9 mars 2013

A l'occasion de la Journée internationale de la femme, Toute l'Europe vous fournit quelques éléments de comparaison sur la situation des femmes en Europe. Pour 2013, les Nations unies ont choisi de placer le thème de la violence au coeur des priorités: "Une promesse est une promesse : il est temps de passer à l’action pour mettre fin à la violence à l’égard des femmes". Le Parlement européen quant à lui a choisi de s'intéresser à un autre thème également préoccupant: "Comment les femmes répondent à la crise?". A cette occasion, il rencontre le 7 mars 2013 les parlements nationaux afin de réfléchir aux moyens d'amortir les effets de la crise et d'améliorer les lois sur les droits des femmes.
La formation
En moyenne, les femmes sont plus nombreuses à faire des études supérieures que les hommes. En 2011, elles ont obtenu 58,9 % des diplômes délivrés par des universités européennes, contre 55% en 2010. Il n'y a qu'au Luxembourg (48%) et à Chypre (49%) que les jeunes filles étudiantes sont moins nombreuses que les garçons. En Allemagne et en Grèce, ils sont en proportions égales. En revanche, en ce qui concerne les spécialités suivies, les différences restent significatives. Seules les Roumaines et les Italiennes sont plus nombreuses que leurs collègues masculins à étudier les mathématiques, les sciences et l'informatique. En moyenne en Europe, ces spécialités concernent seulement 37% de femmes (contre 73% d'hommes). Plus grand écart encore pour ce qui est des étudiants en ingénierie, fabrication et construction, puisqu'un quart seulement sont des femmes (de 10% au Luxembourg, à 34% au Danemark). Ainsi, la part de diplômés en sciences et technologie est deux fois moindre chez les femmes (9 pour 1000) que chez les hommes (18 pour 1000). Aux Pays-Bas, c'est quatre fois moins. Voir aussi Le travail, Les conditions de vie, La vie politique.
L'égalité entre les hommes et les femmes dans l'Union européenne
L'égalité entre les femmes et les hommes est un principe fondamental de l'UE. Malgré l’existence d’une législation européenne, de gros progrès restent à faire. Quels sont les différences de salaire entre les hommes et les femmes? Quel pays compte le plus de femmes ministres? De députées européennes? Le point sur la parité en Europe. Pour agrandir l'image, cliquez dessus!

By Bernard Lane. THE canny marketing pioneered by Australia's universities is being picked up by US institutions as they engage in more aggressive recruitment of overseas students.
"Institutions here are showing increasing sophistication, such as investments in brand development and visibility, and raising their profile overseas," says a new report from the US-based World Education Services agency. Based on surveys of US institutions, the report focuses on trends in the movement and recruitment of international students. It says US universities in the past had been "slow to develop proactive recruitment methods".
However, following the Australian and UK example, they were taking a more targeted approach to recruiting students offshore. Read more...

By Bonnie Patterson. Tim Hudak’s attack on university education misses the point: Higher learning of any kind almost always pays off. It appears commonplace for politicians to question the value of university education. When I reflect on the positions taken, I always return to how university changed my life. As a rather rebellious teenager who left home at 15, I was fortunate to have mentors in my life who pushed me to explore higher education. I became the first in my family to go on to postsecondary – university in my case – and experienced the transformative power of higher education first-hand. It was this experience that led me to dedicate my life to the mission of the university: to give back to the community, broaden young minds, and help students find their passion and what they’re good at. That doesn’t happen overnight; it doesn’t happen quickly. These are the cornerstones of what makes our society and economy strong. Read more...

By Garry Marr. It’s not the job you wanted but maybe it’s the job you should take.
Youth unemployment is double the national average, forcing many graduates to accept the first job that comes along even if it is not in their chosen field and a long way from their chosen path.
Students have faced high tuition costs, even relative to inflation, and their debt is at record amounts compared with past generations. And those loan payments have to begin six months after graduation at a whopping 2.5 percentage points above prime lending rate.
Byrne Luft, vice-president of operations at human resources company Manpower, says it’s become a bit of a dirty word for university graduates but maybe it’s time to consider a trade to fall back on. Read more...

When it comes to paying for the education they need to get on with their lives, Ontario’s college and university students are maxed out. Since 2006, tuition fees have risen by five per cent a year, forcing distraught students to dig themselves ever deeper into a debt hole and prompting them to cry out with increasing volume that enough is enough. To his credit, Ontario’s new Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, Brad Duguid, is listening. And although he’s unlikely to freeze tuition, as many student leaders unreasonably demand, he appears poised to hold future increases below five per cent — possibly to one per cent on top of the rate of inflation.
That step would be an appropriate one, yet it will have to be followed by more movement by the Liberal government. While the average university undergraduate paid $4,933 a year in 2005-06, by the start of the current school year, that payout had risen to $7,180 — an increase that dwarfs any rise in inflation. Ontario’s tuition is now by far the most expensive in Canada. Read more...

By Garry Marr. Getting an education is all well and good, but students have to be realistic about the debt they take on to do so.
Just because the youth unemployment rate is double that of the general population doesn't mean education is a waste of money, but it's easy to understand why students might think so. The Canadian Federation of Students says the average graduate hits the workforce with a debt load of $27,000. It doesn't help that tuition is rising faster than inflation, climbing another 5% this academic year, according to Statistics Canada, while inflation has been well below the Bank of Canada's 2% target. Read more...

By Nobina Robinson. Twenty years after the “brain drain” of the 1990s, a new threat to the supply of talent in Canada is apparent. Key industry sectors and leading employers in Canada are warning of a skills shortage and a lack of skilled tradespeople. Others call this a skills “mismatch.” Governments are under pressure to enact a range of labour market “interventions,” from short-term fixes to immigration to new investment in training and skills upgrading to changes to existing talent support programs. Canada’s failure to graduate enough tradespeople has been a constant for decades. While Canada had nearly 400,000 registered apprentices in 2010, less than 50 per cent went on to obtain their certifications. Most dropouts leave because current policies make it impossible for them to stay. Read more...

By Jennifer Lewington. Just one of four PhD graduates becomes a professor, which begs the question of how to capitalize on the talents of those not headed for academia. One answer, many believe, is internships at the master’s, doctoral and postdoctoral level. Such programs give young scholars an early taste of working in industry and help Canadian companies boost research and development activities.
“We have a huge number of reports that talk about innovation being critical and for the need for creative thinkers with the capacity to move ideas to market,” says Janet Walden, vice-president of research partnerships for the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), which offers an industry internship program. “A huge amount of talent comes out of our universities and with that talent comes a lot of ideas and knowledge and you want to put that to work for Canada.”
However, matching companies and researchers is a challenge. Canada lags the United States in the proportion of PhDs in industry, research shows, and newly-minted PhDs, with theoretical expertise, typically lack job-ready experience. Read more...

By Karen Seidman. That was the reaction from some university officials to the recent public charge that English universities in Quebec are getting more than their fair share of funding.
The allegation, made by a group of nationalist academics in an open letter in Le Devoir, left some university officials wondering why this issue keeps arising.
After all, this is an age where a francophone student can study at an English university and write all papers and exams in French, where HEC Montréal offers courses in English and where McGill University’s new principal-designate is a francophone for the first time. Read more...