By Elizabeth Redden. The rapid expansion of massive open online courses (MOOCs) has left many in international higher education asking how they can compete. With elite American universities dominating the emerging market, will foreign institutions be left behind?
“If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” some have decided. The California-based MOOC provider Coursera counts eight foreign institutions among its 33 university partners. Meanwhile, 12 universities in the United Kingdom have launched a new MOOC platform of their own. The Open University, a distance education institution based in London, recently announced the formation of Futurelearn in partnership with Cardiff and Lancaster Universities; the Universities of Birmingham, Bristol, East Anglia, Exeter, Leeds, Southampton, St Andrews and Warwick; and King’s College, University of London. Initial marketing material for Futurelearn emphasizes its U.K. identity -- asserting that the Britain should be at the forefront of advances in educational technology and stressing that, until now, U.K. universities interested in offering MOOCs have only had the opportunity of working with U.S.-based platforms. However, Futurelearn’s CEO, Simon Nelson, said the company is open to eventually working with universities outside the U.K. Read more...

By Brian Mooney. Excellent international reputations, low or even no tuition fees, and courses taught in English: the EU option may make sense for you.
Irish students are so accustomed to competing for college places it seems strange that leading universities might be jockeying for their attention, but that is exactly what’s happening.
Although Ireland has more students than it does university places for them, Europe is experiencing an acute shortage of young people, because of low birth rates in many countries. As a result, an increasing number of EU third-level institutions, many of them very highly ranked, are offering undergraduate programmes taught exclusively through English.
It’s not all about numbers. Offering courses through English is a highly effective marketing tool for universities, and native English speakers are attractive applicants from colleges’ perspective.
Many students on the English-language programmes will not be native speakers, but the presence of native speakers on a course improves the quality of spoken English in the class very quickly. Added to that, the presence of students from other EU countries improves the international quotient, which helps universities when they are being assessed for global international rankings. Read more...

By Chen Boyuan. De-politicization in Chinese universities will be a tremendous undertaking, which will be difficult to achieve, said Zhu Qingshi, president of South University of Science and Technology of China (SUST), a newly established university that is pioneering comprehensive reforms.
Such de-politicization reforms mean empowering universities with more autonomy to carry out more education and research, while detaching administrative influence from academic affairs.
"The obstacle mainly comes from the lack of recognition from society," Zhu said, speaking of the difficulties. He compared the process of change to China's household responsibility system which started some 30 years ago. "Recognition of de-politicization in universities may also take three decades," he said.
Modeling the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, Zhu Qingshi founded the SUST in 2011 with the hope to build it into a first-class research-oriented higher educational institute in Asia. Read more...

By Joyce Lau. This week, the IHT education section takes a look at the liberal arts, the largely North American education system that emphasizes a broad base of learning. It is slowly making inroads in Europe and Asia, where university courses have traditionally been more narrowly focused.
In Hong Kong, I met with Rebecca Chopp, the president of Swarthmore College, a top liberal arts colleges in the United States. Professor Chopp was on a whirlwind Asia tour that also included Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei, Shanghai and Suzhou, China. Like most college presidents on the road, she was there to visit alumni, raise funds and recruit students. She was also in a position to explain the pluses of a liberal arts education in a region where it’s still a foreign concept. Read more...

More British students are applying to university in Sweden following the rise in tuition fees for students at home. Studying in Sweden is free for all EU citizens.
Lund University, Scandinavia’s largest education and research institute and one of Europe’s most prestigious universities, has seen a 15% increase in UK applicants.
As the application period for studies commencing in August 2013 closed on 15 January, it became clear that the UK has strengthened its position as the number one country for international applicants to the university, with 639 applications this year compared to 558 last year.
British students therefore look set to continue as the largest international student group at Lund University. Overall, Indian students dominate the international applications in Sweden. Read more...

The first ever university branch campus backed by the Chinese State is to be established in Malaysia, one of Asia’s fastest growing education hubs. Xiamen University, a top twenty higher education institution in China, plans to open a five-faculty campus in September 2015, joining well known campuses of foreign institutions such as the University of Nottingham, UK, and Monash University, Australia.
“The invitation is historic because this is the first time that the Chinese government has allowed one of its universities to set up a campus abroad,” said Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak this week. Read more...

By Anna Malinovskaya. Perhaps all international students discover at some point that going to college in the States costs more than they pay in money terms. I have experienced personal costs that will impact my life long after my education here is done. Some I was prepared to encounter, and others caught me off-guard. I don’t regret my decision to study in the States, but coming here has meant closing some doors and cutting off some possibilities.
As long as I can remember, mainstream political opinion in Russia has been anti-American, encouraged by the older generation who grew up in the Soviet Union and taught that America was an enemy to be opposed. Not everyone in the country is anti-American of course – in fact, most people I know are not actively anti-American – but there is an underlying suspicion of American values and intentions. As a result, my decision to study in America is viewed warily, and even negatively, by some. Read more...

By Jordan Weissmann. The last few years haven't exactly been gentle to our public colleges and universities, or the students who attend them. Cash-poor state legislatures have gone to town on their higher education budgets, and as they've hacked away, tuition has risen along with the sums undergraduates have had to borrow. In total, 38 states cut post-secondary funding since the recession, many by more than a fifth.
So in that light, it sadly can be considered welcome news that just 16 states are planning to slash their spending any further in FY 2013, according to the Grapevine project at Illinois State University, which released its annual roundup of state-by-state higher-ed funding on Tuesday. The worst cuts this year are pending in Florida (8 percent), Alabama (6 percent) and New Jersey (5.5 percent). Another 16 legislatures increased their budgets by less than 2 percent, which will likely amount to a cut once inflation takes its bite. On the other hand, that means higher-ed will get a budget boost in 18 states. So let's say the glass is 1/3 full. Read more...

By Manash Pratim Gohain. In a first-of-its-kind opportunity, management students from 11 state government universities and National Institutes of Technology from remote corners of India will learn from international faculty alongside their counterparts from Erasmus University Rotterdam, McGill University and Richard Ivey School of Business of Canada or Grenoble Ecole de Management.
Management Development Institute Gurgaon will host International Summer University 2013 in April in which students from University of Kashmir, NIT Hamirpur and Kottayam will do 8 management elective courses and get the credits transferred to their MBA. Read more...