News

David Jobbins

The United Kingdom’s reputation as a centre of excellence for university education second only to the United States is beginning to slip and could be falling victim to the impact of government policies, the results of Times Higher Education’s 2012 World Reputation Rankings suggest. Meanwhile Asian universities are on the rise.

Alya Mishra

India has allocated only marginal increases to higher education in its 2012-13 budget announced by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee last week, despite a stated aim to dramatically increase the higher education participation rate from 17% now to 30% by 2025.

Makki Marseilles

Greece has a new education minister as Prime Minister Lucas Papademos prepares for an expected general election by reshuffling his cabinet.

Jonathan P Dyson

A rapidly growing number of students in Mexico are attending private universities, but there are increasing concerns about the quality of many of the new institutions. The government is introducing a quality assurance system and expanding access to student loans and grants – but critics say this will not stop the demand for inexpensive courses, which are often of low quality.

Geoff Maslen

A final decision on whether South Africa or Australia will host the world’s biggest radio telescope may be made as early as 4 April. An expert scientific panel has narrowly recommended a consortium of eight African nations over a joint bid by Australia and New Zealand to build the massive telescope, the US$2 billion Square Kilometre Array or SKA.

Tunde Fatunde

The findings of visitation panels to federal universities in Nigeria have been released, along with a white paper responding to them. The reports have accused leaders and councils in most of the 26 universities of abusing autonomy, and some vice-chancellors may lose their jobs for deliberately flouting university statutes.

Eileen Travers

Prodding for an exact definition of the elusive term ‘internationalisation’ triggered hearty chuckles from a range of educators gathered to provide a report card on recent United States-Brazil higher education initiatives, at the Institute of International Education in New York.

British Council – Going Global

The British Council held its annual “Going Global” international education conference in London from 13-15 March, attended by more than 1,000 delegates from around the world. University World News was there.

Yojana Sharma

A combination of demographic and economic changes will resize the global higher education landscape by 2020, according to a new report by the British Council. The largest higher education systems are likely to be China with some 37 million students, India with 28 million, the US with 20 million and Brazil with nine million.

David Jobbins

For almost a decade, the International Association of Universities has been conducting global surveys on internationalisation to monitor trends. IAU Secretary-general Eva Egron-Polak, who led a series of discussions at the "Going Global" conference, told University World News about the latest state of play and the costs and benefits of internationalisation.

David Jobbins

Officials in Europe are pressing on with plans to expand its flagship student mobility programme beyond the borders of existing eligible countries despite the economic crisis, the British Council's "Going Global" conference heard on Thursday.

James Otieno Jowi

Africa might need to cast off the impact of external forces on it higher education system in order to properly internationalise, the “Going Global” conference heard last week. And universities need to participate more in international forums on higher education to highlight what they are doing.

Yojana Sharma

China wants to welcome in foreign universities and branch campuses as part of its drive to grow enrolment in the next decade and in line with plans for increased internationalisation. But it is tightening up the rules on what kinds of universities and programmes it will allow in, the official in charge of auditing overseas university partnerships has said.

IFC – Making Global Connections

The International Finance Corporation held its fifth private higher education conference in Dubai from 6-7 March, titled “Making Global Connections”. University World News produced a special report on the conference last week, and this week we wrap up the reporting.

Yojana Sharma

With graduate unemployment recognised as a ticking time bomb in many countries, innovative ways to get graduates into jobs were presented at the International Finance Corporation (IFC) conference held in Dubai this month.

Yojana Sharma

Two years ago it was just a patch of desert around Dubai, but now a new, state-of-the-art Manipal University campus has arisen out of the sands with its own laboratories, lecture theatres and classrooms in purpose-built facilities.

Yojana Sharma

Colombia is experimenting with more public-private partnerships in higher education in an effort to increase student enrolments through private sector expansion. But allowing for-profit universities is still highly controversial and opposed by students and university rectors alike, according to the country’s former education minister Cecilia María Vélez.

Yojana Sharma

Duoc UC, whose name derives from the Spanish acronym for ‘university department for workers and peasants’ – Departamento Universitario Obrero y Campesino – provides affordable professional and technical education to more than 70,000 low- and middle-income students on more than 40 campuses around Chile.

Features

Bianka Siwinska

While the growing worldwide shortage of engineers has become a threat to global development, students have been flocking to technical universities in Poland to such an extent that they are now more popular than traditional universities.

Sharon Dell

A significant portion of South African students are living in “appalling” conditions which are jeopardising their academic endeavours and creating health and safety risks. Some are also starving, according to a report on student housing released recently by the Department of Higher Education and Training.

