23 juin 2013
Helsinki big winner in centres of excellence funding
By Ian Dobson. The University of Helsinki confirmed its place on the top rung of the Finnish research ladder by being appointed as the coordinating university for seven of 14 centres of excellence in research being funded by the Academy of Finland. Participants are universities and research institutes, and the academy has reserved €45 million (US$59 million) for the first three years of the six-year programme term. The programme involves research teams from 12 universities or research institutes. Read more...Top English universities in 'elitism' row
By David Jobbins. England’s top universities are failing to recruit across all classes and backgrounds, the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission said this week. In a report titled Higher Education: The fair access challenge, the commission found that overall people in the most advantaged areas are still three times as likely to go to university as those in the most disadvantaged areas. Read more...Need to improve technology transfer to economy – Report
By Jane Marshall. France carries out high quality research but does not get full value for the large amounts of public funding it currently spends on the sector, mostly because of weakness in transferring its inventions to the economy, according to a report by the Cour des Comptes, the national audit office. The report was published a week before the Senate debated and adopted the latest higher education and research reform, the Loi d’Orientation pour l’Enseignement Supérieur et la Recherche, or ESR. Research has been a national priority since introduction of the Pacte pour la recherche in 2006, and has been spared the budgetary and staff cuts suffered by other areas of government spending. Read more...UK on borrowed time in world Under 50 university ranking
By David Jobbins. The United Kingdom has more universities than any other nation in the top 100 of the annual Times Higher Education 100 Under 50 ranking – 18 compared to 13 for its nearest competitor, Australia. But the 2013 rankings, published on 19 June, show that the UK figure is down two compared with 2012. The disappearance of one of those – the University of Keele – foreshadows an almost total wipeout for the UK over the next two years. Read more...Commission asks Slovenia to allow franchise operations
By Jan Petter Myklebust. Slovenia has been asked to respect rules in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (EU) regarding the freedom of establishment and free provision of services in education. After infringement procedures initiated by the European Commission, Slovenian legislation has been amended to allow higher education institutions from other member states to offer their programmes in Slovenia. Read more...Minister acts to raise number of Danes studying abroad
ByJan Petter Myklebust. Denmark’s Minister of Higher Education Morten Østergaard is on a drive to boost the number of Danes studying abroad. Increased Insight through a Greater Global View is the title of a newly published plan that includes 31 measures to swell from 17% to at least 50% the proportion of Danish students taking a study period or work-practice abroad. The first part of the strategy, released on 14 June, targets a significant increase in numbers of Danish students studying in other countries, a further strengthening of the international dimension at Danish higher education institutions, and measures to improve local students’ competence in foreign languages. Read more...Nine professors vie for Cairo University presidency
By Ashraf Khaled. Nine academics, including six professors of medicine, are vying for the presidency of Cairo University, which is Egypt’s most prestigious state-run institution. The 27 June election for a new leader will be the second since a 2011 revolt toppled Egypt’s long-standing president Hosni Mubarak. The contenders include Ezz Eddin Abu Steit, an agriculture professor and the university’s vice president; Gaber Nassar, the law faculty’s deputy dean; Alia Abdul Fatah, a medical professor and the first woman to run for the institution’s presidency; and Mohi Mansour, an engineering professor who came second in the 2011 election. Read more...New government gives 23% boost to higher education budget
By Ameen Amjad Khan. Pakistan’s new government has announced a 22.84% rise in the higher education development budget by allocating Rs18.5 billion (US$185 million) compared to last year’s Rs15.1 billion. The money will be spent through the Higher Education Commission, or HEC, which welcomed the increase, terming it a “breath of fresh air” in a letter sent to vice-chancellors of Pakistani universities after the budget announcement in the National Assembly. Read more...Modernising higher education – Let professors be teachers too
ByAlan Osborn. Not enough emphasis is placed on teaching as opposed to research in many of Europe’s top universities, concludes the European Union’s (EU) High Level Group on the Modernisation of Higher Education. Its central recommendation is that by 2020 “all staff teaching in higher education institutions should have received certified pedagogical training”.The group, headed by the former president of Ireland Mary McAleese and composed of a number of distinguished European academics plus the chair of Microsoft Corporation in Europe Jan Muehlfeit, makes 16 recommendations in support of its basic pitch that “teaching matters as much as research matters – we must put the quality of teaching and learning centre-stage”. Read more...
In Online Partnerships, Legal Compliance Is Key
By Joseph G. Casion and Joshua E. Gewolb. More and more colleges are expanding into online education, through traditional courses and MOOCs, or massive open online courses. Developing courses is expensive and requires a lot of technical expertise, so many colleges are forming partnerships with for-profit online vendors to help them. Those partnerships provide an extraordinary opportunity for colleges—but they also present new legal risks. In the past several years, the for-profit-education sector has been the subject of a number of lawsuits, in which the government has extracted large settlements. Colleges need to be aware of their own risks and to create agreements that protect against liability when entering into partnerships with online-education providers. Read more...
