NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report
N IGERIA: Minister proposes monitoring students abroad
Tunde Fatunde
N igeria's Minister of Youth Development has proposed that the government monitor the religious and social activities of students abroad. The controversial plan is a response to the attempted bombing of an American aircraft by a N igerian student last December and the nation's inclusion on a US list of high security risk countries.
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INDONESIA: Level university entrance playing field
David Jardine
Confusion over higher education entrance requirements continues across Indonesia.In response, the Ministry of National Education plans to review this year's arrangements for conducting entrance examinations.
Full report on the University World News site:
EUROPE: The Donostia declaration
Jan Petter Myklebust
A meeting of science ministers from across Europe met in San Sebastian in Spain earlier this month and agreed unanimously to release the 'Donostia Declaration'. This was a 300-word statement endorsing the role that science must play in assisting Europe to recover from its worst economic crisis in recent decades.
Full report on the University World News site:
EUROPE: Turning science into commerce
Europe produces more research papers than the US or Japan but needs an influx of venture capital to turn inventions into commercial success, according to Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, EU commissioner for research, innovation and science.
Full report on the University World News site:
US: Importance of research for undergraduates
Sarah King Head
A survey of the University of California's 170,000 students underlines the importance of offering research projects for undergraduates at research universities.
Full report on the University World News site:
AUSTRALIA: High Court rejects university's IP appeal
Geoff Maslen
A decision by the High Court of Australia earlier this month has dispelled assumptions by universities that they, as with private companies, automatically own the intellectual property rights to discoveries or inventions of their staff.
Full report on the University World News site:
SWEDEN: Tuition fees for foreigners - and scholarships
The government has outlined its plans to introduce tuition and application fees for students from non-EU-EEA countries from the 2011-12 academic year. It also announced that the fees would be supplemented by new scholarship schemes, one of which will be available to students from countries where Sweden is already involved with long-term development projects.
Full report on the University World News site:
SWEDEN: New charges present new challenges
Jan Petter Myklebust
The decision to introduce tuition fees for foreign students has met strong objections by Swedish student unions and a massive e-mail response to Local - Sweden's News in English. But for two of the universities enrolling most foreign students, the government's decision means an immediate income loss in the millions.
Full report on the University World News site:
ZIMBABWE: University's funds looted, intakes frozen
The University of Zimbabwe is battling to recover nearly US$5 million in research funds looted from its foreign currency account by the central bank during the country's economic crisis. Meanwhile, the institution has frozen intakes in some departments as the brain drain takes its toll - and the nationwide lecturer strike at public universities continues.
Full report on the University World News site:
SOUTH AFRICA: OpenContent: Sharing teaching and learning
Alison Moodie
The University of Cape Town has launched an OpenContent Directory that allows academics to share teaching and learning materials and makes a body of knowledge accessible to all. It will contribute South African resources to the global Knowledge Commons, Vice-chancellor Dr Max Price said, and is the first step towards Open UCT - a broader initiative that will make a vast range of resources, including research and community work, available online.
Full report on the University World News site:
NEWSBRIEFS
EGYPT: Academy for young scientists
Wagdy Sawahel
Egypt plans to set up an academy of science for young researchers, to support top up-and-coming scientists and encourage them to play a pivotal role in developing future strategies that use science and technology for socio-economic development.
Full report on the University World News site:
DR CONGO: Professors who exposed frauds sacked
Two professors at the University of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, who alerted the law about embezzlement of funds, are facing the sack on the orders of the Minister of Higher and University Education.
Full report on the University World News site:
NORTH AFRICA: Boost for Maghreb university cooperation
Wagdy Sawahel
The five members of the Arab Maghreb Union - Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Libya and Mauritania - have agreed to create a website for all universities and research centers in the region and to re-activate a union of Maghrebi universities.
Full report on the University World News site:
TUNISIA: President's plans stress economic priorities
Jane Marshall
Tunisian higher education must conform to international standards and adapt to the demands of the labour market and knowledge economy, under the presidential plan 'Together let's meet the challenges' that covers the period 2009-14, reported La Presse of Tunis.
Full report on the University World News site :
FRANCOPHONE AFRICA: Database of diplomas launched
CAMES, the 18-member African and Madagascan Council for Higher Education, has launched a database of recognised qualifications in francophone Africa. With a couple of clicks to locate country and institution, the database gives information about diplomas, their relevant department or faculty, any available options, and how many years higher study they should require.
Full report on the University World News site:
ACADEMIC FREEDOM
SUDAN: Police surround funeral of beaten student
Daniel Sawney and Jonathan Travis*
Reuters reports that the funeral of a Darfuri student who was allegedly beaten to death by Sudanese authorities became the scene of a tense confrontation when armed police surrounded the house where the student's body waited to go to the cemetery.
More Academic Freedom reports on the University World News site:
SCIENCE SCENE
UK: Recognising faces - it's genetic
New research from University College London indicates that the ability to recognise people's faces is genetically based.
Full report on the University World News site:
US-UK: Flightless mosquitoes control dengue fever
A breed of mosquito in which the females cannot fly has been developed as a means of combating dengue fever - a mosquito-borne disease for which there is no vaccine or treatment.
Full report on the University World News site:
UK: Generating energy from grass'
A five-year research project has discovered a way of generating green energy from a humble everyday grass.
Full report on the University World News site:
AFRICA: Diarrhoea vaccine reduces deaths, study finds
Munyaradzi Makoni
Hopes in Africa of a decline in infant deaths from diarrhoea have been raised by a study that found a 61.2% reduction in deaths among babies given the RotarixTM vaccine. The research results were cited as one of the reasons why the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have committed US$10 billion over the next 10 years to vaccines.
Full report on the University World News site:
FEATURES
GLOBAL: Establishing academic standards
Gavin Moodie*
The privatisation of higher education in many countries has increased the financial incentive for institutions to compromise standards to maintain their viability. It has also led to the increased influence of institutions and their managers over lecturers and their academic decisions which were previously more strongly influenced by disciplinary norms and the expectations of the 'invisible college'.
Full report on the University World News site:
SOUTHERN AFRICA: A regional tertiary collaboration model
Sharon Dell
Five years since its establishment the Southern African Regional Universities' Association, Sarua, has made considerable headway in establishing itself as a credible platform for leadership 'conversations' and a model for collaboration in the region's tertiary sector.
Full report on the University World News site:
GERMANY: Training locals to deal with food issues
Stephan Weidt
Researchers at the University of Hohenheim's Food Security Center (FSC) are developing food security strategies. Hohenheim is among five winners of the Exceed - Excellence for Development - competition.
Full report on the University World News site:
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
GLOBAL: Why branch campuses may be unsustainable
Philip G Altbach
Branch campuses are sprouting around the world, like mushrooms after a heavy rain. According to the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education, the number of branch campuses increased by 43% to a total of 162 between 2006 and 2009. Many of the growing mushrooms may only hold a limited lifespan and a few might be poisonous.
Full report on the University World News site:
Article from International Higher Education:
GLOBAL: The poor as providers of innovative solutions
Anil K Gupta*
Economically disadvantaged people can trigger frugal, creative and re-combinable innovations that can stimulate the creation of new pedagogies, products and processes. The model I talk about is 'sink' to 'source'. Such people are not 'sink' - passive recipients of our advice, or clients of corporate social responsibility. Given a chance they can be providers of solutions that may need further value-added in some cases. Why is it that the designers of pedagogies and curricula the world over neglect the need for learning from knowledge-rich, economically poor people? Why are there so few papers on innovations by workers in the organised and unorganised sectors compared to managerial innovations?
Full report on the University World News site:
Presented at the Innovation for Development symposium, Wits University
US: The future of the internet IV
The latest in a series of expert studies, US: The future of the internet IV has revealed "fascinating new perspectives on the way the internet is affecting human intelligence and the ways that information is being shared and rendered", according to the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University and the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project. The web-based survey obtained opinions from nearly 900 internet stakeholders including prominent scientists, business leaders, consultants, writers and technology developers.
Full report on the University World News site:
UNI-LATERAL: Off-beat university stories
US: Cold comfort for Northeastern
The advertisement touting the university's co-op programme was ready to go. It featured a lone king penguin in ice-covered Antarctica - "The only continent where you won't find a Northeastern University student...yet," it proclaimed, writes Tracy Jan for The Boston Globe. But the campaign was killed by its very prescience. Northeastern officials recently learned that a student is heading to the South Pole in April for a six-month research stint, and withdrew the ad.
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FACEBOOK
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WORLD ROUND-UP
INDIA: Committed to overhauling education, says PM
From investing more in primary education to allowing foreign universities to open campuses in India, the central government is working to bring about a paradigm shift in educational infrastructure to further inclusive growth in the country, President Pratibha Patil said on Monday, reports India Edunews. She said change would be based on the "three pillars of expansion, inclusion and excellence."
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ISRAEL: State, universities join forces to fight brain drain
The Israeli state has come up with a plan to diminish the 'brain drain', writes Meirav Arlosoroff for Haartez. It has proposed establishing a new fund to provide the jobs needed to keep the country's best and brightest academics from moving overseas, or to bring them back home. The fund, to be managed by the Council for Higher Education, will invest in centres of research excellence that provide positions for repatriated scientists and engineers.
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LIBERIA: Ex-fighters drop studies as money runs out
Nearly 1,000 former fighters have dropped out of Liberian universities because the cash-strapped government stopped paying their fees as promised, ex-fighters' representatives said, threatening a society trying to recover from a bloody civil war. Jonathan Paye-Layleh writes for the Associated Press that Education minister Joseph Korto said the government cannot pay tuition for some 1,600 ex-combatants because of unspecified "budgetary constraints".
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UK: University managers outpace academics
The number of managers at UK universities has risen more than three times as fast as the number of academics since 2003, according to Financial Times research, reports David Turner. A 33% increase in managers is the most rapid of any job type in Britain's university sector. It compares with a more steady rise of just under 10% in 'academic professionals', according to analysis of data from an official agency.
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UK: Academy cuts threaten future of subject centres
The fruit of decades of effort to improve university teaching is under threat at the very time it is needed most as a result of cuts to the higher education budget, it was claimed this week, writes Rebecca Attwood for Times Higher Education. Funding chiefs confirmed that the £30 million (US$46 million) a year Higher Education Academy, the UK's body for university teaching, is facing a reduction in core funding of about a third over the next two to three years.
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CHINA: Government denies links to Google attacks
China has denied government links to cyber attacks against the search giant Google, saying such accusations were "irresponsible and calculating", China Daily reports. The official Xinhua news agency quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang saying that "China resolutely opposes the groundless accusations from Google" and accusations that two Chinese universities had carried out the cyber attacks did not hold water.
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CHINA: Hacking inquiry puts elite in new light
With its sterling reputation and its scientific bent, Shanghai Jiaotong University has the feel of an Ivy League institution, writes David Barboza for The New York Times. The university has alliances with elite American institutions and it is so rich in science and engineering talent that Microsoft and Intel have moved into a research park directly adjacent to the school. But Jiaotong, whose sprawling campus has more than 33,000 students, is facing an unpleasant question: is it a base for sophisticated computer hackers?
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CHINA: Colleges told to cut ties with Oxfam
China's education ministry has ordered colleges to cut ties with Oxfam and prevent it from recruiting on campuses, accusing its Hong Kong branch of a hidden political agenda, The Guardian reports.
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US: Amy Bishop - a murder suspect's worth to science
Amy Bishop, neuroscientist, inventor, murder suspect, has become bigger than life, a symbol for those who think that genius is close to madness, or that women cannot get ahead in science, or that tenure systems in universities are brutalising - or even that progress against fatal diseases is so important that someone like Bishop should be set free to pursue cures - writes Gina Kolata for The New York Times.
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BANGLADESH: Private university law to ensure standards
Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid said last week that the government had formulated a private university law in a bid to ensure discipline, progress, standards and good management in Bangladesh's private institutions, reports The Daily Star. He said that while some of the country's 53 private universities performed well, many did not succeed.
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TAIWAN: More graduates seeking masters degrees
A sharply increasing number of graduates from universities and colleges are taking entrance examinations in February or March in order to study at graduate schools for masters degrees, reports The China Post. Analysts said the economic downturn, which has squeezed job opportunities, is a major factor driving the growth in postgraduate applicants.
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UAE: University remedial English to end
Remedial courses taken by most first-year Emirati university students because high schools fail to prepare them for higher education are to end, write Kathryn Lewis and Daniel Bardsley for The National. The bold move is contained in the long-anticipated Ministry of Education Strategy 2010-2020, which was published last week on the website of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice-president of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.
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GLOBAL: HP opens Singapore research hub
Two years ago, Hewlett-Packard embarked on an ambitious overhaul of its storied research labs, responsible for some of the most momentous computing innovation of the last 40 years, writes Aaron Ricadela for Business Week. Now, HP Labs Director Prith Banerjee is turning his attention to the company's half-dozen international labs, aiming to generate cutting-edge development from scientific outposts in Asia, Europe and the Middle East.
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PAKISTAN: Higher education collaboration with Iran
Iran's Ambassador to Pakistan Mashallah Shakiri on Wednesday called on the chairman of the Higher Education Commission, Dr Javaid R Laghari, to discuss the prospects of cooperation between the two countries in the higher education sector, reports the Associated Press of Pakistan.
