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University rankings can lure international students, but some experts fear the league table is unreliable, writes Yojana Sharma. Students intending to study abroad are so used to looking up where universities stand in global league tables that it is easy to forget the rankings are just a decade old - the first was released by Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2003, creating a huge international buzz.
Since then there has been a profusion of international rankings, mainly published by newspapers and magazines, such as Times Higher Education (THE) and The Guardian in England, and the US News and World Report in America, as well as commercial organisations, such as QS.
International rankings have become so popular that organisations vie against each other to release new lists every year or sub-lists with a tweak - THE's first Asian regional ranking was released on April 10 and QS is planning a Latin American ranking based on "methodology more appropriate to that region".
The main global league tables are timed to coincide with the university applications season - some students wait for the rankings before deciding where to apply. Read more...

By François Therin. THE recent release of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Survey (Timss) ranking has resulted in many articles being released, commenting on the pros and cons of education systems and how they can jeopardise the economy of a country. But is that really the case?
I did a little exercise using the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) 2009 results. Pisa, launched in 1997 by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), is an international study which aims to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the skills (including many different reading skills) and knowledge of 15-year-old students.
Besides using the Pisa 2009 results, I also gathered information from the Global Innovation Index 2012 results published by Insead and World Intellectual Property Organisation (Wipo); and the unemployment rate of 36 countries, mixing countries which ranked at different levels on Pisa and which are at different stages of economic development. Read more...

By Ariel Kaminer. When the trustees of Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art voted this week to start charging for an undergraduate degree, it ended the institution’s lengthy reign as the most famous tuition-free private college in America.But it was never the only such place. While most colleges grapple with the growing burden of student debt, a few outliers across the country and even New York State offer a college education for the one price that looks good in any economy: nothing.
To qualify for Cooper Union’s largess, applicants had to prove themselves on the highest tier of the highest tier of academic or artistic achievement. That might strike some New Yorkers as easy compared with the requirements at some of the other free colleges. Read more...

TANZANIA Global Learning Agency (TaGLA) has been running various capacity building training programmes via face-to-face and videoconference workshops to help various people sharpen social skills and exchange knowledge and experience.
This has enabled participants from the public and private sectors to utilise TaGLA facilities, workshops and benefit from them.
The Institute of Taxi Administration (ITA), an integral part of Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA), is one of the beneficiaries of such capacity building programmes.
"The training that has been going on at TaGLA for ITA is related to a recently introduced multi-disciplinary Master of Arts in Revenue Law and Administration (M.A. RLA) programme. It is run at ITA in collaboration with two internationally-reputable universities - the University of Dar es Salaam and the University of Muenster, Germany," said ITA rector Dr Patrick Mugoya (pictured) in an interview wit this paper in Dar es Salaam on Monday. Read more...

Around the world almost 300m 15- to 24-year-olds are not working. What has caused this epidemic of joblessness? And what can abate it?
HELDER PEREIRA is a young man with no work and few prospects: a 21-year-old who failed to graduate from high school and lost his job on a building site four months ago. With his savings about to run out, he has come to his local employment centre in the Paris suburb of Sevran to sign on for benefits and to get help finding something to do. He’ll get the cash. Work is another matter. Youth unemployment in Sevran is over 40%...
Countries with the lowest youth jobless rates have a close relationship between education and work. Germany has a long tradition of high-quality vocational education and apprenticeships, which in recent years have helped it reduce youth unemployment despite only modest growth. Countries with high youth unemployment are short of such links. In France few high-school leavers have any real experience of work. In north Africa universities focus on preparing their students to fill civil-service jobs even as companies complain about the shortage of technical skills. The unemployment rate in Morocco is five times as high for graduates as it is for people with only a primary education. The legacy of apartheid means that young black South Africans often live and go to school many miles from where there are jobs. Read more...

By Sabine Righetti and Tai Nalon. A probe finds Dilma's government taking shortcuts to achieving competitiveness for the country. At the center of President Dilma Rousseff's education policy is a plan to send 101,000 students abroad by 2015. Launched in 2011, the Science Without Borders program selects candidates and covers school fees and living costs for them to study in undergraduate programs abroad, with the long-term goal of increasing the nation's competitiveness and entrepreneurship. Brazilian universities submit their top students for eligibility. Out of the 101,000 scholarships, 75,000 are paid for by the government and the rest by the private sector.
However, the goal of 101,000 students is considered unrealistic by many, and indeed the program has been having a hard time finding enough eligible students. The department within the Brazilian Ministry of Education devoted to the evaluation and expansion of higher education in Brazil – Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) – is one of the agencies involved in selecting students for the program. Read more...

There are many good reasons to learn the Russian language. Deepa Sekhar completed her Class XII from Bharathi Matriculation School, Madurai, last year and secured a full scholarship to study marine engineering in Astrakhan State Technical University in Southern European Russia.
Her five year main degree programme starts this fall. In the last 10 months during the preparatory course she established herself as the best foreign student knowing Russian language in her class of 55 students from different nationalities. Deepa apparently is the only Indian in the city of Astrakhan and the only girl student enrolled in the course, which even prompted the Indian Ambassador to have an hour long meeting with her before she joined the programme.
She left her hometown with another credit. She became the first student from Madurai in the last quarter century to bag a scholarship of the Russian Government that would finance her five year degree programme. Read more...

By Richard Springer. Without a 20% increase in applicants from India, there would have been a significant decline in the numbers of international students applying to U.S. graduate schools in 2013, according to a new report by the Council of Graduate Schools. CGS reported that the number of applications from prospective international students to U.S. graduate schools increased just 1% in 2013, after a 9% gain in 2012 and an 11% rise in 2011.
It marks the smallest growth in foreign applicants in the past eight years. The slowdown in international applications was driven mainly by a decline in applications from China. Chinese students, who constitute about 29% of all international students attending U.S. graduate schools, declined 5% in 2013.
Applications from India, on the other hand, which account for about 20% of all international graduate students at U.S. institutions, jumped 20% in graduate school applications from 2012. Read more...

By SAEED AL-ASMARI. The National Commission for Academic Accreditation and Assessment (NCAAA) has recently certified eight Saudi universities and colleges, according to Abdullah Almusallam, secretary general of the NCAAA, who also pointed out that the commission has only accredited 30 academic institutions in the Kingdom.
Abdullah Al-Rubaish, rector of Dammam University said, “The Ministry of Higher Education has canceled some academic programs at Saudi universities because they were deemed undesirable for the labor market,” stressing that the private sector should absorb two-thirds of higher education graduates.
During a press conference, which was held at Dammam University to announce the agenda of the third international conference on quality assurance in post-secondary education, Almusallam and Al-Rubaish addressed various questions regarding the quality of institutions and programs at Saudi universities. Read more...

By Stephen Ssenkaaba. Admission to the university abroad is one of the most exciting moments of one's life. If you have the crucial funding; the tuition, accommodation and maintenance fees sorted, that is even better. But it does not mean it is over. One question still looms. Will you get the travel visa to your preferred destination of studying? With more countries tightening immigration policies, getting a visa, even as a legitimate prospective international student, is becoming a nightmare.
Three years ago, James Tubu won a prestigious scholarship for his university education in the United Kingdom. "I just waited to get a call, deliver my passport and pick my visa after a few days," he recalls. He still needed to go through the visa application process.
As some of the most popular study destinations, the UK, the US, South Africa, Sweden, Norway and Germany provide elaborate procedures for visa application for students intending to pursue further studies there. Read more...