By Press Association. The number of students in England applying to university has slumped by almost 10%, official figures have shown.
The latest UCAS statistics reveal that almost 12,000 fewer people living in England have applied to start degree courses in autumn 2013.
In total, 107,687 potential university students have already submitted their applications, the figures show, compared with 119,548 who had applied by this point last year, meaning there has been a 9.9% fall in applications comparing 2013 with 2012.
Students planning to start degree courses next autumn will pay tuition fees of up to £9,000 a year after the hike, which saw maximum fees tripled, was introduced this autumn. Read more...

China has overtaken the United States as Australia's biggest "knowledge partner" for the first time.
A Universities Australia study of the links institutions here have with those overseas found the connections with China have increased by 72 per cent since 2003.
With 885 university agreements with Chinese institutions now, that country overtook the US (with 876 links) as Australia's leading partner.
The study found Australian universities continued to strongly pursue partnerships around the globe, with a 28 per cent jump in formal agreements since 2008. Read more...

By Karen Seidman. The Université de Montréal is spearheading the most ambitious fundraising campaign ever attempted among francophone universities worldwide — a goal of $500 million to support teaching, research and infrastructure.
Under the banner of Campus Montréal, U de M is joining with Polytechnique Montréal and HEC Montréal to raise the cash to ensure they can continue providing the highest quality education.
The campaign is following McGill University’s even more ambitious goal of raising $750 million, yet the universities say this push for additional funds is not in response to its chronic underfunding, but a chance to improve quality and remain competitive in the world. Read more...

By John Holden. Increased student exchange and research collaboration is paving the way for stronger ties with India, Brazil and Russia.
Irish educational institutions are signing an increasing number of memorandums of understanding (MOU) with the Bric countries, to allow for increased student exchange, and more importantly, increased international research collaboration.
While growing links between new economic Goliath China and the Irish government, academia and industry have already been well documented, less is known about activity in the high-growth markets of Brazil, Russia and India.
In all three economies, it is educational links which will lay the foundations for future export market success. Numerous Irish institutions already have ties with educational bodies in the Brics which have lead to cross collaboration at all higher education levels. Plus the increasing amount of commercially-driven research means that many educational links will organically become industrial ties. Read more...

By Martin Rees. How can UK universities become more globally competitive? At the graduate level, one way would be to follow the US, where a minority of universities have strong graduate schools.
Even though many British universities may offer masters courses in specific subjects, I believe the UK should concentrate graduate education at the PhD level and encourage alliances and clustering in specialised areas. Many academics bridle at this suggestion, so, in making it, it is important to emphasise that concentration of graduate education need not, especially in the humanities, entail an equivalent concentration of research – that is a distinction that is often conflated.
Many who teach in the best American liberal arts colleges are productive researchers and scholars, but if they have graduate students, these are based in another university.
* Lord Martin Rees is astronomer royal and emeritus professor of cosmology and astrophysics at the University of Cambridge. This is an extract from the pamphlet University Diversity: Freedom, excellence and funding for a global future published by the Politeia think-tank. He will be debating with Universities and Science Minister David Willetts on 12 December on whether British universities can keep ahead in a global future in connection with the recent launch of the Council for the Defence of British Universities, of which he is a member. Read more...

By Hiep Pham. It is time for Taiwan to support developing countries in training their young people, in the same way that Western countries such as America have done for Taiwan in the past, according to Teresa Ju, director of the Taiwan Education Center in Da Nang in central Vietnam.
Decades ago, the Taiwan government and Taiwanese families sent their young people to the West for a better quality education. Nowadays, the trend is being reversed – Taiwan has emerged as an attractive destination for international students.
“Before, we [Taiwanese] went abroad only to receive higher education, now we should go abroad to provide higher education,” Ju, a professor at Lunghwa University of Science and Technology, a private institution in Taiwan, told University World News.
Like many of Taiwan’s baby boomers, Ju went to the United States in the late 1960s and earned a PhD from Nova Southeastern University. After more than 20 years of working in US industry she returned to Taiwan to pursue an academic career, first at Foo-Yin University and later at Shu-Te University and Lunghwa University of Science and Technology. Read more...

By Jan Petter Myklebust. The impact of controls on recruitment of Congolese and Chinese students to Belgian higher education institutions has been significant, according to a report prepared with the support of the European Commission.
In the period since 2004 covered by the report, Congolese nationals were said to be using forged documentation to obtain a university place, while a rapid rise in the number of Chinese students – to a fifth of all international students in the country – prompted claims that they were working illegally in the restaurant industry.
The report, Migration of International Students to Belgium 2000-2012: Striking a balance between migration management and actively attracting students from third countries for the purposes of study and research, set out to examine the patterns of recruitment of international students, both to French-speaking institutions and to universities in the Flemish region, following the increased opportunities due to Bologna degree reforms and the increasing number of courses taught in English. Read more...

By Jane Marshall. A vast national consultation to determine the future of French higher education and research has culminated in 121 proposals, distilled from nearly 1,300 written contributions and 20,000 participants who attended more than 500 meetings and debates throughout the country.
The three themes of the Assises Nationales de l’Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche, held in Paris on 26 and 27 November, were ensuring success for all students, especially those taking first degrees; giving a fresh boost to research, at all stages and in all fields, and ensuring French influence in Europe and internationally; and improving governance of institutions and organisation of the higher education and research system nationally and regionally.
The exercise was announced by Minister for Higher Education and Research Geneviève Fioraso after the socialist-led government took office in May. President François Hollande had promised priority for youth in his election campaign. Read more...

By Yojana Sharma. Asia’s universities must align more closely with labour market needs to ensure graduates have the skills and knowledge demanded by employers, according to a new Asian Development Bank (ADB) report, one of many released by international and regional organisations this year stressing the need for higher education to produce labour-market skills.
“Higher education is increasingly expected to address the issue of employability,” said the just-released report Improving Transitions from School to University to Workplace.
A rapid expansion of higher education has the potential to complicate employability rather than address it efficiently, suggests the report, which covers 15 countries in Asia and noted that employability can become a major drag on Asian countries’ development in the coming years. Read more...

By Michael Gardner. Germany’s chief policy advisory body on higher education issues, the Wissenschaftsrat (WR – Science and Humanities Council), has criticised grading practice at universities. While grade averages between universities or between subjects vary considerably, there is too little spread at institution level within individual subjects, the WR argues.
“The mark you get on graduating depends not only on examination attainment but also on what you are studying and where you are studying it,” said WR Chairman Wolfgang Marquardt. The council, whose membership comprises politicians and leading representatives of higher education, evaluated all available data on exam results at German universities in 2010.
The WR also noted that a trend towards better grades being awarded that it had already identified in previous years appeared to be confirmed by the 2010 results, especially in the bachelor programmes, where four out of five students were awarded ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ marks. For example, taking the results for the old Diplom degrees that are being phased out, 98% of graduates from biology had ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ marks in the survey, and so did 97% in psychology. By contrast, just 7% of law students attained these marks. In the corresponding new bachelor programmes, the figures were 84%, 95% and 37% respectively. Bachelor degrees accounted for just under a third of all successful exams in 2010. Various reasons are given for the trend towards good marking at university level. Read more...