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Sunday 28 February 2010
Sunday 21 February 2010
University World News 0112 - 21st February 2010
SPECIAL REPORT: Rise of the foreign doctoral student
International students now comprise a significant and growing proportion of
the postgraduate population in universities around the globe. This is especially so in certain fields such as the physical sciences and engineering, and where students are undertaking masters and PhDs by research.
Many postgraduate courses, and even entire faculties, would have collapsed for want of local students had not the flood of foreigners arrived to bolster numbers and inflate university revenues. While deans and heads of department, as well as governments, generally welcome the highly able foreign graduates who often stay on as researchers, many staff are concerned by the reliance on other countries to provide them with students because their own see no future in obtaining a research degree.
To accompany these special reports, we also publish essays in our Research and Commentary and Feature sections, one by Ben Wildavsky, author of the soon-to-be published The Great Brain Race: How universities are reshaping the world, and the second by four senior US academics on the challenges of educating postgraduates.
UK: Rapid increase in overseas postgraduates
Diane Spencer British universities have seen a rapid increase in numbers of international postgraduate students, according to a study commissioned by the Higher Education Policy Institute and the British Library. In 2007-08, half of masters students and 44% of doctoral students were from overseas, the majority from India and China. The UK has almost 12% market share of all international postgraduate students, second only to the US.
Full report on the University World News site:
US: Maintaining foreign postgraduate enrolments
Sarah King Head
That foreign students tend to complete research masters and doctoral degrees at American universities more often and faster than their domestic counterparts has been well documented. But it is the plateauing of their enrolments at US universities and research institutions that has provoked greater comment in recent years.
Full report on the University World News site:
AUSTRALIA: Many foreigners but few PhDs
Geoff Maslen
So difficult has life become for Australian PhD and masters by research students that the numbers starting the degrees are falling and completion rates are among the lowest in the developed world. At the same time, foreign student commencements in PhD degree courses have rocketed by 125% over the past six years.
Full report on the University World News site:
NZ: Fee policy attracts foreign PhD students
John Gerritsen
International enrolments in doctoral programmes have grown six-fold at New Zealand universities this decade, but domestic students still account for the majority of PhD candidates.
Full report on the University World News site:
SOUTH AFRICA: Universities open to foreigners
Karen MacGregor
A quarter of all doctoral graduates in South Africa are not from this country, according to the Council on Higher Education, and around one in 10 postgraduate students are foreign. Attracting students from other Southern African countries, especially postgraduates, is an ex plicit policy aimed at developing research in the region. But efforts to grow the number of research postgraduates are being thwarted by lack of supervision capacity.
Full report on the University World News site:
EUROPE: Increasing numbers swell PhD ranks
The following four reports on the Nordic countries and Switzerland were prepared by University World News correspondent JAN PETTER MYKLEBUST.
NORWAY: Foreign postgraduates a must
Norway is heavily dependent on foreign students to recruit sufficient numbers for doctoral training, especially in mathematics, the natural sciences and technological studies, according to a government White Paper presented to parliament last year.
Full report on the University World News site:
SWEDEN: Aiming for 5,000 foreign doctorates
One in four doctorate candidates in Sweden are foreign citizens. There were 4,179 of them in 2008 in a PhD student population of 16,900 - an increase since 1999 of 62%. Of newly-recruited doctoral students in 2008, 32% or 1,040 people were foreigners, up from 19% in 1999. The annual increase was 19% between 2007 and 2008 alone, indicating a significant change in the recruitment pattern.
Full report on the University World News site:
DENMARK: Huge PhD expansion continues
In 2007, 432 new international students were recruited to undertake a PhD in Denmark's universities - a 75% rise in eight years. As a part of the government's globalisation strategy of allocating 0.5% of GNP or 39 billion DKK (US$7.1 billion) between 2006 and 2012, the number of new PhD students is expected to reach 2,400 this year, double the number in 2003. At the same time, total foreign enrolments are expected to rise so that foreign students will represent 25% of new enrolments.
Full report on the University World News site:
SWITZERLAND: Second top with PhDs
A higher proportion of Swiss people hold PhDs than any other European country except Portugal: 2.5% of the population in the age cohort that can obtain a doctorate has the degree compared with an EU average of 1%. Today, close to 50% of doctoral students are foreign-born and Switzerland recruits more foreign citizens with a PhD to scientific positions than any other European country.
Full report on the University World News site:
SWITZERLAND: Foreigners a necessity
Jacques Giovanola*
Switzerland has traditionally been a country of strong immigration. Many leading Swiss industries were founded by foreigners and immigrants. Despite the fact it is not part of the EU, Switzerland and its economic, cultural and scientific life are inextricably linked with Europe.
Full report on the University World News site:
GLOBAL: More researchers in developing countries
Michael Gardner
A new study by the Montreal-based Unesco Institute for Statistics has identified a startling 56% increase in the number of researchers in developing countries between 2002 and 2007. In the same period, numbers in developed countries grew by less than 9 % although women are still under-represented in research in both, the study shows.
Full report on the University World News site:
NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report
US: Crafting a compromise: the Obama budget
Sarah King Head
In the context of a net freeze on 'discretionary' spending, higher education pundits in the US are applauding the Obama administration's proposed 6% or $2.1 billion increase in higher education spending as part of its proposed $3.8 trillion 2011 budget. But reservations have been voiced about the sectors and programmes that have not been given a priority.
Full report on the University World News site:
GLOBAL: Obstacles to social mobility
It is easier to climb the social ladder and earn more than one's parents in the Nordic countries, Australia and Canada than in France, Italy, Britain and the United States, according to a new OECD study. But weak social mobility can signal a lack of equal opportunities, constrain productivity and curb economic growth, says a report on the study.
Full report on the University World News site:
US: Bishop published little in past decade
Sarah King Head
Whether the chair of biology at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Professor Gopi K Podila, had or had not supported Amy Bishop's tenure bid, her actual chances of earning the coveted academic status were probably marginal - at best. Whether or not she knew that fact, it did not stop her allegedly murdering three of her colleagues.
Full report on the University World News site:
HAITI: Francophone agency plans reconstruction
Jane Marshall
As French President Nicolas Sarkozy was visiting Haiti last Wednesday, five weeks after the devastating earthquake, the international Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie and Haiti's University of Quisqueya held an inaugural educational video-conference relayed from Paris. The 'distance lecture' was a first step in an AUF plan to reconstruct the Caribbean state's university system.
Full report on the University World News site:
ISRAEL Academics oppose upgrading Ariel
Helena Flusfeder
Two hundred and fifty academics representing universities and colleges in Israel have signed a letter sent to the Council for Higher Education urging it not to recognise the college in the West Bank town of Ariel as either a university centre or a university.
Full report on the University World News site:
NEWSBRIEFS
SPAIN: Financial crisis hits universities
Spain's economic crisis is beginning to bite, hitting top Spanish universities - including the Universidad Complutense which joined The Europaeum in 2003. The government's austerity measures kicked in from January and, although education was to be protected, public universities are feeling the pressure as regional authorities propose substantial cuts that will hit higher education.
Full report on the University World News site:
SAUDI ARABIA: New student loan scheme
The International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group, signed an agreement last week with Saudi Arabia's Riyad Bank to introduce a new student loan scheme that will finance the education of male and female university students across the country.
Full report on the University World News site:
BUSINESS
GLOBAL: First MBA survey following recession
Leah Germain
A new survey released by career and education experts QS shines a revealing light on the impact of the recession on international MBA graduates. A key finding from the QS TopMBA.com applicant survey suggests graduates are increasingly choosing self-employment and entrepreneurship over finance, law and government for a career.
Full report on the University World News site:
US: Twitter for scientists launched online
Keith Nuthall
A scientific version of popular social-networking site Twitter has been launched. Called Sciencefeed, its owners describe it as a "real time micro-blogging tool designed for scientists".
Full report on the University World News site:
GLOBAL: International business school group expands
Keith Nuthall
A prestigious international accrediting body for business schools has appointed a new chairman, as it continues to grow worldwide. Economist Andrew J Policano, dean of the Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine, will lead AACSB International - the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business.
Full report on the University World News site:
FEATURE
US: Educating scholars: Implications for graduate deans*
Ronald G Ehrenberg, Harriet Zuckerman, Jeffrey A Groen and Sharon M Brucker For decades, graduate deans have been troubled by low completion rates and long times-to-degree in PhD programmes in the humanities. Now federal and state officials are talking about the need to improve completion rates in undergraduate programmes.
Full report on the University World News site:
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
US: Welcoming academic globalisation
Ben Wildavsky*
For several years now - and not for the first time in our nation's history - CEOs, politicians and education leaders have regularly decried the shortcomings of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education in America's elementary and secondary schools. And they have vigorously promoted a reform agenda aimed at tackling those problems. But what about our colleges and universities?
Full report on the University World News site:
From The New York Academy of Sciences Magazine:
US: Exploring the experiences of Latina/o students
The latest, special issue of the Harvard Educational Review highlights the needs and interests of Latina/o students enrolled in American colleges and the ever-increasing population of future Latina/o undergraduates. It draw on the tradition of consejos - words of wisdom coming from those with experience - honouring both the insights of its contributors and the interpersonal advice that was critical to the persistence of many of the Latina/o students whose stories are presented in the journal.
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UNI-LATERAL: Off-beat university stories
NORWAY: Sacked professor back in the news
Jan Petter Myklebust
The sacked professor of medieval history at University of Oslo, Arnved Nedkvitne, is contributing to the largest media coverage for the university for a long time. Nedkvitne lost his court case against the university after demanding his professorship back and financial compensation. Now a variety of issues related to the case has hit Oslo's newspaper headlines.
Full report on the University World News site:
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WORLD ROUND-UP
US: Amy Bishop: why no red flags were waved
Neurobiologist Amy Bishop, charged with killing three faculty colleagues at the University of Alabama-Huntsville, had a squeaky-clean public record despite several brushes with the law. There's more than one reason her record didn't follow her, writes Patrik Jonsson for the Christian Science Monitor.
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US: Chinese institutions tied to online attacks
A series of online attacks on Google and dozens of other American corporations have been traced to computers at two educational institutions in China, including one with close ties to the Chinese military, say people involved in the investigation, write John Markoff and David Barboza for The New York Times.
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BANGLADESH: Clamp-down on deadly campus violence
Campus politics has always been a serious business in Bangladesh, but now the death of five students at universities in less than two weeks has forced the government to step in, writes Kamrul Hasan Khan for AFP. The wave of killings began on 2 February at Dhaka University when a third-year student, Abu Bakar Siddique, died during a campus battle between rival factions of the the Chhatra League - the student wing of the ruling Awami League.
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HAITI: Higher education levelled in quake
Christina Julme was scribbling notes in the back of a linguistics class at the State University of Haiti when, in an instant, everything went black, writes Marc Lacey for The New York Times. "You're in class, your professor is talking, you're writing notes and then you're buried alive," said Julme, 23, recounting how her semester came to a halt on the afternoon of 12 January when the earthquake turned her seven-story university into a towering pile of wreckage, with her deep inside.
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EUROPE: Universities face budget cuts
The global economic crisis has led to budget cuts in the education sector in member states across the European Union at a time when the bloc is seeking to boost its economy by, among other things, putting education at the centre of its new economic strategy, writes Helena Spongenberg for Business Week.
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INDIA: Some foreign students to pay less
In a major step to attract international students from countries in the region, Indian universities are to slash the fees they charge, reports the Deccan Herald. The University Grants Commission took the decision and asked central, state and 'deemed' universities to lower fees for foreign students from seven countries immediately.
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VIETNAM: Foreign invested universities have slow growth
Only three foreign-invested universities have been established in Vietnam over the last 12 years, while growth in domestic universities has been huge, VietNamNet reports.
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US: Slipping (further) off the pedestal
Headlines will blare the results of a new public opinion survey about higher education, which finds that Americans are increasingly convinced that higher education is essential to a successful career and life, but are growing more doubtful that college is affordable and ever more suspicious of colleges' motives, viewing them as "just another business", writes Doug Lederman for Inside Higher Ed.
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US: Dilemma over academic meeting in Uganda
The American Political Science Association is among several disciplinary associations that have found themselves caught in debates over whether to hold meetings in locales that some want to boycott, writes Scott Jaschik for Inside Higher Ed. In 2008, the association rejected calls by some to move the 2012 meeting out of New Orleans because Louisiana has adopted a stringent ban on g ay marriage. Now the association is facing yet more criticism from boycott organisers. It is holding a workshop this summer in Uganda, where the government is supporting some of the most anti-gay legislation in the world, which would carry terms of life imprisonment for gay acts and execution in some cases.
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UK: Universities hit with huge fines for over-enrolling
New figures reveal for the first time the penalties the Government will impose on individual institutions for exceeding caps on the numbers of students they were allowed to recruit, writes Julie Henry for The Telegraph. One university faces a fine of more than £800,000 (US$1.3 million), while others will pay between £100,000 and £300,000 for taking additional students during the places crisis in the summer, when 160,000 candidates were turned away.
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UK: Universities 'should offer courses for over-50s'
Universities must offer suitable courses for people aged 50 and above, a Universities UK report says, writes Katherine Sellgren for BBC News. The study says the ageing population in the UK "offers higher education institutions a serious challenge".
