NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report
OECD: International students stay on as migrants
Yojana Sharma
Rich countries have brought in measures to encourage international students to stay and work, with this becoming an increasingly important route to high-skilled migration, according to the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
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GLOBAL: New code to promote academic honesty
Yojana Sharma
New international guidelines and a voluntary code on research integrity are being drawn up as a result of consultations at the Second World Conference on Scientific Integrity held in Singapore on 21-24 July.
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FRANCE: Universities overcharging, claims union
Jane Marshall
A third of French universities are charging students illegal fees, France's biggest students' union has claimed. Unef, the Union nationale des étudiants de France, found 26 out of 83 universities were fixing fees higher than those laid down by law, and two more were on the borderline of legality.
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SOUTHERN AFRICA: Lack of science hampers development
Sharon Dell
A recent study that measures the scientific performance of Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries over the past 15 years throws doubt on the capacity of the region to meet its own development goals.
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EUROPE: Belgian presidency to focus on research
Emma Jackson
The Belgian presidency of the European Union has promised to make research a priority of its six-month period of office, which will run until December. It is calling for a number of changes to make Europe's research networks simpler, more efficient and more accessible for researchers and investors, promoting scientific breakthroughs.
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EUROPE: EU exports higher education know-how
Alan Osborn
Keen to raise the profile of the European Union's higher education institutions among neighbouring countries, the European Commission has announced a new round of multilateral partnerships under its Tempus programme for tertiary studies.
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INDIA-UK: Equal partners in education and research
Alya Mishra
Britain's partnership with India on education, research and innovation should be a partnership of equals in recognition of India's growing economic importance, UK Prime Minister David Cameron said on a visit to the sub-continent. The second phase of the UK-India Education and Research Initiative was announced.
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IRAN: Students caught up in 'sanctions' debacle
Yojana Sharma
Iranian students hoping to sit English language examinations that open the doors to top US and British universities were caught in the crossfire of sanctions imposed by the US and the United Nations when exams were suspended for two weeks.
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US: Regulating student loans
Sarah King Head
Although hailed as an important step towards reining in the 'wild west' practices associated with student loans, Congress' recent financial reform legislation is not seen as going far enough in protecting the interests of the more than 18.2 million students who study in the US.
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SOUTH AFRICA: Universities raise admission standards
Munyaradzi Makoni
Several universities in South Africa, worried that continuing high failure rates among students will erode their global competitiveness, have raised admission requirements for 2011. Not surprisingly, students are unhappy.
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EGYPT: Government axes 'non-regular' student system
Ashraf Khaled
A recent decision by Egypt's Ministry of Higher Education has landed Fathi Mokhtar, a 45-year-old employee at a telecommunications company in Cairo, in a dilemma. Over the past two years, Mokhtar has been studying commerce at Cairo University, a prestigious public institution. He was registered under a 'non-regular' system, which mature students to pursue studies without having to attend classes regularly.
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KENYA: Students warned against some foreign colleges
Gilbert Nganga
Kenya's higher education authorities have cautioned students against enrolling in five international universities purporting to offer degrees and diplomas without government approval. There is growing concern over declining quality in higher education and the mushrooming of institutions offering un-vetted courses.
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KENYA: MBA programme competition hot as demand grows
Gilbert Nganga
Kenya's universities are expanding their facilities and seeking collaborations to tap into a rapidly growing Masters in Business Administration market. The MBA has increasing currency among the working class of East Africa's biggest economy.
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NEWSBRIEFS
NEW ZEALAND: Vice-chancellors' body changes name
John Gerritsen
The New Zealand Vice-Chancellors Committee changed its name last week, saying that more than ever before it needed to speak with a unified voice.
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CÔTE D'IVOIRE: Unesco bioethics chair installed
Jane Marshall
The official installation of Unesco's first francophone Africa chair of bioethics has taken place at the University of Bouaké, based in Abidjan.
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FEATURES
AFRICA: Higher education is financially unsustainable
Geoff Maslen
As a doorstop for one of the minor entrances to Valhalla, Financing Higher Education in Africa could serve nicely. This weighty tome is published by the World Bank and, with 60,000 words in five chapters spread over 200 pages - plus 25 figures, 26 tables and 29 boxes of summaries - the report is a mine of information. But its conclusion is gloomy.
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AUSTRALIA: New election - Universities out in the cold
Geoff Maslen
Only in those countries run by dictators, and where the result of an election is predetermined, could the 'contest' be more boring than the one taking place Down Under. With less than two weeks to go before polling day and the outcome now far from certain, the opposing parties have begun offering billions of dollars in sweeteners to the wavering groups likely to determine the result. Left out in the cold so far are universities
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COMMENTARY
INDIA: Foreign providers: putting national needs first
Rahul Choudaha and Alan Ruby*
As the bill to open up India's higher education sector to foreign providers wends its way through the legislative process, the government needs to consider what is best for the country. Not everyone needs an MBA from Mumbai or Delhi.
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ACADEMIC FREEDOM
Iran: Campaign to free jailed student photographer
Roisin Joyce*
More than 70 Iranian graduates have launched a campaign calling for the release of their friend and colleague, student photographer Hamed Saber, Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty reported last month. Saber was arrested on 21 June and there had been no communication regarding his whereabouts.
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SCIENCE SCENE
EU: Researchers given early access to supercomputer
Emma Jackson
Competition is fierce among researchers for some precious time on the fastest supercomputer in Europe available for public research, the European Union's JUGENE. Last week 10 European research teams were granted more than 320 million core working hours on the computer collectively as part of an early access call for proposals.
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UK-US: New technique estimates past oxygen levels
The proportion of oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere has varied over the millennia, but until now scientists have had to guess at that proportion using geochemical models. Now a team of British and US scientists has found that the amount of charcoal in coal indicates how much oxygen there was in the past.
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SOUTH AFRICA: Rhodes student in nano-tech breakthrough
Munyaradzi Makoni
Rhodes University PhD chemistry student Samuel Chigome has made a major breakthrough by creating tiny fibre filters that would allow scientists to make nano-technology devices that separate unwanted substances from liquid samples.
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US: Orangutans the kings of low-energy use
It's good to get by on less, but the humble orangutan has taken that virtue to another level. A new study shows the orange apes have lower energy use relative to their body mass than nearly any other mammal ever studied.
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UNI-LATERAL: Off-beat university stories
N IGERIA: Controversy over student dress codes
Tunde Fatunde
A debate in N igeria over student dress codes rages on - running the gamut from student academic achievement, discipline, professionalism, conformity with social mores and clothes-as-political-statement to consumerism. While some university authorities argue that mode of dress is an important factor in determining student success or failure and should thus be subject to rules, others - especially in the humanities and social sciences - remain unconvinced.
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FACEBOOK
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higher education worldwide. More than 2,260 readers have joined. Sign up to the University World News Facebook group to meet and communicate directly with academics and researchers informed by the world's first truly global higher education publication. Click on the link below to visit and join the group.
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WORLD ROUND-UP
INDIA: World's oldest university is reborn after 800 years
During the six centuries of its storied existence, there was nothing else quite like Nalanda University, writes Andrew Buncombe for The Independent. Probably the first-ever large educational establishment, the college - in what is now eastern India - even counted the Buddha among its visitors and alumni. At its height, it had 10,000 students, 2,000 staff and striving for both understanding and academic excellence. Today, this much-celebrated centre of Buddhist learning is in ruins.
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BRAZIL: University affirmative action faces crucial rests
When Rio de Janeiro became the first Brazilian state to adopt quotas for Afro-Brazilian students in institutions of higher education in 2002, black activists hoped that the country was finally coming to terms with the bitter legacy of slavery, write Andrew Downie and Marion Lloyd for The Chronicle of Higher Education. But eight years later affirmative action policies, which have since been adopted by scores of other universities on behalf of the country's most disadvantaged groups, could be ruled unconstitutional by the Federal Supreme Court.
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US: Fraud found in for-profit education recruiting
A new US government report on recruiting techniques in the for-profit higher education industry has found instances of college officials urging applicants to invent children and to hide their savings as a way to leverage more federal aid, writes Daniel de Vise for The Washington Post.
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UK: Minister to stop 'abuse' of student visa system
Damian Green, the UK immigration minister, has promised a "thorough evaluation" over the coming months because of what he called "significant abuse" of the student visa system, write Hélène Mulholland and Jessica Shepherd for The Guardian. He stressed the government's commitment to a review of the points-based system after figures showed that the number of students going to the UK from outside Europe to study increased by more than 75,000 in the 12 months to March.
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UK: More British students 'to study abroad'
British students are to be offered up to two years at universities abroad amid government warnings that poor language skills are crippling graduates' job prospects, writes Graeme Paton for The Telegraph. Joint undergraduate and postgraduate courses will be developed between British universities and those in countries such as India under new coalition government plans.
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SCOTLAND: Universities spread to Middle and Far East
Scottish universities are breaking new ground this summer - literally - as work begins on Heriot-Watt's bespoke £35 million (US$55.7 million) campus in the Middle Eastern state of Dubai, writes Jackie Kemp for The Guardian. Glasgow Caledonian has opened a campus in London to help it to attract international postgraduates and, also this year, a nursing college in Bangladesh. Napier University has opened a biofuel research centre in Hong Kong within the last few months and an office in India last year.
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ECUADOR: Controversial higher education law approved
Following months of acrimonious debate, the Ecuadorean congress last week narrowly approved a controversial new higher-education law, according to Ecuadorean news reports, writes Marion Lloyd for The Chronicle of Higher Education. The legislation seeks to increase regulation of universities while bringing their programmes in line with the country's development needs. But it does not go as far as President Rafael Correa had wanted.
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US: California dreamer
Much of the news surrounding the University of California system has involved whether the network of universities will be able to survive its current budgetary crisis without shrinking in size or quality, writes Steve Kolowich for Inside Higher Ed. In that context, it is no surprise that Christopher Edley Jr's plan to use online education to expand the university's footprint "from Kentucky to Kuala Lumpur" has turned some heads - and churned some stomachs.
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US: Getting into medical school without hard sciences
For generations of pre-med students, three things have been as certain as death and taxes: organic chemistry, physics and the Medical College Admission Test, known by its dread-inducing acronym, the MCAT, writes Anemona Hartocollis for The New York Times. So it came as a shock to Elizabeth Adler when she discovered that one of America's top medical schools admits a small number of students every year who have skipped all three requirements.
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BANGLADESH: VAT withdrawn from students' tuition fees
Bangladesh's Finance Minister AMA Muhith last week ruled out the possibility of exempting non-government universities from 15% income tax and other taxes in the current fiscal year, reports The New Nation. The tax charges sparked student protests late last month.
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ICELAND: Probe into role of universities in recession
Icelandic Minister for Education and Culture, Katrin Jakobsdottir, has provided a small grant to help investigate the role of Icelandic universities in the country's economic collapse, reports Ice News.
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Monday, 9 August 2010
Sunday, 18 July 2010
University World News 0132 - 19th July 2010
NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report
MALAYSIA: No distinctions in university rankings
Geoff Maslen
A rating of 47 Malaysian universities and other higher education institutions, including seven set up by foreign universities, has classed 18 as 'excellent', 25 as 'very good' and four as 'good'. None earned a 'distinction'. Releasing the ratings last week, Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin said the Setara ratings would be used by the Higher Education Ministry in developing "appropriate higher education policies".
