Par Nadia Gorbatko. Quelques mois après la ren­trée, Laurent Wauquiez, ministre de l'Enseignement supé­rieur et de la Recherche depuis le mois de juin der­nier, revient sur les réformes en cours au sein des uni­ver­si­tés et déve­loppe sa vision de leur ave­nir. Entretien.
Comment jugez-vous le dérou­le­ment du pre­mier semestre universitaire?
Cette ren­trée a été celle de la concré­ti­sa­tion du chan­ge­ment en cours depuis 2007. Des réformes extrê­me­ment ambi­tieuses comme l'autonomie des uni­ver­si­tés ou l'arrêté licence (1) ont été lan­cées. Elles sont aujourd'hui qua­si­ment concré­ti­sées : au 1er jan­vier 2012, l'ensemble des uni­ver­si­tés ont accédé à l'autonomie. Plus per­sonne n'en conteste le prin­cipe. C'est une belle vic­toire. Cette ren­trée a aussi été pour moi l'occasion de m'attaquer à un autre chan­tier : l'amélioration des condi­tions d'études des étudiants, élément essen­tiel de leur réus­site. Dès sep­tembre, j'ai ainsi mis en place le ver­se­ment d'un dixième mois de bourse. J'ai lancé le pas­se­port étudiant pour faci­li­ter leur acces­sion au loge­ment. Enfin, der­nière opé­ra­tion à laquelle je tenais beau­coup, l'offre de tablettes étudiantes à moins d'un euro par jour est com­mer­cia­li­sée. De véri­tables pro­grès ont été réa­li­sés et je veille­rai à ce que cela continue.
Quel bilan faites-vous, quatre ans après son vote, de la Loi rela­tive aux liber­tés et res­pon­sa­bi­lité des univer­si­tés (LRU)?
Sur les cinq der­nières années, nous avons modi­fié en pro­fon­deur le visage de nos uni­ver­si­tés avec un objec­tif clair: construire l'université du 21ème siècle, ren­for­cer son attrac­ti­vité et sa com­pé­ti­ti­vité, main­te­nir le niveau d'excellence aca­dé­mique, tout en ren­for­çant sa mis­sion d'insertion pro­fes­sion­nelle. Le mou­ve­ment de refon­da­tion de l'université, engagé par le Gouvernement en 2007, a per­mis d'aligner notre sys­tème uni­ver­si­taire sur les meilleurs stan­dards inter­na­tio­naux et d'accélérer l'entrée de la France dans l'économie de la connaissance.
En quoi la LRU rend-t-elle les uni­ver­si­tés plus attractives?
Elle repré­sente une vraie révo­lu­tion ins­ti­tu­tion­nelle. Pour la pre­mière fois, les res­sources finan­cières et humaines, l'immobilier ou les sys­tèmes infor­ma­tiques sont gérés direc­te­ment par les établis­se­ments. S'agissant des cur­sus, nous avons mis en place un ensei­gne­ment per­son­na­lisé tourné vers la réus­site de cha­cun. L'adaptation de leur offre de for­ma­tion aux besoins écono­miques du monde de l'entreprise est au cœur des réformes. C'est notam­ment ce qu'institutionnalise l'arrêté licence que j'ai pris cet été.
Le pro­ces­sus va-t-il se pour­suivre comme prévu avec le trans­fert du patri­moine immobilier?
La dévo­lu­tion du patri­moine est l'étape ultime de l'autonomie. Depuis la ren­trée 2011, trois uni­ver­si­tés sont pro­prié­taires de leur patri­moine: Clermont 1, Toulouse 1 et Poitiers. L'Etat trans­fère non seule­ment le patri­moine immo­bi­lier, mais aussi la res­pon­sa­bi­lité de pla­ni­fier et de finan­cer tous les pro­jets. Pour ces établis­se­ments, c'est un atout sup­plé­men­taire pour construire leur stra­té­gie. Sur le Campus de Poitiers, par exemple, cela a per­mis la réno­va­tion des amphi­théâtres et la construc­tion d'un lear­ning cen­ter. Neuf autres uni­ver­si­tés sou­haitent deve­nir pro­prié­taires de leurs patrimoines.
Qu'est-il envi­sagé pour apla­nir les dif­fi­cul­tés bud­gé­taires de cer­taines uni­ver­si­tés confron­tées, notam­ment, à un accrois­se­ment de leur masse salariale?
Sur les 150 établis­se­ments d'enseignement supé­rieur, seuls trois connaissent des dif­fi­cul­tés pas­sa­gères. C'est l'arbre qui cache la forêt d'une réus­site incon­tes­table, alors que 147 établis­se­ments ont par­fai­te­ment su gérer le bud­get alloué. Bien sûr, il peut y avoir des dif­fi­cul­tés pas­sa­gères, mais l'autonomie est un pro­ces­sus d'apprentissage pour les uni­ver­si­tés et pour l'Etat. Nous devons apprendre à gérer ensemble, serei­ne­ment, les quelques dif­fi­cul­tés qui appa­raissent ponc­tuel­le­ment et qui ne sau­raient remettre en cause tous les béné­fices de l'autonomie pour les étudiants et les per­son­nels de nos établis­se­ments d'enseignement supé­rieurs. Face à ces défis, nous accom­pa­gnons ces établis­se­ments : sur la masse sala­riale, par exemple, un effort excep­tion­nel a été fait. Nous avons trans­féré aux uni­ver­si­tés plus de moyens que ce que l'Etat payait préa­la­ble­ment. Il faut les aider à rat­tra­per le manque d'investissements du passé, indé­pen­dam­ment de la cou­leur poli­tique des gou­ver­ne­ments précédents.
