The China Education Center has updated its China University Ranking. The top five places are as follows:
Peking has held the first place since 2008 when it replaced Tsinghua University. This ranking is produced by the Chinese University Alumni Association. The methodology, according to the Center’s web site, includes:
By Paul Kniest. In the week before Christmas the Minister for Education, Christopher Pyne, released the Finance 2012: Financial Reports of Higher Education Providers. A copy of the report can be downloaded from: http://docs.education.gov.au/node/34601. By Jeannie Rea. “University planning is far too important to be left solely to market forces” NTEU in Times HES on the impact of deregulating university places 
By Anne MacLachlan. In 2005 the German government launched the Excellence Initiative through the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the German Science Council. The call for proposals required applicants to fundamentally rethink how doctoral training is organized so that Germany could reclaim its preeminence in research and research training. Entire universities as well as university divisions applied in all fields. Eighty-five institutions received awards, nine were entire universities. The difference in concept between both the old German doctoral system and Excellence awardees as well as between Excellence awardees and much of the US doctoral training system is enormous. Every aspect of doctoral training has been scrutinized to lower the time to degree by making sure students understand expectations, participate in many kinds of professional training and academic support, are supervised by a group of faculty (not just a Doktorvater/mutter) and acquire the skills necessary for the student’s chosen profession after the doctorate. Doctoral degree time is under four years and employment of Excellence graduates is very high. Since the application is created by graduate faculty and they themselves have designed the program, they are committed to it. Doctoral reform in the US on the other hand depends largely on small unit buy-in from a group of faculty, a department or a division. Disciplinary associations such as the American Chemical Society and organizations external to individual universities such as the American Association of Colleges and Universities have created a range of doctoral reform programs, but the fundamental structure of doctoral training has not altered all that much. This talk explores the German reforms in some detail and examines the potential of these to be applied to US programs. More...
Today’s post is from Andrew Wyckoff, head of the Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry (STI) at the OECD. It follows the post by the World Bank’s Gerardo Corrochano about the Innovation Policy Platform on Friday, and is co-published here by the World Bank.
Do you know what FedEx, the well-known overnight shipping company, and Dell Computers, a multinational technology company, have in common? Both firms’ core business ideas were developed by young student entrepreneurs. There are many other stories out there illustrating that universities and other public research institutions (PRIs) are a major source of innovations.
In searching for new routes to growth policy makers around the globe invest high hopes in public research. A premium is being placed on the contributions of public research to the creation of new knowledge capital. The way universities and PRIs operate is also changing including notably the mechanisms and terms on which universities and PRIs are engaging with business and society. We also see that innovation is becoming more open and collaborative and that knowledge circulates more quickly and freely than ever. This inevitably has impacts on the commercialisation of public research. Recent work we conducted at the OECD on this topic demonstrates the importance of channels other than patents for the commercialisation of public research. More...
According to the CIA World Factbook, political parties are prohibited in Bahrain, but don’t despair, freedom lovers, the “constitutional monarchy” formerly known as an emirate is the 13th freest country in the world according to the 2014 Index of Economic Freedom. Economic freedom? According to the Heritage Foundation, co-publisher of the Index with the Wall Street Journal, that’s “… the fundamental right of every human to control his or her own labor and property”, plus aspects such as “the ability of individuals and businesses to enforce contracts”. The CIA, always looking for something to moan about, claims that “Bahrain is a destination country for men and women subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking; […] domestic workers are particularly vulnerable to forced labor and sexual exploitation because they are not protected under labor laws; […] the government has made few discernible efforts to investigate, prosecute, and convict trafficking offenses; […] most victims have not filed lawsuits against employers because of a distrust of the legal system or a fear of reprisals.”
If it’s like that in one of the freest countries in the world, you can imagine what it’s like in hell-holes such as Norway, 20 places down the list from Bahrain. And what about those poor souls living in Italy, the least free OECD country? Italy ranks 70 places lower than Bahrain, just behind Kyrgyzstan (where’s the CIA’s continuing concerns include: “the trajectory of democratization, endemic corruption, poor interethnic relations, and terrorism.”).
Still, the Index’s “two decades of advancement in economic freedom, prosperity, and opportunity” haven’t been wasted on everybody. Oxfam says that 210 people have been lifted out of poverty in the past year, helping bring the world’s total number of billionaires to 1426, with a combined net worth of $5.4 trillion. And as you’d expect, some billionaires have more billions than others: the world’s 85 richest individuals own as much wealth as the poorest 3 billion people. More...
By Marilyn Achiron Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills. Resisting authority may be some teenagers’ sport of preference, but they’re hobbling themselves if they think that skipping school is cool. Results from PISA 2012 show that playing truant is related to significantly poorer performance in mathematics, which has repercussions on students’ futures, and on the performance of their school and school system. But all parents and teachers have the means to reduce the incidence of truancy.
This month’s PISA in Focus examines the cost of student truancy. Across OECD countries, 18% of students skipped at least one class and 15% skipped at least an entire day of school without authorisation in the two weeks prior to the PISA test. Read more...
This blog, by David Hall-Matthews, managing director at Publish What You Fund is about the data revolution, specifically concerning aid transparency. This is the 17th post in ODI's blog series on ‘What kind of ‘data revolution’ do we need for post-2015?’ This post is also a part of the Wikiprogress series on Data and Statistics and Post-2015.
Transparency is a key pillar of sustainable development: an essential piece of the puzzle to enable effectiveness, accountability and social change. And in recent years, information on aid spending has slowly become more available and open.
The basic principle that aid information should be publicly available is now accepted as an essential component of international development. Nowhere has that been seen more prominently than the discussions around the post-2015 Development Goals. More...
Wikigender is running a new online discussion in partnership with the UN Foundation, Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children (HBSC), the EU-LAC Foundation, European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), ECLAC and PARIS21 – while collaborating with Wikiprogress and Wikichild regarding:
Data Gaps on Gender Equality
Open from 27 January-14 February
We would like to engage participants in a discussion about where the data gaps exist concerning gender equality. With this discussion, we hope to pioneer initiatives that generate new data and new methodological approaches and to examine complex areas of gender equality, including unpaid care, time use and social norms. The discussion will also address the “data revolution” and gender statistics, lessons learned since the adoption of the MDGs in 2000, and proposals for priority targets for the post-2015 development agenda. More...
By Laura Tucker. 2013 saw a lot of changes in the world of higher education; there were cuts, tuition hikes, boosts in technological facilities, and more cuts. With governments and education sectors across the globe trying to regain stability after a turbulent five years of financial insecurity, 2014 sees a continued effort from all sides to remain prosperous even if this comes at the expense of students themselves.
There is good news to be had, however, if a little harder to come by amidst all the news of high costs and hardship for students. Advancements in online education facilities at established schools will continue, providing more opportunities for students to enhance their research and their studies in general, and, in some regions, 2014 will offer more graduate jobs than there’s been in almost a decade. More...
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