL, the world specialist in certification of English language examinations, have ratified an agreement making the university an authorised examination centre of the UK-based assessment agency. Paris-3 introduced the preparatory courses in February and the first batch of students sat their examinations last month.
Full report on the University World News site

GREECE: Harvard in Greece
Makki Marseilles
Harvard University's centre for Hellenic studies is to open a branch in Greece, the first outside the US. The intercultural research institute will seek to connect its own humanistic pursuits with the homeland of Hellenism and to promote greater understanding of Hellenic civilisation by fostering research at all levels by bringing its academic resources to Greece.
Full report on the University World News site

AFRICA: New continental internationalisation network
Karen MacGregor
An African Network for the Internationalisation of Education, or ANIE, is to be launched in Kenya in November along with a new book, African Higher Education - The international dimension. ANIE will comprise a network of scholars, policymakers and professionals involved in international higher education in Africa and will have a secretariat based at Moi University in Kenya. The network will operate special initiatives, including one already established - a capacity-building programme aimed at young 'new generation' researchers and called the Network of Emerging Scholars on Internationalisation (NESI).
Full report on the University World News site

ZIMBABWE: 'Draconian' new higher education law
Clemence Manyukwe
A new law governing higher education institutions in Zimbabwe, soon to become operational, has been dismissed by critics as draconian. Minister for Higher and Tertiary Education Stan Mudenge announced that the government was in the process of appointing a nine-member board that will exert control over institutions under the legislation - the Zimbabwe Council for Higher Education Act.
Full report on the University World News site

EGYPT: Uncertain future for e-university
Ashraf Khaled
Yasser al-Dakrouri, manager of a project to set up Egypt's first electronic university, doubts it will happen any time soon. He has secured approval from various agencies, including the governmental Higher Council for Universities which licenses institutions: "But the electronic university cannot operate without a presidential decree, for which we are still waiting," al-Dakrouri told University World News. "I think the state is not yet convinced of the idea of learning via the internet."
Full report on the University World News site

SCIENCE SCENE:

GLOBAL: Worldwide science information gateway
Subbiah Arunachalam
A multilateral alliance has been set up to govern WorldWideScience.org, the rapidly growing global online gateway to international scientific research information. Officials from organisations representing 38 countries met recently in Seoul, South Korea, to formalise their commitment by signing a WorldWideScience Alliance agreement to sustain and build upon joint efforts to provide a single, sophisticated point of access for diverse scientific resources and expertise from nations around the world.
Full report on the University World News site

GLOBAL: Census of marine life at half-way mark
John Gerritsen
Researchers from around the world are closing in on their goal of creating the first complete inventory of all scientifically described and named marine species by 2010. The Census of Marine Life project is consolidating 34 different databases of ocean life and recently announced it had reached the half-way mark, with some 122,500 validated species names.
Full report on the University World News site

CHINA-US: Collaboration in traditional Chinese medicine
Subbiah Arunachalam
China and the United States have signed a memorandum of understanding to foster collaboration between scientists in both countries in research on integrative and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). The memorandum, signed by US Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt and Chinese Vice-Minister of Health Wang Guoqiang, will aid in furthering scientific research on traditional Chinese medicine, stimulate scientific cooperation on how Western medicine can be informed by TCM and help blend knowledge from the two systems.
Full report on the University World News site

HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY

AUSTRALIA: Who is accountable for what?
Dr John Kenny
The university today is far different from that of the early 1990s and the work of academics has changed considerably, driven by the efficiency and accountability agenda. Often the cry for efficiency and accountability has been used as a mechanism for control, cost reductions and to drive policy agendas. In broad terms, management practices in tertiary education have shifted from a collegial to a corporate or commercial paradigm. A by-product has been a shift in power from academia to the hierarchy, with a managerial emphasis on deploying staff to meet strategic goals and cost effectiveness. In Australian Universities Review, John Kenny discusses the state of tertiary education in Australia, linked to an account of experiences at the University of Tasmania, to consider the cumulative effects of changes and to question whether the prevailing management is the most appropriate way forward.
Full report on the University World News site

