Monday, 12 March 2012

University World News issue number 0211

NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report


IRAN
Lecturer faces death penalty, UN reports rights abuses
Brendan O’Malley
Campaigners have issued an urgent appeal to stay the execution of a university lecturer at the same time that a UN investigation has reported widespread human rights abuses in Iran including arbitrary arrest, torture and imprisonment of students and academics.

GLOBAL
US tops list of international patent-filing universities
Wagdy Sawahel
US universities remain the most prolific international patent filers among higher education institutions worldwide, accounting for 30 of the top 50 institutions. The US is followed by Japan and South Korea with seven institutions each, the UN World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO, reported on Monday.

INDIA
Moratorium on new engineering, business colleges mooted
Alya Mishra
India’s regulatory authority for technical and engineering institutions has said it may stop accepting proposals for new technical colleges in states with surplus capacity. Scores of engineering and business management institutions have announced closures.

RUSSIA
Undergraduates face common compulsory examination
Eugene Vorotnikov
Russia’s Ministry of Education wants to introduce a compulsory unified state examination for undergraduates. Students will have to pass before they can be awarded a bachelor degree.

PAKISTAN
Academics slam controversial new university ranking
Ameen Amjad Khan
A new university ranking by Pakistan’s Higher Education Commission, announced on 23 February, has stirred controversy in academic circles. Many critics have rejected the criteria, declaring the ranking system faulty and contradictory to international standards and practices.

GERMANY
Ban on joint federal-state university funding to be axed
Michael Gardner
The coalition committee of Germany’s centre-right government has announced a plan to widen the scope for higher education cooperation with the country’s state governments.

EUROPE
ERC defends concentration of grants in top universities
Jan Petter Myklebust
Helga Nowotny, president of the European Research Council, has strongly defended the high percentage of ERC grants that go to Europe’s top universities.

EGYPT
University in turmoil over student sackings
Ashraf Khaled
Dozens of students at the privately-run German University in Cairo have been protesting for more than two weeks after five of their colleagues were dismissed in what the university said was disciplinary action.
IFC – Making Global Connections

The International Finance Corporation held its fifth private higher education conference in Dubai from 6-7 March, titled “Making Global Connections”. Private education providers worldwide discussed issues such as the global skills gap and possible responses, the role of equity in private education, building and maintaining quality and supporting graduate employment. University World News was the media partner to the conference.


GLOBAL
Striking a public-private higher education balance 
Yojana Sharma
With increasing investment in private higher education worldwide it is important to strike the right balance between public and private universities to ensure quality and equity, according to participants at last week's International Finance Corporation conference on private education.

GLOBAL
Making higher education relevant can unleash growth
Yojana Sharma
Higher education has emerged as a major economic issue in many countries because of its importance in preparing young people for the job market. Yet it is often not seen as relevant to the needs of the economy, the International Finance Corporation conference heard in Dubai on Tuesday.

GLOBAL
Is formal education failing Arab youth?
Dahlia Khalifa
One in four Arab youths faces the frustration of not being able to find a job, twice the global average. Education in the region is heavily public sector financed, centralised, outcomes-driven and unresponsive to market needs. There is a major role for the private sector in helping to provide quality education and create jobs.

GLOBAL
What we can do about the Arab youth jobs crisis
Dahlia Khalifa
The numbers are stark. A third of the population in the Arab world is below the age of 15 and a further third is aged 15 to 29. Some 50 to 70 million youths are expected to enter the job market in the next decade. But formal education is not enabling youths to find jobs, and two-thirds feel they do not have the necessary skills.

UAE
Quality the big challenge for private education hubs
Leigh Thomas
Quality is the biggest challenge for United Arab Emirates (UAE) education hubs offering private tertiary education, experts said on Thursday during an International Finance Corporation conference in Dubai.
Universities Australia annual conference

Universities Australia, the peak body representing the nation's universities, held its annual conference in Canberra last week. Geoff Maslen reports.

AUSTRALIA
Europe’s €80 billion plan to boost research, innovation
Geoff Maslen
With a proposed budget of €80 billion (US$105 billion), the European Commission’s new Horizon 2020 plan complemented the approach being taken in most of the EU's member states to increase investment in research and innovation as the routes to future growth, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, EU commissioner for research, innovation and science, said last week.

