 Floods in Thailand have cost 500 lives, hit 2,600 educational institutions including universities, caused millions of dollars of damage and affected an estimated 10,000 students. Many universities have postponed the second semester and admissions exams are behind schedule. See the News section.
 Yojana Sharma interviewed Bertil Andersson, president of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, as he headed off to the QS-APPLE conference in Manila. He spoke of the city-state's attractions as a higher education hub and why his university has shot up the world rankings.
 Hong Kong design student Jonathan Mak's silhouette of Steve Jobs' profile went viral, but was not lauded at home. But now Asian countries are working to encourage creativity and design to help them move up the manufacturing value chain. See the Features section.
 I Elaine Allen, co-director of the Babson Survey Research Group which publishes surveys of online education in the US, writes in Commentary about how online higher education continues to grow in America and academics attitudes towards it are gradually changing. |
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| University World News was a media partner to the Talloires Network Leadership Conference in 2011, the OECD’s Institutional Management in Higher Education Conference in 2010, and the UNESCO World Conference on Higher Education in 2009. |
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In Africa Features, JAMES OTIENO JOWIE describes trends in African university engagement identified at the annual conference of the African Network for Internationalisation of Education. MOSES MAGADZA reports on an unusual consortium that new medical schools in Africa have formed with well-established institutions in the US and Finland, and SHARON DELL investigates shifting student politics on South Africa’s post-apartheid campuses. In Global Features, YOJANA SHARMA describes efforts by Asian countries to strengthen design education in order to move up the manufacturing value chain, and SUDARTO SVARNABHUMI writes that the killing of five Al-Qaeda suspects has turned the spotlight on the possible radicalisation of Indonesian students studying in Yemen. In Commentary, PAUL TROWLER argues that changes in academia have eroded academic tribes and territories, and I ELAINE ALLEN writes that rising enrolments in online education in America are gradually changing academics’ attitudes to this mode of teaching and learning. Finally, FRANCOIS THERIN says there is little financial incentive in Europe for private companies to move into the higher education sector.
| AFRICA: News from across the continent |
AFRICA: Expand university access, World Bank urges
Francis Kokutsi
The World Bank has urged African governments to expand access to post-secondary education and ensure that it serves as a ladder for Africans to climb out of poverty. Obiageli Ezekwesili, the bank’s vice-president for Africa, made the call at a conference in Ghana’s capital Accra.
Full report on the University World News site
KENYA: Paralysing lecturer strike suspended, for now
Gilbert Nganga
Lecturers in public universities in Kenya have suspended their paralysing nine-day strike for two weeks to pave the way for negotiations with the government. The tussle has triggered a debate over who should pick up the wage bill.
Full report on the University World News site
SOUTH AFRICA: Campaign to support SKA bid
Munyaradzi Makoni
Minister of Science and Technology Naledi Pandor last week launched a national campaign to drum up support for the bid to host the Square Kilometre Array in South Africa. The campaign, aimed at stimulating interest and showcasing Africa as an emerging global astronomy hub, comes in the months leading up to the international announcement of the bid winner in the first half of 2012.
Full report on the University World News site
NIGERIA: VCs, union protest move to end screening test
Tunde Fatunde
Once again Nigeria’s national assembly and some officials of the examination agency, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, have made moves to dismantle the screening tests carried out by universities around the country. They argue that any test additional to the one conducted by the admissions board itself is unnecessary – even illegal – and places a financial burden on parents.
Full report on the University World News site
GLOBAL: World’s largest gathering of Africa experts
Jacquie Withers
More than 1,000 scholars and researchers from around the globe converged on Washington DC on Thursday for what the US African Studies Association said was the world’s largest gatherings of experts on Africa.
Full report on the University World News site
EGYPT: German University in Cairo reports arson threat
Ashraf Khaled
The German University in Cairo, a private Egyptian institution established in partnership with German universities, has reported receiving a threat from an anonymous arsonist. The alleged threat was made just days after the university announced suspension of classes due to a dispute with the student union over regulations for elections.
