The scorched Earth – what are universities doing?
Universities across the globe are tackling the issue of climate change through teaching and research, but are they doing enough on campuses to help prevent the Earth becoming a dustbowl? Our special series of reports this week asks how green are the towers of academe. To read our special report on the greening of univesities,
Visit the University World News site.
US: Rapid progress in 'greening' campuses
Karen MacGregor
North American universities and colleges have made rapid progress in 'greening' campuses, according to the College Sustainability Report Card 2008. Half of the 200 institutions with the largest endowments in the US and Canada are cutting carbon emissions, a quarter have pledged to achieve carbon neutrality, more than two-thirds have green building policies and nearly a third have endowment investments in renewable energy or similar funds.
Full report on the University World News site
UK: Going greener slowly
Diane Spencer
There are signs Britain's higher education sector is taking environmental issues more seriously. In January, Universities UK (UUK) published a report, Greening Spires, which painted a somewhat rosy picture of how institutions are contributing to the green agenda. This month, too, the Higher Education Funding Council for England issued a progress report and consultation paper on sustainable development. Students are also campaigning on the issue through their organisation, People and Planet, which has groups in 61 universities and colleges. But, say observers, there is much more to do.
Full report on the University World News site
NEW ZEALAND: Universities yet to lead on environment
John Gerritsen
All New Zealand universities are making efforts to address sustainability issues but none has yet committed itself to becoming carbon neutral and the sector is not taking a leadership role in efforts to address environmental issues.
Full report on the University World News site
NEW ZEALAND: First carbon-neutral architecture faculty
John Gerritsen
On a cold winter day, the head of the world's first carbon neutral faculty of architecture and design is proving his commitment to energy conservation. An Antarctic blast has brought temperatures outside Victoria University of Wellington down to seven degrees centrigrade and there is snow on the mountains near the city - but Professor Gordon Holden has his window open and his heater off.
Full report on the University World News site
GERMANY: Boosting environmental research and action
Michael Gardner
Germany's Federal Ministry of Education and Research wants to raise funding for projects in the area of biosphere research by around 50% to an annual EUR30 million (US$47 million) a year. This means that, together with institutional funding, research into the conservation of biological diversity will now be supported with an annual total of roughly EUR90 million. At present, EUR9 million a year is provided for the research programme on Biodiversity and Global Change, or BIOLOG. Efforts are also being made by higher education institutions to comply with international environmental standards at campus level.
Full report on the University World News site
SOUTH AFRICA: Power cuts fuel 'green' drive
Karen MacGregor
South African universities are fully engaged with sustainable development and environmental issues in teaching and research, but until recently the matter of sustainable campuses was low on the agenda. Then early this year energy demand in this fast-growing developing country outstripped supply and massive power cuts struck. Universities, devastated by the outages, responded quickly with electricity saving measures and plans to shift to renewable energy. The worst of the power crisis is over but universities' energy reduction plans are steaming ahead - a sustainability drive fuelled as much now by financial probity as by necessity.
Full report on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA: Are they in it only for the money?
Geoff Maslen
Cynics among Australia's academics claim efforts by the nation's universities to promote their green credentials have more to do with generating income from worried governments than reducing their carbon footprints. But, given the range of university-funded programmes and the preparedness of individuals to push for greater environmental awareness on campus, such cynicism downplays the genuine concern that exists among tertiary staff alarmed by global warming.
Full report on the University World News site
NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report
TURKEY: Student faces jail for questioning Atatürk
Brendan O’Malley
A headscarf-wearing student faces a possible jail sentence of four and a half years for saying she does not like the state's founding hero, Atatürk. The state prosecutor is to open an investigation regarding comments made on a Kanal 1 television show Teke Tek by Nuray Bezirgan.
Full report on the University World News site
GERMANY: Limited access to higher education
Mike Gardner
Skilled workers without the traditional abitur or higher education admission certificate are having particular difficulties gaining access to higher education in Germany. The country's "Hochschul-Informations-System" (HIS), an independent company providing higher education statistics, has confirmed this in its European Students Report covering 23 European states.
Full report on the University World News site
FRANCE: Evaluation agency completes first year
Jane Marshall
Aeres, France's new Research and Higher Education Evaluation Agency, assessed 30 universities, 72 doctoral schools and 130 research units during its first few months, according to its just-published first activity report. But the agency is now responsible for inspecting all national higher education and research establishments and is preparing to overhaul its evaluation methods to improve quality.
Full report on the University World News site
NEWSBRIEFS:
SINGAPORE: Three-nation project to improve water Organisations in three nations are involved in a major international collaboration between Flinders University in South Australia and the National University of Singapore, to improve the quality of the island city-state's stormwater. The new technology and the research expertise will ultimately be used to tackle the world's water crisis.
Full report on the University World News site
EUROPE: Budapest selected for new EU innovation body Budapest has been chosen as the site of the new European Institute of Innovation and Technology, beating four other contenders - Wroclaw in Poland, Sant Cugat del Vallès near Barcelona in Spain, Jena in Germany, and Bratislava-Vienna - for the prize.
Full report on the University World News site
CANADA: Revenues fall behind enrolments Despite government investments in post-secondary education in recent years, revenues per student in the general operating budgets at Canadian universities are much lower than at American public universities, according to the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada.
Full report on the University World News site
ACADEMIC FREEDOM:
INDONESIA: Students protest over colleague's death
Jonathan Travis
Hundreds of university students were involved in a demonstration in Jakarta last week to demand answers over the death of a recently incarcerated colleague. Thousands reportedly gathered outside the parliament building, burning tyres and throwing rocks at police. In addition, around 1,000 protestors toppled the parliament building's fence while an effort to set a police vehicle on fire was foiled by police officers.
Full report on the University World News site
BUSINESS:
EUROPE: Shake-up at WMU after management review
Alan Osborn
A new president and new management team are to be installed at the World Maritime University in Malmo, Sweden, from 1 January next year following the recommendations of a wide-ranging and as yet unpublished external strategic review. Neither the WMU nor the International Maritime Organisation, which established the university in 1983, would comment on the reasons for the changes. But the Swedish press has reported complaints about the management style of the president, Dr Karl Laubstein. These were dismissed by the university while Laubstein, who has been a reformist president for more than a dozen years, said that "whenever you make a lot of changes there are always some people who don't agree with you."
Full report on the University World News site
AUSTRALASIA: Commercialising research from new fund
John Gerritsen
Four Australian universities and one in New Zealand now have access to a new funding pool for the critical early stages of commercialising their research, thanks to A$30 million (US$28.5 million) from an Australian pension fund.
Full report on the University World News site
UK: Universities in groundbreaking health collaboration
Diane Spencer
Britain's first Centre of Excellence for Public Health Research was launched at Queen's University Belfast last week with a focus on promoting healthier nutrition and lifestyles. The £5m centre is part of a £20 million (US$40 million) investment programme under the umbrella of the UK Clinical Research Collaboration, a private-public research funding consortium. Its work aims to significantly improve the health of the British population.
Full report on the University World News site
FEATURE:
CHINA: Emerging world leader in science
Subbiah Arunachalam
China is emerging as the world leader in science. From a mere speck in the atlas of science two decades ago, China today has overtaken Japan, Britain, Germany and France to become second only to the US in the number of scientific research papers produced each year. China also made the third largest investment in research and development last year, after America and Japan.
Full report on the University World News site
LITHUANIA: Call for worldwide defence of academic freedom
Nick Holdsworth
Academic freedom worldwide must be strengthened through a better defence of core university values and greater solidarity within higher education communities. This was the conclusion from a conference organised by the New York-based Scholars at Risk organisation at the European Humanities University in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius.
Full report on the University World News site
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY:
CANADA: Universities in a climate of change
Brian Wakelin and Kathy Wardle
Although we are not experiencing intense hurricanes or brush fires, as a northern country, Canada is more sensitive to climate change than its southern neighbours. The 2.5 degrees centigrade increase in Canada's average temperature over the last 50 years has had major impacts: from diminishing ice caps to shrinking lakes to a forestry industry decimated by pine beetle infestation. According to climate scientist James Hansen, of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, we only have 10 years or approximately 3,000 days before our ability to affect climate change becomes irreversible. In this context, urgent action is critical and everyone must contribute, especially universities, argue architect Brian Wakelin and environmental scientist Kathy Wardle in the latest edition of Academic Matters.
Full report on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA: Sustainability bandwagon is unsustainable
Thomas Barlow
I am not averse to following fashions, writes Thomas Barlow in Australasian Science, and he continues: In the 1970s I had my yo-yos and wore corduroy; in the 1980s I kept time with a Swatch Watch and solved the Rubik's Cube; in the 1990s I walked around in Camper shoes and read a Michael Crichton novel; and today I own an iPod and have a pair of glasses with no rims. I am no Diogenes. Far be it from me to deride faddist behaviour, being as susceptible to social trends as the next person, but I feel compelled to voice misgivings about the current national obsession with `sustainability'.
Full report on the University World News site
PEOPLE:
Obituary: Gilbert Hunt - Princeton probability expert
Kitta MacPherson
Gilbert Hunt, a professor emeritus of mathematics at Princeton University and one of the world's recognised authorities in the fields of probability theory and analysis, has died at the age of 92.
Full report on the University World News site
WORLD ROUND-UP:
SWEDEN: Non-EU students to be charged fees
The government is to introduce fees for all non-EU students in Sweden, according to Liberal Minister of Education Lars Leijonborg, reports Radio Sweden. Sweden is one of the few countries in the world that does not charge fees to foreign students. But now all non-EU students will pay fees by 2010. Costs for one term could be between $5,000 and $13,000.
Full report on the University World News site
US: University presses start to sell via Kindle
The Subprime Solution: How today's global financial crisis happened, and what to do about it is a promising title for Princeton University Press, writes Inside Higher Ed. The topic couldn't be more timely and the author is Robert Shiller, a Yale University economist who has managed with works such as Irrational Exuberance to attract big audiences for complicated topics. Princeton press is planning something new for the release: two weeks before print publication the book will be available as a Kindle e-book. Kindle is Amazon.com's portable reader that allows for downloading of complete books and its Amazon.com market is attractive to many publishers - including university pressses.
Full report on the University World News site
ISRAEL: Treasury 'hostile towards universities'
Israel's former Finance Minister Avraham Shochat, who headed a committee tasked with formulating reform in higher education, has slammed a Treasury decision to recall US$44.7 million given to universities, reports ynetnews.com. The Knesset's Finance Committee held an emergency meeting on Wednesday, following the Finance Ministry's demand that several universities retroactively return funds allocated to them in the last academic year.
Full report on the University World News site
SOUTH AFRICA: Drop-out rate alarming
The high drop-out rate at universities in South Africa is cause for concern, MPs heard last week, reports Independent Online. Higher Education South Africa chair, Professor Theuns Eloff, told Parliament's education portfolio committee that the vice-chancellor's association was "not happy" with the current drop-out rate of up to 35% at some universities.
Full report on the University World News site
SCOTLAND: Radical changes to funding proposed
Radical changes to the way universities are funded and run have been proposed by a specialist group set up by the Scottish Government, reports The Herald. Under the plan, universities would be given more freedom over how they spend public money in return for delivering on ministerial priorities.
Full report on the University World News site
UK: Working class white boys shun higher education
White working class males are severely under-represented in universities, according to a report by the government that shows the English university sector remains strongly divided along class lines, reports Education Guardian.
Full report on the University World News site
INDIA: Education department falls back on old hands
To tide over the crisis of talent in higher education, the state education department in Gandhinager has decided to take retired professors and lecturers on contractual assignments extendable up to the age of 70 years, reports Express India. At present, the retirement age of college teachers is 62 years. Over 2,000 teaching posts are vacant in the state's universities and colleges, and the decision will help fill at least half of them soon, according to sources. "We had to devise this interim arrangement as the shortage of teaching staff was adversely affecting quality of education across the state," said an official.
Full report on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA: Teaching load carried by 'servants'
Sessional lecturers are the domestic servants of the contemporary campus and carry as much as 80% of the undergraduate teaching load, according to a new study on the rise of the casualised class of academic, reports The Australian Higher Education. "In many ways the lifestyle of the traditional teaching (and) research academic is totally dependent on the contribution of sessional staff, in the way that Victorian middle class lifestyles were dependent on the domestic servant," according to the University of Wollongong's Professor Rob Castle, spokesman for the Recognition, Enhancement, Development report.
