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21 avril 2013

Applications for ‘high employment’ courses drop

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By Hiep Pham. Traditional ‘high employment’ courses like economics, finance, banking, business and information technology appear to be losing their appeal among would-be students in Vietnam, according to universities, which receive student applications in April. Nationwide entrance examinations are written in July. Dao Tuyet Hanh, the executive in charge of university enrolment at the Hanoi-based Viet Duc high school, said only 20% of her students submitted applications to economics and related courses this month – a significant drop from last year’s ratio of 50%. Read more...

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21 avril 2013

Access to Britain’s top universities is far from fair

By Vikki Boliver. Despite the establishment of a government Office for Fair Access nearly a decade ago, students from less privileged backgrounds continue to be substantially underrepresented in the United Kingdom’s more prestigious universities. More than 90% of school children are educated in state-maintained schools in the UK, and yet state school students make up less than 80% of all UK-domiciled undergraduates at Russell Group universities and just 60% of those at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Durham. And while students from black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic backgrounds make up 10% of university entrants nationally, they account for just 4% of those entering Russell Group universities and less than 2% of those entering Oxford, Cambridge and Durham. Read more...

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21 avril 2013

Graduate unemployment – Whose fault is it?

By Taina Moisander. When swingeing budget cuts pressure higher education institutions to perform more with less, they have to justify the different purposes that they serve. Whether that is training people for active citizenship, facilitating social mobility, improving skills needed in the labour market or conducting high-quality research, these activities are weighted against one another in a competition for funds and in creating a more efficient education system. The rising unemployment of recent graduates in Europe has emphasised the needs of the labour market in connection with higher education reforms. Read more...

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21 avril 2013

Pan-African accreditation and quality council agreed

By Wagdy Sawahel. Experts have agreed to set up an African Quality Assurance and Accreditation Council for Higher Education, or AQAACHE, to harmonise the approval of courses and activities of quality agencies among countries. The major aim is to encourage qualification recognition, academic mobility and internationalisation across Africa. This was outlined at a workshop held at the African Union offices in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 10-11 April.
"Because different higher education systems in Africa are structured in different ways, it is imperative to integrate [them] into a continental system of harmonisation in order to ensure the recognition of qualifications across the continent, stated the workshop’s concept note. Read more...

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21 avril 2013

The global brain race – Robbing developing countries

By Philip G Altbach. The rich world is worrying about skills shortages, especially at the upper levels of their economies. The causes are many – such as a ‘demographic cliff’ in Japan and some European countries, significantly reducing the numbers of university-age people, especially too few students enrolling in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields; a levelling off of access; and low degree-completion rates. What is a solution to these problems? Increasingly, it is to boost the ‘stay rates’ of international students – in other words, to convince international students, mainly from developing and middle-income countries, to remain after they complete their degrees. To oversimplify, the rich are stealing the brains of developing countries – or for that matter any qualified brains that can be lured. Read more...

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21 avril 2013

Asian higher education revolution a long way off

By Richard Holmes. The Times Higher Education Asian University Rankings are out. Since they are based on data already gathered for the 2012 World University Rankings, there are no surprises in the top 57 that were already included in the world’s top 400 universities. There are, however, some interesting things in the bottom 43, since the scores for those universities have not previously been made public. Unlike QS, Times Higher Education and Thomson Reuters have used the same methodology for their World and Asian rankings. This is a pity since they have missed an opportunity to experiment with methodological changes particularly to the citations indicator, which has been throwing up some surprising results. These rankings show some differences from others such as the QS Asian and World University Rankings and those published by Shanghai Jiao Tong University – the Academic Ranking of World Universities, or ARWU – and the Middle East Technical University – University Ranking of Academic Performance, or URAP. Read more...

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21 avril 2013

Higher education alarmed by A$2.3 billion cut

By Geoff Maslen. Alarmed vice-chancellors across Australia face a A$900 million (US$940 million) cut to their universities’ revenues with a further A$1.4 billion to be slashed from higher education over the next four years so that the federal government can generate some of the A$14.5 billion it plans to allocate to schools. Professor Glyn Davis, chair of the main lobby group Universities Australia, said the cut was on top of A$1billion taken from the sector’s research budget less than six months ago through the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook process. Davis said the government’s latest decision would place a severe strain on institutions that had been encouraged to expand enrolments so as to boost access to higher education. He said the further cuts were at a time when Australia sat “disturbingly” 25th out of 29 advanced economies for public investment in universities. Read more...

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21 avril 2013

The education gap – Practical solutions to key barriers

By Thashlin Govender. In spite of substantial government economic support for education reform, glaring gaps left by 40 years of apartheid education still riddle South Africa’s education system at every level. Primary and secondary schools that historically served black students typically perform poorly: Grade 12 pass rates for black students are often half of that of white students. Statistics about overall qualification for university likewise remain grim: 2012 National Senior Certificate (‘matric’) results indicated an overall 73.9% pass rate – but only 26.6% of those tested qualified for bachelor degree studies. Results show a significant disparity that leaves poorer, more rural provinces at a disadvantage, according to the 2012 National Diagnostic Report on Learner Performance. Read more...

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21 avril 2013

New research shows graduate employment on the rise

By Ishmael Tongai. Graduate employment has risen in South Africa in the past 15 years, despite the country’s exceptionally high unemployment rate. While a third of people are jobless, graduate unemployment has declined to under 5%. New research by a leading think-tank, the Johannesburg-based Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE), has discredited a public perception that more and more people with university degrees are not being absorbed by the job market.
“The myth that graduates in general, and black graduates in particular, are struggling to find work needs to be put to bed,” said the research published this month.
The study was conducted by Professor Servaas van der Berg and Hendrik van Broekhuizen of the department of economics at Stellenbosch University. At 35%, South Africa’s unemployment rate is considered one of the highest in the world. Read more...

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21 avril 2013

Pressing need for more sophisticated rankings – EUA

By David Haworth. This month’s annual conference of the European University Association, or EUA, debated how rankings systems needed to become more sophisticated benchmarking exercises, as higher education worldwide becomes ever more internationalised. Speaking to University World News after the event held at the University of Ghent in Belgium, EUA Secretary General Lesley Wilson said that while “everyone has a different view” about rankings, there was a need to deliver comprehensive benchmarking systems with which universities could compare themselves against other higher education institutions.
“In future it should be easier to see where one stands in relation to one’s peers and the regions in which they work,” she said.
Wilson agreed with a comment made at the conference by European Union Education Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou, that the predominant focus of existing research-weighted rankings did not necessarily help to improve the quality of higher education – which is about far more than just research excellence. She admitted that this was mainly because of a current lack of output indicators regarding the quality of teaching. Read more...

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