Monday 15 December 2008

University World News 0057 - 15th December 2008


IN THIS ISSUE – SPECIAL REPORT FROM GHANA


This week, we publish final issue of University World News for 2008. The next issue will be published on the 11th of January.

GLOBAL: Universities lose billions as recession deepens
Geoff Maslen
Few higher education institutions around the world appear to have escaped the collapse of financial markets. In Asia, Africa, North America, Europe, Britain and down under in Australia and New Zealand, universities have been hit hard as the value of their investments in property and shares and, in many cases, their income from diverse sources crumples. How to counter, or at the very least cope with, this alarming situation – unique in the experience of university managers – will be the great challenge in the year ahead. As the following stories show, for higher education the boom days are well and truly over.
Full report on the University World News site

NEW ZEALAND: Invest in universities to fight recession
John Gerritsen
Vice-chancellors have urged New Zealand’s new government to invest in universities as an anti-recession measure. And, if the government will not come up with the money, it should relax controls on student fees so universities can increase their fee income, they say.
Full report on the University World News site

GERMANY: Higher education spending to boost economy
Michael Gardner
Germany’s Education and Research Minister Annette Schavan has come up with proposals to fund measures in higher education and research as a way to help stimulate the country’s flagging economy. Investing around €15 billion (US$20 billion) in higher education infrastructure and providing tax incentives for small and medium-sized business to spend more on research could provide a vital boost to business, Schavan says.
Full report on the University World News site

CANADA: The Great Depression revisited?
How did universities fare during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and is there anything instructive today’s academics can learn from those years about what may lie ahead? Are you ready to ponder the once-imponderable? In this week’s Features section, Canadian historian Paul Axelrod considers the university experience of the 1930s and its possible implications for the present.
Full report on the University World News site

MISSING: Africa’s next generation of academics


Higher education in Africa is expanding faster than anywhere else on earth. But universities are running out of academics to teach growing student numbers. Reasons for the academic shortfall include a brain drain, lack of funding for research, low salaries, heavy teaching loads and insufficient programmes to train and retain young academics. As a result, according to the World Bank, vacancy rates for academic staff frequently run between 25% and 50%.

Last month in Ghana, at a second University Leaders’ Forum, African and global vice-chancellors and higher education experts gathered to debate and share ideas about academic staff development and retention. There were 37 university leaders from 18 African universities, representatives of governments and national tertiary organisations, young scholars and private sector leaders. The problem is severe but there are solutions and many actions to be taken, participants agreed at the event hosted by the US donor collaboration, the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa. Karen MacGregor reports.

AFRICA: Next generation of academics – The problem
Universities across Africa are running out of academics. The scale of the crisis and reasons for it differ between countries but all are affected and one thing is certain, says Professor Goolam Mohamedbhai, Secretary-General of the Association of African Universities – the continent must “think outside the box” if it is to succeed in developing a new generation of scholars.
Full report on the University World News site

SOUTH AFRICA: Challenges of equity, ageing, expansion
Karen MacGregor
South Africa faces the multiple challenges of transforming the racial and gender profile of its scholarly workforce, tackling a looming staff crisis as nearly half of its most senior academics retire in the coming decade, and growing academic numbers as higher education expands to achieve a 20% participation rate. Urgent interventions are required, says Professor Saleem Badat, vice-chancellor of Rhodes University.
Full report on the University World News site

AFRICA: Data + cooperation + differentiation = scholars
Karen MacGregor
There are pressing needs for information, cooperation and differentiation in higher education if African countries are to meet the challenge of developing and retaining the next generation of academics, says Suzanne Grant Lewis, coordinator of the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa, a collaboration of seven US foundations working in nine African countries. These imperatives emerged at a University Leaders’ Forum held in Ghana last month.
Full report on the University World News site

AFRICA: Grow the pool of potential academics
Karen MacGregor
There is no mystery about what the challenge is for skills-short African countries that do not have enough academics to teach rapidly expanding student populations, says Professor Brian O’Connell, Vice-chancellor of the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. “It is producing more good graduates and enticing them into academia.” But dramatically increasing student numbers and thus the pool of potential new academics will require major increases in higher education funding – as well as the teachers that institutions do not have.
Full report on the University World News site

AFRICA: Halting the brain drain
Karen MacGregor
Universities can do nothing about macro-factors that pull Africa’s best young minds to the West, such as far superior salaries, job opportunities and quality of life. But much can be done to alleviate ‘push’ factors like shoddy workplaces, lack of equipment, teaching overload and uncaring managers. Higher education leaders from Sub-Saharan Africa have created a “to do” list of actions that will help to train and retain the next generation of scholars.
Full report on the University World News site