AUSTRALIA
Demand-driven system boosts student numbers
Geoff Maslen
The federal government’s lifting of restrictions on enrolments that individual universities could accept had boosted student numbers this year by more than 30,000, Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Science and Research, Senator Chris Evans, told the Universities Australia conference last week.

AUSTRALIA
Universities face new world of fierce competition
Geoff Maslen
Australia’s new system of higher education, where universities decide how many students they will enrol, means some will thrive with expanding enrolments and quality offerings while others will be bankrupted and fail to attract sufficient students. “No sector introduced to a market rationale is ever the same,” said Professor Glyn Davis, chair of Universities Australia and vice-chancellor of Melbourne University.

AUSTRALIA
University reforms of international significance
Geoff Maslen
The demand-driven university reform introduced by the Australian government this year is significant on the world scale. This is because the reform established one feature of a genuine market: open competition for market share, albeit funded by a government voucher not commercial fees, and operating in some rather than all institutions.
WORLD BLOG
Jehona Serhati
Kosovo needs to seek funds for research, whether or not its universities are teaching students the right skills to help build the country's economy and future. Currently all information is based on word of mouth and unsystematic surveys, rather than on rigorous research.

FEATURES

Goolam Mohamedbhai
South Africa’s National Planning Commission, in its 2011 National Development Plan: Vision for 2030, set out a series of goals for improving education, training and innovation in order to promote economic development by using the information-knowledge system as a driver. Two of those goals relate directly to doctoral education.

SOUTH AFRICA
Little to show for postgraduate incentive funding
Karen MacGregor
Seven years ago, South Africa introduced incentive funding for postgraduates in an effort to meet an urgent national need for more high-level skills. But new research shows that only some universities have been able to respond and that the annual increase in doctoral graduates is limping along at only 3.6% a year.

COMMENTARY
Nico Cloete
South Africa’s Minister of Higher Education and Training Blade Nzimande, in an article following his attendance at a universities conference in Havana, raised some very important issues for this country’s higher education debate – which, as he suggests, is completely moribund, from bottom to top.

GLOBAL
Flying faculty teaching – who benefits?
Karen Smith
Some transnational higher education teaching models include ‘flying faculty’, where home country academics are flown in to teach for a short period in another country and culture. It's a challenging job, but with many benefits.

GLOBAL
Improving what we offer (international) students
Robert Coelen
Improving international students' experience will attract more and will also benefit local students. That includes changing the way we teach to ensure international students have a voice.

GLOBAL
Exploring identity through education abroad
Andrea O’Leary
Can a short immersion study-abroad course really make a difference to students and universities? The director of one award-winning international programme says it can and the answer is through students forging strong friendships and reflecting on their identities.
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Saturday, 3 March 2012

University World News Issue Number 0210

News

GLOBAL
Fees coupled with aid schemes maintain access
David Jobbins
OECD analysts have found the combination of tuition fees and financial support that seems to lead to the best outcomes for universities, students and society. They suggest systems that charge moderate fees supported by means-tested grants and income-contingent repayments successfully promote access, equity and completion for students.


SYRIA
Students in front line of anti-Assad protests
Wagdy Sawahel
Up to a quarter of the fatalities in protests in Syria since they began in March 2011 have been students, according to the Union of Syrian Free Students, USFS. It has launched a campaign of civil disobedience in universities, calling on the country’s 800,000 students to support the anti-government uprising.

EUROPE
Social science and humanities key to Horizon 2020
Jan Petter Myklebust

Europe’s research ministers have voiced concern that social sciences and humanities should be given a more prominent role in Horizon 2020, the next European Union framework programme for 2014-20. The fears already expressed by academics were reflected in discussions between research ministers from European Union member states in Brussels last week.

UNITED KINGDOM
One in four university courses axed in England
Brendan O’Malley

The number of full-time undergraduate courses on offer at UK universities has fallen by more than a quarter (27%) since 2006, according to a new report published by the University and College Union. Of the four UK countries, England has suffered the greatest reduction in choice at a time when tuition fees are about to rise to as much as £9,000 (US$14,000) a year.

HONG KONG
Students ‘flee’ change to four-year degrees
Yojana Sharma
As Hong Kong shifts from a three-year to four-year degree structure and school-leavers enter university a year earlier, students are applying to study abroad in large numbers to escape a squeeze on university places and amid fears over recognition abroad of the new untried school exam.