Full report on the University World News site
UKRAINE: Businesses finance university improvements
Businesses in Ukraine are investing more money in university classrooms, hoping to better prepare students and prospective recruits for the workplace and repair the country's ailing universities, reports the Kyiv Post. Problems in the halls of learning range from inadequate instruction to widespread bribe-taking by administrators in exchange for admission, and by professors in exchange for good grades.
Full report on the University World News site
Monday 30 June 2008
Sunday 22 June 2008
University World News 0033 - 22 June 2008
Reversing the brain drain
Africa loses 70,000 highly-qualified scholars and experts each year, mostly to developed countries. Now a new project plans to turn the brain drain into a brain gain. See our feature in this week's edition.
Visit the University World News site
NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report
CHINA: Investment in tertiary education on the rise
Subbiah Arunachalam
China's increasing investment in education will accelerate economic development, lead to rapid wage rises and increased consumer demand, and slow population growth, says a new report from MAPI, the Arlington, Virginia-based Manufacturers Alliance.
Full report on the University World News site
GERMANY: A crisis in tertiary teaching
Michael Gardner
The Stifterverband, Germany's Donors' Association for Sciences and the Humanities, has called for marked improvements in university teaching and learning. Addressing his organisation's annual assembly in Essen, President Arend Oetker warned that higher education teaching was "slipping into a crisis". Oetker said the Stifterverband was focusing its efforts on teaching this year and, together with state ministers of cultural affairs, had launched a new initiative to boost standards.
Full report on the University World News site
EUROPE: EQF success hailed at Brussels conference
Alan Osborn
A conference held in Brussels earlier this month to salute the European Qualifications Framework was told the four-year old initiative had been a great success. So much so that, for the first time, Europe's diverse education and training systems will share a common framework that relates their own national qualifications systems to each other.
Full report on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA: Education revolution begins - with a review
Geoff Maslen
A full-scale review of Australia's higher education system has begun with the release this month of a discussion paper setting out the parameters. Launching the 95-page document prepared by a review committee she established, Education Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard said: "We want to make sure there is a vision for our universities for the next 15, 20 years. We want that vision to include the ability of the poorest Australians to be able to aspire to go to university and have a fair chance of doing so. We want that vision to be one of universities leading the way with research that makes a difference to our lives..."
Full report on the University World News site
ZIMBABWE: Students support opposition ahead of poll
Clemence Manyukwe
The Zimbabwe National Students Union, which represents students at 40 tertiary institutions across the country, has passed a resolution supporting Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai against 28-year ruler President Robert Mugabe in the country's fraught 27 June presidential election run-off. The resolution continues a tradition of student opposition to Mugabe's rule since 1990 - and many senior opposition figures are former student leaders or academics.
Full report on the University World News site
NIGERIA: British universities scout for rich students
Tunde Fatunde
British universities have visited N igeria on a recruiting drive to attract rich N igerians who can afford high fees for their offspring to enrol as private students. A London-based company, British Canadian International Education, organised an education fair recently in two cities, Abuja and Lagos, on behalf of 15 British institutions. The fair gave parents the opportunity to prepare for the future of their children in the hope they would eventually secure, with internationally recognised university degrees, lucrative jobs as employees in multi-national companies in the highly competitive global economy.
Full report on the University World News site
AFRICA-CANADA: Poverty project produces graduates
Karen MacGregor
Nearly 50 computer scientists from four Francophone West African countries have just graduated as a result of a Canadian development project aimed at reducing poverty in Africa by producing high-level skills. A further 125 students should graduate next year from a distance learning degree programme, run as a partnership between Université Laval in Quebec and nine African universities. The project is being funded by the Canadian International Development Agency and managed by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada and the African Virtual University.
Full report on the University World News site
RUSSIA: British Council faces back-dated tax demand
Nick Holdsworth
The Russian office of beleaguered cultural organisation the British Council was due in court in Moscow last Thursday (19 June) after being hit with a disputed back-dated tax demand. The bill - for monies Russian tax authorities say were not paid between 2004 and 2006 - is disputed by the council as incorrect.
Full report on the University World News site
NEWSBRIEFS:
US: Massachusetts revokes Mugabe's honorary degree
The University of Massachusetts has revoked an honorary degree conferred on Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe 22 years ago - the first time in its 145-year history that the institution has done so. "Rescinding an honorary degree is a step to be taken in only the rarest and most grievous of circumstances," a press statement released by the US university quoted Robert J Manning, chairman of the Board of Trustees, as saying.
Full report on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA: A$100 million supercomputing facility
The University of Melbourne is to host a A$100 million (US$94 million) supercomputing facility under a new state government life sciences computation initiative. The project aims to develop the world's most powerful supercomputer and leading computational biology facility dedicated to life sciences research.
Full report on the University World News site
MALAWI: University for president's home village
Malawian president Bingu wa Mutharika is to construct a private university in his home village. The institution will be called Kamoto University, a name derived from the village in the Thyolo District. "Land for the infrastructure has already been acquired," the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training said in a brief response to University World News.
Full report on the University World News site
BUSINESS:
GLOBAL: Facebook for researchers promotes collaboration
Keith Nuthall
We all know about Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace. These social utility websites allow us all to keep in touch with friends and family around the world, exchange messages, post pictures and play silly games - such as throwing a digital sheep at someone or giving them a pixellated hellraiser cocktail. But now a new website has been developed for researchers, allowing them to exchange papers and comments about their work. It is called ResearchGATE.
Full report on the University World News site
EUROPE: Breath of new life for EUREKA
Alan Osborn
The European collaborative research network EUREKA has strengthened its links with the European Union amid concerns that the independent initiative is "running out of steam". The closer connection with EU institutions has manifested itself in the Eurostars programme - a six-year, EUR800 million project to support high-risk research by small and medium-sized European companies, which is a joint EUREKA-European Commission initiative. The first projects for financing are now being analysed and the results should be known by the end of the summer.
Full report on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA: Quantum physics outsmarts hackers
Geoff Maslen
Edgar Allen Poe once declared: "It can be roundly asserted that human ingenuity cannot concoct a cipher which human ingenuity cannot resolve." That may once have been true but is no longer: physicists at the Australian National University (ANU) have used quantum cryptography to develop an "unhackable" system of transmitting information.
Full report on the University World News site
FEATURE:
AFRICA: New project to alleviate brain drain
Clemence Manyukwe
Africa, a continent with a critical shortage of high-level skills, loses 70,000 highly qualified scholars and experts each year mostly to developed countries, according to the World Bank. Initiatives by individual African countries to stem the outflow of talent have largely failed, forcing them to seek ways of harnessing the skills of top-flight academics and professionals who have left - people in the African diaspora. A new project involving Unesco, Hewlett Packard and universities in five African countries plans to turn the brain drain into 'brain gain' for Africa. The idea is to compensate for the crippling loss of skills by creating websites and networks, collaborative projects and strengthened links between researchers across the continent and in the diaspora.
Full report on the University World News site
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY:
UK: Standards in decline at many universities
Academic standards are in decline in many British universities, comments Professor Geoffrey Alderman, professor of politics and contemporary history at the University of Buckingham, in The Times. Students who would once have been failed their degrees pass, and students who would once have been awarded respectable lower seconds are now awarded upper seconds and even firsts. He blames an "insidious managerial culture obsessed with league tables and newspaper rankings", under-funding, and too much emphasis on public image and 'customer satisfaction'.
Full report on the University World News site
US: New SAT test not much better than old one
In 2005 the College Board unveiled the most dramatic changes in years in the SAT, reports Scott Jaschik in Inside Higher Ed. The dreaded analogies were removed. Mathematics questions were updated. A writing section was added, resulting in the test getting longer. Last week the College Board released 'validity studies' in which, for the first time, results on the new SAT were correlated with first-year grades earned by students who enrolled at four-year colleges. College Board leaders hailed the results as great news. "But the reports themselves suggested that the SAT's strengths and weaknesses were not much different from before the big changes," Jaschik writes. The validity studies are available on the College Board website
Full report on the University World News site
PEOPLE:
EUROPE: Basic research gets a new champion
Keith Nuthall
Basic academic research - freed from commercial or industrial goals - has a new champion in Europe: Bernd Huber, the new chairman of the League of European Research Universities. Huber is president of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (Munich) in Germany and has been appointed head of Europe's elite research higher education institutions for the next three years. Speaking exclusively to University World News, he outlined three priorities in his new job. Top of the list, he said, was encouraging politicians to take basic research more seriously.
Full report on the University World News site
UK: Yale provost to head Oxford
Diane Spencer
To the surprise and dismay of some in academia, a second outsider has been nominated as vice-chancellor of Oxford University. Professor Andrew Hamilton, a distinguished scientist and provost of Yale University, will take up his post next year, subject to Oxford dons ratifying his appointment this month.
Full report on the University World News site
WORLD ROUND-UP:
PHILIPPINES: Asia must improve education quality
Developing countries in Asia need to improve the quality of their education systems as many graduates lack the skills needed in today's rapidly changing workplace, the Asian Development Bank said last week, reports China View. "The shortage of skilled workforce in the Asia-Pacific region, male and even more so female, has been a major bottleneck in economic and social development," the bank's Vice President Ursula Schaefer-Preuss said at the launch of a research report on education.
Full report on the University World News site
MALAYSIA: Ministry sets transformation targets
The Higher Education Ministry has set several targets to be achieved in two years under its transformation plan, reports The Star. The ministry wants an 80% rate of repayment for student loans disbursed by the National Higher Education Fund Corporation: currently, it is below 50%. It also wants 30% of public universities' revenue to be self-generated, against a current ratio of 10%. By 2010 there should be 80,000 foreign students enrolled in Malaysian higher education institutions. According to 2007 figures there are fewer than 50,000 now.
Full report on the University World News site
UK: Universities in bed with the military
Universities in the United Kingdom may be doing far more research for the military than official estimates acknowledge, according to a report released last week. Scientists for Global Responsibility, a Folkestone-based group that campaigns against military spending, says that of 13 universities surveyed, 12 received an average of around £2.4 million (US$4.7 million) each to conduct military and security-related research between 2005 and 2006, reports Nature News. Some received as much as £5 million.
Full report on the University World News site
UK: Whistle-blower warning on degrees
Degrees are being awarded to overseas students who speak almost no English, claims a whistle-blowing academic. BBC News reports the academic, at a famous UK university, as saying that postgraduate degrees are awarded to students lacking in the most basic language skills. There are concerns that financial pressures to recruit overseas students for cash rather than quality could threaten the credibility of degrees. But Universities UK says there are "rigorous" checks on standards.
Full report on the University World News site
US: Law schools growing, but jobs are not
To hear many students tell it, law school is a guaranteed ticket to a well-paying career, writes Justin Pope for Associated Press. So a recent milestone must have sounded like good news. The United States last week became the world's first nation of 200 accredited law schools, as the American Bar Association gave provisional approval to two North Carolina institutions.
Full report on the University World News site
US: Faculty split over Milton Friedman centre naming
Few names are more associated with the University of Chicago than Milton Friedman's. But that is exactly the problem, say some faculty who want to put the brakes on a plan to name a new research centre after the Nobel Prize-winning economist, reports the Chicago Tribune. And critics say the proposed Milton Friedman Institute would be a right-wing think tank.
Full report on the University World News site
NIGERIA: More must access higher education
Nigeria should aspire to give 20% of eligible candidates access to higher education by 2020, according to former executive secretary of the National Universities Commission, Professor Peter Okebukola, reports This Day. Currently the country's higher education participation rate is only 8% of the eligible population.
Full report on the University World News site
SOUTH AFRICA: Wits starts first writer residency
Residence programmes are the best breeding grounds for good literature around the world - and the first South African university-based writers' residency programme has just been established, reports The Weekender. Pumla Gqola, associate professor of literary, cultural and media studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, and her colleague Thembinkosi Goniwe are spearheading the Wits Humanities Writers Residency.
Full report on the University World News site
PAKISTAN: Commission discouraging regional languages
The Higher Education Commission, or HEC, has been accused of deliberately discouraging regional and international languages by not accepting research journals presented in Punjabi or even Persian, reports the Daily Times. Experts believe this trend could threaten the survival of the excluded languages and the cultures associated with them.
Full report on the University World News site
Africa loses 70,000 highly-qualified scholars and experts each year, mostly to developed countries. Now a new project plans to turn the brain drain into a brain gain. See our feature in this week's edition.
Visit the University World News site
NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report
CHINA: Investment in tertiary education on the rise
Subbiah Arunachalam
China's increasing investment in education will accelerate economic development, lead to rapid wage rises and increased consumer demand, and slow population growth, says a new report from MAPI, the Arlington, Virginia-based Manufacturers Alliance.