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UGANDA: University to sack drunk, unproductive lecturers
Uganda's Makerere University has established a new policy that provides for the sacking of lecturers over drunkenness, writes Francis Kagolo for The New Vision. The policy, which seeks to boost academic standards, also requires lecturers to teach for a minimum of 10 hours a week and provide evidence that they carry out research.
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RWANDA: Kenyan university to open Kigali campus
One of Kenya's private universities, Mount Kenya University, plans to open a coordination centre in the Rwandan capital Kigali, writes Grace Mugoya for The New Times. The institution currently has a partnership with Rwanda Tourism University College but has decided to open a Kigali branch.
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International students now comprise a significant and growing proportion of
the postgraduate population in universities around the globe. This is especially so in certain fields such as the physical sciences and engineering, and where students are undertaking masters and PhDs by research.
Many postgraduate courses, and even entire faculties, would have collapsed for want of local students had not the flood of foreigners arrived to bolster numbers and inflate university revenues. While deans and heads of department, as well as governments, generally welcome the highly able foreign graduates who often stay on as researchers, many staff are concerned by the reliance on other countries to provide them with students because their own see no future in obtaining a research degree.
To accompany these special reports, we also publish essays in our Research and Commentary and Feature sections, one by Ben Wildavsky, author of the soon-to-be published The Great Brain Race: How universities are reshaping the world, and the second by four senior US academics on the challenges of educating postgraduates.
UK: Rapid increase in overseas postgraduates
Diane Spencer British universities have seen a rapid increase in numbers of international postgraduate students, according to a study commissioned by the Higher Education Policy Institute and the British Library. In 2007-08, half of masters students and 44% of doctoral students were from overseas, the majority from India and China. The UK has almost 12% market share of all international postgraduate students, second only to the US.
Full report on the University World News site:
US: Maintaining foreign postgraduate enrolments
Sarah King Head
That foreign students tend to complete research masters and doctoral degrees at American universities more often and faster than their domestic counterparts has been well documented. But it is the plateauing of their enrolments at US universities and research institutions that has provoked greater comment in recent years.
Full report on the University World News site:
AUSTRALIA: Many foreigners but few PhDs
Geoff Maslen
So difficult has life become for Australian PhD and masters by research students that the numbers starting the degrees are falling and completion rates are among the lowest in the developed world. At the same time, foreign student commencements in PhD degree courses have rocketed by 125% over the past six years.
Full report on the University World News site:
NZ: Fee policy attracts foreign PhD students
John Gerritsen
International enrolments in doctoral programmes have grown six-fold at New Zealand universities this decade, but domestic students still account for the majority of PhD candidates.
Full report on the University World News site:
SOUTH AFRICA: Universities open to foreigners
Karen MacGregor
A quarter of all doctoral graduates in South Africa are not from this country, according to the Council on Higher Education, and around one in 10 postgraduate students are foreign. Attracting students from other Southern African countries, especially postgraduates, is an ex plicit policy aimed at developing research in the region. But efforts to grow the number of research postgraduates are being thwarted by lack of supervision capacity.
Full report on the University World News site:
EUROPE: Increasing numbers swell PhD ranks
The following four reports on the Nordic countries and Switzerland were prepared by University World News correspondent JAN PETTER MYKLEBUST.
NORWAY: Foreign postgraduates a must
Norway is heavily dependent on foreign students to recruit sufficient numbers for doctoral training, especially in mathematics, the natural sciences and technological studies, according to a government White Paper presented to parliament last year.
Full report on the University World News site:
SWEDEN: Aiming for 5,000 foreign doctorates
One in four doctorate candidates in Sweden are foreign citizens. There were 4,179 of them in 2008 in a PhD student population of 16,900 - an increase since 1999 of 62%. Of newly-recruited doctoral students in 2008, 32% or 1,040 people were foreigners, up from 19% in 1999. The annual increase was 19% between 2007 and 2008 alone, indicating a significant change in the recruitment pattern.
Full report on the University World News site:
DENMARK: Huge PhD expansion continues
In 2007, 432 new international students were recruited to undertake a PhD in Denmark's universities - a 75% rise in eight years. As a part of the government's globalisation strategy of allocating 0.5% of GNP or 39 billion DKK (US$7.1 billion) between 2006 and 2012, the number of new PhD students is expected to reach 2,400 this year, double the number in 2003. At the same time, total foreign enrolments are expected to rise so that foreign students will represent 25% of new enrolments.
Full report on the University World News site:
SWITZERLAND: Second top with PhDs
A higher proportion of Swiss people hold PhDs than any other European country except Portugal: 2.5% of the population in the age cohort that can obtain a doctorate has the degree compared with an EU average of 1%. Today, close to 50% of doctoral students are foreign-born and Switzerland recruits more foreign citizens with a PhD to scientific positions than any other European country.
Full report on the University World News site:
SWITZERLAND: Foreigners a necessity
Jacques Giovanola*
Switzerland has traditionally been a country of strong immigration. Many leading Swiss industries were founded by foreigners and immigrants. Despite the fact it is not part of the EU, Switzerland and its economic, cultural and scientific life are inextricably linked with Europe.
Full report on the University World News site:
GLOBAL: More researchers in developing countries
Michael Gardner
A new study by the Montreal-based Unesco Institute for Statistics has identified a startling 56% increase in the number of researchers in developing countries between 2002 and 2007. In the same period, numbers in developed countries grew by less than 9 % although women are still under-represented in research in both, the study shows.
Full report on the University World News site:
NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report
US: Crafting a compromise: the Obama budget
Sarah King Head
In the context of a net freeze on 'discretionary' spending, higher education pundits in the US are applauding the Obama administration's proposed 6% or $2.1 billion increase in higher education spending as part of its proposed $3.8 trillion 2011 budget. But reservations have been voiced about the sectors and programmes that have not been given a priority.
Full report on the University World News site:
GLOBAL: Obstacles to social mobility
It is easier to climb the social ladder and earn more than one's parents in the Nordic countries, Australia and Canada than in France, Italy, Britain and the United States, according to a new OECD study. But weak social mobility can signal a lack of equal opportunities, constrain productivity and curb economic growth, says a report on the study.
Full report on the University World News site:
US: Bishop published little in past decade
Sarah King Head
Whether the chair of biology at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Professor Gopi K Podila, had or had not supported Amy Bishop's tenure bid, her actual chances of earning the coveted academic status were probably marginal - at best. Whether or not she knew that fact, it did not stop her allegedly murdering three of her colleagues.
Full report on the University World News site:
HAITI: Francophone agency plans reconstruction
Jane Marshall
As French President Nicolas Sarkozy was visiting Haiti last Wednesday, five weeks after the devastating earthquake, the international Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie and Haiti's University of Quisqueya held an inaugural educational video-conference relayed from Paris. The 'distance lecture' was a first step in an AUF plan to reconstruct the Caribbean state's university system.
Full report on the University World News site:
ISRAEL Academics oppose upgrading Ariel
Helena Flusfeder
Two hundred and fifty academics representing universities and colleges in Israel have signed a letter sent to the Council for Higher Education urging it not to recognise the college in the West Bank town of Ariel as either a university centre or a university.
Full report on the University World News site:
NEWSBRIEFS
SPAIN: Financial crisis hits universities
Spain's economic crisis is beginning to bite, hitting top Spanish universities - including the Universidad Complutense which joined The Europaeum in 2003. The government's austerity measures kicked in from January and, although education was to be protected, public universities are feeling the pressure as regional authorities propose substantial cuts that will hit higher education.
Full report on the University World News site:
SAUDI ARABIA: New student loan scheme
The International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group, signed an agreement last week with Saudi Arabia's Riyad Bank to introduce a new student loan scheme that will finance the education of male and female university students across the country.
Full report on the University World News site:
BUSINESS
GLOBAL: First MBA survey following recession
Leah Germain
A new survey released by career and education experts QS shines a revealing light on the impact of the recession on international MBA graduates. A key finding from the QS TopMBA.com applicant survey suggests graduates are increasingly choosing self-employment and entrepreneurship over finance, law and government for a career.
Full report on the University World News site:
US: Twitter for scientists launched online
Keith Nuthall
A scientific version of popular social-networking site Twitter has been launched. Called Sciencefeed, its owners describe it as a "real time micro-blogging tool designed for scientists".
Full report on the University World News site:
GLOBAL: International business school group expands
Keith Nuthall
A prestigious international accrediting body for business schools has appointed a new chairman, as it continues to grow worldwide. Economist Andrew J Policano, dean of the Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine, will lead AACSB International - the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business.
Full report on the University World News site:
FEATURE
US: Educating scholars: Implications for graduate deans*
Ronald G Ehrenberg, Harriet Zuckerman, Jeffrey A Groen and Sharon M Brucker For decades, graduate deans have been troubled by low completion rates and long times-to-degree in PhD programmes in the humanities. Now federal and state officials are talking about the need to improve completion rates in undergraduate programmes.
Full report on the University World News site:
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
US: Welcoming academic globalisation
Ben Wildavsky*
For several years now - and not for the first time in our nation's history - CEOs, politicians and education leaders have regularly decried the shortcomings of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education in America's elementary and secondary schools. And they have vigorously promoted a reform agenda aimed at tackling those problems. But what about our colleges and universities?
Full report on the University World News site:
From The New York Academy of Sciences Magazine:
US: Exploring the experiences of Latina/o students
The latest, special issue of the Harvard Educational Review highlights the needs and interests of Latina/o students enrolled in American colleges and the ever-increasing population of future Latina/o undergraduates. It draw on the tradition of consejos - words of wisdom coming from those with experience - honouring both the insights of its contributors and the interpersonal advice that was critical to the persistence of many of the Latina/o students whose stories are presented in the journal.
More on the University World News site:
UNI-LATERAL: Off-beat university stories
NORWAY: Sacked professor back in the news
Jan Petter Myklebust
The sacked professor of medieval history at University of Oslo, Arnved Nedkvitne, is contributing to the largest media coverage for the university for a long time. Nedkvitne lost his court case against the university after demanding his professorship back and financial compensation. Now a variety of issues related to the case has hit Oslo's newspaper headlines.
Full report on the University World News site:
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WORLD ROUND-UP
US: Amy Bishop: why no red flags were waved
Neurobiologist Amy Bishop, charged with killing three faculty colleagues at the University of Alabama-Huntsville, had a squeaky-clean public record despite several brushes with the law. There's more than one reason her record didn't follow her, writes Patrik Jonsson for the Christian Science Monitor.
More on the University World News site:
US: Chinese institutions tied to online attacks
A series of online attacks on Google and dozens of other American corporations have been traced to computers at two educational institutions in China, including one with close ties to the Chinese military, say people involved in the investigation, write John Markoff and David Barboza for The New York Times.
More on the University World News site:
BANGLADESH: Clamp-down on deadly campus violence
Campus politics has always been a serious business in Bangladesh, but now the death of five students at universities in less than two weeks has forced the government to step in, writes Kamrul Hasan Khan for AFP. The wave of killings began on 2 February at Dhaka University when a third-year student, Abu Bakar Siddique, died during a campus battle between rival factions of the the Chhatra League - the student wing of the ruling Awami League.
More on the University World News site:
HAITI: Higher education levelled in quake
Christina Julme was scribbling notes in the back of a linguistics class at the State University of Haiti when, in an instant, everything went black, writes Marc Lacey for The New York Times. "You're in class, your professor is talking, you're writing notes and then you're buried alive," said Julme, 23, recounting how her semester came to a halt on the afternoon of 12 January when the earthquake turned her seven-story university into a towering pile of wreckage, with her deep inside.
More on the University World News site:
EUROPE: Universities face budget cuts
The global economic crisis has led to budget cuts in the education sector in member states across the European Union at a time when the bloc is seeking to boost its economy by, among other things, putting education at the centre of its new economic strategy, writes Helena Spongenberg for Business Week.
More on the University World News site:
INDIA: Some foreign students to pay less
In a major step to attract international students from countries in the region, Indian universities are to slash the fees they charge, reports the Deccan Herald. The University Grants Commission took the decision and asked central, state and 'deemed' universities to lower fees for foreign students from seven countries immediately.
More on the University World News site:
VIETNAM: Foreign invested universities have slow growth
Only three foreign-invested universities have been established in Vietnam over the last 12 years, while growth in domestic universities has been huge, VietNamNet reports.
More on the University World News site:
US: Slipping (further) off the pedestal
Headlines will blare the results of a new public opinion survey about higher education, which finds that Americans are increasingly convinced that higher education is essential to a successful career and life, but are growing more doubtful that college is affordable and ever more suspicious of colleges' motives, viewing them as "just another business", writes Doug Lederman for Inside Higher Ed.
More on the University World News site:
US: Dilemma over academic meeting in Uganda
The American Political Science Association is among several disciplinary associations that have found themselves caught in debates over whether to hold meetings in locales that some want to boycott, writes Scott Jaschik for Inside Higher Ed. In 2008, the association rejected calls by some to move the 2012 meeting out of New Orleans because Louisiana has adopted a stringent ban on g ay marriage. Now the association is facing yet more criticism from boycott organisers. It is holding a workshop this summer in Uganda, where the government is supporting some of the most anti-gay legislation in the world, which would carry terms of life imprisonment for gay acts and execution in some cases.
