NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report
GLOBAL: North America far ahead in new rankings
Rebecca Warden
North American universities are the clear winners in the latest edition of The Web Ranking of World Universities, published by the Spanish National Research Council or CSIC’s Cybermetrics Lab. The council has US and Canadian universities between them accounting for 123 of the world’s top 200 universities. Europe comes in a very poor second with 61 universities while the Asia-Pacific region manages a total of 14. The league table, produced twice yearly since 2004, ranks institutions according to the size and quality of their presence on the internet and its wider impact.
Full report on the University World News site
INDONESIA: Universities’ poor world ranking probed
David Jardine
Indonesia’s poor showing in university-based scientific research came under the spotlight at a recent national forum. The forum was called in late August by the Institute of Technology (ITB) in the mountain city of Bandung, the West Java provincial capital, to discuss ways of improving the showing of Indonesian universities in the sciences. Hosted by the ITB Alumni Association, it brought together university rectors, researchers and officials from the Ministry of National Education and the State Ministry of Research and Technology.
Full report on the University World News site
CANADA: Tuition-fee patchwork siphons students
Philip Fine
Hundreds of bargain-hunting Canadian students have moved to Newfoundland and Labrador, a province with the lowest tuition fees in the country. The recent student migration is one of the strange things to emerge in a country where individual provincial governments fund university operations, while the federal government is relegated to observing the wild patchwork of varying fees.
Full report on the University World News site
UK: Students underestimate debts
Diane Spencer
As the British university term is about to begin, new students are being warned not to underestimate how much they are likely to be in debt by the end of their courses. A survey from the National Union of Students reveals that prospective university students are underestimating the basic costs of living such as groceries, household bills and travel by nearly £450 (US$822) a year.
Full report on the University World News site
GERMANY: Studying too expensive
Michael Gardner
Yet another damning report has been released on social background and studying in Germany. This time the Deutsches Studentenwerk or DSW, the country’s student welfare organisation, has drawn attention to the fact that more and more school-leavers in Germany are choosing not to study owing to difficult financial hurdles. Even among the group with top marks in the Abitur higher education admission certificate, parents’ income is clearly a decisive factor in career planning.
Full report on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA: Graduates to get qualifications statement
Geoff Maslen
Students graduating from Australian universities are to receive a statement explaining the qualification they receive in simple terms that describe the system in which it was obtained in a consistent way for potential employers and other higher education institutions.
Full report on the University World News site
NEW ZEALAND: Call for change in research funding
John Gerritsen
The system used to direct research funding to New Zealand’s tertiary institutions has received a thumbs-up from an independent review, along with warnings that change and more funding are needed.
Full report on the University World News site
ACADEMIC FREEDOM
IRAN: Kurdish student sentenced to death
Jonathan Travis
Kurdish student Habibollah Latifi has been sentenced to death by an Iranian court, convicted of ‘endangering state security’, the Kurdish Globe has announced. Latifi is the third Iranian Kurd to receive a death sentence in less than a month in what appears to be developing into a blatant campaign against ethnic minorities. In late July, two teachers, Anwar Hossein Panahi and Arsalan Oliaii, were also handed death sentences. According to the Globe, six Iranian Kurds are now on death row, including award-winning journalist Adnan Hassanpour. All have been convicted of endangering state security and ‘relations with illegal political organisations’. Amnesty International recently expressed concern about the increased repression of Kurdish Iranians, particularly human rights defenders.
More Academic Freedom reports on the University World News site
BUSINESS
CHINA: Racing ahead in patenting
Subbiah Arunachalam
China today is the third most prolific patent-filing country in the world after the United States and Japan. The State Intellectual Property Office of China (SIPO) received more than 694,000 patent applications in 2007 including more than 245,000 20-year patent applications and more than 181,000 10-year patent applications, says a report by Evalueserve, an international business research and analytics company. By contrast, the Indian Patent Office received about 35,000 20-year patent applications in the fiscal year 2007-08.
Full report on the University World News site
NEW ZEALAND: University uses nanotechnology for Adidas
John Gerritsen
The University of Canterbury is hoping to find big commercial success in a very little venture – using nanotechnology to imprint words on clothing fibres. The technology received its first public outing recently when it was announced the university had imprinted the names of all 1,073 past and present All Blacks (New Zealand’s national rugby team) onto a single thread stitched into the Silver Fern on the breast of an All Black jersey.
Full report on the University World News site
US: Remove bone marrow to speed bone healing
Monica Dobie
American scientists have shown that recovery from bone breaks can be significantly increased – strangely by taking out the damaged bone’s marrow.
Full report on the University World News site
FEATURES
GLOBAL: University rankings meaningless
David Woodhouse
The central criticism about whole-of-institution rankings relates to the methodology that addresses quality in a superficial way but projects a complex image. Most rankings rely on two types of data: data given by institutions that may not be validated, and data obtained from opinion polls in the name of ‘expert opinion’. With both components on shaky ground, the use of complex formulae with weights and indicators only helps to project a pseudo-scientific image to outcomes that may be statistically irrelevant.
Full report on the University World News site
UK: An unfair funding system
Diane Spencer
The higher education funding system is creaking under the pressure of market forces, says a report just published by the National Union of Students. In Broke and Broken: A critique of the higher education funding system, the NUS presents what it sees as the unfairness and lack of sustainability in the current system, and argues that the scenario can only get worse if the cap on top-up fees were raised or lifted. A wide-ranging debate is needed, it says.
Full report on the University World News site
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
US: Affirmative action in law school admissions
The Supreme Court has held repeatedly that race-based preferences in public university admissions are constitutional. But debates over the wisdom of affirmative action continue, write Jesse Rothstein of Princeton University and Albert H Yoon of the University of Toronto, in the abstract of an article titled Affirmative Action in Law School Admissions: What do racial preferences do? published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. “Opponents of these policies argue that preferences are detrimental to minority students – that by placing these students in environments that are too competitive, affirmative action hurts their academic and career outcomes,” they write. The article examines the “mismatch” hypothesis in the context of law school admissions – and finds its flawed.
More on the University World News site
FACEBOOK
The Facebook group of University World News is the fastest growing in higher education worldwide. Just three weeks after its launch, already more than 230 UWN 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
UNI-LATERAL: Off-beat university stories
CANADA: Film casts a critical eye on universities
The film Les Invasions barbares, Denys Arcand's trenchant take on modern values, zeroed in on the sad state of Quebec’s health system. Now another Québécois movie, Le Banquet, attempts a similar attack on the province’s other great behemoth, the education system – specifically, the universities – writes Henry Aubin in The Gazette.
More on the University World News site
UK: Cambridge wants to star in TV soaps
Britain's soap operas offer a steady diet of sex, scandal – and if Cambridge University has its way, scholarship, reports Associated Press. Trying to shed its elitist image, Cambridge has approached the producers of Britain's three leading TV soaps about including it in their story lines.
More on the University World News site
WORLD ROUND-UP
AUSTRALIA: Tough visa rules for ‘high risk’ students
Indian students enrolling in higher education, postgraduate research and English language courses in Australia will now have to adhere to more stringent visa regulations, reports The Economic Times. India is one of nine countries that have had their immigration risk assessment levels upgraded from three to four on a scale of five beginning this month – the result of visa non-compliance by students. The other countries are Sri Lanka, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, Jordan, N igeria, Romania and Zimbabwe.
More on the University World News site
US: ‘Wall of shame’ for costly colleges
Colleges beware: One more tuition hike and your name might just end up on a new federal Wall of Shame, writes Noah Grynberg in USA Today. The College Opportunity and Affordability Act, signed by President George W Bush on 14 August, will require the Department of Education to post online the colleges and universities with the highest percentage increases in tuition and fees in a three-year period. It also calls for the department to list the 5% of colleges with the highest overall sticker prices.
More on the University World News site
CHINA: MBAs on the rise
Strong demand for management expertise in China spurred many universities to begin offering MBAs either independently or in joint ventures with overseas institutions, reports China Daily. The first batch of MBA schools was launched in 1991 in nine institutions, and 86 students were enrolled. The burning thirst for advancement among the ranks of young executives in the corporate sector has since fuelled MBA mania.
More on the University World News site
BOLIVIA: Three indigenous universities to be created
While busy preparing for a national referendum vote, as well as negotiating energy accords and dealing with strikes, Bolivian President Evo Morales issued Supreme Decree 29664 last month authorising the creation of three indigenous universities where the courses will be taught in Aymara, Quechua and Guarani – the country's three most widely spoken native languages – reports Indian Country.
More on the University World News site
UK: Ready for the crunch?
As they prepare to open their doors to a new wave of students, college principals will be pondering whether the credit crunch will have the same impact on their business as the previous economic downturn of the early 1990s, writes The Guardian. Then, recession saw a boom in further education, as the unemployed and those concerned about losing their jobs turned to local colleges to up-skill, re-skill or take leisure courses to fill their time.
More on the University World News site
UK: Value of gaining a degree plummets
One-third of graduates are receiving no financial benefit from their degree as young people drawn in by Labour’s mass expansion of universities see the value of studying decline for the first time, writes Jack Grimston in the Sunday Times. A study has identified a widening gulf between the highest-paid graduates, whose degrees have brought them soaring returns over the past decade, and those at the lower end.
More on the University World News site
CANADA-SIERRA LEONE: Researching to re-build
To many in the west, Sierra Leone is a nation that is struggling to recover from 11 years of war and decades of autocratic rule, reports Express News of the University of Alberta. But to Mohamed Sesay, it is something entirely different. Sesay, a graduate student visiting from the University of Sierra Leone, where he is working towards his Master of Philosophy at Fourah Bay College, sees his country as being on the verge of a new beginning.
More on the University World News site
KENYA: Record number of students to enrol
Faced with strained facilities and concerns over falling quality of education, public universities are bracing to absorb 17,000 students later this year, the highest number of candidates ever, writes Mwaura Kimani in Business Daily.
More on the University World News site
SOUTH AFRICA: University rooms for World Cup visitors
South Africa’s universities, colleges and boarding schools will play a key role in providing alternatives to more traditional forms of accommodation such as hotels and guesthouses during the 2010 World Cup, reports The Times. Major universities, including Wits, the University of Cape Town and the University of Johannesburg will provide thousands of beds, with UCT alone likely to provide between 2,000 to 3,000 beds.
More on the University World News site
IRELAND: Students protest against third-level fees
More than 30 student leaders protested last week at the Department of Education in Dublin to highlight their opposition to fees, reports the Irish Times. At the protest in the grounds of the department offices on Marlborough Street, student leaders carried posters stating ‘Public funding not fees”, and chanted “they say cut back, we say fight back”.
More on the University World News site
JORDAN: Student admission numbers up by 10%
The Higher Education Council has announced a 10% increase in the number of students accepted in public universities, reports the Jordan Times. The Unified Admission Committee announced the names of 26,361 students accepted in 10 state universities, which left about 1,800 seats vacant.
More on the University World News site
Sunday, 7 September 2008
Sunday, 31 August 2008
University World News 0042 -1st September 2008
NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report
GLOBAL: The real Shanghai Jiao Tong winners
John Gerritsen*
How many Americans does it take to produce a university? No, it's not an academic joke, it's a population-based analysis of the recently published 2008 Academic Ranking of World Universities by China’s Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The study shows that while the US might have the most top 500 universities in the world, it is not the most efficient producer of such universities on a population basis. That title goes to Sweden and the analysis also demonstrates that Scandinavia in general is a veritable powerhouse of academic excellence given its population base.
Full report on the University World News site
SOUTH OSSETIA: Students seek refuge in Russian HE
Nick Holdsworth
Russian higher education authorities in Northern Ossetia are struggling to find university places for more than 1,000 students who fled the fighting in South Ossetia. The university students, 400 technical college students and 5,000 schoolchildren were among around 15,000 refugees from the war who have been officially registered in Northern Ossetia, the Russian republic that borders the Georgian separatist region of South Ossetia.
Full report on the University World News site
DENMARK: Academics sign up to protest
Ard Jongsma
Danish academics are collecting signatures to convince Science Minister Helge Sander that opposition to the current education law is, in their words, “no sectarian craving from a dissatisfied minority…but has a broad basis of support among Danish students and researchers”.
Full report on the University World News site
PAKISTAN: Changing landscape of higher education
Subbiah Arunachalam
Ever since Pakistan came into being 61 years ago, the country has been going through turbulent times. But the past six years have seen a remarkable change in the landscape of higher education, a silent revolution as a World Bank report refers to it, largely thanks to the six-year old Higher Education Commission and its extraordinarily capable chairman Professor Atta-ur-Rahman, an internationally renowned organic chemist. Rahman’s goal is to democratise quality education without diluting excellence.
