NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report
EUROPE: Leaders highlight universities’ role in downturn
Five hundred university leaders who gathered in Prague this month called on European governments to invest in higher education during the economic and financial crisis. Meeting at the fifth convention of higher education institutions, organised by the European University Association, the rectors said universities had a key role as a ‘motor’ for economic recovery by providing the research-based education at all levels needed to promote creativity and innovation.
Full report on the University World News site
GLOBAL: Columbia opens global centres
John Richard Schrock
Beijing in China and Amman in Jordan are the sites of the first two Columbia Global Centers, a markedly different departure from the standard branch campuses built by many universities around the world to promote exchanges and attract foreign students. Columbia University President Lee C Bollinger opened the Beijing centre last Friday week while the Middle East Research Center in Amman opened two days later.
Full report on the University World News site
TUNISIA: Higher education road to riches
Wagdy Sawahel
During the last decade, Tunisia has launched a higher education reform strategy to bring its universities and research institutions in line with international standards and the world revolution in science and technologies, says Hafedh Nasr, a researcher at the National Research Institute for Rural Engineering, Water and Forestry. Nasr says the strategy has mainly focused on expanding access to higher education, modernising the system, further decentralising universities and technology parks, and improving academic quality and institutional performance.
Full report on the University World News site
FRANCE: Strikes continue despite teacher-training concession
Jane Marshall
Striking lecturers and researchers are continuing their eight-week stoppage, despite a further concession by Education Minister Xavier Darcos over teacher-training reform. The biggest higher education union also rejected an amended decree modifying academics’ job status at a meeting with Higher Education and Research Minister Valérie Pécresse.
Full report on the University World News site
FINLAND: Quality – Finnish style
Ian Dobson
In common with the rest of the higher education world, Finland has embraced ‘quality’ in its universities. Finns prefer to use the term ‘evaluations’ rather than ‘quality audits’ and their national university agency for such matters is the Finnish Higher Education Evaluation Council. Its audits began in the second half of 2005 and it is hoped that all 20 universities and 26 polytechnics will have been audited by the end of 2011.
Full report on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA: Brain economy – the elephant in the room
Politicians and the public are yet to realise that tangible support for the ‘brain industries’ is as critical for Australia’s future and for Australian jobs as support for the resources industries, says Tony Adams, Immediate Past President of the International Education Association of Australia.
Full report on the University World News site
NEWSBRIEFS
FRANCE: Grants for international students
An agency that promotes French education abroad called CampusFrance has set up an online directory of grants available for international students who want to study in France.
Full report on the University World News site
EU: Masters in translation network
The creation of the European Masters in Translation network was the central theme of an international conference organised by the European Commission in Brussels on 16-17 March. More than 100 universities and other stakeholders involved in translator training met to agree on the criteria for training programmes to become part of a common EMT quality label.
Full report on the University World News site
ACADEMIC FREEDOM
CHINA: Imprisoned historian released but refused travel
Jonathan Travis
Tohti Tunyaz, a Uighur historian and writer from China, was released last month after spending 11 years in prison. Tohti was sentenced for “illegally acquiring state secrets” after receiving a copy of a list of documents relating to the second East Turkestan Independence Movement and pre-1949 Xinjiang history. He was also convicted of “instigating national disunity” after allegedly publishing a book in Japan titled The Inside Story of the Silk Road that was claimed to promote ethnic separatism.
More academic freedom reports on the University World News site
BUSINESS
UK: The greening of business schools
Diane Spencer
Business schools in the UK are gearing themselves up for new developments in sustainability. In a new report, the Association of Business Schools says business communities need to embrace environmental and sustainable ways of working and embed them into every day policies and procedures to ensure the future of the planet. The association also says students are more discerning about green issues including buildings, courses and content. They are aware of integrating sustainability into business practices and of the newly created ‘green collar’ jobs.
Full report on the University World News site
EUROPE: R&D wake-up call from European Commission
Alan Osborn
If the European Union wants to become the world leader in information and communication technologies as it frequently asserts, it should not expect to do it for nothing. As a start, the 27 EU member states should at least double their investment in ICT – both public and private – over the next 10 years, says the European Commission in launching a new ICT Research and Innovation Strategy.
Full report on the University World News site
THE NETHERLANDS: Soothing cream from baby film
Monica Dobie
Scientists from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands have developed a synthetic version of the natural protective cream found on newborn babies that they claim can be developed as a medical cosmetic. Its properties will in particular help protect babies born prematurely against temperature changes, dehydration and infection as well as providing adults with relief from skin disease.
Full report on the University World News site
FEATURE
CANADA: Alberta aims for global Top 20
David Jobbins
The time is right for Canadian universities to make their mark on the international student market, says University of Alberta President Dr Indira Samarasekera. And she is determined to win the university a place among the 20 leading comparable universities around the world.
Full report on the University World News site
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
US: The centrality of the academic profession
Philip C Altbach
In 1992, Bill Clinton was elected president of the United States in considerable part by emphasising the importance of the economy. His mantra – “It’s the economy, stupid!” – focused this point. For higher education, the mantra should be “It’s the faculty, stupid!”. In fact, no university can achieve success without a well-qualified, committed academic profession. Neither an impressive campus nor an innovative curriculum will produce good results without great professors.
Full report on the University World News site
GLOBAL: What are universities for?
Geoffrey Boulton
This title of this article should be a FAQ – that is, a frequently asked question. My contention is that the question, ‘What are universities for?’ is not asked enough, and that it tends not to be answered in a cogent and realistic way by those best placed to do so, that is by academics.
Full report on the University World News site
UNI-LATERAL: Off-beat university stories
UK: Pay boost for university leaders
Diane Spencer
Many British vice-chancellors are paid as much if not more than the Prime Minister. But not, of course, as much as Premier League footballers – or failed bankers. Latest figures collated and audited by accountants Grant Thornton on behalf of Times Higher Education show the average university head earned £193,970 (including benefits but not pension contributions) in 2007-08, a 9% increase on the previous year, and a steeper rise than in the previous two years. Gordon Brown was paid £194,250 last year for running the country.
Full report on the University World News site
US: Quirky regional dictionary nears finish
If you don’t know a stone toter from Adam’s off ox, or aren’t sure what a grinder shop sells, the Dictionary of American Regional English is for you, writes Ryan J Foley for Associated Press. The dictionary team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is nearing completion of the final volume, covering ‘S’ to ‘Z’. A new federal grant will help the volume get published next year, joining the first four volumes already in print.
More on the University World News site
PEOPLE
US: Pioneering historian John Hope Franklin dies
John Hope Franklin, a towering scholar and pioneer of African-American studies who wrote the seminal text on the black experience in the US and worked on the landmark Supreme Court case that outlawed public school segregation, died last Wednesday, writes Associated Press’ Martha Waggoner in The Washington Post. Franklin was 94.
More on the University World News site
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WORLD ROUND-UP
US: MIT academics vote for public access to research
Massachusetts Institute of Technology will make its research available to the public free of charge, becoming the first US university to mandate the policy, by faculty vote, across all departments, writes John Lauerman for Bloomberg. The unanimous vote, taken on 18 March, is effective immediately, the university said in an e-mail last week.
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US: University of Michigan Press goes digital
University officials have announced plans to merge the University of Michigan Press with the university library in an effort to reinforce the institution’s mission to efficiently publish scholarly texts while transitioning into the digital age, reports The Michigan Daily. The announcement came about a month after the Association of American Universities and the Association of Research Libraries issued a call to action urging universities to take a more active role in producing and sharing academic works through digital technologies.
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US: Supply, demand and foreign students
The fact that large numbers of international students enrol in doctoral programmes in the United States is no surprise, but their considerable presence represents “one of the most significant transformations in US graduate education” in the last quarter century, argues a new economic analysis of the supply and demand effects influencing student outflows from other countries and influxes into the US, writes Elizabeth Redden for Inside Higher Ed. The proportion of foreign-born PhD recipients in science and engineering nearly doubled from 27% percent in 1973 to 51% in 2003.
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UK: Bursaries ‘must rise in line with fees’
Student bursaries will have to be increased if the government raises tuition fees, the government’s university access watchdog has warned, reports The Guardian. Sir Martin Harris, director of the Office for Fair Access, Offa, said he did not believe the introduction of £3,000 (US$4,350) top-up fees in 2006 had led to universities becoming more socially elitist. But in order to prevent students being excluded, universities would have to give them back more money if they are to be allowed to raise fees to £5,000 or more.
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SOUTH AFRICA: Big research centre to tackle HIV and TB
A partnership between the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, or HHMI, in the US and the University of KwaZulu-Natal will establish an international research centre focused on contributing to the effort to control the ‘co-epidemic’ of tuberculosis and HIV, and on training African scientists, writes Sue Blaine in Business Day.
More on the University World News site
KENYA: Public universities sink into tribalism
Appointments to top administrative positions at public universities are undermining their image as national centres of academic excellence, lecturers and government officials have warned, writes Samuel Siringi in the Daily Nation. They said recent selections of principals for new colleges and campuses appears to have been based on ethnic considerations or regions where the institutions are located, rather than on merit.
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US: Abortion debate dogs Obama visit to university
President Barack Obama’s planned visit to the University of Notre Dame in May has triggered a national debate over whether such a prominent supporter of abortion rights should be welcomed at one of America’s premier Catholic universities, writes John McCormick in the Chicago Tribune. Obama’s decision to speak at the university’s 17 May commencement is generating strong feelings on all sides, with supporters saying he should be welcomed as the nation’s leader and opponents saying he should be shunned because of his views.
More on the University World News site
NIGERIA: President tasks universities on funding
President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua has told Nigerian universities to explore alternative sources of funding and stop depending solely on government funds for their operations, writes John Shiklam in the Daily Champion.
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TAIWAN: Access to higher education widening
People with tertiary education were the largest group among Taiwan’s literate population in 2008, which indicated widening access to higher education by citizens of the country, according to a report released last week by the Ministry of the Interior, reports Taiwan News. The report showed that at the end of 2008, the number of Taiwan citizens with tertiary education levels of training accounted for 34.91% of the population aged 15 and over.
More on the University World News site
UK: Scottish higher education gets £20 million boost
Scottish universities and colleges have been given speeded up funding of more than £20 million (US$174 million) to pay for improved buildings and facilities, reports BBC News. The Scottish government said the move would give students the skills to make it in tough economic times.
More on the University World News site
CANADA: Winnipeg bans bottle water sales on campus
Following a decision by the student body, which voted to prohibit the sale of bottled water on campus, the University of Winnipeg made the ban official last week, reports All Headline News. The prohibition, which will be implemented in phases, will make Winnipeg the first university in Canada to endorse such a drastic pro-environment policy.
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Tuesday 31 March 2009
Sunday 22 March 2009
University World News 0068 - 23rd March 2009
NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report
GLOBAL: The plus and minus of Commonwealth legacy
John Gerritsen
“Commonwealth history is both a hindrance and a help,” admits Association of Commonwealth Universities General Secretary, Professor John Tarrant. Seated in a hotel lobby in Wellington, New Zealand, the silver-haired head of the world’s oldest inter-university network has now had nearly two years to come to grips with the double-edged nature of the association’s origins.
Full report on the University World News site
AFRICA: Fears for continent’s once-great universities
John Gerritsen
Africa must reconstruct its once-great universities or fall even further behind the rest of the world, Professor John Tarrant has warned. Tarrant cited the plight of Africa’s universities as the most worrying issue in global higher education after the immediate issue of the global recession.