More on the University World News site:
UK: Universities hit with huge fines for over-enrolling
New figures reveal for the first time the penalties the Government will impose on individual institutions for exceeding caps on the numbers of students they were allowed to recruit, writes Julie Henry for The Telegraph. One university faces a fine of more than £800,000 (US$1.3 million), while others will pay between £100,000 and £300,000 for taking additional students during the places crisis in the summer, when 160,000 candidates were turned away.
More on the University World News site:
UK: Universities 'should offer courses for over-50s'
Universities must offer suitable courses for people aged 50 and above, a Universities UK report says, writes Katherine Sellgren for BBC News. The study says the ageing population in the UK "offers higher education institutions a serious challenge".
More on the University World News site:
UGANDA: University to sack drunk, unproductive lecturers
Uganda's Makerere University has established a new policy that provides for the sacking of lecturers over drunkenness, writes Francis Kagolo for The New Vision. The policy, which seeks to boost academic standards, also requires lecturers to teach for a minimum of 10 hours a week and provide evidence that they carry out research.
More on the University World News site:
RWANDA: Kenyan university to open Kigali campus
One of Kenya's private universities, Mount Kenya University, plans to open a coordination centre in the Rwandan capital Kigali, writes Grace Mugoya for The New Times. The institution currently has a partnership with Rwanda Tourism University College but has decided to open a Kigali branch.
More on the University World News site:
Sunday 14 February 2010
University World News 0111 - 15th February 2010
NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report
GLOBAL: Education under increasing attack
Around the world, schools and universities have faced brutal military and political attacks in an increasing number of countries over the past three years, according to a new report published by Unesco. The report, Education under Attack 2010, was written by University World News correspondent Brendan O'Malley and he says the sheer volume of incidents demonstrates that attacks on education are "by no means limited to supporters of the Taliban fighting in the hills of Afghanistan". Education and those involved have been subject to attacks in at least 31 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe.
Full report on the University World News site:
See O'Malley's commentary in the Features section:
UK: Crackdown on student visas
Diane Spencer
The Home Office has introduced stringent new rules for overseas students seeking to study in the UK. Alan Johnson, Labour's Home Secretary, announced last Sunday that applicants would have to speak passable English and those on short courses would not be allowed to bring in dependants. Those on non-degree courses would be allowed to work 10 hours a week instead of 20. Visas for non-degree courses would be granted to institutions that are on a new register, The Highly Trusted Sponsors List.
Full report on the University World News site:
AUSTRALIA: 20,000 applications cancelled
Geoff Maslen
At least 20,000 applications by foreign students for permanent residence have been cancelled because of their poor English and qualifications considered no longer in demand. In the biggest shake-up of what had become an education-migration industry, Immigration Minister Senator Chris Evans announced an overhaul of Australia's independent skilled migration system to break the link between students studying a trade in short supply and remaining in the country.
Full report on the University World News site:
US: Tighter visa restrictions but students still enrol
Sarah King Head
In spite of tightened security and controls governing the issuing of student visas, no significant change has occurred in the percentage of foreign students enrolled at US colleges and universities since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. Indeed, the proportion - as a percentage of total US higher education enrolment figures - remained steady at around 3.5% between 2002 and 2009, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Full report on the University World News site:
DENMARK: Sackings create confusion and anger
Jan Petter Myklebust
More than 80 scientific staff in the departments of geology and biology at Copenhagen University were sacked last month with immediate notice. Altogether 110 staff will lose their jobs and another 30 who accept early retirement will not be replaced.
Full report on the University World News site:
THE NETHERLANDS: Students protest against grant cuts
Jan Petter Myklebust
Education Minister Ronald Plasterk has proposed substituting the monthly student grant of €266 (US$367) with a loan system. More than 1,000 students protested at the move, occupying lecture halls and university buildings in Amsterdam, Nijmegen, Utrecht and Rotterdam.
Full report on the University World News site:
NZ: Government promises education reforms
John Gerritsen
Universities look set to benefit but students could face a tougher financial support regime after the government announced that education would be one of its priorities for reform this year.
Full report on the University World News site:
CANADA: Troubled First Nations' funding halved
Philip Fine
After five years of being mired in financial scandals and dragging its feet on commitments to solve its governance problems, the small but symbolically important First Nations University of Canada has lost the confidence of the federal and provincial governments.
Full report on the University World News site:
FINLAND: When the going gets tough?.
Ian R Dobson*
One rarely hears talk about redundancies in the Finnish university sector but the University of Oulu in the country's north-west is thinking along those lines. It finds itself in a financial bind largely because of cutbacks in government funding to the tune of nearly €9 million a year (about US$12.4 million). The university aims to get its budget back into the black by 2012.
Full report on the University World News site:
SOUTH AFRICA: Cost woes spark student protests
Munyaradzi Makoni
Two things never disappear from the grievance lists of South African students - fees and accommodation. No sooner had the 2010 academic year begun than students at some universities clashed with administrations and the police over fee hikes and lousy residences. Students renewed their call for free higher education while universities reported that student debt now tops R2.8 billion (US$363 million).
Full report on the University World News site:
EGYPT: New schools at oldest private university
Ashraf Khaled
This month has been action-packed for the American University in Cairo, Egypt's oldest independent higher education institution founded 90 years ago. At high profile ceremonies attended by Egyptian and foreign dignitaries, the university launched three new schools - of global affairs and public policy, business, and graduate education.
Full report on the University World News site:
SOUTHERN AFRICA: Regional integration and higher education
Sharon Dell
In a recent report, the Southern African Regional Universities' Association, Sarua, has started on the complex subject of regional integration and what it means for higher education. The Challenges of Regional Integration and its Implications for Higher Education aims to "set the background for engagement" around regional integration rather than provide definitive answers or proposals.
Full report on the University World News site:
SOUTH AFRICA: Universities cash in on soccer World Cup
Cornia Pretorius, Primarashni Gower and Munyaradzi Makoni* Universities are set to cash in on the 2010 Fifa World Cup with some institutions expected to earn up to R20 million (US$2.6 million), primarily from renting accommodation to some of the participating teams, their fans and media contingents following the competition. Universities have ploughed substantial investments into student residences and sporting facilities to take advantage of the huge event, and ultimately students will benefit.
Full report on the University World News site:
ZIMBABWE: Brain drain bites, academics strike
Science departments in Zimbabwe's universities have been hardest hit by a brain drain that has been blamed mostly on poor salaries. Last week low pay prompted lectures at all state-run higher education institutions go on strike as part of wider civil service industrial action.
Full report on the University World News site:
NEWSBRIEFS
EUROPE: ERC supports the EU 2020 strategy
Jan Petter Myklebust
The scientific council of the European Research Council has put a submission to the European Commission's 2020 strategic planning regarding the Framework 8 research programme 2014-2020. The document is well-argued and simply-presented, recommending spec ialisation and concentration of research between the commission and member states.
Full report on the University World News site:
EUROPE: EUA examines university quality culture
The European University Association has launched a new project to examine the internal 'quality culture' within universities across Europe, and how this has developed within the framework of the Bologna process.
Full report on the University World News site:
CAMEROON: Student housing and security problems
Students in Douala are facing increasing housing problems as landlords prefer to rent to more lucrative tenants, as well as burglaries when they do find student accommodation, according to newspapers.
Full report on the University World News site:
ARAB STATES: Grants to encourage women's studies
The Arab Women Organization has announced five research grants for young researchers in women's studies, and a prize for higher academic and scientific research into questions related to women. Candidates must be nationals of one of the organisation's member states.
Full report on the University World News site:
ACADEMIC FREEDOM
VENEZUELA: Police break up anti-Chavez protest
Daniel Sawney and Jonathan Travis*
On Thursday 4 February, police used tear gas, plastic bullets and water cannons to disperse hundreds of university protesters. Students started marching after the government pressured cable and satellite TV providers to drop an opposition channel. Demonstrations have appeared in cities across the country, accusing President Chavez of forcing Radio Caracas Television International off the airwaves to silence his critics.
More Academic Freedom reports on the University World News site:
SCIENCE SCENE
UK-NETHERLANDS: The long and short of ageing
British and Dutch scientists have identified the genetic variation that makes some people age faster than others and could also make them more susceptible to age-related diseases. The variation is related to telomeres - parts of the chromosome that shorten as cells divide and age and are considered a marker of ageing. In some people, the telomeres are shorter and they therefore appear to be older biologically than they are chronologically.
Full report on the University World News site:
US: Little warning for climate tipping points
As scientists around the world monitor the effects of climate change, many are on the look out for early signs of changes that might worsen the problem even further. But new research indicates it will be difficult to spot such ecological tipping points before they happen. In fact, in some cases dramatic changes to natural systems are likely to happen with little to no warning at all.
Full report on the University World News site:
AFRICA: Scientists scoop African Union awards
Munyaradzi Makoni
Professor Diane Hildebrandt was one of two South African winners of the inaugural African Union Scientific Awards for basic science, technology and innovation, announced during an African Union summit in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa recently. Hildebrandt said she represented "scientists and engineers in Africa - men and women - who are doing research in often very difficult conditions and always with too few resources".
Full report on the University World News site:
DENMARK: Ancient human genome rebuilt
Scientists have reconstructed the nuclear genome of a man who died in Greenland 4,000 years ago - the first time an ancient genome has been reconstructed in detail - revealing traits including a tendency to baldness, his eye and skin colour and his blood type.
Full report on the University World News site:
FEATURES
GLOBAL: More academics and students suffer attacks
Brendan O'Malley
Unesco's new global study, Education under Attack 2010, reports that in a hard core of countries, academics and students are suffering serious human rights violations, ranging from assassination to torture and death threats, mainly at the hands of government or government-backed forces. The study was launched in New York last week and presented to US policy makers in Washington. A new alliance of education, human rights and child protection agencies, held in New York at the offices of Human Rights Watch, sought a common agenda of co-operation to prevent attacks on education and ensure that perpetrators are punished.
Full report on the University World News site:
EUROPE: Leading the world in innovation
Mark Dodgson*
European research and innovation policy has always promoted collaboration between and within university and business sectors but recent developments point to improved outcomes. This is indicated by the recent announcement of three Knowledge and Innovation Communities or KICs - in climate change, sustainable energy and the information society - with the espoused objective to become world leaders in their fields.
Full report on the University World News site:
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
US: Higher education's new global order
John Aubrey Douglass
Governments are having an epiphany. They are increasingly recognising that their social and economic futures depend heavily on the educational attainment of their population, and as a corollary, on the size and quality of their higher education institutions and systems. Within this relatively new policy and economic environment, the command economy approaches to creating and regulating mass higher education that once dominated most parts of the world are withering. What is emerging is what I call 'Structured Opportunity Markets' (SOM) in higher education - essentially, a convergence, in some form, in the effort of nation-states to create a more lightly regulated and more flexible network of public higher education institutions, including diversified and mission-differentiated providers, new finance structures, and expanding enrolment and programme capacity.
More on the University World News site:
Paper from the Center for Studies in Higher Education, Berkeley:
GLOBAL: The Rise of Asia's universities
Richard C Levin*
At the beginning of the 21st century, the East is rising. The rapid economic development of Asia since the Second World War has altered the balance of power in the global economy and hence in geopolitics. The rising nations of the East all recognise the importance of an educated workforce as a means to economic growth and understand the impact of research in driving innovation and competitiveness. In the 1960s, 70s and 80s the higher education agenda in Asia's early developers - Japan, South Korea and Taiwan - was first and foremost to increase the fraction of their populations provided with postsecondary education. Their initial focus was on expanding the number of institutions and their enrolments, and impressive results were achieved. Today, the later and much larger developing nations of Asia - China and India - have an even more ambitious agenda.
More on the University World News site:
Yale President's lecture to The Royal Society, UK :
GLOBAL: Plagiarism dilemmas in university management
Wendy Sutherland-Smith*
The following is an extract from a Paper in the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management.
Universities face constant scrutiny about their plagiarism management strategies, policies and procedures. A resounding theme, usually media inspired, is that plagiarism is rife, unstoppable and university processes are ineffectual in its wake. This has been referred to as a 'moral panic' approach and suggests plagiarism will thwart all efforts to reclaim academic integrity in higher education. However, revisiting the origins of plagiarism and exploring its legal evolution reveals that legal discourse is the foundation for many plagiarism management policies and processes around the world. Interestingly, criminal justice aims are also reflected in university plagiarism management strategies.
More on the University World News site:
U-SAY
From Michel Rose,
Paris-based journalist
Thanks for your story in the excellent University World News newsletter, which I read every Sunday. I wanted to let you know my utter confusion as to this new '4ICU' ranking which seems even more biased and useless than other rankings. My observations concern the position of French institutions in this ranking system.
Read the full letter on the University World News site:
UNI-LATERAL: Off-beat university stories
AUSTRALIA: Boomerang kids return home
Moving back home with mum and dad is not necessarily a negative step for the 'boomerang generation', a study by Deakin University researchers in Melbourne has found. Rather than being considered a step backwards, the young adults who took part in the study saw such a move as one small, mostly positive, step sideways on life's long journey.
