HE News Brief 30.1.12
by Abby Chau
- SOUTH KOREA: A third of universities have announced the intention of dropping tuition fees by at least 5%
- SAUDI ARABIA: The government has announced that it hopes to have 50,000 graduates from the world’s top 500 universities by 2020
- UK: Application rates projected to fall by 10% for the autumn 2012 term amidst tuition fee hikes and budget cuts
- GERMANY: A different take on foreign students?
Classifying higher education institutions in the MENA region
By John O’Leary, executive member of the QS Global Academic Advisory Board
Universities in seven Arab countries have been classified as part of an international project that is intended to lead to a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of higher education across the Middle East and North Africa.
The Institute of International Education (IIE) and the Lebanese Association for Educational Studies launched their findings at last month’s World Innovation Summit on Education, in Qatar.
Research for the classification was carried out at the height of the Arab Spring, which restricted its scope. Egypt would have been the largest higher education system to be surveyed, but the researchers eventually settled for a classification of universities in Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates.
The draft report stressed the rapid development of higher education in the seven countries, where the number of students grew from 2.9 million in 1998-9 to 7.6 million in 2007-8. The number of universities had grown from 174 to 467 in a decade, supplemented by countless other higher education institutions, many of them privately owned. Dr Rajika Bhandari, deputy vice president of research and evaluation at the IIE, outlined some of the challenges. “It was difficult to get education ministries to cooperate, even before recent political events in the region,” she said. “There needs to be more complete data before we can say this is reliable and valid.” However, the research underlines the diversity of higher education provision in the region.
Universities are classified according to 11 different dimensions, from the student and faculty profiles to their cultural and religious orientation, and regional and international engagement. The report suggests growing use of English throughout the Middle East and North Africa. In the countries surveyed, 23 per cent of universities were using the language for administration, 36 per cent to teach the humanities and nearly 47 per cent to teach the sciences.
This trend reflects an increasingly international outlook. Some 35 per cent of universities had international offices, although 42 per cent were considered to have no or only a low level of international engagement.
The authors do not claim that their research is yet representative of the region as a whole. In particular, they found it difficult to extract complete data from private institutions, many of which were relatively new. Classifying Higher Educations in the Middle East and North Africa: a Pilot Study is available on the IIE website. A full report is also available.
The Leiden Ranking
By Martin Ince, convener of the QS Global Academic Advisory Board
At the QS World University Rankings®, we are always keen to see how other people go about looking at universities. This month has been notable for the appearance of the Leiden ranking, which offers a highly specific view of academic excellence as expressed through citations.
Paul Wouters, director of CWTS at Leiden and director of the Leiden ranking, says that it uses a methodology which allows research at institutions of radically different size and subject mix to be compared fairly. It is also intended to compensate for the different characteristics of English and non-English publishing, and for the potential distorting effects of a few much-cited outlier papers. We asked Paul how the Leiden Ranking fits into the world ecology of university rankings, especially the HEEACT and Shanghai rankings, which are also designed to look at high-level research performance.
He said: “There are a number of fundamental differences. Most rankings combine performance on very different dimensions in a single number, in particular educational performance and scientific performance. HEEACT is similar to our ranking in that it focuses on scientific performance. Another issue is that Shanghai and HEEACT are strongly size-dependent. Larger universities will almost always outperform smaller ones in these rankings.” The Leiden Ranking focuses on the average performance of a university for each of the publications it produces. This means that the large differences in citation behaviour between scientific fields are corrected for.
Next, we asked, how does the system cope with the different publishing cultures of different subjects? Paul replied: “We apply a correction for the differences between citation behaviour in different scientific fields. In addition, our ranking uses fractional counting indicators. Publications co-authored by multiple universities are assigned fractionally to each of the universities involved. In the full counting approach used by most rankings, co-authored publications are fully assigned to each university involved, causing double counting of these publications.
The use of fractional counting is another way of making fields with different publication and citation cultures more comparable.” Paul says that when the results came in, his team’s biggest surprise was the difference which the fractional counting approach makes. Universities with a strong medical orientation tend to fall in a ranking where fractional counting is used, while universities with a technical focus do better. In the Netherlands, for instance, differences between universities that are apparent using the full counting approach disappear almost completely with fractional counting.
The Leiden methodology agrees with its competitors about the excellence of the top US universities. It has 42 of them in its top 50, led by MIT, Princeton and Harvard. Only two non-US universities make it into the top 20: EPFL and ETH, the Francophone and German-speaking federal institutions of Switzerland, at 12 and 18 respectively.
