Formation Continue du Supérieur

Von E. Stengel. Eine Bremer Privathochschule kämpft ums Überleben. Die Zukunft der Uni hängt von neuen Steuermillionen ab – und der Stiftung eines Kaffee-Unternehmers.
Sie nennt sich selbstbewusst "Deutschlands erfolgreichste private Universität in Lehre und Forschung". Finanziell ist die private Elitehochschule "Jacobs University Bremen" (JUB) aber alles andere als erfolgreich. Seit ihrer Gründung 2001, damals noch unter dem Namen "International University Bremen", lebt sie mehr oder weniger von der Hand in den Mund und muss immer wieder ums Überleben kämpfen.
Derzeit, sagt JUB-Sprecher Peter Wiegand, finanziert sie nur 35 von 55 Millionen Euro Jahres-Etat "aus eigener Kraft", also aus Forschungsaufträgen, Studiengebühren, Kapitalstockzinsen und örtlichen Spenden. Die fehlenden 20 Millionen werden vor allem von der Schweizer Jacobs Foundation aufgebracht, einer Stiftung des 2008 gestorbenen Kaffeekönigs Klaus J. Jacobs. Auch das Land Bremen griff der Privatgründung bis 2011 unter die Arme.
In jüngster Zeit spitzten sich die Finanzprobleme wieder zu – aber inzwischen konnte die Jacobs University Entwarnung geben: Ihre treuen Partner Bremen und Jacobs-Stiftung wollen ihre bisher befristete Förderung verlängern. Genaue Beträge stehen noch nicht fest, doch steigen nunmehr die Chancen, dass die Jacobs University längerfristig überleben kann.
Paradiesische Zustände auf Kosten privater Sponsoren
Die Privatuniversität war 2001 mit gerade mal 130 Studierenden auf einem früheren Kasernengelände in Bremen-Nord eröffnet worden. Heute lernen hier fast 1.400 junge Leute aus über hundert Nationen, betreut von rund 130 Professoren und 260 wissenschaftlichen Mitarbeitern. Ein paradiesischer Personalschlüssel im Vergleich zu Staatshochschulen.
Dafür sind aber auch 20.000 Euro Studiengebühr pro Jahr fällig. Finanzschwache Bewerber, die das anspruchsvolle Aufnahmeverfahren bestehen, kommen allerdings günstiger davon. Und von diesen Teilzahlern gab es jahrelang mehr als erwartet.
Auch deshalb kam die Jacobs University nie auf einen grünen Zweig, vor allem aber, weil sich nicht genügend private Sponsoren fanden. Angestrebt wurde ein Kapitalstock von 250 Millionen Euro, doch bis 2006 kamen nur 70 Millionen zusammen. Umso glücklicher war Unipräsident Joachim Treusch, als damals die Jacobs Foundation einsprang: Sie stiftete 200 Millionen Euro, verteilt auf mehrere Jahre - die angeblich größte Privatspende, die jemals in Europa an eine wissenschaftliche Einrichtung vergeben wurde.
Doch auch der Staat steuerte immer wieder Gelder bei. Die einstige große Koalition unter Bürgermeister Henning Scherf (SPD) gewährte eine Anschubfinanzierung von 118 Millionen Euro und bürgte für einen 50-Millionen-Kredit. Auch die seit 2007 regierende rot-grüne Koalition unter Jens Böhrnsen (SPD) mochte den Imageträger nicht hängen lassen und zahlte bis zum vergangenen Jahr insgesamt 23 Millionen Euro.
Nach einjähriger Pause und einem neuerlichen Hilferuf der Jacobs University kann die gemeinnützige GmbH nun bald wieder auf Steuergelder hoffen: Der Bremer Senat verkündete kürzlich, die Jacobs University sei eine "großartige Einrichtung" mit einer "großen strukturpolitischen und wirtschaftlichen Bedeutung" für die ganze Region. Ihre Beschäftigten und Studierenden erhöhten zudem als Neubürger die Einnahmen Bremens. Daher werde sich die Hansestadt "einer zeitlich befristeten Beteiligung an der Zukunftssicherung der JUB für die nächsten Jahre nicht verschließen". Dem Vernehmen nach geht es um drei Millionen Euro jährlich. Der Senat stellt allerdings Bedingungen. Zum Beispiel sollen künftig weniger Professoren für mehr Studierende zuständig sein, nämlich im Verhältnis 1:16 statt derzeit 1:11. Und die Jacobs Foundation soll weiterhin dauerhaft Hilfe leisten.
Die Uni ist kein Einzelfall
Zumindest diese Bedingung wurde jetzt erfüllt: Die Stiftung versprach jüngst, die JUB auch nach 2017 zu unterstützen. Bis dahin müssen die im Jahr 2006 zugesagten 200 Millionen Euro Jacobs-Gelder reichen. Sie sollten ursprünglich nach einem festen Schlüssel für den laufenden Betrieb und für die Erhöhung des Kapitalstocks verwendet werden; wegen der Wirtschaftskrise einigten sich beide Seiten später aber auf eine flexiblere Verwendung, sagt JUB-Sprecher Wiegand.
Bei der Linkspartei, der Gewerkschaft GEW und der Studentenvertretung der Universität Bremen stößt die staatliche Zahlungsbereitschaft auf Protest: Der Senat solle nicht länger Steuergelder in einem Privatunternehmen versenken, während gleichzeitig in den öffentlichen Hochschulen die Hörsäle überquellen.
Bremen ist allerdings kein Einzelfall. Ohne Landesbeihilfen und neue Investoren wäre zum Beispiel die nordrhein-westfälische Privatuniversität Witten-Herdecke 2009 wohl Pleite gegangen. Früh gescheitert sind finanziell prekäre Gründungen wie die Nordische Universität in Flensburg und Neumünster sowie die Hanseuniversität in Rostock. Die Jacobs University hofft, dass ihr dieses Schicksal nun erspart bleibt.