Full report on the University World News site:
MYANMAR: Remembering the 1988 student generation
David Jardine
As another anniversary of the violent repression of Burma's (now Myanmar's) democratic uprising of 1988 approaches, a new book Than Shwe: Unmasking Burma's tyrant* recalls the sacrifices made then by the country's university students, the 8.8.88 generation.
Full report on the University World News site:
RUSSIA: Promoting higher education abroad
Eugene Vorotnikov
Faced with a declining share of the global education export market, the Russian government plans to raise the prestige of local universities by attracting foreign students and creating opportunities for their employment within the country.
Full report on the University World News site:
US: Responding to the 'brain drain' reversal
Sarah King Head
How can the purportedly slowing rate of H-1B visa applications from postgraduates to the US State Department since April 2010 be interpreted? A recent article in Fortune magazine suggests the reversal of the so-called "brain drain" points to a worrying trend related to perceived long-term consequences of the current economic recession and the waning appeal of the spec ialised job market in the US.
Full report on the University World News site :
SPECIAL: Features and Commentary
PAKISTAN: The party's over for universities
Pervez Hoodbhoy*
Greed is now destroying the moral fibre of Pakistan's academia. Professors across the country are clamouring to abandon even minimal requirements that could assure quality education. To benefit from many-fold increases in salaries for tenure-track positions, professors are speedily removing all barriers to their promotions. Second, they want to take on more PhD students because more students mean more money in each professor's pocket.
Full report on the University World News site:
AFRICA: Development aid must target knowledge
Trish Gibbon*
Development aid from donor countries to Africa is usually directed to issues identified as priorities in the home country's development agenda - issues such as HIV and Aids, poverty reduction, primary health care and food security, among others - according to Peter Maassen, professor of higher education at the University of Oslo. This kind of focus is often at the expense of high-level knowledge development such as that produced within the research culture of universities.
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AFRICA: Lessons in history
Keith Nuthall
Historians are working with Unesco and educationalists to try to develop a common African history syllabus, including the teaching approach and pedagogical materials. The ambitious project will initially focus on helping primary and secondary schools across the continent and, this coming year, an assessment will consider how universities in Africa could benefit from such work.
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UK: How a university scuppered next Facebook
Yojana Sharma
Universities are providing more advice to entrepreneurial students but when the student start-up FitFinder was shut down, despite attracting five million users, critics saw it as a case study on how not to nurture student entrepreneurs.
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UK: FitFinder just too distracting
Pippa Shaw*
When FitFinder was launched at University College London this year it took students by storm. Other universities clamoured to have their own version. It had five million student followers before the original version was shut down for 'distracting' students at examination time.
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More International news
AUSTRALIA: A 14-year wait to resume his old job
Geoff Maslen
Some 14 years since he last held the post, Simon Crean has again become Australia's Education Minister. Adding to the irony of resuming a job he lost in 1996 when the then Labor government fell to conservative leader John Howard, Crean's overloaded portfolio includes higher education. But memories of his last stint are not happy ones.
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GERMANY: Late approval of 'elite student' programme
Michael Gardner
The German government's new National Grants Programme for the specially gifted has been rushed through the federal council, representing the federal states. Germany's upper house accepted the new scheme on 9 July, just before going into summer recess.
Full report on the University World News site:
FRANCE: Third wave of autonomous universities
Jane Marshall
Nearly 90% of French universities will be autonomous from next January when another 24 institutions will take over management of their own affairs under the 2007 Libertés et Responsibilités des Universités (Universities' Freedoms and Responsibilities) law.
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INDIA: Vocational education upgrade
Alya Mishra
India's Education Ministry is revamping its vocational education programmes aiming to create a bank of skilled manpower for ageing developed nations over the coming decades. With the Ministry of Labour, education officials are developing a vocational education qualifications framework to end the country's dependence on informal training.
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AFRICA-CANADA: Boost for Next-Einstein centres
Munyaradzi Makoni
The Canadian government has awarded C$20 million (US$19.4 million) over the next four years to five centres of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences. The centres are spread across the continent and run through the AIMS-Next Einstein Initiative. They will train talented young African postgraduate researchers in mathematical sciences.
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AFRICA: Continental leadership centre launched
Gilbert Nganga
Africa's drive towards improving its governance has received a shot in the arm with the launch of a continental leadership training centre in Kenya's capital Nairobi. The African Leadership Centre will teach and mentor the next generation of leaders.
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KENYA: Major plan to improve training institutions
Gilbert Nganga
Kenya is to spend US$56 million in donor funding to strengthen vocational and technical training countrywide, to help boost the country's skills base. The plan includes building new technical institutions and elevating some to national polytechnic status.
Full report on the University World News site:
TUNISIA: Higher education key to development plan
Wagdy Sawahel
Tunisia has adopted the 12th development plan for 2010-14, which has a focus on higher education. The aim is to transform the national economy into a model driven by innovation and knowledge, in a country ranked the most improved in technology-readiness in Africa.
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ZIMBABWE: Scores of 'illegal' private colleges closed
Kudzai Mashininga
Zimbabwe's government has closed 106 'illegal' private colleges countrywide, throwing thousands of students onto the streets. Higher and Tertiary Education Ministry Permanent Secretary Dr Washington Mbizvo said the colleges did not meet acceptable standards. At the same time, a United Nations agency rated the country as the most literate in Africa.
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N IGERIA: Funding boost for tertiary institutions
Tunde Fatunde
N igeria's government has started disbursing funds to selected public tertiary institutions to help them fast-track the development of teaching, research and infrastructure including student hostels. The extra-budgetary funding for six universities, three polytechnics and three colleges of education has been described as a step in the right direction.
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EGYPT: Students angry over admission curbs
Ashraf Khaled
Hossam Safwat has just passed secondary school certificate examinations with flying colours, scoring 92%. But he is not sure he will be allowed to attend his dream college - a medical school - after Egypt's Minister of Higher Education announced that minimum admission grades for the new academic year would be based on the average of those of the past five years.
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NEWSBRIEFS
GLOBAL: China and US attract world's top researchers
Geoff Maslen
Top Chinese, North American and European universities are offering access to laboratories and facilities at a size and on a scale that universities in smaller countries cannot match, says a report commissioned by the Australian government.
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EUROPE: -6 billion for research and innovation
European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science Máire Geoghegan-Quinn will announce tomorrow a -6 billion (US$7.7 billion) fund for research and innovation. Geoghegan-Quinn will give details of the main fields of research and innovation to be covered and will call for proposals.
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GLOBAL: Social science expanding
Social science from Western countries continues to have the greatest global influence but the field is expanding rapidly in Asia and Latin America, particularly in China and Brazil. In Sub-Saharan Africa, social scientists from South Africa, N igeria and Kenya produce 75% of academic publications, according to Unesco's World Social Science Report 2010: Knowledge divides".
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UK-SWEDEN: Remote region co-operation
Universities in far-flung parts of England and Sweden have shared ways of building bridges with local authorities and the private sector to drive economic development.
Full report on the University World News site:
WEST AFRICA: Regional centre for renewable energy
Wagdy Sawahel
A regional centre to help develop renewable energy and promote workforce development in the 15 countries of the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, has opened in Praia, the capital of Cape Verde.
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GREAT LAKES: Partnership signed with AUF
The French-speaking University Agency, AUF, and the Economic Community of the Great Lakes Countries have signed a partnership agreement to support higher education and research in the community's three member countries - Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda.
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DR CONGO: Minister meets donors for reform funds
The Democratic Republic of Congo's Minister of Higher Education and Universities Professor Léonard Mashako Mamba has met funding agencies and other partners to present policies and reforms for which the government is seeking support, reported La Prosérité of Kinshasa.
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SENEGAL: Students on the rampage - again
In the latest of a number of violent demonstrations, students at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar went on the rampage this month, setting fire and causing other damage to university offices, and attacking the rector and a faculty dean with poison gas, said newspaper reports.
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ACADEMIC FREEDOM
Russia: Nuclear scientist released in "spy swap"
Roisin Joyce*
Dr Igor Sutyagin, a Russian nuclear scientist and former head of division at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, was released from prison on 9 July.
Full report on the University World News site:
SCIENCE SCENE
UK: Exploring fish invasion
Bournemouth University Professor Rudy Gozlan is leading an Anglo-Chinese expedition through remote parts of China to discover the origins of a global fish invasion. Together with colleagues from the university and the Chinese Academy of Science, Gozlan will travel more than 10,000 kilometres along two major rivers - the Yellow and the Yangtze - to collect samples of a species of Topmouth gudgeon.
Full report on the University World News site:
GLOBAL: World-first research on bomb attacks
Geoff Maslen
How would a city cope if it suffered a catastrophic terrorist bombing attack or a natural disaster caused by an earthquake or a cyclonic storm? Dr Tuan Ngo and a team of Melbourne University researchers believe they have the answer: with a federal government-funded, million-dollar grant, the researchers expect to provide police and emergency authorities with accurate details of the effects of a bomb blast within a city's central business district.
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UNI-LATERAL: Off-beat university stories
US: Like us, young continue to take risks
John Richard Schrock*
"Why can't they be like we are; Perfect in every way. What's the matter with kids today?" These lyrics from the 1963 musical "Bye, Bye Birdie" reflect the attitude of many older folks that the young generation just isn't as stalwart as we were when we walked five miles to school each day, through the snow and uphill both ways. Now a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that today's kids face a different set of risks and fears than we did.
Full report on the University World News site:
US: Illegal immigrants hold 'teach-in' to push bill
They can't get US citizenship or in-state tuition rates, so they're taking the next steps - the Capitol and White House steps, that is - write Suzanne Gamboa and Russell Contreras for Associated Press. A coalition of student immigrant advocacy groups on Wednesday launched a makeshift school in Washington DC, reminiscent of the 'teach-ins' of the 1960s, to encourage a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants through college enrolment.
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FACEBOOK
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higher education worldwide. More than 2,250 readers have joined. Sign up to the University World News Facebook group to meet and communicate directly with academics and researchers informed by the world's first truly global higher education publication. Click on the link below to visit and join the group.
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WORLD ROUND-UP
US: Academic outcomes of study abroad
In 2000, US researchers began an ambitious effort to document the academic outcomes of study abroad across the 35-institution University System of Georgia, writes Elizabeth Redden for Inside Higher Ed. Ten years later, they've found that students who study abroad have improved academic performance on returning to their home campus, higher graduation rates and improved knowledge of cultural practices and context compared to students in control groups.
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US-INDONESIA: Obama begins rebuilding academic ties
US President Barack Obama has postponed travel to Indonesia, his childhood home, three times since taking office, the latest visit sidelined in June by the giant oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, writes Karin Fischer for The Chronicle of Higher Education. But a "comprehensive partnership" to deepen relations between the two countries is steaming ahead, one that has as a critical tenet the expansion of higher-education ties.
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BANGLADESH: Parliament passes private university bill
Bangladesh's parliament last weekend passed a bill providing detailed rules for establishing private universities, their proper management and improving education quality, reports The Financial Express.
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CHINA: 'Elites' accused of fabricating degrees
The resumes of about 100 Chinese 'elites' have been revised on Hudong Wiki, a pilot Chinese-language encyclopedia website, after the former president of Microsoft China, Tang Jun, was accused of fabricating his academic credentials, writes Chen Jia for Xinhaunet.