World Blog

Rahul Choudaha

Commission-based agents can increase international student numbers fast, but not without risks and challenges. Should universities use them or consider alternatives such as social media or regional consortia, which might not deliver such high numbers in the short term but won’t run the risk of damaging an institution's reputation?

Commentary

Vangelis Tsiligiris

The economic crisis has resulted in neo-neoliberal economic policies guiding higher education strategies. This means less focus on government funding of higher education and more focus on monetary objectives. Higher education planning has in effect been given over to economists.

Vladimir Geroimenko, Grigori Kliucharev and John Morgan

The growing number of private higher education institutions in Russia fulfil an economic need in a growing economy for more student places and more courses that are closely linked to industry. They will help create an innovative educational environment and drive up quality.

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World Round-up

In the 1990s Jeffrey S Lehman, then dean of the University of Michigan law school, began visiting Beijing to help open a programme for members of his faculty to teach at Peking University's law school during the summer. But Lehman, a former president of Cornell University, did not expect to work for a Chinese university himself, writes Liz Gooch for The New York Times.

In the universities of Athens, the city where Plato taught and Cicero studied, campuses are covered in anarchist graffiti, stray dogs run through buildings and students take lessons in Swedish with the aim of emigrating, writes Oliver Staley for Bloomberg.

In the run-up to the French presidential elections, the Soc ialist Party is insisting that it will not backtrack on the current government's controversial overhaul of higher education. Instead the party promises more funds for academia as an investment in economic development, writes Clea Caulcutt for Times Higher Education.

The Indian government is considering a proposal to make caste discrimination in institutions of higher education a punishable offence, writes Ritika Chopra for India Today.

Student leaders have attacked Scotland's ancient universities for opposing plans for legislation to force them to recruit more students from deprived backgrounds or face fines. It comes after Universities Scotland, which represents university principals, said the Scottish government proposals would not address long-standing problems of inequality, writes Andrew Denholm for The Herald Scotland.

Students in England staged a national day of action to protest against changes to higher education, reports the BBC. The National Union of Students said lectures had been boycotted as students joined rallies, marches, petition signings and other events in a week of action by students against higher tuition fees, ‘hidden’ course costs and a lack of bursaries.

Over the past three years, more than 45,000 students at 80 institutions have been hauled before college authorities and found guilty of ‘academic misconduct’ ranging from bringing crib-sheets or mobile phones into exams to paying private firms to write essays for them, write Brian Brady and Kunal Dutta for The Independent on Sunday.

Four more universities are joining the Russell Group of leading universities – Durham, Exeter, Queen Mary at the University of London, and York. The Russell Group represents some of the most prestigious universities in the UK, and will now have 24 members, writes Sean Coughlan for the BBC.

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss. In a troublingly stagnant portrait, the latest national survey of college presidents finds a profession dominated by white men who have hardly changed in more than a quarter century. They're just older, writes Jack Stripling for The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Peter Thiel, the superstar Silicon Valley investor, has famously dismissed university as a waste of time and money, and even offered students cash to drop out. But his views apparently do not apply to himself – or to Stanford University – writes Gerry Shih for Reuters.

US News & World Report released its annual rankings of America’s best law schools last week. Topping this year’s list were law schools at Yale, Stanford, Harvard, Columbia and Chicago. But do the rankings really play a large role in college admissions? asks Andrew Mach for the Christian Science Monitor.

As the new centre for higher education data and statistics gears up to release its first snapshot of the UAE's universities in August, academics around the country are rushing to collect the information it needs, writes Melanie Swan for The National.

Social scientists would be hard-pressed to find a better lens into identity, privilege and race in post-apartheid South Africa than the University of Cape Town’s admissions policy debate, writes Osiame Molefe for Daily Maverick.

Iain Stewart, a member of the British parliament, said that about 30,000 Nigerian students would be studying in various universities across the United Kingdom by 2015, reports PM News.

The University of Cologne is investigating after hundreds of human body parts were found in the cellars of its institute of anatomy, apparently abandoned there for years, writes Kate Connolly for the Guardian. Last month the former director of anatomy was found dead, apparently having taken his life when rumours began to circulate.

UK Home Secretary Theresa May has approved the extradition of a British student to the United States for running a website that provided links to pirated films and television shows, writes Christopher Williams for The Telegraph.

Owen Holland, a Cambridge PhD student and activist associated with the Cambridge Defend Education protest group, has been banned from the university for two-and-a-half years for his part in the protest staged against Minister for Universities and Science David Willetts last term, reports The Cambridge Student.

A US federal judge has ruled that Chicago State University violated a former student newspaper adviser’s First Amendment rights when he was fired following articles critical of the university, writes Jodi S Cohen for the Chicago Tribune.

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