AFRICA: Global university leaders pledge support
Karen MacGregor
Global university leaders have called on Africa to come up with proposals for collaboration that could bring the intellectual and resource muscle of the world’s top institutions to bear on the challenge of training a new generation of academics. Ruth Simmons, President of Brown University and head of a Global University Leaders’ Forum (GULF) team attending a forum of African higher education heads in Ghana, said ways of supporting African universities would be discussed by GULF at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos next month.
Full report on the University World News site

MORE NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report

GREECE: Universities suffer in violent riots
Makki Marseilles
Four universities and a number of historic buildings across Greece were damaged last week during the riots that followed the shooting by police of a 15-year-old youth in Athens. The National Library, a neo-classical building housing invaluable and irreplaceable books in the centre of the capital, caught fire as did the National Archaeological Museum – both were saved at the last minute by the timely arrival of the fire brigade. But the law school library at Athens University, home of important legal documents, was completely destroyed and university Rector Christos Kittas resigned in protest, unable to find words to express his frustration and anger at the carnage.
Full report on the University World News site

CHINA: Leading a global arms race in innovation
Simon Marginson
China has upped the ante on the education revolution. Between 1998 and 2005, the number of students enrolled in tertiary education in China rose by an extraordinary 4.4 times to 15.6 million, not far short of the total tertiary enrolment in each of the US and the European Union.
Full report on the University World News site

GLOBAL: 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

INDONESIA: Concern grows over religious conservatism
David Jardine
Concern is growing in Indonesia over the strength and influence of conservative and right-radical forms of Islam among university students. A debate is taking place against the background of increased local applications of elements of the Islamic sharia code and other perceived threats to the country’s constitutionally mandated religious pluralism.
Full report on the University World News site

PORTUGAL: Lisbon builds bridges with Iran
Paul Rigg
To celebrate the 500th anniversary of relations between Portugal and Iran, the University of Lisbon organised a festival on Iranian art and culture earlier this month. Co-sponsored by the University of Lisbon’s division of cultural activities and the Iranian Embassy, the exhibition gave residents of Lisbon a unique opportunity to learn about historic links between the two countries as well as Iran's cultural heritage.
Full report on the University World News site

UGANDA: Students strike over poor conditions
Kayiira Kizito
Hundreds of Nkumba University students went on hunger strike last week after the university senate failed to meet their demands. The university is one of 21 private and five public universities in Uganda but many are facing student protests over poor housing and inadequate facilities on campus.
Full report on the University World News site

FRANCE-US: HEC and MIT Sloan sign global MBA alliance
Jane Marshall
Two top international schools of management, France’s HEC and the American MIT Sloan, have signed a strategic partnership agreement to develop exchanges and collaboration through educational, research, professional and cross-cultural activities between students and faculty.
Full report on the University World News site

FRANCE-US: St Edward’s returns to its French roots
Jane Marshall
St. Edward’s University, set up by French missionaries nearly 125 years ago in Austin, Texas, is returning to its roots with establishment of a campus in Angers, France. From September 2009, the university will open its doors to European and US students, offering joint graduate degrees with its partner the Université Catholique de Ouest (UCO), study programmes abroad and professional training for businesses.
Full report on the University World News site

UK: Future imperfect
Diane Spencer
Around 900 delegates from the higher education sector worldwide gathered last week in London’s docklands for Going Global 3, the UK’s largest international education conference organised by the British Council. Speakers at the two-day event focused on themes of student mobility, internationalisation, partnership and employability.
Full report on the University World News site

ACADEMIC FREEDOM

SOUTH AFRICA: Professor quits despite global protest
Jonathan Travis
Appeals from academics and organisations around the world to University of KwaZulu-Natal authorities were not enough to prevent the resignation of Professor Nithaya Chetty, The Witness reported. Inside sources claim Chetty was pushed to resign by his own lawyers for fear of further retribution. The highly respected 45-year-old physicist received immediate job offers from a number of South African institutions and has accepted one from the University of Johannesburg.
Full report on this and other Academic Freedom stories on the University World News site

SOUTH AFRICA: University petitioned on freedom inroads
About 150 staff at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa have put their names to a petition calling on Education Minister Naledi Pandor to intervene in an long-running dispute over academic freedom, writes Sue Blaine in Business Day. The argument has pitted vice-chancellor Professor Malegapuru Makgoba against some of 4,000 staff members, of whom 1,960 are academics, and international academics.
More on the University World News site

FEATURES


CANADA: Universities and the Great Depression
As economists predict a major crisis for the world economy, perhaps as profound as the Great Depression, York University historian Paul Axelrod looks in the journal Academic Matters at the university experience of the 1930s and its possible implications for the present.
Full report on the University World News site

RUSSIA: Pay staff more to get top teachers
Nick Holdsworth
Isak Froumin has a simple formula for fast-tracking progress at Moscow's Higher School of Economics: pay staff better salaries and help them to work at world standards. Seconded from the World Bank – where he has spent the last eight years as senior education spec ialist – Froumin, 50, is senior advisor to rector Yaroslavl Kuzminov, a position that ranks him vice-rector.
Full report on the University World News site

HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY

GLOBAL: The knowledge economy and global public sphere
Professor Simon Marginson
The creation of a worldwide communicative structure is a key turning point in history, comparable in its transformative impact with the industrial revolution, perhaps the Neolithic (agricultural) revolution. The world is becoming one zone of association in which all human activities interface, with a common store of knowledge. At the same time the world continues to be diverse in political, linguistic and cultural terms. The common zone of association is a site in which differences are brought into a relation with each other, on a voluntary basis, achieving harmony in diversity without the need for abstract uniformity.
More on the University World News site

GLOBAL: The global challenge for universities
Professor Shih Choon Fong
Universities in smaller economies like Singapore and Australia can ride the rising Asia-Pacific tide by focusing on niche areas, helping them compete for globally mobile talent and resources, and build up strengths. These areas of strength can build the foundation for strong global bridges with traffic flowing in both directions. Without indigenous areas of strength, a bridge merely functions as a service stop.
More on the University World News site

FACEBOOK

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WORLD ROUND-UP

JAPAN: Graduates brace for job crunch
University students in the world’s second-largest economy could face a rude awakening as the global financial crisis hits Japan, prompting firms to cut graduate recruitment, reports Chisa Fujioka for Reuters. “Students last year didn't have any trouble finding jobs, but the situation seems to have suddenly changed this year,” said Junya Kubota, 21, one of 25,000 nervous third-year college students at a recent weekend career forum in Tokyo.
More on the University World News site

US: Harvard faculty halts searches for professors
Harvard University officials said they would postpone nearly all searches for tenure-track professors in the school’s largest academic body, in a sobering indication of how the economic crisis has hit the world’s wealthiest university, writes Tracy Jan in The Boston Globe. The move by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which also plans to freeze salaries for its 720-member faculty, followed a stop on hiring non-faculty staff announced last month.
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US: More eligible students, fewer college slots
California high schools are graduating more students qualified to enter a public university than in past years – especially Latinos – but the state's grim financial picture means not everyone may get to enrol, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.
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US: Court allows review of scholar’s visa denial
A United States judge last week ruled that federal courts may review the case of a Muslim South African scholar denied a visa to enter America on the grounds he had engaged in terrorist activities, reports Independent Online.
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UK: Universities may face deficit
Serious concerns have been raised about the future financial sustainability of the UK’s universities, writes Hannah Richardson of the BBC. The higher education sector overall is predicting a 4% real terms deficit, partly due to a £2 billion (US$3 billion) shortfall in research funding and high staff costs.
More on the University World News site

UK: Devolution creates university funding gap
Universities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland could be threatened as fee-charging institutions in England grow ever larger, a report warned last week. The study by the vice-chancellors’ group, Universities UK, warned of the possible impact of devolution on diverging higher education policies within the UK, writes Anthea Lipsett in The Guardian.
More on the University World News site

UK: Academics petition over ‘spying’
Academics and students have presented a 4,500-signature petition to Downing Street, urging the government to withdraw new immigration rules for overseas students in the UK, reports the BBC. From next March, universities will need a licence to offer places to students from outside the European Union, and will have to act as their sponsors. Lecturers will be expected to monitor whether foreign students are attending tutorials and report if they fail to attend.
More on the University World News site

PHILLIPINES: Boost planned for universities and research
Commission on Higher Education Chairman, Emmanuel Angeles, has vowed to strengthen research and development capability in state universities and colleges, reports the Phillipine News Agency. The country’s 111 state institutions have been divided into six clusters to maximise the utilisation of resources.
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PERU: Yale sued for disputed Inca artefacts
Peru is suing Yale University in a US federal court to recover thousands of Inca artefacts removed from the Machu Picchu jungle ruins nearly a century ago, reports Associated Press. In a suit filed earlier this month in Washington, the South American nation is demanding that Yale returns what it says are more than 40,000 artefacts taken by famed scholar Hiram Bingham III between 1911 and 1915.
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US: Princeton settles $900 million endowment lawsuit
Princeton University has settled a lawsuit over an endowment valued in June at more than $900 million, ending a six-year dispute about how the money is spent. The suit hinged on whether Princeton was meeting the donor’s requirement of using the gift to educate students for government careers, reports Bloomberg.
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IRAN: Protesters cause damage at Tehran University
An “illegal splinter group” of an Iranian student body caused damage and clashed with security personnel during a gathering at Tehran University last weekend, the official IRNA news agency reported. Pictures obtained by Reuters showed hundreds of people gathered at the university in the centre of the Iranian capital, some carrying pro-democracy banners.
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KENYA: Government to improve quality in universities
Kenya’s government has admitted that quality in universities is low and needs immediate improvement. Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology, Professor Crispus Kiamba, said efforts to address the issue were underway and that a regional approach had been taken.
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DUBAI: Tuition fees checked by universities’ expansion
The rapid opening of universities in Dubai has kept tuition fees down, the head of the emirate’s education authority says, reports The National. Dr Abdulla al Karam, chairman of the Knowledge and Human Development Authority, said the growing number of university spaces was “working for the students”. He was responding to concerns that too many universities have been opening, risking closures of those that fail to attract enough students.
More on the University World News site