Comment l'université du 21e siècle pourra-t-elle conci­lier excel­lence, attrac­ti­vité et fru­ga­lité budgétaire?
Je consi­dère que les inves­tis­se­ments d'aujourd'hui sont la crois­sance d'aujourd'hui et de demain. La crise ne doit donc pas être un frein aux inves­tis­se­ments dans l'enseignement supé­rieur et la recherche. Toutes les mesures que nous pre­nons inter­viennent dans un contexte de ges­tion rigou­reuse de la dépense publique. Mais celle-ci n'est pas aveugle car nous construi­sons l'avenir de la France en inves­tis­sant dans les sec­teurs stra­té­giques. Dans le pro­jet de loi de finances pour 2012, le sec­teur de l'enseignement supé­rieur et de la recherche a été pré­servé. Tant sur le plan bud­gé­taire que sur le plan fis­cal, l'effort est excep­tion­nel. Illustration de cette poli­tique, le bud­get des uni­ver­si­tés a aug­menté de 23% en moyenne depuis 2007. En cinq ans, l'Etat a accru ses moyens deux fois plus que sur les 10 années précédentes!
Où en est le pro­gramme "inves­tis­se­ments d'avenir"?
Les inves­tis­se­ments sont notre meilleure arme anti­crise. Avec les inves­tis­se­ments d'avenir, nous consa­crons 22 mil­liards d'euros à l'enseignement supé­rieur et nous déployons un accé­lé­ra­teur de com­pé­ti­ti­vité pour la recherche fran­çaise au plus haut niveau mon­dial. Notre rôle est d'accompagner et de favo­ri­ser l'innovation, le meilleur des moteurs pour relan­cer l'économie. Ma convic­tion est que la recherche est la clé de notre ave­nir. C'est le choix poli­tique que nous avons fait au plus fort de la crise. Les pro­jets se mettent en place, et je ne compte pas m'arrêter en si bon chemin.
(1) Le Conseil national de l’enseignement supérieur et de la recherche (Cneser) a adopté, le 12 juillet 2011, un arrêté relatif au diplôme de la licence modifiant celui de 2002.

Par Paul Santelmann, Responsable de la Prospective à l’AFPA. Les périodes électorales sont propices à la relance de projets de réformes en matière d’éducation et de formation. Certains ne sont que la résurrection de vieilles lunes et d’archaïsmes vaguement rabibochés, d’autres s’avèrent des avancées prometteuses… Les différentes modalités de droits individuels à la formation, en l’absence d’un nouvel équilibre entre système éducatif et formation continue, font partie des vieux couplets qui ne correspondent d’ailleurs à aucune demande sociale… Au point où certains rêvent d’un droit obligatoire (oxymore?) à la formation pour les moins qualifiés!
Comme le droit à la santé, le droit à la formation ne prend sens que pour celles et ceux qui en éprouvent le besoin dans un système où les praticiens sont efficaces et compétents ! Le droit à la santé avec des hôpitaux en ruine, des rebouteux en guise de médecins et le primat donné à l’automédication n’est qu’illusion. Le droit à la formation avec des prestataires essentiellement guidés par une rentabilité de court terme, dispensant les mêmes contenus que ceux du système éducatif et sans valeur ajoutée par rapport aux processus de développement des adultes ne serait qu’une bulle financière aux effets virtuels.
En fait dans le champ de l’usage des savoirs par les adultes (ce qui est la seule question qui vaille du point de vus du fléchage des prélèvements obligatoires), ce qui compte ce sont les finalités et les objectifs poursuivis par la société. Le droit à la formation, de ce point de vue, est une abstraction s’il reste dissocié d’un projet de société! Pourtant on peut désormais cerner la priorité essentielle d’un système organisé de formation dédié aux adultes ayant le moins bénéficié de l’ investissement éducatif, en clair un droit à la reconversion professionnelle. Cette priorité s’ impose sous l’ effet de l’accélération des transformations du travail,  de l’installation d’un chômage de masse et de longue durée et du développement d’une zone d’emplois précaires et dévalués qui traduit un sous-investissement dans la professionnalisation de certains emplois (jugés sans grande valeur ajoutée).
