All higher education institutions, both private and public, must take part in the Rating System for Malaysian Higher Education Institutions (Setara) to further improve the quality of education, the New Straits Times reports.
INDIA
Professors and university lecturers must clock up 40 hours a week, reports The Times of India. It is also mandatory for them to be 'physically' available on campus for at least five hours a day. India's University Grants Commission has set the academic workload at all universities in new regulations.
SAUDI ARABIA
A prominent Muslim cleric has criticised a new Saudi university launched by King Abdullah for allowing men and women to take classes together, reports Associated Press. Sheik Saad Bin Naser al-Shethri, a member of the powerful government-sanctioned Supreme Committee of (Islamic) Scholars, was quoted last week in the Al-Watan daily as demanding an end to co-ed classes at the newly opened King Abdullah Science and Technology University.
UNITED STATES
Caterpillars and butterflies continue to vex the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, a prestigious journal that has found itself criticised for a publishing a paper that many say makes a mockery of evolutionary biology, writes Scott Jaschik for Inside Higher Ed.
UNITED STATES
New York's universities and hospitals excel at winning federal grants but flunk at turning their research into job-creating start-ups, says a new report released last Monday, reports Reuters. While the New York metropolitan area led the nation in spending on research and development in 2006, at US$2.9 billion, it lags on business development.
VIETNAM
Vietnam's Ministry of Education and Training and the US Embassy in Hanoi on 30 September signed an agreement to cooperate in education, the radio station VOVNews reports. Under the agreement, both parties will step up cooperation through a training programme between Vietnamese and US colleges and universities before establishing a Vietnam-US University in Vietnam.
EUROPE
EU commissioner Jan Figel is expected to formally resign after he was elected leader of an opposition party in his native Slovakia, writes Martin Banks for The Parliament. He will hand in his resignation letter to commission president Jose Manuel Barroso tomorrow after his election last weekend as leader of Slovakia's Christian Democratic Movement.
AUSTRALIA
Support is growing across Australia's higher education sector for an independent national university ranking system that would be more comprehensive than the Shanghai Jiao Tong survey of world universities, writes Andrew Trounson for The Australian. A national ranking would complement new performance indicators being developed by the federal government.
TAIWAN
Taiwan is likely to allow Chinese students to attend its universities from September 2010, a few months later than expected, Deputy Minister of Education Lin Tsong-ming said last weekend, reports the Central News Agency.
MALAYSIA
Attending a university overseas has long been an aspiration for many Chinese, writes Liz Gooch for The New York Times. "My father said: 'Why do you want to stay in China? Open your mind, look at the world,'" said Bao Qianqian, a 25-year-old woman from the eastern Chinese city of Ningbo. The predictable choices for her might have been Australia and Britain, where her two sisters have studied. But Bao decided on a destination that would keep her closer to home and cost substantially less, while giving her the chance to improve her English and converse with Chinese speakers. She chose Malaysia, where she is a third-year business student at HELP University College.
UNITED STATES
More low-income students would make it to college in America if changes were made to streamline the complicated financial aid process, according to a ground-breaking study released last week by researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Stanford University School of Education, University of Toronto and National Bureau of Economic Research, reports ScienceDaily.
UNITED STATES
The presidents of 57 liberal arts colleges released an open letter on Tuesday endorsing the Federal Research Access Act of 2009, a bill aimed at increasing public access to academic research that is funded by the federal government, writes Steve Kolowich for Inside Higher Ed. The bill would require certain federal agencies - those that fund more than $100 million in extramural research annually - to require peer-reviewed journals that publish that research to make it available for free on the web after six months.
SOUTH AFRICA
Several South African universities are struggling to find sufficient residence accommodation for students and are conceding that the situation has reached crisis levels, reports Monako Dibetle for the Mail & Guardian. They are appealing to the Department of Higher Education and Training for assistance, as they believe this problem affects students' academic performance.
SAUDI ARABIA
Saudi Arabia has dug into its oil-fuelled coffers to set up a new research university, a multi-billion dollar coed venture built on the promise of scientific freedom in a region where a conservative interpretation of Islam has often been blamed for stifling innovation, reports Tarek El-Tablawy for Associated Press.
ALBANIA
As students in Albania head back to universities, statistics show that more of them are choosing private institutions, reports Manjola Hala for the Southeast European Times.
PHILIPPINES
The Commission on Higher Education in the Philippines has decided to close down six law schools across the country because not one of their graduates has passed the bar exams in the last 10 years, commission chairman Emmanuel Angeles said last week, reports Philip Tubeza for the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
THAILAND
The recent hoopla over university 'rankings' was ill-conceived because the focus should have been on self-improvement, not which university was better than another, writes Vasu Thirasak for the Bankok Post.
SOUTH KOREA
South Korea spent about 34.5 trillion won (US$28 billion) last year on research and development, up 10.2% from the previous year, government data showed last week, reports The Korea Herald. R&D spending now accounts for 3.37% of gross domestic product, placing South Korea sixth among 30 OECD member states.
UNITED STATES
Concerned that journalism's economic problems are reducing Americans' understanding of science, medicine and other research, 35 of the nation's top universities - including Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley - last week announced that they will feed their own accounts of discoveries directly to top news sites on the internet, writes Paul Rogers for the Mercury News.
INDIA
As the Indian government prepares to allow entry of foreign education providers in the higher education sector, about 50 foreign universities - mostly from the US, UK and Australia - have expressed interest in setting up campuses in the country, writes Pallavi Singh for LiveMint & The Wall Street Journal. The universities have approached the Ministry of Human Resource Development in the last three months, a senior official said.
INDIA
Three months after the Yashpal Committee report and as the Indian government moves to create a National Commission for Higher Education and Research, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has said the Yashpal recommendations "do not appear to be in accordance with the thinking of the framers of our Constitution", reports Akshaya Mukul for The Times of India.
UNITED KINGDOM
A review of all higher education funding agencies was formally announced last week by Lord Mandelson, the UK's First Secretary, reports Melanie Newman for Times Higher Education.
UNITED KINGDOM
Up to 50,000 students in England face starting university this month without all the grants and loans they expected, writes Angela Harrison for BBC News. The Student Loans Company has struggled to cope with applications and says full payments will be made by late October. But it now says everyone who applied on time should receive at least the 'basic level' loan soon after courses start.
SAUDI ARABIA
Saudi Arabia is launching its first co-educational high-tech university, but unless clerical influence is removed the state education system will not move into the modern age, analysts say, writes Ulf Laessing for Reuters. King Abdullah has invited heads of state, business leaders and Nobel laureates to the impending opening of a technology university which has attracted top scientists and is meant to produce Saudi scientists and engineers.
UNITED STATES
There is widespread alignment among politicians, many policy experts and foundations that support higher education that the United States must drastically increase the proportion of Americans who enrol in and complete college - now a centrepiece of the Obama administration's agenda - writes Doug Lederman for Inside Higher Ed. Without significant intervention, a federal study released last week suggests, that common goal will be way out of reach.