Full report on the University World News site
GERMANY: A crisis in tertiary teaching
Michael Gardner
The Stifterverband, Germany's Donors' Association for Sciences and the Humanities, has called for marked improvements in university teaching and learning. Addressing his organisation's annual assembly in Essen, President Arend Oetker warned that higher education teaching was "slipping into a crisis". Oetker said the Stifterverband was focusing its efforts on teaching this year and, together with state ministers of cultural affairs, had launched a new initiative to boost standards.
Full report on the University World News site
EUROPE: EQF success hailed at Brussels conference
Alan Osborn
A conference held in Brussels earlier this month to salute the European Qualifications Framework was told the four-year old initiative had been a great success. So much so that, for the first time, Europe's diverse education and training systems will share a common framework that relates their own national qualifications systems to each other.
Full report on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA: Education revolution begins - with a review
Geoff Maslen
A full-scale review of Australia's higher education system has begun with the release this month of a discussion paper setting out the parameters. Launching the 95-page document prepared by a review committee she established, Education Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard said: "We want to make sure there is a vision for our universities for the next 15, 20 years. We want that vision to include the ability of the poorest Australians to be able to aspire to go to university and have a fair chance of doing so. We want that vision to be one of universities leading the way with research that makes a difference to our lives..."
Full report on the University World News site
ZIMBABWE: Students support opposition ahead of poll
Clemence Manyukwe
The Zimbabwe National Students Union, which represents students at 40 tertiary institutions across the country, has passed a resolution supporting Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai against 28-year ruler President Robert Mugabe in the country's fraught 27 June presidential election run-off. The resolution continues a tradition of student opposition to Mugabe's rule since 1990 - and many senior opposition figures are former student leaders or academics.
Full report on the University World News site
NIGERIA: British universities scout for rich students
Tunde Fatunde
British universities have visited N igeria on a recruiting drive to attract rich N igerians who can afford high fees for their offspring to enrol as private students. A London-based company, British Canadian International Education, organised an education fair recently in two cities, Abuja and Lagos, on behalf of 15 British institutions. The fair gave parents the opportunity to prepare for the future of their children in the hope they would eventually secure, with internationally recognised university degrees, lucrative jobs as employees in multi-national companies in the highly competitive global economy.
Full report on the University World News site
AFRICA-CANADA: Poverty project produces graduates
Karen MacGregor
Nearly 50 computer scientists from four Francophone West African countries have just graduated as a result of a Canadian development project aimed at reducing poverty in Africa by producing high-level skills. A further 125 students should graduate next year from a distance learning degree programme, run as a partnership between Université Laval in Quebec and nine African universities. The project is being funded by the Canadian International Development Agency and managed by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada and the African Virtual University.
Full report on the University World News site
RUSSIA: British Council faces back-dated tax demand
Nick Holdsworth
The Russian office of beleaguered cultural organisation the British Council was due in court in Moscow last Thursday (19 June) after being hit with a disputed back-dated tax demand. The bill - for monies Russian tax authorities say were not paid between 2004 and 2006 - is disputed by the council as incorrect.
Full report on the University World News site
NEWSBRIEFS:
US: Massachusetts revokes Mugabe's honorary degree
The University of Massachusetts has revoked an honorary degree conferred on Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe 22 years ago - the first time in its 145-year history that the institution has done so. "Rescinding an honorary degree is a step to be taken in only the rarest and most grievous of circumstances," a press statement released by the US university quoted Robert J Manning, chairman of the Board of Trustees, as saying.
Full report on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA: A$100 million supercomputing facility
The University of Melbourne is to host a A$100 million (US$94 million) supercomputing facility under a new state government life sciences computation initiative. The project aims to develop the world's most powerful supercomputer and leading computational biology facility dedicated to life sciences research.
Full report on the University World News site
MALAWI: University for president's home village
Malawian president Bingu wa Mutharika is to construct a private university in his home village. The institution will be called Kamoto University, a name derived from the village in the Thyolo District. "Land for the infrastructure has already been acquired," the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training said in a brief response to University World News.
Full report on the University World News site
BUSINESS:
GLOBAL: Facebook for researchers promotes collaboration
Keith Nuthall
We all know about Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace. These social utility websites allow us all to keep in touch with friends and family around the world, exchange messages, post pictures and play silly games - such as throwing a digital sheep at someone or giving them a pixellated hellraiser cocktail. But now a new website has been developed for researchers, allowing them to exchange papers and comments about their work. It is called ResearchGATE.
Full report on the University World News site
EUROPE: Breath of new life for EUREKA
Alan Osborn
The European collaborative research network EUREKA has strengthened its links with the European Union amid concerns that the independent initiative is "running out of steam". The closer connection with EU institutions has manifested itself in the Eurostars programme - a six-year, EUR800 million project to support high-risk research by small and medium-sized European companies, which is a joint EUREKA-European Commission initiative. The first projects for financing are now being analysed and the results should be known by the end of the summer.
Full report on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA: Quantum physics outsmarts hackers
Geoff Maslen
Edgar Allen Poe once declared: "It can be roundly asserted that human ingenuity cannot concoct a cipher which human ingenuity cannot resolve." That may once have been true but is no longer: physicists at the Australian National University (ANU) have used quantum cryptography to develop an "unhackable" system of transmitting information.
Full report on the University World News site
FEATURE:
AFRICA: New project to alleviate brain drain
Clemence Manyukwe
Africa, a continent with a critical shortage of high-level skills, loses 70,000 highly qualified scholars and experts each year mostly to developed countries, according to the World Bank. Initiatives by individual African countries to stem the outflow of talent have largely failed, forcing them to seek ways of harnessing the skills of top-flight academics and professionals who have left - people in the African diaspora. A new project involving Unesco, Hewlett Packard and universities in five African countries plans to turn the brain drain into 'brain gain' for Africa. The idea is to compensate for the crippling loss of skills by creating websites and networks, collaborative projects and strengthened links between researchers across the continent and in the diaspora.
Full report on the University World News site
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY:
UK: Standards in decline at many universities
Academic standards are in decline in many British universities, comments Professor Geoffrey Alderman, professor of politics and contemporary history at the University of Buckingham, in The Times. Students who would once have been failed their degrees pass, and students who would once have been awarded respectable lower seconds are now awarded upper seconds and even firsts. He blames an "insidious managerial culture obsessed with league tables and newspaper rankings", under-funding, and too much emphasis on public image and 'customer satisfaction'.
Full report on the University World News site
US: New SAT test not much better than old one
In 2005 the College Board unveiled the most dramatic changes in years in the SAT, reports Scott Jaschik in Inside Higher Ed. The dreaded analogies were removed. Mathematics questions were updated. A writing section was added, resulting in the test getting longer. Last week the College Board released 'validity studies' in which, for the first time, results on the new SAT were correlated with first-year grades earned by students who enrolled at four-year colleges. College Board leaders hailed the results as great news. "But the reports themselves suggested that the SAT's strengths and weaknesses were not much different from before the big changes," Jaschik writes. The validity studies are available on the College Board website
Full report on the University World News site
PEOPLE:
EUROPE: Basic research gets a new champion
Keith Nuthall
Basic academic research - freed from commercial or industrial goals - has a new champion in Europe: Bernd Huber, the new chairman of the League of European Research Universities. Huber is president of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (Munich) in Germany and has been appointed head of Europe's elite research higher education institutions for the next three years. Speaking exclusively to University World News, he outlined three priorities in his new job. Top of the list, he said, was encouraging politicians to take basic research more seriously.
Full report on the University World News site
UK: Yale provost to head Oxford
Diane Spencer
To the surprise and dismay of some in academia, a second outsider has been nominated as vice-chancellor of Oxford University. Professor Andrew Hamilton, a distinguished scientist and provost of Yale University, will take up his post next year, subject to Oxford dons ratifying his appointment this month.
Full report on the University World News site
WORLD ROUND-UP:
PHILIPPINES: Asia must improve education quality
Developing countries in Asia need to improve the quality of their education systems as many graduates lack the skills needed in today's rapidly changing workplace, the Asian Development Bank said last week, reports China View. "The shortage of skilled workforce in the Asia-Pacific region, male and even more so female, has been a major bottleneck in economic and social development," the bank's Vice President Ursula Schaefer-Preuss said at the launch of a research report on education.
Full report on the University World News site
MALAYSIA: Ministry sets transformation targets
The Higher Education Ministry has set several targets to be achieved in two years under its transformation plan, reports The Star. The ministry wants an 80% rate of repayment for student loans disbursed by the National Higher Education Fund Corporation: currently, it is below 50%. It also wants 30% of public universities' revenue to be self-generated, against a current ratio of 10%. By 2010 there should be 80,000 foreign students enrolled in Malaysian higher education institutions. According to 2007 figures there are fewer than 50,000 now.
Full report on the University World News site
UK: Universities in bed with the military
Universities in the United Kingdom may be doing far more research for the military than official estimates acknowledge, according to a report released last week. Scientists for Global Responsibility, a Folkestone-based group that campaigns against military spending, says that of 13 universities surveyed, 12 received an average of around £2.4 million (US$4.7 million) each to conduct military and security-related research between 2005 and 2006, reports Nature News. Some received as much as £5 million.
Full report on the University World News site
UK: Whistle-blower warning on degrees
Degrees are being awarded to overseas students who speak almost no English, claims a whistle-blowing academic. BBC News reports the academic, at a famous UK university, as saying that postgraduate degrees are awarded to students lacking in the most basic language skills. There are concerns that financial pressures to recruit overseas students for cash rather than quality could threaten the credibility of degrees. But Universities UK says there are "rigorous" checks on standards.
Full report on the University World News site
US: Law schools growing, but jobs are not
To hear many students tell it, law school is a guaranteed ticket to a well-paying career, writes Justin Pope for Associated Press. So a recent milestone must have sounded like good news. The United States last week became the world's first nation of 200 accredited law schools, as the American Bar Association gave provisional approval to two North Carolina institutions.
Full report on the University World News site
US: Faculty split over Milton Friedman centre naming
Few names are more associated with the University of Chicago than Milton Friedman's. But that is exactly the problem, say some faculty who want to put the brakes on a plan to name a new research centre after the Nobel Prize-winning economist, reports the Chicago Tribune. And critics say the proposed Milton Friedman Institute would be a right-wing think tank.
Full report on the University World News site
NIGERIA: More must access higher education
Nigeria should aspire to give 20% of eligible candidates access to higher education by 2020, according to former executive secretary of the National Universities Commission, Professor Peter Okebukola, reports This Day. Currently the country's higher education participation rate is only 8% of the eligible population.
Full report on the University World News site
SOUTH AFRICA: Wits starts first writer residency
Residence programmes are the best breeding grounds for good literature around the world - and the first South African university-based writers' residency programme has just been established, reports The Weekender. Pumla Gqola, associate professor of literary, cultural and media studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, and her colleague Thembinkosi Goniwe are spearheading the Wits Humanities Writers Residency.
Full report on the University World News site
PAKISTAN: Commission discouraging regional languages
The Higher Education Commission, or HEC, has been accused of deliberately discouraging regional and international languages by not accepting research journals presented in Punjabi or even Persian, reports the Daily Times. Experts believe this trend could threaten the survival of the excluded languages and the cultures associated with them.
Full report on the University World News site
Sunday 15 June 2008
University World News 0032 - 15 June 2008
SPECIAL REPORT: Investments and endowments
The financial assets of US universities are often looked at with envy by European institutions. The generally perceived wisdom is that many US universities are private institutions and therefore more flexibly able to raise and invest funds than their European counterparts.
But such prejudices were quite convincingly brushed aside in a paper by MIT and Harvard staff who studied endowment investments in the US between 1995 and 2005. They concluded that although it seems to be true the rich just get richer, endowment growth is the result of different factors and investment performance at private and public universities differs little.
In this issue of University World News we focus on some recent developments in endowments and investments which show that all around the world, the price tag of mass access is pressing the sector and its authorities towards alternative ways of financing higher education.
The current issue of University World News
US: The rich get richer but are still a minority
Ard Jongsma
Contrary to popular belief, public universities in the US perform just as well as their private counterparts when it comes to fund management. And, amazingly, the best universities are outperforming large hedge funds and others that can lure the best investors with much higher salaries and compensation packages. But endowment investment remains a risky business even for the wealthiest of academic institutions.