Cette priorité permettrait de rompre avec la représentation dominante qui veut que l’occupation d’ un emploi en CDI du bas de l’échelle en début de vie active pour les filles et fils d’ouvriers et d’employés suffit comme ambition collective et individuelle. Dans cette approche les priorités consistent à se focaliser sur les exclus du marché du travail sans comprendre qu’une des causes de l’exclusion des uns est le surplace professionnel des autres ! Rappelons que la France est marquée par le déclin professionnel à mi-carrière de millions de salariés qui n’ont d’autres perspectives que la retraite…
Sans vouloir minorer les autres causes du chômage (sur lesquelles la formation continue n’a guère d’effet) la question des mobilités et des transitions professionnelles accompagnées est le registre principal d’usage de la formation  des actifs les moins qualifiés (les 13 millions d’ouvriers, d’employés et de techniciens de ce pays qu’ils soient en emploi ou au chômage). L’adaptation permanente des salariés aux évolutions des métiers qui relève des responsabilités de l’employeur et du dialogue social dans l’entreprise n’a nul besoin d’usines à gaz pour s’organiser: la jurisprudence a réglé cette question. Par contre l’organisation territoriale d’un droit à la reconversion professionnelle pour tous les actifs contraints ou désireux de changer de métier, d’évoluer professionnellement, de changer de secteur d’activité avec un filet de sécurité suffisant pour tenter cette étape, serait une façon judicieuse d’accentuer les mobilités volontaires, d’appuyer les vrais projets professionnels et vocationnels de nombreux adultes, de redonner sens à l’investissement formation, de traduire en acte le concept de formation différée, de faire converger projets individuels et dynamique économique globale…
Cette finalité aurait également le mérite de restructurer une partie de l’appareil de formation autour d’une ambition exigeante en termes de qualité des réponses à apporter à un public hétérogène en termes de statut (licenciés économiques, salariés, chômeurs) mais marqués par des objectifs de requalification favorisant l’engagement en formation. La dimension multi-statutaire de ce droit qui pourrait être étendu aux fonctionnaires dégagerait une force de frappe budgétaire non négligeable et moins coûteuse que l’actuelle fragmentation des mesures ayant vaguement le même objet (CIF, CSP, promotion sociale, CNAM, formation qualifiantes de l’AFPA et des GRETA…). Enfin cette option permettrait de rapprocher et d’optimiser les instruments de l’orientation, de la VAE et de la formation qualifiante trop souvent segmentés.

Prague, Jan 5 (CTK) - Twenty out of 26 academic university senates yesterday rejected the draft reform of Czech universities and called for protest petitions and strikes, Daniel Feranc, secretary of the Charles University Academic Senate, has told CTK.
The universities should turn to the government with their comments, Feranc said, adding that Education Minister Josef Dobes (Public Affairs, VV) was distorting their objections. Work on the reform has continued for a number of years. It is to introduce university tuition fees.
Due to the disagreement of the academics, the changes have always been postponed.
"The chairmen of the academic senates ask academic senates to consider all the relevant steps with which to make the state power respect the will of members of academic communities and their democratically elected representatives," the resolution passed by the academic senate chairmen said.
"They may consider public protests such as resolutions and petitions and, if need be, demonstrations and strikes," the resolution said.
The university dignitaries lost patience after the Education Ministry failed to deal with their 11 basic comments, Feranc said. If it had not, the minister would have to inform all government members about them, he added. The report on the bill on universities is "expediently misleading and it deliberately distorts the comments submitted by the Council of Universities," Feranc said.
This is why university representatives have sent a letter to the government highlighting the complaints of the academic community, he added. The university dignitaries criticise what they call the unpreparedness of the law on financial help to students and some planned changes. Fewer students are to newly sit on the academic senates. The universities also object to that the titles of professor and senior lecturer are not to have national validity, but only to be linked with the specific university that granted them.
The academics have also rejected the tuition fees. They should start to be paid as from 2013, with the maximum fee of 10,000 crowns ($1=19.893 crowns) for a semester. The planned reform includes the introduction of saving and loans for tuition. The state would guarantee the banks' loans.

By Graham Wheeler. The field of ‘Bibliometrics’ – derived from the Greek ‘biblion’ (meaning book) and the Latin ‘metricus’ (relating to measure) – is defined as the statistical analysis of a body of literature. Although the name for the field has been around for several decades, it is only until recently that with well-managed computer databases and clever citation maps (see Figure 1), researchers are better enabled to measure the impact of academic literature that universities publish.
In December 2011, the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) at Leiden University published figures for the 2011/2012 Leiden Ranking. The Leiden Ranking is a scoring system designed to measure the impact of academic scientific research undertaken in the world’s 500 most research-intensive universities. In addition, the Leiden Ranking also looks at the collaborative research published by several institutions and considers the networks that are formed between different universities. With numerous output measures and a vast amount of bibliometric data, this new ranking system helps to paint a more accurate picture of which universities are really making an impact on the world in terms of research output.
Methodology and Data
The researchers at CWTS used bibliometric data from over 2.5 million journal articles, letters and reviews published between 2005 and 2009. The articles et cetera studied included both English and non-English language publications, with separate analyses being undertaken on English-only and all-language publications. Only publications in the sciences and social sciences were included in the research; papers from the arts and humanities were excluded since according to the lead researchers, the bibliometric indicators obtained from the data “do not have sufficient accuracy”.
The primary indicators used to measure the impact of a university’s research include the number of publications (P), the Mean Citation Score (MCS – the average number of citations for a publication from that university), the Mean Normalized Citation Score (MNCS – the MCS adjusted for field differences, publication year and document type) and the Proportion Top 10% Publications (PPtop 10% – the proportion of publications from that university that, compared with similar publications, belong to the top 10% most frequently cited). As an example, if Princeton University had a MNCS score of 3, then on average, publications from Princeton are being cited 3 times more often than the world average.