Full report on the University World News site
AFRICA: Call for higher education support fund
Karen MacGregor
Sixteen African ministers attending a preparatory meeting for the Unesco World Conference on Higher Education, to be held in Paris in July, called for improved financing of universities and a support fund to strengthen training and research in key areas. They ministers also want improved governance and quality assurance, and diversification of programmes to enable the sector to meet a wider range of needs, according to a conference report circulated last week.
Full report on the University World News site
VIETNAM: Transforming higher education
Dale Down
Just as Vietnam’s economy has been transforming itself over the last few decades, it is now the turn of the country’s higher education system. The Ministry of Education and Training has announced plans for a new science university to be opened later this year that will be of international standard and will be the benchmark against which all other science universities in the country will be measured.
Full report on the University World News site
US: Switch to online journals under attack
John Richard Schrock
A trend to make printed scientific journals available online worldwide, is under fire. Although President Barack Obama has signed a measure to make the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy permanent, some US lawmakers have launched legislation to roll back the effort. While advocates assert moving science journals online is tech-savvy, economical and the only proper use of taxpayer-generated research, problems with costs, archiving, copyright, and support of small professional organisations (centred on their journal identity and research collaboration) are causing second thoughts.
Full report on the University World News site
RUSSIA: Education Minister to take top job?
Nick Holdsworth
The head of Russia’s top university may be forced to step down next month when he turns 70 as speculation mounts in the Russian press that his successor could be Education Minister Andrei Fursenko. Victor Sadovnichy, who was elected the rector of Russia’s equivalent of a top Ivy League institution in 1992 and heads the Union of Rectors, is a powerful and influential figure within higher education. He enjoys close relations with top government figures but Russian employment law stipulates that rectors should retire at 65 with a five year optional extension.
Full report on the University World News site
FRANCE: Academic and student anger grows
Jane Marshall
The nation’s universities continued to be disrupted by strikes and protests against proposed teacher training reforms last week while university presidents called for a year’s delay in introducing the changes to allow time for reflection and consultation.
Full report on the University World News site
FRANCE: United in struggle against reforms
Bordeaux 3 On Strike
French universities have faced strikes by academics and students for six weeks and their protests have received wide coverage from French and foreign newspapers. Despite claims by some journalists, very few violent clashes have occurred: this movement is not another example of the recurring cliché of striking workers in France.
Full report on the University World News site
SPAIN: OECD: Could do better
Rebecca Warden
Spanish higher education has come a long way in recent years, making significant progress in areas such as quality assurance and institutional autonomy. But issues such as inefficiency, lack of responsiveness to the needs of society and academic inbreeding still plague the system, according to a recent report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Full report on the University World News site
SUDAN: President’s arrest warrant may affect plans
Wagdy Sawahel
In a bid to promote a knowledge-based economy and enhance Africa’s scientific capabilities, Sudan – the largest country in Africa – is planning to launch several initiatives in science and technology and in higher education. But the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court in The Hague against Sudan’s president could mean these projects may not even begin.
Full report on the University World News site
KENYA: Riot after murder of former student leaders
Clemence Manyukwe
Kenyan students rioted last week, demanding the resignation of the country’s police commissioner following the murder of two former student leaders in a suspected assassination by security agents. Outgoing chairman of Kenyatta University Students’ Association Martin KO Luther told University World News the former students, who were shot dead in their car, had been involved in human rights work.
Full report on the University World News site
NIGERIA: Growing support for retirement at 70
Tunde Fatunde
Vice-President Dr Jonathan Goodluck has lent his voice to growing demand that Ni gerian academics should retire at the age of 70 rather than the current 65 years. Goodluck, formerly a science lecturer at the University of Port Harcourt, has advocated retirement age reform as a way of retaining experienced academics at universities that are facing acute staff shortages.
Full report on the University World News site
EGYPT: Future of teacher colleges uncertain
Ashraf Khaled
Five years after graduating from a teacher training college in Egypt, Fouad Abdel Halim, 27, has lost hope of a career in teaching: “Since my graduation, I have been unable to get a job as a school teacher. I have to make both ends meet by doing casual jobs such as working as a store clerk, a secretary and even a wall-painter,” Halim said. He is one of thousands of graduates from teacher colleges who have failed to find teaching work because their numbers far outstrip demand.
Full report on the University World News site
NEWSBRIEFS
ANGOLA: Higher education network to cover country
Higher education reorganisation will lead to the creation of new public institutions and by 2012 the network will extend throughout the country, said Adão do Nascimento, Secretary of State for Higher Education.
Full report on the University World News site
TOGO: Problems training urban planners
“While the towns of Africa explode, the African School of Architecture and Town Planning struggles to train the elite battalions supposed to control the metropoles of the continent, between unpaid budgets and student strikes,” begins an article by correspondent Grégoire Allix in the French newspaper Le Monde, which chronicles the challenges faced by the Ecole africaine des métiers de l’architecture et de l’urbanisme (Eamau) in Lomé.
Full report on the University World News site
SCIENCE SCENE
SOUTH AFRICA-AUSTRALIA: Young lizard ‘transvestites’
Karen MacGregor
Young male Augrabies Flat Lizards in northern South Africa mimic females by delaying the onset of bright colouring, scientists in South Africa and Australia have found. By pretending to be female these ‘transvestites’ not only avoid being attacked by aggressive older male rivals but are also able to court females that share a territorial male’s area.
Full report on the University World News site
GLOBAL: New evidence of ice risk
Latest results from an international study of rock and sediment from the Antarctic sea floor show only a small rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations could prompt significant, and potentially dangerous, changes to the West Antarctic ice.
Full report on the University World News site
EUROPE: Research network extended
The European Commission has connected researchers in the South Caucasus nations of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia to Europe’s largest computer network for research and education. The EU-funded initiative links the countries and connects them to the high bandwidth, pan-European GÉANT network which already serves 30 million researchers.
Full report on the University World News site
CANADA: Smallest known North American dinosaur found
Canadian researchers say they have discovered the smallest known North American dinosaur, a carnivore that roamed areas of the continent 75 million years ago and weighed less than most modern-day house cats, reports CNN. Hesperonychus elizabethae, a two-kilogram creature with razor-like claws, ran through the swamps and forests of south-eastern Alberta, Canada, during the late Cretaceous period, the researchers said.
More on the University World News site
A Message to Readers
University World News is produced by a team of top journalists who contribute their time largely for free because we believe in the project. But we need your support to continue. We are appealing to readers to spread the word about University World News as a valuable source of news and comment, and as an advertising vehicle. We also ask you to consider making a contribution via the Donate button on our newsletter and website, or by clicking here.
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
AUSTRALIA: The global research race
Michael Gallagher
Many countries around the world are pressing ahead with building their research systems, even during the global recession, through economic stimulus measures that include targeted investments in research. They include the US and China, Norway, France and Germany. The economic stimulus measures of different countries are over and above earlier initiatives to strengthen research capability in the light of accelerating international competition. Countries that are not keeping up with research-building, such as Australia, are in a vulnerable position.
More on the University World News site
US-EUROPE: The power of partnerships
“Around the world, institutions are facing intensified competition at home and abroad, more insistent public demands for accountability, pressures to both widen access and contribute to economic development through research, stagnating public funding and a growing role of the market. In this environment, ‘going it alone’ may not be useful as a dominant strategy,” argues The Power of Partnerships: A transatlantic dialogue, an essay recently published by the American Council on Education, based on the outcomes of the 11th Transatlantic Dialogue of 28 university leaders from North America and Europe.
More on the University World News site
UNI-LATERAL: Off-beat university stories
UK: The Obama effect?
Diane Spencer
The Obama magic is spreading to British academe: the US president has now been cited by a Leicester University researcher as “a glorious mascot for biethnic people as highly successful and able individuals, who rise and succeed against many odds”. Postgraduate student Rana Sinha interviewed people from mixed race or ethnic parents in Finland to find out if their backgrounds helped them in their work. Overall, the findings were positive.
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FACEBOOK
The Facebook group of University World News is the fastest growing in higher education worldwide. Some 720 readers have joined. Sign up to the University World News Facebook group to meet and communicate directly with academics and researchers informed by the world’s first truly global higher education publication. Click on the link below to visit and join the group.
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WORLD ROUND-UP
UK: £2,000 rise in fees would not deter students
Raising tuition fees from £3,000 (US$4,350) to £5,000 a year would not put students off higher education, a report for university vice-chancellors has predicted, writes Donald McLeod in The Guardian. Giving the nod to the government to raise fees the report, published by Universities UK, nevertheless warns that students from low-income families would be discouraged if fees rose to £7,000, particularly if they had to take out private loans as well as government student loans.
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UK: Students to lobby MPs over fees
Students are to lobby Parliament in a protest against university top-up fees, reports BBC News. The National Union of Students, joined by former Education Secretary David Blunkett, will ask MPs to support alternative funding. More than 50% of university chiefs want students to pay at least £5,000 (US$7,182) per year or for there to be no upper limit.
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IRELAND: Review of enrolments as courses merge
The numbers of students attending all of the 1,200 courses across higher education in Ireland is to be reviewed, writes John Walshe in the Irish Independent. Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe confirmed the review last week, saying that it was necessary to see where rationalisation can take place.
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US: Big plans for Arizona State collapse
When Michael Crow became president of Arizona State University seven years ago, he promised to make it ‘The New American University’, with 100,000 students by 2020. It would break down the musty old boundaries between disciplines, encourage advanced research and entrepreneurship to drive the new economy, and draw in students from underserved sectors of the state, writes Tamar Lewin in The New York Times. But this year, Crow's plans have crashed into new budget realities.
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US: Enrolments in computing and engineering rise
Some heartening news on the tech front, reports Scientific American: enrolment in undergraduate computer science and engineering programmes is up in the US and Canada for the first time since the dot-com bust.
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SOUTH AFRICA: Too much work for too few engineers
South Africa’s severe shortage of engineering professionals is putting a strain on the country’s infrastructure growth programme, according to research by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) published last week, writes Bheki Mpofu in Business Day. The report supports what similar studies have indicated: the country is facing a chronic shortage of qualified and competent professionals such as engineers following a surge in investment in infrastructure development in recent years.
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AUSTRALIA: Job type, not university, determines pay
Graduates from prestigious universities do not necessarily acquire higher starting salaries, in comparison to graduates from universities of lower rankings, a new study has found, reports Business News. The study in The Australian Economic Review found it is the type of employment obtained that determines labour market outcomes and remuneration.
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ISRAEL: Universities ‘squandering’ funds
Israel’s universities are largely to blame for their dire financial straits, because they pay high salaries and benefits to staff without the approval of the Finance Ministry, according to a report released by State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss last week. He recommended forcing universities to comply with regulatory oversight by freezing their funding until they agreed to allow the Finance Ministry to review their books, reports the Jerusalem Post.
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US: Black immigrants access elite colleges
The election of Barack Obama – African American because of his African father, distinguishing him from how the phrase is commonly used – has brought unprecedented attention to the diversity of backgrounds of those covered by the term, writes Scott Jaschik for Inside Higher Ed. Within higher education, one of the more sensitive issues in discussion of admissions and affirmative action in recent years has been the relative success of immigrant black Americans compared with black people who have been in the US for generations.
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US: Slave trade memorial on cards for Brown University
A Brown University commission has asked the school to create a memorial acknowledging its early ties to the slave trade, one that would inspire reconciliation, not resurrect shame, reports the Seattle Times. The 10-member commission has been studying civil rights and slavery memorials from Alabama to France, and said in a new report released last week that the project should be uplifting.