AUSTRALIA
Painting sold for A$21 million but 100 academics lose jobs
Geoff Maslen
When the University of Sydney, Australia’s oldest and one of the wealthiest, sold a Picasso painting last June for nearly A$21 million (US22 million), few staff would have believed that six months later their jobs would be on the line.

EUROPE

One in five graduates ‘overqualified’ for their job
Jan Petter Myklebust
Europe’s graduates are finding jobs twice as quickly as non-graduates, according to a EURYDICE report presented to EU education ministers this month. But its claim that one in five are "overqualified” for the jobs they take has been challenged by analysts.

THE NETHERLANDS
Rule changes after diploma scandal
Robert Visscher

Independent investigations into journalism diplomas awarded at Windesheim University of Applied Sciences in The Netherlands have found that one in four students should not actually have been awarded one.

KENYA
No more university diplomas and certificates
Gilbert Nganga
Kenya plans to bar its universities from offering diplomas and certificates, starving them of a key income stream as it seeks to streamline higher education to boost quality. Universities must now concentrate on their core business – degrees – leaving colleges to handle lower qualifications, in a move that should help government regulate the college subsector.

NIGERIA
Academics rally as extremist attacks escalate
Tunde Fatunde
Nigerian academics at home and in the diaspora have strongly condemned recent bombings and destruction by Muslim extremists in the north of the country, with some calling the attacks a “declaration of war”. Scholars have put forward solutions to religious and inter-ethnic conflicts, including calling for a national conference on the crisis.

GERMANY
Backlog of bodies causes problems for university
Michael Gardner
The University of Cologne has faced accusations of management irregularities at its Institute of Anatomy. Apparently, officials lost track of the identities of bodies for dissection courses for medical undergraduates.

MAKING GLOBAL CONNECTIONS

GLOBAL
IFC – Major investment in private higher education
Karen MacGregor
Reflecting the extraordinary growth of private education worldwide, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) has built an investment portfolio of US$400 million involving 69 projects in 33 countries, many of them in higher education.

FEATURES
INDIA

Protests erupt against ‘first’ foreign campus

Shuriah Niazi
Often dubbed the first foreign campus in India, the UK’s Leeds Metropolitan University has been established on the outskirts of the central city of Bhopal since 2009 on 15 hectares of lush, sprawling land. But earlier this month the university was rattled by the cries of enthusiastic protestors: “Leeds-Met University, Quit India!”


CANADA
Debate over promise of three new campuses for Ontario

Grace Karram
Debates about the need for more university charters in Ontario were heard this month at a symposium hosted by the University of Toronto. It followed the latest throne speech in which the provincial government promised to create 60,000 new spaces for students by building three new undergraduate campuses.

UNITED STATES
Students fight to block NYU’s bold plans

Eileen Travers
Just when the world thought the Occupy Wall Street movement would fade into the shadows of the New York Stock Exchange, a robust rally organised by its Occupy Student Debt Campaign herded groups of students and non-students alike to protest on Tuesday against a $6 billion New York University expansion project.

WORLD BLOG

CHINA

Developing critical thinking skills through English

Geoff Hall
Chinese students are stereotypically thought to be reluctant to question authority, but this is not the case for English students studying at theUniversity of Nottingham Ningbo. They are taught to question and challenge existing ideas. These critical skills will be vital in an increasingly interconnected world.


COMMENTARY

GLOBAL

The complexities of 21st century brain ‘exchange’

Philip G Altbach
Despite the rise of the BRICs, large numbers of international students are choosing not to return home after completing their studies. Research suggests that this could be for a number of reasons, among them the fact that salaries and facilities in developed countries continue to outpace those at home, and developed countries are keen to maintain their advantage.

UNITED STATES
Universities to be tested to distraction

Diane Ravitch
US schools policy has been all about accountability and measurement. This has led to demoralisation among teachers and a narrowing of what education means. Now higher education is about to be subjected to the same experience.

UNITED STATES
Students must be critical in more ways than one
Adam Peck
Students today are exposed to more information than ever before, but they appear less able to express their opinions. Universities need to ensure that they teach students the critical thinking skills they need for the future, and demonstrate to students that they are the product they are paying to produce.

SCIENCE SCENE

GLOBAL

Waist size linked to obesity and premature death

For the first time, researchers have demonstrated that the effect of obesity on the risk of premature death is seriously underestimated unless a person’s hip circumference is taken into account. An international team of researchers investigated the relationship between waist and hip circumference in a 20-year study of almost 8,000 Mauritians.