In terms of collaborative networks, the main indicators of interest were deemed to be the proportion of publications that were collaborative works (PPcollab), the proportion of collaborative publications co-authored between two or more countries (PPint collab), the mean geographical collaboration distance (MGCD) and the proportion of collaborative publications that have a geographical distance of over 1000km between two of the universities (PP>1000km). CWTS undertook analyses where full counting and also fractional counting of collaborative publications were considered. For a hypothetical publication written by 3 scientists at ETH Zurich and 1 scientist at McGill University, under full counting both ETH’s and McGill’s publication counts (P) would increase by one. Under fractional counting, ETH’s P-number would increase by 0.75 and McGill’s P-number would increase by 0.25.
Results
An article published on the Leiden rankings by the Times Higher Education Supplement highlighted several interesting results obtained from the data. However, I wish to consider the much broader picture of what is implied by the data via graphical illustrations and some non-parametric statistical testing. Here I consider all publications (regardless of language) and assume fractional counting for collaborative papers. I have also added a new categorical variable to the data indicating the region that each university’s country belongs to.
Evident disparities are observed between countries and between geographic regions. Africa’s only entries are four universities in South Africa; Cape Town, Pretoria, Stellenbosch and Witwatersrand. All of these institutions produced less than 5,000 research publications between 2005 and 2009 in the sciences; furthermore, Cape Town University had the highest PPtop 10% value of the African entrants, with a score of 10%. As for the universities in South America (countries include Brazil (light blue), Chile (yellow) and Argentina (black)), all universities score between 4% and 6% for PPtop 10%, regardless of P. The University of Sao Paulo has a PPtop 10% of 5%, which is very similar to the other universities considered here, yet published over 17,300 papers in the 5-year period considered.
Perhaps the most interesting results come from the large clusters in the plots marked “Asia”, “Europe” and “North America”. The black dots in the “North America” plot indicate universities in the United States, the purple ones from Canada; the highest point on the y-axis corresponds to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the right-most point on the x-axis is Harvard University. The “Europe” plot shows Swiss and UK institutions performing highest; the two blue points are (from left to right) the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and ETH Zurich. The grey points represent UK institutions and the highest points on the y-axis include the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Durham, Imperial College London, Cambridge and Oxford (the latter two having almost identical PPtop 10% and P values). Whilst we can identify high fliers with respect to this criterion, are the genuine differences on average between one nation’s universities and another’s?
To answer this question we may perform a statistical test called the Mann-Whitney U Test, which tests whether one of two samples of independent observations tends to have larger values than the other. This test is non-parametric, meaning that we do not need to make distributional assumptions about the data we are using; we only assume that the observations are independent of one another and that the distribution of the bibliometric indicator of interest is continuous.
Using this statistical test to compare the null hypothesis (that a bibliometric indicator is distributed identically in country A and country B) against the alternative hypothesis (that there is a difference in the median of the distribution between country A and country B’s bibliometric indicator), we find that in some cases there is evidence for genuine median differences, and in other cases, not so much evidence.
Table 1 shows the p-values (not to be confused with the number of publications, P) obtained from applying the Mann-Whitney U test to compare the PPtop 10% scores of 4 nations; China, Germany, United Kingdom and United States. The p-values in the table each represent the probability of obtaining a difference in medians of PPtop 10% scores between two nations at least as great as that observed previously, assuming that the null hypothesis is in fact true. So the smaller the p-value, then the more in favour we are of rejecting the null hypothesis. As we can see, the comparisons of China versus the United Kingdom or United States, and Germany versus the United Kingdom or United States show that there is very strong evidence against the null hypothesis; i.e. that there is a genuine difference between the medians of the distributions of PPtop 10% scores. However, when considering the universities of China versus the universities of Germany, or the universities of the United Kingdom versus those of the United States, there is little evidence against the null hypothesis. In the example of UK versus US, whilst we may observed several extreme high-achievers for the US, there is little evidence to suggest that the average (median) PPtop 10% score differs significantly between the two nation’s universities.
With the plethora of data from CWTS, one can spend a great deal of time conducting further analyses and compare universities on all sorts of grounds. Perhaps the nicest thing of all, regardless of the analysis one may conduct, is that it is quite pleasant to have an academic league table that is based purely on objective bibliometric data, rather than other tables that use heavily-subjective measures or arbitrary weighting systems for certain assessment criteria.
References
The Leiden Ranking Webpage.
Data used in the Leiden Ranking research.
"UK fails to shine in citations league" - Times Higher Education Supplement, 22nd December 2011.

Internationalisation is one of the major forces that is shaping higher education, as it is to meet the challenges of the 21 century, according to Jane Knight, distinguished educationist from Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada. Prof. Jane Knight.
She was delivering the inaugural Erudite Lecture on the theme ‘Internationalisation of Higher Education in the 21st Century’ at the School of International Relations and Politics (SIRP), Mahatma Gandhi University here on Wednesday.
Prof. Knight said that internationalisation referred to different things to different people, and the overall picture that is emerging is one of complexity, diversity and differentiation. The internationalisation of higher education is a process that is evolving as both actor and reactor to the new realities and rather turbulent times facing higher education. She said that the international activities of universities dramatically expanded in volume, scope, and complexity during the past decades. These activities range from traditional study-abroad programs, allowing students to learn about other cultures, to providing access to higher education in countries where local institutions cannot meet the demand. Other activities stress upgrading the international perspectives and skills of students, enhancing foreign language programmes, and providing cross cultural understanding.