Full report on the University World News site
MALAYSIA: Inter-ethnic tensions touch universities
David Jardine
Malaysia’s complex inter-ethnic culture touches all areas of life, not least higher education. The latest manifestation is the controversy surrounding a call by Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim, Chief Minister of the central state of Selangor, the country’s most populous, for the local Mara Technology University to open its roll to non-Malays and end its ethnically exclusive admissions policy. Graduates from Mara are favoured for entry into government departments.
Full report on the University World News site
ZIMBABWE: Unqualified Mugabe supporters access HE
Clemence Manyukwe
Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu-PF party is forcing the admission of young supporters into higher education institutions even though they do not meet entry requirements. Students claim the party is using them to destabilise the student union movement by reporting on its activities.
Full report on the University World News site
EGYPT: Universities must open during holy month
Ashraf Khaled
Egyptian Minister of Education, Hany Helal, has caused a stir by opposing a suggestion that the new academic year be postponed until the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Insisting that studies at universities and other education institutions begin on 20 September, Helal was quoted in the press as saying: “Postponing the academic year until the end of the [lunar] month of Ramadan would give a bad impression in the West that Muslims are lazy.”
Full report on the University World News site
NIGERIA: Controversy over university entrance system
Tunde Fatunde
University teachers and the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) are once again at loggerheads over Nigeria’s reformed higher education admission policy. The board, which operates a competitive national entrance examination, is unhappy about universities being allowed to conduct their own admission exams – and has accused some of using the tests to make money.
Full report on the University World News site
NEWSBRIEF
SENEGAL: University students reluctant to leave campus
Students remaining at Senegal’s biggest university, Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, have finally left the campus after water and electricity supplies were cut off last week. They had been refusing to leave their accommodation at the end of an extended academic year, protesting that they had not received their grants.
Full report on the University World News site
FEATURE
AFRICA: New head for African universities association
Karen MacGregor
The new Secretary General of the Association of African Universities, Professor Goolam Mohamedbhai, took up his post this month. His priorities include growing the AAU’s membership, strengthening its secretariat and collaborating with continental development bodies to drive a revival of African universities. This is no easy job – but one for which the former president of the International Association of Universities and University of Mauritius vice-chancellor is exceptionally well qualified.
Full report on the University World News site
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
US: New Stanford study of dual-career academic couples
Dual-career issues are growing in importance in higher education in America. More than 70% of faculty are in dual-career relationships, and more than a third are partnered with another academic, according to a study just published by Stanford University’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research. The publication, Dual-Career Academic Couples: What universities need to know, is based on a survey of full-time tenured and tenure-track academics at 13 leading US universities, as well as interviews with administrators at 18 universities. The lead author is Londa Schiebinger, director of the Clayman Institute and Professor of the History of Science. The report is freely available.
More on the University World News site
FACEBOOK
The Facebook group of University World News is the fastest growing in higher education worldwide. Just three weeks after its launch, already more than 210 UWN 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
INDIA: Poor pay discourages researchers
Increased job opportunities and fat pay packets for young graduates are turning out to be a bane for academic research in India. Alarm bells are ringing in higher education institutions over a sharp drop in the number of students enrolling as research scholars in recent years, reports The Times of India. According to the annual report of the Human Resources Development Ministry, during 2000-01 as many as 45,004 scholars were pursuing research in the country, but by 2005-06 the number had plummeted to 36,519.
More on the University World News site
US: More universities refuse participation in rankings
American universities have begun a rebellion against academic league tables. British universities should join them, writes Geoffrey Alderman in The Guardian. Annually since 1983, US News & World Report has published tables rankings American universities and degree-granting colleges. This year the really good news is not that Harvard has come top, displacing last year’s No 1 Princeton. It is that more US institutions than ever before have refused to take any part whatsoever in the survey.
More on the University World News site
US: Concern over dwindling male tertiary enrolment
For many colleges, dwindling male enrolment has become a source of some concern. But at Saint John’s University – an all-male Roman Catholic institution in Collegeville, Minnesota – recruiting men is a matter of survival, reports Inside Higher Ed. “We see it as a crisis, really, the lack of involvement of men,” said Gar Kellom, executive director of the Center for Men’s Leadership and Service at Saint John’s. “We’ve looked at all the data and said somebody’s got to do something.”
More on the University World News site
US: Universities try to control students off campus
Ah, life in the university district. Cheap ethnic food. Vibrant street life. Fresh-faced students whizzing by on bicycles. People who choose to live on the tree-lined streets surrounding institutions of higher learning often get a more vibrant experience than they expected – loud parties, run-down student boarding houses and trash generated by weekend melees, reports USA Today. But a growing number of universities are starting to take a more proactive approach to monitoring off-campus behaviour and neighbours say the efforts are working.
More on the University World News site
SOUTH AFRICA: Funding for science research diverted
A multi-billion Rand plan to boost South Africa’s scientific research has taken a knock, after the Department of Science and Technology failed to secure R180-million (US$23 million) in funding for this year from the national treasury, reports the Mail & Guardian. Robin Drennan, the National Research Foundation’s executive director of grant management, said there had been “a massive delay” in the allocation of new research positions.
More on the University World News site
SOUTH AFRICA: Huge campus HIV study underway
South Africa's universities have no idea how many of their students and staff are infected with HIV-AIDS – and this scares them, reports The Star. The 23 public universities believe that because they do not know how many of their students are affected by the virus, they do not know if the programmes they have in place to deal with the epidemic are adequate. Earlier this month, the Higher Education HIV-Aids Programme (HEAIDS) embarked on one of the biggest HIV prevalence studies ever undertaken in South Africa.
More on the University World News site
KENYA: Parallel degree courses erode quality, critics say
The quality of education in public universities has been watered down by the introduction of parallel degree programmes, some leaders in the sector have warned and they are calling for urgent measures to stem further decay, reports the Nation. Prime Minister Raila Odinga was first to express concern, saying university education was so commercialised and that it was fast becoming a preserve of the rich.
More on the University World News site
ZIMBABWE: Teachers colleges lower entry requirements
Teacher training colleges have lowered the requirements for prospective student teachers to compensate for a sustained lack of interest in the profession, senior officials confirmed, reports the Zimbabwe Standard. This comes amid reports that 14,000 teachers have left the profession since January due to poor remuneration and deteriorating conditions of service.
More on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA: Universities offer food aid to poor students
The rising cost of living is hitting some Australian students so hard that the universities have now resorted to handing out emergency food aid, reports ABC News. Student organisations say many students across the country are going hungry, and the Australian Catholic University in Sydney has set up a system where students can take food handouts anonymously.
More on the University World News site
SCOTLAND: Call for radical rise in university enrolment
Participation in higher education should be radically expanded by the Scottish Government to allow up to 66% of school-leavers to go to university or college by 2028, according to the new convener of the vice-chancellors body Universities Scotland, Professor Anton Muscatelli. Currently, 47% of young Scots pursue further studies after leaving school, but the proportion has been dropping since 2000, when it reached a peak of 51%, reports The Herald.
More on the University World News site
GLOBAL: The real Shanghai Jiao Tong winners
John Gerritsen*
How many Americans does it take to produce a university? No, it's not an academic joke, it's a population-based analysis of the recently published 2008 Academic Ranking of World Universities by China’s Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The study shows that while the US might have the most top 500 universities in the world, it is not the most efficient producer of such universities on a population basis. That title goes to Sweden and the analysis also demonstrates that Scandinavia in general is a veritable powerhouse of academic excellence given its population base.
Full report on the University World News site
SOUTH OSSETIA: Students seek refuge in Russian HE
Nick Holdsworth
Russian higher education authorities in Northern Ossetia are struggling to find university places for more than 1,000 students who fled the fighting in South Ossetia. The university students, 400 technical college students and 5,000 schoolchildren were among around 15,000 refugees from the war who have been officially registered in Northern Ossetia, the Russian republic that borders the Georgian separatist region of South Ossetia.
Full report on the University World News site
DENMARK: Academics sign up to protest
Ard Jongsma
Danish academics are collecting signatures to convince Science Minister Helge Sander that opposition to the current education law is, in their words, “no sectarian craving from a dissatisfied minority…but has a broad basis of support among Danish students and researchers”.
Full report on the University World News site
PAKISTAN: Changing landscape of higher education
Subbiah Arunachalam
Ever since Pakistan came into being 61 years ago, the country has been going through turbulent times. But the past six years have seen a remarkable change in the landscape of higher education, a silent revolution as a World Bank report refers to it, largely thanks to the six-year old Higher Education Commission and its extraordinarily capable chairman Professor Atta-ur-Rahman, an internationally renowned organic chemist. Rahman’s goal is to democratise quality education without diluting excellence.
Full report on the University World News site
MALAYSIA: Inter-ethnic tensions touch universities
David Jardine
Malaysia’s complex inter-ethnic culture touches all areas of life, not least higher education. The latest manifestation is the controversy surrounding a call by Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim, Chief Minister of the central state of Selangor, the country’s most populous, for the local Mara Technology University to open its roll to non-Malays and end its ethnically exclusive admissions policy. Graduates from Mara are favoured for entry into government departments.
Full report on the University World News site
ZIMBABWE: Unqualified Mugabe supporters access HE
Clemence Manyukwe
Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu-PF party is forcing the admission of young supporters into higher education institutions even though they do not meet entry requirements. Students claim the party is using them to destabilise the student union movement by reporting on its activities.
Full report on the University World News site
EGYPT: Universities must open during holy month
Ashraf Khaled
Egyptian Minister of Education, Hany Helal, has caused a stir by opposing a suggestion that the new academic year be postponed until the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Insisting that studies at universities and other education institutions begin on 20 September, Helal was quoted in the press as saying: “Postponing the academic year until the end of the [lunar] month of Ramadan would give a bad impression in the West that Muslims are lazy.”
Full report on the University World News site
NIGERIA: Controversy over university entrance system
Tunde Fatunde
University teachers and the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) are once again at loggerheads over Nigeria’s reformed higher education admission policy. The board, which operates a competitive national entrance examination, is unhappy about universities being allowed to conduct their own admission exams – and has accused some of using the tests to make money.
Full report on the University World News site
NEWSBRIEF
SENEGAL: University students reluctant to leave campus
Students remaining at Senegal’s biggest university, Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, have finally left the campus after water and electricity supplies were cut off last week. They had been refusing to leave their accommodation at the end of an extended academic year, protesting that they had not received their grants.
Full report on the University World News site
FEATURE
AFRICA: New head for African universities association
Karen MacGregor
The new Secretary General of the Association of African Universities, Professor Goolam Mohamedbhai, took up his post this month. His priorities include growing the AAU’s membership, strengthening its secretariat and collaborating with continental development bodies to drive a revival of African universities. This is no easy job – but one for which the former president of the International Association of Universities and University of Mauritius vice-chancellor is exceptionally well qualified.
Full report on the University World News site
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
US: New Stanford study of dual-career academic couples
Dual-career issues are growing in importance in higher education in America. More than 70% of faculty are in dual-career relationships, and more than a third are partnered with another academic, according to a study just published by Stanford University’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research. The publication, Dual-Career Academic Couples: What universities need to know, is based on a survey of full-time tenured and tenure-track academics at 13 leading US universities, as well as interviews with administrators at 18 universities. The lead author is Londa Schiebinger, director of the Clayman Institute and Professor of the History of Science. The report is freely available.
More on the University World News site
The Facebook group of University World News is the fastest growing in higher education worldwide. Just three weeks after its launch, already more than 210 UWN 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
INDIA: Poor pay discourages researchers
Increased job opportunities and fat pay packets for young graduates are turning out to be a bane for academic research in India. Alarm bells are ringing in higher education institutions over a sharp drop in the number of students enrolling as research scholars in recent years, reports The Times of India. According to the annual report of the Human Resources Development Ministry, during 2000-01 as many as 45,004 scholars were pursuing research in the country, but by 2005-06 the number had plummeted to 36,519.
More on the University World News site
US: More universities refuse participation in rankings
American universities have begun a rebellion against academic league tables. British universities should join them, writes Geoffrey Alderman in The Guardian. Annually since 1983, US News & World Report has published tables rankings American universities and degree-granting colleges. This year the really good news is not that Harvard has come top, displacing last year’s No 1 Princeton. It is that more US institutions than ever before have refused to take any part whatsoever in the survey.
