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 16.4.12
- India: Five-year plan calls for a significant increase in student numbers
- Canada: Business schools paving the way for internationalisation
- Australia: Paper discusses whether Australian institutions are preparing Chinese students for domestic employability
- Italy: Controversial move causing an uproar
HE News Brief 12.3.12
- Australia: Australian universities lose twenty percent of its foreign student numbers
- World: Institutions in the US, Japan, and South Korea top list of WIPO’s patent filers
- UK: Twenty years later and former polytechnics are making strides
- China: Thousand Foreign Experts program seeks to recruit foreign university staff and entrepreneurs
HE News Brief 5.3.12
- Europe: Research ministers call for bigger role for social sciences in Horizon 2020
- India: Massive rise in number of Indian students sitting Graduate Record Examination
- US: Liberal arts education on the rise in Asia
- Asia Pacific: Australia-China higher education forum announced
HE News Brief 6.2.12
- United States: Online education given a boost by ex-tenured professor at Stanford
- Middle East: Increased participation in higher education has not translated to equality for women
- Rankings: Musings on global rankings as they enter their ninth year
- Global: FT releases its Global MBA rankings
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 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 Continue Reading
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. Continue Reading
HE News Brief 18.10.11
by Abby Chau
- UK: A new report outlining the higher education outlook
- LATIN AMERICA: A new rankings of the region has raised questions about governmental spending habits
- INDIA: Foreign branches must adhere to too many restrictions
- US: Some institutions have closed foreign branches
- AUSTRALIA: Trends for international student numbers Continue Reading
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