Prof. Knight said that although globalisation and internationalisation were related, they are not the same. While globalisation is the context of economic and academic trends that are part of the reality of the 21st century, internationalisation incorporated the policies and practices that are undertaken by academic systems and institutions—and even individuals—to cope with the global academic environment. The motivations for internationalisation include commercial advantage, knowledge and language acquisition, enhancing the curriculum with international content, and many others. Specific initiatives such as branch campuses, cross-border collaborative arrangements, programs for international students, establishing English-medium programmes and degrees, and others have been put into place as part of the internationalisation process. Attempts to monitor international initiatives and ensure quality are integral to the international higher education milieu, Prof. Knight pointed out.
Earlier, inaugurating the lecture series, University Vice Chancellor Rajan Gurukkal, said that “deeper knowledge is essentially subversive” but the current trends in higher education across the world tend to mould people to be “conformists” in every sense. In the emerging scenario, discursive practices are seen as uninvited guests and thereby taking away politics of deeper knowledge from the very process of developing critical consciousness, Prof. Gurukkal said.
Raju Thadikkaran, Director, SIRP welcomed the gathering. K. M. Seethi chaired the session. M.V. Bijulal, P.P. Raveendran, Suresh and others spoke.
Meanwhile, the University has informed that Prof. Knight will be the Scholar-in-Residence during January - February 2012 and will deliver a series of lectures on various themes of higher education. The programme is being organised in association with the Kerala State Higher Education Council.

By Chhay Channyda. Corruption, funding shortages and an obsession with profit are plaguing the quality of university education in Cambodia, students say, driving them overseas in search of master’s and PhD programs.
If the government hopes to keep its best and brightest at home, it must resolve these issues and build a world-class university system from within, said Sim Socheata, one of three Cambodians on scholarship at the University of Melbourne, Australia, who spoke to the Post about their frustrations with Cambodian education.
“It is time for Cambodians to start researching, analysing, drawing conclusions and suggesting what needs to be done... Up until now, this has been largely left to external advisers,” said the 29-year-old, who is studying for her master’s in public health.
Obstacles hindering Cambodia’s higher education system include low salaries for teachers – which force them into second jobs – a lack of materials and equipment and a “mushrooming” of the private system, which has encouraged a focus on profit over quality, and flooded the labour market with graduates who can’t find work in their field, she said.
Men Nimmith, 42, moved to Australia to study for a PhD in law in a quest to do the “bigger and better things” he believes are impossible with only a Cambodian degree.
“Higher education in Cambodia has lower quality and very limited facilities. For example, poor library and teaching/learning techniques,” he said.
But Cambodian students suffer not because the government cannot afford to properly fund education, but because it chooses not to, he said.
“[The government is] spending too little on the education sector, and too much on the military,” he said, adding that rampant corruption also takes a toll.
In the place of quality learning, a system of “ceremonial education”, in which bribes are paid for degrees, is flourishing, Men Nimmith said.
“It is dangerous that several of the universities are very powerful and active in selling diplomas. It is frightening,” he said, declining to name specific universities.
Mak Ngoy, director general of higher education at the Ministry of Education, denies such corruption exists and said such beliefs have arisen from “confusion”.
“There is no such issue. Those who don’t study or go to school, we will not give degrees. There is no buying of degrees in Cambodia,” he said.
“The concept of private university tuition fees started in 1997. So it’s not buying a degree. It is just a study tuition fee. People may be confused by this.”
Khim Keovathanak, 37, from Phnom Penh, is studying for a PhD in health systems in Melbourne and spends his holiday teaching at the Royal University of Phnom Penh.
Cambodia’s system lacks rules, regulations and uniformity, which results in students not being taught “the basics” of university, such as meeting deadlines and avoiding plagiarism, he said.
“The teachers are being constrained in terms of doing their job properly. They are not being paid enough and are in environments not conducive to their work,” he said.  “They have to provide for a family, so they have to do other jobs.”
The UNDP-funded Human Capital Report, released in August, voices similar concerns.
“In most cases, students graduating from university with degrees in management, accounting and business administration were found to be lacking in the essential skills and practical experience required for employment in the field for which they were supposed to be qualified,” the report says.
Scoping Study: Research Capacities of Cambodia’s Universities, commissioned by the Development Research Forum in Cambodia and released last year, examines 15 universities, public and private, and concludes that research is lacking, due partly to a “missing generation of academics in the immediate post-conflict era”, but exacerbated by inadequate funding and professional development of staff.
“There is a relative absence of any government budget allocation for research activities in public universities,” it said. “Salaries remain low [and] lecturers tend to take up part-time teaching at a number of other institutions.”
The report recommends universities develop research, form partnerships with civil society groups, state agencies and the private sector, and establish long-term goals. 
Mak Ngoy cannot say how much money the government invests in education because he is “not in charge of it”, but he defends the funding put into universities.
“The education sector receives much more than other sectors. I have no figure, but I know it’s a lot... We (also) have support from donors and development partners.
“The Cambodian government regards the education sector as a priority and always increases money for it from one year to another,” he said.
