Officials at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal refused to disclose whether the school had notified police of a report of a possible suicide-bomber before security guards zeroed in on a public servant and part-time MBA student of Arab origin, writes Jan Ravensbergen for the Montreal Gazette. Computer specialist Slimane Zahaf was briefly but violently arrested on Tuesday afternoon, pinned to the ground and suffered an injury to his lower back - on the mistaken impression he was an explosives-carrying terrorist.
UNITED STATES
The endgames of massive pieces of legislation like the current health care/student loan bill are a politics junkie's dream - and many a policy wonk's nightmare - writes Doug Lederman for Inside Higher Ed. The kinds of compromises that are typically required to win last-minute votes, meet budget requirements and get a measure over the finish line often necessitate decisions that leave nobody, even those making the choices to get the deal done, entirely satisfied.
JAPAN
Japan has decided to draw up a new framework in conjunction with China and South Korea to allow universities in all three countries to integrate methods to evaluate students' academic achievements and certify academic credits, reports The Yomiuri Shimbun. The Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry hopes the collaboration will encourage more students to study abroad.
CHINA
Strong demand for ghost-written academic papers in the lead-up to university graduation and revelations that people pay to have scholarly articles published are worrying critics who fear the billion-yuan industry is making it harder than ever to evaluate graduates' abilities, reports China Daily/Asia News Network.
CHINA
A Chinese scientist is planning to establish the mainland's first university outside the grip of government bureaucracy, the official Xinhua news agency reports. Zhu Qingshi, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences who served as president of the prestigious University of Science and Technology of China for 10 years, believes heavy red tape in higher education is mainly responsible for China's lack of world-renowned scientists.
INDIA
Education was set to dominate Thursday's meeting of the Indian cabinet, which was due to look at five Bills - four new and one amendment Bill - from the Human Resource Development Ministry, all related to higher education. All the new Bills are part of Minister Kapil Sibal's plan to revamp higher education, writes Akshaya Mukul in The Times of India.
MALAYSIA
The Prime Minister's call to raise the salaries and expedite the promotions of top performers in the public sector has been well received by the Higher Education Ministry, with the salary scheme for professors to be revised, Richard Lim reports for The Star. Professors will be able to enjoy promotions up to the highest grade without holding administrative posts at public universities.
VIETNAM
All universities in Vietnam must publish their financial accounts and information about educational standards on their websites by 15 April, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Thien Nhan told a conference in Hanoi this month, reports Saigon Giai Phong. He also said tertiary education would be further decentralised as part of government's action plan to renovate higher education management 2010-12.
UNITED KINGDOM
The new 'manifesto'- Talent, Opportunity, Prosperity - published by the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) deals with a number of core issues in the current debate about the future shape and direction of higher education in the UK, comments Geoffrey Alderman, professor of politics and contemporary history at the University of Buckingham, in The Guardian.
UNITED STATES
College presidents were urged last Tuesday to consider why most Americans think of North America as a geographic entity and not much more, writes Scott Jaschik for Inside Higher Ed. The failure of American academics to embrace a common agenda for cooperation of colleges and universities in Canada, Mexico and the US may be preventing those countries' higher education systems from realising some of the gains European universities are experiencing through the 'Bologna process', said several experts at the annual meeting of the American Council on Education, held in Phoenix.
UNITED STATES
What was a year ago an emerging idea about how to reduce college costs and better serve students has begun to take hold at colleges across the United States, as more institutions introduce three-year bachelor's degrees, writes Jennifer Epstein for Inside Higher Ed.
UNITED STATES
California's public colleges and universities must prepare to serve 387,000 more undergraduates by 2019 than in 2008 - a 16% increase - and they will need an additional $1.5 billion in enrolment funding for the task, according to a report released last week by the California Postsecondary Education Commission, writes Carla Rivera for The Los Angeles Times.
ISRAEL
The original manuscript of Albert Einstein's groundbreaking theory of relativity, which helps explain everything from black holes to the Big Bang, went on display last weekend in its entirety for the first time, writes Karoun Demirjian for Associated Press.