More on the University World News site
US: Concern over dwindling male tertiary enrolment
For many colleges, dwindling male enrolment has become a source of some concern. But at Saint John’s University – an all-male Roman Catholic institution in Collegeville, Minnesota – recruiting men is a matter of survival, reports Inside Higher Ed. “We see it as a crisis, really, the lack of involvement of men,” said Gar Kellom, executive director of the Center for Men’s Leadership and Service at Saint John’s. “We’ve looked at all the data and said somebody’s got to do something.”
More on the University World News site
US: Universities try to control students off campus
Ah, life in the university district. Cheap ethnic food. Vibrant street life. Fresh-faced students whizzing by on bicycles. People who choose to live on the tree-lined streets surrounding institutions of higher learning often get a more vibrant experience than they expected – loud parties, run-down student boarding houses and trash generated by weekend melees, reports USA Today. But a growing number of universities are starting to take a more proactive approach to monitoring off-campus behaviour and neighbours say the efforts are working.
More on the University World News site
SOUTH AFRICA: Funding for science research diverted
A multi-billion Rand plan to boost South Africa’s scientific research has taken a knock, after the Department of Science and Technology failed to secure R180-million (US$23 million) in funding for this year from the national treasury, reports the Mail & Guardian. Robin Drennan, the National Research Foundation’s executive director of grant management, said there had been “a massive delay” in the allocation of new research positions.
More on the University World News site
SOUTH AFRICA: Huge campus HIV study underway
South Africa's universities have no idea how many of their students and staff are infected with HIV-AIDS – and this scares them, reports The Star. The 23 public universities believe that because they do not know how many of their students are affected by the virus, they do not know if the programmes they have in place to deal with the epidemic are adequate. Earlier this month, the Higher Education HIV-Aids Programme (HEAIDS) embarked on one of the biggest HIV prevalence studies ever undertaken in South Africa.
More on the University World News site
KENYA: Parallel degree courses erode quality, critics say
The quality of education in public universities has been watered down by the introduction of parallel degree programmes, some leaders in the sector have warned and they are calling for urgent measures to stem further decay, reports the Nation. Prime Minister Raila Odinga was first to express concern, saying university education was so commercialised and that it was fast becoming a preserve of the rich.
More on the University World News site
ZIMBABWE: Teachers colleges lower entry requirements
Teacher training colleges have lowered the requirements for prospective student teachers to compensate for a sustained lack of interest in the profession, senior officials confirmed, reports the Zimbabwe Standard. This comes amid reports that 14,000 teachers have left the profession since January due to poor remuneration and deteriorating conditions of service.
More on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA: Universities offer food aid to poor students
The rising cost of living is hitting some Australian students so hard that the universities have now resorted to handing out emergency food aid, reports ABC News. Student organisations say many students across the country are going hungry, and the Australian Catholic University in Sydney has set up a system where students can take food handouts anonymously.
More on the University World News site
SCOTLAND: Call for radical rise in university enrolment
Participation in higher education should be radically expanded by the Scottish Government to allow up to 66% of school-leavers to go to university or college by 2028, according to the new convener of the vice-chancellors body Universities Scotland, Professor Anton Muscatelli. Currently, 47% of young Scots pursue further studies after leaving school, but the proportion has been dropping since 2000, when it reached a peak of 51%, reports The Herald.
More on the University World News site
Monday, 18 August 2008
University World News 0041 - 17th August 2008
Are sports winners just like chimps?
The triumphant stance of sporting winners appears to be
an inherited trait that humans share with the apes.
See our story in Science Scene this week.
NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report
GLOBAL: University world rankings
Geoff Maslen
Universities in the United States have again dominated the world’s top 500 in the latest rankings by Shanghai Jiao Tong University. It is the sixth year since the Chinese university began listing the world’s top higher education institutions and once more, US universities have taken 17 of the first 20 places and 55 of the top 100. This compares with America’s main competitor – Britain – which managed to squeeze only two of its universities in the top 20 and a mere 10 in the first 100.
Full report on the University World News site
FRANCE: Jiao Tong rankings cause for concern
Jane Marshal
France’s poor showing in the rankings underlined the absolute necessity to reform French higher education, said the Minister, Valérie Pécresse, who has the task of fulfilling President Nicolas Sarkozy’s aim to make French universities internationally competitive by 2012. France has just three establishments in the top 100, one fewer than in 2007.
Full report on the University World News site
AFRICA: Three universities in global top 500, two out
Karen MacGregor
Two African universities have slipped from the Top 500 identified by the Academic Ranking of World Universities, leaving only three – the universities of Cape Town, the Witwatersrand and KwaZulu-Natal – in the elite global list for 2008. South Africa follows Ireland into 25th place in terms of percentage distribution of top universities by country, ahead of Europe’s Greece, Hungary, Poland and Portugal as well as India.
Full report on the University World News site
EUROPE: Quality assurance register created
Quality assurance agencies for higher education across Europe can now officially apply to join the new European Quality Assurance Register. Founded in March, the EQAR will provide information about trustworthy quality assurance agencies working in Europe.
Full report on the University World News site
IRELAND: Student’s High Court challenge fails
John Walshe
A Dublin student has failed in a High Court bid to ‘buy’ a place in an Irish undergraduate medical school in the same way non-EU students can at present. Frank Prendergast is now preparing a Supreme Court appeal in a test case which has ramifications for selection of candidates across all disciplines.
Full report on the University World News site
GREECE: Cheque-book higher education
Makki Marseilles
The first step towards privatisation of higher education in Greece has been taken by the government despite strong opposition from the academic community, political parties, educational trades unions as well as parents and students at large.
Full report on the University World News site
US: Ford Foundation international fellowships exceed 3,000
Since its international scholarship scheme started in 2001, the Ford Foundation has provided fellowships to more than 3,000 postgraduates in 22 countries. Intended as a social justice programme, the scheme offers fellowships for postgraduate study to leaders from poor and marginalised communities who have demonstrated exceptional social commitment as well as academic achievement.
Full report on the University World News site
ZIMBABWE: Lecturers warn of university closures
Clemence Manyukwe
Academics in Zimbabwe have warned President Robert Mugabe that all state-controlled higher education institutions face closure as a result of poor working conditions, the brain drain and other problems arising from the country’s political and economic crises. With inflation now at 42 million percent, lecturers said their salaries no longer covered transport costs and that they had not been working since June.
Full report on the University World News site
BOTSWANA: Lecturer on Zimbabwe sanctions list deported
Clemence Manyukwe
The Botswana government has deported a media studies lecturer at the University of Botswana who is on the latest Zimbabwe sanctions list of the European Union. Ceasar Zvayi, former political editor of the Harare-based state-owned newspaper The Herald, had moved to Botswana to take up the lecturing job shortly after President Robert Mugabe’s controversial re-election in a one-man poll on 27 June – prompting a public outcry in Botswana.
Full report on the University World News site
NOTICE:
University World News will be taking a short break next week
but will reappear on 31 August.
NEWSBRIEFS:
HONG KONG: Gates calls for more industry involvement
Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates has urged universities to seek industry collaboration in technology research. Speaking at the Microsoft Research Asia 10th Anniversary Innovation Forum in Hong Kong last week, Gates said universities should learn from the US experience in establishing partnerships with industry in conducting research and in transferring the results into marketable products.
Full report on the University World News site
DR CONGO: Ban on graduates wearing academic gowns
Parents of students have been relieved of a heavy financial burden – they will no longer have to buy or hire expensive gowns for their children’s university graduations, says Le Phare of Kinshasa. A ministerial decree has banned students from wearing the ceremonial robes which will in future be reserved for academics only. The prohibition also covers infants leaving nursery school.
Full report on the University World News site
ZAMBIA: Students riot over lecturer strike
Nine University of Zambia students have been arrested following rioting aimed at pressing the government to resolve a crippling strike by lecturers at the country’s oldest institution. Similar protests two months ago resulted in police shooting and injuring two students.
Full report on the University World News site
SCIENCE SCENE:
US: Sports winners are just like chimps
Geoff Maslen
American swimmer Michael Phelps could have been King Kong himself with his contorted face and arms thrust towards the sky following his and his team-mates’ win in the men’s 4 x 100 metre freestyle relay at the Olympics in Beijing last week. Of course Phelps is not alone among winning sportsmen with their clenched fists and chests thrown forward – just look at tennis players where even the women are now also behaving the same way. But do they realise they look just like our cousins, the apes?
Full report on the University World News site
GLOBAL: Sheep genome breakthrough
A cutting-edge new tool to pinpoint the genetic differences responsible for a variety of commercially important traits in sheep is about to be released by an international consortium of researchers in the US, Australia and New Zealand.
Full report on the University World News site
JORDAN: Digging up the past
Geoff Maslen
The past is truly another country to archaeologists such as Dr Phillip Edwards, a fascinating country he has explored for almost 30 years. Edwards hit the headlines earlier this year when he announced the remarkable discovery of an ancient tool kit used by a hunter-gatherer in Jordan 12,000 years before the birth of Jesus Christ.
Full report on the University World News site
FEATURES:
SOUTH AFRICA: From poor to PhD – Gugu Mchunu’s story
Karen MacGregor
Not in her wildest dreams, growing up the youngest of 10 children in a deprived rural family on South Africa’s east coast, did Gugu Mchunu imagine she would end up with a prestigious PhD fellowship studying in America. “I couldn’t afford to go to university,” she recalls. But there sits a gleaming Dr Mchunu, 39, in her neat office at the University of KwaZulu-Natal where she lectures in the School of Nursing – one of some 200 South Africans among more than 3,000 once-disadvantaged intellectuals in 22 countries who have been awarded fellowships under the single biggest grant in the Ford Foundation’s history.
Full report on the University World News site
CHINA: Rise of research in the Middle Kingdom
Simon Marginson
A notable development of the last decade was the pluralisation of research capacity in the sciences. Between 1995 and 2005, the annual number of scientific papers produced in China rose from 9,061 to 41,596. China was poised to overtake UK and Germany at the top of the EU table though its output remained less than one fifth that of the EU as a whole.
Full report on the University World News site
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY:
AFRICA: Research universities needed to fight poverty
Mammo Muchie
Research universities, as a source of new knowledge, are one of the critical levers – along with government and industry – needed to shape a knowledge economy in any part of the world. The key question for Africa is how universities can be aligned to support economic development, the eradication of poverty and sustainable use of natural resources. Here research and knowledge, far from being ivory tower pursuits, become critical to making poverty history and preparing countries to cope with disasters. However, to achieve this, research should be understood not only as a source of new knowledge, but also as a process that trains people to create more knowledge.
This SciDev.net article is on the University World News site
UNI-LATERAL: Off-beat university stories
AUSTRALIA: Mobiles used to tell fibs
More than 40% of train travellers in Melbourne used their mobile phones to lie to their bosses and friends about being delayed because of late trains, an RMIT University study has found.
Full report on the University World News site
FRANCE: Loud music = greater alcohol consumption
Academics in France have swapped their laboratories for cafés and pubs. In a recent study, Université de Bretagne-Sud scientists found the louder the music is in a bar, the more people drank.
Full report on the University World News site
FACEBOOK
The Facebook group of University World News is the fastest growing in higher education worldwide. Just three weeks after its launch, already well over 180 UWN readers have joined. Sign up to the University World News Facebook group to meet and communicate directly with academics and researchers informed by the world’s first truly global higher education publication. Click on the link below to visit and join the group.
Visit the University World News group on Facebook
WORLD ROUND-UP
US: Forbes launches new ‘Best Colleges’ ranking
Choosing a four-year undergraduate college is one of the biggest decisions a typical American family can make. And for too many years, information about the quality of American higher education has been monopolised by one publication, US News & World Report, reports Forbes, announcing its alternative – America’s Best Colleges 2008. The new guide ranks Princeton University the best in the US, followed by the California Institute of Technology, Harvard, Swarthmore and Williams.
More on the University World News site
IRELAND: Fees for better-off are back on agenda
The return of third-level fees – which were abolished in the mid-1990s – is back on the agenda as the government seeks to ensure universities are properly funded, Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe told The Irish Times. However O’Keeffe stressed that there was no question of imposing new charges on those who could not afford them. Any new charges would target better-off families and those with incomes well above the national average.
More on the University World News site
CANADA: Newly appointed professor killed in Afghanistan
The papers appointing Jackie Kirk as an adjunct professor at McGill University were waiting to be signed when school officials learned the research fellow had been killed in an ambush in Afghanistan, reports the National Post. Jamshid Beheshti, an interim dean with the faculty of education, said he expects the school will posthumously award Kirk the professorship that would have allowed her to lecture and teach in the fall.