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BANGLADESH: US$81 million to improve higher education
The World Bank last week approved a US$81 million interest-free credit to Bangladesh to improve the quality of teaching and research in higher education, reports China View. The credit from the International Development Association, the World Bank’s concessionary arm, will support Bangladesh’s Higher Education Quality Enhancement Project.
More on the University World News site
GLOBAL: The plus and minus of Commonwealth legacy
John Gerritsen
“Commonwealth history is both a hindrance and a help,” admits Association of Commonwealth Universities General Secretary, Professor John Tarrant. Seated in a hotel lobby in Wellington, New Zealand, the silver-haired head of the world’s oldest inter-university network has now had nearly two years to come to grips with the double-edged nature of the association’s origins.
Full report on the University World News site
AFRICA: Fears for continent’s once-great universities
John Gerritsen
Africa must reconstruct its once-great universities or fall even further behind the rest of the world, Professor John Tarrant has warned. Tarrant cited the plight of Africa’s universities as the most worrying issue in global higher education after the immediate issue of the global recession.
Full report on the University World News site
AFRICA: Call for higher education support fund
Karen MacGregor
Sixteen African ministers attending a preparatory meeting for the Unesco World Conference on Higher Education, to be held in Paris in July, called for improved financing of universities and a support fund to strengthen training and research in key areas. They ministers also want improved governance and quality assurance, and diversification of programmes to enable the sector to meet a wider range of needs, according to a conference report circulated last week.
Full report on the University World News site
VIETNAM: Transforming higher education
Dale Down
Just as Vietnam’s economy has been transforming itself over the last few decades, it is now the turn of the country’s higher education system. The Ministry of Education and Training has announced plans for a new science university to be opened later this year that will be of international standard and will be the benchmark against which all other science universities in the country will be measured.
Full report on the University World News site
US: Switch to online journals under attack
John Richard Schrock
A trend to make printed scientific journals available online worldwide, is under fire. Although President Barack Obama has signed a measure to make the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy permanent, some US lawmakers have launched legislation to roll back the effort. While advocates assert moving science journals online is tech-savvy, economical and the only proper use of taxpayer-generated research, problems with costs, archiving, copyright, and support of small professional organisations (centred on their journal identity and research collaboration) are causing second thoughts.
Full report on the University World News site
RUSSIA: Education Minister to take top job?
Nick Holdsworth
The head of Russia’s top university may be forced to step down next month when he turns 70 as speculation mounts in the Russian press that his successor could be Education Minister Andrei Fursenko. Victor Sadovnichy, who was elected the rector of Russia’s equivalent of a top Ivy League institution in 1992 and heads the Union of Rectors, is a powerful and influential figure within higher education. He enjoys close relations with top government figures but Russian employment law stipulates that rectors should retire at 65 with a five year optional extension.
Full report on the University World News site
FRANCE: Academic and student anger grows
Jane Marshall
The nation’s universities continued to be disrupted by strikes and protests against proposed teacher training reforms last week while university presidents called for a year’s delay in introducing the changes to allow time for reflection and consultation.
Full report on the University World News site
FRANCE: United in struggle against reforms
Bordeaux 3 On Strike
French universities have faced strikes by academics and students for six weeks and their protests have received wide coverage from French and foreign newspapers. Despite claims by some journalists, very few violent clashes have occurred: this movement is not another example of the recurring cliché of striking workers in France.
Full report on the University World News site
SPAIN: OECD: Could do better
Rebecca Warden
Spanish higher education has come a long way in recent years, making significant progress in areas such as quality assurance and institutional autonomy. But issues such as inefficiency, lack of responsiveness to the needs of society and academic inbreeding still plague the system, according to a recent report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Full report on the University World News site
SUDAN: President’s arrest warrant may affect plans
Wagdy Sawahel
In a bid to promote a knowledge-based economy and enhance Africa’s scientific capabilities, Sudan – the largest country in Africa – is planning to launch several initiatives in science and technology and in higher education. But the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court in The Hague against Sudan’s president could mean these projects may not even begin.
Full report on the University World News site
KENYA: Riot after murder of former student leaders
Clemence Manyukwe
Kenyan students rioted last week, demanding the resignation of the country’s police commissioner following the murder of two former student leaders in a suspected assassination by security agents. Outgoing chairman of Kenyatta University Students’ Association Martin KO Luther told University World News the former students, who were shot dead in their car, had been involved in human rights work.
Full report on the University World News site
NIGERIA: Growing support for retirement at 70
Tunde Fatunde
Vice-President Dr Jonathan Goodluck has lent his voice to growing demand that Ni gerian academics should retire at the age of 70 rather than the current 65 years. Goodluck, formerly a science lecturer at the University of Port Harcourt, has advocated retirement age reform as a way of retaining experienced academics at universities that are facing acute staff shortages.
Full report on the University World News site
EGYPT: Future of teacher colleges uncertain
Ashraf Khaled
Five years after graduating from a teacher training college in Egypt, Fouad Abdel Halim, 27, has lost hope of a career in teaching: “Since my graduation, I have been unable to get a job as a school teacher. I have to make both ends meet by doing casual jobs such as working as a store clerk, a secretary and even a wall-painter,” Halim said. He is one of thousands of graduates from teacher colleges who have failed to find teaching work because their numbers far outstrip demand.
Full report on the University World News site
NEWSBRIEFS
ANGOLA: Higher education network to cover country
Higher education reorganisation will lead to the creation of new public institutions and by 2012 the network will extend throughout the country, said Adão do Nascimento, Secretary of State for Higher Education.
Full report on the University World News site
TOGO: Problems training urban planners
“While the towns of Africa explode, the African School of Architecture and Town Planning struggles to train the elite battalions supposed to control the metropoles of the continent, between unpaid budgets and student strikes,” begins an article by correspondent Grégoire Allix in the French newspaper Le Monde, which chronicles the challenges faced by the Ecole africaine des métiers de l’architecture et de l’urbanisme (Eamau) in Lomé.
Full report on the University World News site
SCIENCE SCENE
SOUTH AFRICA-AUSTRALIA: Young lizard ‘transvestites’
Karen MacGregor
Young male Augrabies Flat Lizards in northern South Africa mimic females by delaying the onset of bright colouring, scientists in South Africa and Australia have found. By pretending to be female these ‘transvestites’ not only avoid being attacked by aggressive older male rivals but are also able to court females that share a territorial male’s area.
Full report on the University World News site
GLOBAL: New evidence of ice risk
Latest results from an international study of rock and sediment from the Antarctic sea floor show only a small rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations could prompt significant, and potentially dangerous, changes to the West Antarctic ice.
Full report on the University World News site
EUROPE: Research network extended
The European Commission has connected researchers in the South Caucasus nations of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia to Europe’s largest computer network for research and education. The EU-funded initiative links the countries and connects them to the high bandwidth, pan-European GÉANT network which already serves 30 million researchers.
Full report on the University World News site
CANADA: Smallest known North American dinosaur found
Canadian researchers say they have discovered the smallest known North American dinosaur, a carnivore that roamed areas of the continent 75 million years ago and weighed less than most modern-day house cats, reports CNN. Hesperonychus elizabethae, a two-kilogram creature with razor-like claws, ran through the swamps and forests of south-eastern Alberta, Canada, during the late Cretaceous period, the researchers said.
More on the University World News site
A Message to Readers
University World News is produced by a team of top journalists who contribute their time largely for free because we believe in the project. But we need your support to continue. We are appealing to readers to spread the word about University World News as a valuable source of news and comment, and as an advertising vehicle. We also ask you to consider making a contribution via the Donate button on our newsletter and website, or by clicking here.
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
AUSTRALIA: The global research race
Michael Gallagher
Many countries around the world are pressing ahead with building their research systems, even during the global recession, through economic stimulus measures that include targeted investments in research. They include the US and China, Norway, France and Germany. The economic stimulus measures of different countries are over and above earlier initiatives to strengthen research capability in the light of accelerating international competition. Countries that are not keeping up with research-building, such as Australia, are in a vulnerable position.
More on the University World News site
US-EUROPE: The power of partnerships
“Around the world, institutions are facing intensified competition at home and abroad, more insistent public demands for accountability, pressures to both widen access and contribute to economic development through research, stagnating public funding and a growing role of the market. In this environment, ‘going it alone’ may not be useful as a dominant strategy,” argues The Power of Partnerships: A transatlantic dialogue, an essay recently published by the American Council on Education, based on the outcomes of the 11th Transatlantic Dialogue of 28 university leaders from North America and Europe.
More on the University World News site
UNI-LATERAL: Off-beat university stories
UK: The Obama effect?
Diane Spencer
The Obama magic is spreading to British academe: the US president has now been cited by a Leicester University researcher as “a glorious mascot for biethnic people as highly successful and able individuals, who rise and succeed against many odds”. Postgraduate student Rana Sinha interviewed people from mixed race or ethnic parents in Finland to find out if their backgrounds helped them in their work. Overall, the findings were positive.
More on the University World News site
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WORLD ROUND-UP
UK: £2,000 rise in fees would not deter students
Raising tuition fees from £3,000 (US$4,350) to £5,000 a year would not put students off higher education, a report for university vice-chancellors has predicted, writes Donald McLeod in The Guardian. Giving the nod to the government to raise fees the report, published by Universities UK, nevertheless warns that students from low-income families would be discouraged if fees rose to £7,000, particularly if they had to take out private loans as well as government student loans.
More on the University World News site
UK: Students to lobby MPs over fees
Students are to lobby Parliament in a protest against university top-up fees, reports BBC News. The National Union of Students, joined by former Education Secretary David Blunkett, will ask MPs to support alternative funding. More than 50% of university chiefs want students to pay at least £5,000 (US$7,182) per year or for there to be no upper limit.
More on the University World News site
IRELAND: Review of enrolments as courses merge
The numbers of students attending all of the 1,200 courses across higher education in Ireland is to be reviewed, writes John Walshe in the Irish Independent. Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe confirmed the review last week, saying that it was necessary to see where rationalisation can take place.
More on the University World News site
US: Big plans for Arizona State collapse
When Michael Crow became president of Arizona State University seven years ago, he promised to make it ‘The New American University’, with 100,000 students by 2020. It would break down the musty old boundaries between disciplines, encourage advanced research and entrepreneurship to drive the new economy, and draw in students from underserved sectors of the state, writes Tamar Lewin in The New York Times. But this year, Crow's plans have crashed into new budget realities.
More on the University World News site
US: Enrolments in computing and engineering rise
Some heartening news on the tech front, reports Scientific American: enrolment in undergraduate computer science and engineering programmes is up in the US and Canada for the first time since the dot-com bust.
More on the University World News site
SOUTH AFRICA: Too much work for too few engineers
South Africa’s severe shortage of engineering professionals is putting a strain on the country’s infrastructure growth programme, according to research by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) published last week, writes Bheki Mpofu in Business Day. The report supports what similar studies have indicated: the country is facing a chronic shortage of qualified and competent professionals such as engineers following a surge in investment in infrastructure development in recent years.
More on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA: Job type, not university, determines pay
Graduates from prestigious universities do not necessarily acquire higher starting salaries, in comparison to graduates from universities of lower rankings, a new study has found, reports Business News. The study in The Australian Economic Review found it is the type of employment obtained that determines labour market outcomes and remuneration.
