In addition to its Best Global Universities rankings, the US News & World Report (USNWR) has issued research based rankings for 21 subjects. Harvard dominates but Asia is rising in engineering and materials science.

The US News & World Report is famous for its rankings of American universities and colleges. It has now ventured into the global ranking scene and produced a list of the top 500 global universities. These are research based rankings that do not attempt to assess anything to do with teaching apart from two indicators that count PhDs...
Overall, the USA remains dominant with 134 universities in the top 500. Germany comes second with 42 in the top 500 followed by the United Kingdom with 38 and France with 22. Once again Russia’s performance is poor, only two universities, less than Ireland, Israel or Hong Kong. Among Asian countries, China has 28 universities in the top 500, Japan 17 and India four.

A rare phenomenon at the turn of the century, English-medium instruction (EMI) has become a systemic feature in some European countries, particularly at the Master level. Even though the growth curve now shows signs of flattening, English-taught programmes have become immensely numerous and popular in the last 15 years.
As a consequence of this rising attention, ACA decided to dedicate its next European Policy Seminar – the 44th of the series- to this theme. There will be presented the key findings of ACA`s latest (2014) Europe-wide surveys of this form of tuition, as well as many more items: the difficult question of which language - or languages - Europe`s new global outreach strategy should use, linguistic quality issues, the lack of a minimum proficiency in the local language, and the alternatives of qualified forms of multilingualism.
Are English-taught programmes an advisable means to attract international students who would not dare to study in the domestic language, or are those critics right who view them as a form of tuition where students who do not understand English are taught by staff who do not master it? In other words: is English medium tuition a blessing or a curse? Join the discussion at the next ACA European Policy Seminar on 4 December.
Find out more details on the programme and registrations on ACA Website. More...

44th in the series “European Policy Seminars” of the Academic Cooperation Association
Brussels, 4 December 2014

Theme
A rare phenomenon at the turn of the century, English-medium instruction (EMI) has become a systemic feature in some European countries, particularly at the Master level. Even though the growth curve now shows signs of flattening, English-taught programmes have become immensely numerous and popular in the last 15 years. This ACA European Policy Seminar will present, amongst other things, the key findings of ACA`s latest (2014) Europe-wide surveys of this form of tuition. There are some surprises in store.
But the seminar will present far more than the recent ACA study. In an opening presentation, Adrian Veale of the European Commission will tackle the difficult question which language - or languages - Europe`s new global outreach strategy (“Europe in the world”) should use to attract the world`s young talents to Europe`s universities and colleges.
One part of the seminar is devoted to linguistic quality issues, which we will attempt to tackle in a `hands-on` manner. Karen Lauridsen, of Aarhus University, is presenting the results of the Europe-wide project Intluni, which seeks to improve communication in the class-room - of students and teachers alike. Janina Cünnen, of the University of Freiburg in Germany, is going to present a new certificate for those teaching in English. Marjorie Castermans, of the Université Libre de Bruxelles, will showcase this university`s efforts in training professors in an EMI setting.
The seminar will also address a danger often underrated: the lack of a minimum proficiency in the local language, which isolates international students once outside the classroom. This issue has consistently been identified as the biggest language challenge for foreign students in all ACA studies. We will present one or two examples of good practice which address this problem.
We will end this seminar with a provocative piece: a speech of by Ulrich Ammon, the highly reputed researcher in sociolinguistics and dialectology, who in later life turned his attention to the trend to publish and to teach in English. We expect him to make a strong case for a qualified form of multilingualism.
ACA European Policy Seminars are a trademark of ACA. These events bring together practitioners and policy makers: Participants are mainly from higher education institutions, but also from national governments, international organisations and NGOs. We expect 100 or more participants and very lively discussions. More...

By Terri Macdonald. News that Australia has slipped in the international rankings for the latest global gender gap index is disappointing but predicatable.
Australia is now 24th on the gender gap index, a major increase from 2006 when it was ranked 15th.
The World Economic Forum's annual index measures gender equality across four areas: economic participation, education, health and political empowerment.  While Australia ranked well in health and education in the index, in terms of political representation Australia did poorly compared to previous years. More...