More on the University World News site
DUBAI: International Academic City takes on the world
Drive down Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai's main thoroughfare, and you'll pass the world's only seven-star hotel, its tallest building and its largest man-made resort island. But head off into the desert and you'll hit a modest-looking set of office buildings and construction cranes that promise to be just as superlative. This is the site of Dubai International Academic City: the future home of a Michigan State University campus and the centre of the local effort to make the emirate into a new global hot spot for higher education, writes Zvika Krieger in Newsweek.
More on the University World News site
US: 1+2+1 = more Chinese students
Type 1+2+1 into Google and the search automatically, and unhelpfully, reverts to calculator mode (=4), writes Elizabeth Redden in Inside Higher Ed. The figures also add up to an increasingly popular model for undergraduate dual degree programmes involving Chinese and American universities. Students start and end in China in a programme structure intended to avert US visa denials – by conditioning degree completion upon a student’s return to China – and to lower the cost of obtaining an American undergraduate degree (by halving the time spent studying abroad).
More on the University World News site
US: University outsources programme to find overseas students
Like a lot of universities, Northeastern has Barnes & Noble running its bookstore, and Pizza Hut, Wendy’s, Starbucks and Taco Bell selling food in the student centre, reports Tamar Lewin in the International Herald Tribune. But Northeastern has taken outsourcing a giant step further. It is using Kaplan Inc to find students for, and help run, an academic programme for international students to spend a year on campus, improving their English and adapting to American higher education before starting on a course. Northeastern is the first US university to take up a model that is common in Britain and gaining interest in the US.
More on the University World News site
UK: Minister questions wisdom of higher education
The Universities Secretary has acknowledged that some young people would be better off not going to university, reports the Financial Times. His comments come amid growing evidence that many people from the country’s ever expanding pool of graduates are leaving university to go into menial, relatively low-paid jobs, while many bright young people who instead opt for some highly regarded apprenticeships are establishing thriving careers.
More on the University World News site
UK: Students to ‘trade up’ for better college
Pupils who do unexpectedly well at A-level will be given five days after receiving their results to shop around for a more prestigious university, reports The Observer. From next year, a controversial new system will allow anyone who achieves grades higher than asked by their first-choice university the chance to ‘trade up’ without losing their original place.
More on the University World News site
UK: Oxford delays on A* grade offers
Oxford University says it will not make conditional offers for places based on the new A* grade at A-level when it is first awarded in 2010, reports the BBC. The higher grade is intended to identify the most able students and to help universities choose from among many candidates with A grades. But there are concerns it will become dominated by independent schools, hitting efforts to widen participation.
More on the University World News site
SOUTH AFRICA: Engineering departments running on empty
Departments of engineering and architecture at universities and tecknikons across South Africa are running into trouble as they face a serious shortage of lecturers and resources, reports Independent Online. Tight budgets, dwindling lecturers, swelling student numbers, a lack of resources and a struggle to fill posts because of poor salaries are the main problems.
More on the University World News site
PHILIPPINES: Private sector not keen on credit transfer
The Commission on Higher Education is having a hard time selling the government’s ‘ladderised education’ programme to private tertiary colleges, reports the Philippine Daily Inquirer. While all 111 state-run tertiary institutions are already using the system that allows learners to progress between technical and vocational education and training and higher education – and vice versa – fewer than a third of more than 1,500 private colleges and universities nationwide have adopted the scheme so far.
More on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA: Union fee change hits universities
The introduction of voluntary student unionism has cost Australian universities $161 million a year since it came into effect in 2006, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. A Federal Government report has highlighted its devastating impact on campuses, where basic services have been cut due to lack of funding.
More on the University World News site
The triumphant stance of sporting winners appears to be
an inherited trait that humans share with the apes.
See our story in Science Scene this week.
NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report
GLOBAL: University world rankings
Geoff Maslen
Universities in the United States have again dominated the world’s top 500 in the latest rankings by Shanghai Jiao Tong University. It is the sixth year since the Chinese university began listing the world’s top higher education institutions and once more, US universities have taken 17 of the first 20 places and 55 of the top 100. This compares with America’s main competitor – Britain – which managed to squeeze only two of its universities in the top 20 and a mere 10 in the first 100.
Full report on the University World News site
FRANCE: Jiao Tong rankings cause for concern
Jane Marshal
France’s poor showing in the rankings underlined the absolute necessity to reform French higher education, said the Minister, Valérie Pécresse, who has the task of fulfilling President Nicolas Sarkozy’s aim to make French universities internationally competitive by 2012. France has just three establishments in the top 100, one fewer than in 2007.
Full report on the University World News site
AFRICA: Three universities in global top 500, two out
Karen MacGregor
Two African universities have slipped from the Top 500 identified by the Academic Ranking of World Universities, leaving only three – the universities of Cape Town, the Witwatersrand and KwaZulu-Natal – in the elite global list for 2008. South Africa follows Ireland into 25th place in terms of percentage distribution of top universities by country, ahead of Europe’s Greece, Hungary, Poland and Portugal as well as India.
Full report on the University World News site
EUROPE: Quality assurance register created
Quality assurance agencies for higher education across Europe can now officially apply to join the new European Quality Assurance Register. Founded in March, the EQAR will provide information about trustworthy quality assurance agencies working in Europe.
Full report on the University World News site
IRELAND: Student’s High Court challenge fails
John Walshe
A Dublin student has failed in a High Court bid to ‘buy’ a place in an Irish undergraduate medical school in the same way non-EU students can at present. Frank Prendergast is now preparing a Supreme Court appeal in a test case which has ramifications for selection of candidates across all disciplines.
Full report on the University World News site
GREECE: Cheque-book higher education
Makki Marseilles
The first step towards privatisation of higher education in Greece has been taken by the government despite strong opposition from the academic community, political parties, educational trades unions as well as parents and students at large.
Full report on the University World News site
US: Ford Foundation international fellowships exceed 3,000
Since its international scholarship scheme started in 2001, the Ford Foundation has provided fellowships to more than 3,000 postgraduates in 22 countries. Intended as a social justice programme, the scheme offers fellowships for postgraduate study to leaders from poor and marginalised communities who have demonstrated exceptional social commitment as well as academic achievement.
Full report on the University World News site
ZIMBABWE: Lecturers warn of university closures
Clemence Manyukwe
Academics in Zimbabwe have warned President Robert Mugabe that all state-controlled higher education institutions face closure as a result of poor working conditions, the brain drain and other problems arising from the country’s political and economic crises. With inflation now at 42 million percent, lecturers said their salaries no longer covered transport costs and that they had not been working since June.
Full report on the University World News site
BOTSWANA: Lecturer on Zimbabwe sanctions list deported
Clemence Manyukwe
The Botswana government has deported a media studies lecturer at the University of Botswana who is on the latest Zimbabwe sanctions list of the European Union. Ceasar Zvayi, former political editor of the Harare-based state-owned newspaper The Herald, had moved to Botswana to take up the lecturing job shortly after President Robert Mugabe’s controversial re-election in a one-man poll on 27 June – prompting a public outcry in Botswana.
Full report on the University World News site
NOTICE:
University World News will be taking a short break next week
but will reappear on 31 August.
NEWSBRIEFS:
HONG KONG: Gates calls for more industry involvement
Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates has urged universities to seek industry collaboration in technology research. Speaking at the Microsoft Research Asia 10th Anniversary Innovation Forum in Hong Kong last week, Gates said universities should learn from the US experience in establishing partnerships with industry in conducting research and in transferring the results into marketable products.
Full report on the University World News site
DR CONGO: Ban on graduates wearing academic gowns
Parents of students have been relieved of a heavy financial burden – they will no longer have to buy or hire expensive gowns for their children’s university graduations, says Le Phare of Kinshasa. A ministerial decree has banned students from wearing the ceremonial robes which will in future be reserved for academics only. The prohibition also covers infants leaving nursery school.
Full report on the University World News site
ZAMBIA: Students riot over lecturer strike
Nine University of Zambia students have been arrested following rioting aimed at pressing the government to resolve a crippling strike by lecturers at the country’s oldest institution. Similar protests two months ago resulted in police shooting and injuring two students.
Full report on the University World News site
SCIENCE SCENE:
US: Sports winners are just like chimps
Geoff Maslen
American swimmer Michael Phelps could have been King Kong himself with his contorted face and arms thrust towards the sky following his and his team-mates’ win in the men’s 4 x 100 metre freestyle relay at the Olympics in Beijing last week. Of course Phelps is not alone among winning sportsmen with their clenched fists and chests thrown forward – just look at tennis players where even the women are now also behaving the same way. But do they realise they look just like our cousins, the apes?
Full report on the University World News site
GLOBAL: Sheep genome breakthrough
A cutting-edge new tool to pinpoint the genetic differences responsible for a variety of commercially important traits in sheep is about to be released by an international consortium of researchers in the US, Australia and New Zealand.
Full report on the University World News site
JORDAN: Digging up the past
Geoff Maslen
The past is truly another country to archaeologists such as Dr Phillip Edwards, a fascinating country he has explored for almost 30 years. Edwards hit the headlines earlier this year when he announced the remarkable discovery of an ancient tool kit used by a hunter-gatherer in Jordan 12,000 years before the birth of Jesus Christ.
Full report on the University World News site
FEATURES:
SOUTH AFRICA: From poor to PhD – Gugu Mchunu’s story
Karen MacGregor
Not in her wildest dreams, growing up the youngest of 10 children in a deprived rural family on South Africa’s east coast, did Gugu Mchunu imagine she would end up with a prestigious PhD fellowship studying in America. “I couldn’t afford to go to university,” she recalls. But there sits a gleaming Dr Mchunu, 39, in her neat office at the University of KwaZulu-Natal where she lectures in the School of Nursing – one of some 200 South Africans among more than 3,000 once-disadvantaged intellectuals in 22 countries who have been awarded fellowships under the single biggest grant in the Ford Foundation’s history.
Full report on the University World News site
CHINA: Rise of research in the Middle Kingdom
Simon Marginson
A notable development of the last decade was the pluralisation of research capacity in the sciences. Between 1995 and 2005, the annual number of scientific papers produced in China rose from 9,061 to 41,596. China was poised to overtake UK and Germany at the top of the EU table though its output remained less than one fifth that of the EU as a whole.
Full report on the University World News site
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY:
AFRICA: Research universities needed to fight poverty
Mammo Muchie
Research universities, as a source of new knowledge, are one of the critical levers – along with government and industry – needed to shape a knowledge economy in any part of the world. The key question for Africa is how universities can be aligned to support economic development, the eradication of poverty and sustainable use of natural resources. Here research and knowledge, far from being ivory tower pursuits, become critical to making poverty history and preparing countries to cope with disasters. However, to achieve this, research should be understood not only as a source of new knowledge, but also as a process that trains people to create more knowledge.
This SciDev.net article is on the University World News site
UNI-LATERAL: Off-beat university stories
AUSTRALIA: Mobiles used to tell fibs
More than 40% of train travellers in Melbourne used their mobile phones to lie to their bosses and friends about being delayed because of late trains, an RMIT University study has found.
Full report on the University World News site
FRANCE: Loud music = greater alcohol consumption
Academics in France have swapped their laboratories for cafés and pubs. In a recent study, Université de Bretagne-Sud scientists found the louder the music is in a bar, the more people drank.
Full report on the University World News site
The Facebook group of University World News is the fastest growing in higher education worldwide. Just three weeks after its launch, already well over 180 UWN readers have joined. Sign up to the University World News Facebook group to meet and communicate directly with academics and researchers informed by the world’s first truly global higher education publication. Click on the link below to visit and join the group.
Visit the University World News group on Facebook
WORLD ROUND-UP
US: Forbes launches new ‘Best Colleges’ ranking
Choosing a four-year undergraduate college is one of the biggest decisions a typical American family can make. And for too many years, information about the quality of American higher education has been monopolised by one publication, US News & World Report, reports Forbes, announcing its alternative – America’s Best Colleges 2008. The new guide ranks Princeton University the best in the US, followed by the California Institute of Technology, Harvard, Swarthmore and Williams.
More on the University World News site
IRELAND: Fees for better-off are back on agenda
The return of third-level fees – which were abolished in the mid-1990s – is back on the agenda as the government seeks to ensure universities are properly funded, Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe told The Irish Times. However O’Keeffe stressed that there was no question of imposing new charges on those who could not afford them. Any new charges would target better-off families and those with incomes well above the national average.
