By Steve Kolowich, The Chronicle of Higher Education. When George Siemens was in the seventh grade, in the early 1980s, he committed what his parents believed to be a sin: he used a computer. It was a Commodore PET, a precursor of the personal computers that would soon reshape the world and everything in it.By Nicola Jenvey. Massive open online courses – MOOCs – are potential game changers for African education, radically enhancing access to knowledge and creating borderless education. In that light it is a boon that a network for educational technology practitioners and researchers, e/merge Africa, has won a major award. Read more...By Peta Lee. There appears much to be learned from the publication last week of Eurydice’s first ever report outlining and scoring European Union member states’ policies to encourage higher education students to spend part of their studies or training abroad. Apart from covering all 28 European Union member states, the report, Towards a Mobility Scoreboard: Conditions for learning abroad in Europe, also included Lichtenstein, Turkey and Norway. Read more...By Suvendrini Kakuchi. Armed with notebooks and folders Rika Nogochi, a third-year liberal arts student, is attending job seminars in Tokyo. “It's not too early to begin this gruelling search for a good job despite the fact that I graduate next April,” she said as she marched through company booths listening to lectures and picking up brochures at a recent job fair. Read more...By Peta Lee. The failure of companies, education institutions and young people to understand one another is one of the reasons why employers are not getting the skills they need and there are now 5.6 million young people jobless across Europe, according to a report by McKinsey & Company. Read more...By Jan Petter Myklebust. A group of leaders of Swedish companies and universities have proposed a new model for financing international students through 1,500 grants. The grants will be calculated on a cost-benefit analysis of at least 20% of the students working and paying taxes in Sweden for five years after graduating. Read more...By Jan Petter Myklebust. Over the Christmas period Morten Østergaard, Denmark’s minister for science, innovation and higher education, told a leading newspaper there were far too many courses at universities and the number would be significantly cut. There have also been challenges to the university funding system. Universities have now struck back. Since 1990 there has been a four-fold increase in the number of bachelor degrees offered by Danish universities. Read more...By Gilbert Nganga. Kenya has finally selected commissioners to head its new higher education regulator, the Commission for University Education, or CUE, ending months of delays and potentially unlocking stalled programmes that had to wait for the leadership team. Education Secretary Jacob Kaimenyi last week unveiled the nine members of CUE, whose appointment had been on the cards for eight months. Read more...By Wagdy Sawahel. UNESCO is planning to set up an online institute aimed at enhancing quality in higher education institutions across Africa. The Virtual Institute for Improving Quality of Higher Education in Africa – VIIQHE – will help to tackle the depreciating quality of lecturers. It is hoped that the initiative will be launched in the first quarter of this year. Read more...By Keith Nuthall. Canada’s higher education sector has welcomed the country’s first comprehensive International Education Strategy – released by the government last week – that aims, among other things, to double the number of foreign students. Announcing the new strategy last Wednesday, International Trade Minister Ed Fast accepted that Canada could profit more from the lucrative global international student market. Read more.../https%3A%2F%2Fprofilepics.canalblog.com%2Fprofilepics%2F1%2F0%2F1076071.jpg)
