The Director of the Institute of Public  Policy Research and the MP for Orpington has made a case for the importance of foreign students at UK universities, which fell by 1 percent in terms of market share between 2000 and 2009. The argument for international students is based on the notion that 15 percent of students end of staying in the country and contribute to the economy as well as contribute to innovation. The doing away with dodgy colleges has paved a way for government policies to welcome foreign students who may become the next leaders of industry.

A new Rankings were produced by a the group of research intensive institutions Universitas 21 last week. The researchers analysed 48 countries using 20 indicators under the umbrella of four major issues: resources, output, connectivity, and environment. The top countries are the US, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Denmark, and Switzerland. The researchers say that although international ranking systems are plentiful, there is no quantitative rankings which takes account of  how a nation educates their students, and how varying countries with complicated systems support and develop academic excellence.

The partnership between Yale University and the National University of Singapore to create a liberal arts college in the Asian country hit headlines when it was first announced. Now that plans are underway, opposition to the scheme is being raised with Yale’s arts and science faculty asking questions regarding concerns over Singapore’s civil liberties record. In addition fresh discussion surrounding who has the rights to use Yale’s brand is causing a stir particularly as the joint venture will not yield a degree from the prestigious American university. Nevertheless plans for the partnership appears to be moving forward with applicants already applying for the 2017 semester and a new president being announced this summer.

The new QS World University Rankings by Subject will be released in four tranches, beginning with the social sciences. They will feature improvements to the methodology introduced last year in the first ever international rankings of individual subjects, as well as an extension into new academic areas. Universities will continue to be ranked by academic reputation, employer reputation and research citations, with weightings tailored to each subject.

Last year’s exercise highlighted areas of excellence in universities that may not compete at the top level across all subjects, as well as confirming the status of the leaders in the overall QS World University Rankings.

The first 26 subject rankings attracted huge interest in 2011. Although dominated by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the results allowed more than 550 universities to demonstrate their strength in particular fields. Among the new subjects to be ranked will be Education and Communication and Media Studies, both of which attract large numbers of international students.

After the publication of social science results will come further launches focusing on engineering and technology, the sciences and the arts and humanities.

Ben Sowter, who will be responsible for the rankings as head of research at QS, said: “”We knew there was a demand for better information on individual subjects, not just whole universities, and the very positive reaction to the first rankings confirmed this. There will be improvements, as well as more subjects, in the second round so they should be even more useful to prospective students.”

Paul Thurman, Professor of Statistics at Columbia University, New York, and a member of the advisory board for the QS World University Rankings, said the subject rankings could represent a “sea change” in the information used to choose universities. “Research shows students are likely to know what they want to study, and these rankings help students find the best places to do just that,” he said. “Long gone, or long going, perhaps, are the days when only a school’s umbrella ‘brand’ matters.”

Recent statistics released by the Office for National Statistics in the UK reveals that the graduate unemployability rate stood at 18.9% for the last quarter of 2011. With tuition fees rising this year, many are saying that students will be more of a conscientious consumer and will be looking toward institutions to provide them with money for value. Institutions, as set out by the White Paper produced last year,  must publish figures on employability. Although some universities have expanded their career services, some students are saying this is not enough and that they need a more personalised service. However some institutions say that a mix of services including industrial placements, curriculum tailored for job preparedness, and performance measures for career counsellors is the way forward.

Despite some criticism, the authors behind  U-Multirank, which allows people and institutions to tailor their own ranking by selecting indicators, are going ahead with the ranking which will cost an estimated $5.2 million dollars. Jordi Currell says that the ranking is evidence–based and that its publication will allow universities to improve their performance. The pilot is due to be released at the tail end of 2013. They are aiming to expand their ranking, which was originally based on EU countries, to the global community. However some, including IREG vice-president Waldemar Siwinksi has urged the authors to include more data from national systems.

Canadian university officials are sending a delegation to Brazil in order to establish collaborations and research agreements. This is the biggest delegation, which represents 95 universities, which Canada has organised in order to tap into fruitful networking opportunities to further international exchanges. Brazil is forecasted to become the world’s fifth biggest economy in five years’ time.

Scimago, which publishes the Iberoamerican Ranking has just released their 2012 results. Universidade de São Paulo, UNAM, and Universidade Estadual de Campinas top the list. The top six, with exception to UNAM and Universitat de Barcelona, all hail from Brazil. The team behind the rankings use a mix of bibliometrics, international collaborations, and calculation of normalised impact which measures institutions’ scientific impact against global averages.

Our presentation focuses on the student as central to QS ranking and evaluation initiatives with a particular focus on the persistent inclusion of employability factors in our work. The slides and accompanying paper are available on the following links.

IREG-6 Presentation Slides

IREG-6 Paper

There, the Head of QS Intelligence Unit shared his insights on “Research Excellence: Results from the largest survey of academic opinion”. You can watch the video here:

We cannot tolerate institutions overtly soliciting specific responses to our surveys and any institution found doing so may have their survey responses for the given year invalidated. Our policy is documented here.

The above is an an anonymous example of an institution breaching these guidelines. This does not reflect well on the said institution and not only will it result in responses being invalidated, repeated breaches may result in our disclosing the identities of institutions undertaking such action.

Just don’t do it.

