By Edwin Mutai. Foreign universities offering degrees in Kenya without accreditation will be fined at least Sh10 million and their promoters sent to jail for three years under a new law meant to safeguard education standards.
President Mwai Kibaki Thursday assented to the Universities Bill 2012, which provides for regulation of universities and centralised admission of students to tertiary institutions. It also establishes the Commission on University Education (CUE) to replace the Commission of Higher Education in overseeing university standards.
The new law also establishes the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service to replace the Joint Admissions Board, which has been recruiting students for regular courses in public universities. Read more...

By Leanne Jansen. Durban - The Department of Higher Education has warned students to be wary of “registered” private colleges which offer certificates, diplomas and degrees but do not have its stamp of approval.
Department spokesman Vuyelwa Qinga said there was worry over the current trend which saw institutions secure registration for one or two programmes, and then “hide behind” this status to offer other unregistered courses.
The Mercury recently reported on how a private design college in Durban was shut down for offering unaccredited programmes in contravention of the Higher Education Act of 1997.
In a letter to parents and students, the management of Westville-based Style Design College said it had found itself without full accreditation for certain programmes because of how “complex” the system was, and the inordinate delays in processing applications. Read more...

By John Ross for The Australian. The proportion of employed graduates has risen since Australian universities embarked on their latest phase of expansion. But the proportion of graduates in professional and managerial positions has declined, data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics reveal.
The figures lend weight to speculation that degrees are becoming entry tickets into the work force rather than marks of distinction.
Andrew Norton, a higher education specialist at the Grattan Institute, an independent think tank, said there was anecdotal evidence that postgraduate qualifications were replacing bachelor's degrees as essential criteria for many jobs. "It's a chicken and egg problem -- are people getting postgraduate qualifications because employers are demanding them or because they think it [result in] a higher salary?
"I would rate a few years' industry experience way above a postgraduate degree for a lot of jobs." Read more...

By Grace Karram. Canada’s University of Waterloo announced this autumn that it will close its Dubai campus after only three years of operation. The withdrawal is due to financial uncertainty as a result of low student enrolment.
But the university does not plan to withdraw entirely from the region; it will stay in the United Arab Emirates, but with a redefined role. According to one report, this revamped agenda may focus on “research linkages and graduate studies”.
Research and graduate education are anything but a new role for Western institutions like Waterloo. For decades, a large portion of university internationalisation has happened in these sectors. Returning to these mainstays may not be a viable fallback option for globally aspiring universities that want to compete in the world’s high-paced education hubs.
Waterloo’s dilemma has been shared by about a dozen Western universities that have established campuses in emerging economies only to pull out later when the programmes were not as lucrative as anticipated. The majority of these are long-established Western universities with rich traditions of research and scholarship. Read more...

Dear Editor
This letter is in response to the article by Erin Millar, published in University World News on 18 November 2012.
I would like to draw your attention to the following:
I have no recollection of having been formally approached by Millar for an interview for University World News at the WISE 2012 conference in Doha. Millar says that she captured my words immediately after my official presentation at the summit on Thursday 15 November when many other participants were trying to speak with me.
If this is the case, which is as a matter of fact possible but sincerely forgotten by me due to my fatigue after my presentation and the debate which followed, my words should be considered as merely spontaneous and certainly with no connection with what the Director General of UNESC0 might have said to Millar and about which I was not informed at all.
As a UNESC0 official I have always tried to pay attention not to comment or to publicly criticise any statements made by UNESCO’s Director General at the conference or in any other circumstances.
Therefore, I would appreciate that University World News publish my response as a sign of respect for its readers and for the sake of deontology.
Yours sincerely
Georges Haddad, Director, Education Research and Prospective, Education Sector, UNESCO. Read more...