Category: Africa
HE News Brief 22.2.11
by Abby Chau
- The UK government’s plan on curbing foreign student numbers is lambasted by a recent study for the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi). Foreign students contribute approximately £5 billion a year to the economy. With devastating budget cuts planned for the sector, the study points out that the government plans to target visa abuse will only reduce crucial recruitment numbers, particularly if it targets the number of pre-university pathway courses, which is a set of English language courses and academic preparation courses used as a gateway for foreign students to study in the UK. The study also points out that the figures the government used to justify these new visa restrictions are based on unreliable statistics.
Full Story: BBC News
- Last December, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg asked universities from anywhere in the world to submit a proposal to build an applied-science facility in NYC. Now the buzz is that Stanford University is preparing a proposal for the venture. Stanford president John Hennessy says that the institution was the epicentre for the success of Silicon Valley and that the type of progress achieved on the west coast could easily be replicated on the east coast.
Full Story: Wall Street Journal
More: New York Observer
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HE News Brief 15.2.11
by Abby Chau
- A 346-page report on business school trends has just been released by the Association to Advance Collegiate schools of Business following an intensive three year study by deans and scholars from top b-schools. The finding show that business schools have an uphill battle in terms of successfully implementing internationalisation strategies. Many courses, particularly in the states, focus more on study abroad programmes than internationalisation strategies and concentrate on North American rather than global markets.
Full Story: Chronicle of Higher Education
- It looks like the Lib Dems will finally have some talking points about the tuition fee hikes – Universities Minister David Willetts announced that institutions who want to charge more than £6,000 must comply with requirements to admit more poorer students. As a strategy to counteract the tuition fee hikes due to commence in 2012, the coalition government has decided that universities charging higher fees must work with the Office for Fair Access (Offa) to establish targets for accessibility. Willetts also announced that institutions charging more fees will also have to participate in the National Scholarship Programme, which will eventually help 48,000 disadvantaged students. There are of course critics of the announcement who are saying such an initiative will not do very much to offset the damage the fees will in incur in terms of social mobility.
Full Story: BBC News
More: Guardian
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2011 Employer Survey sign-up facility
The Employer Reputation Index is also based on a global online survey, but the target audience are employers. This indicator is unique amongst current international evaluations in taking into consideration the important component of employability. In principle, we are asking employers to comment on the quality of an institution’s graduates. We survey employers from all business sectors, including not for profit and public sector and regardless of company size.
If you are an employer and you would like to take part in the 2011 Employer Survey, please register your interest here.
2011 Academic Survey sign-up facility
The Academic Reputation Index is the aspect of the QS World University Rankings® towards which people’s greatest interest is directed. It is an approach to international university evaluation that, in concert with the Employer Reputation Index, is the defining feature which sets this ranking most clearly apart from any other.
The survey is distributed worldwide to academics from a number of different sources and the Academic Sign-up is one of them. Since the process was launched in February 2010, over 2,500 faculty members, university leaders and administrators volunteered to participate.
Today I would like to provide you with the opportunity to register your interest for 2011 here.
HE News Brief 18.1.11
by Abby Chau
- An academic paper entitled Ivies, Extracurriculars, and Exclusion: Credentialism in Elite Labor Markets is about to tell us what we assumed all along – elite businesses only recruit from elite institutions. A new study by a Northwestern professor says that top firms and investment banks only hire from the top five – Harvard, Wharton, Princeton, Yale, and Stanford. According to the report, applicants not from the top five go into the ‘black hole’ and are subsequently dismissed. The professor also found that it is not important how applicants from the big five perform whilst in the institution but rather the perceived prestige is what really counts.
Full Story: Examiner
- President Hugo Chavez has announced that he would veto a controversial new education law which would have given the government more control over universities. President Chavez’s supporters introduced several new laws last December before the newly elected parliament was due in office. The educational reform law would make universities comply with national development plans in all decision-making processes as well as changing the power structure for budgetary decisions. President Chavez said that his government was willing to recognise and amend mistakes. Critics are saying that the president’s hand was forced as opposition to the measure grew in recent weeks.
Full Story: BBC News
More: Wall Street Journal
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HE News Brief 14.12.10
by Abby Chau
- The tuition fee hike passed in the Commons this past week, with the proposal to set the tuition cap at £9,000, due to go to the Lords for a final vote. Thousands of protestors hit the streets last Thursday to convey their dismay over the initiative. Vice chancellors applaud the move saying that this will give universities a chance to succeed as budget cuts are imminent. Most Russell Group universities will charge the maximum but many say that the average fee will hover around the £7,000 mark.
