NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report

Alya Mishra

Widespread public outrage at the brutal gang r ape in New Delhi in December that resulted in the death of the 23-year-old medical student victim has forced India's higher education regulatory body, the University Grants Commission, to review the safety of women in higher education institutions.

Jan Petter Myklebust

Work is in progress to give the humanities and social sciences a separate section in Horizon 2020, to be called "Europe in a Changing World" and focusing on "secure societies". The programme will have its own budget and be part of the sixth challenge in Horizon 2020.

Alison Moodie

The US Department of Education appears to be recognising that a globalised world requires its graduates to have truly global world views and has released, for the first time, an international strategy.

Ameen Amjad Khan

Pakistan’s prime minister’s controversial appointment of a new head of the universities regulatory body, the Higher Education Commission, was declared illegal by the country’s Supreme Court last month on the grounds that the government has no right to interfere in the affairs of the autonomous body.

Kudzai Mashininga

Zimbabwe’s government has outlined plans to raise the bar in lecturer qualifications as part of an initiative to improve quality in universities. Standards plummeted during a decade-long political and economic crisis that sparked a massive brain drain in all sectors, including higher education.

Alya Mishra

With its promise of generating employment and addressing major national challenges of energy and food security, the environment, nutrition and affordable healthcare, scientific innovation will be the focus of the new science, technology and innovation policy announced by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last week.

Jan Petter Myklebust

The Finnish Center for International Mobility has just released a commissioned study on the impact of intensive courses on internationalisation. It looks not only at how these intensive study courses affect the international strategies of Finnish higher education institutions but also at how they advance education development policies.

Maina Waruru

The horn of Africa’s self-declared state of Somaliland may get its first foreign university by mid-2013, if plans by a private university in Kenya to open a branch campus there come to fruition.

Yojana Sharma

A new Ministry of Education regulation to punish academic fraud came into effect on 1 January, to clamp down on plagiarism and fabricating research data, as well as buying, selling or organising trade in academic degree theses, including all forms of ‘ghostwriting’ or buying of materials produced by essay mills.

FEATURES

Yojana Sharma

The attention of education policy-makers and the international education community is moving away from raising literacy levels and increasing access to secondary and higher education, towards skills required by the workforce to promote economic growth.

Alya Mishra

The December New Delhi r ape of the unnamed medical student who died as a result of her injuries continues to spark huge student-led protests and candlelight vigils in the capital and elsewhere in India over the lack of government action to protect women from s exual harassment and r ape.

WORLD BLOG

Hans de Wit

The major internationalisation themes of 2012 will continue into 2013, but many would like to see a greater emphasis on the content and quality of the international experience rather than just numbers.

COMMENTARY

Glen A Jones

It was a year of living dangerously for higher education in Ontario as a new minister pushed for reform, providing an example of why many systems have found ways to isolate policy from direct political interference. This and other government initiatives in Canada, the US and the UK will be discussed at a conference, "Academia in the Age of Austerity", to be held in Toronto from 10-11 January.

Abu Kamara

Canada is looking at ways to increase the internationalisation of higher education for the country’s future prosperity. In some local areas, there is a growing focus on bringing institutions, businesses and policy-makers together to integrate international students into the local labour market. This could provide a future model for international higher education.

Anne Corbett

The European Students’ Union has just celebrated its 30th anniversary and has evolved into playing an important policy-making role. But can it confront the democratic deficit at the heart of the European Higher Education Area?

Letters

Paul Blake and CollegeTimes editors

We were pleased to see the recent article by Richard Hall titled "The profit motive is threatening higher education", published in University World News on 18 November 2012. Our team of editors at CollegeTimes witness the corrupt and destructive influence of money on the higher education system on a daily basis.

SCIENCE SCENE

With nearly two in every five Europeans affected by disorders of the brain and the number increasing, pan-European organisations have called for more research into the human brain. This follows the release of a report identifying opportunities for research, in all scientific domains, into different aspects of the brain and its functions, especially as they relate to disorders.