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PAKISTAN: Problems in identifying fake degree holders
Pakistan's Higher Education Commission, or HEC, is experiencing difficulties in identifying parliamentary and provincial assembly politicians holding fake degrees, even after sending the degree documents for verification to universities across the country, writes Adnan Lodhi for the Daily Times.
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UK: Treasury examines possibility of graduate tax
The Treasury is examining the possibility of introducing a graduate tax for students rather than raising the tuition fee cap, writes Patrick Wintour for the Guardian. Its work is at a preliminary stage, with Lord Browne's report on how to finance higher education due in the autumn.
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UK: Nobel winners' protest halts funding change
The government has put on hold controversial plans to re-work the way England's university science research is funded, writes Hannah Richardson for BBC News. Thousands of academics, including Nobel prize winners, campaigned against them, saying they would lead to major discoveries being missed.
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SAUDI ARABIA: Research chairs boost knowledge economy
Saudi universities have established more than 200 research chairs with the support of individuals and private organizations as part of efforts to transform the Kingdom into a knowledge economy, writes PK Abdul Ghafour for Arab News.
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CANADA: Companies to help solve student housing woes
Canadian universities are turning to the private sector to solve their campus housing problems, writes Steve Ladurantaye for The Globe and Mail. They are looking at adopting an American trend that has seen dozens of schools partner with private equity firms to construct buildings that fill the need for student living and also provide investors with the types of returns generally associated with apartment complexes.
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JAPAN: Thousands delay graduation to try to find jobs
At least 79,000 senior university students are believed to have intentionally stayed in school an extra year so they have a better chance of finding a job, a Yomiuri Shimbun survey has found. Because the mass employment of new graduates by major corporations is still rooted in tradition, many senior students unsuccessful in finding work are repeating a year to engage in job-hunting activities as new graduates.
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CHINA: Students still look to Britain despite limits
A controversial plan by the British coalition government to cap the number of skilled immigrants from non-EU countries seems unlikely to stop enthusiastic Chinese from pursuing higher education in the UK, write Ma Liyao and Zhang Haizhou for Xinhuanet.
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US: California online degree rattles academics
Taking online higher education courses is, to many, like eating at McDonalds: convenient, fast and filling. You may not get filet mignon, but afterward you're just as full. Now the University of California wants to jump into online education for undergraduates, hoping to become America's first top-tier research institution to offer a degree over the internet comparable in quality to its prestigious campus programme, writes Nanette Asimov for the San Francisco Chronicle.
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US: Google finances projects to test digital library
Google Inc is giving researchers nearly a half-million dollars to test the academic value of its rapidly growing online library, writes Michael Liedtke for Associated Press. The grants announced on Wednesday will help pay for 12 humanities projects studying questions that will require sifting through thousands of books to reach meaningful conclusions.
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MALAYSIA: No distinctions in university rankings
Geoff Maslen
A rating of 47 Malaysian universities and other higher education institutions, including seven set up by foreign universities, has classed 18 as 'excellent', 25 as 'very good' and four as 'good'. None earned a 'distinction'. Releasing the ratings last week, Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin said the Setara ratings would be used by the Higher Education Ministry in developing "appropriate higher education policies".
Full report on the University World News site:
MYANMAR: Remembering the 1988 student generation
David Jardine
As another anniversary of the violent repression of Burma's (now Myanmar's) democratic uprising of 1988 approaches, a new book Than Shwe: Unmasking Burma's tyrant* recalls the sacrifices made then by the country's university students, the 8.8.88 generation.
Full report on the University World News site:
RUSSIA: Promoting higher education abroad
Eugene Vorotnikov
Faced with a declining share of the global education export market, the Russian government plans to raise the prestige of local universities by attracting foreign students and creating opportunities for their employment within the country.
Full report on the University World News site:
US: Responding to the 'brain drain' reversal
Sarah King Head
How can the purportedly slowing rate of H-1B visa applications from postgraduates to the US State Department since April 2010 be interpreted? A recent article in Fortune magazine suggests the reversal of the so-called "brain drain" points to a worrying trend related to perceived long-term consequences of the current economic recession and the waning appeal of the spec ialised job market in the US.
Full report on the University World News site :
SPECIAL: Features and Commentary
PAKISTAN: The party's over for universities
Pervez Hoodbhoy*
Greed is now destroying the moral fibre of Pakistan's academia. Professors across the country are clamouring to abandon even minimal requirements that could assure quality education. To benefit from many-fold increases in salaries for tenure-track positions, professors are speedily removing all barriers to their promotions. Second, they want to take on more PhD students because more students mean more money in each professor's pocket.
Full report on the University World News site:
AFRICA: Development aid must target knowledge
Trish Gibbon*
Development aid from donor countries to Africa is usually directed to issues identified as priorities in the home country's development agenda - issues such as HIV and Aids, poverty reduction, primary health care and food security, among others - according to Peter Maassen, professor of higher education at the University of Oslo. This kind of focus is often at the expense of high-level knowledge development such as that produced within the research culture of universities.
Full report on the University World News site:
AFRICA: Lessons in history
Keith Nuthall
Historians are working with Unesco and educationalists to try to develop a common African history syllabus, including the teaching approach and pedagogical materials. The ambitious project will initially focus on helping primary and secondary schools across the continent and, this coming year, an assessment will consider how universities in Africa could benefit from such work.
Full report on the University World News site:
UK: How a university scuppered next Facebook
Yojana Sharma
Universities are providing more advice to entrepreneurial students but when the student start-up FitFinder was shut down, despite attracting five million users, critics saw it as a case study on how not to nurture student entrepreneurs.
Full report on the University World News site:
UK: FitFinder just too distracting
Pippa Shaw*
When FitFinder was launched at University College London this year it took students by storm. Other universities clamoured to have their own version. It had five million student followers before the original version was shut down for 'distracting' students at examination time.
Full report on the University World News site:
More International news
AUSTRALIA: A 14-year wait to resume his old job
Geoff Maslen
Some 14 years since he last held the post, Simon Crean has again become Australia's Education Minister. Adding to the irony of resuming a job he lost in 1996 when the then Labor government fell to conservative leader John Howard, Crean's overloaded portfolio includes higher education. But memories of his last stint are not happy ones.
Full report on the University World News site:
GERMANY: Late approval of 'elite student' programme
Michael Gardner
The German government's new National Grants Programme for the specially gifted has been rushed through the federal council, representing the federal states. Germany's upper house accepted the new scheme on 9 July, just before going into summer recess.
Full report on the University World News site:
FRANCE: Third wave of autonomous universities
Jane Marshall
Nearly 90% of French universities will be autonomous from next January when another 24 institutions will take over management of their own affairs under the 2007 Libertés et Responsibilités des Universités (Universities' Freedoms and Responsibilities) law.
Full report on the University World News site:
INDIA: Vocational education upgrade
Alya Mishra
India's Education Ministry is revamping its vocational education programmes aiming to create a bank of skilled manpower for ageing developed nations over the coming decades. With the Ministry of Labour, education officials are developing a vocational education qualifications framework to end the country's dependence on informal training.
Full report on the University World News site:
AFRICA-CANADA: Boost for Next-Einstein centres
Munyaradzi Makoni
The Canadian government has awarded C$20 million (US$19.4 million) over the next four years to five centres of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences. The centres are spread across the continent and run through the AIMS-Next Einstein Initiative. They will train talented young African postgraduate researchers in mathematical sciences.
Full report on the University World News site:
AFRICA: Continental leadership centre launched
Gilbert Nganga
Africa's drive towards improving its governance has received a shot in the arm with the launch of a continental leadership training centre in Kenya's capital Nairobi. The African Leadership Centre will teach and mentor the next generation of leaders.
Full report on the University World News site:
KENYA: Major plan to improve training institutions
Gilbert Nganga
Kenya is to spend US$56 million in donor funding to strengthen vocational and technical training countrywide, to help boost the country's skills base. The plan includes building new technical institutions and elevating some to national polytechnic status.
Full report on the University World News site:
TUNISIA: Higher education key to development plan
Wagdy Sawahel
Tunisia has adopted the 12th development plan for 2010-14, which has a focus on higher education. The aim is to transform the national economy into a model driven by innovation and knowledge, in a country ranked the most improved in technology-readiness in Africa.
Full report on the University World News site:
ZIMBABWE: Scores of 'illegal' private colleges closed
Kudzai Mashininga
Zimbabwe's government has closed 106 'illegal' private colleges countrywide, throwing thousands of students onto the streets. Higher and Tertiary Education Ministry Permanent Secretary Dr Washington Mbizvo said the colleges did not meet acceptable standards. At the same time, a United Nations agency rated the country as the most literate in Africa.
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N IGERIA: Funding boost for tertiary institutions
Tunde Fatunde
N igeria's government has started disbursing funds to selected public tertiary institutions to help them fast-track the development of teaching, research and infrastructure including student hostels. The extra-budgetary funding for six universities, three polytechnics and three colleges of education has been described as a step in the right direction.
Full report on the University World News site:
EGYPT: Students angry over admission curbs
Ashraf Khaled
Hossam Safwat has just passed secondary school certificate examinations with flying colours, scoring 92%. But he is not sure he will be allowed to attend his dream college - a medical school - after Egypt's Minister of Higher Education announced that minimum admission grades for the new academic year would be based on the average of those of the past five years.
Full report on the University World News site:
NEWSBRIEFS
GLOBAL: China and US attract world's top researchers
Geoff Maslen
Top Chinese, North American and European universities are offering access to laboratories and facilities at a size and on a scale that universities in smaller countries cannot match, says a report commissioned by the Australian government.
Full report on the University World News site:
EUROPE: -6 billion for research and innovation
European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science Máire Geoghegan-Quinn will announce tomorrow a -6 billion (US$7.7 billion) fund for research and innovation. Geoghegan-Quinn will give details of the main fields of research and innovation to be covered and will call for proposals.
Full report on the University World News site:
GLOBAL: Social science expanding
Social science from Western countries continues to have the greatest global influence but the field is expanding rapidly in Asia and Latin America, particularly in China and Brazil. In Sub-Saharan Africa, social scientists from South Africa, N igeria and Kenya produce 75% of academic publications, according to Unesco's World Social Science Report 2010: Knowledge divides".
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UK-SWEDEN: Remote region co-operation
Universities in far-flung parts of England and Sweden have shared ways of building bridges with local authorities and the private sector to drive economic development.
Full report on the University World News site:
WEST AFRICA: Regional centre for renewable energy
Wagdy Sawahel
A regional centre to help develop renewable energy and promote workforce development in the 15 countries of the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, has opened in Praia, the capital of Cape Verde.
Full report on the University World News site:
GREAT LAKES: Partnership signed with AUF
The French-speaking University Agency, AUF, and the Economic Community of the Great Lakes Countries have signed a partnership agreement to support higher education and research in the community's three member countries - Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda.
Full report on the University World News site:
DR CONGO: Minister meets donors for reform funds
The Democratic Republic of Congo's Minister of Higher Education and Universities Professor Léonard Mashako Mamba has met funding agencies and other partners to present policies and reforms for which the government is seeking support, reported La Prosérité of Kinshasa.
