University World News

FINLAND: Technology students say they work too hard

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 07:56:04 +0200

Some students at a super-university in Finland have claimed they have to work harder to gain the same credits as others. Aalto University is the product of a three-way merger aimed at creating a wo...

FINLAND: Technology students say they work too hard

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 07:56:04 +0200

NORWAY: Drinking wine can be good for the brain

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 07:58:52 +0200

At last, the news tipplers around the world have been waiting for - ...

GLOBAL: Higher education in a world changed utterly

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 08:01:24 +0200

Universities are at the sharp end of the global financial crisis, of...

SOUTH AFRICA: Decline in PhD numbers a major problem

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 09:25:36 +0200

South Africa's inability to produce enough doctoral graduates to bui...

ETHIOPIA: Expanding and improving higher education

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 09:09:03 +0200

Ethiopia is radically expanding its higher education sector: from two federal universities to 22 in just over a decade and another 10 to open soon. Even so, the percentage of the available cohort t...

GLOBAL: University rankings - It's about jobs, stupid!

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 08:15:00 +0200

International study has been one of the global phenomena of the curr...

AUSTRALIA: The perils of commercialism

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 08:23:00 +0200

More than two decades ago, the Australian government decided that in...

THAILAND: Close watch on students' 'political' plays

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 08:45:00 +0200

After censoring the news media and internet in the wake of the May c...

EGYPT: Universities to scrap textbooks and go digital

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 09:27:50 +0200

To many academics and students in Egypt, Minister of Higher Educatio...

SAUDI ARABIA: Rapid growth for universities

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 08:49:02 +0200

Saudi Arabia has announced plans to continue the rapid expansion of higher education as part of its ninth five-year development plan, for 2010-14. A nearly quarter billion dollar annual investment ...

GLOBAL: University spending key to recovery - OECD

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 08:53:00 +0200

Public spending on universities should be maintained where possible ...

ISRAEL: University defies right-wing boycott threat

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 10:00:30 +0200

The President of Ben-Gurion University of Negev has pledged to ignore threats by a right-wing political group to incite a boycott by international and other donors if staff and curriculum changes a...

GLOBAL: Shanghai rankings: Shifting research landscape

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 10:06:17 +0200

In recent years, something like a small-scale industry has developed with commentators earnestly trying to read long-term trends into the rise and fall of various universities in the former THE-QS ...

CANADA: Rented textbook option gains ground

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 10:48:05 +0200

Students at Carleton University in Ottawa will have the option of renting their textbooks from the beginning of the upcoming semester, reports CBC News. The school's boo...

INDIA: State sets sights on first vocational university

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 10:49:06 +0200

The Maharashtra state government is considering setting up a vocational unive...

SOUTH AFRICA: Whites-only fund fights to stay white

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 10:50:03 +0200

A high court ruling which made an educational fund for poor white girls available to girls from all races was disputed in the Supreme Court of Appeal, reports the South African...

TAIWAN: Universities score poorly on student rights

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 10:51:04 +0200

Seventy percent of universities included in a nationwide student rights evaluation received failing scores, reflecting a general disregard for student rights in Taiwan, reports the ...

MOZAMBIQUE: New regulations for higher education

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 10:52:04 +0200

The Mozambican government has approved new regulations on the licensing and functioning of higher education institutions which collectively deal with more than 70,000 students, reports ...

NIGERIA: Retirement age for professors rises to 70

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 10:53:01 +0200

Professors will now stay longer in universities after Nigeria's federal government pushed back the national mandatory retirement age from 65 to 70, reports Next. Non-aca...

UK: Study questions science-economic growth link

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 10:54:02 +0200

An academic believes he has found evidence to refute the argument that increased university provision of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem) subjects is needed to aid the econom...

UK: Students fuel rise in immigration

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 10:54:58 +0200

Official statistics show that a surge in the number of foreign students studying in the UK helped drive up net migration by 20% last year, reports Channel 4 News. The go...

AUSTRALIA: Latin American students wooed

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 10:56:07 +0200

During the past six years, Australia has had rapid success in recruiting students from a relatively new market: Latin America, writes Janaki Kremmer for The Chronicle of Higher...

CHINA: Phd quantity surpasses quality

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 10:56:56 +0200

With a rapid increase in the number of Chinese graduates enrolling in PhD programmes in the past decade, it seems the quality of education doctoral students receive is falling short, writes He Dan ...

ISRAEL: Professors protest 'political pressures'

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 10:57:54 +0200

Israeli professors representing the faculties of all of Israel's seven research universities have publicly denounced "political pressures brought to bear on universities recently, which are tantamo...

AUSTRALIA: Strangers help university succeed, virtually

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 10:59:21 +0200

An Australian university has been inspired to develop its virtual wo...

EUROPE: Universities heighten virtual reality

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:00:53 +0200

Researchers from nine European universities are developing more inte...

