On July 8, the European Parliament voted in favour of the Trade Agreement with the US (TTIP), despite protests from constituents. Thus, TTIP Negotiations moved to the 10th Round, which took place in Brussels from 13 to 17 July 2015.
ESU as well as other like-minded organisation and interest groups are concerned about the possible consequences of the negotiations on education and training sectors. We are glad to see that the Parliament voted on Helga Trüpels’ amendement with 373 votes in favour, 336 against and 1 abstention. This means that the European Parliament officially calls the European Commission to exclude non-profit educational services from the scope of the TTIP. More...
United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) passed a resolution on the right to education
On July 2, the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) passed Resolution 29/14 on the right to education, including substantially the language we sought on State responsibility to protect higher education from attack. Specifically, the Resolution states at page 4, paragraph 8:
“[The Human Rights Council...] Urges all States to comply with their responsibilities under international law, and also urges them to strengthen the protection of schools and universities, as well as other educational settings, from attacks by reviewing national laws to ensure that attacks on schools and universities are criminalized, where appropriate; investigating attacks on schools and universities, and prosecuting and punishing those responsible, as appropriate; making every effort to collect reliable relevant data with respect to attacks on schools and universities; and providing assistance to victims, on a non-discriminatory basis, towards the full realization of the right to education”. More...
Call for ESU Quality Assurance Student Experts' Pool and the Institutional Evaluation Programme
The Steering Committee of the ESU QA Student Experts’ Pool hereby opens a call for 30 members of the ESU Quality Assurance Student Experts’ Pool. In addition to new recruits, the call is also being issued to current members of the ESU QA Pool, who wish to continue their activities as pool members.
Successful applicants will be included into ESU’s quality assurance experts’ pool until 30th of June 2016. Becoming a member of the pool will give eligibility to be nominated by ESU for quality assurance reviews and trainings, and provide an opportunity to gain more knowledge about quality assurance in Europe.
Download Call for ESU QA Student Experts' Pool. More...
Understanding the Bologna Process with Student Eyes. Why does it matter?
According to European Students’ Union newly released publication Bologna With Student Eyes 2015, after more than 15 years, the goals of the Bologna Declaration remain largely unfulfilled. The major challenge for the Bologna Process today from the student perspective is the uneven implementation of reforms and countries’ poor follow-up on previous commitments. Additionally, unrelated, and at times unpopular national reforms have been pushed using the Bologna-name. Cuts in funding have also stopped or delayed the implementation process.
Basic recognition of degrees and qualifications is not yet a reality. More...
Swedish students demand better pedagogy
Will Legal Notice 150 affect the University of Malta?
During this past year, the Education sector in Malta was faced with a number
of reforms to promote a pluralistic provision in Further and Higher Education. In light of this, on the 8th of May 2015 a new Legal Notice (LN150 of 2015) was tabled in Parliament by the Minister for Education and Employment
, which led to substantial modifications being made to a Subsidiary Legislation which rules the requirements for Further and Higher Education Institution to gain the University Status. More...
Computing Power Rankings: Saudi University Enters the Top Ten
The TOP500 project is a ranking and description of the world’s most powerful supercomputer systems. Data is currently collected by experts at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and NERSC/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and are published twice a year. The rankings are based on the LINPACK benchmark, that is the ability to solve a dense system of linear equations. More...
The CWUR Rankings: New Methodology Includes Prizes and Awards
The Center for World University Rankings, based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, has produced the latest edition of its global university rankings. These rankings are notable for avoiding surveys and data submitted by institutions and focussing entirely on outputs. The eight “objective and robust” indicators are: Quality of Education, measured by prizes and awards won by alumni, Alumni Employment, measured by alumni who are CEOs of major companies, Quality of Faculty, measured by faculty who have won major prizes or awards, Publications, measured by number of research papers in “reputable” journals, Influence, measured by the number of papers in “highly-influential“ journals, Citations, measured by highly cited research papers, Broad Impact measured by the h-index, and Patents, measured by international patents filings. More...
Scimago Rankings: Research Output Rising in Asia and South America
The Scimago Institutions Rankings are “a science evaluation resource to assess worldwide universities and research-focused institutions”. They are published annually by the Scimago Lab, a Spanish company, and include twelve indicators for research, innovation and web visibility. The Scimago Lab does not, however, produce overall rankings and consequently they do not receive much media attention although they can provide interesting insights into important trends in research, innovation and web activity. More...
South Africa Tops THE Pilot Ranking
Times Higher Education (THE) has published a “pilot” ranking of African universities. This consists of a single indicator, citations per publications normalised by field and year with the data being taken from the Scopus database rather than from the Web of Science as in previous years. More...