More on the University World News site
CANADA: Newly appointed professor killed in Afghanistan
The papers appointing Jackie Kirk as an adjunct professor at McGill University were waiting to be signed when school officials learned the research fellow had been killed in an ambush in Afghanistan, reports the National Post. Jamshid Beheshti, an interim dean with the faculty of education, said he expects the school will posthumously award Kirk the professorship that would have allowed her to lecture and teach in the fall.
More on the University World News site
DUBAI: International Academic City takes on the world
Drive down Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai's main thoroughfare, and you'll pass the world's only seven-star hotel, its tallest building and its largest man-made resort island. But head off into the desert and you'll hit a modest-looking set of office buildings and construction cranes that promise to be just as superlative. This is the site of Dubai International Academic City: the future home of a Michigan State University campus and the centre of the local effort to make the emirate into a new global hot spot for higher education, writes Zvika Krieger in Newsweek.
More on the University World News site
US: 1+2+1 = more Chinese students
Type 1+2+1 into Google and the search automatically, and unhelpfully, reverts to calculator mode (=4), writes Elizabeth Redden in Inside Higher Ed. The figures also add up to an increasingly popular model for undergraduate dual degree programmes involving Chinese and American universities. Students start and end in China in a programme structure intended to avert US visa denials – by conditioning degree completion upon a student’s return to China – and to lower the cost of obtaining an American undergraduate degree (by halving the time spent studying abroad).
More on the University World News site
US: University outsources programme to find overseas students
Like a lot of universities, Northeastern has Barnes & Noble running its bookstore, and Pizza Hut, Wendy’s, Starbucks and Taco Bell selling food in the student centre, reports Tamar Lewin in the International Herald Tribune. But Northeastern has taken outsourcing a giant step further. It is using Kaplan Inc to find students for, and help run, an academic programme for international students to spend a year on campus, improving their English and adapting to American higher education before starting on a course. Northeastern is the first US university to take up a model that is common in Britain and gaining interest in the US.
More on the University World News site
UK: Minister questions wisdom of higher education
The Universities Secretary has acknowledged that some young people would be better off not going to university, reports the Financial Times. His comments come amid growing evidence that many people from the country’s ever expanding pool of graduates are leaving university to go into menial, relatively low-paid jobs, while many bright young people who instead opt for some highly regarded apprenticeships are establishing thriving careers.
More on the University World News site
UK: Students to ‘trade up’ for better college
Pupils who do unexpectedly well at A-level will be given five days after receiving their results to shop around for a more prestigious university, reports The Observer. From next year, a controversial new system will allow anyone who achieves grades higher than asked by their first-choice university the chance to ‘trade up’ without losing their original place.
More on the University World News site
UK: Oxford delays on A* grade offers
Oxford University says it will not make conditional offers for places based on the new A* grade at A-level when it is first awarded in 2010, reports the BBC. The higher grade is intended to identify the most able students and to help universities choose from among many candidates with A grades. But there are concerns it will become dominated by independent schools, hitting efforts to widen participation.
More on the University World News site
SOUTH AFRICA: Engineering departments running on empty
Departments of engineering and architecture at universities and tecknikons across South Africa are running into trouble as they face a serious shortage of lecturers and resources, reports Independent Online. Tight budgets, dwindling lecturers, swelling student numbers, a lack of resources and a struggle to fill posts because of poor salaries are the main problems.
More on the University World News site
PHILIPPINES: Private sector not keen on credit transfer
The Commission on Higher Education is having a hard time selling the government’s ‘ladderised education’ programme to private tertiary colleges, reports the Philippine Daily Inquirer. While all 111 state-run tertiary institutions are already using the system that allows learners to progress between technical and vocational education and training and higher education – and vice versa – fewer than a third of more than 1,500 private colleges and universities nationwide have adopted the scheme so far.
More on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA: Union fee change hits universities
The introduction of voluntary student unionism has cost Australian universities $161 million a year since it came into effect in 2006, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. A Federal Government report has highlighted its devastating impact on campuses, where basic services have been cut due to lack of funding.
More on the University World News site
Sunday, 10 August 2008
University World News 0040 - 10th August 2008
THE BEIJING 2008 OLYMPICS
China's universities have played little part preparing athletes for this week's sporting spectacular in Beijing. See our exclusive story on the University World News site.
NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report
CHINA: Olympics - low-key involvement by universities
Michael Delaney
University sports are a big deal in China, followed with great fervour by students and alumni, and many universities boast excellent sporting facilities and stadiums. Yet historically there has been a great distance, even antipathy, between the state administration and university sports departments. As a result, the nation's centralised sports system means universities have largely been left out in the cold when it comes to preparing athletes for the Olympic Games.
Read the full story on the University World News site
GLOBAL: Liberalisation shelved as talks collapse
Keith Nuthall
Proposals to sweep away some restrictions preventing private universities and higher education service providers from teaching, researching and examining in foreign countries have been put on ice at the World Trade Organization.
Read the full story on the University World News site
GERMANY: Plans to create more leeway for research
Michael Gardner
Germany's federal government has adopted a five-point plan to create more autonomy for public-funded research institutions. In future, they will enjoy considerably more scope in terms of budgets, staff, networking, construction measures and procurement. The new measures will ultimately lead to a special law on academic freedom agreed to by the government last year.
Read the full story on the University World News site
NEW ZEALAND: Student allowances an election bribe
John Gerritsen
University bosses are fuming after the ruling Labour Party admitted it was considering extending student allowances to all tertiary students. The party is polling badly with a general election due to take place before the end of the year, and Labour knows from past experience that students' finances are a vote-winner: a policy of zero interest for student loans helped it win the 2005 elections.
Read the full story on the University World News site
SPECIAL REPORT: E-Learning
E-learning is one of the buzzwords of 21st century higher education, with academics around the world increasingly relying on technology to communicate with their students – and transmit their lectures. But as University World News writers report in this special on E-learning, as some designate it, although a great boon to many lacking easy access to education, technology must be used intelligently as a tool for learning and not be regarded simply as a panacea.
Read the full report on the University World News site.
BRITISH COMMONWEALTH: Big changes in small states
Nick Holdsworth
One of the world's leading distance learning organisations is pushing ahead with plans to give students in some of the poorest parts of the developing world equal access to university education. The Commonwealth of Learning - the world's only intergovernmental agency solely dedicated to promoting and delivering distance education and open learning - is working with 30 of the British Commonwealth's smaller states to create a 'virtual university'.
Read the full report on the University World News site.Read the full story on the University World News site
Read the full story on the University World News site
FRANCE: Universities lag 'digitally native' students
Jane Marshall
French universities must urgently catch up with information and communication technologies if they are to satisfy the higher education demands of the advancing generation of 'digitally native' students. Although initiatives have been established in recent years to help them develop the necessary infrastructure, only a few universities have so far made satisfactory progress. But this lag is due more to systemic and human shortcomings than to technological inadequacies.
Read the full report on the University World News site.
UK: Virtual lectures? No thanks, say students
Diane Spencer
The British government is keen to promote e-learning, as are UK universities. Yet research shows that students still prefer face-to-face learning. Next year will see the conclusion of a project which began in October 2003, run by the Joint Information Systems Committee to identify how e-learning can benefit learners, practitioners and educational institutions, and it will advise how its findings can be implemented.
Read the full report on the University World News site.
AUSTRALIA: Online studying for the remote and on-the-move
Geoff Maslen
The only troublesome incident Kerry Grace had in four years of studying online for her bachelor of business degree through Open Universities Australia (OUA) was when she was breastfeeding her first baby and had to travel to sit for an examination 90 minutes away. The university she was taking the unit with refused to allow her to bring the baby into the exam room but said she could have a babysitter outside and she could go and feed her baby if she needed to.
Read the full report on the University World News site.
SOUTH AFRICA: Universities not far behind the curve
Karen MacGregor
The use of information and communication technologies to support learning in South African universities is booming and they are "not very far behind the curve" of developed countries in e-learning, says Stephen Marquard, learning technology coordinator for the University of Cape Town. Activities are limited by low internet bandwidth and uneven access by students to computers, but there is widespread experimentation within this constrained African context and interest is keen - last month participants from 14 African countries and 24 worldwide 'attended' the third virtual conference on educational technology in Africa, e/merge 2008.
Read the full report on the University World News site.
GREECE: Struggling to keep up
Makki Marseilles
Greece is not in the forefront of e-learning but efforts are being made to keep the country from lagging too far behind other major European countries in and out of the EU as well as worldwide.
Read the full report on the University World News site.
NEWSBRIEF::
EU: New governing board for European institute
A new 18-member governing board of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) was appointed on 30 July and has until the end of 2009 to identify, select and launch the first EU 'innovation hubs', expected to cover the fields of climate change, renewable energy and ICT.
Read the story on the University World News site.
ACADEMIC FREEDOM:
ETHIOPIA: October conference on academic freedom
Jonathan Travis
The Network for Education and Academic Rights, Scholars at Risk Network, British Council Ethiopia, the Forum for Social Studies and the Organisation for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa are organising a conference and workshop in Addis Ababa to discuss academic freedom in the region.
Read the full report on the University World News site.
FACEBOOK:
The Facebook group of University World News is the fastest growing in higher education worldwide. Just three weeks after its launch, more than 120 UWN readers have already registered. 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
BUSINESS:
CANADA: Academics train Inuit territory bureaucrats
Monica Dobie
Canada's most northerly territory, Nunavut, will have access to an advanced business management diploma programme operated by the Sobey School of Business at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Read the full report on the University World News site.
NEW ZEALAND: EU agreement encourages collaboration
John Gerritsen
New Zealand's researchers will gain access to more European Union (EU) science and technology programmes, thanks to a newly-signed cooperation agreement.
Read the full report on the University World News site.
SWEDEN: Inspire workers - make them redundant
Monica Dobie
A doctoral dissertation submitted to the Swedish Business School at Örebro University has revealed that failing companies could offer the secret of success for businesses yet to face dire straits. Strangely, productivity rises when companies are facing closure.
Read the full report on the University World News site.
FEATURE:
INDIA: A crumbling system of higher education
Geoff Maslen
India's decision in the early 1990s to open its markets and fully participate in the global economy is widely credited for the nation's spectacular rate of economic growth over the past decade or so, says Professor Fazal Rizvi. But Rizvi says many within and outside India believe this rate of growth is not sustainable unless India overhauls its crumbling system of higher education.
Read the full report on the University World News site.
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY:
CHINA: Major higher education transformation underway
As eyes turn to China and the Olympic Games, a recent study by Canada's Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) has found that major transformation of higher education in the emerging power could impact on the global economy and global education structure. The policy brief Higher Educational Transformation in China and its Global Implications highlights recent statistics showing that the number of undergraduate and graduate students in China has increased by about 30% a year since 1999, as well as earlier studies estimating that in two years there will be many more PhD engineers and scientists in China than in the US and 90% of all PhD physical scientists and engineers in the world will be Asians living in Asia, most of them Chinese.
Read the full report on the University World News site.
PEOPLE:
RUSSIA: Solzhenitsyn - a mission to save his people
Nick Holdsworth
Obituary: Alexander Solzhenitsyn 11 December 1918 - 3 August 2008
Russia went into mourning last week after the death of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel prize-winning writer and dissident who devoted his life to exposing the horrors of Stalin's police state and prison system.
Read the full obituary on the University World News site.
WORLD ROUND-UP
TURKEY: Academics quit over president's rector choices
More than a dozen senior Turkish academics resigned last week in protest at President Abdullah Gul's choice of university rectors, a sign of renewed tensions between the secularist establishment and the government, reports The Peninsula in Qatar. Turkish media said several rectors who support the ruling AK Party, including those favourable to ending a ban on students wearing the Muslim headscarf on campus, had been picked over secularist professors.
Read more on the Unviersity World News site.
US: Scientists homes firebombed
Firebombs that struck the home and car of two University of California, Santa Cruz, scientists last weekend were part of an increasingly aggressive campaign by animal rights activists against animal researchers, officials said. The LA Times reported Santa Cruz police officials as saying that the blasts, which occurred three minutes apart, caused one of the scientists, his wife and two young children to flee their home through a second-story window.
Read more on the Unviersity World News site.
US: Google, Microsoft vie for universities
You can think of it as 'Schoogle', writes John Cox in washingtonpost.com. That would be Google's laid-back but unflinchingly ambitious plan to woo college and university IT departments into outsourcing not just student e-mail but web-based productivity applications and calendaring to the search giant. And a growing number of schools are doing just that. Last week, Google announced that 13 new US institutions had signed up for the free, and ad-free, cloud-based services - bringing the total of 'Googlised' institutions worldwide to 2,000 since the Google Apps Education Edition programme was announced almost two years ago.
