By Uche Nnaike. The Committee of Vice-Chancellors of Nigeria (CVC) said at the weekend that Nigerians spend an average of $500 million annually on European and American universities. This was contained in a communiqué issued at the end of a two-day Consultative Policy Dialogue on the Future and Relevance of the Nigerian Universities and other Tertiary Institutions, organised by CVC and Trust Africa, Dakar.
The communiqué, signed by Prof. Michael Faborode, noted that the amount was about 70 per cent of the total allocation in 2008 to all federal universities. It said this was an indication of the loss of faith in Nigerian universities as shown by the rush for foreign institutions, even to other African countries.
The committee noted that constant restiveness of students between host communities, school administration, weak governance structures and processes were some of the challenges facing the Nigerian Higher Education sector, reported the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).
According to the communiqué, the challenge have contributed to the disruptions of the academic calendar, including the constant bickering between the academic staff union, other staff unions, university management and government. Read more...

By Michael Stratford. The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday passed legislation that would reallocate up to 55,000 green cards to foreign graduates of American research universities who receive advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics.
The bill, called the STEM Jobs Act, was approved by a 245-to-139 vote. The measure would eliminate an existing "diversity visa" program that currently provides 55,000 visas a year to people from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States. Under the legislation, those visas would be redirected to highly educated graduates. The bill would create a new category of visas specifically for foreign students who graduate from an American research university with a doctorate or master's degree in a STEM field.
Proponents of the bill, which included nearly all House Republicans and 27 Democrats, said the new program was essential for economic growth and maintaining the nation's global competitiveness because it would keep highly trained, in-demand workers in the United States. Read more...

Hungary's government on Thursday unveiled a broad-reaching plan that aims to make higher education accessible to more students while creating disincentives for dropping out.
The main points of the plan, approved by the government at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, were outlined by government spokesman András Giró-Szósz and deputy state secretary for higher education Zoltán Maruzsa at a press conference.
Giró-Szász said the plan aims to level the playing field and allow more Hungarians to enter college or university. The merit-based system will allow as many people as possible to enter university, not just the ones with money, he said. State-sponsored student loans, under the aegis of the Diákhitel 2.0 programme, will serve as a disincentive for leaving university before graduating, he said, adding that the dropout rate is almost 50% at present.
Giró-Szász announced measures designed to encourage students to take out the loans through helping loan repayment. State organisations will take over the student loans from their employees, he said, and private sector employers who take over the loans will be offered "significant tax write-offs". He noted that repayments for graduates start at just 4% of earnings. Giró-Szász did not reveal the exact number of state scholarships to be available next year at the press conference but confirmed that they were the same as numbers in a proposal reported in the press. Read more...

By Sarah Harris. Nearly one in five degree courses has been scrapped since the tripling of tuition fees to £9,000-a-year, it has been revealed.
Universities are concentrating on popular subjects and dropping courses that have too few applicants or are too expensive to run.
Official figures show a cull of more than 2,600 in the number of courses available to applicants planning to start their degrees in 2013.
More than 5,200 courses had already been removed for students beginning this year - the first cohort to face the higher fees.
Universities dumped some of the courses even after prospectuses went online earlier this year and in some cases after applications began, according to reports yesterday. Read more...

By Myint Oo. For half a century the people of Myanmar have lived under dictatorship in a veritable police state. The country has been isolated and devastated, with its entire infrastructure, including its health and education sectors, destroyed.
With the emergence in the past two years of a quasi-civilian government, a process of reform has begun. Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was allowed to enter parliament. US-Myanmar relations improved. United States President Barack Obama made a historic visit to Yangon, and gave a speech at the Yangon University Convocation Hall. “I came here because of my respect for this university…it must reclaim its greatness because the future of this country will be determined by the education of its youth,” he said.
Following Obama’s stated commitment to advancing education in Myanmar, the Institute of International Education (IIE) has launched an initiative involving the participation of nine US institutions in a strategic planning process aimed at developing partnerships with universities in Myanmar and assisting the rebuilding of higher education capacity in the country. Myanmar citizens have welcomed the IIE’s initiative and interpreted its announcement in the following way: "The eagles are coming to dance with the peacocks." the ‘dancing peacock’ is the emblem of Yangon University.
It is hoped that the launch of the International Academic Partnership Programme (IAPP) in Myanmar will help to reclaim the greatness of Myanmar’s universities and bring about the potential emergence of US-standard universities. During the 1950s, Yangon University was one of the top institutions in Asia. Now Myanmar's universities have been demoted and lag behind, ranked between 12,000 and 20,000 worldwide, according to the Webometrics Ranking Web of Universities. Read more...

By Rahul Choudaha. A recent commentary in University World News highlighted issues facing US higher education in sustaining international student growth rates. Although some of the concerns raised are relevant, they mask the latent strength in the scale, diversity and capacity of the American higher education system to become a more attractive player in the international student mobility arena.
The concept of international student recruitment in the US is a relatively new development. It gained traction in response to post-recession budget cuts, primarily in public higher education institutions. The external environment prompted institutions to start recruiting international students, but the internal capacities and resources of many were ill prepared for this sudden shift towards a more proactive recruitment model.
Against a backdrop of higher expectations for international enrolment and declining budget support, this lack of internal capacity triggered the adoption of quick turnaround recruitment approaches. For example, several institutions started experimenting with commission-based recruitment agents, anticipating lower upfront costs. These quick-fix practices, however, have created gaps in institutions’ ability to manage the qualitative risks associated with the use of agents and provide adequate support services to meet international student needs. Read more...

By Alya Mishra. With Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia and, more recently, Sri Lanka and Bhutan aspiring to become global education hubs in Asia, India’s potential to host several hubs – and the challenges it would face in doing this – has become a point of recent debate.
With more than 600 universities and 31,000 colleges, and the third largest student enrolment after China and the United States, India has what it takes to become a global education hub, argue experts.
But lack of a comprehensive national policy, bureaucratic red tape and the slow pace of higher education reform may prevent India from achieving this. Read more...

By Nicola Jenvey. South Africa’s universities view their autonomy as sacrosanct, and so the decision by Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande to push through legal amendments that will allow him to intervene in university governance "at whim" has come as a severe blow. Last month parliament voted in favour of the Higher Education and Training Laws Amendment Bill, and last week it was approved in the National Council of Provinces –- the final step ahead of becoming law.
The bill essentially simplifies the process by which the government can place struggling universities under administration and sanctions other kinds of government interventions. But it has shocked the sector is that neither Higher Education South Africa (HESA), which represents the vice-chancellors of the country's 23 universities, nor the statutory advisory Council on Higher Education (CHE), were consulted on the amendments.
Both entities had made presentations to parliamentary bodies, arguing that the amendments would affect their autonomy. It was, said HESA Chair and Durban University of Technology Vice-chancellor Ahmed Bawa, “extraordinarily disappointing" that they had not been consulted before the bill went to parliament – especially as the amendments were "devastating". Read more...

By David Jobbins. Universities’ increasingly important revenues from international students are being seriously depleted by foreign exchange charges on fees and other transactions.
In the UK alone universities spend £34 million (US$54 million) a year in foreign exchange charges, given that approximately 35% of international students make up to three payments a year by international bank transfer at a charge of £6 a transaction, with the remainder using credit cards, which carry a 1.6% surcharge each time.
But using a new system established by a UK-based company, Uni-Pay, the costs are reduced to nothing. International students pay their fees in local currencies in their home countries and the university receives payments in domestic currency (Pounds Sterling in the case of the UK). More...