Cambridge, top in the QS ranking, appears here in 31st place. It is one of four UK institutions in the top 50 along with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (33), Oxford (36), and Durham (42). The only other non-US institutions in the top 50 are the Weizmann Institute (Israel) at 25 and the Technical University of Denmark at 45. The ranking shows the top 500 universities, with Moscow and St Petersburg in the last two places.
The table also shows the volume of publications for each institution found in the Web of Science database and used for the ranking. The total among the top 50 ranges from 33511 for Harvard to 1652 for the LSHTM. The ranking is at www.leidenranking.com, and CWTS is at www.cwts.nl.
Count your saints: a new ranking criterion?
By John O’Leary, executive member of the QS Global Academic Advisory Board
University vice-chancellors and presidents have put forward all sorts of measures that would improve their institution’s standing in rankings – from academic prizes to community projects and student exchanges. But the rector of the University of Santo Tomas (UST), in Manila, came up with a truly unique proposal at the QS-APPLE conference, which his institution hosted.
Perhaps only half jokingly, he suggested that the number of saints produced by a university should be adopted as a measure in the QS World University Rankings®. Not surprisingly, UST, the largest single-campus Catholic university in the world and the oldest university in Asia, would do extremely well in the canonisation table.
Father Rolando De la Rosa said the university had 30 saints to its name, as well as several presidents and prime ministers of the Philippines – “the better ones,” according to Fr De la Rosa. Further research suggests that most universities are shamefully ignorant of their tally of saints, if indeed they have any, possibly because they had not expected them to become an indicator in rankings. No doubt, tenuous links to long-forgotten saints will soon be discovered at universities all around the world if Fr De la Rosa’s idea catches on.
Oxford should do well, laying claim to at least a dozen saints and martyrs, including Thomas of Hereford, who was Chancellor of the university in the 13th century, when he was said to have “applied firm discipline and confiscated weapons”, as well as being generous to poor students. But can any university rival UST?
HE News Brief 29.11.11
by Abby Chau
- SOUTH KOREA: Recognition of foreign diplomas paves the way for Asia-Pacific higher ed collaboration
- UK: Initial figures show that applications for 2012 sees a 15% shortfall
- CANADA: Positioning itself as a popular destination for international students
- RUSSIA: Recognition of foreign degrees in 2012 Read more
HE News Brief 21.11.11
by Abby Chau
- AUSTRALIA: Internalisation activities are entering a third stage
- MIDDLE EAST: Foreign branches in Qatar and Dubai are faring well
- INTERNATIONAL: A new Autonomy Scorecard produced by the EUA
- CHILE: Students are going to the table after six-months of protests Read more
International student enrolment at US universities goes up by nearly 5%
The US has always been popular with overseas students, perpetually leading international student population tables. The world sat up and paid attention, therefore, when it was revealed that, though total enrolment went up by 3%, new international student numbers increased by only a worrying 1% in 2009-10. This year’s Open Doors report, from the International Institute of Education (IIE), however, indicates that the system is well on the way to recovery, with new international student numbers increasing by 6% and total enrolment by 4.7% in 2010-11. “Students and families from all over the world continue to choose the US over other countries because of the high quality of education, which stresses interdisciplinary approaches, student participation and critical thinking,” says Allan E. Goodman, President and CEO of the IIE.
The 2011 report, released on November 14th, shows that 723,277 overseas students were studying in the US in 2010-2011 – an increase of 32,354 over the 2009-2010 figure. This increase in numbers is largely courtesy of China, which sent 157,558 students to the US, 23.3% (or 29,736 students) more than the preceding year. India is in second place, sending just over 100,000 students – a figure which is, however, down 1% as compared to the previous year – and South Korea is third, with its 75,000 students representing an increase of 1.7%.
Although this top three remains unchanged, some interesting patterns have also emerged, among them as the increase of traffic from countries experiencing political unrest. Also noteworthy was the 22,704 students from Saudi Arabia studying in the US – an increase of 46.3%, which no other country can match. Though it only accounts for 0.8% of the total, Iran sent a significantly higher number of students too (18.9%).
Traffic from Japan, on the other hand, dropped off significantly. In 2009-2010, there were 24,842 Japanese students studying in the US, but a year later the figure was 21,290. This decline of 14.3%, was the sharpest recorded by any country this year. Kenya followed Japan with its student numbers declining by 13.3%.
Business and management (21.5%), engineering (18.7%) and life sciences (8.8%) lead the pack when it comes to the most popular subject areas. Other in-demand areas of study were maths and computer science (8.9% between them), social sciences (8.8%) and fine and applied arts (5.1%). Although only accounting for a relatively small number of students (4.5%), demand for intensive English language courses went up by massive 24%, with Saudi Arabia (29.1%), Japan (10.8%) and Venezuela (11.9%) sending the greatest numbers of students for these courses.