More on the University World News site
ISRAEL: Universities ‘squandering’ funds
Israel’s universities are largely to blame for their dire financial straits, because they pay high salaries and benefits to staff without the approval of the Finance Ministry, according to a report released by State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss last week. He recommended forcing universities to comply with regulatory oversight by freezing their funding until they agreed to allow the Finance Ministry to review their books, reports the Jerusalem Post.
More on the University World News site
US: Black immigrants access elite colleges
The election of Barack Obama – African American because of his African father, distinguishing him from how the phrase is commonly used – has brought unprecedented attention to the diversity of backgrounds of those covered by the term, writes Scott Jaschik for Inside Higher Ed. Within higher education, one of the more sensitive issues in discussion of admissions and affirmative action in recent years has been the relative success of immigrant black Americans compared with black people who have been in the US for generations.
More on the University World News site
US: Slave trade memorial on cards for Brown University
A Brown University commission has asked the school to create a memorial acknowledging its early ties to the slave trade, one that would inspire reconciliation, not resurrect shame, reports the Seattle Times. The 10-member commission has been studying civil rights and slavery memorials from Alabama to France, and said in a new report released last week that the project should be uplifting.
More on the University World News site
BANGLADESH: US$81 million to improve higher education
The World Bank last week approved a US$81 million interest-free credit to Bangladesh to improve the quality of teaching and research in higher education, reports China View. The credit from the International Development Association, the World Bank’s concessionary arm, will support Bangladesh’s Higher Education Quality Enhancement Project.
More on the University World News site
Monday 16 March 2009
University World News 0067 - 16th March 2009
SPECIAL REPORT: ACCESS AND EQUITY
The poor, disabled, indigenous and migrant children, often born of parents with little education, have long been excluded from university in most countries of the world. Their life chances seem determined for them at birth and the schooling they receive does not make up for the disadvantages imposed on them by their impoverished environments. Thus does society replicate itself with each new generation.
In recent years, however, governments have come to realise that the potential of millions of people is being wasted and that far more needs to be done to raise the education levels of all their citizens – young and old. In the following reports, we look at what is happening in countries where age-old discrimination based solely on race or family background is at last being tackled.
GLOBAL: Why equity in admission matters
Julia Gillard
Equity is more than a moral issue, it is also an economic issue. Equity matters to national productivity. It has always done so but the global financial crisis brings a new urgency to the debate. Why? Because when the recovery does come we will need to ensure that everyone is able to fill the increasing opportunities presented by an expanding economy.
Full report on the University World News site
US: Maintaining access for the disadvantaged
John Richard Schrock
While American Hispanics make up 15% of the US population, they only comprise 12% of higher education enrolments. Along with most other minorities and lower socio-economic groups, they are looking to community colleges and other sources of credits that will assist if they transfer to universities after the present financial tsunami is over.
Full report on the University World News site
UK: Slow progress to widening participation
Diane Spencer
Some elite English universities are still failing to attract students from poor backgrounds despite £392 million from the government and the funding council over the past five years to help widen participation among students with no tradition of higher education, says a new report from a Parliamentary committee. MPs singled out the Russell Group of 16 major research-intensive institutions, including Oxbridge, London and Warwick, as the main culprits.
Full report on the University World News site
FRANCE: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité – but not yet Jane Marshall
It may seem odd that France, a nation whose motto boasts of ‘equality’, should have two unequal systems of higher education. One comprises the expensive, selective grandes écoles, originally established under Napoleon to train an elite leadership. The other consists of universities that are open to all school-leavers who have passed their baccalauréat exam and that have low fees fixed by the state. But these are too often overcrowded and suffer high student dropout rates, especially after the first year of studies.
Full report on the University World News site
GREECE: Access reform overdue
Makki Marseilles
Egalitarian but unfair, free but expensive, complex and complicated are some of the contradictions of Greek higher education that everyone knows and talks about but no one is willing to take the necessary measures to resolve them.
Full report on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA: Poor must be given access
Geoff Maslen
Australian universities are dens of inequity. Despite huge increases in enrolments over the past 30 years, despite the tens of billions of dollars spent by a succession of federal governments, despite a broadening of access, universities still open their doors most wide to the children of well-endowed, Anglo-Australian families. No longer: the federal government has announced that universities will have to increase their enrolments of disadvantaged students.
Full report on the University World News site
SOUTH AFRICA: Debate moves on from access to success
Karen MacGregor
Since the end of apartheid, access to universities for poor students in South Africa has grown phenomenally. Enrolment of (mostly disadvantaged) African and mixed-race students rose by 268% in the decade to 2006. But, in the face of low pass rates, the debate has moved on from access to success, and the government is considering extending three-year degrees to four years to include the foundational learning many under-prepared students need.
Full report on the University World News site
SPAIN: Quality of more concern than equal access
Rebecca Warden
Class and how it affects access to higher education is not a burning issue in Spain. It rarely makes the Spanish headlines and does not come in for the fierce debate that regularly grips the UK. Spanish academics believe that social class can affect a person’s chances of getting a good education, but that this factor comes into play long before a student reaches university.
Full report on the University World News site
NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report
IRELAND: `Civil war’ could fractures colleges
John Walshe
Secret talks between Ireland’s two biggest universities on a research alliance have alarmed other college heads. One was so annoyed he sent a leaked e-mail warning the Irish Universities Association representing the seven presidents it could “split into groups and civil war”.
Full report on the University World News site
FRANCE: Concessions but strike continues
Government ministers have made a further concession to striking lecturers and researchers, postponing introduction of contentious teacher-training reforms by a year. But by the weekend, the six-week strike showed no sign of abating with ongoing university closures and protest actions, including nationwide demonstrations on Wednesday in the tens of thousands. Meanwhile, President Nicolas Sarkozy came under attack by education unions for “tackling the problem” during a lunch with senior academics and researchers.
Full report on the University World News site
UK: New strategy to lure postgraduates
Brendan O’Malley
The UK government will publish a new framework for postgraduate research to maintain its leading position as a destination of choice for researchers, Minister for Higher Education and Intellectual Property David Lammy told higher education experts in London.
Full report on the University World News site
NEW ZEALAND: Tertiary funding body imposes cuts
John Gerritsen
New Zealand’s Tertiary Education Commission has announced plans to cut more than 70 jobs, or about 20% of its total workforce, as the country’s new government tries to make savings in the public sector.
Full report on the University World News site
NEW ZEALAND: Surprise university merger proposed
John Gerritsen
New Zealand’s smallest university has unveiled a plan to nearly triple its research capability and become one of the top five land-based universities in the world by merging with a government-owned research organisation.
Full report on the University World News site
SOUTH AFRICA: First black leader for Free State
Karen MacGregor
Professor Jonathan Jansen, a renowned education academic, is to become the first black leader of South Africa’s University of the Free State, its council announced on Friday. It seems appropriate that a much-published scholar who has probed racism and reconciliation in recent books will lead a university that lost its previous vice-chancellor following a racist incident, involving white male Afrikaner students, that sparked outrage here and abroad
Full report on the University World News site
NEWSBRIEFS
UK: Sexuality challenge for universities
Diane Spencer
Positive images of lesbian, gay, bis exual and transs exual students in university brochures and websites influence students’ choice of institution, new research by the Equality Challenge Unit has shown. The unit, founded in 2001, is funded by the higher education sector and the funding councils.
Full report on the University World News site
IRELAND-CANADA: Surge in Irish language courses
To meet a big rise in Irish language courses in Canadian universities, the Irish government has established an awards programme to fund Irish language teachers and professors so they can spend time in Canadian universities while Canadian students will be able to visit Ireland to attend courses in the Irish language.
Full report on the University World News site
GERMANY: New approach to liberal studies
Next October, the European College of Liberal Arts in Berlin will begin offering a four-year degree leading to a bachelor of arts in value studies. Said to be the first of its kind worldwide, the college says the degree represents a new European approach to liberal education.
Full report on the University World News site
ACADEMIC FREEDOM
CHINA: Hong Kong professor denied entry into Macau
Jonathan Travis
A Hong Kong professor and two pro-democracy politicians have been barred from Macau, raising serious concerns about academic freedom. AFP News reported that Johannes Chan, Dean of the University of Hong Kong’s law faculty, was turned away by immigration officers on 28 February when he went to give a speech at the University of Macau.
More academic freedom reports on the University World News site
BUSINESS
US: Recession hits wealthy university
Keith Nuthall
One of America’s richest higher education institutions – Duke University in North Carolina – has unveiled a business plan to help it deal with the global recession. But the plan will see demand for student support clashing with declining revenues.
Full report on the University World News site
UK: Commercialising wave energy
Emma Jackson
A research team at Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland has renewed a relationship with Aquamarine Power, a leading marine technology energy company. Together they may create the next generation of wave power converters that could some day be an alternative source of power for European maritime states.
Full report on the University World News site
US: X-ray technology helps peanut farmers
Leah Germain
Researchers may sometimes complain they work for peanuts, but scientists at the USA’s National Peanut Research Laboratory have shown that this is not always a bad thing: they have developed new high-tech grading methods that could dramatically boost the American peanut industry.
Full report on the University World News site
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
A special report published last week in SciDev.net – the online publication reporting on science and technology for the developing world – looked at higher education’s role in achieving development goals and the roles of governments and funding organisations in building robust higher education systems. The articles below are among several featured in the series and follow a comprehensive background article that probes donor funding for higher education in developing countries over the last half century.
Special report on the University World News site
GLOBAL: Research governance policies threaten capacity
Phuong Nga Nguyen
Around the world, research-based knowledge is believed to enhance socio-economic development. So funding agencies, including governments, are pushing universities to focus on ‘usable’ research outputs. The way they bring this pressure to bear, through ‘research governance’, can either support and facilitate university research or hinder it, sometimes even damaging a university’s existing strengths.
Full SciDev.net article on the University World News site
GLOBAL: New thinking needed on innovation infrastructure
Arnoldo Ventura
Rapid technological changes and more sophisticated societies generate changing needs in developing countries and old methods, technologies and choices are not coping. More innovative approaches are required to tackle social conundrums and to clear paths for progress. The ingredients for these must be the information, experiences and skills people get through higher education.
Full SciDev.net article on the University World News site
UNI-LATERAL: Off-beat university stories
AUSTRALIA: Academics lose their car park to students
Academics at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne lost their car park to make way for a student-only project hub. The hub in the staff car park is for final-year students to use for group project work and to meet industry clients. Reversing the normal structure of university spaces, staff will be refused access to the hub unless invited by a student.
See the University World News site
US: Freshmen study booze more than books
Nearly half of college freshmen who drink alcohol spend more time drinking each week than they do studying, suggests a survey involving more than 30,000 first-year students on 76 campuses who took an online alcohol education course last year, reports USA Today.
Full report on the University World News site
A MESSAGE TO READERS
University World News is produced by a team of top journalists who contribute their time largely for free because we believe in the project. But we need your support to continue. We are appealing to readers to spread the word about University World News as a valuable source of news and comment, and as an advertising vehicle. We also ask you to consider making a contribution via the Donate button on our newsletter and website, or by clicking here.
FACEBOOK
The Facebook group of University World News is the fastest growing in higher education worldwide. More than 700 readers have joined. Sign up to the University World News Facebook group to meet and communicate directly with academics and researchers informed by the world’s first truly global higher education publication. Click on the link below to visit and join the group.
Visit the University World News group on Facebook
WORLD ROUND-UP
ASIA-PACIFIC: Higher education sees rapid change
Facing an unprecedented expansion, Asian centres of higher education are looking for ways to diversify opportunities for learning, concluded the Asia-Pacific Sub-regional Preparatory Conference for Unesco’s 2009 World Conference on Higher Education held recently in Macao, China. The Asia-Pacific zone is the largest of the Unesco regions, containing over three billion people, or 60% of the world’s population, writes Hye-Rim Kim for the Bangkok Post. Its diverse geography, population, income and culture are reflected in the size and types of higher education institutions operating in the region.
