By Angela Jameson. Nestled in a tree-lined gorge on the main railway line between London and Scotland, Durham University is the unlikely seat of Islamic finance teaching in the United Kingdom.
Here, in the third-oldest university in England, a world heritage site, students have been coming to learn the principles of Islamic finance for more than a quarter of a century. Read more...
14 avril 2015
Education: the end of the alpha-male?
'To call woman the weaker sex is a libel' – Mahatma Gandhi
What is the most striking transformation that has taken place in European education in the last half century? The information and communications revolution and the changes brought to teaching and learning methods are strong contenders, while internationalisation and student mobility in education have also expanded education's horizons. Yet there is another dramatic evolution that we sometimes take for granted: the female dominance in terms of educational success! Why does this not make more headlines, especially since the trend of women outperforming men has been strengthening at all educational levels year after year. More...
Turning tides in school evaluation
'The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple' – Oscar Wilde
15 years ago, the phrase 'school evaluation' would probably have triggered a rather one directional image of teachers assessing individual students. The reputation and 'fame' of schools depended on whether pupils generally performed well, and while schools or teachers, may have been 'inspected' there was rarely a consideration of the range of issues that affect the school environment. Today, reality has progressed and the picture looks quite different. The one-way evaluation streets have evolved into multi-lane highways with everyone scrutinising everyone else. More...
One million hybrid babies, better transversal skills and job prospects – is there a downside to Erasmus?
"Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it". George Bernard Shaw.
This year, a study on the impact of the Erasmus mobility programme revealed that there are now over one million Erasmus babies roaming Europe and the world – meaning offspring from parents who have met while one or both were on an Erasmus exchange in another country. Considering that about three million students have participated in the programme, one million babies is quite an impressive figure. More...
Funding education: who really decides?
"To give away money is an easy matter ... and in any man's power. But to decide to whom to give it, and how large and when, for what purpose and how, is neither in every man's power nor an easy matter". – Aristotle
Aristotle's musings on "giving away money" can surely be related to public funding. Public purse strings are becoming ever tighter and questions are constantly being asked about the amount of public spending, as well as its purposes. More...
Can education make us happy?
'The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence. But we find that this education of sympathy is not only systematically ignored in schools, but it is severely repressed. ' – Rabindranath Tagore on education
The recipe for a better life is made up of 11 key ingredients according to the OECD’s Better Life Index. Just as countries are ranked on their wealth and health, now we can complete the triangle and rank them on the quality of life of their populations. More...
Is PISA too slanted?
"Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it" – Salvador Dali
It took 199 years to build the Tower of Pisa. Only 5 years after construction had started, the tower began to sink. It had been built on too weak a foundation, set in unstable soil. Although beautifully planned and designed, the project was flawed from the beginning. More...
Education in Europe 2020: do targets really matter?
"Symbols can be so beautiful, sometimes." – Kurt VonnegutAt the centre of Europe 2020 – the EU's main strategy for growth in the current decade – lie two European targets for education. The EU aims to increase tertiary graduation rates to at least 40 % and reduce early school leaving (ESL) rates below 10 % – despite the fact that education remains a national, rather than a European, competence. But if the European Union is not responsible for the policies that may lead to the success or failure in reaching these numbers, are the targets meaningful, or merely symbolic. More...
How can a scoreboard improve student mobility?
"When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind ..." – William Thompson (Lord Kelvin), 1824–1907.
90 % of all human data has been created in the last two years: from big to micro data, quantitative to qualitative data – data is everywhere and none of us can escape it. The sentiment expressed by Lord Kelvin – that you understand a phenomenon better when you have data about it – seems comforting in times like these. And who knows, perhaps it even led the drive for gathering ever more data in the first place. More...
Islamic finance lessons for UK as swathe of universities launch courses
Public-sector universities: As the number goes up, quality sinks
By Riazul Haq. As the number of public sector universities has increased sharply during the last over one decade, the declining standards of teaching, research work, plagiarism, mismanagement, financial irregularities and establishment of illegal campuses pose a major challenge to the policymakers and higher education managers. Read more...
