QSIU HE Digest – Slashing Student Enrolment for Quality
- Vietnam: Slashing Enrolment for Quality
- Australia: New Australian MOOC
- Canada: $23m for international education strategy
- UK: Competition & UK Universities
QSIU HE Digest – India Should Look to MOOCs
- India: India Should Look to MOOCs
- Egypt: 10 Year HE Plan
- Japan: First Overseas Campus
- UK: Cheap Courses Equate Poor Quality
QSIU HE Digest – The Law School Crisis
- US: The Law School Crisis
- China: End to Free PG Tuition
- Kenya: Policy for Specialist Unis
- Norway: Losing International Talent
QSIU HE Digest – Traditional University Revenue Sources Questioned
- Funding: University Revenue Sources
- India:Study Abroad Trends
- US:Credit for MOOCs in California
- UK:Universities to Go to Schools
Student protest against tuition fees in Hungary
Tuition fee hikes spread to other European countries. Maybe Hungarian tuition fees are not as mediatised as in the United Kingdom but it is worth mentioning them.
According the OECD report, Education at a Glance 2011, during the 2008-2009 academic year, 25% of full-time Hungarian students were paying tuition fees to access higher education, and the vast majority (75%) were state financed with a scholarship. In 2013, it has recently been announced 80% of students will now face paying annual tuition fees of between $446 and $892 (HUF50,000 and HUF100,000)*. Although the number of part-time scholarships in Hungary will increase from 5,000 in 2011 to 46,330 on 2013, full-time scholarships will, nonetheless, dramatically drop from 53,450 in 2011 to 10,480 in 2013. Furthermore, if students want to apply for a loan, it will be done under some conditions such as after graduation they will have to work in Hungary for twice as long as their study duration otherwise, they find a job abroad, they will have to pay back the outstanding amount. Students protested in mid-December 2012 in Budapest against the introduction of tuition fees, concerned poorer students will be those suffering the most.
*Exchange rate of the 4th January 2013.
Behind the balance sheets: how will your university tuition fees be spent?
Yale University’s latest financial report shows that income from students – including tuition fees, accommodation and other charges – accounted for only 8.6% of the university’s total operating revenue in the 2010-11 academic year.
Other major sources of funding for universities are governments, businesses and non-profit organizations, income from investments, and private donors such as alumni (past students).
University spending on staff salaries and benefits
Many universities publish details of their income and expenditure in an annual report, but they rarely use the same categories, so direct comparison is tricky.
However, one clear pattern is that for most universities, the largest chunk of spending is dedicated to staff salaries and benefits (such as child care, health insurance and pensions).
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Fewer applications for UK universities
Two days ago, the University and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) revealed the details of the drop in university application in the United Kingdom (UK) for 2012 tuition fees months after the government announced that universities would be able to charge up to £9,000 for tuition fees. Students had from September 2011 until 30th June 2012 to apply for undergraduate studies in the UK. Continue Reading
HE News Brief 30.4.12
- UK: The government has announced it will lift student place restrictions in 2013
- Australia: Discussion on capping international student numbers
- US: Call for boycott of journal publishers growing in momentum
- China: Fake degrees and qualifications on the rise
HE News Brief 27.2.12
- Australia: Australian universities may jeopardise its appeal in the Asian market
- UK: New structures in September causing anxiety
- Asia: Liberal arts education on the rise in Asia
- Rankings: Undergraduate course offerings decreased since 2006
Diverse Top 500 shows benefits of sustained investment
by John O’Leary
With more countries than ever represented, this year’s rankings reflect global investment in higher education.
When Cambridge topped the QS World University Rankings® for the first time last year, some commentators thought it a one-off interruption to Harvard’s global supremacy. But Cambridge shows today that its pre-eminence was no fluke by retaining the leadership in the 2011 rankings.
Harvard has closed the gap fractionally on Cambridge, but the decline in staffing levels that cost it top place in 2010 has not been reversed. Although it dominated the series of subject rankings published by QS in recent months, it remains second in the world overall.
Almost 3,000 institutions were included in the research that produced the latest rankings and a record 712 feature in the results. The outcome shows the increasingly competitive nature of global higher education, with 32 countries represented in the top 200, three more than last year.
While the United States remains the superpower of the university world, occupying 13 of the top 20 places and more than 50 of the top 200, the leading universities of Europe and Asia are making up ground. The United Kingdom has cemented its place as the nearest challenger, taking the other seven places in the top 20, including four of the top ten.
The latest rankings demonstrate the link between sustained investment and academic strength. They deliberately to do not measure institutional wealth, but the results show the benefits of sharply increased funding in several countries and the impact of cuts elsewhere. China, for example, which has seen the world’s biggest investment programme in higher education over the past decade, has more universities in the ranking than ever before. Nearly all of them have improved their positions since 2010.
Several of the German universities selected for extra funding under the government’s Excellence Initiative have also risen in the rankings. In the US, however, where budget cuts and falls in endowment have led to staffing reductions in state and private universities, the result has been an overall decline in ranking positions. While most of the top performers have maintained or even improved their placings, some of those outside the top 50 have been overtaken. Continue Reading
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