FIFTH BIRTHDAY EDITION

University World News has come a long way since 14 October 2007, when we nervously hit the Send button on the first edition. The e-paper has achieved great success in reaching ever-more academics and higher education professionals – 40,000 in 150 countries now – and has earned a reputation for quality journalism and for being truly international.

African university leaders series

Karen MacGregor

With a career enriched by international experience, first as a postgraduate student in Germany and then as a member of academic networks, Professor Ernest Aryeetey has steered the flagship University of Ghana steadily into the wider world since becoming vice-chancellor two years ago. This, and the pursuit of excellence through change, define his leadership.

AFRICA NEWS

Tunde Fatunde

Nigeria’s National Universities Commission has announced the immediate suspension of all part-time programmes in universities, affecting over 20% of the country’s student population. The plan is to conduct a quality assurance audit of all part-time provision, which the commission believes is fraught with problems.

Jane Marshall

Violent clashes between rival Islamist and secular students on 3 October led to closure of the faculty of human and social sciences at the University of Tunis for three days, and caused considerable damage. The government is consulting on legislation regarding the niqab – the Islamic full-face veil – which has sparked controversy and conflict on campuses.

Munyaradzi Makoni

Global partnerships between higher education institutions and the information and communication technologies industry could reduce the distance between collaborators and help tap experts in the diaspora, a UNESCO official told the Innovation Africa summit held from 5-7 October in Cape Town.

Reuben Kyama

Kenyatta University, one of Kenya’s leading universities, has opened a campus in Dadaab, a town in the semi-arid northeast of the country that is home to the world’s largest refugee camp.

Ingvild Nilssen

Today’s climate models are not accurate as far as Southern Africa is concerned, says Professor Brian Chase, who has made revolutionary discoveries about the climate, based on fossilised badger urine. Chase says the study is changing understanding of environmental trends in South Africa.

AFRICA FEATURES

Reuben Kyama

The African Virtual University is a pan-African intergovernmental organisation operating in 27 countries. “We work with more than 50 universities across Africa,” says Rector Dr Bakary Diallo of the institution with a vision to be the continent’s leading open, distance and e-learning network.

Paul Rigg

An African country won a place for the first time in a global university competition to build the best solar-powered house. The American University in Cairo was selected along with 18 other universities to compete for the top Solar Decathlon prize.

AFRICA ANALYSIS

Goolam Mohamedbhai

A survey of universities in Sub-Saharan Africa revealed some commitment to and activity around sustainable development, though only among public institutions. Much more needs to be done, and help is required in specific areas. African universities are revitalising, and it is important that they integrate the promotion of sustainable development into that process.

Linda Nordling

A paralysed science system means that Uganda's desire to fund a landmark project out of its own coffers could backfire. A science ministry is needed to tackle fragmentation of research between government departments that is damaging the country’s entire science system.

AFRICA BRIEFS

With public universities in Madagascar able to cater for only 8,000 new students this year, many private institutions without accreditation or authorisation to operate are preparing to offer courses to a large number of school-leavers qualified to enter higher education.

Senegal’s government is to introduce a five-year plan to balance the universities’ budget, which is currently showing a deficit of FCFA14 billion (US$27.5 million), reported media in the capital Dakar.

NEWS: Our correspondents worldwide report

Dinesh De Alwis

Sri Lanka’s longest lecturer strike, which lasted for nearly 100 days, was called off by the university teachers’ union on Thursday after crucial discussions led to a government climb-down and capitulation to several union demands.

Yojana Sharma

As international student mobility grows, the number of reported attacks on students has also been increasing and students are becoming more aware of the risks they may face when studying abroad.

David Jobbins

Students around the world perceive the United Kingdom as the safest place to study, an international survey has found – and Israel is seen as the least safe destination country. The multicultural nature of British society was the main reason cited for its ‘safe’ reputation.

Geoff Maslen

For the first time, foreign students in Australia have their own ‘bill of rights’. This follows the release by the Australian Human Rights Commission of a set of principles to promote and protect the rights of international students, which it says have too often been ignored by individuals and organisations.

Jane Marshall

The financial management of the elite Institute of Political Studies in Paris has been strongly criticised in an official report that found evidence of exorbitant bonuses, absence of controls and waste of public funds during the directorship of Richard Descoings, who died in April.

Patrick McDonagh

On 18 September, the McGill University Health Centre issued a terse statement: it confirmed that at 08h00, 12 officers of Quebec’s Unité permanente anti-corruption had raided its offices as part of a wide-ranging investigation into corruption in the province’s construction industry.

Michael Gardner

Contingency plans are being drawn up in North Rhine-Westphalia to cope with a huge onslaught of first-year students in 2013. Germany’s most densely populated state is bracing itself for around 45,000 more students than enrolled last year.

Wagdy Sawahel

The United Arab Emirates has granted the land for and offered to bear all expenses related to the construction of the Islamic Virtual University, which aims to expand education and research cooperation in the Islamic world, produce and disseminate teaching knowledge, and promote higher education quality, internet access and e-infrastructure.

Geoff Maslen

A federal government-commissioned review has called for an additional A$3 billion (US$3 billion) a year to be spent on health and medical research in Australia over the next 10 years. The review panel made 21 recommendations on how to strengthen the health and medical research sector and improve the integration of research with the nation’s healthcare system.

GLOBAL FEATURES

Yojana Sharma

After more than a decade of phenomenal growth, private higher education institutions in China are beginning to face problems attracting students, with some colleges showing a significant drop in recruitment this year.