Monday 8 December 2008

University World News 0056 - 8th December 2008

SPECIAL REPORT: UNIVERSITY LEADERSHIP

Leadership is the theme of this week's University World News special report. More than ever before, effective leadership is required of the world's universities, as our correspondents report. Search companies go through exacting selection processes as institutions search for vice-chancellors and presidents with near super-human qualities. In some instances they match their requirements with super-salaries exceeding US$1 million, but there is concern that the demands of the job deter many from even considering the role.
See the University World News website

GLOBAL: Huge demands on today’s vice-chancellors
Karen MacGregor
It’s a bird, it’s a plane…it’s Super-scholar! Leadership of universities today, especially large, complex and transforming institutions, is hugely demanding. To succeed, experts say, a vice-chancellor, principal, rector or president must be a strategic visionary, a change-manager and negotiator, fund-raiser, public figure and the bold, jet-setting workaholic chief executive of an unwieldy organisation staffed with critical minds and big egos. Ideally, he or she should also be a respected academic.
Full report on the University World News site

GLOBAL: The outsider as university leader
John Gerritsen
Management is management – does it really matter if the person running a university has not risen through its ranks or has only a passing familiarity with the work of its staff? In the business world, chief executives will move from one industry to another. The same is true of the public service with career managers shifting from one government department to another. But in higher education there is a strong feeling that the heads of the world's universities and colleges – the vice-chancellors and presidents – should come from within the sector. That they should have a track record at least in academia and preferably in university and research management.
Full report on the University World News site

CANADA: Want the top job? Be ready for some scrutiny
Philip Fine
Janet Wright, a Canadian executive-search veteran, says going through the hiring of a new university president means being able to find out everything you can about your candidate. That would mean everything. Whether the potential candidate is a womaniser or a union basher, Wright says she has to know. That translates into several hours of her calling around and talking to many people about that one person who’s being touted for the top job at her clients’ university.
Full report on the University World News site

GLOBAL: The price of leadership
Leading a university is a high-profile job but it appears that only in the US does the reward for that work break the US$1 million mark. Pay surveys from English-speaking nations indicate that US university leaders are much more highly paid than their peers in other countries, particularly in private, research-intensive institutions.
Full report on the University World News site

GLOBAL: Balancing the governance-management seesaw
John Gerritsen
Tension, trust, power – those are some of the words associated with the relationship between a university's chief executive and the chair of its governing body. Whether the two are known as vice-chancellor and chancellor, president and board chair, the issues are likely to be very much the same around the world. The vice-chancellor or president is charged with running the institution while the chair or chancellor leads the group that looks over his or her shoulder, providing governance and advice, and voting on key decisions.
Full report on the University World News site

NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report

SPAIN: Protests against Bologna begin to spread
Rebecca Warden
Resistance to the Bologna process is spreading among academics and students in different countries across Europe. In Spain, angry students have stepped up their protests by occupying university buildings, blocking train lines and interrupting senate meetings. The Spanish government has tried to defuse the situation but last week more than 600 students were occupying various buildings at the University of Barcelona while universities in Madrid, Seville and Valencia were also affected.
Full report on the University World News site

AUSTRALIA: Online learning not the most popular
Geoff Maslen
Transnational higher education, where students study courses provided by a university in another country, has proved to be one of the fastest growing areas of education exports. The US-based Global Alliance for Transnational Education estimated in 2000 that demand for transnational education would exceed 500,000 by 2020 but the latest research has revealed the usual method of providing transnational education via online courses is not popular with students.
Full report on the University World News site

FRANCE: Life sciences and health research ‘needs total overhaul’
Jane Marshall
The organisation of life sciences and health research in France needs radical and bold reform to streamline and unify its highly fragmented structure, eliminate bureaucracy and give researchers their freedom, according to international experts who also propose creation of a single funding institute for the whole sector.
Full report on the University World News site

GREECE: Tough regulations create more unrest
Makki Marseilles
Tough new measures are being imposed by the Greek Education Ministry on universities and technology institutes. Although the institutions are supposed to be autonomous and self-administering, the government intends to exercise greater control over their operations, restrict academic freedom and trade union activity, and curtail student mobilisation.
Full report on the University World News site