Full report on the University World News site
SENEGAL: Second university to offer teacher training
Mamadou Mika
The Université Gaston Berger, Senegal’s second largest academic institution with 7,000 students, will add teacher training to its offerings to meet the rapidly growing needs of middle and high schools. Demand for quality teachers is intense as a result of Senegal’s resolve to accelerate the provision of universal education.
Full report on the University World News site
AFRICA: Universities rethink internationalisation
James Otieno Jowi*
The African Network for Internationalisation of Education, ANIE, held its third annual conference recently in Abuja, Nigeria. Among the trends identified were growing collaboration between African universities, which is driving far greater mobility of students and staff across the continent, and increased use of information and communication technologies
Full report on the University World News site
AFRICA: New medical schools seek strength in numbers
Moses Magadza
New medical schools in Africa have formed an unusual consortium in partnership with well-established medical schools in the United States and Finland, as they strive to avoid re-inventing the wheel and instead focus on strengthening teaching, learning and research.
Full report on the University World News site
SOUTH AFRICA: New dynamics in student politics
Sharon Dell
A convincing win for the opposition-aligned Democratic Alliance Student Organisation in recent student representative council elections at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University suggests that South African students may be tired of having their interests overshadowed by intra-party politics in a more complex post-apartheid political environment.
Full report on the University World News site
TUNISIA: Debate on university problems and the future
Jane Marshall
The future of higher education in Tunisia following the revolution in January has been under debate in the media. In a series of articles, La Presse questioned whether the sector “truly responds to the commonly accepted demands on universities?” Are there links coordinating teaching with the job market, have higher education’s problems been identified and what should reform priorities be?
Full report on the University World News site
CHAD-CONGO: Students protest over grants and fees
Student protests against non-payment of grants have broken out in N’djamena, Chad, while in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, students angered by fee increases demanded the resignation of their university’s management committee, according to press reports.
Full report on the University World News site
MADAGASCAR: Student unrest, research not used
Unrest has erupted again in universities in Madagascar, with a new strike and demonstrations at Ankatso campus in Antananarivo and three students arrested at the University of Maninday Toliara in protests against non-payment of grants. Meanwhile, an official of the Academy of Sciences for Developing Countries has claimed that much Madagascan academic research “remains in drawers” and is wasted because the state does not make use of it.
Full report on the University World News site
TUNISIA: Alarm over attacks against ‘incorrect’ clothes
University staff and students in Tunisia have raised the alarm over verbal and physical attacks against academics and students that happened because they were wearing clothing considered unsuitable by their attackers.
Full report on the University World News site
| NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report |
EUROPE: Austerity threatens autonomy, EAU warns
David Jobbins
An authoritative study of university autonomy across 26 European countries has found "worrying signs" that the economic crisis and austerity measures have led to instances of tighter controls of university budgets, "unnecessary" administrative burdens and reduced financial autonomy. Estonia and the UK rank highest on scorecards that rate tertiary systems in four areas of autonomy.
Full report on the University World News site
US: Chinese drive 5% international student growth
Alison Moodie
International student enrolment at American colleges and universities has been growing steadily for the past five years, reaching a record high of 723,277 in 2010, according to a new report by the Institute of International Education. The annual Open Doors study found that the majority of international students came from China, with their number rising by 23% – the fourth consecutive year of double-digit increases.
Full report on the University World News site
THAILAND: Floods disrupt higher education
Suluck Lamubol
Thailand’s worst floods in decades are disrupting the higher education system, causing millions of dollars worth of damage to facilities and forcing universities to reschedule semester dates. It is also having knock-on effects on the higher education budget and the administration of student loans and could have wider impacts on education plans in the coming months.
Full report on the University World News site
CHILE: Opposition and students unveil reform plan
María Elena Hurtado
The sixth-month-long battle over reforms to Chile’s higher education has moved from the streets to parliament. Student representatives of the 25 universities that make up the Council of Rectors of Chilean Universities have spent a week with opposition politicians hammering out a united position on the education budget for 2012, which has to be approved by the end of November.
Full report on the University World News site
EUROPE: Social sciences research role backed
Jan Petter Myklebust and Brendan O’Malley
European Union Commissioner Maire Geoghegan-Quinn has responded to calls to give more weight to social sciences and humanities in Horizon 2020, the EU's funding programme for research and innovation.