Full report on the University World News site:
SENEGAL: Students on the rampage - again
In the latest of a number of violent demonstrations, students at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar went on the rampage this month, setting fire and causing other damage to university offices, and attacking the rector and a faculty dean with poison gas, said newspaper reports.
Full report on the University World News site:
ACADEMIC FREEDOM
Russia: Nuclear scientist released in "spy swap"
Roisin Joyce*
Dr Igor Sutyagin, a Russian nuclear scientist and former head of division at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, was released from prison on 9 July.
Full report on the University World News site:
SCIENCE SCENE
UK: Exploring fish invasion
Bournemouth University Professor Rudy Gozlan is leading an Anglo-Chinese expedition through remote parts of China to discover the origins of a global fish invasion. Together with colleagues from the university and the Chinese Academy of Science, Gozlan will travel more than 10,000 kilometres along two major rivers - the Yellow and the Yangtze - to collect samples of a species of Topmouth gudgeon.
Full report on the University World News site:
GLOBAL: World-first research on bomb attacks
Geoff Maslen
How would a city cope if it suffered a catastrophic terrorist bombing attack or a natural disaster caused by an earthquake or a cyclonic storm? Dr Tuan Ngo and a team of Melbourne University researchers believe they have the answer: with a federal government-funded, million-dollar grant, the researchers expect to provide police and emergency authorities with accurate details of the effects of a bomb blast within a city's central business district.
Full report on the University World News site:
UNI-LATERAL: Off-beat university stories
US: Like us, young continue to take risks
John Richard Schrock*
"Why can't they be like we are; Perfect in every way. What's the matter with kids today?" These lyrics from the 1963 musical "Bye, Bye Birdie" reflect the attitude of many older folks that the young generation just isn't as stalwart as we were when we walked five miles to school each day, through the snow and uphill both ways. Now a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that today's kids face a different set of risks and fears than we did.
Full report on the University World News site:
US: Illegal immigrants hold 'teach-in' to push bill
They can't get US citizenship or in-state tuition rates, so they're taking the next steps - the Capitol and White House steps, that is - write Suzanne Gamboa and Russell Contreras for Associated Press. A coalition of student immigrant advocacy groups on Wednesday launched a makeshift school in Washington DC, reminiscent of the 'teach-ins' of the 1960s, to encourage a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants through college enrolment.
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WORLD ROUND-UP
US: Academic outcomes of study abroad
In 2000, US researchers began an ambitious effort to document the academic outcomes of study abroad across the 35-institution University System of Georgia, writes Elizabeth Redden for Inside Higher Ed. Ten years later, they've found that students who study abroad have improved academic performance on returning to their home campus, higher graduation rates and improved knowledge of cultural practices and context compared to students in control groups.
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US-INDONESIA: Obama begins rebuilding academic ties
US President Barack Obama has postponed travel to Indonesia, his childhood home, three times since taking office, the latest visit sidelined in June by the giant oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, writes Karin Fischer for The Chronicle of Higher Education. But a "comprehensive partnership" to deepen relations between the two countries is steaming ahead, one that has as a critical tenet the expansion of higher-education ties.
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BANGLADESH: Parliament passes private university bill
Bangladesh's parliament last weekend passed a bill providing detailed rules for establishing private universities, their proper management and improving education quality, reports The Financial Express.
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CHINA: 'Elites' accused of fabricating degrees
The resumes of about 100 Chinese 'elites' have been revised on Hudong Wiki, a pilot Chinese-language encyclopedia website, after the former president of Microsoft China, Tang Jun, was accused of fabricating his academic credentials, writes Chen Jia for Xinhaunet.
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PAKISTAN: Problems in identifying fake degree holders
Pakistan's Higher Education Commission, or HEC, is experiencing difficulties in identifying parliamentary and provincial assembly politicians holding fake degrees, even after sending the degree documents for verification to universities across the country, writes Adnan Lodhi for the Daily Times.
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UK: Treasury examines possibility of graduate tax
The Treasury is examining the possibility of introducing a graduate tax for students rather than raising the tuition fee cap, writes Patrick Wintour for the Guardian. Its work is at a preliminary stage, with Lord Browne's report on how to finance higher education due in the autumn.
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UK: Nobel winners' protest halts funding change
The government has put on hold controversial plans to re-work the way England's university science research is funded, writes Hannah Richardson for BBC News. Thousands of academics, including Nobel prize winners, campaigned against them, saying they would lead to major discoveries being missed.
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SAUDI ARABIA: Research chairs boost knowledge economy
Saudi universities have established more than 200 research chairs with the support of individuals and private organizations as part of efforts to transform the Kingdom into a knowledge economy, writes PK Abdul Ghafour for Arab News.
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CANADA: Companies to help solve student housing woes
Canadian universities are turning to the private sector to solve their campus housing problems, writes Steve Ladurantaye for The Globe and Mail. They are looking at adopting an American trend that has seen dozens of schools partner with private equity firms to construct buildings that fill the need for student living and also provide investors with the types of returns generally associated with apartment complexes.
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JAPAN: Thousands delay graduation to try to find jobs
At least 79,000 senior university students are believed to have intentionally stayed in school an extra year so they have a better chance of finding a job, a Yomiuri Shimbun survey has found. Because the mass employment of new graduates by major corporations is still rooted in tradition, many senior students unsuccessful in finding work are repeating a year to engage in job-hunting activities as new graduates.
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CHINA: Students still look to Britain despite limits
A controversial plan by the British coalition government to cap the number of skilled immigrants from non-EU countries seems unlikely to stop enthusiastic Chinese from pursuing higher education in the UK, write Ma Liyao and Zhang Haizhou for Xinhuanet.
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US: California online degree rattles academics
Taking online higher education courses is, to many, like eating at McDonalds: convenient, fast and filling. You may not get filet mignon, but afterward you're just as full. Now the University of California wants to jump into online education for undergraduates, hoping to become America's first top-tier research institution to offer a degree over the internet comparable in quality to its prestigious campus programme, writes Nanette Asimov for the San Francisco Chronicle.
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US: Google finances projects to test digital library
Google Inc is giving researchers nearly a half-million dollars to test the academic value of its rapidly growing online library, writes Michael Liedtke for Associated Press. The grants announced on Wednesday will help pay for 12 humanities projects studying questions that will require sifting through thousands of books to reach meaningful conclusions.
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Sunday, 11 July 2010
University World News 0131 - 11th July 2010
NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report
ITALY: 'The best shoes in the world'
Fabio Santelli*
Italian universities say they will be unable to pay their staff wages next year as the ramifications of -1.3 billion in government spending cuts hit home. Yet Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi seems not to care, declaring: "Why do we need to pay scientists when we make the best shoes in the world?"
Full report on the University World News site:
US: Degree shortfall will hit economy hard
Geoff Maslen
America will need 22 million new degree-holders over the next eight years but will fall short by at least three million, according to a new report, Help Wanted: Projections of jobs and education requirements through 2018. The nation will also have vacancies for at least 4.7 million new workers with post-secondary certificates and the shortfall will mean lost economic opportunity for millions of American workers, the report says.
Full report on the University World News site:
THAILAND: Danger in airing political views
Yojana Sharma
Thai academics are well-known voices on television and radio as analysts and commentators providing lively debate on politics. But broadcasting freely is no longer a simple and safe matter since the government crackdown against Red Shirt protesters in May.
Full report on the University World News site:
INDIA: Universities opening foreign campuses
Alya Mishra
While the Indian government is trying to lure foreign institutions with its Foreign Education Providers Bill, Indian universities are opening campuses abroad and aiming for a global presence. See also Dr Tim Gore's views in our Research and Commentary section
Full report on the University World News site:
HUNGARY: Order, work and fulfilling duties
Anna Csonka*
Reducing bureaucracy was an election promise of the right-wing conservative party Fidesz, the Alliance of Young Democrats, which replaced the Soc ialists as leader of Hungary's new government on 29 May. The first step in the reform was a cut in the number of ministries from 12 to eight and merging the formerly autonomous Education Ministry into a new Ministry of National Resources.
Full report on the University World News site:
NETHERLANDS: Call to invest in knowledge economy
Frank Vanaerschot*
Higher education stakeholders want their sector to be internationally competitive to tackle the economic crisis and play a leading role in realising a competitive, knowledge-based economy, a central goal of the European Union's 20-20 strategy.
Full report on the University World News site:
EUROPE: IP a major concern in innovative medicine
Eleven pan-European organisations representing universities, research
centres and biopharmaceutical organisations have called for an urgent revision of the intellectual property rights in the EU Innovative Medicines Joint Technology Initiative policy and the Innovative Medicines Initiative funding model. See also our Feature this week: Scary IP control measures
Full report on the University World News site:
MAURITIUS: Minister sets out ambitious plans
Jane Marshall
Rajesh Jeetah, the minister responsible for higher education in Mauritius, has spelt out ambitious plans for the next few years. They include raising the student enrolment rate to 70% - more than four times the participation rate of any other Sub-Saharan Africa country - increasing the number of foreigners studying in the country and building a new campus at Réduit. He also intends to lengthen the opening hours of the University of Mauritius.
Full report on the University World News site:
NORWAY: Give universities more autonomy
Jan Petter Myklebust
Norway's present system of financing universities is destructive because having to fight for money to meet the cost of additional activities while running their normal operations often creates a deficit that has to be financed by external income, says Swedish Professor Sverker Sørlin. He has called on Norway to break radically with its present system of university funding.
Full report on the University World News site:
ABU DHABI: US$1 billion higher education plan
Wagdy Sawahel
The government of Abu Dhabi has launched its first higher education strategy reform. This aims to build research capabilities to help sustain a shift from Abu Dhabi's oil-based economy and establish an innovation-based and knowledge-producing society.
Full report on the University World News site:
NEWSBRIEFS
EU: Italy told to end student discrimination
The European Commission has requested Italy to end discriminatory conditions in competitions for university students to have access to low-rent apartments in Milan.
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SWEDEN: Targeting fee-paying foreigners
Jan Petter Myklebust
Sweden will introduce tuition fees for non-European students next year and will identify likely countries to highlight its attraction as a study destination.
Full report on the University World News site:
BUSINESS
EUROPE: Is an EU patent on the way at last?
Alan Osborn
The European Commission - the executive of the European Union - has published proposals that could eliminate one of the most tiresome and costly of the obstacles to successful exploitation of innovation in the union: the lack of an EU-wide patent. Commission officials say if the EU Council of Ministers accepts proposed new arrangements for text translation, the costs of patenting inventions and technical advances across the EU could fall drastically.
Full report on the University World News site:
GLOBAL: Future MBAs must consider long term
Cayley Dobie
The global economic recession may appear to have been the direct result of negligent MBA graduates working for a quick buck. While this is not true these courses need to change, a senior business school academic argues.
Full report on the University World News site:
GLOBAL: Ethics not a priority for MBA students
Cayley Dobie
A tiny proportion of MBA students feel ethics courses are a necessary part of MBA programmes and qualifications, according to a recent survey by London based business education spec ialists CarringtonCrisp.
