Formation Continue du Supérieur

28 janvier 2013

EU rolls out university ranking

By Ian Mundell. U-Multirank aims to correct a perceived bias towards research performance.
Plans to roll out a new system of rankings for Europe's universities to encourage international comparison will be outlined next week at a conference in Dublin. The system, called U-Multirank, has been developed with funding from the European Union. It aims to correct a perceived bias towards research performance in other international rankings, and so present a more balanced picture of university activities.
The goal is to persuade at least 500 universities to opt into the first phase of the system. Most will be from Europe, with a small number of international institutions included for comparison. The first ranking would be published early in 2014. The perceived research bias of existing rankings – principally the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities and the Times Higher Education World University Ranking – is seen as problematic because it fails to recognise that universities may have other goals and their users may have other priorities. The EU initiative aims to bring out these other university activities and allow institutions to be compared accordingly. Read more...

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28 janvier 2013

A game-changing year for American higher education?

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By Edwin Eisendrath and James DeVaney. Leading thinkers in and outside of the academy are bullish about higher education, although many are frankly worried about the future of American universities and colleges. Higher education faces unprecedented challenges, but many institutions are better prepared to meet these than their critics imagine. Gone since 2008 are the remedies for Baumol’s cost disease – tuition fee hikes, state appropriations, bubble-boosted endowment returns and a growing research portfolio. Subsequent cost-cutting continues, but many universities are gasping for revenue. Then in 2012, Harvard and MIT made very public announcements about EdX, their online learning platform. On the other coast, Stanford birthed Udacity and Coursera after professors successfully developed and delivered Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs. Read more...

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28 janvier 2013

Internationalisation has corrupted higher education

By Roger Y Chao Jr. Over the past two decades, neoliberal globalisation has opened up trade borders, commoditised the higher education sector and established a global higher education market. Furthermore, the changing political and economic environment especially after the Cold War resulted in rapid globalisation, technology development and a contraction of borders for trade, labour and academic mobility purposes. Currently, a global higher education market exists particularly for internationally mobile students and lately for domestic students wishing to take international programmes in their home countries. This article focuses on the commercialisation of higher education and its role in ushering corruption into higher education. Read more...

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28 janvier 2013

Internationalisation begins with the curriculum

By Craig Whitsed and Wendy Green. “You can’t have comprehensive internationalisation without internationalisation of the curriculum,” said Professor John Hudzik to a diverse gathering of academics and managers at a recent International Education Association of Australia (IEAA) event in Brisbane, Australia. Hudzik, author of Comprehensive Internationalisation and a professor at Michigan State University, was in Australia as a guest speaker for the University of Queensland’s (UQ) Teaching and Learning week and the launch of the UQ Global Strategy and Internationalisation plan. Members of the IEAA Special Interest Group on Internationalising the Curriculum caught up with Hudzik between his engagements. Sitting at a café overlooking the Brisbane River, we invited him to elaborate further on "internationalisation of the curriculum".
Hudzik explained that universities today have to be reminded of their core mission, namely the production of gradates who can live, work and contribute as productive citizens in an increasingly fluid and borderless global context. Read more...

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28 janvier 2013

Education’s investment metaphor misses the point

By Grace Karram. Canada’s education news is currently being dominated by the protests of Ontario public school teachers amid fiscal cuts. But this has not stopped some determined post-secondary researchers from releasing reports on recent study findings. Not surprisingly the bulk of the reports suggest how institutions should spend limited financial resources during austere times. It seems that as money becomes scarce, post-secondary education advice is infused with investment metaphors: Should institutions invest in high-performing students, permanent instructors or high-enrolment programmes? This is problematic, as it presents a false sense that education funding is a zero-sum game in which administrators must finance the most lucrative venture. Read more...

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28 janvier 2013

Southern African universities association – What next?

By Karen MacGregor. The Southern African Regional Universities Association has completed its first phase, with funding ended and most of its staff gone. But there remains a need to drive regional higher education collaboration, according to Dr John Butler-Adam: “What happens next will require new approaches, nuanced strategising and strong implementation skills.”
“This might seem a great deal to expect,” he wrote in a review of the association, published last month and titled The Southern African Regional Universities Association (SARUA): Seven years of regional higher education advancement 2006-2012.
“The process has, however, achieved so much thus far that the gains simply cannot be lost. They must be turned into regional higher education systems that will change the lives of the region’s people at a rate not previously imagined.”
Butler-Adam, a geography professor who is currently editor-in-chief of The South African Journal of Science and a consultant to the University of Pretoria, was commissioned by SARUA to review its operations and achievements and their significance for Southern Africa. The origins of SARUA date back to a general conference of the Association of African Universities held in Cape Town in February 2005. Read more...

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28 janvier 2013

PM backs fraud-reducing student application system

By David Jobbins. British prime minister David Cameron has intervened to help a business management graduate, who has devised an automated application system for educational agents and international students, to approach the UK Border Agency (UKBA) at the right level. Dawood Fard (25) came up with the idea for the system, Centurus One, during a business management masters course at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan). While on a business experience placement working in Delhi, he witnessed the bureaucratic process that international students face when applying to study in the UK.
“The day after I came back from India I got about 20 people together and we thrashed out ideas,” Fard said. “The current process is tedious, slow, inflexible and expensive. We have developed a revolutionary system that is easy to use, transparent and not at all intimidating. Read more...

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28 janvier 2013

Uncertain future for regional universities association

By Karen MacGregor. After six years of research, publications, dialogues, training and advocacy, the Southern African Regional Universities Association (SARUA) has run out of funding and its future is uncertain. Efforts will be made this year to raise funding and reconstitute SARUA in a new form appropriate to a second phase of collaborative activity. If unsuccessful, it will be a blow to regional higher education integration. The association, which was launched in early 2007, currently has a membership of 61 universities in all 15 countries of the Southern African Development Community. SARUA chair and University of Johannesburg Vice-chancellor Professor Ihron Rensburg told members in a circular that the association’s executive committee had decided last month to undertake a strategic exercise “to plan our future direction, and to develop a future funding model”. Read more...

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28 janvier 2013

Better planning and data needed to raise HE quality

By Patrick Boehler. Education professionals from Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand met in Hong Kong from 14-18 January to better understand how to improve the gathering and processing of data for more accurate planning for their education systems up to universities, under a UNESCO programme to promote education policy coordination in Asia. Citing the need for better planning Aryo Sawung, a director general with the Indonesian Ministry of Education, said: “We have not yet addressed problems beyond increasing the [education] participation rate.”
“Our next step will be to look into more accurate budgeting and how to set quality standards,” said Aryo, who attended the weeklong workshop, which involved almost 85 ministry officials and university researchers from Asia. Read more...

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28 janvier 2013

Davos delegates call for university-to-job schemes

By Jan Petter Myklebust. When 2,500 global leaders met in Davos last week, one open agenda session asked – “Unemployed or Unemployable?” The discussants called for more flexibility in the transfer from higher education to work.
“Globally, there is a need to create 600 million productive jobs over the next decade, and the number of university graduates is higher than ever before, yet businesses are struggling to find skilled talent to hire,” said the programme.
“How can this gap be bridged? Is the education system at fault, or are the unemployed? Is unemployment high because of economic policy?”
Professor Peter Cappelli of Wharton illustrated the mismatch between graduate numbers and skills shortages by asking if anyone on the panel or in the audience personally knew a person who was currently unemployed. Read more...

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