Full report on the University World News site
US: Gulf states biggest donors
Geoff Maslen
American neo-conservatives claim that Arab donations to US universities are improperly influencing professors and students of Middle Eastern studies. In the latest critique, the online conservative FrontPage Magazine raised the issue last Monday (9 June) in a lengthy interview with a fellow of the free-market Manhattan Institute, Professor Jay P Greene. The magazine is published by David Horowitz, an advocate of right-wing causes and founder of the activist group Students for Academic Freedom.
Full report on the University World News site
UK: Learning from the States
Diane Spencer
At last British universities are taking a leaf from their American cousins' book on the art of fund-raising. But UK universities have a long way to go before they catch up. Figures show that Harvard alone raised more than £310 million (US$609 million) in 2004-05, while Oxbridge raised £185 million - out of the estimated overall amount of £450 million of private giving to UK universities.
Full report on the University World News site
SOUTH AFRICA: Third stream income a new priority
Karen MacGregor
Under increasing pressure from the South African government to contain soaring tuition fees, universities are urgently seeking new ways of generating more third stream income through donations, investments and entrepreneurial activities. As higher education now receives less than half its funding directly from the state, universities also see raising alternative income as a way of bolstering their autonomy in the face of growing state intervention.
Full report on the University World News site
NEW ZEALAND: Government scheme encouraged donations
John Gerritsen
New Zealand universities are relatively new to the endowments business, but they were helpedalong in recent years by a government scheme that has encouraged roughly $110 million (US$82 million) in private donations since 2002.
Full report on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA: Endowments a fraction of Harvard's
Geoff Maslen
More than 150 years after Australia's first university was founded, the nation's 40 higher education institutions have collectively amassed less than US$5 billion in investments and endowments - or about one seventh of that held by a single university in America. In fact, Harvard University has an endowment whose value grew to almost $35 billion by the end of the 2007 financial year. While the money earned from the investments and endowments of Australian universities contributes 17% to their total incomes, Harvard's return is double that and almost matches the Australian government's entire contribution to the higher education system.
Full report on the University World News site
NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report
GLOBAL: Report tackles social and human development
Rebecca Warden
The UN's Global University Network for Innovation, known as GUNI, is nothing if not ambitious. Its latest report, Higher Education in the World: New challenges and emerging roles for human and social development, aims to fuel the debate on how universities can contribute to human and social development - what kind of knowledge should they be producing for what kind of society? All this at a time when increasing internationalisation and competition between institutions mean universities are facing a multitude of new demands as never before.
Full report on the University World News site
EUROPE: Doctoral education body launched
Alan Osborn
The inaugural meeting of the European University Association Council for Doctoral Education was held at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland earlier this month. The new council will help formalise doctoral training within Europe and provide a focus for global dissemination of European work in this field.
Full report on the University World News site
FRANCE: First super-campuses chosen
Jane Marshall
The first six campuses to qualify for substantially increased funding under government plans to make French universities internationally competitive will be in the towns of Bordeaux, Grenoble, Lyon, Montpellier, Strasbourg and Toulouse. The projects, each consisting of several higher education and research establishments, are at the heart of President Nicolas Sarkozy's determination to see France feature prominently among the top universities in the world.
Full report on the University World News site
UK-INDIA: Research and education partners
Subbiah Arunachalam
The United Kingdom wants to strengthen its collaboration with India in research and higher education, says British High Commissioner to India Richard Stagg. Britain is willing to assist India in building world class universities and the two countries will collaborate in establishing a new Indian Institute of Technology, a new Institute of Science Education and Research and a new central university, Stagg says.
Full report on the University World News site
NEWSBRIEF: Dictionary of Christian-Muslim relations
A US university has received a $30,000 grant from the New York-based Henry Luce Foundation to create what is expected to be the world's first dictionary of Christian-Muslim relations.
Full report on the University World News site
ACADEMIC FREEDOM:
UK: Education Minister debates academic freedom
Jonathan Travis
British Higher Education Minister Bill Rammell hosted a debate with members of the University College Union this month - the first in a series of events designed to create lively discussion on academic freedom. In recent weeks, academics have attacked the government for creating a 'climate of fear' on campus that led to the arrest and release without charge of a Nottingham University student and administrator for printing a copy of the al-Qaida training manual.
Full report on the University World News site
BUSINESS:
EUROPE: Research collaboration with business on the up
Alan Osborn
Europe's universities, research bodies and businesses are increasingly collaborating with each other in the major research areas, according to a new report Responsible Partnering between Research and Business. The development will encourage hopes that the key drivers of research in Europe are beginning to operate on a much more pan-European basis than in the past and that the divisions between research and business that have held back exploitation of the research effort in recent years are being overcome.
Full report on the University World News site
UK: Fighting organised crime
Monica Dobie
The University of Glasgow is to undertake collaboration with law enforcement authorities in Britain by creating the UK's first Institute for the Study of Serious Organised Crime. Researchers from the university will work closely with law enforcement to tackle organised crime issues that threaten businesses on a daily basis.
Full report on the University World News site
US: Computer firm teams up with universities
Diane Spencer
An American IT-services company is increasing its collaboration with universities in Europe, to create ground-breaking computer systems that allow public organisations and companies to better interact online. Torry Harris Business Solutions, a US-based firm founded in 1998, specialises in 'service-oriented architecture' which helps move data between different services within an organisation.
Full report on the University World News site
FEATURE:
INDIA: Students drawn to study overseas
Subbiah Arunachalam
More than six decades after India won its Independence on Gandhi's principle of 'Swadeshi' or self-reliance, an ever-increasing number of Indian students are going abroad for their education. Indeed, more go overseas for higher education than from any other country.
Full report on the University World News site
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY:
US: New study on research-related ITs
A new EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research study, by Dr Marc C Sheehan, explores higher education's involvement in five areas of research-related information technologies - high-performance computing resources, cyber-infrastructure applications and tools, data storage and management resources, advanced network infrastructure resources, and resources for collaboration within virtual communities. The report, titled Higher Education IT and Cyber-infrastructure: Integrating technologies for scholarship, is publicly available.
Full report on the University World News site
US: Asian American higher education success a 'myth'
When 'too good to be true' fails to be either good or true, long term repercussions can be devastating and pervasive, writes the College Board about a new report that challenges long-held beliefs about Asian American and Pacific Islander students' academic success. Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders - Facts, not Fiction: Setting the record straight, published in collaboration with the National Commission on Asian American and Pacific Islander Research in Education, details "why false assumptions can lead to misinformed policy and practice that can be harmful to Asian American and Pacific Islander students".
Full report on the University World News site
PEOPLE:
AUSTRALIA: Fay Gale - A life of firsts
Obituary: Fay Gale - 13 June 1932 to 3 May 2008
In her prime as an academic, Professor Fay Gale was Australia's foremost cultural geographer but throughout her life she was also a passionate advocate of equal opportunity for women and Aboriginal people. Hers was a life of remarkable firsts: from being the first woman to hold a chair at the University of Adelaide, and the only female professor there for 10 years, to being appointed the first woman to head the University of Western Australia and thereby the first female vice-chancellor of one of the elite Group of Eight universities, following this by becoming the first woman to be elected president of the Australian Vice Chancellors Committee.
Full report on the University World News site
WORLD ROUND-UP:
CHINA: Elite universities eye alumni wallets
A decade ago, then-President Jiang Zemin said he wanted to transform China's top universities into world class institutions fit for the 21st century, reports Forbes. But attracting the world's best faculty, funding top-notch research and expanding campuses does not come cheap. So the elite ones are now focused on developing the kind of powerful private fund-raising machines that have made top US universities so rich.
Full report on the University World News site
IRAQ: Ambitious higher education plan
Iraqi officials have proposed a five-year, US$1 billion higher education plan to increase the science and technology workforce and promote science-based sustainable development, reports SciDev.Net. Under the plan, which will be financed by revenue generated by Iraq's oil reserves, university infrastructure will be rebuilt, including new laboratories and establishing internet connections, and 10,000 students will be sent abroad each year to study in Australia, Canada, the UK and US.
Full report on the University World News site
SRI LANKA: Push to expand technical education
The development of education in Sri Lanka has led to the rapid expansion of secondary schools and more and more young people seeking tertiary education, according to Higher Education Minister, Professor Wiswa Warnapapa, reports the Daily News. Growth of higher education has not kept up with demand, and this year universities could only provide places for 20,204 students out of nearly 100,000 qualified to enter higher education. Lack of access is a fundamental problem for higher education, along with quality issues - the reasons why Sri Lanka is now pushing for a major expansion of its neglected technical education sector.
Full report on the University World News site
INDIA: Scientists split on belief in God
Indian scientists are split down the middle over their belief in the existence of God, the first nationwide investigation into their deepest personal thoughts has revealed, reports The Telegraph. A fourth of scientists took an atheist or agnostic position and another fourth were firm believers, according to the findings of a survey by the US-based Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture. The rest said they were unsure, or didn't respond to the question on God, which was included in a web-based survey that covered 1,100 scientists from 130 research or educational institutions and universities scattered across India.
Full report on the University World News site
US: Women's colleges boom in developing world
As their numbers decline in the United States, women's colleges are booming in much of the developing world - places such as Africa, Asia and the Middle East, reports Associated Press. They have become a trendy tool for jump-starting economic growth and political development, and for helping break down barriers in the same way their US counterparts have been doing since the 19th century.
Full report on the University World News site
KENYA: Universities get funding boost for expansion
Kenya's government has set aside a billion Shilling (US$16 million) for the expansion of public universities, Assistant Minister of Higher Education Dr Kilemi Mwiria has said, reports The Nation. He added that the money, which has already been factored into this year's budget, will be used to expand the institutions of higher learning countrywide.
Full report on the University World News site
ZIMBABWE: Government reverses university fee hikes
The government has reversed tertiary education fee increases effected by state universities and colleges in Zimbabwe at the beginning of this academic year to cushion parents from the current economic hardships, reports The Herald. Addressing journalists in Harare, the Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education Stan Mudenge said tertiary institutions had increased fees without Ggvernment approval.
Full report on the University World News site
CANADA: Police close universities council fraud case
Toronto police have closed the file on a fraud that cost the Council of Ontario Universities at least $600,000, said Paul Genest, the Council's executive director. The Globe and Mail reports that police were called and a forensic auditor retained in March, when the organisation found evidence that its former chief information officer Janet Donio - who has since committed suicide - was siphoning off COU funds.
Full report on the University World News site
The financial assets of US universities are often looked at with envy by European institutions. The generally perceived wisdom is that many US universities are private institutions and therefore more flexibly able to raise and invest funds than their European counterparts.
But such prejudices were quite convincingly brushed aside in a paper by MIT and Harvard staff who studied endowment investments in the US between 1995 and 2005. They concluded that although it seems to be true the rich just get richer, endowment growth is the result of different factors and investment performance at private and public universities differs little.
In this issue of University World News we focus on some recent developments in endowments and investments which show that all around the world, the price tag of mass access is pressing the sector and its authorities towards alternative ways of financing higher education.
The current issue of University World News
US: The rich get richer but are still a minority
Ard Jongsma
Contrary to popular belief, public universities in the US perform just as well as their private counterparts when it comes to fund management. And, amazingly, the best universities are outperforming large hedge funds and others that can lure the best investors with much higher salaries and compensation packages. But endowment investment remains a risky business even for the wealthiest of academic institutions.
Full report on the University World News site
US: Gulf states biggest donors
Geoff Maslen
American neo-conservatives claim that Arab donations to US universities are improperly influencing professors and students of Middle Eastern studies. In the latest critique, the online conservative FrontPage Magazine raised the issue last Monday (9 June) in a lengthy interview with a fellow of the free-market Manhattan Institute, Professor Jay P Greene. The magazine is published by David Horowitz, an advocate of right-wing causes and founder of the activist group Students for Academic Freedom.
Full report on the University World News site
UK: Learning from the States
Diane Spencer
At last British universities are taking a leaf from their American cousins' book on the art of fund-raising. But UK universities have a long way to go before they catch up. Figures show that Harvard alone raised more than £310 million (US$609 million) in 2004-05, while Oxbridge raised £185 million - out of the estimated overall amount of £450 million of private giving to UK universities.
Full report on the University World News site
SOUTH AFRICA: Third stream income a new priority
Karen MacGregor
Under increasing pressure from the South African government to contain soaring tuition fees, universities are urgently seeking new ways of generating more third stream income through donations, investments and entrepreneurial activities. As higher education now receives less than half its funding directly from the state, universities also see raising alternative income as a way of bolstering their autonomy in the face of growing state intervention.