EUROPE: Digital library on track despite launch flop
Alan Osborn
It lasted less than a day and ended in apparent humiliation but, believe it or not, the launch of the European digital library Europeana has been hailed a success story. The site collapsed on 20 November because the servers could not cope with the torrent of demand. Now, all being well, it will be back before Christmas “bigger and better than ever” said a spokesman for the European Commission which is behind the idea.
Full report on the University World News site

EGYPT: Court bans police from campus
Ashraf Khaled
In a ruling applauded by academics as historic, an Egyptian court has banned the presence of police guards on the campus of Cairo University, the nation’s most prestigious university. The Administrative Court also obliged the university administration to set up a security unit of civilians, saying the presence of police on the campus was a violation of the Egyptian constitution and university independence.
Full report on the University World News site

ZIMBABWE: Cholera greater threat than police
Clemence Manyukwe
“Police stop beating students” demands a sign across one of the main gates of the University of Zimbabwe, the country’s oldest university. The sign has been there for close to five years, says Wadzanai Rugare, a vendor who sells fruit and sweets to students outside the gate. It is a plea from students who are routinely harassed, arrested and tortured by a notorious police force determined to subdue a restive population fed up with President Robert Mugabe’s 28-year-old autocratic rule. But the greatest threat they currently face is cholera.
Full report on the University World News site

NIGERIA: Law lecturers reject new faculties
Tunde Fatunde
Professor Funsho Adaramola, dean of law at Lagos State University, frowns on the establishment of law faculties in newly created public and private universities in Nigeria. He believes the move breaches legal provisions regulating setting up new law faculties, and other law lecturers have supported him. Meanwhile, there are fears among members of the councils of new universities that the National Universities Commission (NUC) might not accredit their faculties, and they are making moves to prevent possible closures.
Full report on the University World News site

NEWSBRIEFS

GERMANY: First-year student numbers peak
Michael Gardner
According to figures released by the Federal Statistical Office, around 385,500 first-year students enrolled at German higher education institutions in the 2008 academic year. This puts the first-year student rate – the number of first-year students per cohort – at 39%, just short of the Federal Government’s 40% goal.
Full report on the University World News site

ANGOLA: Cuba offers study and science support
Cuba will send teachers to Angola to train personnel in a variety of fields, and 1,000 Angolan students will go to the Caribbean republic to study during the next five years, it was announced during a five-day visit to Angola by the Cuban Minister for Higher Education, Juan Vela Valdês. Angola has also entered a partnership with Brazil for technological cooperation.
Full report on the University World News site

US: Graduate conference attracts education leaders
More than 600 leaders in graduate education from North America and overseas met at the Council of Graduate Schools’ 48th annual meeting in Washington late last week. Deans of graduate schools and other stakeholders from across the US and Canada, as well as Mexico, Europe, Australia, and China, discussed current issues in graduate education.
Full report on the University World News site

SCIENCE SCENE

GLOBAL: Academies have no-one to fear but themselves
John Gerritsen
The director of the Science Development Network has urged science academies in the developing world to engage with the “real world” to influence policy. Writing on the network’s website, www.scidev.net, David Dickson said many scientific academies, particularly in the developed world, were increasingly interacting with governments on science-related issues and encouraging public debates around them. “But all too often, the image of science academies as elite institutions remains uncomfortably close to the truth,” Dickson said.
Full report on the University World News site

AUSTRALIA: Seeds return from space
Native to one of the world’s harshest climates, Australian seeds have to put up with a lot of challenges before they germinate. But it's unlikely any have been through more than a group of seeds that will be propagated after six months orbiting the earth.
Full report on the University World News site

EUROPE: R&D targeted in recession-recovery plan
The European Union last week unveiled an anti-recession plan which includes strong spending on research and development. European Commissioner for Science and Research, Janez Potočnik, said the European Economic Recovery Plan looked beyond the “short distance” of the immediate recession and took account of the commission’s longer-term plan of building Europe’s future prosperity on the basis of a knowledge economy.
Full report on the University World News site

FEATURES

GLOBAL: Academic blogging opens new world
Andrew Walker and Nicholas Farrelly
Academic blogs dramatically extend the boundaries of conventional peer review and academic readership. Even in our niche field, the pool of attentive readers and reviewers is huge. With engaging content, regular updates and savvy marketing, academic bloggers can build a community of peers that would fill seminar rooms, lecture theatres and conference venues many times every day. Statistics we have seen indicate that a blog run by a couple of academics can generate as much internet traffic as the conventional websites of an entire faculty.
Full report on the University World News site

GLOBAL: Universities offer anti-money laundering advice
Alan Osborn
The world is not overfull of spec ialist academics teaching anti-money laundering methods – but these important experts are out there if you look for them. In this article, University World News continues an occasional series covering subjects where academic experts can be called on to give vital economic, social, legal and other advice to the wider world.
Full report on the University World News site

HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY

US: Measuring UP 2008
Measuring Up 2008, the fifth in a series of biennial report cards by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, reveals that America is making some advances in preparing students for college and providing them with access to higher education. However, writes Patrick M Callan, the independent Center’s president, “other nations are advancing more quickly than the United States; we continue to slip behind other countries in improving college opportunities for our residents. In addition, large disparities in higher education performance by race/ethnicity, by income, and by state limit our nation’s ability to advance the educational attainment of our workforce and citizenry – and thereby remain competitive globally.”
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UNI-LATERAL: Off-beat university stories

AUSTRALIA: Universities not run by ‘lefties’
Australian universities are not controlled by left-wing academics hell-bent on brainwashing students, a Senate inquiry has found, reports The Age. The previous coalition government established the inquiry into allegations of academic bias a week before it lost control of the upper house earlier this year.
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FACEBOOK

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WORLD ROUND-UP

CANADA: Lecturers censure First Nations University
Saskatchewan’s First Nations University of Canada is facing yet another crisis after the Canadian Association of University Teachers voted unanimously to censure the institution for failing to insulate itself from political interference and safeguard academic freedom, write Joe Friesen and Elizabeth Church in the Globe and Mail.
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US: Women abroad and men at home
Across America, fuelled by growth in short-term programmes and increasing diversity in participating students’ majors and destinations, a two-to-one female-to-male ratio of students studying abroad has stayed remarkably stagnant, writes Elizabeth Redden in Inside Higher Ed. In 2006-07, the most recent year for which data are available, 65.1% of Americans studying abroad were women, and 34.9% were men. A decade earlier, when the total number of study abroad students was less than half its current total, the breakdown was 64.9% female, 35.1% male, according to Institute of International Education Open Doors statistics.
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US: Harvard’s endowment plunges $8 billion
Harvard University’s endowment lost more than $8 billion in four months, a 22% plunge that is the steepest decline at the school in modern history, reports The Boston Globe. The loss brings the endowment from $36.9 billion on 30 June to roughly $28.7 billion by the end of October.
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US: Graduate students pay and benefits vary widely
When it comes to the financial packages that graduate students receive to pursue their degrees, the devil is in the details. A survey by the Chronicle of Higher Education, conducted in recent months, of the pay and benefits of teaching and research assistants at more than 100 research institutions reveals a dizzying array of variables that students must compare.
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US: Studies link part-time lecturers to poor quality
It is no secret that colleges and universities are relying increasingly on part-time instructors or other faculty who are neither tenured nor on track for tenure. But a flurry of recent studies draw troubling conclusions about what kind of impact that is having on the quality of a student’s education, reports USA Today.
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KOREA: Top universities get state research funds
The government has announced a list of universities whose research projects will be funded to support their international competitiveness, reports Korea Times. Eighteen universities will benefit from the World Class University project that will finance 52 research initiatives proposed by the institutions, said the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology.
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EAST AFRICA: Minister wants university fees harmonised
Following the recent signing of the inter-university bill by partner states of the East African Community, or EAC, all universities in the five member countries should charge uniform fees, chairperson of the EAC Council of Ministers Monique Mukaruliza has urged. But the decision should only be implemented after legislation and ratification of the bill and protocol has been done by member states, reports The New Times.
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UK: Students fashion their own education
In David Melville’s last year as vice-chancellor of the University of Kent, where he worked until September 2007, he found the style of students’ emails to him had changed, writes Harriet Swain in The Guardian. “Hi Dave, how are you today? Just thought I'd let you know what I'm doing,” they would read. Or: “Sorry you’re going. I’ve had a good time here and that would probably have had something to do with you, so thanks.”
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UK: Are universities hotbeds of Islamic radicalism?
Cambridge researcher June Edmunds has argued that most young British Muslims are not disaffected radicals. But politics Professor Anthony Glees, director of the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies at Buckingham University, pointed out in a blog in The Guardian that her study is based on just 26 interviews. His article provoked a lively set of reader responses.
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AUSTRALIA: Less cash for more PhDs, say scientists
The flagship grant programme of the Australian Research Council should radically be redesigned, with emphasis on a large number of low-cost grants to train PhD students, a group of scientists has urged, reports The Australian. Their call was inspired by a Canadian programme that funds a high proportion of applicants.
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US: Toledo official fired over column sues
The firing of a college administrator over her criticism of g ay rights has sparked a debate about free speech and whether universities have the right to regulate what employees say outside of their jobs, reports Associated Press. Crystal Dixon filed a lawsuit in federal court last week seeking to be reinstated to her University of Toledo job, which she lost after writing in a newspaper column that g ay rights cannot be compared to civil rights because being
gay is a choice.
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Monday 1 December 2008