WORLD ROUND-UP

INDIA: Foreign varsities itching for a base in India
International players are increasingly setting up campuses in India, reports Business Standard. Some have already begun offering courses, mostly in management, but others are waiting for the passage of the Foreign Education Bill, which has been pending in Parliament for two years. Sources say that 40 international universities have sought land from the Maharashtra government in the Mumbai-Pune-Nashik belt to set up campuses in India. The investments lined up by these institutions are substantial.
Full report on the University World News site

US: Leaving combat for the classroom
The war spending bill President Bush signed into law recently includes one of the most dramatic bumps in troop benefits to come along in decades: a new military funding measure that roughly doubles the money troops would be eligible to get for college once they have completed at least three years in the military, reports Newsweek.
Full report on the University World News site

US: Diversity exaggerated in brochures
In September 2000, the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the University of Idaho were embarrassed when they were forced to admit they had doctored promotional photographs to make their campuses look diverse, writes Scott Jaschik in Inside Higher Ed. In both cases, non-white faces were added to real student photographs of all-white groups. Now a study of the viewbooks of hundreds of colleges and universities has found that more than 75% appear to over-represent black students.
Full report on the University World News site

IRELAND: Risk of losing 'best and brightest'
Ireland is at risk of losing its most talented students unless the state creates permanent research positions, according to one of the country's most eminent educationalists, reports the Irish Examiner. Newly-retired Higher Education and Training Awards Council chief executive, Séamus Puirséil, warns: "The brightest and the best of our students are going into science, but it will destroy the nation's morale if there are no jobs for these people at the end of their studies."
Full report on the University World News site

UK: Universities told to favour poor schools
Universities are to be told to give preferential treatment to pupils from poorly performing state schools in a move that is likely to anger independent schools, reports The Sunday Times. The government is to endorse proposals that admissions staff should tailor offers to candidates according to the quality of school they attended. The report, commissioned by Gordon Brown, is intended to devise ways of increasing the number of pupils from the poorest families reaching top universities.
Full report on the University World News site

UK: Email leak of 'degree inflation'
A leaked email shows how staff at a UK university are being urged to increase the number of top degree grades to keep pace with competing universities, reports BBC News. The internal email from Manchester Metropolitan University tells staff to "bear this in mind" when they do student assessments. The university told the BBC this was in no way related to university policy.
Full report on the University World News site

UK: One in five regret degree course choice
More than one in five of today's university graduates regret their choice of degree course, the Guardian's Grad Facts 2008 survey has revealed. Some 20% of graduates from the elite Russell group of universities, which includes Oxbridge, Imperial College London and Manchester, said they now felt they should have chosen a different degree course. The figure compared with 22% of those graduating from newer, post-92 universities.
Full report on the University World News site

Kenya: Public universities' two-year wait conundrum
Students who sat for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examination in November 2006 and qualified well enough to join regular courses in public universities are still at home, writes Ibrashim Mwathane in The Nation. They look forward to joining universities of choice later this year. By then they will have been out of school for close to two years.
Full report on the University World News site

KENYA: Scientists in rare project with rainmakers
At first they were described as backward and their shrines dismissed as laboratories of black magic. But like the proverbial cornerstone rejected by builders, traditional African rain-makers are slowly gaining recognition, reports the Daily Nation. A plan has been mooted for researchers from local universities, the Kenya Meteorological Department, Kenya Industrial Property Institute and National Museums of Kenya to join forces with the legendary rain making Nganyi community in Emuhaya constituency of Western Province.
Full report on the University World News site

UGANDA: Cabinet approves district student quotas
Cabinet has recommended that districts approve only 11 slots for students to benefit from the district quota system in Uganda's five public universities, reports the Daily Monitor. A total of 896 students are to be absorbed under the system in all public universities.
Full report on the University World News site