Full report on the University World News site
NEW ZEALAND: Government scheme encouraged donations
John Gerritsen
New Zealand universities are relatively new to the endowments business, but they were helpedalong in recent years by a government scheme that has encouraged roughly $110 million (US$82 million) in private donations since 2002.
Full report on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA: Endowments a fraction of Harvard's
Geoff Maslen
More than 150 years after Australia's first university was founded, the nation's 40 higher education institutions have collectively amassed less than US$5 billion in investments and endowments - or about one seventh of that held by a single university in America. In fact, Harvard University has an endowment whose value grew to almost $35 billion by the end of the 2007 financial year. While the money earned from the investments and endowments of Australian universities contributes 17% to their total incomes, Harvard's return is double that and almost matches the Australian government's entire contribution to the higher education system.
Full report on the University World News site
NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report
GLOBAL: Report tackles social and human development
Rebecca Warden
The UN's Global University Network for Innovation, known as GUNI, is nothing if not ambitious. Its latest report, Higher Education in the World: New challenges and emerging roles for human and social development, aims to fuel the debate on how universities can contribute to human and social development - what kind of knowledge should they be producing for what kind of society? All this at a time when increasing internationalisation and competition between institutions mean universities are facing a multitude of new demands as never before.
Full report on the University World News site
EUROPE: Doctoral education body launched
Alan Osborn
The inaugural meeting of the European University Association Council for Doctoral Education was held at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland earlier this month. The new council will help formalise doctoral training within Europe and provide a focus for global dissemination of European work in this field.
Full report on the University World News site
FRANCE: First super-campuses chosen
Jane Marshall
The first six campuses to qualify for substantially increased funding under government plans to make French universities internationally competitive will be in the towns of Bordeaux, Grenoble, Lyon, Montpellier, Strasbourg and Toulouse. The projects, each consisting of several higher education and research establishments, are at the heart of President Nicolas Sarkozy's determination to see France feature prominently among the top universities in the world.
Full report on the University World News site
UK-INDIA: Research and education partners
Subbiah Arunachalam
The United Kingdom wants to strengthen its collaboration with India in research and higher education, says British High Commissioner to India Richard Stagg. Britain is willing to assist India in building world class universities and the two countries will collaborate in establishing a new Indian Institute of Technology, a new Institute of Science Education and Research and a new central university, Stagg says.
Full report on the University World News site
NEWSBRIEF: Dictionary of Christian-Muslim relations
A US university has received a $30,000 grant from the New York-based Henry Luce Foundation to create what is expected to be the world's first dictionary of Christian-Muslim relations.
Full report on the University World News site
ACADEMIC FREEDOM:
UK: Education Minister debates academic freedom
Jonathan Travis
British Higher Education Minister Bill Rammell hosted a debate with members of the University College Union this month - the first in a series of events designed to create lively discussion on academic freedom. In recent weeks, academics have attacked the government for creating a 'climate of fear' on campus that led to the arrest and release without charge of a Nottingham University student and administrator for printing a copy of the al-Qaida training manual.
Full report on the University World News site
BUSINESS:
EUROPE: Research collaboration with business on the up
Alan Osborn
Europe's universities, research bodies and businesses are increasingly collaborating with each other in the major research areas, according to a new report Responsible Partnering between Research and Business. The development will encourage hopes that the key drivers of research in Europe are beginning to operate on a much more pan-European basis than in the past and that the divisions between research and business that have held back exploitation of the research effort in recent years are being overcome.
Full report on the University World News site
UK: Fighting organised crime
Monica Dobie
The University of Glasgow is to undertake collaboration with law enforcement authorities in Britain by creating the UK's first Institute for the Study of Serious Organised Crime. Researchers from the university will work closely with law enforcement to tackle organised crime issues that threaten businesses on a daily basis.
Full report on the University World News site
US: Computer firm teams up with universities
Diane Spencer
An American IT-services company is increasing its collaboration with universities in Europe, to create ground-breaking computer systems that allow public organisations and companies to better interact online. Torry Harris Business Solutions, a US-based firm founded in 1998, specialises in 'service-oriented architecture' which helps move data between different services within an organisation.
Full report on the University World News site
FEATURE:
INDIA: Students drawn to study overseas
Subbiah Arunachalam
More than six decades after India won its Independence on Gandhi's principle of 'Swadeshi' or self-reliance, an ever-increasing number of Indian students are going abroad for their education. Indeed, more go overseas for higher education than from any other country.
Full report on the University World News site
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY:
US: New study on research-related ITs
A new EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research study, by Dr Marc C Sheehan, explores higher education's involvement in five areas of research-related information technologies - high-performance computing resources, cyber-infrastructure applications and tools, data storage and management resources, advanced network infrastructure resources, and resources for collaboration within virtual communities. The report, titled Higher Education IT and Cyber-infrastructure: Integrating technologies for scholarship, is publicly available.
Full report on the University World News site
US: Asian American higher education success a 'myth'
When 'too good to be true' fails to be either good or true, long term repercussions can be devastating and pervasive, writes the College Board about a new report that challenges long-held beliefs about Asian American and Pacific Islander students' academic success. Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders - Facts, not Fiction: Setting the record straight, published in collaboration with the National Commission on Asian American and Pacific Islander Research in Education, details "why false assumptions can lead to misinformed policy and practice that can be harmful to Asian American and Pacific Islander students".
Full report on the University World News site
PEOPLE:
AUSTRALIA: Fay Gale - A life of firsts
Obituary: Fay Gale - 13 June 1932 to 3 May 2008
In her prime as an academic, Professor Fay Gale was Australia's foremost cultural geographer but throughout her life she was also a passionate advocate of equal opportunity for women and Aboriginal people. Hers was a life of remarkable firsts: from being the first woman to hold a chair at the University of Adelaide, and the only female professor there for 10 years, to being appointed the first woman to head the University of Western Australia and thereby the first female vice-chancellor of one of the elite Group of Eight universities, following this by becoming the first woman to be elected president of the Australian Vice Chancellors Committee.
Full report on the University World News site
WORLD ROUND-UP:
CHINA: Elite universities eye alumni wallets
A decade ago, then-President Jiang Zemin said he wanted to transform China's top universities into world class institutions fit for the 21st century, reports Forbes. But attracting the world's best faculty, funding top-notch research and expanding campuses does not come cheap. So the elite ones are now focused on developing the kind of powerful private fund-raising machines that have made top US universities so rich.
Full report on the University World News site
IRAQ: Ambitious higher education plan
Iraqi officials have proposed a five-year, US$1 billion higher education plan to increase the science and technology workforce and promote science-based sustainable development, reports SciDev.Net. Under the plan, which will be financed by revenue generated by Iraq's oil reserves, university infrastructure will be rebuilt, including new laboratories and establishing internet connections, and 10,000 students will be sent abroad each year to study in Australia, Canada, the UK and US.
Full report on the University World News site
SRI LANKA: Push to expand technical education
The development of education in Sri Lanka has led to the rapid expansion of secondary schools and more and more young people seeking tertiary education, according to Higher Education Minister, Professor Wiswa Warnapapa, reports the Daily News. Growth of higher education has not kept up with demand, and this year universities could only provide places for 20,204 students out of nearly 100,000 qualified to enter higher education. Lack of access is a fundamental problem for higher education, along with quality issues - the reasons why Sri Lanka is now pushing for a major expansion of its neglected technical education sector.
Full report on the University World News site
INDIA: Scientists split on belief in God
Indian scientists are split down the middle over their belief in the existence of God, the first nationwide investigation into their deepest personal thoughts has revealed, reports The Telegraph. A fourth of scientists took an atheist or agnostic position and another fourth were firm believers, according to the findings of a survey by the US-based Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture. The rest said they were unsure, or didn't respond to the question on God, which was included in a web-based survey that covered 1,100 scientists from 130 research or educational institutions and universities scattered across India.
Full report on the University World News site
US: Women's colleges boom in developing world
As their numbers decline in the United States, women's colleges are booming in much of the developing world - places such as Africa, Asia and the Middle East, reports Associated Press. They have become a trendy tool for jump-starting economic growth and political development, and for helping break down barriers in the same way their US counterparts have been doing since the 19th century.
Full report on the University World News site
KENYA: Universities get funding boost for expansion
Kenya's government has set aside a billion Shilling (US$16 million) for the expansion of public universities, Assistant Minister of Higher Education Dr Kilemi Mwiria has said, reports The Nation. He added that the money, which has already been factored into this year's budget, will be used to expand the institutions of higher learning countrywide.
Full report on the University World News site
ZIMBABWE: Government reverses university fee hikes
The government has reversed tertiary education fee increases effected by state universities and colleges in Zimbabwe at the beginning of this academic year to cushion parents from the current economic hardships, reports The Herald. Addressing journalists in Harare, the Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education Stan Mudenge said tertiary institutions had increased fees without Ggvernment approval.
Full report on the University World News site
CANADA: Police close universities council fraud case
Toronto police have closed the file on a fraud that cost the Council of Ontario Universities at least $600,000, said Paul Genest, the Council's executive director. The Globe and Mail reports that police were called and a forensic auditor retained in March, when the organisation found evidence that its former chief information officer Janet Donio - who has since committed suicide - was siphoning off COU funds.
Full report on the University World News site
Tuesday 10 June 2008
University World News 0031 - 8 June 2008
NEWS:
GLOBAL: US academics top salaries ranking
John Gerritsen
US academics enjoy higher salaries than those in any of the main English-speaking countries, even when their purchasing power parity is taken into account, while New Zealanders bring up the rear. A new report shows that the purchasing power of professorial salaries at selected US universities is almost US$114,000 a year - $11,600 more than professors receive in Australia, $13,000 more than in Canada, $32,000 more than in the UK and a whopping $36,200 more than their lowly-paid New Zealand cousins.
Full report on the University World News site
CHINA: Overseas students to be expelled?
Michael Gardner
Media around the world have reported that all foreign students will be forced to leave China during the Olympic Games. But although visa regulations have been tightened and some students have not had their visas renewed, the reports of wholesale expulsions appear to be unfounded.
Full report on the University World News site
TURKEY: Headscarf ban re-imposed
Brendan O’Malley
In a decision that will worsen Turkey's political crisis, the country's top constitutional court has re-imposed a ban on women wearing headscarves on university campuses. By a vote of nine to two, the judges ruled that constitutional amendments ending the ban were unlawful on the grounds that securlarism was an unalterable principle of the Turkish Republic.
Full report on the University World News site
EUROPE: Parliament calls for more women scientists
Alan Osborn
The European Parliament has strongly backed a report calling for a bigger role for women in European research and setting out specific initiatives to improve the gender balance. The report Women in Science, drawn up by Danish member of parliament Britta Thomsen, was adopted last month by 416 votes in favour with 75 against and 164 abstentions.
Full report on the University World News site
ZAMBIA: Protesting students shot and wounded
Clemence Manyukwe
Two Zambian university students were shot and wounded by police during protests aimed at forcing the government to increase student allowances. Some students were arrested, police confirmed. The demonstrations at two public institutions - the University of Zambia and Copperbelt University - followed industrial action by lecturers who are demanding better pay.
Full report on the University World News site
ISRAEL: Alarm at threat of British boycott
Helena Flusfeder
Israeli academics are alarmed by the recurring threat of a boycott by British academics of Israel's higher education institutions, implicit in a motion passed at the recent congress of the University and College Union in Manchester.
Full report on the University World News site
GREECE: Higher education in crisis
Makki Marseilles
After almost a month of unrest, conflict and violence in Greek universities, all parties in the dispute - government, political parties, trade unions, lecturers and students - are seeking a way out of the crisis so the student examination period can go ahead unhindered.
Full report on the University World News site
INTERNATIONAL: Universities opt for i-Tunes
Universities in Australia, Britain, Ireland and New Zealand have followed US institutions and joined with Apple to make their teaching and research available free to a global audience, using the giant company's distribution system, iTunes U on the iTunes Store.
Full report on the University World News site
EGYPT: Land of the Nile starved of agriculture students
Ashraf Khaled
Egypt's state-owned universities are bursting at the seams with students - except for students of agriculture. There has been a sharp decline in the number of agriculture students in public universities and there is no teaching of agronomy or other farming-related disciplines in private institutions established in the past two decades.
Full report on the University World News site
NEWSBRIEF
UK: Oxford's new vice-chancellor
Oxford University has nominated the Provost of Yale University, Professor Andrew Hamilton, as its next vice-chancellor. Provided the university dons approve the appointment, Hamilton will replace the current vice-chancellor, Dr John Hood, who retires next year after his five-year appointment ends.
