By Hu Haidan. Eight members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a former Cornell University president are among the faculty slated to teach at New York University's Shanghai campus starting in September.
NYU Shanghai, the first joint Chinese-US educational institution to receive approval from China's Ministry of Education, is an example of international cooperation in higher education. Its first group of 200 to 300 undergraduates will be enrolled for the inaugural 2012-13 academic year.
"NYU Shanghai aims to become a world-class research university," said Yu Lizhong, chancellor of the campus. "To achieve this goal, we need to attract the best faculty, enroll the most talented students and create the best educational environment, which we are all very confident with." Read more...

By William McGuinness. Duke University is moving to close the deal on a campus in China after celebrating preliminary approval from the Chinese government last month. Provost Peter Lange said Duke will submit its final plan for a campus on the outskirts of Shanghai to China's education ministry by its deadline in April 2013.
Named Duke Kunshan University, the proposed campus is a collaboration between Duke University in Durham, N.C., Wuhan University and the city of Kunshan. The New York Times reports a Dec. 19 ceremony marked preliminary approval of Duke's Kunshan campus, which was initially awarded in August. Classes are expected to start there in the 2013-2014 academic year. Read more...

By Jason Lane and Kevin Kinser. In honor of the New Year, we wanted to put forward five trends that we think will affect international branch campuses in 2013. As is always the case with predictions, we run the risk of being completely wrong. A year from now we will revisit this list to see how we did. In the meantime, feel free to add your own predictions—and critiques—in the comments. And we wish everyone a very happy 2013!
Greater push-back from home campuses. By and large, the development of overseas campuses has been led by senior administrators who jumped into the efforts with limited consultation. Until lately, there has been very little push-back from faculty and others, but we believe this is about to change. Read more...

By D.D. Guttenplan. For a certain kind of European, Asian or Latin American institution, the release of the world university rankings each autumn is an exercise in humiliation. Though often long established, and with good local reputations, these schools lack the endowments, research facilities and sheer size needed to compete with U.S. and British powerhouses like Harvard, M.I.T., Cambridge and Stanford. So when Quacquarelli Symonds, the London-based company behind the QS World University Rankings, announced “a new initiative that gives universities the opportunity to highlight their strength” by paying a fee for the chance to be rated on a scale of one to five stars, the business case was obvious. But so, say critics, was the potential for conflicts of interest. The fees were announced in 2010, though the initiative was not introduced fully until this year. Read more...

By Ray Clancy. Canadian authorities are considering putting new measures in place to protect authentic international students who want to study in the country. The new measures aim to prevent fraud in the International Student Programme (ISP) and Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) said the changes will limit study permits to students attending institutions designated by provinces and territories.
The proposed changes would address concerns that some institutions are providing poor quality programmes or facilitating, knowingly or not, the entry of foreign nationals to Canada for purposes other than study. Under the proposed amendments, CIC would work with provinces and territories, which are constitutionally responsible for education, to develop a framework to designate educational institutions that will be permitted to host international students. Read more...

THe first CeQuInt Newsletter was sent out to ECA's stakeholders. The CeQuInt project intends to inform its target audiences proactively about its activities. The quarterly CeQuInt Newsletter is just one way of informing its direct stakeholders.
The CeQuInt newsletter will be send out quarterly and povides information about the ongoing project activities.  You can register to receive the newsletter via e-mail. You will then automatically receive the CeQuInt Newsletter. If you already receive the ECA newsletter, you don't need to register. The CeQuInt Newsletter is also published online on ECA's website.
Current literature suggests that higher education’s internationalisation is perceived as an indicator for the quality of higher education. Nonetheless few approaches have been developed to assess the quality of internationalisation. The current national quality assurance and accreditation systems do not explicitly include international and intercultural learning outcomes and a commonly agreed assessment methodology is lacking.
CeQuInt therefore intends to develop such a methodology.
The overall aim of the project is to assess, reward and enhance internationalisation.
CeQuInt will develop an assessment framework (i.e. methodology) to assess the internationalisation of a programme or an institution and which, if completed successfully, can lead to the award of a Certificate for Quality in Internationalisation. The Certificate is intended to confirm that a programme or an institution has successfully incorporated an international and intercultural dimension into the purpose, function and delivery of its education.
The project is based on the consortium's commonly agreed framework for internationalisation and will focus on both enhancement and excellence.