Full report on the University World News site:
PEOPLE
BOTSWANA: Academic leader, historian, diplomat dies
Sheldon G Weeks*
Obituary: Thomas Tlou - 1 June 1932 to 28 June 2010 Botswana's Professor Thomas Tlou - historian, academic, vice-chancellor and diplomat - died on 28 June 2010 after a long illness. He will be remembered for positive attributes including humour and an ability to turn words around so that new insights were gained. He was a consummate negotiator, a modest man who accomplished a great deal, a democrat, a man of integrity who stood up for the rights of others, a researcher and an author.
Full report on the University World News site:
THE UNIVERSITY WORLD NEWS INTERVIEW
INDIA: Key elements of a university
Dr Rajeev Shorey is President of NIIT University, a not-for-profit institution in Rajasthan sponsored by NIIT Limited. He has worked variously for General Motors India, IBM, GM Research and as an academic at IIT Delhi and the National University of Singapore. Dr Rahul Choudaha spoke with him for University World News.
Full report on the University World News site:
FEATURE
GLOBAL: Scary IP border control measures
Anna George
In the wake of the recent Goldman Sachs revelations, it is clear we are still working our way through the financial and ethical wreck imposed by investment bankers who were 'too big to fail'. But the phenomenon of over-reach of corporate influence over the economy is not confined to the banking sector. Another industry that has increased its influence, to the extent that it can now be seen as an alternative private 'tax collecting' agency, is the complex intellectual property industry.
Full report on the University World News site:
HE Research and Commentary
INDIA: Connecting universities with the world
Tim Gore*
The progress of the Foreign Universities Bill in the Indian parliament has been regarded with great interest over the last few years because it could significantly affect the dynamic between India and its foreign educational partners. The recent impetus and direction given to the bill's development by current Human Resources and Development Minister Shri Kapil Sibal is laudable.
Full report on the University World News site:
US: Futures thinking for academic librarians
"For academic librarians seeking to demonstrate the value of their libraries to their parent institutions, it is important to understand not only the current climate. We must also know what will be valued in the future so that we can begin to take appropriate action now." So begins a new report by the Association of College & Research Libraries, which presents 26 scenarios based on an assessment of current trends that may impact on academic and research libraries over the next 15 years.
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UNI-LATERAL: Off-beat university stories
US: Texting: the teenage girls' addiction
John Richard Schrock*
While many boys have dropped out of academic life over the last 15 years of video game development, leaving girls to excel at school, in higher education and jobs, the electronic age may now start suppressing girls with texting.
Full report on the University World News site:
JAPAN: Monkeys' daring escape from laboratory
A group of 15 monkeys at Kyoto University's primate research institute in Aichi Prefecture, which are the focus of a string of high-profile scientific studies, escaped from their forest home which is encased by a more than five metre high electric fence, writes Danielle Demetriou in Japan for the Telegraph.
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UK: Lobby group rates gay-friendly universities
Club scene. Reputation for research. Proximity to parents' washing machine. All issues prospective students will be weighing up over the next few weeks as they make final decisions about which university to choose. But some will be asking another question, too - which institution will allow them to feel comfortable about who they are? - writes Harriet Swain for the Guardian.
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AUSTRALIA: University students most hit by depression
University students are four times more likely to be anxious and depressed than other people their age, a study of almost 1,000 students in Australia has found, writes Sarah-Jane Collins for The Sydney Morning Herald. The research found that 48% of participating students from the medicine, law, mechanical engineering and psychology faculties at the University of Adelaide showed significant levels of anxiety and depression.
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FACEBOOK
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higher education worldwide. More than 2,200 readers have joined. Sign up to the University World News Facebook group to meet and communicate directly with academics and researchers informed by the world's first truly global higher education publication. Click on the link below to visit and join the group.
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WORLD ROUND-UP
DUBAI: Michigan shuts most of its branch campus
Michigan State University's branch campus in Dubai International Academic City says it is terminating all of its undergraduate programmes immediately, after losing millions of dollars since opening two years ago, writes Melanie Swan for The National. The move affects more than 100 undergraduate students and 24 staff and faculty in five subjects including business, media management and research, and computer and electrical engineering.
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UK: 'Climategate' scientists cleared of dishonesty
The climate scientists at the centre of a media storm were cleared in the UK last week of accusations that they fudged their results and silenced critics to bolster the case for man-made global warming, writes David Adam for the Guardian.
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CANADA: Universities see India as land of opportunity
In a rocky field dotted with mango trees, five minutes from southern India's gleaming new Hyderabad airport, Dezso Horvath sees a solution for Canadian universities struggling with limited public dollars, writes Elizabeth Church for The Globe and Mail. The York University business dean has struck a deal with a developer to build an outpost for the Schulich School of Business, making it one of the first foreign campuses in the world's fastest growing market for higher education.
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TAIWAN: University improvement to continue: President
Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou said on Monday that the government would honour its commitment to provide additional funding to upgrade the quality of local universities and enable them to join the world's top institutions, reports Channel News Asia.
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PUERTO RICO: Student victory unleashes backlash
As many Americans geared up for Fourth of July fireworks last weekend, the US territory of Puerto Rico roiled from a brutal civil rights showdown unleashed by a right-wing government seemingly hell-bent on destroying the recent, unprecedented victory of a two-month long student strike against privatisation of higher education at the University of Puerto Rico, writes Dr Maritza Stanchich for The Huffington Post.
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BRAZIL: University growth eroded by drop-out rates
The average cost of tuition at Brazil's private universities has fallen by almost a third over the last 10 years, and the number of students has risen above five million for the first time, according to research by Semesp, an organisation of higher education institutes in the state of São Paulo, writes Andrew Downie for The Chronicle of Higher Education.
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UK: Thousands of academic jobs on the line
Thousands of people working for universities in England could lose their jobs if ministers press ahead with 25% funding cuts, a union has warned, reports BBC News. Analysis by the University and College Union concluded that 22,584 jobs - academic and otherwise - would be lost. It warned that the quality of students' university experience would be reduced.
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UK: Graduates warned of 70 applicants for every job
UK graduates are facing the most intense scramble in a decade to get a job this summer, as a poll of employers reveals the number of applications for each vacancy has surged to nearly 70 while the number of available positions is predicted to fall by nearly 7%, writes Jeevan Vasagar for the Guardian.
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US: What happened to studying?
They come with polished resumes and perfect SAT scores, writes Keith O'Brien for The Boston Globe. Their grades are often impeccable. The perception is that today's over-achieving, college-driven kids have it - whatever 'it' is. They're not just groomed; they're ready. There's just one problem. Once on campus, the students aren't studying.
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US: Stopping student cheats by learning trickery
The US frontier in the battle to defeat student cheating may be at the testing centre of the University of Central Florida, writes Trip Gabriel for The New York Times. No gum is allowed during an exam: chewing could disguise a student's speaking into a hands-free cellphone to an accomplice outside.
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ETHIOPIA: Half of lecturers have only a first degree
Around around a half of lecturers in public universities in Ethiopia have only a bachelor degree, according to a new government report, writes Binyam Tamene for Capital. In the last five years there has been a 137% increase in student enrolments in higher education, and government institutions enrolled 185,788 students this year.
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INDIA: More quality research in science needed: PM
Pitching for greater collaboration between universities such as the institutes of technology and the corporate sector, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said last weekend that the country urgently needed to increase quality research in science and technology to meet newer challenges like climate change, reports NDTV.
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US: NASA, universities in spill prevention coalition
NASA, the University of Houston and Rice University will be part of a coalition of scientists, policy experts, oil and gas engineers and state officials focused on preventing future oil spill disasters, Governor Rick Perry said in Houston on Tuesday, writes Joe Holley for the Houston Chronicle.
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CAMEROON: Higher education rewards excellence
Some 60,000 students in Cameroon earmarked for the academic achievement bonus granted by the country's head of state, began collecting the money from the financial departments of their universities last week, reports Brenda Yufeh for the Cameroon Tribune.
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ITALY: 'The best shoes in the world'
Fabio Santelli*
Italian universities say they will be unable to pay their staff wages next year as the ramifications of -1.3 billion in government spending cuts hit home. Yet Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi seems not to care, declaring: "Why do we need to pay scientists when we make the best shoes in the world?"
Full report on the University World News site:
US: Degree shortfall will hit economy hard
Geoff Maslen
America will need 22 million new degree-holders over the next eight years but will fall short by at least three million, according to a new report, Help Wanted: Projections of jobs and education requirements through 2018. The nation will also have vacancies for at least 4.7 million new workers with post-secondary certificates and the shortfall will mean lost economic opportunity for millions of American workers, the report says.
Full report on the University World News site:
THAILAND: Danger in airing political views
Yojana Sharma
Thai academics are well-known voices on television and radio as analysts and commentators providing lively debate on politics. But broadcasting freely is no longer a simple and safe matter since the government crackdown against Red Shirt protesters in May.
Full report on the University World News site:
INDIA: Universities opening foreign campuses
Alya Mishra
While the Indian government is trying to lure foreign institutions with its Foreign Education Providers Bill, Indian universities are opening campuses abroad and aiming for a global presence. See also Dr Tim Gore's views in our Research and Commentary section
Full report on the University World News site:
HUNGARY: Order, work and fulfilling duties
Anna Csonka*
Reducing bureaucracy was an election promise of the right-wing conservative party Fidesz, the Alliance of Young Democrats, which replaced the Soc ialists as leader of Hungary's new government on 29 May. The first step in the reform was a cut in the number of ministries from 12 to eight and merging the formerly autonomous Education Ministry into a new Ministry of National Resources.
Full report on the University World News site:
NETHERLANDS: Call to invest in knowledge economy
Frank Vanaerschot*
Higher education stakeholders want their sector to be internationally competitive to tackle the economic crisis and play a leading role in realising a competitive, knowledge-based economy, a central goal of the European Union's 20-20 strategy.
Full report on the University World News site:
EUROPE: IP a major concern in innovative medicine
Eleven pan-European organisations representing universities, research
centres and biopharmaceutical organisations have called for an urgent revision of the intellectual property rights in the EU Innovative Medicines Joint Technology Initiative policy and the Innovative Medicines Initiative funding model. See also our Feature this week: Scary IP control measures
Full report on the University World News site:
MAURITIUS: Minister sets out ambitious plans
Jane Marshall
Rajesh Jeetah, the minister responsible for higher education in Mauritius, has spelt out ambitious plans for the next few years. They include raising the student enrolment rate to 70% - more than four times the participation rate of any other Sub-Saharan Africa country - increasing the number of foreigners studying in the country and building a new campus at Réduit. He also intends to lengthen the opening hours of the University of Mauritius.
Full report on the University World News site:
NORWAY: Give universities more autonomy
Jan Petter Myklebust
Norway's present system of financing universities is destructive because having to fight for money to meet the cost of additional activities while running their normal operations often creates a deficit that has to be financed by external income, says Swedish Professor Sverker Sørlin. He has called on Norway to break radically with its present system of university funding.
Full report on the University World News site:
ABU DHABI: US$1 billion higher education plan
Wagdy Sawahel
The government of Abu Dhabi has launched its first higher education strategy reform. This aims to build research capabilities to help sustain a shift from Abu Dhabi's oil-based economy and establish an innovation-based and knowledge-producing society.
Full report on the University World News site:
NEWSBRIEFS
EU: Italy told to end student discrimination
The European Commission has requested Italy to end discriminatory conditions in competitions for university students to have access to low-rent apartments in Milan.