Full report on the University World News site
GLOBAL: Unlocking the sun's energy secrets
Keith Nuthall
Research funding has begun to flow to a global project aimed at harnessing the physics of the stars to create a sustainable and safe nuclear fusion. A consortium of 14 research teams from across Europe has been formed to create a computer simulation of the international ITER fusion reactor, to model the technology required to operate it safely.
Full report on the University World News site
EUROPE: Poor links with industry restrict innovation
Alan Osborn
The European Union will have to achieve much greater progress in bridging the gap between research and industry if it is to make a success of the Lisbon strategy for making the EU the world's most competitive economy by 2010, a conference in Brussels on Innovating for Competitiveness in ICT was told late last month.
Full report on the University World News site
RUSSIA: Scientific ties boosted by co-funding initiative
Nick Holdsworth
Russian and European Union scientific ties and collaboration are set to be boosted following the first meeting of a high level political body set up to create a programme of joint study projects. The EU-Russia Permanent Partnership Council on Research met for the first time in the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana on 26 May. The council agreed to push ahead with joint research and co-funding of projects in areas including health, nanotechnologies and new materials.
Full report on the University World News site
FEATURES:
DENMARK: Erasmus Mundus on a collision course?
Ard Jongsma
In its proposals for the next phase of Erasmus Mundus, the European Commission is moving towards higher student contributions for enrolment in the EU joint programmes scheme. The proposals have met opposition from countries such as Denmark, where tuition is paid through taxation. The issue will come up for debate in the European Parliament this month and an amendment has already been mooted.
Full report on the University World News site
BOTSWANA: New tertiary education policy
A special correspondent
Botswana's parliament recently approved a new tertiary education policy, Towards a knowledge society, for the stable and rapidly growing southern African nation. The major goals of the new approach to tertiary education are to enhance relevance, ensure quality, maintain diversity of choice and increase access - including more than doubling the ratio of young people entering tertiary education within two decades. The country's capacity for research and innovation is to be expanded from a single national university to other tertiary institutions and a second public university.
Full report on the University World News site
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY:
US: Navigating conflict between science and policymakers
Drawing on his experience as a biologist, president emeritus of Stanford University and former editor-in-chief of Science magazine, Donald Kennedy probes conflict between the conduct of science and influences of (a security-focussed, neo-conservative) government, in a paper published by the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley. In "Science and its discontents: An evolutionary tale", Kennedy discusses three current conflicts: new security and secrecy regimes that seek control of science; religiously derived moral viewpoints that aim to limit scientific research; and the shaping and censoring of scientific findings for political gain. The full paper is available on the CSHE website.
Full report on the University World News site
SOUTH AFRICA: Context counts in Chinese higher education
Adam Habib
A recent trip to China, to learn about Chinese higher education institutions and explore the potential for research collaborations and partnerships, suggested important lessons for South Africa's higher education system. The most striking feature of China's universities is how they are structured to meet the needs of their context. Of course, they do borrow from the comparative experiences of other countries. But unlike higher education leaders and policy wonks in South Africa, who slavishly follow the latest reforms in the US and the UK, Chinese higher education authorities adapt other experiences to their own context, writes Professor Adam Habib, a deputy vice-chancellor of the University of Johannesburg, in Business Day
Full report on the University World News site
PEOPLE:
AUSTRALIA: Fay Gale - A life of firsts
Obituary: Fay Gale 13 June 1932 to 3 May 2008
In her prime as an academic, Professor Fay Gale was Australia's foremost cultural geographer but throughout her life she was also a passionate advocate of equal opportunity for women and Aboriginal people. Hers was a life of remarkable firsts: from being the first woman to hold a chair at the University of Adelaide, and the only female professor there for 10 years, to being appointed the first woman to head the University of Western Australia and thereby the first female vice-chancellor of one of the elite Group of Eight universities, following this by becoming the first woman to be elected president of the Australian Vice Chancellors Committee.
Full report on the University World News site
WORLD ROUND UP:
US: Call to fund the young and risky
A coalition of researchers has strongly urged a greater commitment among policymakers, universities and private donors to support scientists early in their careers and encourage potentially "high risk, high reward" ventures, reports Inside Higher Ed. A series of recommendations that would alter longstanding federal funding and peer review mechanisms was published in a white paper released by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Full report on the University World News site
US: Loan mess hits home for students
Todd Coffman thinks he's a good credit risk - but because he's studying at a community college, the banks suddenly seem to think otherwise, reports the Seattle Times. Coffman, 28, is halfway through a two-year X-ray-technology degree at Bellevue Community College. In the past year, he took out about $4,500 in federally subsidised student loans through Citibank. But turbulent credit markets prompted Citibank and other banks in recent weeks to stop offering student loans at many community colleges across the country.
Full report on the University World News site
JAPAN: Chinese students prefer the West
About 70,000 Chinese are studying at Japanese universities, comprising by far the single biggest group among the nation's 120,000 international students. But Homare Endo, an adviser to Teikyo University Group who has served as a counsellor for Chinese students in Japan since the early 1980s, says the cream of China's students tend to go to the United States or Europe, reports the Daily Yomiuri.
Full report on the University World News site
CHINA: Growing competition for top students
Universities across China are competing aggressively for top students as the annual national college entrance examination approaches. Some are offering special scholarships for students who do well in the exam, reports ChinaView.
Full report on the University World News site
SOUTH AFRICA: On track to R&D spending of 1% of GDP
South Africa is well on track to reach research and development spending of 1% of gross domestic product by the end of 2008, according to Science and Technology Minister Mosibudi Mangena, reports Engineering News. The intensity of research and development, which is measured as a percentage of research spending of gross domestic product and indicates the competitiveness of an economy, currently stands at 0.9%.
Full report on the University World News site
INDIA: UK keen to send students to Indian universities
In a reverse trend, the UK government is interested in sending British students to study in India, reports The Times of India. "We want to set up a UK-India school to facilitate British students to come and study in India," said Bill Rammell, UK minister of state, lifelong learning, further and higher education. This is part of a slew of initiatives by the British government to strengthen education ties with India.
Full report on the University World News site
UK: Cheating rife among university students
As undergraduates gear up for end-of-year exams, new research shows cheating among university students is rife, reports Education Guardian. Researchers investigating the number of cases of plagiarism in the UK's 168 universities and colleges found over 9,000 incidents recorded in the 100 institutions that responded to the survey by the Higher Education Academy.
Full report on the University World News site
UK: Welsh universities furious over fake degrees
Fake degrees from every university in Wales are being sold on the internet for less than £40 each, a Wales on Sunday investigation has found. Carrying official university crests, printed on parchment paper and with authentic embossed seals, the bogus qualifications could easily be used to dupe a potential employer
Full report on the University World News site
University World News is an online global higher education publication focusing on international higher education news and analysis, developments, events and announcements
Issues covered by our world class writers include, among many other areas: international university rankings and league tables; globalisation and higher education research and analysis; international students; tertiary education systems, policies and reforms; higher education funding and liberalisation; academic posts and tenure; college accreditation; English language tuition; GATS and the Bologna Process. We are also working to highlight academic job opportunities, new academic posts, conferences and events, research grants, research jobs and further education news.
University World News is read by vice-chancellors and their deputies, professors and university managers, lecturers, higher education researchers and postgraduate students at universities and colleges worldwide, as well as by government policy-makers and officials and people working in higher education funding and advisory bodies, research councils, think tanks, donor agencies, and national and international organisations.
UNI-LATERAL:
RUSSIA: President's alma mater in quality dispute
A row has broken out at St Petersburg State University - the alma mater of ex-President Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev - following the failure of more than a third of students to pass their examinations. Unsuccessful students, who were sent away without any right of appeal, said they had been made scapegoats after the authorities, trying to raise respect for the rule of law, called for higher standards among law graduates.
GLOBAL: US academics top salaries ranking
John Gerritsen
US academics enjoy higher salaries than those in any of the main English-speaking countries, even when their purchasing power parity is taken into account, while New Zealanders bring up the rear. A new report shows that the purchasing power of professorial salaries at selected US universities is almost US$114,000 a year - $11,600 more than professors receive in Australia, $13,000 more than in Canada, $32,000 more than in the UK and a whopping $36,200 more than their lowly-paid New Zealand cousins.
Full report on the University World News site
CHINA: Overseas students to be expelled?
Michael Gardner
Media around the world have reported that all foreign students will be forced to leave China during the Olympic Games. But although visa regulations have been tightened and some students have not had their visas renewed, the reports of wholesale expulsions appear to be unfounded.
Full report on the University World News site
TURKEY: Headscarf ban re-imposed
Brendan O’Malley
In a decision that will worsen Turkey's political crisis, the country's top constitutional court has re-imposed a ban on women wearing headscarves on university campuses. By a vote of nine to two, the judges ruled that constitutional amendments ending the ban were unlawful on the grounds that securlarism was an unalterable principle of the Turkish Republic.
Full report on the University World News site
EUROPE: Parliament calls for more women scientists
Alan Osborn
The European Parliament has strongly backed a report calling for a bigger role for women in European research and setting out specific initiatives to improve the gender balance. The report Women in Science, drawn up by Danish member of parliament Britta Thomsen, was adopted last month by 416 votes in favour with 75 against and 164 abstentions.
Full report on the University World News site
ZAMBIA: Protesting students shot and wounded
Clemence Manyukwe
Two Zambian university students were shot and wounded by police during protests aimed at forcing the government to increase student allowances. Some students were arrested, police confirmed. The demonstrations at two public institutions - the University of Zambia and Copperbelt University - followed industrial action by lecturers who are demanding better pay.
Full report on the University World News site
ISRAEL: Alarm at threat of British boycott
Helena Flusfeder
Israeli academics are alarmed by the recurring threat of a boycott by British academics of Israel's higher education institutions, implicit in a motion passed at the recent congress of the University and College Union in Manchester.
Full report on the University World News site
GREECE: Higher education in crisis
Makki Marseilles
After almost a month of unrest, conflict and violence in Greek universities, all parties in the dispute - government, political parties, trade unions, lecturers and students - are seeking a way out of the crisis so the student examination period can go ahead unhindered.
Full report on the University World News site
INTERNATIONAL: Universities opt for i-Tunes
Universities in Australia, Britain, Ireland and New Zealand have followed US institutions and joined with Apple to make their teaching and research available free to a global audience, using the giant company's distribution system, iTunes U on the iTunes Store.
Full report on the University World News site
EGYPT: Land of the Nile starved of agriculture students
Ashraf Khaled
Egypt's state-owned universities are bursting at the seams with students - except for students of agriculture. There has been a sharp decline in the number of agriculture students in public universities and there is no teaching of agronomy or other farming-related disciplines in private institutions established in the past two decades.
Full report on the University World News site
NEWSBRIEF
UK: Oxford's new vice-chancellor
Oxford University has nominated the Provost of Yale University, Professor Andrew Hamilton, as its next vice-chancellor. Provided the university dons approve the appointment, Hamilton will replace the current vice-chancellor, Dr John Hood, who retires next year after his five-year appointment ends.
Full report on the University World News site
GLOBAL: Unlocking the sun's energy secrets
Keith Nuthall
Research funding has begun to flow to a global project aimed at harnessing the physics of the stars to create a sustainable and safe nuclear fusion. A consortium of 14 research teams from across Europe has been formed to create a computer simulation of the international ITER fusion reactor, to model the technology required to operate it safely.
Full report on the University World News site
EUROPE: Poor links with industry restrict innovation
Alan Osborn
The European Union will have to achieve much greater progress in bridging the gap between research and industry if it is to make a success of the Lisbon strategy for making the EU the world's most competitive economy by 2010, a conference in Brussels on Innovating for Competitiveness in ICT was told late last month.
Full report on the University World News site
RUSSIA: Scientific ties boosted by co-funding initiative
Nick Holdsworth
Russian and European Union scientific ties and collaboration are set to be boosted following the first meeting of a high level political body set up to create a programme of joint study projects. The EU-Russia Permanent Partnership Council on Research met for the first time in the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana on 26 May. The council agreed to push ahead with joint research and co-funding of projects in areas including health, nanotechnologies and new materials.
Full report on the University World News site
FEATURES:
DENMARK: Erasmus Mundus on a collision course?
Ard Jongsma
In its proposals for the next phase of Erasmus Mundus, the European Commission is moving towards higher student contributions for enrolment in the EU joint programmes scheme. The proposals have met opposition from countries such as Denmark, where tuition is paid through taxation. The issue will come up for debate in the European Parliament this month and an amendment has already been mooted.