GLOBAL

Sunshine may help prevent allergies and eczema
Increased exposure to sunlight may reduce the risk of both food allergies and eczema in children, according to a new scientific study. Children living in areas with lower levels of sunlight were at greater risk of developing food allergies and the skin condition eczema, compared with those in areas with higher UV.

AUSTRALIA

Drinking black tea may lower blood pressure
In a world first, scientists at the University of Western Australia and Unilever, the multi-national consumer goods company, discovered that drinking three cups of black tea a day lowered systolic and diastolic blood pressure.

UNITED KINGDOM
Concrete corrosion sensors to spot danger signs

Scientists at Queen’s University in Belfast have made a major breakthrough in developing sensors that dramatically improve the ability to spot early warning signs of corrosion in concrete. Scientists say they will make monitoring the safety of structures such as bridges and vital coastal defences much more effective.


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Monday, 20 February 2012

University World News 0209 - 19th February 2012

News
GLOBAL
David Jobbins

Forget the Eurozone crisis and the attractions of the New World. A new ranking of the world’s best cities for students places Europe’s cities firmly ahead of the US for quality of life, affordability and their universities’ academic reputation.
CZECH REPUBLIC
Jan Petter Myklebust

The government of the Czech Republic intends to press ahead with plans to reduce academic control of universities and introduce student fees. But it faces mounting opposition from students, academics and university leaders.
AUSTRALIA
Geoff Maslen

Australian universities and research organisations generated a record A$1.3 billion (US$1.38 billion) from the commerc ialisation of their research activities in 2010. According to a report released by Knowledge Commerc ialisation Australasia, the money came from contracts, consultancies and related agreements.
INDONESIA
Ria Nurdiani

Indonesia’s Ministry of Education and Culture has made a bold but controversial decision to boost the number of research papers produced by the country by requiring all university students to publish papers in academic journals as a condition for graduation.
GLOBAL
Wagdy Sawahel

The United States Agency for International Development, USAID, is taking a fresh approach to tackling major development challenges, seeking to leverage new trends on campuses in both the US and abroad to improve the efficacy and impact of its programmes and policies.
NORWAY
Jan Petter Myklebust

A Norwegian company, Rekruttering AS, wants to register all Norwegian graduates from the past 15 to 20 years in a commercial databank to be used for recruitment purposes. But student unions and universities are refusing to hand over the information.
CHINA
Mimi Leung

Blood donation will become part of student and teacher evaluations at Beijing’s universities, according to the Beijing Municipal Health Bureau. Its controversial new scheme is to include blood donation records in assessments to determine academic performance, official Chinese media reported.
COSTA RICA
Chrissie Long

Costa Rica’s higher education authority is investigating reports that at least 10 students have been working in the homes of university leaders as a condition for their scholarships at the private Universidad Creativa in San José. The students were asked to wash clothes, care for children, prepare dinners and buy food.
GLOBAL
David Jobbins

The Commonwealth of Learning, or COL, has appointed its first female president. Asha Kanwar, its current vice-president, will succeed Sir John Daniel when he steps down as president and chief executive officer at the end of May.
GLOBAL
Wagdy Sawahel

A regional centre for space science and technology education for Western Asia will be sited at the Royal Jordanian Geographic Centre (RJGC) by April, the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs has announced.
Africa News
EGYPT
Ashraf Khaled

Students from the universities of Cairo, Ain Shams and Helwan marched on the Ministry of Defence in Cairo on Tuesday to protest against continued military rule. Students are at the forefront of the strike that began on 11 February and is aimed at pressuring army generals into a swift transfer of power to civil administration.
ZIMBABWE
Kudzai Mashininga

Zimbabwe has outlined plans for every university lecturer to be in possession of a PHD by 2015, and is reconsidering salary discrepancies between university and college lecturers. And the country’s higher education regulator has cracked down on state-run and foreign universities deemed to be offering sub-standard programmes.
KENYA
Gilbert Nganga

Kenya plans to start ranking its universities based on their performance and the quality of graduates they are producing, to raise their profile globally. The move, which begins in April, is intended to boost the faltering quality of education in the country.
GHANA
Francis Kokutse

