Formation Continue du Supérieur

By Hiep Pham. A time scale has been established for setting up a common credit transfer scheme between several South East Asian and neighbouring countries, which will be crucial for encouraging student mobility within Asia.
The Great Mekong Subregion – which includes Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and China – and neighbouring countries Japan and Korea, are working together to set up a higher education platform, similar to the European Union’s Erasmus programme, to increase mobility within the region.
The platform’s first plank will be a common credit transfer scheme, which could be adopted by all higher education institutions in the subregion as early as the next academic year (2013-14), according to Sauwakon Ratanawijitrasin, director of the South East Asian Ministers of Education Organisation – Regional Centre for Higher Education and Development (SEAMEO–RIHED), which organised a regional workshop in Bangkok last month. Read more...

By Geoff Maslen. Providing education to students from more than 100 nations around the world is Australia’s fourth largest export, behind iron, coal and gold but ahead of tourism, natural gas and crude oil, according to a new report.
The report says education as an export has played a key role in Australia’s economic prosperity, doubling in value every five years from 1990-2010. The sector overtook tourism as the top service export in 2007-08 and edged out gold, briefly, in 2009-10.
But the report notes that 2009 was the peak and that, since then, the income generated from the declining number of foreign fee-paying students – notably from India – fell from A$17.3 billion (US$18 billion) in 2009 to A$15.5 billion in 2010, and down to almost A$14.8 billion over the past year. Read more...

By Alan Osborn. Time is running out for an agreement on the European Union’s (EU) budget that would permit the Erasmus student exchange programme to continue without damaging cuts early next year.
But the hold-ups are to some extent procedural and a rescue could be on the way before year end.
Although there was yet more deadlock this week in negotiations between the joint EU financing authorities – the Council of Ministers, representing the 27 member states, and the European Parliament – the failure was not to do with the figures for once.
At issue was whether to discuss the amending ‘budget 6’ for 2012 simultaneously with the budget for 2013 – or not.
This might seem a ludicrously pedantic matter to the world at large, but of such fine distinctions is the machinery of EU government constructed. Read more...