European Universities Games held in Spain
While the UK is busy undergoing the final preparations for this year’s Olympics, Spain has been playing host to the first European Universities Games.
Organized by the European Universities Sports Association (EUSA), this first edition of the European Universities Games was held in Cordoba, in southern Spain, between 13 and 23 July 2012.
More than 2,500 students took part, representing teams from 151 universities in 32 European nations.
During the ten days of the Games, these teams participated in a total of 667 sports matches, competing to be named the champions in ten different sports.
A glance at the final results of the contests gives an overview of the wide range of universities taking part – and the diverse sporting strengths of Europe’s students.
However, while teams from many different countries were named as champions, several nations had a particularly good run. Continue Reading
QS Best Student Cities 2012: post-launch effects
The first global ranking of student cities, published last month by QS, caused a stir around the world, reaching more than 500,000 people on Twitter and attracting more than 1 million hits on the topuniversities.com website.
Paris edged out London as the top city, benefiting from a concentration of leading universities with low study costs. Four continental European cities appeared in the top ten, while both Melbourne and Sydney reached the top six for Australia.
QS Best Student Cities Ranking rated the top 50 cities on student mix, quality of living, employer activity and affordability. Public information, published surveys and data gathered in the production of the QS World University Rankings were combined to produce scores.
Cities had to have at least two world-ranked universities to be included. Edouard Husson, Vice-Chancellor of the Universities of Paris, said the city’s triumph in the first QS student cities ranking had been welcomed both by the Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, and by President Sarkozy. He said the accolade reflected the huge amount of work taking place in French universities and especially in Paris, with its high density of leading institutions.
Nunzio Quacquarelli, the chief executive of QS, said the success of Paris also reflected the affordability of study at French universities. Both domestic and international students could attend leading institutions at low cost. The ranking was welcomed in student cities across the world.
Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, was delighted that second-placed London had been confirmed as one of the best places on earth to study. “We have more bookshops than New York, more museums than Paris (which, by the way, are free) and less rainfall than Rome,” he said. “What’s not to like about London?” Other city leaders were almost as pleased as Mr Johnson.
In Dublin, for example, Andrew Montague, the Lord Mayor, said that the city’s appearance in the top 10 worldwide was “hugely useful” in raising its profile among prospective students. Media organisations in 30 countries reported on the ranking.
Forbes Magazine said the results would be welcomed by those who “enjoy bashing education in America” since Boston was the only US city in the top 10. However, Chicago, San Francisco and New York all joined it in the top 20. Students and alumni competed for bragging rights on social networking sites, where discussion continues on the relative merits of different cities. More than a fortnight after the ranking appeared, Amanda Drolet was still extolling the virtues of Boston on Twitter, while others argued for Berlin, Montreal and Barcelona.
France: Improvement of the graduate situation
by Stephanie Braudeau
The Conference des Grandes Ecoles in France released last week the results of the Graduate Employability survey conducted among its members, i.e. Engineering and Business Schools. The exercise took place in January 2011 referring to graduates from the class of 2010.
The first thing worth to note is the high response rate: 55.3% of graduate from 153 schools took part in the survey out of 37,500 graduates (including 10% of international students) among 192 schools in the CGE; 7.5% more than last year’s survey.
Graduates from the class of 2009 were among the severely hit by the international crisis with 19% of them in the market searching for a job and 60% employed at the time of the 2010 survey; though it seems the situation for the class of 2010 put back on its feet as 13% were searching for an employment and 68% were employed in January 2011. The employment rate (84%) therefore is also better this year than it was last year (76.1%). It is worth noting that the majority of graduates who found a job were in a permanent position in January 2011.
Internships are a springboard
The survey also shows that 41.4% of graduates in engineering and 35.6% in management found their current position through the internships/apprenticeship they have done during their studies. Internships being compulsory in France in order to graduate in these schools; revealing student work experience is a veritable spring board towards professional life.
International aspect
12.9% of working graduates are employed abroad (11.9% of engineers and 16.5% of managers). Among this rate in the top destination countries, surprisingly Switzerland welcomes 1/3 of graduates abroad and the United Kingdom, 13%.
Gender inequality
In terms of salaries, women are still behind men, whatsoever in engineering or management schools.
The graphs have been created by QSIU using data extracted from the full report.
More information on:
Full report available on Educpros (in French)
Elite French Graduates Did Better Than Others in Upturn, Report Shows
HE News Brief 7.3.11
by Abby Chau
- Statistics recently released by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada shows that a growing amount of young people are now entering into higher education. 32,000 more students are enrolled in 2010 which represents a 3.7% increase from 2009. Ontario universities has seen a 49% increase in applications since 2000. Some are warning that the increase in students will be a drain on government funds as numbers continue to expand.