Read more on the Unviersity World News site.
UK: New universities could struggle to survive
Newer British universities may disappear because of global competition forcing them to spend more, a leading ratings agency has warned, reports The Guardian. Credit analysis by Standard & Poors warns of "certain universities ceasing to exist" because of increasing competition from China and India and within the UK.
Read more on the Unviersity World News site.
UK: Arctic map plots new 'gold rush'
Researchers at Durham University have drawn up the first ever Arctic map to show the disputed territories that states might lay claim to in the future, reports ScienceDaily. The new map design follows a series of historical and ongoing arguments about ownership, and the race for resources, in the frozen lands and seas of the Arctic. The potential for conflicts is increasing as the search for new oil, gas and minerals intensifies.
Read more on the Unviersity World News site.
ISRAEL: Worries about damaging brain drain
When it comes to hi-tech start-ups, Nobel laureates and computer innovation, Israel has few equals. It attracts more venture capital that any country outside the United States. But now a country whose only significant resource is its brain power finds itself losing its best and brightest, with one out of four Israeli academics working in the US because of low pay and limited research budgets at home, reports the Jerusalem Post.
Read more on the Unviersity World News site.
SAUDI ARABIA: Higher education to enrol 236,000 new students
Saudi Arabia's universities will enrol more than 236,000 students who passed out of secondary schools this year, according to Higher Education Minister Khaled Al-Anqari, - around 88% of 267,122 school leavers - reports Arab News.
Read more on the Unviersity World News site.
SOUTH KOREA: Universities aim for 100,000 foreign students
The South Korean government plans to attract 100,000 foreign students to the country by 2010, reports Korea Times. The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology the number of scholarships available to foreign students will jump to 2,450 in 2010 and 3,000 by 2012, up from 1,500 this year. Universities will receive a combined $2 million to open more English-only and Korean-language classes.
Read more on the Unviersity World News site.
SOUTH AFRICA: Universities must help new students more
Education Minister Naledi Pandor has urged universities to do more to help first-year students adjust to new academic learning and teaching styles they experience when they reach the tertiary level, reports the government agency Bua News. She said the failure of schools to support learners in acquiring effective competence in the language of learning and teaching was among several factors contributing to the difference between success at school and success at university.
Read more on the Unviersity World News site.
AUSTRALIA: Call for greater equity in university enrolments
The Federal Government has been urged to dramatically increase the number of disadvantaged students attending university, as new figures show Victoria state has some of the lowest rates of participation by poor and indigenous groups, reports The Age. In a series of submissions to the government's long-awaited review into higher education, university chiefs have called for a shake-up of funding, better access for low-income groups, and new scholarships to encourage more high school students from poorer families.
Read more on the Unviersity World News site.
China's universities have played little part preparing athletes for this week's sporting spectacular in Beijing. See our exclusive story on the University World News site.
NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report
CHINA: Olympics - low-key involvement by universities
Michael Delaney
University sports are a big deal in China, followed with great fervour by students and alumni, and many universities boast excellent sporting facilities and stadiums. Yet historically there has been a great distance, even antipathy, between the state administration and university sports departments. As a result, the nation's centralised sports system means universities have largely been left out in the cold when it comes to preparing athletes for the Olympic Games.
Read the full story on the University World News site
GLOBAL: Liberalisation shelved as talks collapse
Keith Nuthall
Proposals to sweep away some restrictions preventing private universities and higher education service providers from teaching, researching and examining in foreign countries have been put on ice at the World Trade Organization.
Read the full story on the University World News site
GERMANY: Plans to create more leeway for research
Michael Gardner
Germany's federal government has adopted a five-point plan to create more autonomy for public-funded research institutions. In future, they will enjoy considerably more scope in terms of budgets, staff, networking, construction measures and procurement. The new measures will ultimately lead to a special law on academic freedom agreed to by the government last year.
Read the full story on the University World News site
NEW ZEALAND: Student allowances an election bribe
John Gerritsen
University bosses are fuming after the ruling Labour Party admitted it was considering extending student allowances to all tertiary students. The party is polling badly with a general election due to take place before the end of the year, and Labour knows from past experience that students' finances are a vote-winner: a policy of zero interest for student loans helped it win the 2005 elections.
Read the full story on the University World News site
SPECIAL REPORT: E-Learning
E-learning is one of the buzzwords of 21st century higher education, with academics around the world increasingly relying on technology to communicate with their students – and transmit their lectures. But as University World News writers report in this special on E-learning, as some designate it, although a great boon to many lacking easy access to education, technology must be used intelligently as a tool for learning and not be regarded simply as a panacea.
Read the full report on the University World News site.
BRITISH COMMONWEALTH: Big changes in small states
Nick Holdsworth
One of the world's leading distance learning organisations is pushing ahead with plans to give students in some of the poorest parts of the developing world equal access to university education. The Commonwealth of Learning - the world's only intergovernmental agency solely dedicated to promoting and delivering distance education and open learning - is working with 30 of the British Commonwealth's smaller states to create a 'virtual university'.
Read the full report on the University World News site.Read the full story on the University World News site
Read the full story on the University World News site
FRANCE: Universities lag 'digitally native' students
Jane Marshall
French universities must urgently catch up with information and communication technologies if they are to satisfy the higher education demands of the advancing generation of 'digitally native' students. Although initiatives have been established in recent years to help them develop the necessary infrastructure, only a few universities have so far made satisfactory progress. But this lag is due more to systemic and human shortcomings than to technological inadequacies.
Read the full report on the University World News site.
UK: Virtual lectures? No thanks, say students
Diane Spencer
The British government is keen to promote e-learning, as are UK universities. Yet research shows that students still prefer face-to-face learning. Next year will see the conclusion of a project which began in October 2003, run by the Joint Information Systems Committee to identify how e-learning can benefit learners, practitioners and educational institutions, and it will advise how its findings can be implemented.
Read the full report on the University World News site.
AUSTRALIA: Online studying for the remote and on-the-move
Geoff Maslen
The only troublesome incident Kerry Grace had in four years of studying online for her bachelor of business degree through Open Universities Australia (OUA) was when she was breastfeeding her first baby and had to travel to sit for an examination 90 minutes away. The university she was taking the unit with refused to allow her to bring the baby into the exam room but said she could have a babysitter outside and she could go and feed her baby if she needed to.
Read the full report on the University World News site.
SOUTH AFRICA: Universities not far behind the curve
Karen MacGregor
The use of information and communication technologies to support learning in South African universities is booming and they are "not very far behind the curve" of developed countries in e-learning, says Stephen Marquard, learning technology coordinator for the University of Cape Town. Activities are limited by low internet bandwidth and uneven access by students to computers, but there is widespread experimentation within this constrained African context and interest is keen - last month participants from 14 African countries and 24 worldwide 'attended' the third virtual conference on educational technology in Africa, e/merge 2008.
Read the full report on the University World News site.
GREECE: Struggling to keep up
Makki Marseilles
Greece is not in the forefront of e-learning but efforts are being made to keep the country from lagging too far behind other major European countries in and out of the EU as well as worldwide.
Read the full report on the University World News site.
NEWSBRIEF::
EU: New governing board for European institute
A new 18-member governing board of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) was appointed on 30 July and has until the end of 2009 to identify, select and launch the first EU 'innovation hubs', expected to cover the fields of climate change, renewable energy and ICT.
Read the story on the University World News site.
ACADEMIC FREEDOM:
ETHIOPIA: October conference on academic freedom
Jonathan Travis
The Network for Education and Academic Rights, Scholars at Risk Network, British Council Ethiopia, the Forum for Social Studies and the Organisation for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa are organising a conference and workshop in Addis Ababa to discuss academic freedom in the region.
Read the full report on the University World News site.
FACEBOOK:
The Facebook group of University World News is the fastest growing in higher education worldwide. Just three weeks after its launch, more than 120 UWN readers have already registered. 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
BUSINESS:
CANADA: Academics train Inuit territory bureaucrats
Monica Dobie
Canada's most northerly territory, Nunavut, will have access to an advanced business management diploma programme operated by the Sobey School of Business at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Read the full report on the University World News site.
NEW ZEALAND: EU agreement encourages collaboration
John Gerritsen
New Zealand's researchers will gain access to more European Union (EU) science and technology programmes, thanks to a newly-signed cooperation agreement.
Read the full report on the University World News site.
SWEDEN: Inspire workers - make them redundant
Monica Dobie
A doctoral dissertation submitted to the Swedish Business School at Örebro University has revealed that failing companies could offer the secret of success for businesses yet to face dire straits. Strangely, productivity rises when companies are facing closure.
Read the full report on the University World News site.
FEATURE:
INDIA: A crumbling system of higher education
Geoff Maslen
India's decision in the early 1990s to open its markets and fully participate in the global economy is widely credited for the nation's spectacular rate of economic growth over the past decade or so, says Professor Fazal Rizvi. But Rizvi says many within and outside India believe this rate of growth is not sustainable unless India overhauls its crumbling system of higher education.
Read the full report on the University World News site.
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY:
CHINA: Major higher education transformation underway
As eyes turn to China and the Olympic Games, a recent study by Canada's Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) has found that major transformation of higher education in the emerging power could impact on the global economy and global education structure. The policy brief Higher Educational Transformation in China and its Global Implications highlights recent statistics showing that the number of undergraduate and graduate students in China has increased by about 30% a year since 1999, as well as earlier studies estimating that in two years there will be many more PhD engineers and scientists in China than in the US and 90% of all PhD physical scientists and engineers in the world will be Asians living in Asia, most of them Chinese.
Read the full report on the University World News site.
PEOPLE:
RUSSIA: Solzhenitsyn - a mission to save his people
Nick Holdsworth
Obituary: Alexander Solzhenitsyn 11 December 1918 - 3 August 2008
Russia went into mourning last week after the death of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel prize-winning writer and dissident who devoted his life to exposing the horrors of Stalin's police state and prison system.
Read the full obituary on the University World News site.
WORLD ROUND-UP
TURKEY: Academics quit over president's rector choices
More than a dozen senior Turkish academics resigned last week in protest at President Abdullah Gul's choice of university rectors, a sign of renewed tensions between the secularist establishment and the government, reports The Peninsula in Qatar. Turkish media said several rectors who support the ruling AK Party, including those favourable to ending a ban on students wearing the Muslim headscarf on campus, had been picked over secularist professors.
Read more on the Unviersity World News site.
US: Scientists homes firebombed
Firebombs that struck the home and car of two University of California, Santa Cruz, scientists last weekend were part of an increasingly aggressive campaign by animal rights activists against animal researchers, officials said. The LA Times reported Santa Cruz police officials as saying that the blasts, which occurred three minutes apart, caused one of the scientists, his wife and two young children to flee their home through a second-story window.
Read more on the Unviersity World News site.
US: Google, Microsoft vie for universities
You can think of it as 'Schoogle', writes John Cox in washingtonpost.com. That would be Google's laid-back but unflinchingly ambitious plan to woo college and university IT departments into outsourcing not just student e-mail but web-based productivity applications and calendaring to the search giant. And a growing number of schools are doing just that. Last week, Google announced that 13 new US institutions had signed up for the free, and ad-free, cloud-based services - bringing the total of 'Googlised' institutions worldwide to 2,000 since the Google Apps Education Edition programme was announced almost two years ago.
Read more on the Unviersity World News site.
UK: New universities could struggle to survive
Newer British universities may disappear because of global competition forcing them to spend more, a leading ratings agency has warned, reports The Guardian. Credit analysis by Standard & Poors warns of "certain universities ceasing to exist" because of increasing competition from China and India and within the UK.
Read more on the Unviersity World News site.
UK: Arctic map plots new 'gold rush'
Researchers at Durham University have drawn up the first ever Arctic map to show the disputed territories that states might lay claim to in the future, reports ScienceDaily. The new map design follows a series of historical and ongoing arguments about ownership, and the race for resources, in the frozen lands and seas of the Arctic. The potential for conflicts is increasing as the search for new oil, gas and minerals intensifies.
Read more on the Unviersity World News site.
ISRAEL: Worries about damaging brain drain
When it comes to hi-tech start-ups, Nobel laureates and computer innovation, Israel has few equals. It attracts more venture capital that any country outside the United States. But now a country whose only significant resource is its brain power finds itself losing its best and brightest, with one out of four Israeli academics working in the US because of low pay and limited research budgets at home, reports the Jerusalem Post.
Read more on the Unviersity World News site.