More on the University World News site
AFGHANISTAN: Student facing 20 years in jail
Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, the student journalist sentenced to death for blasphemy in Afghanistan, has been told he will spend the next 20 years in jail after the country’s highest court ruled against him – without even hearing his defence – writes Jerome Starkey for The Independent. The 23-year-old, brought to worldwide attention after an Independent campaign, was praying that Afghanistan’s top judges would quash his conviction for lack of evidence, or because he was tried in secret and convicted without a defence lawyer.
More on the University World News site
UK: Tycoon gives Oxford £36 million
A wealthy benefactor last week pledged Oxford University up to £36 million (US$50 million) to help it combat any shortfall in cash as a result of the recession, writes Richard Garner in The Independent. Former Keble College alumni Dr James Martin, who made his fortune through books on information technology, has promised to match any research donations made to the university up to the tune of $50 million.
More on the University World News site
CANADA: The squeeze on science
From their high perches in the world of Canadian research, former national science adviser Arthur Carty and McGill University neuroscientist David Colman, see Canada at a crossroads in research and development, writes Mohammed Adam in The Ottawa Citizen. Despite the energy, tremendous potential and growing cachet of Canadian research scientists, experts believe the country is wandering, both for lack of adequate funding and a coherent vision from the government.
More on the University World News site
US: Thirteen reasons colleges are in mess
The economy may not have hit rock bottom, but the finger-pointing over what went wrong is well under way, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education. In some ways, higher education has been a victim of the recession – but not a defenceless victim. Smart moves clearly helped some colleges and universities avoid the worst of the downturn. But mistakes have left many others in the lurch.
More on the University World News site
US: Colleges share applicants’ anxiety
It’s not much solace for nervous college applicants awaiting acceptance or rejection letters, but there is plenty of anxiety this month inside college admissions offices as well, writes Larry Gordon in the Los Angeles Times. Many colleges and universities in California and around the country report unprecedented uncertainty about how the depressed economy and state budget cuts could affect enrolments. As a result, they say they cannot rely this year on the admission formulas that typically help them hit enrolment targets without overcrowding dorms.
More on the University World News site
US: Boom amid bust: Med schools grow as economy tanks
You wouldn’t know there was an economic crisis the way the medical school business is booming these days, writes Associated Press’ David N Goodman in the Chicago Tribune. Responding to warnings of a looming doctor shortage, existing schools are increasing enrolment, and new ones are opening or under development from El Paso in West Texas to Kalamazoo in West Michigan.
More on the University World News site
US: Sustaining study abroad
Sustainable study abroad. “It almost seems like an oxymoron,” says Daniel Greenberg, executive director of Living Routes, an Amherst-based provider that runs study abroad programmes in eco-villages, writes Elizabeth Redden for Inside Higher Ed. The perception of paradox, Greenberg says, has in some ways frozen the field. The prevailing sense is this: “You can’t be sustainable studying abroad, so how can you talk about it?”
More on the University World News site
KENYA: Admission crisis to ease with proposed funding
The biting university admission crisis in Kenya could soon ease should a proposal to double funding for public universities from July sail through, reports Business Daily. Estimates from Treasury show that state subsidies to the seven public universities will double to Sh26 billion (US$338 million) in the coming financial year as the government weighs options on the admissions crisis.
More on the University World News site
US: LA’s animal terrorists
Last Monday in Washington, President Barack Obama heralded the return of what he terms “sound science” to the administration of federal policy, writes Tim Rutten in a column in the Los Angeles Times. At that moment in Los Angeles, a joint federal and local law enforcement task force was investigating the latest incident in a three-year-old terrorist campaign being waged against University of California, Los Angeles, medical researchers. This time, a group that calls itself the Animal Liberation Front firebombed a car belonging to a neuroscientist whose research into psychiatric disorders involves primates.
More on the University World News site
US: Rash of university data breaches
Purdue University last month reported its seventh data breach in the past four years, writes Jay Cline in Computerworld. But Purdue is hardly alone. According to my records, over 300 publicised privacy incidents have occurred at US institutions of higher learning since 2001, with at least 53 colleges and universities experiencing multiple breaches.
More on the University World News site
SCOTLAND: University campaign to raise £100 million
Scotland’s oldest university is to launch a multi-million pound American-style fundraising campaign later this year to mark its 600th anniversary and help bring in more students from poor backgrounds, writes Andrew Denholm in The Herald. St Andrews, which was founded in 1413, hopes to raise at least £100 million as part of its anniversary celebrations, which run from 2010-2013.
More on the University World News site
The poor, disabled, indigenous and migrant children, often born of parents with little education, have long been excluded from university in most countries of the world. Their life chances seem determined for them at birth and the schooling they receive does not make up for the disadvantages imposed on them by their impoverished environments. Thus does society replicate itself with each new generation.
In recent years, however, governments have come to realise that the potential of millions of people is being wasted and that far more needs to be done to raise the education levels of all their citizens – young and old. In the following reports, we look at what is happening in countries where age-old discrimination based solely on race or family background is at last being tackled.
GLOBAL: Why equity in admission matters
Julia Gillard
Equity is more than a moral issue, it is also an economic issue. Equity matters to national productivity. It has always done so but the global financial crisis brings a new urgency to the debate. Why? Because when the recovery does come we will need to ensure that everyone is able to fill the increasing opportunities presented by an expanding economy.
Full report on the University World News site
US: Maintaining access for the disadvantaged
John Richard Schrock
While American Hispanics make up 15% of the US population, they only comprise 12% of higher education enrolments. Along with most other minorities and lower socio-economic groups, they are looking to community colleges and other sources of credits that will assist if they transfer to universities after the present financial tsunami is over.
Full report on the University World News site
UK: Slow progress to widening participation
Diane Spencer
Some elite English universities are still failing to attract students from poor backgrounds despite £392 million from the government and the funding council over the past five years to help widen participation among students with no tradition of higher education, says a new report from a Parliamentary committee. MPs singled out the Russell Group of 16 major research-intensive institutions, including Oxbridge, London and Warwick, as the main culprits.
Full report on the University World News site
FRANCE: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité – but not yet Jane Marshall
It may seem odd that France, a nation whose motto boasts of ‘equality’, should have two unequal systems of higher education. One comprises the expensive, selective grandes écoles, originally established under Napoleon to train an elite leadership. The other consists of universities that are open to all school-leavers who have passed their baccalauréat exam and that have low fees fixed by the state. But these are too often overcrowded and suffer high student dropout rates, especially after the first year of studies.
Full report on the University World News site
GREECE: Access reform overdue
Makki Marseilles
Egalitarian but unfair, free but expensive, complex and complicated are some of the contradictions of Greek higher education that everyone knows and talks about but no one is willing to take the necessary measures to resolve them.
Full report on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA: Poor must be given access
Geoff Maslen
Australian universities are dens of inequity. Despite huge increases in enrolments over the past 30 years, despite the tens of billions of dollars spent by a succession of federal governments, despite a broadening of access, universities still open their doors most wide to the children of well-endowed, Anglo-Australian families. No longer: the federal government has announced that universities will have to increase their enrolments of disadvantaged students.
Full report on the University World News site
SOUTH AFRICA: Debate moves on from access to success
Karen MacGregor
Since the end of apartheid, access to universities for poor students in South Africa has grown phenomenally. Enrolment of (mostly disadvantaged) African and mixed-race students rose by 268% in the decade to 2006. But, in the face of low pass rates, the debate has moved on from access to success, and the government is considering extending three-year degrees to four years to include the foundational learning many under-prepared students need.
Full report on the University World News site
SPAIN: Quality of more concern than equal access
Rebecca Warden
Class and how it affects access to higher education is not a burning issue in Spain. It rarely makes the Spanish headlines and does not come in for the fierce debate that regularly grips the UK. Spanish academics believe that social class can affect a person’s chances of getting a good education, but that this factor comes into play long before a student reaches university.
Full report on the University World News site
NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report
IRELAND: `Civil war’ could fractures colleges
John Walshe
Secret talks between Ireland’s two biggest universities on a research alliance have alarmed other college heads. One was so annoyed he sent a leaked e-mail warning the Irish Universities Association representing the seven presidents it could “split into groups and civil war”.
Full report on the University World News site
FRANCE: Concessions but strike continues
Government ministers have made a further concession to striking lecturers and researchers, postponing introduction of contentious teacher-training reforms by a year. But by the weekend, the six-week strike showed no sign of abating with ongoing university closures and protest actions, including nationwide demonstrations on Wednesday in the tens of thousands. Meanwhile, President Nicolas Sarkozy came under attack by education unions for “tackling the problem” during a lunch with senior academics and researchers.
Full report on the University World News site
UK: New strategy to lure postgraduates
Brendan O’Malley
The UK government will publish a new framework for postgraduate research to maintain its leading position as a destination of choice for researchers, Minister for Higher Education and Intellectual Property David Lammy told higher education experts in London.
Full report on the University World News site
NEW ZEALAND: Tertiary funding body imposes cuts
John Gerritsen
New Zealand’s Tertiary Education Commission has announced plans to cut more than 70 jobs, or about 20% of its total workforce, as the country’s new government tries to make savings in the public sector.
Full report on the University World News site
NEW ZEALAND: Surprise university merger proposed
John Gerritsen
New Zealand’s smallest university has unveiled a plan to nearly triple its research capability and become one of the top five land-based universities in the world by merging with a government-owned research organisation.
Full report on the University World News site
SOUTH AFRICA: First black leader for Free State
Karen MacGregor
Professor Jonathan Jansen, a renowned education academic, is to become the first black leader of South Africa’s University of the Free State, its council announced on Friday. It seems appropriate that a much-published scholar who has probed racism and reconciliation in recent books will lead a university that lost its previous vice-chancellor following a racist incident, involving white male Afrikaner students, that sparked outrage here and abroad
Full report on the University World News site
NEWSBRIEFS
UK: Sexuality challenge for universities
Diane Spencer
Positive images of lesbian, gay, bis exual and transs exual students in university brochures and websites influence students’ choice of institution, new research by the Equality Challenge Unit has shown. The unit, founded in 2001, is funded by the higher education sector and the funding councils.
Full report on the University World News site
IRELAND-CANADA: Surge in Irish language courses
To meet a big rise in Irish language courses in Canadian universities, the Irish government has established an awards programme to fund Irish language teachers and professors so they can spend time in Canadian universities while Canadian students will be able to visit Ireland to attend courses in the Irish language.
Full report on the University World News site
GERMANY: New approach to liberal studies
Next October, the European College of Liberal Arts in Berlin will begin offering a four-year degree leading to a bachelor of arts in value studies. Said to be the first of its kind worldwide, the college says the degree represents a new European approach to liberal education.
Full report on the University World News site
ACADEMIC FREEDOM
CHINA: Hong Kong professor denied entry into Macau
Jonathan Travis
A Hong Kong professor and two pro-democracy politicians have been barred from Macau, raising serious concerns about academic freedom. AFP News reported that Johannes Chan, Dean of the University of Hong Kong’s law faculty, was turned away by immigration officers on 28 February when he went to give a speech at the University of Macau.