Public university teachers earn at least US$100 per month plus between $2.30 for each hour of actual teaching, but if their universities offer additional private classes, teachers can earn more than $500 per month, Mak Ngoy said.
As to why teachers are taking second or third jobs, “it’s better to ask them”.
Cambodia’s higher education sector, which comprises 97 institutions, 38 of them public, has come a long way since the 1990s, when only students who won scholarships could study, Mak Ngoy said.
“We did not have full peace until 1998. So we have had 13 years to build the education system, and we have seen an increase in both quality and quantity.”
About 10 employers the Post spoke to, including phone companies, NGOs and banks, said experience is the most important thing they look for in jobseekers, followed by education.
One Phnom Penh-based technology company told the Post it prefers graduates who have studied in other countries, preferably Japan, the US or Australia, because they have “more advanced skills”.
However, this is not something the company mentions in job descriptions or interviews, so it asked not to be named. Mak Ngoy acknowledges that many students want to study in countries such as Japan and Australia.
“[But these] are developed countries, so development means that everything is better, including the education system. [However] paying to study at university here is not too expensive, [and] we give more than 5,000 students per year a scholarship.”
Ek Tha, spokesman for the Press and Quick Reaction Unit of the Council of Ministers, said the government is looking to countries such as the US, Canada and Australia for ways to improve.
“Those governments heavily invest in education, and this is why Cambodia wants to improve its quality of education by calling for investment in education. We want our children and students to obtain higher education [here] like students overseas.”
While Cambodia’s students wait for this change, Sim Socheata said they also need to take responsibility for their learning.
“How serious do Cambodian students commit to reading books other than the required course books?” she asked.
“We need to promote the culture of reading among our generations, as through reading we begin to acquire broader knowledge outside what we learn through the system.”

By D.D. GUTTENPLAN. When Kessewaa Brown, an official at Standard Chartered Bank in Accra, Ghana, decided she wanted to go back to school to improve her career prospects, her options were limited.
“I have two kids. My youngest is still living at home, and so I needed a program where I didn’t have to quit my job or leave my family,” she said.
Like many professionals in Africa, she considered enrolling in a remote program for a degree from a British or American university. However, she worried about the lack of human interaction. “It’s different when you have the professor right in front of you, and you are able to debate the issues,” she said.
Abiodun Afinowi, a Nigerian management consultant based in Lagos, said that after two degrees from local universities he was looking for a program with a more global reputation. But he, too, was reluctant to leave his business. “I can’t afford to take a year or two to study in the U.S.,” he said.
Instead, both Ms. Brown and Mr. Afinowi joined the first class of students on a new executive M.B.A. program offered by Ceibs, the China Europe International Business School, at its campus in Accra, graduating in December 2010. Founded as a joint venture by the European Commission, the Chinese ministry of foreign trade, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Ceibs quickly became one of the most highly regarded business schools in the world.
“Our alumni oversee about 5 percent of China’s Gross Domestic Product,” said John Quelch, the school’s dean.
A former associate dean at the Harvard Business School, Mr. Quelch, who also served as dean of the London Business School, was in Britain in December to collect an O.B.E. from Queen Elizabeth. “One of the purposes of Ceibs is to challenge American dominance,” he said in an interview during his visit.
Although there have been Western-backed universities in Africa before — the American University in Cairo dates to 1919 — most arose out of missionary impulses, a trend that continues with Daystar in Kenya, founded by American Protestant missionaries, and Strathmore, also in Kenya, whose founders were members of the conservative Catholic group Opus Dei. The Ceibs program in Accra is completely secular, as is a new branch of Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University that is set to open in Kigali, Rwanda, this month.
Offering master’s degrees in engineering and information technology, the program has the backing of the government of Rwanda and the African Development Bank, which is hoping to use it as the model for a string of centers across the continent. As with the Ceibs program, which flies in faculty members from Shanghai and Beijing, students will study with Carnegie Mellon faculty. “We are offering Carnegie Mellon credits towards a Carnegie Mellon degree,” said Bruce Krogh, professor of electrical engineering and the new program’s director.
Do such ambitious ventures portend the start of an academic scramble for Africa reminiscent of the rivalry between the great powers at the beginning of the past century? Alex Vines, head of Africa programs at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, thinks they might.
“Given the state of higher education in Africa, the huge growth in demand and a rapidly growing middle class, I think this is just the beginning,” he said. “There are state universities and private providers already there. But they can’t guarantee either quality or the recognized status that students want. And you have to remember, Africa has the fastest-growing population of young people in the world.”
The Ceibs Web site is unabashed about the advantages of being “a ‘first mover’ in this uncharted region.” But Pedro Nueno, the president of Ceibs, said, “I don’t think in Africa you can talk about competition. There’s so much to be done.”
Postgraduate education in Africa today, he said, reminds him of “when I started in China in 1984 — there was no competition at all.” The opportunity to be in at the start also appealed to Carnegie Mellon. Mr. Krogh, who will be moving from Pittsburgh to Kigali, said that while the initial class will be limited to 40 students, “we hope to ramp up fairly quickly to 150 students and a faculty of 15 based in Rwanda.”