Full report on the University World News site:
US: Barack Obama, Professor in Chief
Barack Obama has been called a lot of things since he hit the national stage: celebrity, elitist and even one who 'pals around with terrorists', writes Jack Stripling for Inside Higher Ed. But as his poll numbers come back down to earth, and an emboldened conservative movement sharpens its attacks, the label that seems to be sticking to Obama as much as any lately is that of 'professor'.
More on the University World News site:
NEW ZEALAND: 600 Otago University students disciplined
More than 600 University of Otago students were disciplined last year for criminal or disorderly behaviour and dishonesty, writes Allison Rudd for the Otago Daily News. Their offending included electronically altering exam results, falsifying documents, plagiarism, stealing other students' work or possessions, setting couches on fire, assault, trespass, wilful damage and offensive behaviour, discipline reports released by the university showed.
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WORLD ROUND-UP
UK: Thousands to lose university jobs as cuts bite
Universities across Britain are preparing to axe thousands of teaching jobs, close campuses and ditch courses to cope with government funding cuts, write Jessica Shepherd and Owen Bowcott for The Guardian. Other plans include using postgraduates rather than professors for teaching and the delay of major building projects. The proposals have already provoked ballots for industrial action at a number of universities in the past week raising fears of strike action that could severely disrupt lectures and examinations.
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IRAN: Professors slam expulsions and threats
A group of professors at Tarbiat Modares University, which spec ialises in training university staff and researchers, wrote an open letter to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warning him that the continuation of fear tactics in universities will have "destructive effects", reports Radio Zamaneh. On Wednesday, Kalameh website published the letter signed by 116 professors expressing grave concern over arrests and expulsion of students and sackings of academics.
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IRAN: Court cuts jail term for US-Iranian scholar
An Iranian appeal court has reduced to five years the jail sentence for an Iranian-American scholar detained after last year's disputed election and accused of espionage, an Iranian news agency reported on Wednesday, according to Reuters. In October, official media said Kian Tajbakhsh was sentenced to more than 12 years in jail.
More on the University World News site:
NETHERLANDS: Court rebukes policy on Iranian scientists
A court in The Hague dealt a blow to the Dutch government's controversial attempts to keep sensitive nuclear technology out of the hands of Iran, writes Martin Enserink for Science Insider. Its policy to ban Iranian-born students and scientists from certain masters degrees and from nuclear research facilities in The Netherlands is overly broad and a violation of an international civil rights treaty, the court ruled earlier this month.
More on the University World News site:
UK: Iranian tensions shake Durham's ivory towers
It's a long way from Iran to north-east England, but anger about the crushing of opposition protests by the Islamic regime has generated a furious row at Durham University, where one academic has condemned the British government for turning "the slaughter of innocent teenagers in Iraq and Afghanistan into an art form", writes Ian Black for The Guardian.
More on the University World News site:
UK: University applications reach record levels
More than 200,000 would-be students are likely to be left without a place at a UK university this year as undergraduate applications reach record levels for the fourth year running, write Anna Bawden and Warwick Mansell for The Guardian. Applications are almost a fifth up on last year, according to the latest figures from the university admissions service, Ucas.
More on the University World News site:
MALAYSIA: New bill to regulate higher education sector
A bill to empower the Higher Education Ministry to govern institutions of higher learning is being promulgated, said Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin, reports the official news agency Bernama. He said although there were provisions under six acts to regulate the management of higher education sector, they were piecemeal in nature and not comprehensive.
More on the University World News site:
TAIWAN: Exchanges with US universities encouraged
Taiwan will encourage local universities to seek out and expand exchanges with their US counterparts in the hope of giving Taiwan a voice in public policy debates in the United States, Minister of Education Wu Ching-ji said, Lin Szu-yu and Elizabeth Hsu report for the Central News Agency.
More on the University World News site:
US: Call for better treatment of non-tenured academics
A coalition of academic associations last week issued a joint statement calling on colleges to recognise that they have 'one faculty' and to treat those off the tenure track as professionals, with pay, benefits, professional development and participation in governance, writes Scott Jaschik for Inside Higher Ed.
More on the University World News site:
US: Outspoken hurricane expert sues over dismissal
Last April Ivor van Heerden, an internationally known hurricane expert, was told he was losing his job at Louisiana State University, writes John Schwartz for The New York Times. He and other experts said it was because of his outspoken criticism of the federal government's flood protection of New Orleans; the university would not comment. Now Van Heerden, the former deputy director of the university's Hurricane Center, is suing the university to get his job back.
More on the University World News site:
US: Private colleges looking to rein in financial aid
In the last year, America's private colleges have laid off staff, shelved construction projects, slashed sports teams and turned down thermostats to cut costs. But student financial aid has kept flowing, writes Eric Gorski for Associated Press. Now the weak economy is forcing some institutions to limit their generosity after many of them doubled or even tripled financial aid over the last decade to attract more applicants and reduce student debt.
More on the University World News site:
US: 11 students held for disrupting Israeli's speech
Soon after Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Oren began his speech last Monday night at the University of California, Irvine, the first student rose, writes Raja Abdulrahim for the Los Angeles Times. "Michael Oren, propagating murder is not an expression of free speech," the student in a gray hoodie yelled. The remainder of his words were drowned out by an uproar of cheering and clapping from students before he was led away by university police. It was the first of 10 interruptions throughout the speech, and by the end of the night, 11 students had been arrested and cited for disturbing a public event.
More on the University World News site:
US: University of California's Commission on the Future
With California's public university system shackled to a shrinking budget, a group of chancellors, students and others considers ideas - from banal to radical - to keep quality up and costs down, writes Larry Gordon for the Los Angeles Times.
More on the University World News site:
PAKISTAN: Expand ties with China, says President
Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari said last week that he wants to take the Pak-China bilateral trade and commercial ties to new heights, Dawn reports. Talking to a Chinese delegation led by the Vice-Governor of Sichuan Province, Zardari reiterated that strengthening and expanding cooperation with China in all fields was one of the key objectives of Pakistan's foreign policy.
More on the University World News site:
GLOBAL: Education under increasing attack
Around the world, schools and universities have faced brutal military and political attacks in an increasing number of countries over the past three years, according to a new report published by Unesco. The report, Education under Attack 2010, was written by University World News correspondent Brendan O'Malley and he says the sheer volume of incidents demonstrates that attacks on education are "by no means limited to supporters of the Taliban fighting in the hills of Afghanistan". Education and those involved have been subject to attacks in at least 31 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe.
Full report on the University World News site:
See O'Malley's commentary in the Features section:
UK: Crackdown on student visas
Diane Spencer
The Home Office has introduced stringent new rules for overseas students seeking to study in the UK. Alan Johnson, Labour's Home Secretary, announced last Sunday that applicants would have to speak passable English and those on short courses would not be allowed to bring in dependants. Those on non-degree courses would be allowed to work 10 hours a week instead of 20. Visas for non-degree courses would be granted to institutions that are on a new register, The Highly Trusted Sponsors List.
Full report on the University World News site:
AUSTRALIA: 20,000 applications cancelled
Geoff Maslen
At least 20,000 applications by foreign students for permanent residence have been cancelled because of their poor English and qualifications considered no longer in demand. In the biggest shake-up of what had become an education-migration industry, Immigration Minister Senator Chris Evans announced an overhaul of Australia's independent skilled migration system to break the link between students studying a trade in short supply and remaining in the country.
Full report on the University World News site:
US: Tighter visa restrictions but students still enrol
Sarah King Head
In spite of tightened security and controls governing the issuing of student visas, no significant change has occurred in the percentage of foreign students enrolled at US colleges and universities since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. Indeed, the proportion - as a percentage of total US higher education enrolment figures - remained steady at around 3.5% between 2002 and 2009, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Full report on the University World News site:
DENMARK: Sackings create confusion and anger
Jan Petter Myklebust
More than 80 scientific staff in the departments of geology and biology at Copenhagen University were sacked last month with immediate notice. Altogether 110 staff will lose their jobs and another 30 who accept early retirement will not be replaced.
Full report on the University World News site:
THE NETHERLANDS: Students protest against grant cuts
Jan Petter Myklebust
Education Minister Ronald Plasterk has proposed substituting the monthly student grant of €266 (US$367) with a loan system. More than 1,000 students protested at the move, occupying lecture halls and university buildings in Amsterdam, Nijmegen, Utrecht and Rotterdam.
Full report on the University World News site:
NZ: Government promises education reforms
John Gerritsen
Universities look set to benefit but students could face a tougher financial support regime after the government announced that education would be one of its priorities for reform this year.
Full report on the University World News site:
CANADA: Troubled First Nations' funding halved
Philip Fine
After five years of being mired in financial scandals and dragging its feet on commitments to solve its governance problems, the small but symbolically important First Nations University of Canada has lost the confidence of the federal and provincial governments.
Full report on the University World News site:
FINLAND: When the going gets tough?.
Ian R Dobson*
One rarely hears talk about redundancies in the Finnish university sector but the University of Oulu in the country's north-west is thinking along those lines. It finds itself in a financial bind largely because of cutbacks in government funding to the tune of nearly €9 million a year (about US$12.4 million). The university aims to get its budget back into the black by 2012.
Full report on the University World News site:
SOUTH AFRICA: Cost woes spark student protests
Munyaradzi Makoni
Two things never disappear from the grievance lists of South African students - fees and accommodation. No sooner had the 2010 academic year begun than students at some universities clashed with administrations and the police over fee hikes and lousy residences. Students renewed their call for free higher education while universities reported that student debt now tops R2.8 billion (US$363 million).
Full report on the University World News site:
EGYPT: New schools at oldest private university
Ashraf Khaled
This month has been action-packed for the American University in Cairo, Egypt's oldest independent higher education institution founded 90 years ago. At high profile ceremonies attended by Egyptian and foreign dignitaries, the university launched three new schools - of global affairs and public policy, business, and graduate education.
Full report on the University World News site:
SOUTHERN AFRICA: Regional integration and higher education
Sharon Dell
In a recent report, the Southern African Regional Universities' Association, Sarua, has started on the complex subject of regional integration and what it means for higher education. The Challenges of Regional Integration and its Implications for Higher Education aims to "set the background for engagement" around regional integration rather than provide definitive answers or proposals.
Full report on the University World News site:
SOUTH AFRICA: Universities cash in on soccer World Cup
Cornia Pretorius, Primarashni Gower and Munyaradzi Makoni* Universities are set to cash in on the 2010 Fifa World Cup with some institutions expected to earn up to R20 million (US$2.6 million), primarily from renting accommodation to some of the participating teams, their fans and media contingents following the competition. Universities have ploughed substantial investments into student residences and sporting facilities to take advantage of the huge event, and ultimately students will benefit.
Full report on the University World News site:
ZIMBABWE: Brain drain bites, academics strike
Science departments in Zimbabwe's universities have been hardest hit by a brain drain that has been blamed mostly on poor salaries. Last week low pay prompted lectures at all state-run higher education institutions go on strike as part of wider civil service industrial action.
Full report on the University World News site:
NEWSBRIEFS
EUROPE: ERC supports the EU 2020 strategy
Jan Petter Myklebust
The scientific council of the European Research Council has put a submission to the European Commission's 2020 strategic planning regarding the Framework 8 research programme 2014-2020. The document is well-argued and simply-presented, recommending spec ialisation and concentration of research between the commission and member states.
Full report on the University World News site:
EUROPE: EUA examines university quality culture
The European University Association has launched a new project to examine the internal 'quality culture' within universities across Europe, and how this has developed within the framework of the Bologna process.
Full report on the University World News site:
CAMEROON: Student housing and security problems
Students in Douala are facing increasing housing problems as landlords prefer to rent to more lucrative tenants, as well as burglaries when they do find student accommodation, according to newspapers.
Full report on the University World News site:
ARAB STATES: Grants to encourage women's studies
The Arab Women Organization has announced five research grants for young researchers in women's studies, and a prize for higher academic and scientific research into questions related to women. Candidates must be nationals of one of the organisation's member states.
Full report on the University World News site:
ACADEMIC FREEDOM
VENEZUELA: Police break up anti-Chavez protest
Daniel Sawney and Jonathan Travis*
On Thursday 4 February, police used tear gas, plastic bullets and water cannons to disperse hundreds of university protesters. Students started marching after the government pressured cable and satellite TV providers to drop an opposition channel. Demonstrations have appeared in cities across the country, accusing President Chavez of forcing Radio Caracas Television International off the airwaves to silence his critics.
More Academic Freedom reports on the University World News site:
SCIENCE SCENE
UK-NETHERLANDS: The long and short of ageing
British and Dutch scientists have identified the genetic variation that makes some people age faster than others and could also make them more susceptible to age-related diseases. The variation is related to telomeres - parts of the chromosome that shorten as cells divide and age and are considered a marker of ageing. In some people, the telomeres are shorter and they therefore appear to be older biologically than they are chronologically.
Full report on the University World News site:
US: Little warning for climate tipping points
As scientists around the world monitor the effects of climate change, many are on the look out for early signs of changes that might worsen the problem even further. But new research indicates it will be difficult to spot such ecological tipping points before they happen. In fact, in some cases dramatic changes to natural systems are likely to happen with little to no warning at all.
Full report on the University World News site:
AFRICA: Scientists scoop African Union awards
Munyaradzi Makoni
Professor Diane Hildebrandt was one of two South African winners of the inaugural African Union Scientific Awards for basic science, technology and innovation, announced during an African Union summit in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa recently. Hildebrandt said she represented "scientists and engineers in Africa - men and women - who are doing research in often very difficult conditions and always with too few resources".