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SWEDEN: Targeting fee-paying foreigners
Jan Petter Myklebust
Sweden will introduce tuition fees for non-European students next year and will identify likely countries to highlight its attraction as a study destination.
Full report on the University World News site:
BUSINESS
EUROPE: Is an EU patent on the way at last?
Alan Osborn
The European Commission - the executive of the European Union - has published proposals that could eliminate one of the most tiresome and costly of the obstacles to successful exploitation of innovation in the union: the lack of an EU-wide patent. Commission officials say if the EU Council of Ministers accepts proposed new arrangements for text translation, the costs of patenting inventions and technical advances across the EU could fall drastically.
Full report on the University World News site:
GLOBAL: Future MBAs must consider long term
Cayley Dobie
The global economic recession may appear to have been the direct result of negligent MBA graduates working for a quick buck. While this is not true these courses need to change, a senior business school academic argues.
Full report on the University World News site:
GLOBAL: Ethics not a priority for MBA students
Cayley Dobie
A tiny proportion of MBA students feel ethics courses are a necessary part of MBA programmes and qualifications, according to a recent survey by London based business education spec ialists CarringtonCrisp.
Full report on the University World News site:
PEOPLE
BOTSWANA: Academic leader, historian, diplomat dies
Sheldon G Weeks*
Obituary: Thomas Tlou - 1 June 1932 to 28 June 2010 Botswana's Professor Thomas Tlou - historian, academic, vice-chancellor and diplomat - died on 28 June 2010 after a long illness. He will be remembered for positive attributes including humour and an ability to turn words around so that new insights were gained. He was a consummate negotiator, a modest man who accomplished a great deal, a democrat, a man of integrity who stood up for the rights of others, a researcher and an author.
Full report on the University World News site:
THE UNIVERSITY WORLD NEWS INTERVIEW
INDIA: Key elements of a university
Dr Rajeev Shorey is President of NIIT University, a not-for-profit institution in Rajasthan sponsored by NIIT Limited. He has worked variously for General Motors India, IBM, GM Research and as an academic at IIT Delhi and the National University of Singapore. Dr Rahul Choudaha spoke with him for University World News.
Full report on the University World News site:
FEATURE
GLOBAL: Scary IP border control measures
Anna George
In the wake of the recent Goldman Sachs revelations, it is clear we are still working our way through the financial and ethical wreck imposed by investment bankers who were 'too big to fail'. But the phenomenon of over-reach of corporate influence over the economy is not confined to the banking sector. Another industry that has increased its influence, to the extent that it can now be seen as an alternative private 'tax collecting' agency, is the complex intellectual property industry.
Full report on the University World News site:
HE Research and Commentary
INDIA: Connecting universities with the world
Tim Gore*
The progress of the Foreign Universities Bill in the Indian parliament has been regarded with great interest over the last few years because it could significantly affect the dynamic between India and its foreign educational partners. The recent impetus and direction given to the bill's development by current Human Resources and Development Minister Shri Kapil Sibal is laudable.
Full report on the University World News site:
US: Futures thinking for academic librarians
"For academic librarians seeking to demonstrate the value of their libraries to their parent institutions, it is important to understand not only the current climate. We must also know what will be valued in the future so that we can begin to take appropriate action now." So begins a new report by the Association of College & Research Libraries, which presents 26 scenarios based on an assessment of current trends that may impact on academic and research libraries over the next 15 years.
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UNI-LATERAL: Off-beat university stories
US: Texting: the teenage girls' addiction
John Richard Schrock*
While many boys have dropped out of academic life over the last 15 years of video game development, leaving girls to excel at school, in higher education and jobs, the electronic age may now start suppressing girls with texting.
Full report on the University World News site:
JAPAN: Monkeys' daring escape from laboratory
A group of 15 monkeys at Kyoto University's primate research institute in Aichi Prefecture, which are the focus of a string of high-profile scientific studies, escaped from their forest home which is encased by a more than five metre high electric fence, writes Danielle Demetriou in Japan for the Telegraph.
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UK: Lobby group rates gay-friendly universities
Club scene. Reputation for research. Proximity to parents' washing machine. All issues prospective students will be weighing up over the next few weeks as they make final decisions about which university to choose. But some will be asking another question, too - which institution will allow them to feel comfortable about who they are? - writes Harriet Swain for the Guardian.
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AUSTRALIA: University students most hit by depression
University students are four times more likely to be anxious and depressed than other people their age, a study of almost 1,000 students in Australia has found, writes Sarah-Jane Collins for The Sydney Morning Herald. The research found that 48% of participating students from the medicine, law, mechanical engineering and psychology faculties at the University of Adelaide showed significant levels of anxiety and depression.
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WORLD ROUND-UP
DUBAI: Michigan shuts most of its branch campus
Michigan State University's branch campus in Dubai International Academic City says it is terminating all of its undergraduate programmes immediately, after losing millions of dollars since opening two years ago, writes Melanie Swan for The National. The move affects more than 100 undergraduate students and 24 staff and faculty in five subjects including business, media management and research, and computer and electrical engineering.
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UK: 'Climategate' scientists cleared of dishonesty
The climate scientists at the centre of a media storm were cleared in the UK last week of accusations that they fudged their results and silenced critics to bolster the case for man-made global warming, writes David Adam for the Guardian.
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CANADA: Universities see India as land of opportunity
In a rocky field dotted with mango trees, five minutes from southern India's gleaming new Hyderabad airport, Dezso Horvath sees a solution for Canadian universities struggling with limited public dollars, writes Elizabeth Church for The Globe and Mail. The York University business dean has struck a deal with a developer to build an outpost for the Schulich School of Business, making it one of the first foreign campuses in the world's fastest growing market for higher education.
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TAIWAN: University improvement to continue: President
Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou said on Monday that the government would honour its commitment to provide additional funding to upgrade the quality of local universities and enable them to join the world's top institutions, reports Channel News Asia.
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PUERTO RICO: Student victory unleashes backlash
As many Americans geared up for Fourth of July fireworks last weekend, the US territory of Puerto Rico roiled from a brutal civil rights showdown unleashed by a right-wing government seemingly hell-bent on destroying the recent, unprecedented victory of a two-month long student strike against privatisation of higher education at the University of Puerto Rico, writes Dr Maritza Stanchich for The Huffington Post.
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BRAZIL: University growth eroded by drop-out rates
The average cost of tuition at Brazil's private universities has fallen by almost a third over the last 10 years, and the number of students has risen above five million for the first time, according to research by Semesp, an organisation of higher education institutes in the state of São Paulo, writes Andrew Downie for The Chronicle of Higher Education.
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UK: Thousands of academic jobs on the line
Thousands of people working for universities in England could lose their jobs if ministers press ahead with 25% funding cuts, a union has warned, reports BBC News. Analysis by the University and College Union concluded that 22,584 jobs - academic and otherwise - would be lost. It warned that the quality of students' university experience would be reduced.
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UK: Graduates warned of 70 applicants for every job
UK graduates are facing the most intense scramble in a decade to get a job this summer, as a poll of employers reveals the number of applications for each vacancy has surged to nearly 70 while the number of available positions is predicted to fall by nearly 7%, writes Jeevan Vasagar for the Guardian.
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US: What happened to studying?
They come with polished resumes and perfect SAT scores, writes Keith O'Brien for The Boston Globe. Their grades are often impeccable. The perception is that today's over-achieving, college-driven kids have it - whatever 'it' is. They're not just groomed; they're ready. There's just one problem. Once on campus, the students aren't studying.
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US: Stopping student cheats by learning trickery
The US frontier in the battle to defeat student cheating may be at the testing centre of the University of Central Florida, writes Trip Gabriel for The New York Times. No gum is allowed during an exam: chewing could disguise a student's speaking into a hands-free cellphone to an accomplice outside.
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ETHIOPIA: Half of lecturers have only a first degree
Around around a half of lecturers in public universities in Ethiopia have only a bachelor degree, according to a new government report, writes Binyam Tamene for Capital. In the last five years there has been a 137% increase in student enrolments in higher education, and government institutions enrolled 185,788 students this year.
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INDIA: More quality research in science needed: PM
Pitching for greater collaboration between universities such as the institutes of technology and the corporate sector, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said last weekend that the country urgently needed to increase quality research in science and technology to meet newer challenges like climate change, reports NDTV.
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US: NASA, universities in spill prevention coalition
NASA, the University of Houston and Rice University will be part of a coalition of scientists, policy experts, oil and gas engineers and state officials focused on preventing future oil spill disasters, Governor Rick Perry said in Houston on Tuesday, writes Joe Holley for the Houston Chronicle.
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CAMEROON: Higher education rewards excellence
Some 60,000 students in Cameroon earmarked for the academic achievement bonus granted by the country's head of state, began collecting the money from the financial departments of their universities last week, reports Brenda Yufeh for the Cameroon Tribune.
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Sunday, 4 July 2010
University World News 0130 - 5th July 2010
NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report
MALAYSIA: Accused Nigerian students deported
Tunde Fatunde
The Malaysian government has deported two N igerian postgraduate students who were among 10 people from various countries detained in January for alleged links with the terrorist organisation Al-Qaeda. The N igerians had been studying at the International Islamic University near the capital Kuala Lumpur.
Full report on the University World News site:
INDIA: New performance and promotion system
Suchitra Behal
Career advancement prospects in Indian universities became more difficult last week with the University Grants Commission adopting a performance-based points system. From now on, lecturers will be graded annually on their performance and will be eligible for promotions based on their teaching, research and publication quality - not on seniority.
Full report on the University World News site:
INDIA: Single entry test proposed
Alya Mishra
With millions of school leavers sitting multiple examinations in their final year of school, India's Education Ministry is proposing a single national entrance test for universities and professional institutions. The aim is to reduce student stress and also introduce greater flexibility in a system that currently makes it difficult for students to switch between courses once they have made a choice in high school.
Full report on the University World News site:
AFRICA: New institute to boost university governance
Jane Marshall
A new institute to strengthen the governance and management of African universities has been officially inaugurated in Yaoundé, Cameroon. The Pan-African Institute of University Governance aims to improve and modernise practices for the competent running of higher education institutions throughout Sub-Saharan Africa.
Full report on the University World News site:
NORWAY: Top bureaucrat claimed false degrees
Jan Petter Myklebust
A high-ranking official at the Norwegian Regulation Authority for Health Personnel has quit following allegations she used fake degrees 15 years ago to be appointed. Liv Løberg, whose husband is the security chief in Norway's parliament, was responsible for authorising the qualifications each year of hundreds of health professionals, including many foreign citizens.
Full report on the University World News site:
FINLAND: New era of private benefactors
Ian R Dobson*
A new universities act has transformed institutions from branches of government into independent legal entities. Universities now face fewer restrictions in raising revenue via private donations and bequests.
Full report on the University World News site:
AFRICA: Pan-African University close to starting
Gilbert Nganga
Kenya has been selected as the East African host of the planned Pan-African University, a spec ialised institution comprising a network of universities that is being created to help supply the continent's high-level human capital. This ends a five-month stalemate between countries in the region that had been squabbling over who the host would be.
Full report on the University World News site:
EGYPT: University cooperation to ease Nile Basin row
Wagdy Sawahel
Egypt plans to promote higher education cooperation with seven upstream Nile Basin states in a diplomatic move to strengthen strategic, economic and cultural relations. The aim is to ease tension sparked by a new pact calling for equitable water use, which Egypt perceives as being against its interests.