As has consistently been the case, graduate programs were more in demand than bachelor’s degrees. 219,853 overseas students, constituting 34%, of the total, were enrolled on Bachelors programs in 2010-2011, an increase of 6.8% over the previous year. Enrolment on graduate programs—including master’s, doctoral and professional degrees—nearly touched 300,000 and accounted for 45.8% of the total international student enrolments.
The University of Southern California (8,615), University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign (7,991) and New York University (7,988) hosted the most doctoral students. For Masters programs, the University of Bridgeport (2,582), California State University-Northridge (2,579) and San Jose University (2,566) lead the way, and Brigham Young University-Hawaii Campus (1,000), Mount Holyoke College (595) and Utah Valley State College’s (466) professional graduate courses attracted the highest numbers. Read more
UK university admission system may undergo major overhaul
For more than 50 years, applicants to UK universities have followed the same procedure. However, this may all change soon, as the University and College Admissions Service (UCAS) has proposed a revamp of the undergraduate admission process, which will see students applying to university after they receive their exam results, rather than before as at present. This change may come into effect as soon as 2016.
The key findings of a UCAS review into the admissions procedure were published in a report titled Admissions Process Review Consultation. The report found the current system of applying to universities to be ‘complex and difficult to navigate’ and not easily understood by applicants. The current system has been put under pressure by the huge surge in the number of applicants in the last five decades. There were only 80,003 applications in 1963 compared to almost 700,000 in 2010.
The proposed post-results system of application is considered by UCAS to be potentially more user-friendly because it will be based on actual rather than predicted grades. Evidence suggests that there may be confusion among some applicants about how the current system works. UCAS states that in some courses almost 50% of applicants submitted predicted grades which failed to meet the minimum entry requirements. More than 30% of applicants provided incomplete information, and this percentage was higher among international students, who found it hard to understand the system. Read more
The European plan
By Martin Ince, convener of the QS Academic Advisory Board
Anyone working in a European university may think they have enough to do already, but the European Commission does not agree. In a September policy document, it has put them front and centre in the hunt for economic growth.
The Commission’s major economic document, the Europe 2020 Strategy, already emphasises higher education and research as the route to higher skills and higher levels of innovation.
Despite many years of urging from Brussels, only about six per cent of the European workforce are researchers, lagging Japan at 11 and nine for the US. In addition, European targets for research and development spending have almost all been missed, and with the exception of the UK, European universities’ performance in world rankings is best described as modest.
In EU customary style, this Commission document regards further European integration as an important part of the solution. It has persuaded education ministers of member states to aim for 20 per cent of students to do at least some overseas study or training by 2020, twice the current figure. It also wants the European Quality Assurance Register to get involved in academic quality assurance in the hope that common standards will encourage mobility and make qualifications from other European nations more acceptable.
The problem with these initiatives is that education, at school and university level, is one of the roles which national governments, and in some cases devolved administrations, guard most enthusiastically. However, the existence of the Framework Programme for research, the European Research Council, and a range of initiatives on student mobility and qualifications recognition, does give the Commission some influence over higher education priorities.
It is now setting up a “high-level group” to produce new proposals for the modernisation of higher education. This group’s members will be announced in 2012. They are intended to produce their first report, on excellence in teaching, in 2013.
The document also opens up the possibility of new streams of cash for member state universities. The Commission may support universities to develop internationalisation strategies reaching beyond the EU, in the search to make Europe a prime destination for top talent. Officials have acknowledged that while the US has long been a magnet for bright academics, Asian nations are now aiming to attract them too.
The Commission is especially keen on anything that gets academic research into industrial use. It is already running some pilot projects called Knowledge Alliances which are intended to do this. Next could be European Industrial Doctorates and special Doctoral Schools with an innovation mission. There are also plans to build up traineeships and other forms of graduate training.
These plans have much in common with Talent 2030, a UK-level campaign launched in October by the Council for Industry and Higher Education, a joint business/academic forum. Its main call is for a campaign to get more women into manufacturing and engineering. To do this it suggests much stronger connections between companies and universities, and the establishment of a new elite manufacturing college for UK talent.
The Commission document is available on http://tinyurl.com/42rq2ll
HE News Brief 25.10.11
by Abby Chau
- CHILE: Student protests have erupted in Santiago
- CHINA: Collaboration of 11 institutions to form the Beijing Tech
- INTERNATIONAL: A new report by the World Bank follows 11-leading universities
- UK: A BBC investigation into graduate employability
- NETHERLANDS: Call on cap for foreign student numbers Read more