The university has a 10-year contract with the Rwandan government, which has agreed to meet all the costs of the new venture, and to allow Carnegie Mellon total control over admissions and curriculum. Tuition will be the same as at Carnegie Mellon’s other campuses, $37,800 a year, a figure Mr. Krogh described as “outrageously expensive for Africa.”

Von RUDOLF TASCHNER. Nur bei Studien, deren Nutzen manifest ist, soll sich der Staat um Vergleichbarkeit bemühen und in die Gestaltung eingreifen. Sonst aber sollte er volle Freiheit walten lassen.
Sagen wir es ohne Umschweife: „Bologna“, jenes nach der Geburtsstadt der europäischen Universität benannte ehrgeizige Projekt zur Schaffung eines einheitlichen Hochschulraums auf dem Kontinent, hat die in es gesetzten Erwartungen rundum nicht erfüllt: Der Aufschwung zur Elite ist ferner denn je. Die Mobilität der Studenten blieb weit hinter den Erwartungen zurück.
Das Studium wurde vom Streben nach Bildung zum in unzähligen Prüfungen bescheinigten Erwerb von Kompetenzen verfremdet. Vor allem: Die Zahl gedruckter Exposés ist Legion. Aber kaum jemand liest sie, kann man von den meisten doch nur erwarten, dass pfiffig abgeschrieben und zitiert wurde.
(Ein kluger Rat für jene, die sich ihre Dissertation bei einem „Ghost“ bestellen und sie erst bei einer unerwarteten Kontrolle zum ersten Mal lesen – und treuherzig behaupten, die Arbeit auf mehreren Dutzend Datenträgern verteilt zu haben. Am besten sagt man: „Ich wusste offensichtlich später auch nicht mehr, an welchem Text ich selbst bereits gearbeitet hatte, welcher Text mein eigener und welcher möglicherweise ein Fremdtext war, insbesondere beim Zusammenfügen dieser Bruchstücke.“)
Vor Jahrzehnten war man ehrlicher: Man vergab Doktorate in den Rechtswissenschaften und in der Medizin, ohne eine Dissertation zu verlangen. Das Studium war anspruchsvoll genug, um den Doktortitel rechtfertigen zu können. Vor allem war es für die Gesellschaft wichtig zu wissen, dass die mit dem Dr. iur. oder Dr. med. benannten Personen in der Tat nach allen Regeln ihrer Wissenschaft umfassend ausgebildete Juristen oder Mediziner sind.
Dies führt zu einem ganz anderen Bild, als es „Bologna“ vorschwebt: dass die Universität, auf ihrer Tradition ruhend, für Gegenwart und Zukunft wegweisend wirkt.
Für die Gegenwart: Darunter fallen die Studien, bei denen der unmittelbare Nutzen manifest ist: jene klassischen der Medizin und Jurisprudenz, dazu die Technik, die Ökonomie, die Lehramtsstudien und einige weitere wie Bodenkultur oder Veterinärwesen. Fraglos hat hier der Staat vitales Interesse und daher – unabhängig von „Bologna“ – sowohl Eingriffsrecht als auch Gestaltungspflicht, dass eine gediegene und forschungsgeleitete Lehre erfolgt; wobei in der Medizin neben Forschung und Lehre noch die Betreuung von Patienten als dritte Säule hinzutritt. Dass in diesem Zusammenhang im aktuellen Fall des AKHs Wien um eine verhältnismäßig geringe Summe von neun Millionen Euro bis zu einem Streik hin gerungen wird, zeigt das Ungleichgewicht in der Wertschätzung der Disziplinen.
Für die Zukunft: Studien, bei denen die Anwendbarkeit der Ergebnisse nicht zentral ist, sind in ihrer Lehre und Forschung völlig frei – Bevormundung à la „Bologna“ ist hinderlich. Nicht der einheitliche, sondern der vielfältig gestaltete Hochschulraum müsste das Ziel sein: In Wien wird Altphilologie anders gelehrt als in Berlin, die Philosophie in Graz setzt andere Schwerpunkte als in Bologna – nur so wird Mobilität attraktiv.
Allerdings dürfen diese „reinen“ Disziplinen vom Staat bloß eine Basisfinanzierung erwarten, deren Höhe davon abhängt, wie sehr die Gesellschaft das jeweilige Fach schätzt. Worauf es dabei ankommt, ist es, den Gehalt der Disziplin öffentlich bündig darzulegen.

Von Hans Pechar. Nach der römisch-katholischen Kirche ist die Universität die europäische Institution mit der längsten Lebensdauer. Warum, so fragen Kritiker der jüngsten hochschulpolitischen Entwicklungen, wird diese offenbar erfolgreiche Einrichtung nun einem Reformstakkato unterworfen, der sie seit Jahrzehnten nicht zur Ruhe kommen lässt? Aber abgesehen davon, dass die Krise der katholischen Kirche kein schlechtes Beispiel für die Folgen lange währender Reformresistenz abgibt, ignoriert dieses Argument die tief greifenden Transformationen, mit denen die europäische Universität in ihrer langen Geschichte auf existenzbedrohende Krisen reagiert und sich mehrfach "neu erfunden" hat.