More academic freedom reports on the University World News site
BUSINESS
US: Recession hits wealthy university
Keith Nuthall
One of America’s richest higher education institutions – Duke University in North Carolina – has unveiled a business plan to help it deal with the global recession. But the plan will see demand for student support clashing with declining revenues.
Full report on the University World News site
UK: Commercialising wave energy
Emma Jackson
A research team at Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland has renewed a relationship with Aquamarine Power, a leading marine technology energy company. Together they may create the next generation of wave power converters that could some day be an alternative source of power for European maritime states.
Full report on the University World News site
US: X-ray technology helps peanut farmers
Leah Germain
Researchers may sometimes complain they work for peanuts, but scientists at the USA’s National Peanut Research Laboratory have shown that this is not always a bad thing: they have developed new high-tech grading methods that could dramatically boost the American peanut industry.
Full report on the University World News site
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
A special report published last week in SciDev.net – the online publication reporting on science and technology for the developing world – looked at higher education’s role in achieving development goals and the roles of governments and funding organisations in building robust higher education systems. The articles below are among several featured in the series and follow a comprehensive background article that probes donor funding for higher education in developing countries over the last half century.
Special report on the University World News site
GLOBAL: Research governance policies threaten capacity
Phuong Nga Nguyen
Around the world, research-based knowledge is believed to enhance socio-economic development. So funding agencies, including governments, are pushing universities to focus on ‘usable’ research outputs. The way they bring this pressure to bear, through ‘research governance’, can either support and facilitate university research or hinder it, sometimes even damaging a university’s existing strengths.
Full SciDev.net article on the University World News site
GLOBAL: New thinking needed on innovation infrastructure
Arnoldo Ventura
Rapid technological changes and more sophisticated societies generate changing needs in developing countries and old methods, technologies and choices are not coping. More innovative approaches are required to tackle social conundrums and to clear paths for progress. The ingredients for these must be the information, experiences and skills people get through higher education.
Full SciDev.net article on the University World News site
UNI-LATERAL: Off-beat university stories
AUSTRALIA: Academics lose their car park to students
Academics at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne lost their car park to make way for a student-only project hub. The hub in the staff car park is for final-year students to use for group project work and to meet industry clients. Reversing the normal structure of university spaces, staff will be refused access to the hub unless invited by a student.
See the University World News site
US: Freshmen study booze more than books
Nearly half of college freshmen who drink alcohol spend more time drinking each week than they do studying, suggests a survey involving more than 30,000 first-year students on 76 campuses who took an online alcohol education course last year, reports USA Today.
Full report on the University World News site
A MESSAGE TO READERS
University World News is produced by a team of top journalists who contribute their time largely for free because we believe in the project. But we need your support to continue. We are appealing to readers to spread the word about University World News as a valuable source of news and comment, and as an advertising vehicle. We also ask you to consider making a contribution via the Donate button on our newsletter and website, or by clicking here.
The Facebook group of University World News is the fastest growing in higher education worldwide. More than 700 readers have joined. Sign up to the University World News Facebook group to meet and communicate directly with academics and researchers informed by the world’s first truly global higher education publication. Click on the link below to visit and join the group.
Visit the University World News group on Facebook
WORLD ROUND-UP
ASIA-PACIFIC: Higher education sees rapid change
Facing an unprecedented expansion, Asian centres of higher education are looking for ways to diversify opportunities for learning, concluded the Asia-Pacific Sub-regional Preparatory Conference for Unesco’s 2009 World Conference on Higher Education held recently in Macao, China. The Asia-Pacific zone is the largest of the Unesco regions, containing over three billion people, or 60% of the world’s population, writes Hye-Rim Kim for the Bangkok Post. Its diverse geography, population, income and culture are reflected in the size and types of higher education institutions operating in the region.
More on the University World News site
AFGHANISTAN: Student facing 20 years in jail
Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, the student journalist sentenced to death for blasphemy in Afghanistan, has been told he will spend the next 20 years in jail after the country’s highest court ruled against him – without even hearing his defence – writes Jerome Starkey for The Independent. The 23-year-old, brought to worldwide attention after an Independent campaign, was praying that Afghanistan’s top judges would quash his conviction for lack of evidence, or because he was tried in secret and convicted without a defence lawyer.
More on the University World News site
UK: Tycoon gives Oxford £36 million
A wealthy benefactor last week pledged Oxford University up to £36 million (US$50 million) to help it combat any shortfall in cash as a result of the recession, writes Richard Garner in The Independent. Former Keble College alumni Dr James Martin, who made his fortune through books on information technology, has promised to match any research donations made to the university up to the tune of $50 million.
More on the University World News site
CANADA: The squeeze on science
From their high perches in the world of Canadian research, former national science adviser Arthur Carty and McGill University neuroscientist David Colman, see Canada at a crossroads in research and development, writes Mohammed Adam in The Ottawa Citizen. Despite the energy, tremendous potential and growing cachet of Canadian research scientists, experts believe the country is wandering, both for lack of adequate funding and a coherent vision from the government.
More on the University World News site
US: Thirteen reasons colleges are in mess
The economy may not have hit rock bottom, but the finger-pointing over what went wrong is well under way, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education. In some ways, higher education has been a victim of the recession – but not a defenceless victim. Smart moves clearly helped some colleges and universities avoid the worst of the downturn. But mistakes have left many others in the lurch.
More on the University World News site
US: Colleges share applicants’ anxiety
It’s not much solace for nervous college applicants awaiting acceptance or rejection letters, but there is plenty of anxiety this month inside college admissions offices as well, writes Larry Gordon in the Los Angeles Times. Many colleges and universities in California and around the country report unprecedented uncertainty about how the depressed economy and state budget cuts could affect enrolments. As a result, they say they cannot rely this year on the admission formulas that typically help them hit enrolment targets without overcrowding dorms.
More on the University World News site
US: Boom amid bust: Med schools grow as economy tanks
You wouldn’t know there was an economic crisis the way the medical school business is booming these days, writes Associated Press’ David N Goodman in the Chicago Tribune. Responding to warnings of a looming doctor shortage, existing schools are increasing enrolment, and new ones are opening or under development from El Paso in West Texas to Kalamazoo in West Michigan.
More on the University World News site
US: Sustaining study abroad
Sustainable study abroad. “It almost seems like an oxymoron,” says Daniel Greenberg, executive director of Living Routes, an Amherst-based provider that runs study abroad programmes in eco-villages, writes Elizabeth Redden for Inside Higher Ed. The perception of paradox, Greenberg says, has in some ways frozen the field. The prevailing sense is this: “You can’t be sustainable studying abroad, so how can you talk about it?”
More on the University World News site
KENYA: Admission crisis to ease with proposed funding
The biting university admission crisis in Kenya could soon ease should a proposal to double funding for public universities from July sail through, reports Business Daily. Estimates from Treasury show that state subsidies to the seven public universities will double to Sh26 billion (US$338 million) in the coming financial year as the government weighs options on the admissions crisis.
More on the University World News site
US: LA’s animal terrorists
Last Monday in Washington, President Barack Obama heralded the return of what he terms “sound science” to the administration of federal policy, writes Tim Rutten in a column in the Los Angeles Times. At that moment in Los Angeles, a joint federal and local law enforcement task force was investigating the latest incident in a three-year-old terrorist campaign being waged against University of California, Los Angeles, medical researchers. This time, a group that calls itself the Animal Liberation Front firebombed a car belonging to a neuroscientist whose research into psychiatric disorders involves primates.
More on the University World News site
US: Rash of university data breaches
Purdue University last month reported its seventh data breach in the past four years, writes Jay Cline in Computerworld. But Purdue is hardly alone. According to my records, over 300 publicised privacy incidents have occurred at US institutions of higher learning since 2001, with at least 53 colleges and universities experiencing multiple breaches.
More on the University World News site
SCOTLAND: University campaign to raise £100 million
Scotland’s oldest university is to launch a multi-million pound American-style fundraising campaign later this year to mark its 600th anniversary and help bring in more students from poor backgrounds, writes Andrew Denholm in The Herald. St Andrews, which was founded in 1413, hopes to raise at least £100 million as part of its anniversary celebrations, which run from 2010-2013.
More on the University World News site
Monday 9 March 2009
University World News 0066 - 9th March 2009
NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report
UK: Role of professors mired in confusion
Geoff Maslen
Professors in Britain are not alone in seeing their role very differently from the universities that employ them. But a new report, based on a survey of 200 UK professors, confirms what many in the professoriate around the world privately believe: significant ‘expectation gaps’ exist between them and their universities regarding the importance of income generation versus mentoring staff and the leadership of their departments or faculties. In an exclusive commentary on our webpage this week, survey author Professor Bruce Macfarlane says the lack of clarity about the role of a professor is partly a symptom of the way appointment criteria at the professorial level have broadened in recent years. Almost one in 10 UK academics is now a full professor.
Full report on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA: Bold plan to reshape higher education
Geoff Maslen
Australia’s 38 public universities face an upheaval on a scale they have not experienced in 20 years under bold new government plans. The main goal in a set of wholesale reforms to the nation’s higher education system is the government’s intention to boost the number of Australians aged 25 to 34 with bachelor degrees from 32% of the population to 40% over the next 15 years – an enormous challenge given it would mean producing an additional 550,000 graduates by 2025 – and perhaps require more than 20 new universities.
Full report on the University World News site
IRELAND: Victory for academic freedom
John Walshe
An important victory for academic freedom has been struck by the Irish Federation of University Teachers which successfully brought a case against Trinity College Dublin to the Labour Court. It’s believed to be one of the few cases in the world where an issue of academic freedom ended up in an industrial relations forum and its progress has been monitored by trade unions internationally.
Full report on the University World News site
SPAIN: Young researchers wary of new proposals
Rebecca Warden
Young researchers in Spain are not convinced a draft Law of Science published recently will improve their working conditions or career prospects. Gathered at the seventh Young Researchers Days in Barcelona on 25-27 February, many had more questions and criticisms of the proposed law than they did praise.
Full report on the University World News site
EUROPE: Student declaration on Bologna
A meeting of more than 100 representatives from 49 student unions across Europe was held in Prague last month to draw up a declaration leading to a Ministerial Conference of the Bologna Process in April. The declaration provides an analysis of the progress made on Bologna over the last 10 years and calls for changes during the decade to 2020. The key element of the declaration says that the vision of a European Higher Education Area the Bologna process was intended to create is still a long way from being delivered.
Full report on the University World News site
INDONESIA: Tackling graduate unemployment
David Jardine
Indonesia’s Ministry of National Education has announced a sizeable fund to finance entrepreneurship programmes at university level that it hopes will enable more graduates to quickly enter the jobs market. The most recent figures released by the manpower ministry show some 1.15 million unemployed graduates nationwide.
Full report on the University World News site
JAPAN: Change reformed tertiary system, says OECD
John Gerritsen
Institutional mergers, a revised student loan scheme and more performance-based funding are among changes an OECD review team has called on Japan to make to its tertiary education system. The recommendations come less than four years after Japan reformed the system to give greater autonomy to the country’s more than 4,000 tertiary institutions.
Full report on the University World News site
EGYPT: Academics warn of new strike over wages
Ashraf Khaled
Months after going on strike for the first time, professors at Egypt’s public universities have threatened to take “escalatory measures” unless the government releases performance-related bonuses owed to them. Last December, academics in state-run universities received the first part of bonuses approved after gruelling negotiations with the government. They reacted angrily last week when they learned that universities would have to pay for the bonuses from their resources.