Full report on the University World News site:
DENMARK: Ancient human genome rebuilt
Scientists have reconstructed the nuclear genome of a man who died in Greenland 4,000 years ago - the first time an ancient genome has been reconstructed in detail - revealing traits including a tendency to baldness, his eye and skin colour and his blood type.
Full report on the University World News site:
FEATURES
GLOBAL: More academics and students suffer attacks
Brendan O'Malley
Unesco's new global study, Education under Attack 2010, reports that in a hard core of countries, academics and students are suffering serious human rights violations, ranging from assassination to torture and death threats, mainly at the hands of government or government-backed forces. The study was launched in New York last week and presented to US policy makers in Washington. A new alliance of education, human rights and child protection agencies, held in New York at the offices of Human Rights Watch, sought a common agenda of co-operation to prevent attacks on education and ensure that perpetrators are punished.
Full report on the University World News site:
EUROPE: Leading the world in innovation
Mark Dodgson*
European research and innovation policy has always promoted collaboration between and within university and business sectors but recent developments point to improved outcomes. This is indicated by the recent announcement of three Knowledge and Innovation Communities or KICs - in climate change, sustainable energy and the information society - with the espoused objective to become world leaders in their fields.
Full report on the University World News site:
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
US: Higher education's new global order
John Aubrey Douglass
Governments are having an epiphany. They are increasingly recognising that their social and economic futures depend heavily on the educational attainment of their population, and as a corollary, on the size and quality of their higher education institutions and systems. Within this relatively new policy and economic environment, the command economy approaches to creating and regulating mass higher education that once dominated most parts of the world are withering. What is emerging is what I call 'Structured Opportunity Markets' (SOM) in higher education - essentially, a convergence, in some form, in the effort of nation-states to create a more lightly regulated and more flexible network of public higher education institutions, including diversified and mission-differentiated providers, new finance structures, and expanding enrolment and programme capacity.
More on the University World News site:
Paper from the Center for Studies in Higher Education, Berkeley:
GLOBAL: The Rise of Asia's universities
Richard C Levin*
At the beginning of the 21st century, the East is rising. The rapid economic development of Asia since the Second World War has altered the balance of power in the global economy and hence in geopolitics. The rising nations of the East all recognise the importance of an educated workforce as a means to economic growth and understand the impact of research in driving innovation and competitiveness. In the 1960s, 70s and 80s the higher education agenda in Asia's early developers - Japan, South Korea and Taiwan - was first and foremost to increase the fraction of their populations provided with postsecondary education. Their initial focus was on expanding the number of institutions and their enrolments, and impressive results were achieved. Today, the later and much larger developing nations of Asia - China and India - have an even more ambitious agenda.
More on the University World News site:
Yale President's lecture to The Royal Society, UK :
GLOBAL: Plagiarism dilemmas in university management
Wendy Sutherland-Smith*
The following is an extract from a Paper in the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management.
Universities face constant scrutiny about their plagiarism management strategies, policies and procedures. A resounding theme, usually media inspired, is that plagiarism is rife, unstoppable and university processes are ineffectual in its wake. This has been referred to as a 'moral panic' approach and suggests plagiarism will thwart all efforts to reclaim academic integrity in higher education. However, revisiting the origins of plagiarism and exploring its legal evolution reveals that legal discourse is the foundation for many plagiarism management policies and processes around the world. Interestingly, criminal justice aims are also reflected in university plagiarism management strategies.
More on the University World News site:
U-SAY
From Michel Rose,
Paris-based journalist
Thanks for your story in the excellent University World News newsletter, which I read every Sunday. I wanted to let you know my utter confusion as to this new '4ICU' ranking which seems even more biased and useless than other rankings. My observations concern the position of French institutions in this ranking system.
Read the full letter on the University World News site:
UNI-LATERAL: Off-beat university stories
AUSTRALIA: Boomerang kids return home
Moving back home with mum and dad is not necessarily a negative step for the 'boomerang generation', a study by Deakin University researchers in Melbourne has found. Rather than being considered a step backwards, the young adults who took part in the study saw such a move as one small, mostly positive, step sideways on life's long journey.
Full report on the University World News site:
US: Barack Obama, Professor in Chief
Barack Obama has been called a lot of things since he hit the national stage: celebrity, elitist and even one who 'pals around with terrorists', writes Jack Stripling for Inside Higher Ed. But as his poll numbers come back down to earth, and an emboldened conservative movement sharpens its attacks, the label that seems to be sticking to Obama as much as any lately is that of 'professor'.
More on the University World News site:
NEW ZEALAND: 600 Otago University students disciplined
More than 600 University of Otago students were disciplined last year for criminal or disorderly behaviour and dishonesty, writes Allison Rudd for the Otago Daily News. Their offending included electronically altering exam results, falsifying documents, plagiarism, stealing other students' work or possessions, setting couches on fire, assault, trespass, wilful damage and offensive behaviour, discipline reports released by the university showed.
More on the University World News site:
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WORLD ROUND-UP
UK: Thousands to lose university jobs as cuts bite
Universities across Britain are preparing to axe thousands of teaching jobs, close campuses and ditch courses to cope with government funding cuts, write Jessica Shepherd and Owen Bowcott for The Guardian. Other plans include using postgraduates rather than professors for teaching and the delay of major building projects. The proposals have already provoked ballots for industrial action at a number of universities in the past week raising fears of strike action that could severely disrupt lectures and examinations.
More on the University World News site:
IRAN: Professors slam expulsions and threats
A group of professors at Tarbiat Modares University, which spec ialises in training university staff and researchers, wrote an open letter to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warning him that the continuation of fear tactics in universities will have "destructive effects", reports Radio Zamaneh. On Wednesday, Kalameh website published the letter signed by 116 professors expressing grave concern over arrests and expulsion of students and sackings of academics.
More on the University World News site:
IRAN: Court cuts jail term for US-Iranian scholar
An Iranian appeal court has reduced to five years the jail sentence for an Iranian-American scholar detained after last year's disputed election and accused of espionage, an Iranian news agency reported on Wednesday, according to Reuters. In October, official media said Kian Tajbakhsh was sentenced to more than 12 years in jail.
More on the University World News site:
NETHERLANDS: Court rebukes policy on Iranian scientists
A court in The Hague dealt a blow to the Dutch government's controversial attempts to keep sensitive nuclear technology out of the hands of Iran, writes Martin Enserink for Science Insider. Its policy to ban Iranian-born students and scientists from certain masters degrees and from nuclear research facilities in The Netherlands is overly broad and a violation of an international civil rights treaty, the court ruled earlier this month.
More on the University World News site:
UK: Iranian tensions shake Durham's ivory towers
It's a long way from Iran to north-east England, but anger about the crushing of opposition protests by the Islamic regime has generated a furious row at Durham University, where one academic has condemned the British government for turning "the slaughter of innocent teenagers in Iraq and Afghanistan into an art form", writes Ian Black for The Guardian.
More on the University World News site:
UK: University applications reach record levels
More than 200,000 would-be students are likely to be left without a place at a UK university this year as undergraduate applications reach record levels for the fourth year running, write Anna Bawden and Warwick Mansell for The Guardian. Applications are almost a fifth up on last year, according to the latest figures from the university admissions service, Ucas.
More on the University World News site:
MALAYSIA: New bill to regulate higher education sector
A bill to empower the Higher Education Ministry to govern institutions of higher learning is being promulgated, said Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin, reports the official news agency Bernama. He said although there were provisions under six acts to regulate the management of higher education sector, they were piecemeal in nature and not comprehensive.
More on the University World News site:
TAIWAN: Exchanges with US universities encouraged
Taiwan will encourage local universities to seek out and expand exchanges with their US counterparts in the hope of giving Taiwan a voice in public policy debates in the United States, Minister of Education Wu Ching-ji said, Lin Szu-yu and Elizabeth Hsu report for the Central News Agency.
More on the University World News site:
US: Call for better treatment of non-tenured academics
A coalition of academic associations last week issued a joint statement calling on colleges to recognise that they have 'one faculty' and to treat those off the tenure track as professionals, with pay, benefits, professional development and participation in governance, writes Scott Jaschik for Inside Higher Ed.
More on the University World News site:
US: Outspoken hurricane expert sues over dismissal
Last April Ivor van Heerden, an internationally known hurricane expert, was told he was losing his job at Louisiana State University, writes John Schwartz for The New York Times. He and other experts said it was because of his outspoken criticism of the federal government's flood protection of New Orleans; the university would not comment. Now Van Heerden, the former deputy director of the university's Hurricane Center, is suing the university to get his job back.
More on the University World News site:
US: Private colleges looking to rein in financial aid
In the last year, America's private colleges have laid off staff, shelved construction projects, slashed sports teams and turned down thermostats to cut costs. But student financial aid has kept flowing, writes Eric Gorski for Associated Press. Now the weak economy is forcing some institutions to limit their generosity after many of them doubled or even tripled financial aid over the last decade to attract more applicants and reduce student debt.
More on the University World News site:
US: 11 students held for disrupting Israeli's speech
Soon after Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Oren began his speech last Monday night at the University of California, Irvine, the first student rose, writes Raja Abdulrahim for the Los Angeles Times. "Michael Oren, propagating murder is not an expression of free speech," the student in a gray hoodie yelled. The remainder of his words were drowned out by an uproar of cheering and clapping from students before he was led away by university police. It was the first of 10 interruptions throughout the speech, and by the end of the night, 11 students had been arrested and cited for disturbing a public event.
More on the University World News site:
US: University of California's Commission on the Future
With California's public university system shackled to a shrinking budget, a group of chancellors, students and others considers ideas - from banal to radical - to keep quality up and costs down, writes Larry Gordon for the Los Angeles Times.
More on the University World News site:
PAKISTAN: Expand ties with China, says President
Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari said last week that he wants to take the Pak-China bilateral trade and commercial ties to new heights, Dawn reports. Talking to a Chinese delegation led by the Vice-Governor of Sichuan Province, Zardari reiterated that strengthening and expanding cooperation with China in all fields was one of the key objectives of Pakistan's foreign policy.
More on the University World News site:
Sunday 7 February 2010
University World News 0110 - 8th February 2010
NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report
EUROPE: Developing a worldwide league table
The European Union plans to publish a worldwide ranking of universities next year that it hopes will rival existing global league tables. The aim is to boost the place of European universities in the Shanghai Jiao Tong and Times Higher Education ranking systems, both dominated by US institutions.
Full report on the University World News site:
EUROPE: EUA president promises rankings review
David Haworth
University rankings can sometimes be confusing and should not be the basis for devising policy because universities are confronted with rankings every day, said Jean-Marc Rapp, President of the European University Association. Speaking at the association's spring meeting in Brussels at the end of January, Rapp said rankings were volatile and he promised an annual review as a service for the EUA's 850 institutional members.
Full report on the University World News site:
GLOBAL: Ranking universities by web popularity
Geoff Maslen
A company that produces an online ranking of the world's universities based on the popularity of their websites has just released its world top 200 institutions for 2010. Called 4 International Colleges and Universities, or www.4icu.org, the company describes its website as an online directory of accredited, four-year institutions around the globe.
Full report on the University World News site:
UK: Spending on universities slashed
Diane Spencer
English universities face massive cuts for the first time in a decade and just as demand for places is increasing. The Higher Education Funding Council for England told vice-chancellors last week that some £215 million (US$342 million) will be sliced off teaching budgets in 2010-11. Spending on science, technology, engineering and maths, the so-called Stem subjects, however, will be safeguarded. Individual institutions will learn details of their grant allocations on 18 March.
Full report on the University World News site:
SOUTH AFRICA: Top UK astronomer suspended
Karen MacGregor
The suspension in South Africa of internationally recognised British astronomer Professor Phil Charles has stunned the astronomy community and raised concerns about this country's relationship with international scientists. It might also undermine South Africa's bid against Australia to host the world's biggest radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).
Full report on the University World News site:
US: Voluntary support down by 12%
Sarah King Head
It is hardly surprising that voluntary support for US colleges and universities has declined over the past year given the current economic crisis. But 2009 saw the greatest fall in more than half a century.
Full report on the University World News site:
ISRAEL: Controversy over upgrading college to university
Helena Flusfeder
Controversy has erupted over a decision to upgrade an Israeli college in the West Bank and give it university status. Described by one critic as "an academic settlement in occupied territory", the move to have the college in the West Bank town of Ariel officially recognised as a university centre has been vehemently opposed by Israel's Council for Higher Education which contends there is no academic need for another university.
Full report on the University World News site:
FRANCE: Paris-Dauphine fees increase may be illegal
Jane Marshall
A decision by the University Paris-Dauphine to increase fees for some of its masters courses from €231 (US$321) to as much as €4,000 has angered lecturers and students, while Minister for Higher Education and Research Valérie Pécresse believes the move could be illegal.
Full report on the University World News site:
GERMANY: Proposal to train imams at universities
Michael Gardner
Germany's Wissenschaftsrat or Science Council has recommended that Islamic theology play a more significant role in higher education institutions. The council, one of the country's chief advisory bodies to the government on higher education and research matters, proposes establishing centres for Islamic studies at two or three publicly funded universities.