Full report on the University World News site
AUSTRALIA: Huge surplus or massive shortfall?
Geoff Maslen
Australia’s public universities have rejected federal government claims that they generated a huge ‘profit’ last year, arguing that the accounting methods used distort the real situation. Far from making an AUD2 billion (US$2 billion) surplus, more than half the universities made a significant loss.
Full report on the University World News site
The seventh QS-APPLE (Asia Pacific Professional Leaders in Education) conference was held from 16-18 November at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, the Philippines. It attracted delegates from more than 30 countries and some 100 speakers to discuss issues ranging from internationalisation and the global higher education market to building world-class universities. University World News reports.
GLOBAL: ‘World-class’ universities can harm others
Yojana Sharma
Building ‘world-class’ universities can have a negative impact on the rest of a country’s higher education system if equity and other issues are not taken into account, a senior Asian Development Bank official warned Asian university leaders meeting in Manila.
Full report on the University World News site
ASIA: How to soar up the world university rankings
Bertil Andersson, president of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, is one of several non-Singaporean university leaders in the city-state. YOJANA SHARMA spoke to him as he headed for the QS-APPLE conference in Manila, on Singapore’s attractions as a higher education hub, its willingness to import the best from the West, and whether Asian institutions might eventually overtake the West.
Full report on the University World News site
CHINA: Design education for future economic growth
Yojana Sharma
Just days after the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in October, Hong Kong design student Jonathan Mak’s silhouette of Jobs' profile in the bite of the Apple logo went viral internationally. His simple tribute was fêted and published worldwide. But in Hong Kong it caused barely a ripple.
Full report on the University World News site
YEMEN: Students from Indonesia being radicalised?
Sudarto Svarnabhumi
The killing of five Al-Qaeda suspects including an Indonesian in southern Yemen this month has turned the spotlight on Indonesian students studying abroad in Yemen, and the possibility that students could become radicalised during their time there.
Full report on the University World News site
GLOBAL: Rethinking academic tribes and territories
Do established disciplines behave in a territorial way that defines how academics work and what they research? PAUL TROWLER argues that this was certainly the case in the past, but changes such as increasing interdisciplinarity and more intensive ways of working mean that it is less and less the case.
Full report on the University World News site
US: Online education growth dwarfs overall enrolment
The latest survey of online education in the US shows that enrolment increased by 10% in the last year, compared to a 2% rise in overall higher education enrolment. A growing number of academics now say online courses are as good as or better than face-to-face classes, writes I ELAINE ALLEN. Today, nearly a third of all students take at least one course online.
Full report on the University World News site
EUROPE: No need to fear higher education investors
British newspapers are awash with rumours that private equity companies could be interested in taking over a university. But there is little financial incentive on the European continent for private companies to move into the higher education sector, argues FRANCOIS THERIN.
Full report on the University World News site
GLOBAL: Academic freedom reports worldwide
Noemi Bouet*
In Turkey, 57 members of the Academy of Sciences have resigned in protest against a government decree that will end the academy’s autonomy. In Bahrain, university students are under attack by the authorities, with hundreds being tried for pro-democracy activities and six recently receiving 15-year sentences and hefty fines in a court case widely criticised as unfair. Papuan students in Indonesia are being targeted by the authorities for what human rights groups describe as generalised intimidation and threats. And in Azerbhaijan, a top scientist has been demoted for questioning the legality of the detention of youth activist Baxtiyar Haciyev, amid moves against the Azerbaijani intelligentsia.
Full report on the University World News site
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GLOBAL: Call for more Muslim-owned universities
Muslim ownership and management of private universities and colleges in Muslim-majority countries and Muslim-minority communities need to be strengthened to cater for the increasing demand for higher education arising from growth in Muslim populations, reports Malaysia’s official agency Bernama.
More on the University World News site
CHILE: Universities fail transparency law standards
According to a study recently released by Chile’s Consejo para la Transparencia, the Council for Transparency, state universities are not living up to agreements outlined in the transparency law, reports I Love Chile.