Open universities are proliferating in India. The Indira Gandhi National Open University has four million students, and an open university in Bihar which is one of the country’s most under educated regions, has seen an increase in enrolment of over 38,000 students in the last ten years. Many are saying that this is the answer to the country’s accessibility problems, where the population is growing by a rapid rate but there is a lack of universities to accommodate the growing number of students. Open universities educate approximately 15% of students, with many from poorer backgrounds. Some however are saying that open universities do not track drop-out rates and that the quality of courses should be carefully tracked so that outcomes can be closely examined.

Universities are receiving hefty fines for recruiting more students than is allotted by the government. The Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) have fined between 20-25 universities, including the London Metropolitan University for almost six million pounds. The university recruited 1,550 students beyond the target. Applications for university grew in previous years because students are looking to avoid paying higher fees this autumn.

The British government announced stricter rules on visas today. Graduates used to be able to stay in the country for two years under the post-work study visa, however the government has scrapped that scheme and instead is implementing restrictions that will allow, they say, for the best graduates to remain in the country. Under the new rules, graduates will be able to stay in the country after they have received an offer of employment with a minimum salary and from an employer who has been accredited by the border agency. The amount students must hold in funds to support themselves has also increased. Universities are concerned that these restrictions will harm the sector’s ability to attract international students, a scenario that some top destination countries had to face this year. The British government says that the move is intended to curb abuses which saw a record number of students remaining in the country in recent years.

The Kenyan government announced it will rank its universities in a scheme to commence in April. The Higher Education Permanent Secretary Professor Crispus Kiamba says that the initiative will hopefully spark competition and the auditing will help to identify poor performing institutions. The rankings, the government hopes, will also help attract foreign students. A survey was sent to higher education experts, administrators, parents, and students to help them identify appropriate indicators to be utilised for the rankings exercise.

Paris also offers a student concentration that belies its status as a major global capital. With 16 universities in the QS World University Rankings, Paris has an unrivalled variety and concentration of globally recognised institutions, contributing to its famed student scene. The city’s Latin Quarter in particular is a hub of student activity, with a cluster of famous institutions including the Sorbonne, École Normal Supérieure and École des Mines de Paris. This means that while Paris is a large and diverse capital it also has the sort of student-dominated core that one would expect to find in a smaller university town.

Another aspect in which the French capital excels is in the number of domestic and international employers seeking to recruit its graduates. Parisian graduates are identified as priority targets by employers both in France and all across Europe, reflecting the solid graduate skills gained through its teaching-intensive undergraduate system, and the internationally-minded nature of Parisian graduates. Despite the continent’s current financial uncertainties, Paris offers a wealth of graduate opportunities due to its position at the heart of the EU.

Another feature of the top-ranked European cities is their high score for quality of living, based on the annual Mercer Quality of Living Index, which takes into account factors such as safety, public services and infrastructure, recreation and environment. Vienna, ranked fifth overall here, was the top city in the world for quality of living in 2011, and other major European student cities to feature near the top of the table include Munich, Zurich, Berlin, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Dublin and Paris.

For the full results, visit www.topuniversities.com.

Online education received a boost recently from former tenured professor of computer science at Stanford University, who quit his position in order to establish Udacity, a start-up company aiming to provide affordable online classes. With the US economy stagnating and tuition fees rising, the initiative is hailed by many as an important step toward levelling the opportunity for participation in higher education. Other free or low-cost online programmes are making a mark in the states, MIT offers an open platform for their lectures and have gone one step further by establishing MITx, which allows people to gain credentials.  Some argue that online education is the way forward for students looking for outcomes and that the model can be based on Amazon for example, where products, or in this case classes, or rated by users.

Women are increasingly attending universities in the Middle East, thanks to some Arab government’s goals in the 1990s to prioritise women’s participation in higher education. However after two decades of participation, women are still lagging behind in terms of attaining high-ranking positions in universities, and changing the perception of old gender stereotypes is still a challenge. Women are also pushed toward ‘feminine’ degrees such as the humanities and the social sciences.  Despite advances such as increased participation, over 50% in some universities in Saudi Arabia, attitudes and career advancement is still seen as far from equal.

As global rankings have reached its eight years in existence, University World News has released a retrospective of sorts.  Although measuring research can take on multiple incarnations – citations per paper, h-index, reputation, citations per faculty, publications – measuring teaching quality  has been less successful. Some systems are moving in the right direction such as the U-Multirank project which utilises student satisfaction surveys to measure teaching.  Other characteristics of global rankings which have become mainstays is a strong brand, and the importance of establishing itself first on the global stage. In addition, a trend moving forward is the importance of having an interactive platform for people to change the weightings applied to each indicator as students choosing their preferred university is a subjective experience.  The so-called missing indicator, some argue,  in global rankings is a measurement of students’ intelligence, an indicator used by the ubiquitous US News & World Report.

The FT has recently released its Global MBA rankings with the Stanford Graduate School of Business topping the chart, followed by heavy-hitters Harvard Business, Wharton, LBS, and Columbia. Half of the list hail from the United States while schools in China are making inroads. Canada has five schools on the list, Spain and Singapore have three, and Hong Kong has two. Some notable entries include the Indian Institute of Management (11) and the National University of Singapore (23). The FT utilised different indicators for their rankings including graduate salaries, questionnaires and research measures.