Full report on the University World News site:
AFRICA: International research initiatives launched
Wagdy Sawahel
A number of international initiatives were launched in Africa recently to develop research and innovation across the continent, and to transform new ideas generated by higher education and research into improved products, processes and businesses. The projects include a technology development and transfer network, a continental research framework programme and a science-to-business challenge.
Full report on the University World News site:
AFRICA: New inventions and discoveries observatory
Wagdy Sawahel
An Online Observatory for African Inventions and Discoveries has been launched, aimed at encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship to help meet the continent's development challenges.
Full report on the University World News site:
NEWSBRIEFS
CHINA: Future of rapid urbanisation
From critiques of the Shanghai World Expo logo and the expo's unsustainable aftermath, to how changing ideologies and economic regimes are positively transforming urban spaces, a Global Cities Research Institute at RMIT University in Melbourne is shining a spotlight on the impact of rapid urbanisation in China.
Full report on the University World News site:
UK: Open University hits 20 million iTunes U downloads
The Open University set a world record last week when it became the first university to achieve 20 million downloaded tracks on iTunes U, a dedicated area within the iTunes Store.
Full report on the University World News site:
GLOBAL: OECD launches innovation strategy
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Developments has presented its innovation strategy, focusing on human capital and education. The initiative was launched at a ministerial council meeting in May following a three-year multidisciplinary, multi-stakeholder effort, the organisation announced.
Full report on the University World News site:
EUROPE: Research grants top 1,000
Michael Gardner
Professor Erika von Mutius is the thousandth top researcher to receive a grant from the European Research Council. Von Mutius is exploring new ways to tackle asthma and allergies. To mark the awarding of the grant, a ceremony attended by leading figures from the political and research scene was held in Munich late last month.
Full report on the University World News site:
ACADEMIC FREEDOM
IRAN: Prominent scholar released on bail
Roisin Joyce
Emadeddin Baghi, Iranian scholar, journalist and human rights activist, was released on bail on 23 June. According to reports from Amnesty International he was released from Tehran's Evin prison on bail of US$200,000 after 180 days in prison.
Full report on the University World News site:
More academic freedom reports on the University World News site
CHINA: Publisher scraps Tiananmen Square memoir:
IRAN: Two UK students in detention in Iran:
ANGOLA: Professor on trial in Cabinda:
TURKEY: Education trade unionists on trial:
RWANDA: American academic released:
SCIENCE SCENE
AUSTRALIA: Mutton birds or puffins
Geoff Maslen
Giant tiger snakes as long as a man's arm and with heads the size of his closed fist live on Great Dog Island. So it is always with some trepidation that La Trobe University researcher Mark Carey pushes his arm down the burrows where the mutton birds nest - in case a tiger is there as well. "I have a fear of snakes," Carey says. "And if students are with me on the island, the one rule is that the 's' word is not to be spoken unless there's one of them about..."
Full report on the University World News site:
UK: Huge prehistoric 'accessories' attracted mates
Fins, crests and sails - various species of dinosaur displayed intriguing accessories. Now research suggests many of these adaptations grew extra large in order to attract mates.
Full report on the University World News site:
US: Communicating science to the public
A US initiative has tried to find ways to improve communication between scientists and the public, especially about issues that worry people deeply. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences project considered how scientists engage with the public and how their mutual understanding could be improved.
Full report on the University World News site:
FEATURES
GLOBAL: Ivory towers to solar-powered houses
Paul Rigg
The adrenalin buzz among the professors and university students is palpable during the construction of futuristic structures that run exclusively on energy generated by the sun. But these are not mere models; they are real houses that can run everything from washing machines to air conditioning systems, all from solar power.
Full report on University World News Website:
KYRGYZSTAN: University politicisation to continue
Yojana Sharma
The national referendum held in Kyrgyzstan last weekend in the wake of major unrest in mid-June will not halt the politicisation of universities, said a Kyrgyz opposition politician in exile who is familiar with the country's universities.
Full report on University World News Website:
KENYA: Cashing in on foreign language learning
Gilbert Nganga
Kenya's universities are rolling out foreign language programmes as nations and investors, especially from Asia, increasingly turn to the East African country for resources to boost their industrial growth. In the past month Kenya's biggest universities - Nairobi and Kenyatta - have announced new courses in Korean and Chinese respectively. They both host branches of China's Confucius Institute.
Full report on the University World News site:
AFRICA: Does Africa really need new idealism?
Linda Nordling
Perhaps it is a fear that aid from the financially tumultuous North might be squeezed. Perhaps it is a growing frustration at rich countries' failure to keep their promises to the world's poor. Whatever the cause, a wave of idealism is sweeping through the innovation policy debate, accompanied by that idealist writ - the manifesto.
Full report on University World News Website:
HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
GLOBAL: Student disengagement: global comparisons
Jim Côté
A common reaction to reports of student disengagement is that we all should get used to widespread disengagement because nothing better should be expected from a mass university system. A variety of excuses are made for students who are 'too busy' to put full effort into their studies. One way to approach this 'inevitability question' is to ask whether the levels of student disengagement observed in Canada and the US are also found in massified systems in other countries.
Full report on the University World News site:
GLOBAL: Bibliometrics, rankings and transparency
Kristopher Olds*
Why do we care so much about the actual and potential uses of bibliometrics ("the generic term for data about publications", according to the OECD) and world university ranking methodologies, but care so little about the private sector firms, and their inter-firm relations, that drive the bibliometrics and global rankings agenda forward?
Full report on the University World News site:
GLOBAL: Science metrics
The value of scientific output is often measured, to rank one nation against another, allocate funds between universities, or even grant or deny tenure. Scientometricians have devised a multitude of 'metrics' to help in these rankings. Do they work? Are they fair? Are they over-used? Nature investigated this key higher education issue in a Nature Special published in its June edition.
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UNI-LATERAL: Off-beat university stories
UK: Bees stick to working hours
Bees are often admired by humans for what appears to be a strong work ethic - working throughout the day to gather pollen. But what happens when the insects have the opportunity to work around the clock? Will they do so?
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FACEBOOK
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higher education worldwide. More than 2,300 readers have joined. Sign up to the University World News Facebook group to meet and communicate directly with academics and researchers informed by the world's first truly global higher education publication. Click on the link below to visit and join the group.
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WORLD ROUND-UP
GLOBAL: New ranking of Ibero-American universities
The SCImago Research Group has just published a new ranking of Ibero-American universities, based on their research productivity, writes Simon Schwartzman for the Inside Higher Ed blog The World View. Of the 10 more productive research institutions, five are Spanish, four Brazilian and one Mexican. The indicators are based on scientific publications.
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US: Politics embroil gulf research grants
University professors in the gulf region responded with delight to BP's pledge to put up $500 million for academic research into the Gulf of Mexico's ecology over the next 10 years, writes Julie Cart for the Los Angeles Times. With no significant federal grants on the horizon and an urgency to begin work, some of the academics had taken to using their own credit cards in hopes they would soon be reimbursed.
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US: Questioning foreign medical schools
Just as Congress ratchets up its scrutiny of for-profit higher education as a whole, the body's investigative arm is calling on the US Department of Education to begin examining some of the same issues of value and quality at foreign medical schools where Americans use federal student loans, writes Jennifer Epstein for Inside Higher Ed. The largest of such schools are for-profit institutions.
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US: For-profit colleges: educators or predators?
When Yasmine Issa found herself, at 24, unemployed and a recently divorced mother of twins, she turned to the Sanford-Brown Institute, a for-profit college in White Plains, New York, that offered an ultrasound sonography programme and promised her job-placement opportunities, writes Elizabeth Dias for Time. But a completed programme and $15,000 in federal loans later, Issa missed the catch: the programme was not accredited. "I was somebody no one wanted to hire," she says.
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PAKISTAN: Court orders action against fake degree MPs
Pakistan's increasingly assertive Supreme Court has ordered election authorities to take action against legislators found to have forged higher education qualifications in order to contest the 2008 general elections, writes Zeeshan Haider for Reuters. And the Higher Education Commission has asked universities to verify the degrees of their academic and administrative staff, creating tension, reports the Daily Times.
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TURKEY: Science needs more autonomy, report says
Turkey has not achieved the status of a "scientific society" and science in the country requires more independence from politics to achieve that goal, according to a new report based on extensive interviews with scientists, reports Hürriyet Daily News.
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WALES: University numbers to be reduced
A plan to close smaller Welsh universities has been broadly welcomed by education professionals, reports BBC News. Education Minister Leighton Andrews has indicated that smaller bodies will be forced into mergers, meaning a reduced number of higher education institutions.
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UK: University admission points system to be reviewed
The UK's university admissions system is to be overhauled amid fears that the practice of scoring applicants' qualifications has become outdated, and is being wrongly used by employers to recruit graduates, writes Polly Curtis for the Guardian.
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AFRICA: Research project takes genetics to roots
A US$37 million international collaboration by major research bodies in the United States, Britain and Africa wants to take the fruits of the genetic revolution to a continent it has largely bypassed until now, writes Kate Kelland for Reuters. The project, named Human Heredity and Health in Africa or H3Africa, will use genetic techniques developed in the West to explore the roots of human life among populations that carry the world's oldest and most diverse sets of genes.
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HONG KONG: China scholarship centre's big ambitions
A university library in Hong Kong is aiming to open up new fields of research on China by building the world's most comprehensive repository of statistical information on the country, better than anything available on the mainland, writes Mary Hennock for The Chronicle of Higher Education. The ambition is huge: to put details about life in China dating back to 1949 into a digital format that permits swift comparisons and reaches down to the country's smallest towns and villages.
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AUSTRALIA: Push for degree-level colleges
The heads of technical and further education (TAFE) colleges in Australia are proposing a new type of higher education institution between universities and colleges, writes Andrew Trounson for The Australian. The TAFE Directors Australia initiative is part of a push to win funding for degrees in a post-2012 uncapped student numbers system.
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THE NETHERLANDS: No university anti-spy measures
Universities of technology in the Netherlands are not taking additional anti-espionage measures, against the advice of the General Intelligence and Security Service, or AIVD, reports Radio Netherlands. Universities see combating espionage as a matter for the government.
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MALAYSIA: Accused Nigerian students deported
Tunde Fatunde
The Malaysian government has deported two N igerian postgraduate students who were among 10 people from various countries detained in January for alleged links with the terrorist organisation Al-Qaeda. The N igerians had been studying at the International Islamic University near the capital Kuala Lumpur.
Full report on the University World News site:
INDIA: New performance and promotion system
Suchitra Behal
Career advancement prospects in Indian universities became more difficult last week with the University Grants Commission adopting a performance-based points system. From now on, lecturers will be graded annually on their performance and will be eligible for promotions based on their teaching, research and publication quality - not on seniority.
Full report on the University World News site:
INDIA: Single entry test proposed
Alya Mishra
With millions of school leavers sitting multiple examinations in their final year of school, India's Education Ministry is proposing a single national entrance test for universities and professional institutions. The aim is to reduce student stress and also introduce greater flexibility in a system that currently makes it difficult for students to switch between courses once they have made a choice in high school.