More on the University World News site
IRELAND: Labour accused of cheating students
Pre-election pledges by the Labour Party about reversing student registration charges and not reintroducing formal fees amounted to “cheating students to win votes”, the Dáil (parliament) was told, writes Marie O’Halloran for The Irish Times.
More on the University World News site
UK: Professors lambasted for failure to mentor
A lack of leadership and the failure to support and mentor junior colleagues have been highlighted in a major study of the professoriate, writes Jack Grove for Times Higher Education. Of 1,200 academic staff from lower grades who responded to a survey commissioned by the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education, more than half (53%) said they did not receive sufficient help or advice from professorial staff.
More on the University World News site
UK: Universities forced to reveal animal test details
Universities will be forced to reveal details of controversial research, including testing on monkeys, after a tribunal ruling made it harder for them to claim exemption from freedom of information requests, writes Jonathan Brown for The Independent.
More on the University World News site
US: Berkeley reveals plan for centre in China
The University of California, Berkeley, announced last week that it plans to open a large research and teaching facility in Shanghai as part of a broader plan to bolster its presence in China, writes David Barboza for The New York Times.
More on the University World News site
CANADA: Universities refocus on Malaysian market
Canada is doing all it can to return to the glory days as one of Malaysia’s top education providers. Canadian High Commissioner to Malaysia Randolph Mank said many Canadian universities were focusing on the Malaysian market to regain lost ground, writes Paul Gabriel for The Star.
More on the University World News site
CANADA: University to open two offices in India
The University of British Columbia is opening two offices in India as part of its efforts to gain a foothold in one of the world's most rapidly growing higher education markets. The initiative was announced last week in Bangalore by Premier Christy Clark, who was leading a British Colombia government trade mission to India, reports The Vancouver Sun.
More on the University World News site
UAE: Foreign campuses link under college system
Winning its bid to host the 2022 Fifa World Cup in Doha, the Gulf emirate of Qatar showed the rising power of the Middle East. Its landmark football stadium will cool summer temperatures of around 40 degrees with solar panel-powered air-conditioning as the international teams play to crowded stands, writes Stephen Hoare for The Independent.
More on the University World News site
MALAYSIA: UNESCO to help review education policy
Malaysia and UNESCO last week signed a memorandum of understanding to review the country’s education policy at all levels, from pre-school to higher education, reports the official agency Bernama.
More on the University World News site
PAKISTAN: Higher education participation hits 7.8%
Higher Education Commission Chairman Javaid R Laghari has said that in 2008 the participate rate of higher education in Pakistan was 2.5%, but after commission initiatives it has reached 7.8% and the government has a vision to increase the figure to 15% by 2020, reports The International News.
More on the University World News site
UK: University ‘consumer culture’ warning
The new chairman of a group of leading research universities has warned against treating students as “consumers purchasing degree certificates”, writes Sean Coughlan for the BBC.
More on the University World News site
CHINA: Contest for ‘prodigy’ places in universities
A thin but fit figure at 5 foot 10, he looked no different from other college students. His shyness and unguarded manner, however, gave him away. Zhang Xinyang, from Panjin in Liaoning province, entered college at just 10 years of age, a record in China. Now 16, he is pursuing a doctorate in mathematics at Beihang University in Beijing, write Wang Yan and Chen Jia for China Daily.
More on the University World News site
HONG KONG: Mugabe jets in for daughter’s graduation
Zimbabwe’s budget presentation in parliament was moved from last Thursday to next week Wednesday after President Robert Mugabe decided his daughter Bona Mugabe’s graduation at the City University in Hong Kong was more important, reports Nehanda Radio.
More on the University World News site
TANZANIA: IDs offer hope for student debt recovery
Hopes in Tanzania for the recovery of more than US$397 million in outstanding debt from thousands of defaulting higher education students loans lies mainly with the introduction of national identity documents early next year, writes James Mwakisyala for East African Business Week.
More on the University World News site
US: Atheist students protest exclusion by Duquesne
Holding signs that said ‘We don't bite’ and ‘Support reason’, about 20 students from three universities gathered last week to protest Duquesne University’s refusal to recognise a proposed secular student group, write Kaitlynn Riely and Ann Rodgers for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
More on the University World News site
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