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 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
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
QS University Rankings: Latin America – Brazilian dominance points to future economic might
By Danny Byrne
Universities throughout Latin America are in a period of transition. Though precise circumstances vary by country, factors such as the growth in scientific research, massification of social demand for higher education, increased student mobility and the rise of private universities have exerted an influence across the region. These rankings aim to more closely reflect these circumstances than is possible in the overall QS World University Rankings®, as well as giving greater exposure to up-and-coming Latin American institutions.
The new QS methodology employs criteria that address region-specific issues, such as the proportion of faculty with a PhD, research productivity per capita and web presence. We have also drawn on by far the largest surveys of Latin American academics and employers ever conducted.
From an international perspective, a look at the top 200 provides further evidence of the emergence of Brazil as a future economic power alongside fellow BRIC nations Russia, India and China. Universidade de São Paulo (USP) tops the table, with Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) and Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais joining it in the top ten. There are an impressive eight Brazilian universities in the top 20, and 31 in the top 100.
Higher education has been earmarked as the engine-room to help Brazil fulfil its massive potential for economic growth, with enrolment tripling from two to six million in the last decade. However, the rankings also show the extent to which Brazil has prioritized research. A remarkable eight of the top ten for papers per faculty are Brazilian, alongside nine of the top ten for the proportion of academic with a PhD. Continue Reading
HE News Brief 16.8.11
by Abby Chau
- RANKINGS: Publication of the Academic Ranking of World Universities
- LATIN AMERICA: Alba member states looking to harmonise higher education
- SOUTH KOREA: Auditing of institutions to ascertain whether they are fit for foreign students
- EAST AFRICA: Plans for harmonising of higher education
- LATIN AMERICA: Region increasing study abroad programmes Continue Reading
Too many graduates, or too few?
by Mansoor Iqbal, Education Writer
Competition for jobs may be intense, but the vital role played by graduates in economic growth and recovery means that some voices believe the world needs more, not fewer.
It has recently been reported that no less than 83 applicants apply for every graduate level role in the UK. The total number of graduate jobs is expected to rise by 2.6% in 2011, and it should be remembered that graduates can often be pretty indiscriminate when applying for a first job, but the figure is still pretty daunting. It is no wonder, then, that one proposal in the recent white paper presented to the government by the UK’s Minister for Universities, David Willetts, was that universities publish data on how many of their graduates are able to find work – this is one of the primary concerns of students in the 21st century (as reflected in the methodology of the QS World University Rankings®, which takes into account the prestige afforded to universities by graduate employers).
Graduate unemployment figures inevitably add to these concerns. While the UK is used as an example here, the problems are certainly not limited to that particular nation – graduates in countries as prosperous as the US and China are also facing stiff competition for jobs (though it should be noted that graduates are generally less likely to be unemployed that non-graduates). The almost inevitable consequence of this is voices calling for the number of students in higher education to be greatly reduced, particularly while we are still living in the shadow of the financial crisis that occurred at the end of the last decade. Continue Reading
Six Latin American universities make the grade in new QS World University Rankings: Arts and Humanities
by Liliana Casallas
Six Latin American universities were featured in the QS World University Rankings®: Arts and Humanities released on http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings, revealing strength in Latin America’s universities in Modern Languages, Philosophy, Geography, History, English and Linguistics.
- Brazil, with four universities featured, is best-performing country in the region
- Mexico’s Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) ranks in top 100 in five of the six ranked subjects
- Argentina’s Universidad de Buenos Aires in top 100 for Modern languages and English
HE News Brief 5.4.11
by Abby Chau
IN THIS EDITION
- LATIN AMERICA: Regional and national university rankings emerging
- UNITED KINGDOM: Could number of high charging universities undermine the whole idea and result in reduced places for students?
- CZECH REPUBLIC: Foreign students quadrupled in four years
- GLOBAL: Britain’s Royal Society report that the landscape of international research collaboration has changed dramatically
HE News Brief 22.3.11
by Abby Chau
IN THIS EDITION
- CZECH REPUBLIC: Ministry of Education to implement university classification system
- VENEZUELA: Student protests over HE funding
- IRELAND: Ellen Hazelkorn publishes her book on Rankings and their influence on Higher Education
- BRAZIL: Employers investing heavily in higher education progress
- UNITED KINGDOM: Durham joins Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial and Exeter in announcing their intention to charge maximum fees
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