By Khy Sovuthy and Matt Blomberg. The Minister of Education will no longer place a validating signature on the country’s university degrees, and schools of tertiary education will soon be audited, and properly accredited, for the quality of their education, officials said Monday.
Universities whose courses and degrees fall below par will be shut down entirely, or ordered to take serious remedial action to improve their level of teaching, an education ministry official said. More...

By Stéphan Vincent-Lancrin and Alfonso Echazarra, CERI Innovation Strategy, Directorate for Education and Skills. India has been hailed for being a laboratory of frugal and inclusive innovations. The Tata Nano, the cheapest car in the world, the Aravind Eye Care Hospitals, which fight “avoidable blindness” by giving cheap or free state-of-the-art eye surgery to poor Indians, or the Bharti Airtel, which offers low-rate phone calls, thanks to an innovative business model, are often-cited examples of innovations that make valuable products and services affordable to deprived populations. Just glance at the Honey Bee Network database and you will find a plethora of interesting initiatives targeted to the Indian poor: from the Mitticool, a natural refrigerator made entirely from clay that requires no energy, to the Washing and Exercise Machine, a mechanical, semi-automated, pedal operated washing machine for clothes, the jugaad spirit is ubiquitous. More...

By Amy Baker. In positive news for Australia’s international education sector, year-end 2013 data reveals an almost double-digit rise in course commencements in 2013 compared with the previous year. This upturn was across all sectors except the Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector, which remained stable with negligible -0.1% negative growth. More...

By Dinesh Weerakkody. Sri Lanka in order to become a knowledge hub would require to invest big, to strengthen the existing skills base, that would however require the sort of great national leap forward we saw in 2009 to ensure we have the kind of skilled workforce needed to compete in a new, high tech industrial era.
A Knowledge Hub is broadly defined as a designated region intended to attract FDIs, retain and attract foreign students, build and grow a reputation for providing high-quality education and specialized training for both international and domestic students, and finally create a knowledge-based economy.  A knowledge hub is concerned with the process of building up a country’s capacity to better integrate it with the world’s increasing knowledge-based economy, while simultaneously exploring policy options that have the potential to enhance economic growth. A higher education hub can include different combinations of domestic/international institutions, branch campuses, and foreign partnership, within the region. More...

By Shoaib Saleem. Pakistan-China Institute in Islamabad with the collaboration of University of Karachi’s Latif Ebrahim Jamal National Science Information Center is launching courses on “Basic Chinese Language” under the supervision of Professor Attaur Rahman, Professor Iqbal Choudhary and Senator Mushahid Hussain in all public sector universities of Pakistan through video-conferencing. The main objective of the programme is to impart basic Chinese language to Pakistani students which will help them in their future lives, particularly in view of the key role that China is now playing in the world economy and in science and engineering. This course has been designed to help undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate students across Pakistan in basic sciences, applied sciences and social sciences to develop their language skills. More...

By Tomoko Yamashita. The government of South Korea wants to shut down universities that cannot attract enough students. As a result, universities and colleges in South Korea are now merging and reorganizing as they fight for survival.
The birthrate in South Korea is declining even faster than in rapidly aging Japan. The number of new graduates from high school may soon not be enough to meet annual enrollment targets set up by each university.
Drastic measures are under way as the country grapples with the question of how to maintain the number and quality of its institutes of higher education. More...

By Stephanie March. The number of students from India applying to study at Australian universities has more than doubled over the past year, largely because they want a quality education not just a pathway to permanently migrate to Australia, industry representatives say.
The number of higher education visa applications lodged by students in India to study in Australia rose from 1,987 to 4,148 in the year to September 2013.
Student visa applications from India fell sharply in 2009 after the closure of bogus colleges, tightening of visa rules for vocational courses and a number violent attacks on Indians in Melbourne. More...