University World News 0178 - 3rd July 2011

This week's highlights

In Features, HAN-SUK KIM writes that South Korea's slashing of tuition fees will require a painful restructuring of universities. YOJANA SHARMA reports on a new research centre being set up by the UK's Birmingham University in China, which provides an alternative model to branch campuses, and SHARON DELL describes a new project that aims to re-think the study of Africa. In Commentary, BINOD KHADRIA argues that some countries may be hiding a global marketing mechanism behind their international scholarship programmes. BRUCE MACFARLANE says universities need to reconsider what they want from professors beyond income generation, JOHN HIGGINS writes that the humanities in South Africa are caught between a rock favouring applied sciences and the hard place of 'applied nationalism', and AMANDA SELVARATNAM describes an initiative between UK and N igerian universities to build transnational links.

NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report

UK: Reforms make universities compete harder
Brendan O'Malley
Universities in England will have to compete harder with each other to attract students under higher education reforms outlined in the government's long-awaited white paper last week. Top-ranking universities and institutions charging low fees are most likely to benefit.
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NORTH KOREA: Learning stops as students must work
Yojana Sharma
Close watchers of North Korean affairs were caught on the hop last week by reports that universities in the hermit kingdom could be closed from 27 June for up to 10 months while students are sent to work on farms, in factories and in construction.
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FRANCE: Degree reform to boost employability
Jane Marshall
A minimum of 1,500 teaching hours, programmes tailored to individual students and work experience for all students who want it are key features of the reformed licence, France's three-year equivalent to the bachelor degree.
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FRANCE: New minister will continue reforms
Jane Marshall
Laurent Wauquiez has replaced Valérie Pécresse as France's Minister for Higher Education and Research in the government reshuffle announced by President Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday, following the appointment of finance minister Christine Lagarde to the International Monetary Fund.
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SWEDEN: International students shun tuition fees
Jan Petter Myklebust
The number of international students studying in Sweden will fall more than 75% next academic year, following the introduction of tuition fees, according to new figures on the number of advance payments made.
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ISLAMIC STATES: Space for higher education planned
Wagdy Sawahel
Islamic states are to foster mutual recognition of degrees among universities and cooperate to enhance exchange of information, experience, researchers and students following the launch of an Islamic 'space' for higher education.
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GERMANY: Plagiarism MEP loses second post
Michael Gardner
Silvana Koch-Mehrin has bowed to pressure from Germany's major higher education and research organisations and stepped down from her new post in the European Parliament's Committee on Industry, Research and Energy. Koch-Mehrin only recently resigned as Vice-President of the European Parliament, having been caught up in a copycat affair concerning her doctoral thesis.
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BRAZIL: Government under pressure to not botch exam
Tom Hennigan
The troubled efforts of Brazil's government to build a national standardised university entrance examination received a major boost after the country's second-ranked university said it would accept results from the federal exam for courses starting in 2012.
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SRI LANKA: Moves to step up foreign student intake
Dinesh De Alwis
Sri Lanka's Higher Education Ministry has taken steps to award 150 scholarships to foreign students to study in local universities, as part of its plan to turn the country into a higher education hub and attract up to 50,000 international students in the next decade.
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MIDDLE EAST: SESAME opens links
Geoff Maslen
The project is called SESAME and it has already opened lines of communication between nine countries that have at times been at war with each other. The acronym stands for Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East and, interestingly, it is backed by Israel and the Palestinian Authority as well as Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Pakistan and Turkey.
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MALAWI: Closed campuses set to reopen
Malawi's government and lecturers have been racing against time to reach an agreement on the reopening of closed campuses next week. Following an appeal by President Bingu wa Mutharika for university staff to resume lectures as originally scheduled on 4 July, lecturers indicated willingness to end their academic freedom protests, which began in February.
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EGYPT: Academics heartened by landmark election
Ashraf Khaled
Until a few months ago, deans at Egypt's public universities were selected by the authorities after obtaining approval from security agencies. But since former president Hosni Mubarak was swept aside in a popular revolt in February, academics have been pushing for a say in choosing their leaders. And some have just taken an unprecedented step towards this aim.
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NIGERIA: State vice-chancellor jobs precarious
Tunde Fatunde
Vice-chancellors of Nigeria's regionally controlled universities are being fired or resigning due to instability and excessive politicisation at the institutions. And industrial unions in these state universities are constantly at loggerheads with the authorities over issues of autonomy and failure to follow due process.
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AUSTRALIA: Climate denier lord condemned
Geoff Maslen
More than 50 Australian academics signed a letter last week calling on the University of Notre Dame in Fremantle to cancel a lecture by controversial climate change sceptic Lord Christopher Monckton. The Conservative Scottish peer arrived in Perth on Wednesday to deliver a lecture at Notre Dame titled "The Climate of Freedom".
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FEATURES