Full report on the University World News site
ZIMBABWE: Universities forced to slash forex fees
Clemence Manyukwe
Zimbabwean universities have been forced to reduce their foreign currency-denominated fees following crippling student demonstrations that resulted in the country’s biggest and oldest institution, the University of Zimbabwe, being shut down. Universities were charging fees ranging from US$700 to US$1,500 per semester, starting in January, following the ‘dollarisation’ of the economy to escape the devastating effects of world record inflation.
Full report on the University World News site
NIGERIA: Open University produces first graduates
Tunde Fatunde
After three decades of controversy and debate, the state-supported National Open University of Nigeria admitted its first students in 2002. Now its first graduates have been capped in a colourful ceremony in Lagos. Despite initial remarkable progress, the institution faces a range of problems although they are surmountable if the government and private sector show greater commitment.
Full report on the University World News site
KENYA: Polytechnics being upgraded
Denis Anadye
With an ever-increasing number of pupils graduating from high school in Kenya, competition for places in public higher education institutions is getting tougher by the year. One of the government’s responses has been to upgrade some colleges, especially polytechnics, into universities in an effort to expand the number of higher education places.
Full report on the University World News site
A Message to Readers
University World News is produced by a team of top journalists who contribute their time largely for free because we believe in the project. But we need your support to continue. We are appealing to readers to spread the word about University World News as a valuable source of news and comment, and as an advertising vehicle. We also ask you to consider making a contribution via the Donate button on our newsletter and website, or by clicking here
NEWSBRIEFS
BOTSWANA: National university reopens after protests
The University of Botswana, which closed on 4 February because of student protests, reopened last Monday – though many of the issues that caused the disturbances remain unresolved. There is a threat of further disturbances by a minority of students who want to take action in solidarity with Student Representative Council leaders who have been suspended or expelled.
Full report on the University World News site
ANGOLA: Reorganisation of higher education
The Angolan government has approved reorganisation of the higher education system “for the strategic aims of economic, social, technological and community development”. The move involves the creation of seven academic regions to define the operations and expansion of institutions. Meanwhile, the University Agostinho Neto reports increasing numbers of students, although many more young applicants will miss out because there are not enough places.
Full report on the University World News site
ALGERIA: University signs digital campus agreement
The Algerian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research has signed an agreement with the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF) for the creation of a French-language digital campus at the University of Oran.
Full report on the University World News site
MADAGASCAR: Lost academic year could follow crisis
The political crisis that has engulfed Madagascar over the past two months has led to fears of a lost academic year, with no date fixed for universities to reopen and thousands of students waiting to enrol.
Full report on the University World News site
SCIENCE SCENE
UK: Buried Antarctic lake to be explored
An international group of scientists is preparing to explore an ancient lake hidden deep beneath Antarctica’s ice sheet – but it will take them five years just to develop the equipment they will need for the job.
Full report on the University World News site
QATAR: Launch highlights research focus
The growing role of research in the Gulf States will be highlighted with the official launch of Qatar’s multi-million dollar science and technology park next week. The region’s nations are acutely aware of the need to ready themselves for life after their oil resources run out, and research and higher education are playing a key role in those preparations.
Full report on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA: Endangered animals face lower fertility
The world’s endangered species face a double whammy of threats to their survival – as their numbers reduce, the chances of inbreeding increase and a new study now shows that this in turn reduces their fertility.
Full report on the University World News site
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
EUROPE: Coimbra Group position paper on Bologna
At their annual conference last year the Coimbra Group, an association of 37 long-standing and internationally respected European universities, reflected on the European higher education landscape in view of the 2010 deadline for the Bologna Process. The universities “enthusiastically embraced” Bologna and the increased trans-national transparency it promotes, but highlighted critical issues that need to be addressed in the years to come. Last week the association published a freely accessible Position Paper The Coimbra Group and European Higher Education after Bologna 2010
More on the University World News site
US: The ‘black box’ of peer review
Countless decisions in academe are based on the quest for excellence. Which professors to hire and promote, writes Scott Jaschik for Inside Higher Ed. Which grants to fund? Which projects to pursue? Everyone wants to promote excellence. But what if academe actually doesn’t know what excellence is. Michèle Lamont decided to explore excellence by studying one of the primary mechanisms used by higher education to, in theory, reward excellence: scholarly peer review. The result is How Professors Think: Inside the curious world of academic judgment, just published by Harvard University Press, which aims to expose what goes on behind the closed doors where funds are allocated and careers can be made.
More on the University World News site
UNI-LATERAL: Off-beat university stories
US: University bans Christian group from campus
Robert L Shibley
A Dayton, Ohio, university has banned a Christian group from meeting on campus because of the group’s requirement that voting members be Christian and its refusal to accept “non-discrimination” language that would eliminate faith-based standards. The Campus Bible Fellowship at Wright State University sought help from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, known as FIRE.
Full report on the University World News site
FACEBOOK
The Facebook group of University World News is the fastest growing in higher education worldwide. Almost 700 readers have joined. Sign up to the University World News Facebook group to meet and communicate directly with academics and researchers informed by the world’s first truly global higher education publication. Click on the link below to visit and join the group.
Visit the University World News group on Facebook
WORLD ROUND-UP
US: Visa trouble could drive foreign students away
When Dr Alena Shkumatava opens the door to the ‘fish lab’ at the Whitehead Institute of MIT, she encounters warm, aquarium-scented air and shelf after shelf of foot-long tanks, each containing one or more zebra fish, writes Cornelia Dean in the New York Times. She studies the tiny fish in her quest to unravel one of the knottiest problems in biology: how the acting of genes is encouraged or inhibited in cells. The work, focusing on genetic material called micro-RNAs, is ripe with promise. But Shkumatava, a postdoctoral researcher from Belarus, will not pursue it in the US, she said, partly because of what happened last year, when she tried to renew her visa.
More on the University World News site
US: Job forecast for college seniors grimmer than ever
Smith College’s career office sent its jittery job-hunting seniors a letter last month with a reassuring message: “There ARE jobs, and you can find employment.” Unfortunately, there are far fewer jobs than anticipated, according to a new report from the National Association for Colleges and Employers, reports Yahoo News. The companies surveyed for the group’s spring update are planning to hire 22% fewer graduates from the class of 2009 than they hired from the class of 2008, a big letdown from the group’s projections in October that hiring would hold steady.
More on the University World News site
CHINA: Higher education inaccessible to rural people
According to a report released by the Institute of Social Science Survey at Peking University, the proportion of rural residents in China with a bachelor degree is only 0.7%. The report has attracted the attention of a number of law makers who have been in Beijing attending the annual session of the National People’s Congress, writes China.org. Their view is that the equitable distribution of education resources will be key to solving this problem.
More on the University World News site
ASIA: Crisis won’t deter spending on higher education
Countries in South, South-West and Central Asia have decided to increase public spending on higher education notwithstanding the global financial crisis, reports The Hindu. This resolve to ensure that it does not suffer for want of funds was made at the conclusion of a two-day, sub-regional conference last week.
More on the University World News site
UK: Universities socially engineer intakes
In a move that critics claim filters out middle class students, admission tutors at leading institutions are being told to give interviews and make offers to working class candidates who have attended low performing schools or who live in postcodes where few go on to higher education, writes Julie Henry in The Sunday Telegraph. It comes as more universities, including Sussex, Worcester, Dundee and the University of East Anglia, have decided not to use the new A* grade at A-level in offers from 2010 amid fears that independent school pupils will win more places.
More on the University World News site
US: Obama’s call for college for all – is it possible?
In his address to a joint session of Congress recently, President Barack Obama called for every American to pursue some form of education beyond high school, write Justin Pope and Libby Quaid for Associated Press. It is an ambitious goal – some might say impossible. Currently, only two of every five American adults have a two- or four-year college degree. Millions struggle even to complete high school, with one in four dropping out. And even a high school degree is no guarantee a student is ready for college.
More on the University World News site
US: Tight leash
Just when they need money most, some colleges and universities are incapable of tapping their rainy day funds, reports Inside Higher Ed. Currently, 21 states are still governed by decades-old laws that restrict endowment spending, according to the Uniform Law Commission. With revenues drying up for many colleges, these regulations are likely to result in fewer scholarships being awarded next year at some institutions, according to fund raisers and legal analysts.
More on the University World News site
US: Return on investment – public schools rock
Few measures of a business school’s performance hit home quite like return on investment, or ROI. In an era when salary freezes and layoffs are the order of the day, a school that can deliver the goods – decent-paying jobs for the vast majority of graduates – is golden. If it can do so without charging an arm and a leg, well, so much the better. That's why BusinessWeek undertook an extensive analysis of ROI for the 50 top schools in its 2009 Best Undergraduate Business Schools ranking. The results were enlightening: while the top-ranked private schools such as Notre Dame and Wharton get all the attention, it is the big state schools (and their lower tuition costs) that fare the best on this measure.
More on the University World News site
SOUTH AFRICA: Wannabe teachers fill universities
For the first time in years South African universities are seeing a marked increase in the number of students opting to become teachers, writes Prega Govender for the Sunday Times. In response to burgeoning student numbers this year, several universities have hired extra teaching staff while others are building new lecture halls to cope with the increased demand.
More on the University World News site
EAST AFRICA: Moving towards harmonised education
Until the late 1960s education in Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya served as a unifying force across the three states of the East African Community, or EAC, reports The Independent. Curricula and examinations were the same at almost all levels of education, as determined by the examination council of East Africa. In 1970, after the collapse of the EAC, the University of East Africa was split into the three national universities of Makerere, Dar es Salaam and Nairobi. Today, the revival of the EAC means there is a greater need for academic cooperation between the three universities.
More on the University World News site
MALTA: Wide skills gap presents ‘major challenge’
Malta’s workforce will need to undergo a paradigm shift if Malta is to remain competitive within the European Union, a report published by the National Commission for Higher Education found, writes David Lindsay for the Malta Independent.
More on the University World News site
WALES: Universities unite over recession
Five universities are pledging to work together in an attempt to help drive the Welsh economy out of the recession, reports BBC News. Aberystwyth, Bangor, Cardiff, Glamorgan and Swansea universities say closer cooperation will help Wales create an “innovative and dynamic economy”.
More on the University World News site
UK: Role of professors mired in confusion
Geoff Maslen
Professors in Britain are not alone in seeing their role very differently from the universities that employ them. But a new report, based on a survey of 200 UK professors, confirms what many in the professoriate around the world privately believe: significant ‘expectation gaps’ exist between them and their universities regarding the importance of income generation versus mentoring staff and the leadership of their departments or faculties. In an exclusive commentary on our webpage this week, survey author Professor Bruce Macfarlane says the lack of clarity about the role of a professor is partly a symptom of the way appointment criteria at the professorial level have broadened in recent years. Almost one in 10 UK academics is now a full professor.
Full report on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA: Bold plan to reshape higher education
Geoff Maslen
Australia’s 38 public universities face an upheaval on a scale they have not experienced in 20 years under bold new government plans. The main goal in a set of wholesale reforms to the nation’s higher education system is the government’s intention to boost the number of Australians aged 25 to 34 with bachelor degrees from 32% of the population to 40% over the next 15 years – an enormous challenge given it would mean producing an additional 550,000 graduates by 2025 – and perhaps require more than 20 new universities.
Full report on the University World News site
IRELAND: Victory for academic freedom
John Walshe
An important victory for academic freedom has been struck by the Irish Federation of University Teachers which successfully brought a case against Trinity College Dublin to the Labour Court. It’s believed to be one of the few cases in the world where an issue of academic freedom ended up in an industrial relations forum and its progress has been monitored by trade unions internationally.
