HE News Brief 8.5.12
- US: Heavy hitters team up to offer free online courses
- Middle East: Spotlight on teaching quality
- Brazil: Affirmative action decision upheld by Supreme Court
Prestigious universities in the States are putting their weight behind free online courses. Harvard and MIT have announced a partnership called edX which will begin enrolment this fall. With 60 million dollars to commence the project, the universities will be offering five courses including classes in engineering and humanities. University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Stanford have also announced a partnership recently called Coursera, which will be offering free online courses. Both MIT and Stanford have already pioneered successful free online course offerings, with MITx enrolling 120,000 students and Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence course signing up 160,00 students.
At a recent conference in Riyadh concerning ‘World-class teaching universities’, the general director for international affairs at the Saudi Ministry of Higher Education has highlighted a strategy to becoming a top teaching university. Salim Al Malik called for universities to evaluate teaching quality and to set up learning centres to train staff, as well as, to make teaching training a component of postgraduate studies. Universities, he said, are measured too heavily on research alone and that teaching should not be relegated in the pursuit of becoming a world-class institution.
Brazil has upheld sweeping affirmative action policies in higher education which allows a quota for enrolling students of African or indigenous descent. Now the country, which has more people of African descent than any other country outside Africa, is starting to tackle the economic and social divides that many are saying are linked to racial politics. Supporters of the bill say that they hope this policy will not only tackle social issues but help bridge the learning gap necessary for job creation.
HE News Brief 23.4.12
- UK: Employability at centre stage as tuition fees are set to increase
- EU: U-Multirank moving forward despite some criticism
- Canada: Delegation heading to Brazil to form colloborations
- Iberoamerica: Scimago releases its 2012 results
HE News Brief 2.4.12
- Iraq: Institutions struggling to rebuild
- UAE: Institutions submitting data for 61 indicators for evaluation
- Chile: The imperatives of Classification
- UK: Institutions in the ‘middle’ set to see a 10% shortfall
HE News Brief 26.3.12
- Canada:Canada to receive 3,000 Brazilian students
- UK: Government injection for research and development
- Middle East: Comparative data for MENA required
- Vietnam: Lawmakers to vote on autonomy for universities
HE News Brief 19.3.12
- UK: Elite Russell Group of universities announce four new members
- Mexico: New regulations for private institutions
- Uganda: Private universities emerge in Uganda
Leaving their 1994 Group membership , Queen Mary, Durham, Exeter, and York have all joined the elite Russell Group, which now has 24 members. The Group represents the UK’s elite group of research intensive institutions including Oxford, Cambridge, and Imperial. According to the Research Assessment Exercise in 2008, 60% of research in the UK is produced by the Russell Group. Professor Michael Arthur, chair of the Russell Group and the vice-chancellor of Leeds University, says that the four institutions were invited to join the Group because of their innovation and research intensity across a broad range of subjects.
The number of private institutions have grown considerably in Mexico, from 995 in 2006 to close to 1,500 in the current year. The number of students attending these universities increased from 400,000 in 2006 to one million in 2012 and come mostly from underprivileged backgrounds. The rapid growth rates are prompting many to be concerned with the quality of education received at private institutions, particularly because there are no quality assurance regulations in place. In order to curb this, the Ministry of Education has announced that private institutions will go through a thorough assessment process by national assessment bodies to ensure standards are up to scratch. The government is trying to balance increasing student enrolment numbers (Mexico (37%) trails behind Chile (56%) and Argentina (71%) for instance) with policing new institutions for quality.
A year after the furore surrounding Makerere University, which was once known as the ‘Harvard of Africa’, many are contemplating the role of private institutions in the country. Makerere, some are saying suffers from overcrowding which may have contributed to the strikes that took place last year. Private institutions, which total 30 in the country, are viable alternatives for many however some worry that the rapid growth in private institutions may contribute to further divisions within society. Mahmood Mamdani, director of Makerere’s Institute of Social Research, says that ‘commericialisation’ of higher education may lead to an even deeper divide between the rich and poor. Private institutions at the moment costs more than public universities and Professor Mamdani worries that only richer students could afford to go to a private institution while poorer students are relegated to overcrowded and badly managed public institutions
Public spending and university quality: is there a link?
by Martin Juno
Broadly speaking, higher education systems range from those relaying almost entirely on public funding to those mainly supported by private sources. Of course, there are a variety of options between those extreme points and most countries try mixed schemes.
Which system provides the better outcomes in terms of university teaching and research quality?