SAUDI ARABIA: Higher education to enrol 236,000 new students
Saudi Arabia's universities will enrol more than 236,000 students who passed out of secondary schools this year, according to Higher Education Minister Khaled Al-Anqari, - around 88% of 267,122 school leavers - reports Arab News.
Read more on the Unviersity World News site.
SOUTH KOREA: Universities aim for 100,000 foreign students
The South Korean government plans to attract 100,000 foreign students to the country by 2010, reports Korea Times. The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology the number of scholarships available to foreign students will jump to 2,450 in 2010 and 3,000 by 2012, up from 1,500 this year. Universities will receive a combined $2 million to open more English-only and Korean-language classes.
Read more on the Unviersity World News site.
SOUTH AFRICA: Universities must help new students more
Education Minister Naledi Pandor has urged universities to do more to help first-year students adjust to new academic learning and teaching styles they experience when they reach the tertiary level, reports the government agency Bua News. She said the failure of schools to support learners in acquiring effective competence in the language of learning and teaching was among several factors contributing to the difference between success at school and success at university.
Read more on the Unviersity World News site.
AUSTRALIA: Call for greater equity in university enrolments
The Federal Government has been urged to dramatically increase the number of disadvantaged students attending university, as new figures show Victoria state has some of the lowest rates of participation by poor and indigenous groups, reports The Age. In a series of submissions to the government's long-awaited review into higher education, university chiefs have called for a shake-up of funding, better access for low-income groups, and new scholarships to encourage more high school students from poorer families.
Read more on the Unviersity World News site.
Sunday, 3 August 2008
University World News 0039 - 3rd August 2008
NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report
NEW ZEALAND: Women-only scholarships challenged
John Gerritsen
In a case that could have repercussions around the world, a Victoria University of Wellington academic has queried the legality of tertiary education scholarships for women. Institute of Policy Studies senior research fellow and acting deputy director, Dr Paul Callister, created a storm of debate in New Zealand when it emerged he had written to the country's Human Rights Commission about the issue.
Read the full story on the University World News site
EUROPE: New network of children's universities
Geoff Maslen
More than 100 universities across Europe organise science events for children that offer them their first introduction to what scientific researchers do. But these are mostly one-off occasions whereas now a network of 'children's universities' is being established to create a stable and continual platform for promoting interest in science among the young of the continent.
Read the full story on the University World News site
FRANCE: First wave of autonomous universities
Jane Marshall
The first universities in France to be granted autonomy under a controversial reform law passed almost a year ago will be able to spend their state-allocated budgets as they choose and recruit their own staff from the start of 2009. Of France's 85 universities, 20 have been granted autonomous status by the government. Between them, the newly autonomous universities cater for 312,000 students, about 20% of the total enrolled in French universities.
Read the full story on the University World News site
EGYPT: Medical school enrolments to be slashed
Ashraf Khaled
Although he came top of his class in this year's secondary school certificate examinations Hassan Abdel Fatah, 19, is unlikely to achieve his dream of attending medical school. An Egyptian court recently upheld a request from the Doctors' Association, an independent union, that the number of new medical students be slashed because of pressure on standards and an over-supply of doctors. In line with the ruling, the number of new enrolments at medical schools will be cut by 14%, from 7,800 to 6,700.
Read the full story on the University World News site
ZIMBABWE: Lecturer targeted for EU sanctions
Clemence Manyukwe
A media studies lecturer at the University of Botswana has been slapped with targeted sanctions by the European Union for his role in propping up the government of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. Ceaser Zvayi, a Zimbabwean citizen and former political editor of the government mouthpiece The Herald, is among 37 individuals added to a list of 168 people who face travel restrictions and a freeze on their assets in EU countries.
Read the full story on the University World News site
EUROPE: Researchers told: be less nationalistic
Alan Osborn
Research in European Union countries is too national in focus to be fully effective, says the European Commission. The commission says this poses a major obstacle to the ambitious Lisbon strategy for giving the EU a global lead in technology by 2010.
Read the full story on the University World News site
EU: Legal status for major research projects
Keith Nuthall
The European Commission has proposed the creation of a new legally distinct organisation for incorporating major research projects so they could operate without paying sales tax. Under proposals from EU research commissioner Janes Poto_nik, the special bodies - called European Research Infrastructures - would have the authority to conclude agreements with universities and other higher education organisations outside the EU.
Read the full story on the University World News site
HOLLAND-INDIA: Strengthening education links
Subbiah Arunachalam
The main associations of universities in the Netherlands and India have signed an agreement to strengthen scientific cooperation in education and research. Both countries stand to benefit from the agreement which has been described as a perfect match in more than one sense.
Read the full story on the University World News site
UK-MALAWI: Project to reduce medical brain drain
Clemence Manyukwe
Scotland's University of Dundee has launched a pilot project aimed at reducing Africa's medical brain drain, through a partnership with the University of Malawi's college of medicine that will see selected final year students undergoing four-month placements in the southern African country.
Read the full story on the University World News site
NEWSBRIEFS:
CHILE-AUSTRALIA: Postgraduate scholarship opportunities
A US$200 million scholarship scheme will enable up to 500 PhD and masters students from Chile each year to study in Australia over the next five to 10 years. Cooperation between the two countries will involve scholarships and exchanges for PhD and masters students, graduate internships and fellowships, joint research programmes, postdoctoral programmes and English language teacher training.
Read more on the University World News site
TUNISIA: Higher education must 'professionalise'
Tunisian Higher Education Minister Lazhar Bououni has stressed the need to instil an entrepreneurial culture in students and to implement higher education reforms passed in February, reported La Presse of Tunis. The reforms include raising the quality of education, decentralisation and improving management efficiency, as well as strengthening the systems of evaluation and allocating posts.
Read more on the University World News site
UK: New resource for research
A groundbreaking collaboration between the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the British Library and Imperial College London will create a new resource for academic researchers. The council is giving £10 million (US$ 19.8 million) to fund the UK Research Reserve, an agreement between higher education institutions and the British Library for storing low-use highly specialised journals, and making them easily accessible to researchers around the world.
Read more on the University World News site
ANGOLA: Plans to regulate university expansion
Government plans to open public universities in different regions of Angola should resolve a number of issues in these areas, said Joao Saveia, Vice-rector of the Université Technique d'Angola (Utanga), according to the Angola Press Agency of Luanda.
Read more on the University World News site
US: Joint venture to attract foreign students
The British company INTO has formed a partnership with Oregon State University which it says will "enhance" the internationalisation of the university. The joint venture is aimed at doubling foreign student enrolments over the next six years.
Read more on the University World News site
SCIENCE SCENE:
US: End of the science superpowers
Brian Mattmiller
Is the sun beginning to set on America's scientific dominance? Much like the scientific superpowers of France, Germany and Britain in centuries past, the United States has a diminishing lead over other nations in financial investment and scholarly research output in science and engineering, says a group of historians and sociologists led by University of Wisconsin-Madison emeritus history professor J Rogers Hollingsworth.
Read more on the University World News site
GERMANY: Excellence Initiative gets strong backing
Michael Gardner
Three years after its inception, Germany's Science Council or Wissenschaftsrat and the German Research Foundation or Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft have published a white paper on the further development of the Excellence Initiative. The funding scheme has received good marks for results so far and the two institutions strongly favour extending it and increasing the money provided.
Read more on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA-INDIA: Greater collaboration needed
Australia must look to the future and strengthen its education and research ties with India to capitalise on the country's economic boom, the chair of India's Scientific Advisory Council Professor Chintamani Rao told a forum in Melbourne.
Read more on the University World News site
FACEBOOK:
The Facebook group of University World News is the fastest growing in higher education worldwide. Just three weeks after its launch, more than 120 UWN readers have already registered. 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
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY:
BRUSSELS: Report on reforming Europe's universities Since the introduction of the Shanghai ranking of world universities it has been clear that European institutions are under-performing. A new report by the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel - titled Higher Aspirations: An agenda for reforming European universities and written by senior scholars from Belgium, the US and Spain - recommends gradual raising of spending on higher education by 1% of European Union GDP over the next 10 years to approach American funding levels, increasing university autonomy, fostering greater student and faculty mobility, improving success rates and developing competitive graduate schools.
Read the full story on the University World News site
FEATURE:
AFRICA: Lecturers debate education and development
Sheldon G Weeks
The Southern African Comparative and History of Education Society (Saches) held its 17th annual conference last month on "Education and Regional Development", at Kaya Kwanga on the beach just north of Maputo in Mozambique. Seventy members attended from nine countries in Southern Africa and several from outside the continent - and discussions ranged from pre-school education to the training of graduate students, and from South-South cooperation in education to the "betrayal" of illiterate adults and xenophobia in South Africa.
Read the full story on the University World News site
PEOPLE:
US: Randy Pausch delivered 'The Last Lecture'
Philip Fine
Randolph Frederick Pausch: 30 October 1960 - 25 July 2008
The US professor who turned a terminal diagnosis into an online inspiration for millions has succumbed to the disease that had been a catalyst for the now-famous university lecture. Randy Pausch died on 25 July from pancreatic cancer at the age of 47, 10 months after delivering a talk at Carnegie Mellon that would become a populist treatise on positive thinking. His lecture on YouTube alone has been seen 5.3 million times and spawned a best-selling book, called The Last Lecture.
Read the full story on the University World News site
WORLD ROUND-UP:
MALAYSIA: ASEAN quality assurance network to be created
Quality assurance agencies in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations have decided to adopt the Kuala Lumpur Declaration which aims to establish an Asean Quality Assurance Network (AQAN), reports The Star. Malaysian Qualifications Agency chief executive officer Datuk Dr Syed Ahmad Hussein said this was decided at the Asean quality assurance agencies' round-table meeting in July. The objectives of AQAN are to share best practices of quality assurance, develop an Asean quality assurance framework, collaborate on capacity building, and facilitate the recognition of qualifications and cross-border mobility.
Read more on the University World News site
THAILAND: Two million students, but quality poor
The number of students in Thailand has topped two million - but the news is not good for educators, who are worried about poor quality, reports the Bangkok Post. The number of students in the country's tertiary system has doubled and the number of courses has increased 10-fold over the last decade.
Read more on the University World News site
IRELAND: Universities warn of severe impact of cuts
University presidents are considering a range of options - including the withdrawal of some third-level courses - amid growing anger about government cutbacks, reports The Irish Times. A special meeting of the seven university presidents heard that the 3% cut in payroll costs demanded by the Minister for Education, Batt O'Keeffe, would inevitably led to dramatic cuts in services for students.
Read more on the University World News site
UK: Government clamps down on bogus colleges
New government moves to clamp down on bogus colleges and "fake" students have drawn praise from university and student organisations, reports The Guardian. However, lecturers have warned the moves could damage their professional relationships with students.
Read more on the University World News site
INDIA: Investment norms in higher education to ease
Private and foreign corporate investment may soon get to flow into Indian higher education with the government considering a move to reform policy that hinders such financing, reports Business Standard. There is also renewed hope for a Bill allowing foreign universities and institutions into India to be tabled in parliament, judging by Human Resources Development Minister Arjun Singh's remarks at a conference of state education ministers last week.
Read more on the University World News site
US: Top schools reject government research restrictions
Caught between the demands of academic freedom and national security in a post-September 11 world, the Bay Area's two major research universities are walking away from lucrative research contracts rather than consenting to intrusive restrictions on their work, reports Mercury News. A new major study of 20 top schools found 180 instances of "troublesome clauses" attached by the federal government to research contracts -up from 138 in 2004.
Read more on the University World News site
US: Lessons from the Obama campaign
Among the most striking phenomena associated with Barack Obama's successful bid for the Democratic nomination has been his ability to attract young people to the political process, writes Richard M Freeland, professor of higher education at Clark University and president emeritus of Northeastern University, in Inside Higher Ed. This resurgence of youthful activism delivers an important message for colleges and universities.
Read more on the University World News site
US: McCain comes out against affirmative action
Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain has come out against affirmative action, and endorsed ballot measures to bar public colleges and universities - and other state agencies - from considering race in admissions or hiring, reports Inside Higher Ed. McCain had previously been among those Republicans who refused to endorse these ballot measures.
Read more on the University World News site
US: Stanford best in class, Florida's the party school
Stanford University has the best classroom experience in American higher education and the University of Florida is the top party school, according to the Princeton Review's college guide, reports Bloomberg. The findings were based on a survey of 120,000 students, according to the Princeton Review whose book, "The Best 368 Colleges", went on sale last week.