Full Story: BBC News
- During the last five years, institutions in Kenya has ballooned, with many saying that higher education has become more of a cash cow than a centre for learning and employability. Following this, the Kenyan government’s efforts to reform higher education has lead to the closing of hundreds of unaccredited tertiary institutions. Only 464 out of Kenya’s 1,000 colleges have passed the audit which the government initiated by weeding out institutions that did not have adequate facilities or teaching resources. Many are saying that this will cause chaos as students will be left either holding degrees from colleges that will no longer exist, or scrambling to get a place in one of the accredited colleges.
Full Story: University World News
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HE News Brief 19.10.10
by Abby Chau
- The Browne report is still dominating headlines as ministers weigh in and the political line is delicately drawn around a leaked memo that says universities should brace themselves for a £4.2bn budget cut. The cut is more severe than universities were prepared for as degrees other than medicine, engineering, science, and modern languages would lose state subsidies. Browne’s recommendation is also facing scrutiny from the Welsh Assembly Government which says they are poised to lose £55million if the tuition fee cap is lifted as there are approximately 16,000 Welsh undergraduates studying in England. Wales and Scotland’s fate in England’s higher education debacle is not entirely clear.
Full Story: Guardian
More: Wales Online - The London School of Economics has announced a collaboration with the Reliance Foundation, which is an arm of the Reliance Industries group, run by Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani. The partnership will work on setting up a world class university in India, focusing on problems such as expanding education to all segments of the population. Ambani’s wife and Foundation chair said they plan to open a university which is global and with “Indian soul”.
Full Story: Economic Times Continue Reading
HE News Brief 12.10.10
by Abby Chau
- Former BP Chief Lord Browne today released his long-awaited report on higher education. It comes as no surprise that he is advising that the tuition fee cap be lifted. If the Coalition government takes on his recommendations, students may pay up to £12,000 a year for their degrees. This is a contentious issue as the Lib Dems are solidly against hiking tuition. In addition Lord Browne is recommending a 10% increase in student intake as well as advising that universities focus more on career advice, supporting part-time students, and empowering students to dictate which university should flourish.
Full Story: Guardian
More: BBC News
- As university league tables grow in influence and prominence, the IREG Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence, which first met in Washington in 2004, is serving as a watchdog of university rankings. At a conference last week in Berlin, they announced that an executive team will be conducting audits of producers of league tables to make sure they comply with certain principles such as transparency and accessibility of methodology.
Full Story: Chronicle of Higher Education
HE News Brief 21.9.10
by Abby Chau
Here are this week’s news stories:
- Up until a few years ago, Dubai appeared to be financially invincible, it boasted the tallest building in the world and even the SATC girls were paying homage to the city. But fast-forward a few years later, and the economic recession has hit the real estate sector and now many are worried that it will also affect Higher Education. George Mason University of Virginia in the UAE closed a few years ago and recently Michigan State University’s foreign branch in Dubai also shut down its operations. However the executive director of Higher Education Warren Fox, says that the forecast is actually encouraging – in 2004, four foreign campuses operated in the free zone and now the number is close to 30. Fox remains optimistic, saying that it can take a few years before foreign campuses can find an audience.
Full Story: New York Times
- Portugal is looking to revamp their higher education system, much in the same way vein as Asia’s institutions. Secretary of State for Higher Education Manuel Heitor says that in order for a country to compete in the economic realm, they must invest in HE. In the 80s, Portugal invested .4 percent of gdp in education, and in 2008, that figure jumped to 1.55 percent. After years of oppression, Portugal has slowly been rebuilding its infrastructure but now it has partnerships with Harvard Medical, MIT, University of Texas at Austin, and Carnegie Mellon.
Full Story: Chronicle of Higher Education
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HE News Brief 1.9.10
by Abby Chau
Here are this week’s news stories:
- University rankings hits its zenith in autumn, with different league tables pronouncing their take on a world-class university. The Chronicle of Higher Education has devised a nifty chart to compare Rankings and sheds a bit of light on which indicators are predominantly used, and which ones are ignored.
Full Story: Chronicle of Higher Education
- In a shocking directive, the Ethiopian Ministry of Education decreed that there is to be a ban on distance learning programmes across the country. Stating that distance learning is unnecessary at this point in the country’s higher educational development, the Ministry also said that quality assurance is a major priority. This will have a drastic effect on the estimated 64 private institutions in the country, as well as vocational education. Critics argue that this directive goes too far and does not offer solutions to the current problems facing higher education. Others are worried about the impact on current students – St Mary’s University College for example currently enrolls 75% of its students in distance learning courses.
Full Story: Addis Fortune Continue Reading
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