By David Matthews. An outsourcing company has announced that it will buy i-graduate, a firm that surveys international students and agents, for up to £7.5 million.
Tribal Group, which entered takeover talks in 2011 after a collapse in its share price, said the acquisition would help it offer more data to customers in the education sector.
i-graduate, founded in 2005, is responsible for reports including the ICEF Agent Barometer, which surveys agents for international students across the globe about their perceptions of higher education in different countries.
It also owns the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education, a body that also looks at trends in global higher education. The OBHE was founded by Universities UK and the Association of Commonwealth Universities but joined i-graduate in 2010. Read more...

COMPREHENDING THE INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVES OF UNIVERSITIES: A Taxonomy of Modes of Engagement and Institutional Logics by Richard J. Edelstein and John Aubrey Douglass. CSHE.19.12. Download the PDF document.
Abstract: The paper examines the behavior of universities at the level of the individual institution to create a taxonomy of actions and logics used to initiate international activities, engagements, and academic programs. The taxonomy is organized utilizing the concepts of activity clusters, modes of engagement, and institutional logics. Its purpose is to provide a framework for future research as well as a tool for scholars and practitioners to better analyze and understand what has become a rush by many universities to become more engaged globally. After a brief discussion of the importance of contextual variables such as academic discipline, academic program level, and the prestige hierarchy, the specific characteristics of the university as a social organization are considered. A central assumption is that the most meaningful and successful change in the university occurs when the decentralized nature of the organization and the significant formal and informal authority of faculty and academic staff is recognized and incorporated into decision processes in real and meaningful ways. The taxonomy of actions and logics is conceptualized as a list of modes of engagement that can be organized into seven clusters of activity. Clusters include individual faculty initiatives; the management of institutional demography; mobility initiatives; curricular and pedagogical change; transnational institutional engagements; network building; and campus culture, ethos, and leadership. Nine institutional logics are described and proposed as possible explanatory variables as to how universities interpret their global environment and justify strategies, policies, and actions they undertake. International and global realities have become a central strategic concern for many universities. The framework offered in this article is intended to help support empirical research on strategies, actions and logics at the institutional level and an on-going research project by the authors.

High officials and scholars from China and Hong Kong together with European policymakers and practitioners deeply involved in the making of Europe-China academic relations had a round of vivid discussions with the enthusiastic participants in the 35th ACA European Policy Seminar. Over 100 participants, many of whom are China experts themselves, turned up at the event on 7 December 2012 despite the disruptive first snow in Brussels. The seminar was a timely occasion for the exchange of new information, professional know-how and inspiring thoughts on higher education cooperation between the European Union and China, especially at the juncture of major changes on both ends. It was also a well-attended event, bringing together speakers and participants with a shared goal in developing academic relations between Europe, China and its Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
The seminar was a one-day event, as usual. The eight hours of people-to-people contact, though short, were thoroughly enjoyed by the participants and speakers alike. As we are well aware of the fact that an event without participants is a sad event, we wish to thank all the participants and speakers for making the seminar a happy one. Additionally, we must also thank the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Brussels for its support that enabled us to reach out to the best possible speakers in the Greater China region.
ACA organises four policy seminars each year. On 24 January 2013, the first gathering of the year will, again, be What’s News in Brussels? This seminar will discuss the latest developments in European policies and programmes including, but not limited to, the proposed Erasmus for All and Horizon 2020, the Bologna mobility strategy, and issues for the European Commission’s upcoming “internationalisation communication”. It goes without saying that ACA only brings you the best speakers who do not only have something to say, but say it very well.
Seats in this hallmark seminar go particularly fast. We highly recommend an early registration before 8 January 2013 (Tuesday).
ACA Seminar – What’s new in Brussels.