By Andrew Denholm, Education Correspondent. A NEW draft code of conduct to improve the governance of Scottish universities has been attacked as weak and vague.
One in five students now choosing technology as first preference. There has been a 51 per cent increase in applications to technology courses at third level over the last five years, a new study by the Higher Education Authority (HEA) has found.
University accused of bowing to China after scheduled talk by Nobel peace laureate moved off campus. One of Australia's most exclusive universities has been accused of bowing to China after calling off a talk to students by the Dalai Lama. Sydney University, ranked in the world's top 50, cancelled the visit by the Nobel peace laureate, scheduled for June, to avoid damaging its ties with China, including funding for its cultural Confucius Institute, Tibetan activists and Australian politicians said. Read more...
By Hiep Pham. Traditional ‘high employment’ courses like economics, finance, banking, business and information technology appear to be losing their appeal among would-be students in Vietnam, according to universities, which receive student applications in April. Nationwide entrance examinations are written in July. Dao Tuyet Hanh, the executive in charge of university enrolment at the Hanoi-based Viet Duc high school, said only 20% of her students submitted applications to economics and related courses this month – a significant drop from last year’s ratio of 50%. Read more...By Vikki Boliver. Despite the establishment of a government Office for Fair Access nearly a decade ago, students from less privileged backgrounds continue to be substantially underrepresented in the United Kingdom’s more prestigious universities. More than 90% of school children are educated in state-maintained schools in the UK, and yet state school students make up less than 80% of all UK-domiciled undergraduates at Russell Group universities and just 60% of those at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Durham. And while students from black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic backgrounds make up 10% of university entrants nationally, they account for just 4% of those entering Russell Group universities and less than 2% of those entering Oxford, Cambridge and Durham. Read more...By Taina Moisander. When swingeing budget cuts pressure higher education institutions to perform more with less, they have to justify the different purposes that they serve. Whether that is training people for active citizenship, facilitating social mobility, improving skills needed in the labour market or conducting high-quality research, these activities are weighted against one another in a competition for funds and in creating a more efficient education system. The rising unemployment of recent graduates in Europe has emphasised the needs of the labour market in connection with higher education reforms. Read more...By Wagdy Sawahel. Experts have agreed to set up an African Quality Assurance and Accreditation Council for Higher Education, or AQAACHE, to harmonise the approval of courses and activities of quality agencies among countries. The major aim is to encourage qualification recognition, academic mobility and internationalisation across Africa. This was outlined at a workshop held at the African Union offices in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 10-11 April.By Philip G Altbach. The rich world is worrying about skills shortages, especially at the upper levels of their economies. The causes are many – such as a ‘demographic cliff’ in Japan and some European countries, significantly reducing the numbers of university-age people, especially too few students enrolling in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields; a levelling off of access; and low degree-completion rates. What is a solution to these problems? Increasingly, it is to boost the ‘stay rates’ of international students – in other words, to convince international students, mainly from developing and middle-income countries, to remain after they complete their degrees. To oversimplify, the rich are stealing the brains of developing countries – or for that matter any qualified brains that can be lured. Read more...By Richard Holmes. The Times Higher Education Asian University Rankings are out. Since they are based on data already gathered for the 2012 World University Rankings, there are no surprises in the top 57 that were already included in the world’s top 400 universities. There are, however, some interesting things in the bottom 43, since the scores for those universities have not previously been made public. Unlike QS, Times Higher Education and Thomson Reuters have used the same methodology for their World and Asian rankings. This is a pity since they have missed an opportunity to experiment with methodological changes particularly to the citations indicator, which has been throwing up some surprising results. These rankings show some differences from others such as the QS Asian and World University Rankings and those published by Shanghai Jiao Tong University – the Academic Ranking of World Universities, or ARWU – and the Middle East Technical University – University Ranking of Academic Performance, or URAP. Read more...By Geoff Maslen. Alarmed vice-chancellors across Australia face a A$900 million (US$940 million) cut to their universities’ revenues with a further A$1.4 billion to be slashed from higher education over the next four years so that the federal government can generate some of the A$14.5 billion it plans to allocate to schools. Professor Glyn Davis, chair of the main lobby group Universities Australia, said the cut was on top of A$1billion taken from the sector’s research budget less than six months ago through the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook process. Davis said the government’s latest decision would place a severe strain on institutions that had been encouraged to expand enrolments so as to boost access to higher education. He said the further cuts were at a time when Australia sat “disturbingly” 25th out of 29 advanced economies for public investment in universities. Read more.../https%3A%2F%2Fprofilepics.canalblog.com%2Fprofilepics%2F1%2F0%2F1076071.jpg)
