Student enrolment at Dubai universities has risen by 11% in the last year, according to the KHDA 2012 Higher Education Landscape report. The report, which also shows an 8% increase in academic programmes, is testament to Dubai's position as a desirable destination for both international and Emirati university students. With 53 higher education institutions now open in the emirate and a 12% rise in the number of students at private universities, Dubai offers more choice than ever before. In addition to more than 160 business courses, there has also been an increase in media, law, humanities and natural and physical science programmes. Read more...

By Marwa Haddad. The Ministry of Higher Education may offer Saudi citizenship as an incentive to attract top foreign scholars and lecturers to the Kingdom's universities, said the ministry's Undersecretary for Educational Affairs Muhammad bin Abdulaziz Al-Ouhali. The offer is one of the incentives the ministry is considering, said Al-Ouhali, who was speaking at the seventh periodic meeting of Saudi universities' undersecretaries for educational affairs at Taif University.
Under the proposal, foreigners will also get allowances for their children, he added. He said it was an international academic tradition to have diverse expertise that can improve services. Lawyer and King Abdul Aziz University professor Omar Al-Khuli said universities have a "clear shortage" of faculty members and need to recruit professors from abroad, but these people have to be outstanding and highly qualified. Al-Khuli suggested raising the retirement age from 60 to 65 to help meet the need for academics. Read more...

By Jack Grove. Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates are the best places for British universities to set up overseas campuses or establish partnerships with local higher education providers, a study has found.
The countries have been identified as "hotspots" for transnational education activity by the British Council-commissioned report, which analyses student demand and international mobility in 25 nations, as well as how open their governments are to foreign higher education providers.
Each of the four countries is above average in almost all of the categories recorded, indicating a strong potential for foreign universities to flourish there, according to the report, titled The Shape of Things to Come 2: the evolution of trans-national education.
The study, published on 28 February, is due to be discussed at the British Council's Going Global conference, one of the world's largest gatherings of higher education leaders. The event will take place in Dubai from 4 to 6 March and Times Higher Education is one of its media partners. Read more...

By Koran Addo. Two high-ranking members of the state Legislature are proposing legislation that would more closely link the amount of money colleges and universities get from the state with a school’s graduation rate. In such an outcome-based model, schools would have to meet the average graduation rate of their peer institutions in the South in order to receive their full share of state funding. Louisiana institutions get about 40 percent of their funding from the state and the remaining 60 percent from students in the form of tuition. State Sen. Conrad Appel, R-Metairie, said Wednesday that Louisiana has a problem when it comes to funding colleges and universities. Read more...

By Louise Tickle. As the first university to open a fully operational branch campus in Malaysia in 2000, internationalisation has been in the University of Nottingham DNA for well over a decade. It has since opened a further campus in China, and says that global reach is "hardwired" into its strategic plan.
Ambition on such a scale means you can't keep your recruitment exclusively based in the UK, so Nottingham has international student recruiters employed in regional offices in Malaysia, China, Brazil and Mexico. The university's West Africa office opened in Accra in April 2012 and an India office opened in June last year.
It's an approach that's getting results: over 9,500 students are enrolled in Malaysia and China, and as well as having one of the largest cohorts of international students in the UK, Nottingham is a top 10 recruiter (by volume) in most markets worldwide. Read more...

By Jason Fekete. The federal government is writing off another $231 million in unpaid student loans this year from more than 44,000 cases, meaning taxpayers are on the hook for more than half a billion in uncollected student debt over the past few years. Supplementary spending estimates tabled Monday in the House of Commons by Treasury Board president Tony Clement call for an additional $231.2 million in the current 2012-13 fiscal year ending in March to write off 44,048 debts related to Canada Student Loans.
“Amounts being written off are debts for which all reasonable efforts to collect the amounts owed have been exhausted,” explains the 145-page supplementary spending estimates.
The new cash for 2012-13 is on top of nearly $312 million on the books from the 2011-12 fiscal year to cover unpaid Canada Student Loans from 98,448 debts dating back more than a decade. Together, taxpayers are on the hook for more than $540 million over the past couple of years to cover uncollected student loan debt. Read more...

By Catherine Rampell. As we’ve covered here many times before, there is an abundance of evidence showing that going to college is worth it. But that’s really only true if you go to college and then graduate, and the United States is doing a terrible job of helping enrolled college students complete their educations.
A new report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center digs deeper into these graduation rates. It finds that of the 1.9 million students enrolled for the first time in all degree-granting institutions in fall 2006, just over half of them (54.1 percent) had graduated within six years. Another 16.1 percent were still enrolled in some sort of postsecondary program after six years, and 29.8 percent had dropped out altogether. Read more...

Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse today launched www.nzstudywork.com, an exciting new website designed to provide advice and support for international students in New Zealand.
“The new website provides international students with a ‘one-stop shop’ where they can get information about their employment rights and responsibilities, health and safety in the workplace, work conditions attached to student visas and settlement resources,” says Mr Woodhouse.
“The export education sector contributes over $2 billion a year to the New Zealand economy and the government has set an ambitious target to double that contribution by 2025.”
“To meet this target, and to ensure that New Zealand remains an attractive destination for international students, we need to constantly be looking to improve on the support and service we offer those students.” Read more...

Par Assma Maad. Grâce aux anciens élèves, comme les patrons de Google, de Yahoo de Nike, l’université californienne a battu tous les records en collectant plus d’un milliard de dollars en un an. Aux États-Unis, le fundraising (la collecte de fonds auprès de donateurs individuels ou institutionnels) constitue depuis longtemps une ressource indispensable pour les universités. Chaque année des millions de dollars sont recueillis, et depuis une dizaine d’année l’université de Stanford domine les autres établissements du pays.
En 2012, elle est même parvenue à établir un record, en devenant la première université américaine à atteindre 1 milliard de dollars de dons. Selon un rapport annuel établi par The Council for Aid to Education,l’université californienne se place largement en tête avec 1,03 milliards de dollars devant Harvard (650 millions de dollars) et Yale (544 millions de dollars). Suite de l'article...

Le Sommet sur l'enseignement supérieur rassemblera des membres de la communauté universitaire, des représentants de la société civile et le gouvernement autour d'un objectif commun: définir une vision pour le réseau universitaire québécois. Dans ce contexte, la Conférence des recteurs et des principaux des universités du Québec (CREPUQ) présente sa vision de l'université québécoise d'aujourd'hui et de demain.
Cette contribution est issue des travaux de réflexion menés au sein du conseil d'administration et des comités de la CREPUQ ainsi que par un groupe de personnalités externes reconnues pour leur connaissance des réalités du milieu universitaire.
Pour les chefs d'établissement universitaire, cette vision devrait s'articuler en fonction des principes suivants:
   1. Des universités fidèles à leur mission;
   2. Des universités d'excellence, accessibles à tous ceux qui en ont le désir et la capacité;
   3. Des universités diversifiées, qui collaborent et se concertent;
   4. Des universités ancrées dans leur communauté et ouvertes sur le monde;
   5. Des universités fondées sur les principes d'autonomie, de liberté académique et de collégialité.
Au terme de leur réflexion et à la lumière de diverses contributions, les chefs d'établissement proposent aux participants du Sommet sur l'enseignement supérieur de remettre résolument l'éducation au cœur de notre projet de société. Suite de l'article...