Eine erste schwere Krise trat zu Beginn der frühen Neuzeit auf, als die Universitäten im Zuge der Religionskonflikte ihre gesamteuropäische Identität zu Gunsten einer Anbindung an die entstehenden Territorialstaaten aufgaben. Die ökonomischen und politischen Revolutionen des ausgehenden 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhunderts haben dann einen Umbruch ausgelöst, in dessen Verlauf die Forschungsuniversität entstand, welche nicht nur das Wissen der Vergangenheit aufbewahrt und weitergibt, sondern ihre Hauptaufgabe in der Produktion neuen Wissens sieht.
Gewiss, das waren "Jahrhundertreformen", die den Universitäten genügend Zeit zur Transformation an die veränderten sozialen Gegebenheiten ließen. Die Belastungen, die daraus erwachsen, dass sich die hochschulpolitischen Reformzyklen nun im selben Takt beschleunigt haben wie der gesellschaftliche Wandel insgesamt, sind nicht zu übersehen. Erschwerend für die österreichischen Universitäten ist, dass sie gegenwärtig in den Strudel der jüngsten, durch Globalisierung und Digitalisierung ausgelösten Umbrüche hineingeraten, ohne noch den davor liegenden Umbruch, in dessen Verlauf die US-amerikanische Universität zum weltweit dominanten Modell wurde, umfassend nachvollzogen zu haben.
Um 1900 waren die deutschsprachigen Universitäten - darunter einige österreichische - am Zenit ihres Ruhms. Wären damals schon Rankings in Mode gewesen, hätten sie die Spitzenplätze eingenommen. Aber im Nachhinein betrachtet verdeckte ihr Erfolg bei den Nobelpreisen den Umstand, dass sich ein Paradigmenwechsel anbahnte, der in wenigen Jahrzehnten eine bis dahin unbekannte Dynamik entfaltete: der Durchbruch der Massenuniversität und das Entstehen der Großforschung.
Es war die US-Universität, die sich zuerst gegenüber den Qualifikationsbedürfnissen breiter Schichten öffnete und dem Umstand Rechnung trug, dass moderne Gesellschaften in immer mehr Bereichen auf die Ausbildungs- und Forschungsleistungen der Universitäten angewiesen sind. Hier wurde die gegen Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts einsetzende ökonomische Nachfrage nach universitärer Forschung als Chance begriffen und nicht als Angriff auf die eigentliche Bestimmung dieser Institution. Im deutschsprachigen Raum dagegen pflegten die Universitäten noch lange eine geistesaristokratische Attitüde und bezogen ihre Identität daraus, sowohl zu den "Massen" wie zu den praktischen Dingen auf Distanz zu gehen.
Ab den 1960er Jahren, vor allem im Zuge der sozialdemokratischen Reformpolitik der 1970er, hat das österreichische Hochschulsystem den Anschluss an diese Entwicklungen gesucht und dabei beachtliche Erfolge erzielt. Behindert wurde dieser Prozess zum einen durch ein vormodernes Verständnis der "Akademiker" als eines homogenen Bildungsstandes, der sich vom Rest der Bevölkerung trennscharf unterscheidet. Auf konservativer Seite drückt sich das in einer tief sitzenden Abneigung gegen "zu viel" tertiäre Bildung aus, während viele Linke glauben, die Hochschulexpansion würde zu einer Demokratisierung geistesaristokratischer Ideale führen. In der Wirklichkeit geht die Ausdehnung tertiärer Bildung aber mit neuen Formen der Differenzierungen einher. Die surrealen Debatten über den offenen Hochschulzugang lassen erkennen, dass diese Botschaft noch immer nicht bei allen hochschulpolitischen Akteuren angekommen ist.
Zweitens hielt die Reformpolitik auch zu einem Zeitpunkt am kulturstaatlichen Modell machtgeschützter akademischer Autonomie fest, als es seiner Substanz längst beraubt war. Dieses Modell, in dem der Staat die Universitäten fördert, ohne ihnen Bedingungen zu stellen, war auf die kleinen Elitesysteme des 19. Jahrhunderts zugeschnitten. Mit Beginn der Hochschulexpansion hat es die staatliche Hochschulpolitik de facto aufgekündigt und die Universitäten zunehmend als Motor ökonomischer Entwicklung betrachtet. Der Staat war kein wohlwollender Patron mehr, sondern hat sich zunehmend dirigistisch verhalten.
In der Aufbruchstimmung der frühen 1970er Jahren blieben die inneren Widersprüche dieser Konstruktion verborgen. Aber in den 1980ern machten sie sich umso heftiger im Ruf nach mehr Autonomie Luft. Doch merkwürdig, als ein Paradigmenwechsel in der staatlichen Hochschulpolitik den Weg für erweiterte Universitätsautonomie freimachte, stieß das bei großen Teilen des akademischen Personals auf heftigen Widerstand. Nicht selten bei denselben Personen, die der Politik und der Bürokratie pauschal Unfähigkeit und Wissenschaftsfeindlichkeit unterstellten. Aber mit der Perspektive universitärer Autonomie konfrontiert, klammerten sie sich am Rockzipfel der Ministerialbürokratie fest und klagten, der Staat würde sich seiner Verantwortung entziehen. Noch heute sitzen viele im Schmollwinkel und trauern der guten alten Zeit nach, in der paritätisch besetzte Gremien heroische Beschlüsse fassten, die dann vom Ministerium souverän ignoriert wurden.