Full Story: Macleans
- Sir Howard Davies, director of the London School of Economics since 2003, resigned recently over allegations of acceptance of a £1.5 million donation from a charity foundation run by one of the sons of the controversial and eccentric Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Wikileaks cables show that LSE may not be the only institution connected to the Libyan government and this is just the beginning of a series of revelations concerning universities’ role in legitimizing the government. LSE, for its part, said that it would donate the funds to promote higher education in North Africa.
Full Story: Chronicle of Higher Education
- Academic and deputy director of research at Kent Business School Dennis Tourish recently laid claim that journal lists are detrimental to innovative research, particularly pointing out that the Q index used by some institutions such as the University of Queensland is flawed. The Q index measures research income, higher degree completions, research publication, and advisory loads, among others. Tourish says that the emphasis on journal lists is encouraging conformity and academic malaise. Queensland’s deputy vice-chancellor has reputed the claims saying that the Q index is a good tool to assess academic quality but other factors are taken into account such as teaching loads and performance.
Full Story: The Australian
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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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A gap between French universities?
by Stephanie Braudeau
A gap between the quality of programmes offered at French universities is growing larger suggests a regional analysis released a couple of weeks ago by the Agence d’évaluation de la recherche et de l’enseignement supérieur, AERES, a French statutorily independent agency. The 600 page report is a thorough four-year work involving 4,500 French and international experts and carrying out 10,000 evaluations. The agency evaluated two main areas: Bachelor programmes and research activities. Each region gathers a detailed profile of the universities it includes, with their strengths and weaknesses.
For the Bachelor programmes, four grades are available, A+, A, B and C. A+ is for excellent programmes, A means programmes are of very good quality, B that the programmes are justified though do not meet the criteria requirements and D represents programmes that do not meet requirements and have too many weaknesses.
As for the research institutes, four indicators are drawn by subject areas: production; attractivity, socio-cultural and economic impact; strategy and institution life and project appreciation. Each indicator is ranked between A+ to C, but it also leads to a global grade, A+ indicating an international visibility, A being a high quality institute, B rated as a good institute that needs to improve its quality in several areas and C, an institute needing to substantially improve its quality level to meet the requirements. Continue Reading
HE News Brief 25.1.11
by Abby Chau
- Approximately 15,000 protestors descended on the Parliament in Hague to demonstrate against a proposed multi-billion austerity plan, which include plans to slash university budgets and increased fees for some students. A policy aimed at students who take longer to graduate is causing a commotion. Under the new proposal, students who take longer than 4 years to complete their three year undergraduate degrees will have to pay an extra $4,000 per year in fees. Starting from 2012, the government is hoping to save $501 million each year from this initiative.
Full Story: Businessweek
More: Edmonton Journal - A survey of over 6,000 students at 62 institutions and 20 junior colleges showed that graduate employment rates in Japan has hit a new low since records began in 1996. 68.8% of Japanese university students found a job before graduation, which represents a 4.3% decline from the previous year. Those graduating in the field of science and engineering had the largest hurdle, with job offers dropping 7.3 percentage to 71.3 %. In response, the Japanese government has announced new incentives for companies who employ graduates as well as plans for more career fairs.
Full Story: Japan Today
More: BBC News
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HE News Brief 4.01.11
by Abby Chau
Happy new year to you all! The QSIU team will be delivering you the latest HE news, as well as intelligence on rankings, HE trends, and other beasts this upcoming year. Stay tuned.
- India has announced that they will be performing their first major survey of higher education, which has suffered from inadequate statistical information for years. This initiative is seen to be the first step in a decade long effort to double the countries’ higher education institutions.
Full Story: New York Times
- Now that English students are set to pay up to £9000 in tuition fees starting in 2012, Michael Russell, Scotland’s Education announced that Scottish students will still enjoy free tuition. In order to fund this, students from the rest of the UK will pay premium fees. This announcement is seen to curve “fee refugees” from other parts of the UK from fleeing to Scotland in order to pay less for higher education.
Full Story: University World News
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Rankings and their impact for French universities
by Stephanie Braudeau
Last Friday 3rd December 2010, the QS Intelligence Unit was represented at a conference organised by the group L’Etudiant/Educpros about rankings.
Name of the event :“ Classements et Rankings: Que vont-ils encore changer dans le paysage de l’enseignement supérieur ?’’ Rankings : What will they change in the higher education scene?
Audience: French and Belgian universities, Business Schools, engineering schools, journalists and organizations specialised in the higher education sector.
Key themes: Rankings and their stakes and impact, strategies chosen by universities and the type of communication to adopt regarding rankings.
QSIU Research Manager Baerbel Eckelmann was among the key note speakers during a workshop called ‘Stakes and impact of rankings’ where she explained to the audience how QSIU collects data, the weightings and the importance of indicators. QS Marketing and Communications Director Isabelle Pasmantier and Junior Analyst Stephanie Braudeau also attended the conference to help answer questions. Continue Reading
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