Ghana’s union of students has promised demonstrations if necessary to reverse the government’s decision to shorten the duration of senior high school from four years to three. The new system is likely to put huge pressure on university admissions this year, as double the usual number of school-leavers vie for limited places.
Features
CHINA
Yojana Sharma

Overseas non-governmental organisations have been raising the alarm over worker exploitation in factories in China that produce the Apple iPad and other consumer electronic products. A new report by a Hong Kong-based labour organisation has found that many of the exploited are students working as interns as a compulsory part of vocational courses.
GLOBAL
Geoff Maslen

The number of students around the globe enrolled in higher education is forecast to more than double to 262 million by 2025, and study abroad numbers could treble. Nearly all the student growth will be in the developing world, with more than half in China and India alone.
TUNISIA
Eileen Byrne

The victory last October of the moderate Islamist party Ennahda (‘Renaissance’) in Tunisia's first election since the revolution intensified the controversy that was already brewing over women students opting to wear the niqab, or full face veil, on university campuses.
ALGERIA
Kaci Racelma

Significant new reforms are on the horizon for Algeria’s universities. Efforts are being made to ratchet up public funding and raise standards, with the government planning to spend US$1.48 billion on higher education and science over the next five years and to double research spending to 1% of gross domestic product.
World Blog
EUROPE
Curt Rice

Having a more equal balance of male and female staff at the top levels of academia is the right thing to do, but also makes sense if universities want to improve output and the quality of team work. Now is the time to act.
Commentary
GLOBAL
Viv Caruana

Universities talk about internationalisation and diversity, but often students voluntarily self-segregate on campus. Instead, institutions should be looking at how to encourage students to be more resilient and open to change and different ways of thinking.
GLOBAL
Phil Baty

Global rankings have become hugely influential. We should be honest about their limitations, and about the needs for constant improvement and to be more transparent. In this spirit Times Higher Education will soon publish its World Reputation Rankings in isolation from the overarching rankings. It is based solely on the subjective judgment of academics and shows the fragility of the global reputations of universities.
Student View
UNITED KINGDOM
Hannah Blackstock