Full report on the University World News site:
NEWSBRIEFS
EUROPE: Nowotny new ERC President?
Jan Petter Myklebust
With the retirement of Fotis C Kafatos as President of the European Research Council and Chairman of the Scientific Council, rumours in Brussels suggest Helga Nowotny, one of the vice-presidents of ERC, will be elected to take his place at the next meeting of the Scientific Board in Bucharest next month.
Full report on the University World News site:
GLOBAL: Wood to head commonwealth association
The Association of Commonwealth Universities has appointed Imperial College London's Professor John Wood as its new Secretary General. Wood, currently senior international relations adviser at the college, will take up the post on 1 July. He succeeds Professor John Tarrant.
Full report on the University World News site:
SOUTHERN AFRICA: New health research initiative
A new initiative aimed at encouraging development of health research capacity in Southern Africa has been launched. The academic training project is being funded by the Wellcome Trust of London, one of the world's largest medical research charities, through a US$50 million pledge made last year in July to support health research at 50 institutions spread across 18 African countries.
Full report on the University World News site:
BUSINESS
EUROPE: New methods to clean up industrial processes
Alan Osborn
The EU will provide €1 million (US$1.4 million) to help a team of UK researchers at Leicester University develop a range of ionic liquid solvents to provide safe, non-toxic alternatives to harmful solutions used in industrial processes. One aim is to improve the working conditions of people exposed to carcinogenic toxic acids and electrolytes that are used in some processes, such as those relating to commercial metal finishing and energy storage.
Full report on the University World News site:
AUSTRALIA: A golden opportunity for developing countries
Leah Germain
A professor from the Melbourne Business School in Australia has proposed an innovative plan to create a multi-billion dollar fund to provide financial assistance for carbon reduction initiatives in developing countries. Professor Gary Sampson has touted the plan as a positive version of "creative accounting", because it exploits the difference between the International Monetary Fund book value for gold and what can be earned by selling this precious metal on global commodity markets.
Full report on the University World News site:
EUROPE: Expansion for EU vocational education
Keith Nuthall
The Greece-based European Union agency charged with promoting vocational education and training in Europe has released a forecast on the anticipated demand and supply of skills until 2020. Releasing the report at a Brussels conference, agency Cedefop predicts a "steady rise in knowledge- and skill-intensive occupations".
Full report on the University World News site:
FEATURES
INDIA: Selling services or spreading light?
Alan Ruby*
Over the last 20 years, the growth of the global middle class has driven up demand for higher education. A global market for education is operating with new forms of information-ranking systems to guide consumer choices. India, despite rapid growth in wealth and a large under-served population of young people, was quarantined, isolated by government regulatory barriers. That may be about to change.
Full report on the University World News site:
NORWAY: A free system but for how long?
Jan Petter Myklebust
Higher education in Norway is a part of a welfare society and is defined as a public good so 100% of the education part of the budget is publicly funded. Although a few private institutions exist, they are mainly in business studies. The present coalition government, with a Left Soc ialist minister of higher education, will ensure international students also do not face fees - at least for the next three years. But this could change, given that the budget for universities this year is extremely tight.
Full report on the University World News site:
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
AUSTRALIA: Casual approach to the academic workforce
Hamish Coates, Ian R Dobson, Leo Goedegebuure and Lynn Meek* The response of Australian academics to the Changing Academic Profession survey indicates that they are among the least satisfied academics in the world. This dissatisfaction has been expressed after two decades of rapid growth in the student body and structural changes in the academic workforce, particularly an expansion in the amount of teaching provided by casual staff. Growth in casual staff numbers is a factor that has simultaneously created a precariously employed but cheaper and more flexible workforce along with higher levels of stress among the full-time teachers responsible for managing and supervising casual teachers.
Full article on the University World News site:
US: Top 10 higher education state policy issues
In 2009, two contradictory movements shaped the US public higher education policy landscape, according to the latest Policy Matters brief of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, titled Top 10 State Higher Education Policy Issues for 2010. While higher education soared up the national policy agenda, states focused attention on funding cuts to post-secondary institutions.
More on the University World News site:
UNI-LATERAL: Off-beat university stories
GLOBAL: Examination howlers: but who is fooling whom?
Geoff Maslen
As students returned to their campuses in Europe and other countries in the northern hemisphere after the Christmas break, they faced the first set of examinations for the year. While they have little choice but to sit the exams, or go home again, students have their own way of getting back at a system that often makes them feel powerless. During a medical school examination, to give one example, students were asked: What is a fibula? To which one replied, "A little lie". In another test, a student wrote that a myth was a female moth while someone else declared that Algebra was the wife of Euclid.
Full report on the University World News site:
UK: Video diaries reveal depths of post-Christmas blues
The return to university after Christmas is a low point for many students as they face examinations following a festive break that is often less restful than expected. Researchers at the University of Leicester who asked students to keep a regular video diary have discovered that post-Christmas blues are very real for many who find the need to earn and revise during the holiday season leaves them drained at the start of the New Year.
Full report on the University World News site:
NORWAY: Sacked professor loses case
Jan Petter Myklebust
A sacked professor of medieval history who sued the University of Oslo for wrongful dismissal has lost the case. Arnved Nedkvitne was dismissed by the university's academic senate last year. He was seeking to regain his tenured professorship and compensation for loss of income but lost on both issues and was also ordered to pay -23,000 in costs.
Full report on the University World News site:
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WORLD ROUND-UP
HAITI: University rector reports on quake devastation
"It's my first time on the internet since Tuesday's earthquake," writes Dr Jacky Lumarque, Rector of Université Quisqueya in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. "My apologies to friends who may have been worried by my silence but I have been focused on rescue operations and assistance to families. I was bent on not ending rescue operations until getting confirmation that the persons we were searching for had indeed died."
More on the University World News site:
IRELAND: Professors teach just four hours a week: Minister
Education Minister Batt O'Keeffe has accused some university professors of teaching as few as four hours a week, writes John Walshe for the Irish Independent. They are earning between €120,000 (US$166,000) and €143,000 a year for what the minister last week called a "light" teaching load, as well as for research and administration.
More on the University World News site:
CANADA: China snubs university over Dalai Lama
The Chinese government has removed Canada's University of Calgary from its list of accredited institutions - a move school officials fear is linked to the Dalai Lama's visit last autumn, writes Gwendolyn Richards for the Calgary Herald. The university hosted the Tibetan spiritual leader and awarded him an honorary degree when he visited the city last September.
More on the University World News site:
US: University adds worker rights to Abu Dhabi contract
Workers involved in building and operating New York University's Middle East campus in Abu Dhabi must have protections in areas such as how often they are paid and how many hours they can work in a week, the university announced on Wednesday in a move that human rights advocates hope reverberates around the region, writes Deepti Hajela for The Associated Press.
More on the University World News site:
US: Science funding gets a boost
A tough budget year could have meant big cuts for science research funding, but as mapped out in the Obama administration's plan for the 2011 fiscal year released on Monday, it doesn't, writes Jennifer Epstein for Inside Higher Ed. Though President Barack Obama vowed in his State of the Union address to freeze discretionary domestic spending, his $3.8 trillion budget shifts priorities to find increases for science and technology research and education that well outpace the 1.1% rate of inflation expected over the next year. The budget proposes non-defence research expenditures totalling $61.6 billion, a 5.6% increase over 2010 levels.
More on the University World News site:
US: Class cuts wreak havoc at California universities
California's budget crisis came into stark focus in the halls of Sacramento State University, where many students returning for spring semester were turned away from classes they had hoped to get into, or strained from hallways to hear lectures in classes that had enrolled way more students than there were seats, writes Laurel Rosenhall for The Sacramento Bee. A group of dejected seniors stood in the hallway after being booted from a writing class they must take if they are to graduate in May. It was full, they weren't on the waiting list, and the professor didn't let any extra students in.
More on the University World News site:
UK: Seven compete for each place at top universities
Almost seven students are competing for each place at elite universities in the UK this year amid warnings that record numbers of straight-A candidates will be rejected, write Graeme Paton and Andrew Hough for The Daily Telegraph. Research by the newspaper suggests that applications for degree courses have soared by as much as a third at some institutions, despite a strict cap on the number of new places.
More on the University World News site:
SCOTLAND: University chiefs attack innovation fund
Lecturers' leaders and university principals last week attacked the handling of a controversial £110 million (US$172 million) fund to boost innovation in Scottish higher education, writes Andrew Denholm for The Herald. Critics said a new committee set up by the Scottish Funding Council to administer the so-called Horizon Fund lacked independent scrutiny and allowed officials to pursue "pet projects".
More on the University World News site:
CHINA: Test of English but not Chinese 'traitorous'
Four Shanghai universities that included an English test in their independent admission examinations but chose to leave out Chinese have come under flak for giving "more importance to a foreign language", Wu Yiyao reports for China Daily. Internet users flooded the Qiangguo Forum to voice their disapproval, calling the exams "traitorous" and "discriminatory" and accusing the universities of "blindly worshipping foreign languages".
More on the University World News site:
UK: Climate change scientist 'hid' data flaws
Professor Phil Jones, the beleaguered British climate scientist at the centre of the leaked emails controversy, is facing fresh claims that he sought to hide problems in key temperature data on which some of his work was based, writes Fred Pearce for The Guardian. An investigation by the newspaper of thousands of emails and documents apparently hacked from the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit has found evidence that a series of measurements from Chinese weather stations were seriously flawed and that documents relating to them could not be produced.
More on the University World News site:
US: Researcher on climate is cleared in inquiry
An academic board of inquiry has largely cleared a noted Pennsylvania State University climatologist of scientific misconduct, but a second panel will convene to determine whether his behaviour undermined public faith in the science of climate change, the university said last week, writes John M Broder for The New York Times. Dr Michael E Mann has been at the centre of a dispute arising from the unauthorised release of more than 1,000 e-mail messages from the servers of the University of East Anglia in England, home to one of the world's premier climate research units.
More on the University World News site:
US: Wisconsin moves to stop use of phony degrees
Wisconsin International University could be forced to change its name. So might Heed University. And a job applicant who recently tried to claim a phony degree from Madison Business College could be criminally prosecuted, writes Ryan J Foley for Business Week. State lawmakers are considering a bill that would crack down on the manufacture and use of phony academic credentials by criminalising both practices. If approved, Wisconsin would become the 12th state to make it a crime to use a bogus academic degree, said George Gollin, a University of Illinois professor who is an expert on the issue.
More on the University World News site:
NEPAL: Scholarships for the poor countrywide
The Student Financial Support Fund Development Committee (SFSFDC), which falls under the University Grant Commission, is set to provide scholarships to meritorious students from poor and disadvantaged communities across Nepal, in a bid to make higher education more accessible, reports The Himalayan Times.
More on the University World News site:
INDIA: Finance for poor students on the cards
To help students from financially poor backgrounds pursue higher education, the Ministry of Human Resource Development is contemplating the formation of an Education Finance Corporation to provide education loans at low interest rates, reports Express News Service.
More on the University World News site:
JAMAICA: Government ponders fund for needy students
Jamaica's government has agreed to consider, for the next financial year, a programme of support for tertiary students in dire financial distress and at risk of deregistration, reports The Gleaner. Students qualifying for the programme would be selected by means testing and on the recommendation of institutions, the Ministry of Education has said.
More on the University World News site:
TAIWAN: Universities must be globally competitive: President
Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou stressed on Tuesday the importance of making Taiwan universities globally competitive, and said he hoped they could attract 30,000 foreign students over the next four years, reports Central News Agency.
More on the University World News site:
YEMEN: Talks with China on increasing scholarships
Yemen and China have held talks about increasing cultural exchange scholarships between Yemeni and Chinese universities, the Yemen News Agency reports.
More on the University World News site:
EUROPE: Developing a worldwide league table
The European Union plans to publish a worldwide ranking of universities next year that it hopes will rival existing global league tables. The aim is to boost the place of European universities in the Shanghai Jiao Tong and Times Higher Education ranking systems, both dominated by US institutions.
Full report on the University World News site:
EUROPE: EUA president promises rankings review
David Haworth
University rankings can sometimes be confusing and should not be the basis for devising policy because universities are confronted with rankings every day, said Jean-Marc Rapp, President of the European University Association. Speaking at the association's spring meeting in Brussels at the end of January, Rapp said rankings were volatile and he promised an annual review as a service for the EUA's 850 institutional members.
Full report on the University World News site:
GLOBAL: Ranking universities by web popularity
Geoff Maslen
A company that produces an online ranking of the world's universities based on the popularity of their websites has just released its world top 200 institutions for 2010. Called 4 International Colleges and Universities, or www.4icu.org, the company describes its website as an online directory of accredited, four-year institutions around the globe.
Full report on the University World News site:
UK: Spending on universities slashed
Diane Spencer
English universities face massive cuts for the first time in a decade and just as demand for places is increasing. The Higher Education Funding Council for England told vice-chancellors last week that some £215 million (US$342 million) will be sliced off teaching budgets in 2010-11. Spending on science, technology, engineering and maths, the so-called Stem subjects, however, will be safeguarded. Individual institutions will learn details of their grant allocations on 18 March.