Full report on the University World News site
BOTSWANA: New tertiary education policy
A special correspondent
Botswana's parliament recently approved a new tertiary education policy, Towards a knowledge society, for the stable and rapidly growing southern African nation. The major goals of the new approach to tertiary education are to enhance relevance, ensure quality, maintain diversity of choice and increase access - including more than doubling the ratio of young people entering tertiary education within two decades. The country's capacity for research and innovation is to be expanded from a single national university to other tertiary institutions and a second public university.
Full report on the University World News site
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY:
US: Navigating conflict between science and policymakers
Drawing on his experience as a biologist, president emeritus of Stanford University and former editor-in-chief of Science magazine, Donald Kennedy probes conflict between the conduct of science and influences of (a security-focussed, neo-conservative) government, in a paper published by the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley. In "Science and its discontents: An evolutionary tale", Kennedy discusses three current conflicts: new security and secrecy regimes that seek control of science; religiously derived moral viewpoints that aim to limit scientific research; and the shaping and censoring of scientific findings for political gain. The full paper is available on the CSHE website.
Full report on the University World News site
SOUTH AFRICA: Context counts in Chinese higher education
Adam Habib
A recent trip to China, to learn about Chinese higher education institutions and explore the potential for research collaborations and partnerships, suggested important lessons for South Africa's higher education system. The most striking feature of China's universities is how they are structured to meet the needs of their context. Of course, they do borrow from the comparative experiences of other countries. But unlike higher education leaders and policy wonks in South Africa, who slavishly follow the latest reforms in the US and the UK, Chinese higher education authorities adapt other experiences to their own context, writes Professor Adam Habib, a deputy vice-chancellor of the University of Johannesburg, in Business Day
Full report on the University World News site
PEOPLE:
AUSTRALIA: Fay Gale - A life of firsts
Obituary: Fay Gale 13 June 1932 to 3 May 2008
In her prime as an academic, Professor Fay Gale was Australia's foremost cultural geographer but throughout her life she was also a passionate advocate of equal opportunity for women and Aboriginal people. Hers was a life of remarkable firsts: from being the first woman to hold a chair at the University of Adelaide, and the only female professor there for 10 years, to being appointed the first woman to head the University of Western Australia and thereby the first female vice-chancellor of one of the elite Group of Eight universities, following this by becoming the first woman to be elected president of the Australian Vice Chancellors Committee.
Full report on the University World News site
WORLD ROUND UP:
US: Call to fund the young and risky
A coalition of researchers has strongly urged a greater commitment among policymakers, universities and private donors to support scientists early in their careers and encourage potentially "high risk, high reward" ventures, reports Inside Higher Ed. A series of recommendations that would alter longstanding federal funding and peer review mechanisms was published in a white paper released by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Full report on the University World News site
US: Loan mess hits home for students
Todd Coffman thinks he's a good credit risk - but because he's studying at a community college, the banks suddenly seem to think otherwise, reports the Seattle Times. Coffman, 28, is halfway through a two-year X-ray-technology degree at Bellevue Community College. In the past year, he took out about $4,500 in federally subsidised student loans through Citibank. But turbulent credit markets prompted Citibank and other banks in recent weeks to stop offering student loans at many community colleges across the country.
Full report on the University World News site
JAPAN: Chinese students prefer the West
About 70,000 Chinese are studying at Japanese universities, comprising by far the single biggest group among the nation's 120,000 international students. But Homare Endo, an adviser to Teikyo University Group who has served as a counsellor for Chinese students in Japan since the early 1980s, says the cream of China's students tend to go to the United States or Europe, reports the Daily Yomiuri.
Full report on the University World News site
CHINA: Growing competition for top students
Universities across China are competing aggressively for top students as the annual national college entrance examination approaches. Some are offering special scholarships for students who do well in the exam, reports ChinaView.
Full report on the University World News site
SOUTH AFRICA: On track to R&D spending of 1% of GDP
South Africa is well on track to reach research and development spending of 1% of gross domestic product by the end of 2008, according to Science and Technology Minister Mosibudi Mangena, reports Engineering News. The intensity of research and development, which is measured as a percentage of research spending of gross domestic product and indicates the competitiveness of an economy, currently stands at 0.9%.
Full report on the University World News site
INDIA: UK keen to send students to Indian universities
In a reverse trend, the UK government is interested in sending British students to study in India, reports The Times of India. "We want to set up a UK-India school to facilitate British students to come and study in India," said Bill Rammell, UK minister of state, lifelong learning, further and higher education. This is part of a slew of initiatives by the British government to strengthen education ties with India.
Full report on the University World News site
UK: Cheating rife among university students
As undergraduates gear up for end-of-year exams, new research shows cheating among university students is rife, reports Education Guardian. Researchers investigating the number of cases of plagiarism in the UK's 168 universities and colleges found over 9,000 incidents recorded in the 100 institutions that responded to the survey by the Higher Education Academy.
Full report on the University World News site
UK: Welsh universities furious over fake degrees
Fake degrees from every university in Wales are being sold on the internet for less than £40 each, a Wales on Sunday investigation has found. Carrying official university crests, printed on parchment paper and with authentic embossed seals, the bogus qualifications could easily be used to dupe a potential employer
Full report on the University World News site
University World News is an online global higher education publication focusing on international higher education news and analysis, developments, events and announcements
Issues covered by our world class writers include, among many other areas: international university rankings and league tables; globalisation and higher education research and analysis; international students; tertiary education systems, policies and reforms; higher education funding and liberalisation; academic posts and tenure; college accreditation; English language tuition; GATS and the Bologna Process. We are also working to highlight academic job opportunities, new academic posts, conferences and events, research grants, research jobs and further education news.
University World News is read by vice-chancellors and their deputies, professors and university managers, lecturers, higher education researchers and postgraduate students at universities and colleges worldwide, as well as by government policy-makers and officials and people working in higher education funding and advisory bodies, research councils, think tanks, donor agencies, and national and international organisations.
UNI-LATERAL:
RUSSIA: President's alma mater in quality dispute
A row has broken out at St Petersburg State University - the alma mater of ex-President Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev - following the failure of more than a third of students to pass their examinations. Unsuccessful students, who were sent away without any right of appeal, said they had been made scapegoats after the authorities, trying to raise respect for the rule of law, called for higher standards among law graduates.
Monday 2 June 2008
University World News 0030 - 1 June 2008
World’s oldest mother located
A team of earth scientists has discovered the fossilised remains of the planet’s oldest mother – a now extinct 25 centimetre-long placoderm fish in the process of giving birth, with the 6 centimetre embryo and umbilical cord intact. The 380 million-year-old fossil from Western Australia represents one of the biggest breakthroughs ever made in palaeontology.
Full report on the University World News site
SPECIAL REPORT: University reform
In countries around the globe, universities face huge challenges as they try to prepare their students for an uncertain future. The Bologna process, of course, is generating the most dramatic reforms of higher education systems across almost the entire European continent but, along the way, Bologna is affecting higher education in many other places – even the US. In this series of special reports, University World News correspondents describe the upheavals universities are experiencing, or will soon encounter, in a number of different nations.
US: America and the Bologna Club
Geoff Maslen
The Bologna process has sufficient momentum to become the dominant global higher education model within the next two decades, according to a report released last week by the US Institute for Higher Education Policy. The report calls on American universities and colleges to take careful note of what is happening across Europe as a result of Bologna and implies it could be time for sweeping changes in the US as well. The 200-page report, The Bologna Club: What US higher education can learn from a decade of European reconstruction, says that in terms of crossing geographic and language boundaries, "let alone turning ancient higher education systems on their heads", the Bologna process is the most far-reaching and ambitious reform of higher education ever undertaken. Not only that, the core features of Bologna "have sufficient momentum to become the dominant global higher education model within the next two decades and Americans had better listen up".
Full report on the University World News site
CZECH REPUBLIC: Green Minister proposes radical changes
Nick Holdsworth
Higher education in the Czech Republic - long caricatured by critics as the dinosaur of Europe's university system - is due for a major overhaul. This follows publication of a White Paper that proposes sweeping reforms, penned by a 30-year-old Green Party Minister of Education.
Full report on the University World News site
NEW ZEALAND: Report ponders future of universities
John Gerritsen
Almost every aspect of higher education in New Zealand, from student numbers to university cooperation, has been thrown open for debate with the publication of a discussion document on the future of the nation's universities. The document, by former Ministry of Education boss Howard Fancy, indicates New Zealand's eight universities will need more funding, have more postgraduate students and be markedly different from one another in future. But it also suggests they will need to work more closely together, perhaps as a federation of institutions, and that their collective international reputation will be extremely important.
Full report on the University World News site
SAUDI ARABIA: E-learning education shake-up
In a major transformation of traditional education, most universities in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia are expected to switch to a system of e-learning next year. The Saudi Ministry of Higher Education has established a National Centre of E-learning & Distance Learning, known as the ELC, to organise the change and prepare e-learning material. Nine universities have already agreed to implement the system.
Full report on the University World News site
INDONESIA: Obstacles to university reform
David Jardine
Reform of higher education in Indonesia, as in any sector of governance, cannot be considered outside the context of the history of Dutch colonialism and the record of the 32-year militarised dictatorship of the late President Suharto.
Full report on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA: Divisions surface as review begins
Geoff Maslen
Higher education in Australia is undergoing a wide-ranging review commissioned by the new Labor government. As the latest in a long line of investigations over the past two decades, this one was announced in March by Education Minister Julia Gillard. It is focusing on the future direction of higher education, its 'fitness for purpose' in meeting the needs of the Australian community and economy, and the options for ongoing reform.
Full report on the University World News site
NEWS:
POLAND: Academic ranking group formed
Intense interest in university and faculty rankings around the world has resulted in the establishment of an international observatory on academic ranking and excellence. Described by its founders as a "partnership of rankings practitioners and academic analysts of rankings", the aim is to develop a way of making the now-numerous rankings of universities and their departments credible.
Full report on the University World News site
GERMANY: Donors' association warns against scrapping fees
Michael Gardner
Germany's 'Stifterverband' has warned against the abolition and reduction of tuition fees in the Federal states of Hesse and Hamburg. The Stifterverband, the country's donors' association for sciences and the humanities, stresses the importance of long-term funding horizons to safeguard teaching and is concerned that doing away with fees, or lowering them, could jeopardise study conditions.
Full report on the University World News site
FRANCE: An 'act of aggression', unions say
Jane Marshall
Unions representing staff of the CNRS, France's national centre for scientific research, walked out of a ministerial meeting to discuss reform of the centre after Valérie Pécresse, Minister for Higher Education and Research, made public her plans for its future before consultations had been completed.
Full report on the University World News site
NEW ZEALAND: Budget disappoints universities
John Gerritsen
New Zealand's universities will lobby hard for a big boost in their annual funding after last week's government budget delivered only minor increases for staff salaries and research. The eight universities are pushing for a $230 million (US$181 million) funding increase they say will restore them to the level of per-student funding they enjoyed some 15 years ago.
Full report on the University World News site
NEWSBRIEFS:
UK-AUSTRALIA: First British campus down under
University College London will next year become the first UK university with a campus in Australia. This follows the signing of an agreement in London on Thursday with the South Australian government to establish a UCL school of energy and resources in Adelaide.
Full report on the University World News site
UK: Oxford launches call for £1.25 billion
Oxford University has launched a massive fundraising campaign for £1.25 billion (US$2.5 billion), the largest bid for cash by any European university, in an effort to keep up with institutions such as Harvard and Stanford. Famous Oxford alumni including Richard Dawkins, Michael Palin and Sir Roger Bannister have backed the appeal, which the university says is vital to maintain its world-class reputation.
Full report on the University World News site
ACADEMIC FREEDOM:
UK: Terrorism arrests raise academic freedom questions
Jonathan Travis
A Nottingham University student and a staff member were detained for nearly a week under British terrorism laws for attempting to print 'controversial' documents on campus. Politics student Rizwaan Sabir was arrested after downloading an edited version of an al-Qaeda handbook from a US government website and sending it to an administrative member of staff, Hashim Yezza, for printing. Sabir is writing his MA dissertation on Islamic extremism and international terrorist networks, and many academics regard the downloaded material, which is publicly available, as a relevant piece of research.
Full report on the University World News site
BUSINESS:
EU: Europeans want to ban cloning for business
Alan Osborn
The European Parliament is pushing for an outright ban on the commercialisation of cloning of animals, heading off potentially lucrative research revenues for universities. The parliament voted overwhelmingly for a legislative amendment within European Union legislation to ban cloning animals for economic reasons, preventing their use for manufacturing meat, dairy foods, fibres and skins for clothing and textiles, medicine and other industries.