The number of home student applicants to UK universities has fallen significantly this year, with mature student applications the worst hit. Some university figures are playing down the impact, but it could be just the tip of the iceberg after a decade of changes to university funding.
Facebook
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World Round-up
UNITED STATES
These are the most uncertain times in living memory for academic publishing. After decades of bumping along with an antique publishing model, researchers have suddenly woken up and found that they are strong. More than 4,700 have signed a pledge not to write, review or edit for Elsevier journals, in a movement The Economist has called the Academic Spring. How did we get here? asks Mike Taylor in The Independent.
UNITED STATES
Attracting and retaining the world's brightest students is on the mind of every university official. But a new, unprecedented study in the journal Science suggests leaders in higher education face an understated, even more pressing challenge: the retention of professors, reports Science Codex.
CHINA
It was the best of times; it was the worst of times." The opening line of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities is perhaps an apt description of the status of innovation in China today. In terms of political stability and research funding, few would argue that China is in "the best of times", free from the upheavals and setbacks that chequered the first 30 years of the modern People's Republic of China, writes Cong Cao for China Daily.
CHINA
Hundreds of private colleges and universities have opened in China in the past decade in response to soaring demand for higher education. The private institutions offer millions of students a no-frills education and a better shot at a paycheck after graduation as China continues its quest to gain influence in the world economy, writes Sarah Butrymowicz for The Washington Post.
AUSTRALIA
International students will more easily be able to apply for visas following changes announced by the federal immigration and citizenship minister, Chris Bowen. The changes mean that the number of assessment levels across a range of student visa subclasses will be reduced, making the visa application process easier for students from 29 countries, writes Alison McMeekin for The Daily Telegraph.
AUSTRALIA
Australia is running a booming trade surplus on education with the largest net student number among the global education industry's major players, writes Stephen Matchett for The Australian. Dr Daniel Edwards, a senior research fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research, measured the ratio of international students hosted by 109 countries to their nationals going overseas to study.
AUSTRALIA
A 4% increase in the latest round of offers at Australian universities will place overstretched teaching staff under more strain and lower the quality of education for ballooning student ranks, the higher education union warned last week. Latest figures show that in the wake of the government’s move to uncap places from this year, the number of offers has risen to 220,000, reports The Conversation.
UNITED KINGDOM
English universities have exceeded their numbers cap by thousands of students this year as applicants flocked to avoid higher tuition fees, and large fines are expected, with London Metropolitan University alone facing a hit of up to £6 million (US$9.4 million), writes John Morgan for Times Higher Education.
UNITED STATES
It was not a good weekend for international higher education, writes Kevin Kiley for Inside Higher Ed. An audit released by the American state of North Dakota found that poor record-keeping and a lack of oversight at Dickinson State University resulted in hundreds of foreign students – mostly from China – receiving degrees despite not having completed required coursework.
UNITED STATES
For the 99% of colleges, it was a pretty good fundraising year. For the 1% of super-wealthy elite, it was a much better one that catapulted them even farther ahead of the pack, writes Justin Pope for Associated Press. The latest annual college fundraising figures out last week show donations to colleges and universities rose 8.2% in fiscal 2011, crossing back over the $30 billion mark for just the second time ever.
UNITED STATES
President Barack Obama's budget for the 2013 fiscal year, released last week, reaffirms his commitment to community colleges and college access, targeting scarce federal resources to job training and student aid programmes, writes Kelly Field for The Chronicle of Higher Education.
IRELAND
All tertiary institutions have been given six months to respond to official proposals that would result in the merger of many smaller colleges and the development of regional clusters of universities or institutes of technology, writes Carl O’Brien for The Irish Times.
SOUTH AFRICA
Riot police and private security swooped on a residence at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Westville campus in an attempt to quell student protests. The university is also investigating a threat made against the lives of Indian and white students on its Facebook page. A parent who saw the post last Wednesday said she feared for her daughter’s safety, writes Leanne Jansen for Independent Online.
UGANDA
The Ugandan government last week unveiled new legislation that seeks, among other things, to open up top jobs in public universities to competition as part of a wider plan to stop what legislators called a fraudulent recruitment system, writes Yasiin Mugerwa for The Monitor.
NIGERIA
The federal government has stopped universities from running national diploma programmes, urging them to adhere strictly to their approved mandates of awarding degrees and higher degrees, write Kunle Awosiyan and Clement Idoko for the Nigerian Tribune.
UNITED KINGDOM
David Cameron has admitted defeat in his battle to prevent Professor Les Ebdon being appointed director general of the Office for Fair Access (Offa), the universities access body seen by some Conservatives as a threat to excellence in universities, writes Patrick Wintour for the Guardian.
HONG KONG
The British Council expects a 35% to 50% increase in the number of Hong Kong students who will be accepted by British universities this year. More than 3,200 students were accepted in 2011, and this year there has been a 37% surge in applications so far, writes Kenneth Foo for The Standard.
ISRAEL
The Ariel University Centre of Samaria now qualifies as a university, according to a report prepared by the Council for Higher Education in Judea and Samaria. But the bid to recognise the centre as a university has prompted hundreds of academics to urge Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar to revoke the process, writes Talila Nesher for Haaretz.
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Saturday, 18 February 2012

University World News 0208

Newsletter
This week we launch “Thoughts and experiences of African university leaders”, a series of interviews with higher education leaders across the continent, starting with Cheryl de la Rey, vice-chancellor of the University of Pretoria. The series aims to promote good leadership in universities, especially in Africa, and will publish an article a month over the coming year.
In World Blogs, Daniel Guhr reports on the rise and impacts of fraud on international education, and steps that can be taken to thwart the problem. In Commentary, Brenda Gourley writes about a high-level symposium in Oxford that focused on higher education in emerging countries – and reached remarkable consensus. In the United States, Jamie Merisotis outlines ways to attain the goals of making higher education more affordable and able to produce the highly qualified workers the economy needs, and Eva Egron-Polak argues for quality assurance in international higher education.
In Features Suluck Lamubol reports on Thai government criticism of international and local scholars supporting a campaign to amend the draconian lèse majesté law, which is curtailing academic freedom, and Sarah King Head describes an award-winning American programme that gives graduates an international edge by combining an engineering degree with a foreign language BA and study abroad.