Full report on the University World News site:
AFRICA: New institute to boost university governance
Jane Marshall
A new institute to strengthen the governance and management of African universities has been officially inaugurated in Yaoundé, Cameroon. The Pan-African Institute of University Governance aims to improve and modernise practices for the competent running of higher education institutions throughout Sub-Saharan Africa.
Full report on the University World News site:
NORWAY: Top bureaucrat claimed false degrees
Jan Petter Myklebust
A high-ranking official at the Norwegian Regulation Authority for Health Personnel has quit following allegations she used fake degrees 15 years ago to be appointed. Liv Løberg, whose husband is the security chief in Norway's parliament, was responsible for authorising the qualifications each year of hundreds of health professionals, including many foreign citizens.
Full report on the University World News site:
FINLAND: New era of private benefactors
Ian R Dobson*
A new universities act has transformed institutions from branches of government into independent legal entities. Universities now face fewer restrictions in raising revenue via private donations and bequests.
Full report on the University World News site:
AFRICA: Pan-African University close to starting
Gilbert Nganga
Kenya has been selected as the East African host of the planned Pan-African University, a spec ialised institution comprising a network of universities that is being created to help supply the continent's high-level human capital. This ends a five-month stalemate between countries in the region that had been squabbling over who the host would be.
Full report on the University World News site:
EGYPT: University cooperation to ease Nile Basin row
Wagdy Sawahel
Egypt plans to promote higher education cooperation with seven upstream Nile Basin states in a diplomatic move to strengthen strategic, economic and cultural relations. The aim is to ease tension sparked by a new pact calling for equitable water use, which Egypt perceives as being against its interests.
Full report on the University World News site:
AFRICA: International research initiatives launched
Wagdy Sawahel
A number of international initiatives were launched in Africa recently to develop research and innovation across the continent, and to transform new ideas generated by higher education and research into improved products, processes and businesses. The projects include a technology development and transfer network, a continental research framework programme and a science-to-business challenge.
Full report on the University World News site:
AFRICA: New inventions and discoveries observatory
Wagdy Sawahel
An Online Observatory for African Inventions and Discoveries has been launched, aimed at encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship to help meet the continent's development challenges.
Full report on the University World News site:
NEWSBRIEFS
CHINA: Future of rapid urbanisation
From critiques of the Shanghai World Expo logo and the expo's unsustainable aftermath, to how changing ideologies and economic regimes are positively transforming urban spaces, a Global Cities Research Institute at RMIT University in Melbourne is shining a spotlight on the impact of rapid urbanisation in China.
Full report on the University World News site:
UK: Open University hits 20 million iTunes U downloads
The Open University set a world record last week when it became the first university to achieve 20 million downloaded tracks on iTunes U, a dedicated area within the iTunes Store.
Full report on the University World News site:
GLOBAL: OECD launches innovation strategy
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Developments has presented its innovation strategy, focusing on human capital and education. The initiative was launched at a ministerial council meeting in May following a three-year multidisciplinary, multi-stakeholder effort, the organisation announced.
Full report on the University World News site:
EUROPE: Research grants top 1,000
Michael Gardner
Professor Erika von Mutius is the thousandth top researcher to receive a grant from the European Research Council. Von Mutius is exploring new ways to tackle asthma and allergies. To mark the awarding of the grant, a ceremony attended by leading figures from the political and research scene was held in Munich late last month.
Full report on the University World News site:
ACADEMIC FREEDOM
IRAN: Prominent scholar released on bail
Roisin Joyce
Emadeddin Baghi, Iranian scholar, journalist and human rights activist, was released on bail on 23 June. According to reports from Amnesty International he was released from Tehran's Evin prison on bail of US$200,000 after 180 days in prison.
Full report on the University World News site:
More academic freedom reports on the University World News site
CHINA: Publisher scraps Tiananmen Square memoir:
IRAN: Two UK students in detention in Iran:
ANGOLA: Professor on trial in Cabinda:
TURKEY: Education trade unionists on trial:
RWANDA: American academic released:
SCIENCE SCENE
AUSTRALIA: Mutton birds or puffins
Geoff Maslen
Giant tiger snakes as long as a man's arm and with heads the size of his closed fist live on Great Dog Island. So it is always with some trepidation that La Trobe University researcher Mark Carey pushes his arm down the burrows where the mutton birds nest - in case a tiger is there as well. "I have a fear of snakes," Carey says. "And if students are with me on the island, the one rule is that the 's' word is not to be spoken unless there's one of them about..."
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UK: Huge prehistoric 'accessories' attracted mates
Fins, crests and sails - various species of dinosaur displayed intriguing accessories. Now research suggests many of these adaptations grew extra large in order to attract mates.
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US: Communicating science to the public
A US initiative has tried to find ways to improve communication between scientists and the public, especially about issues that worry people deeply. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences project considered how scientists engage with the public and how their mutual understanding could be improved.
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FEATURES
GLOBAL: Ivory towers to solar-powered houses
Paul Rigg
The adrenalin buzz among the professors and university students is palpable during the construction of futuristic structures that run exclusively on energy generated by the sun. But these are not mere models; they are real houses that can run everything from washing machines to air conditioning systems, all from solar power.
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KYRGYZSTAN: University politicisation to continue
Yojana Sharma
The national referendum held in Kyrgyzstan last weekend in the wake of major unrest in mid-June will not halt the politicisation of universities, said a Kyrgyz opposition politician in exile who is familiar with the country's universities.
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KENYA: Cashing in on foreign language learning
Gilbert Nganga
Kenya's universities are rolling out foreign language programmes as nations and investors, especially from Asia, increasingly turn to the East African country for resources to boost their industrial growth. In the past month Kenya's biggest universities - Nairobi and Kenyatta - have announced new courses in Korean and Chinese respectively. They both host branches of China's Confucius Institute.
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AFRICA: Does Africa really need new idealism?
Linda Nordling
Perhaps it is a fear that aid from the financially tumultuous North might be squeezed. Perhaps it is a growing frustration at rich countries' failure to keep their promises to the world's poor. Whatever the cause, a wave of idealism is sweeping through the innovation policy debate, accompanied by that idealist writ - the manifesto.
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HE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
GLOBAL: Student disengagement: global comparisons
Jim Côté
A common reaction to reports of student disengagement is that we all should get used to widespread disengagement because nothing better should be expected from a mass university system. A variety of excuses are made for students who are 'too busy' to put full effort into their studies. One way to approach this 'inevitability question' is to ask whether the levels of student disengagement observed in Canada and the US are also found in massified systems in other countries.
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GLOBAL: Bibliometrics, rankings and transparency
Kristopher Olds*
Why do we care so much about the actual and potential uses of bibliometrics ("the generic term for data about publications", according to the OECD) and world university ranking methodologies, but care so little about the private sector firms, and their inter-firm relations, that drive the bibliometrics and global rankings agenda forward?
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GLOBAL: Science metrics
The value of scientific output is often measured, to rank one nation against another, allocate funds between universities, or even grant or deny tenure. Scientometricians have devised a multitude of 'metrics' to help in these rankings. Do they work? Are they fair? Are they over-used? Nature investigated this key higher education issue in a Nature Special published in its June edition.
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UNI-LATERAL: Off-beat university stories
UK: Bees stick to working hours
Bees are often admired by humans for what appears to be a strong work ethic - working throughout the day to gather pollen. But what happens when the insects have the opportunity to work around the clock? Will they do so?
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WORLD ROUND-UP
GLOBAL: New ranking of Ibero-American universities
The SCImago Research Group has just published a new ranking of Ibero-American universities, based on their research productivity, writes Simon Schwartzman for the Inside Higher Ed blog The World View. Of the 10 more productive research institutions, five are Spanish, four Brazilian and one Mexican. The indicators are based on scientific publications.
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US: Politics embroil gulf research grants
University professors in the gulf region responded with delight to BP's pledge to put up $500 million for academic research into the Gulf of Mexico's ecology over the next 10 years, writes Julie Cart for the Los Angeles Times. With no significant federal grants on the horizon and an urgency to begin work, some of the academics had taken to using their own credit cards in hopes they would soon be reimbursed.
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US: Questioning foreign medical schools
Just as Congress ratchets up its scrutiny of for-profit higher education as a whole, the body's investigative arm is calling on the US Department of Education to begin examining some of the same issues of value and quality at foreign medical schools where Americans use federal student loans, writes Jennifer Epstein for Inside Higher Ed. The largest of such schools are for-profit institutions.
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US: For-profit colleges: educators or predators?
When Yasmine Issa found herself, at 24, unemployed and a recently divorced mother of twins, she turned to the Sanford-Brown Institute, a for-profit college in White Plains, New York, that offered an ultrasound sonography programme and promised her job-placement opportunities, writes Elizabeth Dias for Time. But a completed programme and $15,000 in federal loans later, Issa missed the catch: the programme was not accredited. "I was somebody no one wanted to hire," she says.
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PAKISTAN: Court orders action against fake degree MPs
Pakistan's increasingly assertive Supreme Court has ordered election authorities to take action against legislators found to have forged higher education qualifications in order to contest the 2008 general elections, writes Zeeshan Haider for Reuters. And the Higher Education Commission has asked universities to verify the degrees of their academic and administrative staff, creating tension, reports the Daily Times.
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TURKEY: Science needs more autonomy, report says
Turkey has not achieved the status of a "scientific society" and science in the country requires more independence from politics to achieve that goal, according to a new report based on extensive interviews with scientists, reports Hürriyet Daily News.
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WALES: University numbers to be reduced
A plan to close smaller Welsh universities has been broadly welcomed by education professionals, reports BBC News. Education Minister Leighton Andrews has indicated that smaller bodies will be forced into mergers, meaning a reduced number of higher education institutions.
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UK: University admission points system to be reviewed
The UK's university admissions system is to be overhauled amid fears that the practice of scoring applicants' qualifications has become outdated, and is being wrongly used by employers to recruit graduates, writes Polly Curtis for the Guardian.
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AFRICA: Research project takes genetics to roots
A US$37 million international collaboration by major research bodies in the United States, Britain and Africa wants to take the fruits of the genetic revolution to a continent it has largely bypassed until now, writes Kate Kelland for Reuters. The project, named Human Heredity and Health in Africa or H3Africa, will use genetic techniques developed in the West to explore the roots of human life among populations that carry the world's oldest and most diverse sets of genes.
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HONG KONG: China scholarship centre's big ambitions
A university library in Hong Kong is aiming to open up new fields of research on China by building the world's most comprehensive repository of statistical information on the country, better than anything available on the mainland, writes Mary Hennock for The Chronicle of Higher Education. The ambition is huge: to put details about life in China dating back to 1949 into a digital format that permits swift comparisons and reaches down to the country's smallest towns and villages.
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AUSTRALIA: Push for degree-level colleges
The heads of technical and further education (TAFE) colleges in Australia are proposing a new type of higher education institution between universities and colleges, writes Andrew Trounson for The Australian. The TAFE Directors Australia initiative is part of a push to win funding for degrees in a post-2012 uncapped student numbers system.
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THE NETHERLANDS: No university anti-spy measures
Universities of technology in the Netherlands are not taking additional anti-espionage measures, against the advice of the General Intelligence and Security Service, or AIVD, reports Radio Netherlands. Universities see combating espionage as a matter for the government.
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