IRAN: Detention of student union leaders

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:02:11 +0200

Two members of the Central Council of Advar-e Tahkim Vahdat, a repre...

AUSTRALIA: Universities face political uncertainty

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:04:08 +0200

The most boring federal election in living memory turned into a clif...

GLOBAL: Social science and rankings

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:06:30 +0200

The number of social science publications in international journals is much lower than those for the natural sciences and medicine. So the natural sciences and the medical fields dominate universit...

LATIN AMERICA: Rise of the social sciences

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:08:04 +0200

Universities are crucial actors in the evolution of the social sciences in Latin America, say Hebe Vessuri, head of the Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Research's Center on Science Studies, and ...

NORTH AMERICA: Social research too inward-looking

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:09:24 +0200

The most distinctive feature of North American social science, besides its size, is the extent of the investment made in time, facilities, training and incentives for research since the Second Worl...

KENYA: Why academics do not publish

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:10:49 +0200

Kenya is a good illustration of the effect on scholarly output of lack of resources and capacity in higher education, say the editors of the ...

AFRICA: Charting the decline of social sciences

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:13:35 +0200

The all-round expansion that characterised African higher education in general, and the social sciences in particular, during the 1960s was interrupted at the end of the 1970s as African countries ...

AFRICA: Social science under-resourced but resilient

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:14:43 +0200

The social sciences in Sub-Saharan Africa are seriously under-resourced but determined, says Johann Mouton, Director of the Centre for Research on Science and Technology and head of the African Doc...

ARAB REGION: Academic freedom curtailed

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:16:01 +0200

The social sciences in the Arab region are shaped by severe socio-political, economic and environmental challenges, instability and by diverse and divergent research policies, agendas and funding p...

ASIA-PACIFIC: Social science transcends boundaries

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:16:57 +0200

In his discussion of social sciences and the Asia-Pacific region in the ...

GLOBAL: Social sciences brain drain or gain?

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:17:54 +0200

Social scientists migrate from the main academic centres to the periphery to teach, export their skills or do research and gather data. In the opposite direction, talented young social scientists t...

GLOBAL: Worlds apart but on same map?

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:18:52 +0200

In spite of the impact social scientists have had around the world, Gudmund Hernes says humans face crises that tax their understanding and their capacity to cope. The President of the Internationa...

DENMARK: Students plan autumn 'austerity' protests

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:23:41 +0200

Danish universities are likely to be hit hard by austerity measures ...

IRELAND: Hackers overload central applications site

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:26:15 +0200

An investigation is getting underway into a series of malicious atta...

US: Support for undocumented immigrant students

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:30:42 +0200

Backing for America's bipartisan Development, Relief and Education fo...

INDIA: UK attracts more Indian students than the US

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:32:08 +0200

Despite visa restrictions the United Kingdom remains the top foreign...

TAIWAN: Way clear for Chinese students next year

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:33:20 +0200

Students from Mainland China will not arrive at Taiwanese universities before 2011 even though hotly disputed legislation allowing the admission of mainland Chinese finally cleared Taiwan's parliam...

SOUTH AFICA: Minister backs media-gagging proposals

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:35:22 +0200

Two proposed media laws aimed at gagging South Africa's press have d...

FRANCE: Students face sharp cost increases

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:36:41 +0200

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has cancelled an austerity measure t...

PAKISTAN: Flood drowns out fake degrees scandal

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:37:47 +0200

As Pakistan's Election Commission began its first hearings into parl...

UK: Challenging ruling mantras of higher education

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:52:44 +0200

There is a special kind of British humour that is very good at locat...

JAPAN: Top universities sharpen international focus

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:55:52 +0200

Japanese society is undergoing transformative changes amidst a wave of IT growth and globalisation. Even the 'once-in-a-century' recession of two years ago seems merely a ripple in this massive swe...

IRAN: New crackdown on universities

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 09:52:05 +0200

The Iranian government has said it will restrict the number of students admitted to humanities programmes at universities, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty's Radio Fard ...

KENYA: Universities to admit extra students

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 09:56:40 +0200

Kenya's public universities, long plagued by an admissions crisis, w...

ASIA: Regional universities agree on network deal

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 10:01:14 +0200

Eleven universities in Cambodia, Laos and Viet Nam signed an agreement last week during a University Presidents' Conference in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, to develop a collaborative network in the r...

AUSTRALIA: Plunging visa numbers threaten universities

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 08:09:15 +0200

Visa applications from foreign students to study in Australian universities have dropped by 15,500, almost 12%, over the past 12 months, according to figures just released by the Department of Immi...

SINGAPORE: New Universities Trust to ensure funding

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 08:10:04 +0200

Singapore will set up a national endowment fund known as the Singapore Universities Trust to support higher education institutions through economic downturns, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announc...