A large international team of astronomers has discovered what they describe as the “missing link” of black holes in Andromeda, the nearest neighbouring galaxy to the Milky Way. The finding has shed new light on some of the brightest X-ray sources seen in other galaxies.

Scientists at the Tokyo Institute of Technology have developed a new type of transistor – made from diamond – which could prove valuable for high-power applications.

An A$35 million (US$37 million) grant from the Australian government has been allocated to the University of New South Wales to create a US-Australian institute to foster rapid development of “over the horizon” photovoltaic technology.

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WORLD ROUND-UP

Universities will be told they should recruit more white, working-class males in the wake of figures showing a massive slump in applications from men for courses, writes Richard Garner for The Independent.

The cash-strapped central government has cut the money it was supposed to spend on higher education this fiscal year by 13%, reports Prashant K Nanda for Livemint. The hardest hit will be two key initiatives of the Human Resources Development Ministry.

After weeks of bickering, members of Congress passed a bill last Tuesday that would avert the worst effects of the so-called fiscal cliff, writes Kelly Field for The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Security has been ramped up at the Peshawar University campus after an explosion rocked the university’s Institute of Islamic and Arabic Studies on Wednesday, writes Zahir Shah Sherazi for Dawn.com.

The UK higher education sector has concluded that an insurance scheme to guarantee international students a fees refund or alternative places should their course or university close down is "essential", writes David Matthews for Times Higher Education.

Controversial admissions rules intended to force leading universities to take more students from state schools are to be reviewed after protests, writes Tim Ross for The Telegraph.

Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar on Wednesday lauded Israel’s recent recognition of the Ariel college as a full-fledged university and said the newly upgraded institution was set to become a major part of Israel’s academic infrastructure, writes Michal Shmulovich for The Times of Israel.

For a certain kind of European, Asian or Latin American institution, the release of the world university rankings each autumn is an exercise in humiliation. Though often long established, and with good local reputations, these schools lack the endowments, research facilities and sheer size needed to compete with US and British powerhouses like Harvard, MIT, Cambridge and Stanford, writes DD Guttenplan for The New York Times.

One of the best-known research universities in America is now using the services of an atheist chaplain to counsel unbelieving students on campus, writes Heather Clark for Christian News.

The University of Toronto has distanced itself from a controversial programme, dubbed ‘Courage’, described as an anonymous support group to help young adults struggling to resist homos exual urges and recently launched at the Catholic parish based on the university’s main campus, writes James Bradshaw for The Globe and Mail.

The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service has expressed concern about the potential impact of tuition fees, after figures showed a drop of more than 6% in student applications with less than a month to go before the deadline for 2013 applications, writes Peter Walker for the Guardian.

Like their counterparts around the world in just about any other industry, administrators in higher education in the West can be forgiven for looking at the writing on the wall and seeing Chinese characters. Whether for the narrow purpose of generating revenue or the broader goal of engaging more deeply with a rapidly emerging and ever more important nation, foreign universities are scrambling to recruit in China as well as to establish or expand their presence there, reports The Economist.

Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande on Thursday welcomed last year’s 73.9% National Senior Certificate pass rate and urged those who did not qualify for university entry to consider alternatives, including further education and training colleges, writes Khulekani Magubane for Business Day Live.

Results published last Wednesday of the University Selection Test yielded apparently unfavourable results for Chile’s incoming college students. Only 219 students throughout the country achieved the maximum score of 850 points, a decrease of 97 students compared to last year. These are the lowest results since 2004, when only 112 students stood out, writes Manon Paulic for The Santiago Times.

Academics and analysts have called for further reforms to a system that distributes funds for scientific research projects at universities, writes Jin Zhu for China Daily. Observers said that funds often go to researchers who maintain good relations with government officials, rather than those seeking to conduct real scientific research.

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