An interesting exercise that may provide a general answer to this question is to compare the relative performance of institutions operating in different funding environments. In order to conduct this analysis we used the higher education finance indicators provided by UNESCO (available here) , establishing four range groups (or quartiles) of public spending on tertiary education as a proportion of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the countries . Then the top 400 QS World University Rankings (QSWUR) institutions – available on topuniversities.com- were distributed among each spending level quartile and the average scores for every group were calculated.
Continue Reading
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 Continue Reading
QS University Rankings: Latin America™ launch event a big success
By Danny Byrne
The first ever ranking of Latin American universities was launched by QS on 4th October with an event at Canning House in London. Attended by an important number of embassies from Latin America in UK, journalists, universities in the UK, and other key stakeholders, the event was sponsored by IELTS and supported by the Foreign Commonwealth Office and the Canning House, and viewed live online by over 2,000 people among universities, students, employers, media and independent organisations from Latin America and other countries in the world.
Ben Sowter – Launch of the QS University Rankings: Latin America from QSIU Latin America on Vimeo.
The event was opened by Professor Maxine Molyneu, Director of the Institute for the Study of the Americas, who welcomed the new ranking as a positive development for universities in the region.
“This exercise draws attention to the significant achievements that Latin America has made in higher education, and serves as a reminder that a good number of universities have attained international standing for the quality of their research and teaching programs,” Molyneu stated. “The information will help to support international exchange and collaboration between scholars and institutions, and that in turn will help to advance knowledge”.
Maxine Molyneux – Launch of the QS University Rankings: Latin America from QSIU Latin America on Vimeo.
Introducing the new exercise, QS Managing Director Nunzio Quacquarelli situated QS University Rankings: Latin America™ within an evolution toward more nuanced and targeted QS research exercises, stretching from the first QS World University Rankings® in 2004 through to the QS Asian University Rankings™, QS World University Rankings® by Subject, QS Stars™, and the now QS University Rankings: Latin America™.
“QS serves the informational need of students and parents first and foremost, and we have set out to innovate in the information we provide since our launch in 1990,” he stated. “These rankings meet a real need for information for a major part of the world’s population”.
QS Head of Research Ben Sowter pointed to increased student mobility as one of the factors driving the need for greater comparative information on the region’s universities, citing as an example the 250% growth in international students in Chile between 2000 and 2008. “There has been a dramatic change in some of the migration patterns and some of the decisions being made by international students in the region,” Sowter stated. “While much of that mobility stems from within Latin America, increasingly European students are beginning to look to the region as a potential destination.”
Sowter outlined the detailed consultation with Latin American institutions that QS undertook while finalizing the methodology for the rankings. A survey of over 110 institutions in the region identified the importance of factors such as the proportion of academics with a PhD, web presence, and research papers per faculty, which were introduced for the first time alongside more staple QS rankings criteria such as academic and employer reputation, student/faculty ratio and research citations.
“University systems in Latin America are now among the fastest changing and fastest growing in the world,” said Sowter. “We have been able to gather an unprecedented level of information to put together a much richer comparative picture of Latin American higher education than has ever been compiled before”.
QS University Rankings: Latin America™ Project Manager Liliana Casallas emphasised the wider importance of the rankings for universities in the region, and outlined the extensive consultation that ensured that data was available from all universities in the region: “This has just been a very valuable exercise for universities in data collection, integration and communication within the different departments”, Casallas stated. “For some it has been easier than for others, but this is one of the indirect benefits of participation in this type of study”.
Casallas also stressed that the rankings will expand and develop as they mature, with universities becoming more familiar with data collection processes and continual work being carried out by QS to develop new assessment criteria. “The next edition of QS will have more challenges, such as developments in the methodology, expanding and improving channels with universities for data collection, strengthening data collection in Central America in particular, increasing our operational capacity, and including new partners and sponsors”.
Stephen Carey (IELTS) – Launch of the QS University Rankings: Latin America from QSIU Latin America on Vimeo.
To follow the video conferences and dowload the presentations please click here
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 Continue Reading
Supplement QS University Rankings: Latin America 2011/2012
Supplement 2011/2012 for the first QS University Rankings: Latin America
- Ben Sowter introduces this year’s research and the results tables.
- Danny Byrne reflects on the results of the rankings and looks at some of the issues surrounding access to higher education for students from low-income backgrounds.
- John O’Leary introduces QS Stars, a new university rating system that has been implemented during 2011.
- Liliana Casallas looks at the status of collaboration agreements between Latin American universities and those elsewhere in the world.
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