27 octobre 2013

By Jordi Curell. International cooperation between higher education institutions within the European Union started with the exchange of students on the basis of bilateral agreements. Since 1987, the EU has been instrumental in developing this form of cooperation through mobility. The Erasmus programme has played a fundamental role, and has allowed three million people to benefit from a mobility experience within Europe over the past 25 years. Erasmus has changed the lives of all who participated in it and has also changed the way higher education institutions relate to and cooperate with each other. More...

By Eugene Sebastian and Abid Khan. Partnership between leading institutions will be absolutely crucial to innovation and success in tackling major issues in a changing world. A small number of critical factors affect the long-term success of collaborations: the depth of the alliance; shared aspirations and strategies; unified governance; and the deployment of shared talent. Recently, when India’s Human Resource Development Ministry sent out queries to the top 30 global universities inviting them to set up campuses in the country, the response was hardly enthusiastic, with many echoing the need for collaboration over a physical presence. More...

By Serhiy Kvit. Ukrainian higher education is in a parallel world in comparison with contemporary standards of educational process and research, and with criteria for calculating academic quality. An Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union, or EU, has been a central topic in the Ukrainian media for quite a long time. Hopes of educational reform are now related to signing of this document, which may take place on 28 November. The agreement not only presupposes a free trade zone to unite Ukraine and the EU; in article 431, reforms of higher education and the standards expected in the Bologna process are also mentioned. More...

By Sarah King Head. It is entirely apt that Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, should be the recipient of a UNESCO Chair in Genocide Prevention – especially since it was there that the man who coined the term ‘genocide’, Raphael Lemkin, taught law in the 1950s. Professor Alex Hinton, director of the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights and newly inaugurated UNESCO chair, agrees. More...

By Paul Rigg. Massive open online courses, SPOCs – self-paced open courses that may become MOOCs – and university hubs generated most interest at the fourth annual international conference on “Reinventing Higher Education”, which took place in Spain from 7-8 October. The conference, which had the theme “Time for New Frontiers and Cross-collaboration in Higher Education”, was organised by Madrid-based IE University, a private non-profit institution owned by the Instituto de Empresa SL. More...

By Gilbert Nganga. At a hostel near the expansive Kenyatta University, Kenya’s biggest by student numbers, Patrick Kinyanjui is seated on his bed, typing away at his class-work on a laptop. Several students are queuing for an opportunity to do an assignment due the following day. Lecturers are increasingly demanding typed assignments. Kinyanjui, a fourth year computer engineering student, is one of a few lucky students who own a laptop or desktop computer. He charges US$4 cents per page for typing services and US$1.5 cents per page for printing. More...

By Brenda Dionisi. Italian officials are finalising a major funding and standards strategy for universities, which they hope will be enacted despite the country’s endemic political instability. The plan has been developed by the Ministry of Education, University and Research and will span three years, 2013-15, setting academic standards for both state and non-state universities. It also seeks to further internationalise higher education. Assuming that overall 2013 higher education funding is maintained next year, the programme will spend up to €167 million (US$230 million) in 2014. More...

A sod-turning ceremony at Tsinghua University in Beijing last Thursday marked the future location of Schwarzman College, a state-of-the-art residential institute designed specifically for the new Schwarzman Scholars programme. The event was recorded as the largest ever internationally funded philanthropic effort in China’s history.
Philanthropist Stephen A Schwarzman – chair, CEO and co-founder of Blackstone, an alternative asset management company – said at the ceremony that US$260 million (¥1.6 billion) had been raised for Schwarzman Scholars, the elite international scholarship programme announced in April this year. More...

By David Jobbins. The United Kingdom’s Office of Fair Trading, set up to make markets work in consumers’ interests, has launched an investigation into competition between universities in England.
The probe will focus on the impact regulation has on universities' and students' experiences of the current system. More...

By Jan Petter Myklebust. While most European countries face budget cuts and severe limitations on public spending, Norway has swum against the tide and proposed finalising the long political process of providing students abroad with access to state funding worldwide. A new budget proposal would extend support to first-year Norwegian students in the United States. But this latest stage in an increase of support for Norwegians studying in foreign institutions may fall prey to politics. “Don’t celebrate too early,” warned new Prime Minister Erna Solberg. More...