Hiep Pham

Vietnam has announced that it will spend 2,500 billion dong (US$125 million) on subsidised student loans during the 2012-13 academic year, which has just begun. But this is less than a third of what the loan scheme used to provide and there are deep concerns about access.

WORLD BLOG

Hans de Wit and Elspeth Jones

In the five years since University World News was launched, internationalisation has moved up the ladder of higher education priorities. No longer is the West the main player, and there is increasing recognition of the need to take into account different perspectives on internationalisation.

COMMENTARY

Margaret Waters

Erasmus for All is focusing funds on strategic objectives like promoting greater mobility for masters-level students, building partnerships between institutions and with business, and supporting policy reform in Europe and beyond.

Toby Paltridge, Susan Mayson and Jan Schapper

The responsibility for international students in Australia has devolved to institutions. But the fact is that these students face more off- than on-campus problems. Local government should be involved in helping international students to integrate and deal with security issues, as well as listening to their concerns.

STUDENT VIEW

Camila Vallejo

Privatisation and attacks on the humanities impoverish education and society. Chilean students and their colleagues across the Americas are fighting for a diverse and equitable public education system.

FACEBOOK

University World News has a new Facebook group. If you are not a member, do consider joining to see our regular updates, post on our wall and communicate with us and other University World News fans. You can also follow University World News on Twitter @uniworldnews

WORLD ROUND-UP

International students are spurning the UK's most prestigious universities as a result of government immigration curbs, writes Richard Garner for The Independent. Some courses at universities in the Russell Group – which represents 24 top institutions, including Oxford and Cambridge – have seen a drop of up to 30% in applications from Indian students.

Student Abdul Basir was giving an interview last Monday. “We don’t want politics at the university,” he said, speaking softly, in conciliatory tones. “It should not be named after a political figure.” Suddenly Basir was punched in the face and yet another melee was under way between rival groups over the decision by President Hamid Karzai to change the name of Kabul Education University to the Martyr of Peace Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani University, writes Rod Nordland for The New York Times.

As the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments last Wednesday in a lawsuit challenging race-conscious admissions at the University of Texas at Austin, it became evident that the court's past rulings on such policies have failed to provide colleges – or even the justices themselves – with clear guidance, writes Peter Schmidt for The Chronicle of Higher Education.

It's official. Higher education is shrinking, for the first time in at least 15 years, writes Doug Lederman for Inside Higher Ed. Total enrolment at American colleges and universities eligible for federal financial aid fell slightly in the autumn of 2011 from the year before, according to preliminary data released by the US Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics.

Continental Europe still offers heavily subsidised higher education. And in some countries, such as Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Austria and much of Germany, it is free. Other popular destinations, such as The Netherlands and France, offer postgraduate qualifications at a fraction of the price now charged in Britain, writes Helena Pozniak for The Independent.

An education and research agreement that will see 4,000 Brazilian undergraduates study in Ireland over the next four years was signed last week during Enterprise Ireland’s trade mission to Brazil, writes Grainne Rothery for Business and Leadership.

When the Foreign Educational Institutions (Regulations of Entry and Operations) Bill was introduced in parliament in 2010, no less than 50 foreign universities showed interest in setting up operations in India. Two years down the line, their interest seems to have dwindled, writes Kalpana Pathak for Business Standard.

Universities in the United Kingdom are being urged to waive the tuition fees of Syrian doctoral students who have had their funding from the Damascus government cut off, writes David Matthew for Times Higher Education.

University leaders have welcomed a rule change that will mean overseas students no longer have to register in person with the police. Last week saw students queuing at night outside an office in London in order to meet a registration deadline. But from Monday, students will be able to register through their universities, reports the BBC.

Since the 1970s, we have witnessed the forces of market fundamentalism strip education of its public values, critical content and civic responsibilities as part of its broader goal of creating new subjects wedded to consumerism, risk-free relationships and the destruction of the social state, writes Henry Giroux of McMaster University in Canada, for Counterpunch.

When it comes to attracting the best business students, Ali Mallekzadeh knows what it takes, writes Mará Rose Williams for The Kansas City Star. “Very astute students walk through the doors of your college with a check list,” said Mallekzadeh, dean of Kansas State University’s college of business administration.

Education Minister Costas Arvanitopoulos has underlined that “upgrading public universities is a top priority”, while at the same time saying that Greece has too many universities – 40 for a country of 11 million people – and needs to consolidate or merge institutions to reduce costs, writes A Papapostolou for ANA-MPA.

Cambridge University, the 800-year-old alma mater of Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking, sold its first bonds, tapping investor demand that let Portugal Telecom SGPS SA (PTC) issue its first benchmark notes since 2011, writes Katie Linsell for Bloomberg News.

Oxford and Cambridge have rejected plans to scrap traditional degree classifications in favour of school-style report cards, it emerged last week. The two institutions are among up to 10 members of the elite Russell Group with no plans to award graduates with the new Higher Education Achievement Report, writes Graeme Paton for The Telegraph.

Emory University is apologising for years of anti-Semitism at its dental school, during which dozens of Jewish students were failed or forced to repeat courses, leaving many feeling inadequate and ashamed for decades despite successful careers, reports Associated Press.

Economic depression drives youngsters back to campus. The lack of job opportunities in India has spurred tech graduates in Kolkata to arm themselves with an additional degree rather than try their luck in the job market, writes Prithvijit Mitra for The Times of India.

Subscribe / Unsubscribe

Terms and Conditions / ISSN 1756-297X / © University World News 2007-2012