Read more on the University World News site
EAST AFRICA: HIV-AIDS study at 18 universities
A study to establish the impact of the HIV-AIDS pandemic on university communities in East Africa is scheduled to start in October, reports The Citizen in Dar es Salaam. Initially, the project will target 18 universities - six each in Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya - according to the officials of the Inter-University Council of East Africa.
Read more on the University World News site
JAPAN: Government penalises three universities
The Education, Science and Technology Ministry has decided to reject applications for research funds from Yokohama City University and two other universities that were found to have engaged in inappropriate actions this year, reports The Yomiuri Shimbun.
Read more on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA: States must "put up or shut up", say universities
Australia's states have been told to "put up or shut up" when it comes to universities, with vice-chancellors warning governments to invest more in the sector or consider ceding power to the Commonwealth. One year after the Howard government pushed for a federal takeover of higher education, the divisive debate over what role the states should play has re-emerged.
Read more on the University World News site
NEW ZEALAND: Women-only scholarships challenged
John Gerritsen
In a case that could have repercussions around the world, a Victoria University of Wellington academic has queried the legality of tertiary education scholarships for women. Institute of Policy Studies senior research fellow and acting deputy director, Dr Paul Callister, created a storm of debate in New Zealand when it emerged he had written to the country's Human Rights Commission about the issue.
Read the full story on the University World News site
EUROPE: New network of children's universities
Geoff Maslen
More than 100 universities across Europe organise science events for children that offer them their first introduction to what scientific researchers do. But these are mostly one-off occasions whereas now a network of 'children's universities' is being established to create a stable and continual platform for promoting interest in science among the young of the continent.
Read the full story on the University World News site
FRANCE: First wave of autonomous universities
Jane Marshall
The first universities in France to be granted autonomy under a controversial reform law passed almost a year ago will be able to spend their state-allocated budgets as they choose and recruit their own staff from the start of 2009. Of France's 85 universities, 20 have been granted autonomous status by the government. Between them, the newly autonomous universities cater for 312,000 students, about 20% of the total enrolled in French universities.
Read the full story on the University World News site
EGYPT: Medical school enrolments to be slashed
Ashraf Khaled
Although he came top of his class in this year's secondary school certificate examinations Hassan Abdel Fatah, 19, is unlikely to achieve his dream of attending medical school. An Egyptian court recently upheld a request from the Doctors' Association, an independent union, that the number of new medical students be slashed because of pressure on standards and an over-supply of doctors. In line with the ruling, the number of new enrolments at medical schools will be cut by 14%, from 7,800 to 6,700.
Read the full story on the University World News site
ZIMBABWE: Lecturer targeted for EU sanctions
Clemence Manyukwe
A media studies lecturer at the University of Botswana has been slapped with targeted sanctions by the European Union for his role in propping up the government of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. Ceaser Zvayi, a Zimbabwean citizen and former political editor of the government mouthpiece The Herald, is among 37 individuals added to a list of 168 people who face travel restrictions and a freeze on their assets in EU countries.
Read the full story on the University World News site
EUROPE: Researchers told: be less nationalistic
Alan Osborn
Research in European Union countries is too national in focus to be fully effective, says the European Commission. The commission says this poses a major obstacle to the ambitious Lisbon strategy for giving the EU a global lead in technology by 2010.
Read the full story on the University World News site
EU: Legal status for major research projects
Keith Nuthall
The European Commission has proposed the creation of a new legally distinct organisation for incorporating major research projects so they could operate without paying sales tax. Under proposals from EU research commissioner Janes Poto_nik, the special bodies - called European Research Infrastructures - would have the authority to conclude agreements with universities and other higher education organisations outside the EU.
Read the full story on the University World News site
HOLLAND-INDIA: Strengthening education links
Subbiah Arunachalam
The main associations of universities in the Netherlands and India have signed an agreement to strengthen scientific cooperation in education and research. Both countries stand to benefit from the agreement which has been described as a perfect match in more than one sense.
Read the full story on the University World News site
UK-MALAWI: Project to reduce medical brain drain
Clemence Manyukwe
Scotland's University of Dundee has launched a pilot project aimed at reducing Africa's medical brain drain, through a partnership with the University of Malawi's college of medicine that will see selected final year students undergoing four-month placements in the southern African country.
Read the full story on the University World News site
NEWSBRIEFS:
CHILE-AUSTRALIA: Postgraduate scholarship opportunities
A US$200 million scholarship scheme will enable up to 500 PhD and masters students from Chile each year to study in Australia over the next five to 10 years. Cooperation between the two countries will involve scholarships and exchanges for PhD and masters students, graduate internships and fellowships, joint research programmes, postdoctoral programmes and English language teacher training.
Read more on the University World News site
TUNISIA: Higher education must 'professionalise'
Tunisian Higher Education Minister Lazhar Bououni has stressed the need to instil an entrepreneurial culture in students and to implement higher education reforms passed in February, reported La Presse of Tunis. The reforms include raising the quality of education, decentralisation and improving management efficiency, as well as strengthening the systems of evaluation and allocating posts.
Read more on the University World News site
UK: New resource for research
A groundbreaking collaboration between the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the British Library and Imperial College London will create a new resource for academic researchers. The council is giving £10 million (US$ 19.8 million) to fund the UK Research Reserve, an agreement between higher education institutions and the British Library for storing low-use highly specialised journals, and making them easily accessible to researchers around the world.
Read more on the University World News site
ANGOLA: Plans to regulate university expansion
Government plans to open public universities in different regions of Angola should resolve a number of issues in these areas, said Joao Saveia, Vice-rector of the Université Technique d'Angola (Utanga), according to the Angola Press Agency of Luanda.
Read more on the University World News site
US: Joint venture to attract foreign students
The British company INTO has formed a partnership with Oregon State University which it says will "enhance" the internationalisation of the university. The joint venture is aimed at doubling foreign student enrolments over the next six years.
Read more on the University World News site
SCIENCE SCENE:
US: End of the science superpowers
Brian Mattmiller
Is the sun beginning to set on America's scientific dominance? Much like the scientific superpowers of France, Germany and Britain in centuries past, the United States has a diminishing lead over other nations in financial investment and scholarly research output in science and engineering, says a group of historians and sociologists led by University of Wisconsin-Madison emeritus history professor J Rogers Hollingsworth.
Read more on the University World News site
GERMANY: Excellence Initiative gets strong backing
Michael Gardner
Three years after its inception, Germany's Science Council or Wissenschaftsrat and the German Research Foundation or Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft have published a white paper on the further development of the Excellence Initiative. The funding scheme has received good marks for results so far and the two institutions strongly favour extending it and increasing the money provided.
Read more on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA-INDIA: Greater collaboration needed
Australia must look to the future and strengthen its education and research ties with India to capitalise on the country's economic boom, the chair of India's Scientific Advisory Council Professor Chintamani Rao told a forum in Melbourne.
Read more on the University World News site
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HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY:
BRUSSELS: Report on reforming Europe's universities Since the introduction of the Shanghai ranking of world universities it has been clear that European institutions are under-performing. A new report by the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel - titled Higher Aspirations: An agenda for reforming European universities and written by senior scholars from Belgium, the US and Spain - recommends gradual raising of spending on higher education by 1% of European Union GDP over the next 10 years to approach American funding levels, increasing university autonomy, fostering greater student and faculty mobility, improving success rates and developing competitive graduate schools.
Read the full story on the University World News site
FEATURE:
AFRICA: Lecturers debate education and development
Sheldon G Weeks
The Southern African Comparative and History of Education Society (Saches) held its 17th annual conference last month on "Education and Regional Development", at Kaya Kwanga on the beach just north of Maputo in Mozambique. Seventy members attended from nine countries in Southern Africa and several from outside the continent - and discussions ranged from pre-school education to the training of graduate students, and from South-South cooperation in education to the "betrayal" of illiterate adults and xenophobia in South Africa.
Read the full story on the University World News site
PEOPLE:
US: Randy Pausch delivered 'The Last Lecture'
Philip Fine
Randolph Frederick Pausch: 30 October 1960 - 25 July 2008
The US professor who turned a terminal diagnosis into an online inspiration for millions has succumbed to the disease that had been a catalyst for the now-famous university lecture. Randy Pausch died on 25 July from pancreatic cancer at the age of 47, 10 months after delivering a talk at Carnegie Mellon that would become a populist treatise on positive thinking. His lecture on YouTube alone has been seen 5.3 million times and spawned a best-selling book, called The Last Lecture.
Read the full story on the University World News site
WORLD ROUND-UP:
MALAYSIA: ASEAN quality assurance network to be created
Quality assurance agencies in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations have decided to adopt the Kuala Lumpur Declaration which aims to establish an Asean Quality Assurance Network (AQAN), reports The Star. Malaysian Qualifications Agency chief executive officer Datuk Dr Syed Ahmad Hussein said this was decided at the Asean quality assurance agencies' round-table meeting in July. The objectives of AQAN are to share best practices of quality assurance, develop an Asean quality assurance framework, collaborate on capacity building, and facilitate the recognition of qualifications and cross-border mobility.
Read more on the University World News site
THAILAND: Two million students, but quality poor
The number of students in Thailand has topped two million - but the news is not good for educators, who are worried about poor quality, reports the Bangkok Post. The number of students in the country's tertiary system has doubled and the number of courses has increased 10-fold over the last decade.
Read more on the University World News site
IRELAND: Universities warn of severe impact of cuts
University presidents are considering a range of options - including the withdrawal of some third-level courses - amid growing anger about government cutbacks, reports The Irish Times. A special meeting of the seven university presidents heard that the 3% cut in payroll costs demanded by the Minister for Education, Batt O'Keeffe, would inevitably led to dramatic cuts in services for students.
Read more on the University World News site
UK: Government clamps down on bogus colleges
New government moves to clamp down on bogus colleges and "fake" students have drawn praise from university and student organisations, reports The Guardian. However, lecturers have warned the moves could damage their professional relationships with students.
Read more on the University World News site
INDIA: Investment norms in higher education to ease
Private and foreign corporate investment may soon get to flow into Indian higher education with the government considering a move to reform policy that hinders such financing, reports Business Standard. There is also renewed hope for a Bill allowing foreign universities and institutions into India to be tabled in parliament, judging by Human Resources Development Minister Arjun Singh's remarks at a conference of state education ministers last week.
Read more on the University World News site
US: Top schools reject government research restrictions
Caught between the demands of academic freedom and national security in a post-September 11 world, the Bay Area's two major research universities are walking away from lucrative research contracts rather than consenting to intrusive restrictions on their work, reports Mercury News. A new major study of 20 top schools found 180 instances of "troublesome clauses" attached by the federal government to research contracts -up from 138 in 2004.
Read more on the University World News site
US: Lessons from the Obama campaign
Among the most striking phenomena associated with Barack Obama's successful bid for the Democratic nomination has been his ability to attract young people to the political process, writes Richard M Freeland, professor of higher education at Clark University and president emeritus of Northeastern University, in Inside Higher Ed. This resurgence of youthful activism delivers an important message for colleges and universities.
Read more on the University World News site
US: McCain comes out against affirmative action
Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain has come out against affirmative action, and endorsed ballot measures to bar public colleges and universities - and other state agencies - from considering race in admissions or hiring, reports Inside Higher Ed. McCain had previously been among those Republicans who refused to endorse these ballot measures.
Read more on the University World News site
US: Stanford best in class, Florida's the party school
Stanford University has the best classroom experience in American higher education and the University of Florida is the top party school, according to the Princeton Review's college guide, reports Bloomberg. The findings were based on a survey of 120,000 students, according to the Princeton Review whose book, "The Best 368 Colleges", went on sale last week.
Read more on the University World News site
EAST AFRICA: HIV-AIDS study at 18 universities
A study to establish the impact of the HIV-AIDS pandemic on university communities in East Africa is scheduled to start in October, reports The Citizen in Dar es Salaam. Initially, the project will target 18 universities - six each in Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya - according to the officials of the Inter-University Council of East Africa.
Read more on the University World News site
JAPAN: Government penalises three universities
The Education, Science and Technology Ministry has decided to reject applications for research funds from Yokohama City University and two other universities that were found to have engaged in inappropriate actions this year, reports The Yomiuri Shimbun.
Read more on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA: States must "put up or shut up", say universities
Australia's states have been told to "put up or shut up" when it comes to universities, with vice-chancellors warning governments to invest more in the sector or consider ceding power to the Commonwealth. One year after the Howard government pushed for a federal takeover of higher education, the divisive debate over what role the states should play has re-emerged.
Read more on the University World News site
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