Karen MacGregor Global Editor
SERIES: African university leaders
Karen MacGregor

Cheryl de la Rey, a professor of psychology, notched up several firsts when she became vice-chancellor of South Africa’s large University of Pretoria in 2009 – the first woman, the first black person and the first English-speaker. It seems the university was ripe for change, as she faced no opposition on any of these fronts. De la Rey spoke to University World News for this first in a new series of articles on African university leaders.
WORLD BLOG
GLOBAL
Daniel Guhr

Until recently, it has been easy to ignore the impact of fraud on international education given that little systematic data exists on its breadth and pervasiveness. In addition, raising the issue of fraud is hardly a promising way to gain tenure or to impress a lawmaker who is interested in maximising national income from international students. But once comprehensively surveyed, the magnitude and reach of fraud is becoming clear.
NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report
EGYPT
Wagdy Sawahel

Students protested at several universities in Egypt yesterday, and there were reports that an American student had been arrested for allegedly bribing people to join a strike. Student unions at around 20 public and private universities had called for a general strike, prompted by anger at continued military rule and post-football match violence at Port Said stadium in which 74 people were killed, including at least two students.
HUNGARY
Ard Jongsma

Hungarian students took to central Deak Ter Square in Budapest on Wednesday to protest against dramatic budget cuts and remarkable new legislation that will severely limit the rights of Hungarian graduates to work abroad.
CHINA
Mimi Leung

An academic has resigned as dean of the school of communications at Hong Kong’s Baptist University after the institution became embroiled in political controversy over a public opinion survey he conducted in January. The resignation is an indication of the sensitivity of independent public polling in China.
NIGERIA
Tunde Fatunde

Students across Nigeria expressed joy on learning that the academic staff union had called off its eight-week nationwide strike. The government has promised to implement a 2009 agreement signed with the union, including finalising the retirement age and reviewing issues related to the academic pension scheme.
INDIA
Alya Mishra

In a bid to rejuvenate social science research, India has announced several measures targeted at the Indian Council of Social Science Research, or ICSSR. They include establishing a Social Sciences Knowledge and Research Network, a National Social Science Research Innovation Centre and a fellowship scheme to attract young scholars into social sciences.
GERMANY
Michael Gardner

Implementation of the Bologna process is making good progress in Germany, according to a new government report. The transformation of courses into bachelor and masters programmes is said to have been largely completed – with positive impacts including greater mobility, access and graduate employment.
NETHERLANDS
Robert Visscher

From 2013, Dutch students will no longer receive a scholarship during their masters studies. Legislation was recently passed to turn the scholarship into a loan. According to the student union LSVB this is the biggest budget cut ever for Dutch students.
CHILE
María Elena Hurtado

Warnings that Chilean students applying for university places for the 2012 academic year would steer clear of the 20 universities that were paralysed by five months of massive protests last year, have not been realised.
QATAR
Wagdy Sawahel

An official report says that a decade of substantial investments in scientific research and higher education in Qatar has yet to meet expectations. Indeed, the nation has gone backwards on some indicators.
ZAMBIA
Zambia’s new government is crafting a higher education law that will among other things monitor quality. There has been a mushrooming of bogus institutions of higher learning in the Southern African country.
PAKISTAN
Ameen Amjad Khan

The United States has pledged US$15 million to construct facilities at seven Pakistani universities to offer degrees in education. The initiative is considered a confidence-building measure after a NATO raid mistakenly killed 24 Pakistani soldiers near the Afghan border at Salala last November.
FEATURES
THAILAND
Suluck Lamubol

The Thai government has criticised foreign scholars for supporting a campaign led by Thai academics to amend the country’s controversial lèse majesté law, saying that the international scholars may not understand the unique meaning of the monarchy to Thai society.
GLOBAL
Sarah King Head

The University of Rhode Island’s innovative International Engineering Program (IEP) is designed to give graduates a global marketplace edge – adding to a BSc in an engineering discipline a BA in one of four languages: German, French, Spanish or Mandarin. It recently won a Heiskell Award, one of the Institute of International Education’s highest honours.
COMMENTARY
GLOBAL
Brenda Gourley

A high-powered Emerging Markets Symposium at Oxford turned its focus on post-secondary education in these nations crucial to the world’s future. There was remarkable consensus, including weariness with rankings and concerns about standards and the suitability of Western university models. The importance of mobility, innovation and blended learning solutions became clear. It was agreed that there is no room for complacency at any level – anywhere.
UNITED STATES
Jamie Merisotis

Top education officials have been travelling across America to raise awareness of the need to make higher education more affordable. The economy urgently needs more highly qualified workers. There are many ways to attain these goals, including rewarding universities for students who graduate rather than for those who enrol.
GLOBAL
Eva Egron-Polak