University World News 0055 - 1st December 2008

NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report

EUROPE: Meltdown forces new look at university financing
Alan Osborn
The global credit crunch has focused attention on the financing of universities, especially in Europe where there is less public investment in higher education than in many other places around the world. At the same time, more and more is demanded of the universities in teaching and in research. As the European University Association says: “The financial sustainability of their missions will certainly be the primary issue of concern for universities in the 21st century.”
Full report on the University World News website

US: Call for a crisis commission
As America faces its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, a distinguished American educator, Dr John Aubrey Douglass, has called on the new Obama administration to establish an exploratory Commission on Higher Education similar to that created by President Harry Truman in 1946 to avoid a projected steep post-World War II recession. But Douglass says the issue has more urgency today and a new commission would need an initial budget as well as “a larger vision to contemplate a range of options”.
Full report on the University World News website

GLOBAL: Fees converging – and rising
Diane Spencer
Fees in American and European research universities are showing signs of convergence and the start of a ‘big curve’ in pricing, say researchers at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley. John Aubrey Douglass and Ruth Keeling studied pricing trends among a sample group of 24 public and private research universities in the US, all with a wide array of graduate and professional programmes, and a smaller group of EU universities.
Full report on the University World News website

HUNGARY: University rankings rejected
Nick Holdsworth
Competitive university rankings have been rejected as an effective means of informing people about differing standards in higher education. A conference attended by delegates from European university and standards-setting associations in Budapest last week agreed that rankings had “perverse effects”.
Full report on the University World News website

GERMANY: Court rules on maintenance grants
Michael Gardner
Nationals of European countries may be required to have lived for several years in a foreign member state before being entitled to maintenance grants. This follows a decision earlier this month by the European Court of Justice after hearing an appeal by Jacqueline Förster, a German national settled in The Netherlands who enrolled for higher education courses there.
Full report on the University World News website

INDIA: Technology institutes face uncertain future
Shreesh Chaudhary
The scientific community in India is worried about the global image of Indian Institutes of Technology after the government created six new IITs earlier this year. Professor CNR Rao, principal scientific adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, expressed surprise and dissent at the decision.
Full report on the University World News website

EGYPT: Politics gets short shrift on campuses
Ashraf Khaled
It is not uncommon to see scores of police vehicles and anti-riot soldiers stationed outside Egypt's government-run universities. In recent years, universities have been venues for vociferous student protests against local politics and anti-US acts in the Middle East. On several occasions, campus activists, particularly the Islamists, have been detained and questioned by the police. They may be dismissed from classes or even jailed.
Full report on the University World News website

ACADEMIC FREEDOM

ETHIOPIA: Academic freedom in East African universities
Jonathan Travis
The Network for Education and Academic Rights (NEAR) and the Scholars at Risk (SAR) Network held a conference and workshop on academic freedom in Ethiopia last month. The event was organised in partnership with the Forum for Social Studies, the Organisation for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa and the British Council. Faculty members and researchers from 13 countries participated, including Ethiopia, Ghana, Jordan, Kenya, Rwanda, Senegal, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Ukraine, UK and the US.
Full report on the University World News website

BUSINESS

GLOBAL: College offers virtual world digital course
Kristan Hall
The virtual world Second Life has become a focus of higher education by providing a remote forum in which to teach and hold seminars. Now a college in Texas is offering a certificate and degree course likely to be of interest to a large number of Second Life residents.
Full report on the University World News website

US: Chicago business school receives record donation
Jane Marshall
The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business is no more: in its place is the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. The change of name for the globally top-ranking institution is in honour of entrepreneur and alumnus David G Booth who made a record donation to the school where he learned the finance principles on which he built his fortune.
Full report on the University World News website

AUSTRALIA: Conductive plastics centre launched
Keith Nuthall
High technology plastics that act as conductors will be developed by a Centre for Organic Photonics and Electronics which opened at the University of Queensland in Australia this month. The US$7 million purpose-built centre will bring together almost 40 scientists specialising in chemistry and physics
Full report on the University World News website

FEATURES

AUSTRALIA: How I learned to stop worrying and love YouTube
Adam Micolich
Once the gas helium is cooled below 2.2 Kelvin or minus 271 degrees Celsius, it becomes a superfluid: incredibly, it can flow without resistance, defy gravity by climbing up walls, slide through tiny pores that other liquids cannot penetrate and even produce a fountain that never stops flowing. Video footage of superfluid helium is quite rare and as a student the best I ever saw were some small black and white photographs in a textbook, something that hardly conveys the bizarre and fascinating behaviour of this liquid. Today, however, any physics students can see what few of their lecturers have ever seen, thanks to the wonders of YouTube.
Full report on the University World News site

GLOBAL: Academic Freedom in the 21st century
Jonathan Travis
Academics and students around the world at this very second are being subjected to infringements of their professional and human rights and most of these violations are going unnoticed. From surveillance to corruption, from torture to murder, educators and the educated stand little chance against the full force of corrupt regimes and repressive agents intent on stifling democracy.
Full report on the University World News website