Full report on the University World News site
GLOBAL: WTO services negotiations at critical point
Keith Nuthall
The services negotiations of the World Trade Organisation's Doha Development Round - which could create openings for universities, colleges and research institutes to open branches in foreign countries - are reaching a critical juncture.
Full report on the University World News site
UK: Unique collaboration funds clinical research
Diane Spencer
A university, a health trust and a charity have joined forces to establish a state-of-the-art clinical research and imaging centre. Bristol University, the United Bristol Healthcare Trust and the Wolfson Foundation have collaborated to build the £6.6 million ($12 million) centre at St Michael's Hospital, in the south-west England city, which is due to open in 2009.
Full report on the University World News site
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
UK: Graduate trainee schemes in higher education
Allan Bolton
While the leadership and management of higher education institutions have become a subject for increased research and discussion, it is a concern that most of the sector has made little progress in ensuring its ability to recruit and develop the next generation of senior managers and leaders. How many commercial organisations would opt to meet their challenges without a well-structured, well-publicised recruitment programme, hoping instead to fill vacancies at all levels from whatever pool of applicants is available?
Full report on the University World News site
KENYA: World class research needed
Every poor country wants a national airline, writes Professor Mammo Muchie in Business Daily Africa, but rarely do powerful people ruling these countries think of establishing world-class research universities.
Full report on the University World News site
PEOPLE:
Award for Antarctic pioneer and educationist
At the age of 96, one of Australia's greatest Antarctic pioneers and educators, Dr Phillip Law, was last week awarded yet another degree - this time Doctor of Applied Science Honoris Causa at RMIT University in Melbourne. In presenting him to the chancellor, the university's acting pro vice-chancellor, Professor Irena Cosic, read out Dr Law's citation, describing him as a "living legend..., a true pioneer, innovator and educator, a man of science, courage and compassion".
Full report on the University World News site
WORLD ROUND-UP:
UK: Price too high?
British universities risk becoming too expensive for overseas students and are losing their grip on the market, says a report by the Higher Education Policy Institute. Research comparing leading universities in 11 countries found that it cost more to study in England, for example, than anywhere else, other than the US, reports Times Online.
Full report on the University World News site
US: Rise in students from India
Indians have doubled their presence on US campuses in the past decade, reports the Boston Globe. Numbering more than 83,000 last year, they are the largest group of international students in the country after overtaking the Chinese in 2002, surveys show.
Full report on the University World News site
PHILIPPINES: Freeze on fees
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has directed the Commission on Higher Education to freeze all tuition fee increases in the 110 state-run colleges and universities nationwide to help students and parents cope with the global rise in oil and food prices, reports the Philippine Information Agency.
Full report on the University World News site
PAKISTAN: No human rights courses
Although there are 36 Higher Education Commission-affiliated universities in the Punjab, none of them offers a degree in human rights studies, says The Daily Times in Lahore. Nineteen public and 17 private universities are HEC-affiliated in the province, but the study of human rights has failed to get the attention of any of these schools. Educationists believe the poor state of human rights in the country is the reason why the subject is overlooked.
Full report on the University World News site
A team of earth scientists has discovered the fossilised remains of the planet’s oldest mother – a now extinct 25 centimetre-long placoderm fish in the process of giving birth, with the 6 centimetre embryo and umbilical cord intact. The 380 million-year-old fossil from Western Australia represents one of the biggest breakthroughs ever made in palaeontology.
Full report on the University World News site
SPECIAL REPORT: University reform
In countries around the globe, universities face huge challenges as they try to prepare their students for an uncertain future. The Bologna process, of course, is generating the most dramatic reforms of higher education systems across almost the entire European continent but, along the way, Bologna is affecting higher education in many other places – even the US. In this series of special reports, University World News correspondents describe the upheavals universities are experiencing, or will soon encounter, in a number of different nations.
US: America and the Bologna Club
Geoff Maslen
The Bologna process has sufficient momentum to become the dominant global higher education model within the next two decades, according to a report released last week by the US Institute for Higher Education Policy. The report calls on American universities and colleges to take careful note of what is happening across Europe as a result of Bologna and implies it could be time for sweeping changes in the US as well. The 200-page report, The Bologna Club: What US higher education can learn from a decade of European reconstruction, says that in terms of crossing geographic and language boundaries, "let alone turning ancient higher education systems on their heads", the Bologna process is the most far-reaching and ambitious reform of higher education ever undertaken. Not only that, the core features of Bologna "have sufficient momentum to become the dominant global higher education model within the next two decades and Americans had better listen up".
Full report on the University World News site
CZECH REPUBLIC: Green Minister proposes radical changes
Nick Holdsworth
Higher education in the Czech Republic - long caricatured by critics as the dinosaur of Europe's university system - is due for a major overhaul. This follows publication of a White Paper that proposes sweeping reforms, penned by a 30-year-old Green Party Minister of Education.
Full report on the University World News site
NEW ZEALAND: Report ponders future of universities
John Gerritsen
Almost every aspect of higher education in New Zealand, from student numbers to university cooperation, has been thrown open for debate with the publication of a discussion document on the future of the nation's universities. The document, by former Ministry of Education boss Howard Fancy, indicates New Zealand's eight universities will need more funding, have more postgraduate students and be markedly different from one another in future. But it also suggests they will need to work more closely together, perhaps as a federation of institutions, and that their collective international reputation will be extremely important.
Full report on the University World News site
SAUDI ARABIA: E-learning education shake-up
In a major transformation of traditional education, most universities in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia are expected to switch to a system of e-learning next year. The Saudi Ministry of Higher Education has established a National Centre of E-learning & Distance Learning, known as the ELC, to organise the change and prepare e-learning material. Nine universities have already agreed to implement the system.
Full report on the University World News site
INDONESIA: Obstacles to university reform
David Jardine
Reform of higher education in Indonesia, as in any sector of governance, cannot be considered outside the context of the history of Dutch colonialism and the record of the 32-year militarised dictatorship of the late President Suharto.
Full report on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA: Divisions surface as review begins
Geoff Maslen
Higher education in Australia is undergoing a wide-ranging review commissioned by the new Labor government. As the latest in a long line of investigations over the past two decades, this one was announced in March by Education Minister Julia Gillard. It is focusing on the future direction of higher education, its 'fitness for purpose' in meeting the needs of the Australian community and economy, and the options for ongoing reform.
Full report on the University World News site
NEWS:
POLAND: Academic ranking group formed
Intense interest in university and faculty rankings around the world has resulted in the establishment of an international observatory on academic ranking and excellence. Described by its founders as a "partnership of rankings practitioners and academic analysts of rankings", the aim is to develop a way of making the now-numerous rankings of universities and their departments credible.
Full report on the University World News site
GERMANY: Donors' association warns against scrapping fees
Michael Gardner
Germany's 'Stifterverband' has warned against the abolition and reduction of tuition fees in the Federal states of Hesse and Hamburg. The Stifterverband, the country's donors' association for sciences and the humanities, stresses the importance of long-term funding horizons to safeguard teaching and is concerned that doing away with fees, or lowering them, could jeopardise study conditions.
Full report on the University World News site
FRANCE: An 'act of aggression', unions say
Jane Marshall
Unions representing staff of the CNRS, France's national centre for scientific research, walked out of a ministerial meeting to discuss reform of the centre after Valérie Pécresse, Minister for Higher Education and Research, made public her plans for its future before consultations had been completed.
Full report on the University World News site
NEW ZEALAND: Budget disappoints universities
John Gerritsen
New Zealand's universities will lobby hard for a big boost in their annual funding after last week's government budget delivered only minor increases for staff salaries and research. The eight universities are pushing for a $230 million (US$181 million) funding increase they say will restore them to the level of per-student funding they enjoyed some 15 years ago.
Full report on the University World News site
NEWSBRIEFS:
UK-AUSTRALIA: First British campus down under
University College London will next year become the first UK university with a campus in Australia. This follows the signing of an agreement in London on Thursday with the South Australian government to establish a UCL school of energy and resources in Adelaide.
Full report on the University World News site
UK: Oxford launches call for £1.25 billion
Oxford University has launched a massive fundraising campaign for £1.25 billion (US$2.5 billion), the largest bid for cash by any European university, in an effort to keep up with institutions such as Harvard and Stanford. Famous Oxford alumni including Richard Dawkins, Michael Palin and Sir Roger Bannister have backed the appeal, which the university says is vital to maintain its world-class reputation.
Full report on the University World News site
ACADEMIC FREEDOM:
UK: Terrorism arrests raise academic freedom questions
Jonathan Travis
A Nottingham University student and a staff member were detained for nearly a week under British terrorism laws for attempting to print 'controversial' documents on campus. Politics student Rizwaan Sabir was arrested after downloading an edited version of an al-Qaeda handbook from a US government website and sending it to an administrative member of staff, Hashim Yezza, for printing. Sabir is writing his MA dissertation on Islamic extremism and international terrorist networks, and many academics regard the downloaded material, which is publicly available, as a relevant piece of research.
Full report on the University World News site
BUSINESS:
EU: Europeans want to ban cloning for business
Alan Osborn
The European Parliament is pushing for an outright ban on the commercialisation of cloning of animals, heading off potentially lucrative research revenues for universities. The parliament voted overwhelmingly for a legislative amendment within European Union legislation to ban cloning animals for economic reasons, preventing their use for manufacturing meat, dairy foods, fibres and skins for clothing and textiles, medicine and other industries.
Full report on the University World News site
GLOBAL: WTO services negotiations at critical point
Keith Nuthall
The services negotiations of the World Trade Organisation's Doha Development Round - which could create openings for universities, colleges and research institutes to open branches in foreign countries - are reaching a critical juncture.
Full report on the University World News site
UK: Unique collaboration funds clinical research
Diane Spencer
A university, a health trust and a charity have joined forces to establish a state-of-the-art clinical research and imaging centre. Bristol University, the United Bristol Healthcare Trust and the Wolfson Foundation have collaborated to build the £6.6 million ($12 million) centre at St Michael's Hospital, in the south-west England city, which is due to open in 2009.
Full report on the University World News site
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
UK: Graduate trainee schemes in higher education
Allan Bolton
While the leadership and management of higher education institutions have become a subject for increased research and discussion, it is a concern that most of the sector has made little progress in ensuring its ability to recruit and develop the next generation of senior managers and leaders. How many commercial organisations would opt to meet their challenges without a well-structured, well-publicised recruitment programme, hoping instead to fill vacancies at all levels from whatever pool of applicants is available?
Full report on the University World News site
KENYA: World class research needed
Every poor country wants a national airline, writes Professor Mammo Muchie in Business Daily Africa, but rarely do powerful people ruling these countries think of establishing world-class research universities.
Full report on the University World News site
PEOPLE:
Award for Antarctic pioneer and educationist
At the age of 96, one of Australia's greatest Antarctic pioneers and educators, Dr Phillip Law, was last week awarded yet another degree - this time Doctor of Applied Science Honoris Causa at RMIT University in Melbourne. In presenting him to the chancellor, the university's acting pro vice-chancellor, Professor Irena Cosic, read out Dr Law's citation, describing him as a "living legend..., a true pioneer, innovator and educator, a man of science, courage and compassion".
Full report on the University World News site
WORLD ROUND-UP:
UK: Price too high?
British universities risk becoming too expensive for overseas students and are losing their grip on the market, says a report by the Higher Education Policy Institute. Research comparing leading universities in 11 countries found that it cost more to study in England, for example, than anywhere else, other than the US, reports Times Online.
Full report on the University World News site
US: Rise in students from India
Indians have doubled their presence on US campuses in the past decade, reports the Boston Globe. Numbering more than 83,000 last year, they are the largest group of international students in the country after overtaking the Chinese in 2002, surveys show.
Full report on the University World News site
PHILIPPINES: Freeze on fees
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has directed the Commission on Higher Education to freeze all tuition fee increases in the 110 state-run colleges and universities nationwide to help students and parents cope with the global rise in oil and food prices, reports the Philippine Information Agency.
Full report on the University World News site
PAKISTAN: No human rights courses
Although there are 36 Higher Education Commission-affiliated universities in the Punjab, none of them offers a degree in human rights studies, says The Daily Times in Lahore. Nineteen public and 17 private universities are HEC-affiliated in the province, but the study of human rights has failed to get the attention of any of these schools. Educationists believe the poor state of human rights in the country is the reason why the subject is overlooked.
Full report on the University World News site
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