14 avril 2013
Egyptian Court Supports Universities’ Independence
By Mohamed Mahmoud. In a decision viewed as supporting the need for Egyptian universities to be free of government interference, the Alexandria administrative court has blocked an effort by the education ministry to force twice-a-year evaluations of university staff.“The minister’s decision is a flagrant violation of the universities independence,” said Mohammed al-Khafaji, the judge who issued the decision. Although the case only affects the University of Alexandria, it sets a precedent that will encourage similar lawsuits on behalf of professors at other public universities.
On July 2012, President Mohamed Morsi issued a decree increasing the pay of faculty members at public universities, a change regarded by many university supporters as a pressing demand for over a decade. The new increase was conditional on faculty members working a full day, four days a week. But earlier this year, the Supreme Council of Universities, headed by the education minister, ordered faculty members to submit biannual self-evaluations to the Ministry of Higher Education. Read more...
Treasury to raise university tuition prices
By . ‘We will battle to protect education in the country,’ promises student union head. Alate night meeting between Finance Ministry officials and student leaders Monday revealed that the treasury is planning a multi-million shekel cut to the higher education budget that will lead to a major increase of university tuition costs, and likely to department closures and faculty firings. The deputy head of the ministry’s budget department Yoni Regev told National Student Union head Uri Rashtik that the planned cuts could reach hundreds of millions of shekels, which in turn would lead to a double-digit increase in tuition costs starting the next academic year, Channel 10 reported. Read more...Faculty Pay Survey Shows Growing Gap Between Public, Private Colleges
By Tyler Kingkade. A growing wage gap between public and private colleges, coupled with the increased reliance on part-time instructors, threatens to degrade academic quality at certain universities, according to a new report from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). The average pay for all types of professors, instructors and lecturers is $84,303 for the academic year 2012-13, but the report noted a big difference between public and private colleges. At public institutions, the average is $80,578, while at private schools, it's $99,771. For a full professor, the average salary at a private university this year is $139,620, a notable hike over the average $110,143 at public colleges, and that difference has been growing. This public-private gap has increased from 18 percent in 2004 to 24 percent in 2013, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Read more...MI5 warns universities on cyber spying
UK security services have warned universities to be more vigilant in protecting themselves against cyber attacks by foreign powers seeking to poach intellectual property at the frontier of science and technology, writes Helen Warrell for the Financial Times.Vice-chancellors have been briefed by Sir Jonathan Evans, the outgoing head of MI5, while Universities UK, which represents the sector, is preparing to issue institutions guidance about how to ward off the cyber threat. Full report on the Financial Times site. Read more...Sham journals scam authors
Con artists are stealing the identities of real journals to cheat scientists out of publishing fees. Scientific publishing, meet cybercrime. Two reputable European science journals have fallen prey to identity theft by criminals who have created counterfeit journal websites. These online doppelgängers have duped hundreds of researchers into paying author fees, with the ill-won gains being funnelled to Armenia.
Editors of the victim journals first learned of the scam last year, but their attempts to put a stop to it have so far come to nothing. The crooked websites are masquerading as Archives des Sciences, a multidisciplinary journal founded in 1791 and published by the Society of Physics and Natural History of Geneva (SPHN) in Switzerland; and Wulfenia, a botany journal published by the Regional Museum of Carinthia in Klagenfurt, Austria. Read more...
Editors of the victim journals first learned of the scam last year, but their attempts to put a stop to it have so far come to nothing. The crooked websites are masquerading as Archives des Sciences, a multidisciplinary journal founded in 1791 and published by the Society of Physics and Natural History of Geneva (SPHN) in Switzerland; and Wulfenia, a botany journal published by the Regional Museum of Carinthia in Klagenfurt, Austria. Read more...
At the forefront of international higher education
By Hans de Wit, Patti McGill Peterson and Jamil Salmi. On 5 April, a large group of colleagues, students and friends gathered in Boston to honour the career of Philip Altbach, director of the Center for International Higher Education and J Donald Monan SJ professor of higher education in the school of education at Boston College, US. He will retire from his professorship, but continue as director of the centre. The global gathering was organised to pay tribute to Altbach for his enormous contributions over almost 50 years as a teacher, scholar and advisor, and author of many books and articles on international higher education.During a one-day seminar, key topics in international higher education were addressed by scholars and higher education policy leaders from around the world – including China, India, Africa, Russia, Europe, Latin America and North America: national and regional challenges for higher education; the international pursuit of excellence; and international imperatives, initiatives and risks.
Altbach, who does not like to put himself on a pedestal, set one condition for accepting this surprise honour: the seminar had to be substantive and its results will be published by the centre. Look out for its future publication, as together the presentations provided a comprehensive overview of developments in international higher education over the past 20 years. Read more...
The European Union – A free market in minds?
By Anne Corbett. In his alluringly titled 2010 book, The Great Brain Race, author and former journalist Ben Wildavsky made the case for how and why global universities were reshaping the world. The book was written before MOOCs hit the headlines, promising a new globalised dimension. But the structures that have already made some universities global beacons were already in place: the spread of reputational university league tables, greater possibilities for academic mobility, the acceptability of universities seeking to make a profit, and the marketing that makes the marketers themselves say that the brightest foreign students are not choosing between the US and the UK but between Yale and Cambridge. Read more...The web trail – Using cybermetrics to build reputation
By Enrique Orduña-Malea. In the inaugural lecture of the international conference “Transparency versus Rankings”, held last month at the Polytechnic University of Valencia and led by Francisco Marmolejo, education programme coordinator at the World Bank, two approaches to the future of higher education were presented. One involved various macro-level factors (especially economic and demographic ones) and the other considered the impact of information and communication technology (ICT) on higher education, both internally (infrastructure and services) and externally (affecting institutional relations and visibility) – issues that are discussed extensively in the current literature. But one critical aspect not often talked about is that the use of ICT by universities – in addition to changing their structure, how they function or the services they offer – generates a trail that can be quantified and evaluated, which provides complementary information of indisputable value and which, given its size and global sweep, should not be overlooked in any university information system, whether it is able to be evaluated or not. Read more...Modern European, not marginal post-Soviet universities needed
By Serhiy Kvit. Let’s sketch out the main characteristics of a post-Soviet university, based on the latest experience in Ukraine. I’ll take the liberty of supposing that those characteristics are universal, although the situation in Ukraine probably reflects the worst of all the post-Soviet systems. Compared to some of the achievements attained by universities in Russia, Belorussia or Kazakhstan, possibly a result of government patronage or control, Ukraine cannot demonstrate any benefits that have come its way in connection with post-Soviet changes to its higher education system since 1991. Read more...Leading Ibadan, Africa’s prolific producer of PHDs
By Tunde Fatunde. The University of Ibadan is Nigeria’s oldest and premier higher education institution. It produces around 3,000 postgraduates a year – more than any other university in Africa – Vice-chancellor Isaac Folorunso Adewole told University World News. During his two years in the top job, he has moved from being a “strategic” to a consensual leader.This is just as well, Adewole laughed, because no autocrat could survive in the university with its strong committee system – and a strong national academic union. In the challenging task of leading this major institution, students are his greatest motivators...
The University of Ibadan’s vision is to be a “world-class institution for academic excellence geared towards meeting societal needs”. Among Adewole’s priorities are to achieve a student profile that is 60% postgraduate, strengthen research, further internationalise the university and overcome its considerable infrastructural challenges. Read more...