SOUTH AFRICA
African National Congress Youth League leader Julius Malema is facing a barrage of complaints to the police and chapter nine institutions over his latest racial outburst, after he led students at the University of Johannesburg in singing 'kill the boer', writes Natasha Marrian for the Mail & Guardian. 'Boer' refers to white farmers. Malema also sang the song the previous week at birthday celebrations held in a province where six farmers had been murdered in the past month.
The perception of academic autonomy and freedom in China has been distorted with many cases of misconduct reported, writes Professor Cao Xinglong on the China Law & Policy website. Cao says misuses of academic powers for illegitimate benefit such as money, honour and even sex have occurred yet only a small fraction has ever been officially verified or action taken.
UNITED STATES
In an unprecedented day of national protest across all sectors of education, the epicentre proved to be Berkeley - where the seeds of student activism were sown more than 40 years ago, writes Jack Stripling for Inside Higher Ed. With the smell of burning sage and the occasional hint of weed in the air, an impassioned throng of students from the University of California's Berkeley campus marched to protest budget cuts and tuition hikes they say are crippling one of the nation's premier public institutions.
CHILE
Six Chilean university administrators on a disaster surveillance mission were killed last Monday after their twin-engine aircraft crashed in a wooded area north of Concepción, the city near the epicentre of the devastating 27 February earthquake, according to university and news reports, writes Marion Lloyd for The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Europe is winning the battle to be the most popular region for postgraduate study, writes Michael Prest for The Independent. According to preliminary 2009 statistics compiled by QS, the private provider of higher education information services, North America has continued to slide in the esteem of prospective postgraduates. There has also been a noticeable increase in proportions studying international relations, communications and law, mainly at the expense of finance, accounting, management and economics subjects.
For months, climate scientists have taken a vicious beating in the media and on the internet, accused of hiding data, covering up errors and suppressing alternate views, writes John M Broder for The New York Times. Their response until now has been largely to assert the legitimacy of the vast body of climate science and to mock their critics as cranks and know-nothings. But the volume of criticism and the depth of doubt have only grown, and many scientists now realise they are facing a crisis of public confidence and have to fight back.
PALESTINE
The Syndicate of Palestinian Universities Union announced the suspension of classes in West Bank institutions last Monday, because of what it called a lack of response to employees' demands by the Palestinian Council for Higher Education, reports Ma'an news agency. The strike was the third in a week, following two student-led strikes over a Palestinian Authority Ministry of Education decision to convert most of its tuition grants into loans.
UNITED STATES
America's ITT Educational Services Inc paid US$20.8 million for debt-ridden Daniel Webster College last June, writes Daniel Golden for Bloomberg. In return, the company obtained an academic credential that may generate a taxpayer-funded bonanza worth as much as $1 billion.
UNITED STATES
One of the ultimate protections of being a tenured faculty member in the US has been being immune from layoff in all but the most extraordinary circumstances, writes Scott Jaschik for Inside Higher Ed. Under policies issued by the American Association of University Professors and largely accepted by higher education leaders, only institutions that declare 'financial exigency' - a state so dire that it "threatens the survival of the institution as a whole" - can eliminate the jobs of tenured academics.
UNITED STATES
Business is the number one college major for women and men in America, according to a recent analysis by the AAUW (formerly the American Association of University Women) of the Department of Education's Condition of Education 2009 report, writes Ruchika Tulshyan for Forbes. Business degrees now comprise 18% of all degrees awarded to women, nearly twice as high as the second most popular major, health professions and clinical sciences.
CHINA
An ongoing public survey has shown that almost 80% of Chinese want the abolition of a bonus points policy for some candidates taking the annual National College Entrance Examination, or NCEE, the official Xinhua news agency reports. The controversial policy allows candidates to receive additional points if they are from an ethnic minority or are outstanding students academically or athletically.
KENYA
About 60,000 candidates who have qualified for public universities in Kenya will fail to gain admission, reports The Nation. This is despite the fact that the Joint Admissions Board, or JAB, has increased the number of students joining the universities by nearly half.