SOUTH KOREA: University reforms after fee climb-down
Han-Suk Kim
The South Korean government's announcement of a reduction in tuition fees of up to 30% by 2014 fell short of the 50% cut demanded by protesting students. But it has emerged that even the scaled-down offer will require a painful restructuring of universities. Cross-party talks last week reached little agreement on how the fee reduction will be financed or implemented.
Full report on the University World News site:

CHINA: Joint research: Alternative to branch campus?
Yojana Sharma
Tie-ups between China and Western universities are announced almost every month. But a new collaborative research centre being set up by England's Birmingham University in Guangzhou in southern China highlights another model of cooperation, with none of the drawbacks of the more popular 'branch campus'.
Full report on the University World News site:

SOUTH AFRICA: Re-thinking the study of Africa
Sharon Dell
What is Africa? Who and what is the study of Africa for? These surprisingly complex questions have inspired a new postgraduate project at South Africa's Rhodes University, which aims to contribute towards "re-thinking the study of Africa" and pursue an innovative approach to teaching-led research.
Full report on the University World News site:

COMMENTARY

INDIA: Doing the maths behind scholarship figures
Who funds international students and who gains most from international scholarship programmes? According to BINOD KHADRIA, India may be a net loser in terms of its funding for Indian students in America, while the US may be the net gainer. Are some countries hiding a global marketing mechanism behind their scholarship programmes?
Full report on the University World News site:

GLOBAL: Professors: Cash cows or intellectual leaders?
Universities need to re-think what they want from their professors beyond the narrow confines of income generation, says BRUCE MACFARLANE. Professors are much more than this. They play a crucial role in inter-generational scholarly renewal and progress and this role needs to be nurtured.
Full report on the University World News site:

SOUTH AFRICA: Dilemma of the humanities
The humanities in South Africa are caught between a rock and a hard place, writes JOHN HIGGINS. The rock is that of a global higher education policy template which increasingly favours applied science to all other forms of knowledge, enquiry and training, while the hard place is a local one: the hard place of what we might call applied nationalism.
Full report on the University World News site:

UK: Universities build transnational links in N igeria
Transnational education is not new, but the focus in the past has been on recruiting overseas students. Now the aim is to work in partnership with universities in students' home countries, says AMANDA SELVARATNAM. She outlines a recent initiative between UK and N igerian universities.
Full report on the University World News site :

SCIENCE SCENE

EUROPE: Super-fast internet speeds
Thirteen photonics research projects are being launched in the field of high-speed fibre broadband networks with the aim of developing technologies to deliver super-fast internet speeds to the home in excess of 1 Gigabit per second. The projects were jointly selected last year by the European Commission, Austria, Germany, Poland, the UK and Israel, which together are paying a total of EUR22.3 million.


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GLOBAL: Plant biomass largest renewable resource
An international multidisciplinary team of researchers from Argentina, Australia, the US, Denmark and Brazil have uncovered the key steps for controlling plant growth. The team has shown how the assembly of components of the plant cell wall regulates growth of root hairs, a finding that has implications for expanding world food production.
Full report on the University World News site:

AUSTRALIA: Moon dust not what it seems
Long-accepted interpretations of lunar dust experiments carried out during the Apollo moon missions in the 1970s have just been shown to be wrong - 33 years later. The experiments were supposed to measure cosmic dust hitting the moon's surface but the results were actually caused by electrical interference.
Full report on the University World News site:

AUSTRALIA: Space rock passes through satellite belt
Astronomers around the world breathed a sigh of relief when an asteroid passed within 12,000 kilometres of Australia, closer than communication satellites, last Monday night.
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UNI-LATERAL

UK: Death of the Oxford comma
Late on Friday morning, the sky fell in, with the Oxford University style guide recommending the abandoning of the 'Oxford comma', writes Michael Bywater for The Independent.
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WORLD ROUND-UP

BAHRAIN: Students pay the price for protests
As the summer heat sets in, most university students in Bahrain are eagerly looking forward to getting out of class. But 19 year-old Mohammed and his friends are struggling to get back in, reports Reuters.
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IRAN: Government may separate s exes at universities
When Iranian students return to university in September, men and women may find themselves in separate classes, laboratories, canteens, buses and even administration offices, writes Maryam Sinaiee for The National.
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ISRAEL: Arabs under-represented in universities
The Arab population of Israel suffers from underrepresentation in the country's higher education system and the government will make efforts to remedy this situation, Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar said on Monday, reports Ben Hartman for The Jerusalem Post.
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GERMANY: Once-lauded education system under fire
Germany, the birthplace of kindergarten and the modern university, has long been admired for its commitment to education and for good reason: for generations its spec ialised schools produced more than their share of Nobel Prize winners, as well as the highest skilled tradesmen - high-octane fuel for Europe's economic powerhouse - writes Vanessa Fuhrmans for The Wall Street Journal.
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UK: Two English universities consider going private
Two English universities are actively considering becoming private institutions, research suggests, writes Angela Harrison for BBC News. This would mean they would no longer get direct funding for research or teaching from the government.
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UK: Universities recruit more foreigners to earn cash
Research by The Sunday Telegraph has revealed that nearly a quarter of universities in England, including Cambridge, plan to recruit more international students for the academic year which begins in the autumn, while their number of home students will fall or remain static, write David Barrett and Rebecca Lefort.
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AUSTRALIA: International students save universities
Australian universities are so chronically under-funded in their teaching activities that every domestic undergraduate is effectively subsidised to the tune of AUD1,200 (US$1,293) by international student fees, write Andrew Trounson and Julie Hare for The Australian. That almost matches the government's own subsidy for domestic law and business students of $1,765 a year.
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US: Big jump in California's non-resident students
The University of California's campaign to recruit more high-paying non-resident students appears to be paying off, reports Terence Chea for Associated Press. New data released on Thursday showed big jumps in out-of-state and international students who intend to enroll at the university's nine undergraduate campuses this autumn.
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US: Agents recruiting foreign students criticised
The practice of using commissioned agents to bring in foreign students to American colleges and universities came under sharp criticism during an international education conference organised by the US State Department, with one panelist comparing it to contracting out the student recruitment process to a car salesman, writes Karin Fischer for The Chronicle of Higher Education.
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US: Plan to rank online colleges
The annual college rankings by US News & World Report, demonised by many college leaders as being overly simplistic yet touted by institutions that score well, will soon expand to include online programmes, write Rachel Wiseman and Jeffrey R Young for The Chronicle of Higher Education.
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US: Obama announces technology partnership
President Barack Obama visited a university research centre outside Pittsburgh on 24 June to announce a new partnership between the government, industries and leading universities to speed the movement of technological advances to commercial users, writes Jackie Calmes for The New York Times.
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IRELAND: Measuring the yield from research spending
A hard-hitting review of engineering research in Irish universities and its potential for making a contribution to economic development was recently published by the Irish Academy of Engineering, writes Professor John Kelley for the Irish Times.
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IRELAND: Student number surge to spark funding crisis
Ireland's government is facing a massive financial headache because of a projected explosion in student numbers at schools and colleges, reports Katherine Donnelly for The Irish Independent. The number of enrolments over the coming years is estimated to be much higher than previously thought.
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THE NETHERLANDS: Universities to get tougher
Dutch universities are planning to introduce a range of measures, including compulsory attendance at lectures, in an effort to boost standards, the Volkskrant reported on Thursday.
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