05 juin 2013
Anglais à l'université: "une nécessité vitale" pour Bruno Sire
Propos recueillis par Charles Centofanti. La loi Fioraso, votée à l'Assemblée nationale ce 28 mai, donne la possibilité aux universités d'intégrer des cursus en anglais. Bruno Sire, président de l'université de Toulouse 1 Capitole, fait partie des défenseurs farouches de la mesure.Pour quelles raisons êtes-vous convaincu par l'introduction de cours en anglais à l'université?
C'est une nécessité vitale pour la recherche et une mesure indispensable pour la réussite des étudiants dans un monde globalisé. Parmi les missions de l'université, il y a la recherche, la formation et aussi l'insertion professionnelle. Ce dernier point concerne nos doctorants: nous devons les préparer à s'insérer dans des réseaux internationaux. Pour qu'ils puissent diffuser les résultats de leurs recherches, une langue véhiculaire commune est indispensable. Autrefois ce fut le latin, demain ce sera peut-être l'espagnol ou le chinois... Aujourd'hui en tout cas c'est l'anglais. Je suis donc pragmatique: nous devons préparer nos étudiants en Master à faire des doctorats dans de bonnes conditions. Et pour acquérir un vocabulaire de spécialiste, c'est-à-dire être capable de comprendre et de communiquer sur la scène internationale, le plus efficace c'est que les chercheurs assistent à des cours et à des conférences en anglais. Si nous ne le faisons pas, la recherche française décrochera. Suite de l'article...
Léiríonn Agallamh le Charles Centofanti. Fioraso an dlí arna ghlacadh ag an Tionól Náisiúnta ar 28 May, deis d'ollscoileanna churaclaim a chomhtháthú i mBéarla. Tá Bruno Sire, uachtarán de chuid Ollscoil Toulouse 1 Capitole, ar cheann de na lucht tacaíochta staunch an bhirt. Níos mó...University guide 2014: download the Guardian tables and see how the rankings have changed
By Ami Sedghi. The Guardian University guide and ranking for 2014 is out today. See what the data says and how it's changed since last year.• Get the data
• Read the methodology
• Get the 2013 data
• More data journalism and data visualisations from the Guardian
• Banding boundaries details.
Cambridge University has retained its top spot on the Guardian undergraduate university league table for the third year in a row. Oxford University and the London School of Economics (LSE) are in second and third place respectively, unchanged from the 2013 rankings. St Andrews remains at fourth place, whilst UCL and Durham have each climbed one position taking them to fifth and sixth place respectively. Bath are up two places to seventh and Imperial climbs an impressive four places to return to the top ten. A new addition to the top ten is Surrey university coming in at eighth beating Imperial at ninth and Warwick at tenth place. Read more...
Student value for money means broader learning, not just more contact hours
By Janice Kay. Interdisciplinarity isn't just for researchers, says Janice Kay, as 1,000 Exeter first years set out to tackle some big problems. At a time of the year when many students around the UK are beginning to drift off for the summer, 1,000 first years at the University of Exeter have signed up for a study series centred on big world problems like climate change, ageing, ethical banking, child health and international security. Read more...Students' 20 top tips for picking a course
By Lucy Tobin. As the Guardian publishes its university guide 2014, Lucy Tobin asks students for their handy hints on picking a course.5 Pick something you love – and won't mind getting up with a hangover to learn about
Samuel Day, 19, is studying drama and English literature at the University of East Anglia
"You'll find that you work harder if you're passionate about your degree. Joint courses are also great because you get the best out of both subjects." Read more...
Most people in the UK do not go to university – and maybe never will
By Charlie Ball. A recent BIS report on higher education participation was flawed, says Charlie Ball – closer analysis reveals rates well below 50%. Almost everyone goes to university nowadays, everyone knows that. Except that not everyone does and we rarely see accurate statistics about how many or what proportion of people actually do. It's quite an important question, bound up with thorny issues of workforce skills, educational aspiration and, of course, how (and how much) the UK taxpayer funds our domestic higher education sector. Against this backdrop came a widely-reported piece of analysis from the department of business, innovation and skills (BIS) on the Higher Education Initial Participation Rate (HEIPR), which examines participation rates for 17-30-year-old English domiciled first-time participants in higher education in the UK, including outside England. Read more...Elizabeth Warren's loan bill offers a lifeline to America's indebted students
By Sam Blum. With interest rates on $1tn of student debt set to double, inaction by Congress means college education will become unaffordable. With the interest rate on federal student loans set to double – from 3.4% to 6.8% – on 1 July, representatives are flooding Congress with a plethora of bills aimed at remedying America's student loan problem. Most bills coming out of the Senate and House are quite similar, with minor variations of emphasis on interest rate caps, prevailing market trends and so forth. But the bold approach of one bill, authored by Democratic Senator from Massachusetts Elizabeth Warren, offers the best chance of tackling a crisis that now affects 37 million loan debtors in this country, and which accounts for more than $1tn owed to the federal government. Read more...Tighter rules for student visas could cost UK £2.4bn in a decade – study
By Richard Adams. Research suggests more students are choosing to study in the US and Canada and that the change cannot easily be reversed. The government's hardening of international student visa rules could cause long-term damage to Britain's universities and cost £2.4bn over the next decade, a study claims. Research by Universities UK, which lobbies on behalf of British higher education, warns that the visa restrictions may mean many more overseas students choose to study in the US and Canada rather than the UK, taking £350m a year in lost revenue with them. Read more...Why I'm taking a punt on Cairo
By Zoe Roberts. If you're studying Arabic, finding a safe place to practise speaking the language can be tricky. Syria, no go. Lebanon, problematic, no go. Egypt remains on the borderline of stability. For those about to set off to study in an Arab-speaking country, stories of past students being evacuated when civil unrest breaks out are troubling.Where is there left that's safe in the Middle East for students wanting to go there on their year abroad? Arabic, like Japanese and Mandarin Chinese, is rated a category five language, the highest category in terms of difficulty and hours required for an English-speaker to master it. Read more...
Why higher education will not benefit from market forces
By Peter Scott. If we have more of a market in higher education, brands will become more important, says Peter Scott – to the detriment of diversity. The trouble with "markets" in higher education is that most of the people designing them haven't a clue about real markets. With few exceptions, ministers, civil servants, quangocrats and senior university managers have all spent their careers in the very public sector they seem determined to subvert. Read more...Cheating isn’t networking, it’s cheating
By Valerie Strauss. Elaine J. Power, a biology and biotechnology teacher at James Hubert Blake High School in Silver Spring, Md., took strong issue with a post by Penelope Trunk that said schools should loosen up about cheating and encourage students to network to find answers. You can read the original post here, and following is Power’s response: By Elaine J. Power. Penelope Trunk says that “what schools call cheating is what people in the work world call effective workplace behavior.” She’s wrong. What schools call cheating is more akin to the workplace behavior in which somebody gets a promotion by taking credit for someone else’s work. When the boss condones that kind of behavior, you get a lot of disgruntled, back-stabbing employees, and a dysfunctional workplace. If schools condone cheating, it’s not collaboration that students learn. Read more...