Full report on the University World News site:
SOUTH AFRICA: Top UK astronomer suspended
Karen MacGregor
The suspension in South Africa of internationally recognised British astronomer Professor Phil Charles has stunned the astronomy community and raised concerns about this country's relationship with international scientists. It might also undermine South Africa's bid against Australia to host the world's biggest radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).
Full report on the University World News site:
US: Voluntary support down by 12%
Sarah King Head
It is hardly surprising that voluntary support for US colleges and universities has declined over the past year given the current economic crisis. But 2009 saw the greatest fall in more than half a century.
Full report on the University World News site:
ISRAEL: Controversy over upgrading college to university
Helena Flusfeder
Controversy has erupted over a decision to upgrade an Israeli college in the West Bank and give it university status. Described by one critic as "an academic settlement in occupied territory", the move to have the college in the West Bank town of Ariel officially recognised as a university centre has been vehemently opposed by Israel's Council for Higher Education which contends there is no academic need for another university.
Full report on the University World News site:
FRANCE: Paris-Dauphine fees increase may be illegal
Jane Marshall
A decision by the University Paris-Dauphine to increase fees for some of its masters courses from €231 (US$321) to as much as €4,000 has angered lecturers and students, while Minister for Higher Education and Research Valérie Pécresse believes the move could be illegal.
Full report on the University World News site:
GERMANY: Proposal to train imams at universities
Michael Gardner
Germany's Wissenschaftsrat or Science Council has recommended that Islamic theology play a more significant role in higher education institutions. The council, one of the country's chief advisory bodies to the government on higher education and research matters, proposes establishing centres for Islamic studies at two or three publicly funded universities.
Full report on the University World News site:
NEWSBRIEFS
EUROPE: Nowotny new ERC President?
Jan Petter Myklebust
With the retirement of Fotis C Kafatos as President of the European Research Council and Chairman of the Scientific Council, rumours in Brussels suggest Helga Nowotny, one of the vice-presidents of ERC, will be elected to take his place at the next meeting of the Scientific Board in Bucharest next month.
Full report on the University World News site:
GLOBAL: Wood to head commonwealth association
The Association of Commonwealth Universities has appointed Imperial College London's Professor John Wood as its new Secretary General. Wood, currently senior international relations adviser at the college, will take up the post on 1 July. He succeeds Professor John Tarrant.
Full report on the University World News site:
SOUTHERN AFRICA: New health research initiative
A new initiative aimed at encouraging development of health research capacity in Southern Africa has been launched. The academic training project is being funded by the Wellcome Trust of London, one of the world's largest medical research charities, through a US$50 million pledge made last year in July to support health research at 50 institutions spread across 18 African countries.
Full report on the University World News site:
BUSINESS
EUROPE: New methods to clean up industrial processes
Alan Osborn
The EU will provide €1 million (US$1.4 million) to help a team of UK researchers at Leicester University develop a range of ionic liquid solvents to provide safe, non-toxic alternatives to harmful solutions used in industrial processes. One aim is to improve the working conditions of people exposed to carcinogenic toxic acids and electrolytes that are used in some processes, such as those relating to commercial metal finishing and energy storage.
Full report on the University World News site:
AUSTRALIA: A golden opportunity for developing countries
Leah Germain
A professor from the Melbourne Business School in Australia has proposed an innovative plan to create a multi-billion dollar fund to provide financial assistance for carbon reduction initiatives in developing countries. Professor Gary Sampson has touted the plan as a positive version of "creative accounting", because it exploits the difference between the International Monetary Fund book value for gold and what can be earned by selling this precious metal on global commodity markets.
Full report on the University World News site:
EUROPE: Expansion for EU vocational education
Keith Nuthall
The Greece-based European Union agency charged with promoting vocational education and training in Europe has released a forecast on the anticipated demand and supply of skills until 2020. Releasing the report at a Brussels conference, agency Cedefop predicts a "steady rise in knowledge- and skill-intensive occupations".
Full report on the University World News site:
FEATURES
INDIA: Selling services or spreading light?
Alan Ruby*
Over the last 20 years, the growth of the global middle class has driven up demand for higher education. A global market for education is operating with new forms of information-ranking systems to guide consumer choices. India, despite rapid growth in wealth and a large under-served population of young people, was quarantined, isolated by government regulatory barriers. That may be about to change.
Full report on the University World News site:
NORWAY: A free system but for how long?
Jan Petter Myklebust
Higher education in Norway is a part of a welfare society and is defined as a public good so 100% of the education part of the budget is publicly funded. Although a few private institutions exist, they are mainly in business studies. The present coalition government, with a Left Soc ialist minister of higher education, will ensure international students also do not face fees - at least for the next three years. But this could change, given that the budget for universities this year is extremely tight.
Full report on the University World News site:
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
AUSTRALIA: Casual approach to the academic workforce
Hamish Coates, Ian R Dobson, Leo Goedegebuure and Lynn Meek* The response of Australian academics to the Changing Academic Profession survey indicates that they are among the least satisfied academics in the world. This dissatisfaction has been expressed after two decades of rapid growth in the student body and structural changes in the academic workforce, particularly an expansion in the amount of teaching provided by casual staff. Growth in casual staff numbers is a factor that has simultaneously created a precariously employed but cheaper and more flexible workforce along with higher levels of stress among the full-time teachers responsible for managing and supervising casual teachers.
Full article on the University World News site:
US: Top 10 higher education state policy issues
In 2009, two contradictory movements shaped the US public higher education policy landscape, according to the latest Policy Matters brief of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, titled Top 10 State Higher Education Policy Issues for 2010. While higher education soared up the national policy agenda, states focused attention on funding cuts to post-secondary institutions.
More on the University World News site:
UNI-LATERAL: Off-beat university stories
GLOBAL: Examination howlers: but who is fooling whom?
Geoff Maslen
As students returned to their campuses in Europe and other countries in the northern hemisphere after the Christmas break, they faced the first set of examinations for the year. While they have little choice but to sit the exams, or go home again, students have their own way of getting back at a system that often makes them feel powerless. During a medical school examination, to give one example, students were asked: What is a fibula? To which one replied, "A little lie". In another test, a student wrote that a myth was a female moth while someone else declared that Algebra was the wife of Euclid.
Full report on the University World News site:
UK: Video diaries reveal depths of post-Christmas blues
The return to university after Christmas is a low point for many students as they face examinations following a festive break that is often less restful than expected. Researchers at the University of Leicester who asked students to keep a regular video diary have discovered that post-Christmas blues are very real for many who find the need to earn and revise during the holiday season leaves them drained at the start of the New Year.
Full report on the University World News site:
NORWAY: Sacked professor loses case
Jan Petter Myklebust
A sacked professor of medieval history who sued the University of Oslo for wrongful dismissal has lost the case. Arnved Nedkvitne was dismissed by the university's academic senate last year. He was seeking to regain his tenured professorship and compensation for loss of income but lost on both issues and was also ordered to pay -23,000 in costs.
Full report on the University World News site:
The Facebook group of University World News is the fastest growing in
higher education worldwide. Almost 1,800 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
HAITI: University rector reports on quake devastation
"It's my first time on the internet since Tuesday's earthquake," writes Dr Jacky Lumarque, Rector of Université Quisqueya in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. "My apologies to friends who may have been worried by my silence but I have been focused on rescue operations and assistance to families. I was bent on not ending rescue operations until getting confirmation that the persons we were searching for had indeed died."
More on the University World News site:
IRELAND: Professors teach just four hours a week: Minister
Education Minister Batt O'Keeffe has accused some university professors of teaching as few as four hours a week, writes John Walshe for the Irish Independent. They are earning between €120,000 (US$166,000) and €143,000 a year for what the minister last week called a "light" teaching load, as well as for research and administration.
More on the University World News site:
CANADA: China snubs university over Dalai Lama
The Chinese government has removed Canada's University of Calgary from its list of accredited institutions - a move school officials fear is linked to the Dalai Lama's visit last autumn, writes Gwendolyn Richards for the Calgary Herald. The university hosted the Tibetan spiritual leader and awarded him an honorary degree when he visited the city last September.
More on the University World News site:
US: University adds worker rights to Abu Dhabi contract
Workers involved in building and operating New York University's Middle East campus in Abu Dhabi must have protections in areas such as how often they are paid and how many hours they can work in a week, the university announced on Wednesday in a move that human rights advocates hope reverberates around the region, writes Deepti Hajela for The Associated Press.
More on the University World News site:
US: Science funding gets a boost
A tough budget year could have meant big cuts for science research funding, but as mapped out in the Obama administration's plan for the 2011 fiscal year released on Monday, it doesn't, writes Jennifer Epstein for Inside Higher Ed. Though President Barack Obama vowed in his State of the Union address to freeze discretionary domestic spending, his $3.8 trillion budget shifts priorities to find increases for science and technology research and education that well outpace the 1.1% rate of inflation expected over the next year. The budget proposes non-defence research expenditures totalling $61.6 billion, a 5.6% increase over 2010 levels.
More on the University World News site:
US: Class cuts wreak havoc at California universities
California's budget crisis came into stark focus in the halls of Sacramento State University, where many students returning for spring semester were turned away from classes they had hoped to get into, or strained from hallways to hear lectures in classes that had enrolled way more students than there were seats, writes Laurel Rosenhall for The Sacramento Bee. A group of dejected seniors stood in the hallway after being booted from a writing class they must take if they are to graduate in May. It was full, they weren't on the waiting list, and the professor didn't let any extra students in.
More on the University World News site:
UK: Seven compete for each place at top universities
Almost seven students are competing for each place at elite universities in the UK this year amid warnings that record numbers of straight-A candidates will be rejected, write Graeme Paton and Andrew Hough for The Daily Telegraph. Research by the newspaper suggests that applications for degree courses have soared by as much as a third at some institutions, despite a strict cap on the number of new places.
More on the University World News site:
SCOTLAND: University chiefs attack innovation fund
Lecturers' leaders and university principals last week attacked the handling of a controversial £110 million (US$172 million) fund to boost innovation in Scottish higher education, writes Andrew Denholm for The Herald. Critics said a new committee set up by the Scottish Funding Council to administer the so-called Horizon Fund lacked independent scrutiny and allowed officials to pursue "pet projects".
More on the University World News site:
CHINA: Test of English but not Chinese 'traitorous'
Four Shanghai universities that included an English test in their independent admission examinations but chose to leave out Chinese have come under flak for giving "more importance to a foreign language", Wu Yiyao reports for China Daily. Internet users flooded the Qiangguo Forum to voice their disapproval, calling the exams "traitorous" and "discriminatory" and accusing the universities of "blindly worshipping foreign languages".
More on the University World News site:
UK: Climate change scientist 'hid' data flaws
Professor Phil Jones, the beleaguered British climate scientist at the centre of the leaked emails controversy, is facing fresh claims that he sought to hide problems in key temperature data on which some of his work was based, writes Fred Pearce for The Guardian. An investigation by the newspaper of thousands of emails and documents apparently hacked from the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit has found evidence that a series of measurements from Chinese weather stations were seriously flawed and that documents relating to them could not be produced.
More on the University World News site:
US: Researcher on climate is cleared in inquiry
An academic board of inquiry has largely cleared a noted Pennsylvania State University climatologist of scientific misconduct, but a second panel will convene to determine whether his behaviour undermined public faith in the science of climate change, the university said last week, writes John M Broder for The New York Times. Dr Michael E Mann has been at the centre of a dispute arising from the unauthorised release of more than 1,000 e-mail messages from the servers of the University of East Anglia in England, home to one of the world's premier climate research units.
More on the University World News site:
US: Wisconsin moves to stop use of phony degrees
Wisconsin International University could be forced to change its name. So might Heed University. And a job applicant who recently tried to claim a phony degree from Madison Business College could be criminally prosecuted, writes Ryan J Foley for Business Week. State lawmakers are considering a bill that would crack down on the manufacture and use of phony academic credentials by criminalising both practices. If approved, Wisconsin would become the 12th state to make it a crime to use a bogus academic degree, said George Gollin, a University of Illinois professor who is an expert on the issue.
More on the University World News site:
NEPAL: Scholarships for the poor countrywide
The Student Financial Support Fund Development Committee (SFSFDC), which falls under the University Grant Commission, is set to provide scholarships to meritorious students from poor and disadvantaged communities across Nepal, in a bid to make higher education more accessible, reports The Himalayan Times.
More on the University World News site:
INDIA: Finance for poor students on the cards
To help students from financially poor backgrounds pursue higher education, the Ministry of Human Resource Development is contemplating the formation of an Education Finance Corporation to provide education loans at low interest rates, reports Express News Service.
More on the University World News site:
JAMAICA: Government ponders fund for needy students
Jamaica's government has agreed to consider, for the next financial year, a programme of support for tertiary students in dire financial distress and at risk of deregistration, reports The Gleaner. Students qualifying for the programme would be selected by means testing and on the recommendation of institutions, the Ministry of Education has said.
More on the University World News site:
TAIWAN: Universities must be globally competitive: President
Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou stressed on Tuesday the importance of making Taiwan universities globally competitive, and said he hoped they could attract 30,000 foreign students over the next four years, reports Central News Agency.
More on the University World News site:
YEMEN: Talks with China on increasing scholarships
Yemen and China have held talks about increasing cultural exchange scholarships between Yemeni and Chinese universities, the Yemen News Agency reports.
More on the University World News site:
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