PEOPLE

UK: Widening a lady’s net
Diane Spencer
JANET is not the name of a respectable middle-class housewife, probably from Morningside, the posh part of Edinburgh, but it is the acronym for one of the world’s leading research and educational networks. It styles itself as “a mission critical asset for all involved in education, training and research” and has ambitions to work with other sectors beyond its 18 million users in the UK and to learn from the rest of the world. So it has appointed Steve Hogger as its first head of international relations.
Full report on the University World News site

HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY

EUROPE: Are higher education rankings reliable?
A recent study by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre has questioned the substance of statistics on which the Academic Ranking of World Universities conducted by Shanghai Jiao Tong University are based. The study, carried out by researchers at the Centre for Research on Lifelong Learning (CRELL), questions whether the Jiao Tong ranking serves its intended purpose, compares it with the Times Higher Education-QS rankings exercise, and concludes that neither system succeeds in effectively ranking Europe’s universities.
More on the University World News site

UK: How HE can help businesses during downturn
A brochure outlining how universities and colleges can help businesses during an economic downturn was published last week by Universities UK, the representative body for higher education, and GuildHE. Standing Together: Universities helping business through the downturn, describes the kind of support institutions can offer employers including practical support for small and medium sized enterprises, consultancy services, research support, staff development and training courses, and strengthened partnerships.
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WORLD ROUND-UP

US: University presidents to give back some pay
In the week after The Chronicle of Higher Education published its annual survey of university presidents’ pay – a week in which the nation’s economic troubles worsened – several of the highest-paid presidents said that they would give back part of their pay or forgo their raises, writes Tamar Lewin in the New York Times.
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TANZANIA: Accept cost sharing or leave, students told
Following student protests that closed down several universities, the Tanzanian government last week directed public universities to readmit only students who agreed to pay for their education through its cost-sharing loan policy and lock out those demanding that government fully finances their fees and accommodation, reports The Citizen.
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BANGLADESH: Campuses of foreign universities allowed
Despite opposition from Bangladesh’s university regulator, the country’s caretaker government passed a law last week allowing private individuals and institutions to establish campuses in the name of foreign universities – but only with prior permission from the government – reports The Chronicle of Higher Education.
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NEW ZEALAND: Take cap off fees, say universities
The heads of New Zealand’s universities say the government is unfairly doling out money to students and forgetting universities themselves, reports the New Zealand Herald. They also want the cap on fees removed so universities can set the cost of courses.
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WALES: Student grant shake-up plan unveiled
The Welsh Education Minister has unveiled proposals to scrap the £1,890-a-year (US$2,927) grant every Welsh student in Wales receives towards tuition fees, reports the BBC. Jane Hutt wants a “significant proportion” of funding, currently £61 million, to be redirected to helping students from lower income families from 2010.
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SOUTH AFRICA: Physicist quits in academic freedom row
Appeals from international academic heavyweights to University of KwaZulu-Natal authorities were not enough to prevent the resignation last week of respected physicist Professor Nithaya Chetty, who faced what commentators have described as “unwinnable” internal disciplinary action, reports The Witness. The university has come under sharp criticism for what critics claim are infringements of academic freedom.
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UK: University students focused on jobs
University students are more focused on gaining qualifications and getting a good job than going into higher education for the “experience”, according to a study commissioned by the National Union of Students, reports the Press Association. Online interviews with 3,135 students revealed that most undergraduates see university as a means to an end and less than a third (28%) say their main reason for going to university was “for the experience itself”.
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UK: Science students from top universities earn most
Graduates earn hugely different salaries depending on what subject they study and which university they attend, new research has found, reports The Guardian. According to research into graduate employment and earnings by the 1994 group, science graduates from the old research-intensive universities will earn much more than graduates with arts and social science degrees from the newer teaching-led institutions.
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NIGERIA: President seeks better global ranking for universities
President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua has urged universities to work toward attaining a more respectable position in world universities rankings in the next five years, reports This Day. He pledged the federal government’s commitment to improving learning facilities in universities, and asked institutional administrators to ensure that resources made available to them were judiciously used.
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INDIA: Green light for two more universities
Two universities will be set up in Karnataka state after Governor Rameshwar Thakur, who is the chancellor of universities, gave the green light, reports the Times of India. He cleared an ordinance to this effect last weekend, according to higher education department officials.
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IRELAND: IBM forms research partnership with universities
IBM has formed a multi-million euro partnership with Irish universities to research massively powerful super-computers which it expects to change the future of computing, reports The Irish Times.
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SOUTH AFRICA: University expels racist student
A North West University student has been expelled for bringing the institution into disrepute after he created a racist Facebook group, reports The Times. Another six students were found not guilty by a disciplinary committee because it could not find evidence that they actively associated themselves with the group.
Full report on The Times site