Formation Continue du Supérieur

12 mai 2013

Beijing wants more in-depth HE links with Europe

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By Yojana Sharma. In a flurry of recent international meetings of education policy-makers and university leaders, China is deepening its higher education links with Europe. A more in-depth relationship would include a stronger focus on understanding the management and governance of public universities to enable increased international collaboration. Academics and policy-makers who took part in the European Union (EU)-China people-to-people high-level dialogue in Brussels last month said China and European countries had moved on from mainly facilitating student exchanges, to discussing institutional-level cooperation and creating joint research platforms that would also include partners from outside China and Europe. Read more...

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12 mai 2013

Erasmus loans for masters students will greatly expand mobility

By Adam Tyson. Recently University World News carried a report on the call by the European Students' Union to scrap the proposed new European study loan guarantees and to use the funds instead for traditional Erasmus grants. The ‘Erasmus Master Student Loan Guarantee’ is one of the entirely new proposals to support the higher education sector – along with the extension of Erasmus mobility to the world and the creation of Knowledge Alliances to promote more intensive cooperation between higher education and business – in the European Commission's proposal for the next generation of education and training support, Erasmus for All.
Let us be clear. The Loan Guarantee is an entirely additional action. It will not replace traditional Erasmus grants for credit mobility, which will continue to be by far the largest part of Erasmus and which we will also expand in the new programme. The new mechanism responds to feedback from students and student groups, which highlights that finding adequate funding to take a full degree programme – as opposed to short-term Erasmus credit mobility – in another country is a real problem for many. Erasmus grants are currently around €250 (US$320) per month with an average duration of one semester. Read more...

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12 mai 2013

U-Multirank works to improve quality of indicators

By Carmen Paun. The consortium running the European Commission-backed U-Multirank is working to ensure the quality and reliability of the indicators it will use to measure universities, University World News has been told in an exclusive interview. Jordi Curell, director of higher education and international affairs in the commission’s directorate general for education and culture, said assessments were weakened by universities failing to monitor the professional success of their graduates.
“There is an issue because some of the indicators are difficult to obtain, for instance when it comes to the tracking of students, because they don’t exist everywhere,” he said of the new global ranking system that was officially launched in Dublin in January. U-Multirank aims to step out from the crowd of international university rankings by focusing not only on institutions’ research quality, as other rankings largely do, but also measuring teaching and learning, knowledge transfer, and the international orientation and regional engagement of participating universities. Read more...

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12 mai 2013

Traditional students lose out as college intakes grow

By William Patrick Leonard. A number of commentators have suggested that the American tertiary community is facing a bubble reminiscent of the 2008 housing meltdown. While many underlying factors have been identified and discussed to near ad nauseam, one has been largely ignored. The bulk of the US’s non-elite tertiary institutions have employed, whether consciously or not, an unsustainable budget-balancing strategy. In sum, they have repeatedly used tuition fee increases, often exceeding the nation’s Consumer Price Index, coupled with larger student intakes, to balance their operating budgets. Read more...

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12 mai 2013

Vice-chancellor struggles to open his new university

By Andrew Green. Dr John Apuru Akec wants to use universities to develop South Sudan, the world’s newest country, which became independent in July 2011. It is a noble and sensible goal. But first of all, the vice-chancellor will have to help make the nation’s higher education system work. In 2010 Akec (54) was appointed vice-chancellor of the brand new University of Northern Bahr el Ghazal, or UNBEG. Less than a year later, and following a decades-long war, South Sudan achieved independence from Sudan, and his university found itself in the north-west of a new country. But South Sudan’s university system has been in disarray ever since. Last year the government closed more than 30 privately owned colleges and universities. An official report from the government said that the institutions – overcrowded and lacking instructors – did not meet official standards. Read more...

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12 mai 2013

UK universities can help Burma’s HE – Aung San Suu Kyi

By Yojana Sharma. Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, head of the opposition National League for Democracy in Myanmar, has said that British universities can help reinvigorate her country’s education system, which has been ravaged by years of military rule. In a video address to a meeting in London of higher education leaders from Myanmar and the UK, she said: “The focus of the military government was on maintaining discipline, not on providing education. Read more...

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12 mai 2013

Medium-term funding boost for post-school education

By Karen MacGregor. South Africa’s post-school education budget has been increased to R34.3 billion (US$3.8 billion) – growth of 8.6% over last year – Minister of Higher Education and Training Blade Nzimande said last week. A priority is to provide opportunities for 3.5 million youths not absorbed into employment, education or training this year. The current inflation rate is just under 6%. Medium-term funding has been increased by an average of 7.8% over the three years to 2015-16, rising to nearly R40 billion in 2015-16, Nzimande told parliament in his budget vote speech on 8 May. Read more...

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12 mai 2013

EAC slashes budget for harmonising higher education

By Gilbert Nganga.The East African Community, or EAC, has slashed its budget for harmonising education systems and curricula in the five member countries in the coming fiscal year, further slowing a process that has nearly flopped due to financial constraints. Budgetary estimates produced by the EAC secretariat, the executive arm of the trade bloc, earlier this month showed that the Inter-University Council for East Africa, or IUCEA, will receive US$9.6 million – just down from the current year’s $10 million. The IUCEA is the regional body charged by the five countries with harmonising their education systems. According to the documents, of the US$9.6 million, $5.6 million is expected to come from donors, while the balance will be contributions from the partner states: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. Read more...

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12 mai 2013

Mega-universities and more money for higher education

ByTunde Fatunde. Nigeria’s National Economic Council, or NEC, recently made several far-reaching decisions on the future of tertiary education in the country, including the creation of ‘mega-universities’ in six geo-political zones, each with the capacity to admit up to 150,000 students. At the recent meeting of the NEC, whose membership includes the president, vice-president and all 36 governors of the federation, some unprecedented decisions were unanimously reached to increase the level of tertiary education. Read more...

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12 mai 2013

Balkan ministers identify labour market links as top priority

By Ard Jongsma. Last Tuesday, ministers from the European Union (EU) accession countries in the Balkans decided with the European Commission on the topic of the next action of the EU-supported Western Balkan Platform for Education and Training. The most likely option will be work to map the links between the world of learning and the world of work. With unemployment rampant in the region, not least among graduates, a rethink of industry involvement in education is high on the list of regional priorities. At the launch of the platform in Danilovgrad last March, ministers prioritised higher education over teacher training as the area to benefit most from this EU-supported regional cooperation. Read more...

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