Quality assurance in international higher education is more than the end result of a set of narrow statistics. The process encourages universities to question what they are doing in terms of internationalisation, and why.
SCIENCE SCENE
ARCTIC
Humanity faces dire consequences as a result of the first signs of dangerous climate change in the Arctic. Leading international scientists say the Arctic region is fast approaching a series of ‘tipping points’ that could trigger an abrupt domino effect of large-scale climate change across the entire planet.
AFRICA
Trees are dying in the Sahel, a region in Africa south of the Sahara Desert, and human-caused climate change is to blame, according to a study led by a scientist at the University of California, Berkeley.
NEW ZEALAND
An expedition to one of the deepest places in the ocean has discovered one of the most enigmatic creatures in the deep sea – a ‘supergiant’ amphipod. Amphipods are a type of crustacean particularly common in the deep sea, and the deeper the sea the greater their numbers.
GLOBAL
Scientists have made a new discovery about how old stars called ‘red giants’ rotate, giving an insight into what our Sun will look like in five billion years. The international team of scientists has discovered that red giants have slowed down on the outside while their cores spin at least 10 times faster than their outer layers.
FACEBOOK
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WORLD ROUND-UP
EUROPE
The European ideal of uniting the continent through education appears a waste of time, according to new research into student mobility and common curricula, writes Stephen Matchett for The Australian.
UNITED KINGDOM
The organisation charged with promoting British education overseas has rounded on the government over its student visa changes, calling for an “urgent review” of the policy to avert damage to the economy and the possible closure of university departments, writes John Morgan for Times Higher Education.
UNITED STATES
This is the University of Washington’s new maths: 18% of its freshmen come from abroad, most from China. Each pays tuition of $28,059, about three times as much as students from Washington State. And that, according to the dean of admissions, is how low-income Washingtonians – more than a quarter of the class – get a free ride, writes Tamar Lewin for The New York Times.
INDIA
As an indication that more Indian students are looking at foreign countries like the US for higher education, the Graduate Record Examination, or GRE, witnessed an increase of 43% in students taking the test from India last year, reports the Deccan Chronicle.
IRAN
An Iranian opposition website reported last week that authorities had banned one of the daughters of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi from her university teaching job, according to Associated Press.
UNITED STATES
The Barack Obama administration put its stamp last week on a strategy to boost America’s numbers of science and engineering graduates by working harder to retain those already in the college pipeline, writes Paul Basken for The Chronicle of Higher Education.
UNITED STATES
Stanford University said last week that its latest five-year fundraising drive netted $6.2 billion, one of the largest amounts ever collected in a higher education campaign, writes Terence Chea for Associated Press.
JAPAN
Japan’s universities and research institutes have long had to make do with few philanthropic donations. Strict laws governing university finances, and the lack of a philanthropic tradition, have discouraged the gifts that serve Western institutions so well. But change is coming, writes David Cyranoski for Nature.
CANADA
BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion co-founder Mike Lazaridis is donating another CAN21million (US$21 million) to his alma mater, the University of Waterloo, showing no signs of tightening his philanthropic purse strings after a year in which he saw his personal fortune dwindle, writes James Bradshaw for The Globe and Mail.
UNITED STATES
The litany of bad news about the status of black men in higher education in the US is by now familiar. They make up barely 4% of all undergraduate students. They come into college less prepared than their peers for the rigours of college-level academic work. Their completion rates are the lowest of all major racial and ethnic groups in the US, writes Doug Lederman for Inside Higher Ed.
UNITED KINGDOM
Despite government pressure on universities to diversify their admissions, it has emerged that bright candidates from fee-paying schools were around 25% more likely to get in to Oxford University last year. Black and Asian pupils with decent grades had a significantly lower success rate than their white counterparts, writes Olivia Goldhill for The Telegraph.
UNITED KINGDOM
Many institutions are “marginalising the mathematical content” of degree courses amid fears that English students are incapable of the most basic sums, writes Graeme Paton for The Telegraph.
UNITED KINGDOM
Britain’s Liberal Democrats have suffered a defeat at the hands of their Conservative coalition partners after a committee of MPs overruled Vince Cable’s choice of new university access tsar, writes Jessica Shepherd for the Guardian.
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