Full report on the University World News site
SPAIN: Young researchers wary of new proposals
Rebecca Warden
Young researchers in Spain are not convinced a draft Law of Science published recently will improve their working conditions or career prospects. Gathered at the seventh Young Researchers Days in Barcelona on 25-27 February, many had more questions and criticisms of the proposed law than they did praise.
Full report on the University World News site
EUROPE: Student declaration on Bologna
A meeting of more than 100 representatives from 49 student unions across Europe was held in Prague last month to draw up a declaration leading to a Ministerial Conference of the Bologna Process in April. The declaration provides an analysis of the progress made on Bologna over the last 10 years and calls for changes during the decade to 2020. The key element of the declaration says that the vision of a European Higher Education Area the Bologna process was intended to create is still a long way from being delivered.
Full report on the University World News site
INDONESIA: Tackling graduate unemployment
David Jardine
Indonesia’s Ministry of National Education has announced a sizeable fund to finance entrepreneurship programmes at university level that it hopes will enable more graduates to quickly enter the jobs market. The most recent figures released by the manpower ministry show some 1.15 million unemployed graduates nationwide.
Full report on the University World News site
JAPAN: Change reformed tertiary system, says OECD
John Gerritsen
Institutional mergers, a revised student loan scheme and more performance-based funding are among changes an OECD review team has called on Japan to make to its tertiary education system. The recommendations come less than four years after Japan reformed the system to give greater autonomy to the country’s more than 4,000 tertiary institutions.
Full report on the University World News site
EGYPT: Academics warn of new strike over wages
Ashraf Khaled
Months after going on strike for the first time, professors at Egypt’s public universities have threatened to take “escalatory measures” unless the government releases performance-related bonuses owed to them. Last December, academics in state-run universities received the first part of bonuses approved after gruelling negotiations with the government. They reacted angrily last week when they learned that universities would have to pay for the bonuses from their resources.
Full report on the University World News site
ZIMBABWE: Universities forced to slash forex fees
Clemence Manyukwe
Zimbabwean universities have been forced to reduce their foreign currency-denominated fees following crippling student demonstrations that resulted in the country’s biggest and oldest institution, the University of Zimbabwe, being shut down. Universities were charging fees ranging from US$700 to US$1,500 per semester, starting in January, following the ‘dollarisation’ of the economy to escape the devastating effects of world record inflation.
Full report on the University World News site
NIGERIA: Open University produces first graduates
Tunde Fatunde
After three decades of controversy and debate, the state-supported National Open University of Nigeria admitted its first students in 2002. Now its first graduates have been capped in a colourful ceremony in Lagos. Despite initial remarkable progress, the institution faces a range of problems although they are surmountable if the government and private sector show greater commitment.
Full report on the University World News site
KENYA: Polytechnics being upgraded
Denis Anadye
With an ever-increasing number of pupils graduating from high school in Kenya, competition for places in public higher education institutions is getting tougher by the year. One of the government’s responses has been to upgrade some colleges, especially polytechnics, into universities in an effort to expand the number of higher education places.
Full report on the University World News site
A Message to Readers
University World News is produced by a team of top journalists who contribute their time largely for free because we believe in the project. But we need your support to continue. We are appealing to readers to spread the word about University World News as a valuable source of news and comment, and as an advertising vehicle. We also ask you to consider making a contribution via the Donate button on our newsletter and website, or by clicking here
NEWSBRIEFS
BOTSWANA: National university reopens after protests
The University of Botswana, which closed on 4 February because of student protests, reopened last Monday – though many of the issues that caused the disturbances remain unresolved. There is a threat of further disturbances by a minority of students who want to take action in solidarity with Student Representative Council leaders who have been suspended or expelled.
Full report on the University World News site
ANGOLA: Reorganisation of higher education
The Angolan government has approved reorganisation of the higher education system “for the strategic aims of economic, social, technological and community development”. The move involves the creation of seven academic regions to define the operations and expansion of institutions. Meanwhile, the University Agostinho Neto reports increasing numbers of students, although many more young applicants will miss out because there are not enough places.
Full report on the University World News site
ALGERIA: University signs digital campus agreement
The Algerian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research has signed an agreement with the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF) for the creation of a French-language digital campus at the University of Oran.
Full report on the University World News site
MADAGASCAR: Lost academic year could follow crisis
The political crisis that has engulfed Madagascar over the past two months has led to fears of a lost academic year, with no date fixed for universities to reopen and thousands of students waiting to enrol.
Full report on the University World News site
SCIENCE SCENE
UK: Buried Antarctic lake to be explored
An international group of scientists is preparing to explore an ancient lake hidden deep beneath Antarctica’s ice sheet – but it will take them five years just to develop the equipment they will need for the job.
Full report on the University World News site
QATAR: Launch highlights research focus
The growing role of research in the Gulf States will be highlighted with the official launch of Qatar’s multi-million dollar science and technology park next week. The region’s nations are acutely aware of the need to ready themselves for life after their oil resources run out, and research and higher education are playing a key role in those preparations.
Full report on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA: Endangered animals face lower fertility
The world’s endangered species face a double whammy of threats to their survival – as their numbers reduce, the chances of inbreeding increase and a new study now shows that this in turn reduces their fertility.
Full report on the University World News site
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
EUROPE: Coimbra Group position paper on Bologna
At their annual conference last year the Coimbra Group, an association of 37 long-standing and internationally respected European universities, reflected on the European higher education landscape in view of the 2010 deadline for the Bologna Process. The universities “enthusiastically embraced” Bologna and the increased trans-national transparency it promotes, but highlighted critical issues that need to be addressed in the years to come. Last week the association published a freely accessible Position Paper The Coimbra Group and European Higher Education after Bologna 2010
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US: The ‘black box’ of peer review
Countless decisions in academe are based on the quest for excellence. Which professors to hire and promote, writes Scott Jaschik for Inside Higher Ed. Which grants to fund? Which projects to pursue? Everyone wants to promote excellence. But what if academe actually doesn’t know what excellence is. Michèle Lamont decided to explore excellence by studying one of the primary mechanisms used by higher education to, in theory, reward excellence: scholarly peer review. The result is How Professors Think: Inside the curious world of academic judgment, just published by Harvard University Press, which aims to expose what goes on behind the closed doors where funds are allocated and careers can be made.
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UNI-LATERAL: Off-beat university stories
US: University bans Christian group from campus
Robert L Shibley
A Dayton, Ohio, university has banned a Christian group from meeting on campus because of the group’s requirement that voting members be Christian and its refusal to accept “non-discrimination” language that would eliminate faith-based standards. The Campus Bible Fellowship at Wright State University sought help from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, known as FIRE.
Full report on the University World News site
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WORLD ROUND-UP
US: Visa trouble could drive foreign students away
When Dr Alena Shkumatava opens the door to the ‘fish lab’ at the Whitehead Institute of MIT, she encounters warm, aquarium-scented air and shelf after shelf of foot-long tanks, each containing one or more zebra fish, writes Cornelia Dean in the New York Times. She studies the tiny fish in her quest to unravel one of the knottiest problems in biology: how the acting of genes is encouraged or inhibited in cells. The work, focusing on genetic material called micro-RNAs, is ripe with promise. But Shkumatava, a postdoctoral researcher from Belarus, will not pursue it in the US, she said, partly because of what happened last year, when she tried to renew her visa.
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US: Job forecast for college seniors grimmer than ever
Smith College’s career office sent its jittery job-hunting seniors a letter last month with a reassuring message: “There ARE jobs, and you can find employment.” Unfortunately, there are far fewer jobs than anticipated, according to a new report from the National Association for Colleges and Employers, reports Yahoo News. The companies surveyed for the group’s spring update are planning to hire 22% fewer graduates from the class of 2009 than they hired from the class of 2008, a big letdown from the group’s projections in October that hiring would hold steady.
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CHINA: Higher education inaccessible to rural people
According to a report released by the Institute of Social Science Survey at Peking University, the proportion of rural residents in China with a bachelor degree is only 0.7%. The report has attracted the attention of a number of law makers who have been in Beijing attending the annual session of the National People’s Congress, writes China.org. Their view is that the equitable distribution of education resources will be key to solving this problem.
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ASIA: Crisis won’t deter spending on higher education
Countries in South, South-West and Central Asia have decided to increase public spending on higher education notwithstanding the global financial crisis, reports The Hindu. This resolve to ensure that it does not suffer for want of funds was made at the conclusion of a two-day, sub-regional conference last week.
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UK: Universities socially engineer intakes
In a move that critics claim filters out middle class students, admission tutors at leading institutions are being told to give interviews and make offers to working class candidates who have attended low performing schools or who live in postcodes where few go on to higher education, writes Julie Henry in The Sunday Telegraph. It comes as more universities, including Sussex, Worcester, Dundee and the University of East Anglia, have decided not to use the new A* grade at A-level in offers from 2010 amid fears that independent school pupils will win more places.
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US: Obama’s call for college for all – is it possible?
In his address to a joint session of Congress recently, President Barack Obama called for every American to pursue some form of education beyond high school, write Justin Pope and Libby Quaid for Associated Press. It is an ambitious goal – some might say impossible. Currently, only two of every five American adults have a two- or four-year college degree. Millions struggle even to complete high school, with one in four dropping out. And even a high school degree is no guarantee a student is ready for college.
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US: Tight leash
Just when they need money most, some colleges and universities are incapable of tapping their rainy day funds, reports Inside Higher Ed. Currently, 21 states are still governed by decades-old laws that restrict endowment spending, according to the Uniform Law Commission. With revenues drying up for many colleges, these regulations are likely to result in fewer scholarships being awarded next year at some institutions, according to fund raisers and legal analysts.
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US: Return on investment – public schools rock
Few measures of a business school’s performance hit home quite like return on investment, or ROI. In an era when salary freezes and layoffs are the order of the day, a school that can deliver the goods – decent-paying jobs for the vast majority of graduates – is golden. If it can do so without charging an arm and a leg, well, so much the better. That's why BusinessWeek undertook an extensive analysis of ROI for the 50 top schools in its 2009 Best Undergraduate Business Schools ranking. The results were enlightening: while the top-ranked private schools such as Notre Dame and Wharton get all the attention, it is the big state schools (and their lower tuition costs) that fare the best on this measure.
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SOUTH AFRICA: Wannabe teachers fill universities
For the first time in years South African universities are seeing a marked increase in the number of students opting to become teachers, writes Prega Govender for the Sunday Times. In response to burgeoning student numbers this year, several universities have hired extra teaching staff while others are building new lecture halls to cope with the increased demand.
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EAST AFRICA: Moving towards harmonised education
Until the late 1960s education in Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya served as a unifying force across the three states of the East African Community, or EAC, reports The Independent. Curricula and examinations were the same at almost all levels of education, as determined by the examination council of East Africa. In 1970, after the collapse of the EAC, the University of East Africa was split into the three national universities of Makerere, Dar es Salaam and Nairobi. Today, the revival of the EAC means there is a greater need for academic cooperation between the three universities.
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MALTA: Wide skills gap presents ‘major challenge’
Malta’s workforce will need to undergo a paradigm shift if Malta is to remain competitive within the European Union, a report published by the National Commission for Higher Education found, writes David Lindsay for the Malta Independent.
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WALES: Universities unite over recession
Five universities are pledging to work together in an attempt to help drive the Welsh economy out of the recession, reports BBC News. Aberystwyth, Bangor, Cardiff, Glamorgan and Swansea universities say closer cooperation will help Wales create an “innovative and dynamic economy”.
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