By Bernard Lane. WESTERN education, not Asian languages, is what Asia expects of Australia, according to Adelaide University's Warren Bebbington.
"Asia looks to Australia not as a centre of study for Asian language, but as a beacon of Western education and culture in Asia," Professor Bebbington said.
The vice-chancellor was commenting on the government's Asian Century white paper with its emphasis on "Asia-relevant capabilities" including expertise in Asian studies and languages.
He said the report misunderstood the values that Asia sought in Australia.
"What Asia wants from our leading universities is western scientific method, western thought; not Asian cultural study, something they could get better at home," he said.
"This is why the best Asian universities are urgently moving to teaching in English.
"It would be better if the current decline in Asian languages and culture in our schools was reversed, but I don't actually think that is as pivotal as is suggested."
Professor Bebbington, who used to be pro vice-chancellor for global relations at the University of Melbourne, is a critic of global university rankings as a poor guide to the quality of teaching.
"Students the world over use rankings for advice on which particular teaching program, at what campus to enrol in," he said in a speech in August.
"Most don't realise that many of the rankings scarcely measure teaching or the campus experience at all. They mostly measure research outcomes."
He singled out the Shanghai Jiao Tong league table for its research bias. That ranking has been given quasi-official status by the government's white paper, which states a "national objective" that Australia will have 10 universities in the top 100 by 2025. There are five this year. An OECD project to devise global measures of learning outcomes offers a potential corrective to the research bias of rankings such as the Jiao Tong.
However, the depleted treasuries of the developed world and university apprehension about the nature and use of the new OECD measure may prevent its development. A feasibility study for the measure, called the Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes, has been finished.

By Dayna Catropa and Margaret Andrews. It seems we may have another big, unpredictable storm close to home – MOOCs. Earlier this week Inside Higher Ed announced a partnership between Coursera and Antioch University to license Coursera courses for Antioch degree programs.
In short, here’s the business model:  Universities such as Duke and the University of Pennsylvania work with Coursera to produce massively open online courses (“MOOCs”) that are offered for free (at least until this point) through Coursera.  Some schools, like Antioch, may decide to license these courses and will pay Coursera a fee to do so.  Coursera will share the gross revenue and net profit from these licensed courses with the universities that produced the content.  The faculty that produced the course will also receive some revenue.  Schools like Antioch will offer these licensed MOOCs to their students, thus giving them access to a wider array of courses and instructors, including “rock star” faculty from well-known universities.  Because the cost of licensing the content through Coursera will likely be smaller than the cost of hiring these well-known faculty to teach at the licensee school, universities like Antioch that work through Coursera can pass the savings on to students, thus lowering the cost of a degree. More...

By JULIE CRESWELL. The sales pitch for the fund was simple: a chance for individual investors to get in on the same high-octane private equity and hedge funds that have fueled successful returns for large university endowments for years. But now investors in the fund, the nine-year-old, $3.3 billion Endowment Fund, are finding it was much easier to get in than it is to get out.
The fund, run by Mark Yusko, the charismatic former chief of the endowment for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, sent letters on Friday to investors saying it was limiting the amount of money that could be taken out each quarter. Investors withdrew more than $1 billion, or about a quarter of the fund’s assets, this year through September, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Investors generally have been disappointed with hedge fund returns for the last couple of years because many have lagged the gains made in the stock market. Investors have pulled about $13.2 billion, or 2 percent of total assets, from hedge funds for the year through August, according to estimates by BarclayHedge and TrimTabs Investment Research. The firms estimate that in the 3,000 hedge funds that they track, assets have fallen 28.7 percent from their peak of $2.4 trillion in 2008 through a combination of weak performance and withdrawals.
But hedge fund investors and lawyers said the move by the Endowment Fund was one of the first forms of gating, or reducing the ability of investors to take out their money, since the financial crisis. Then, several large hedge funds gated, angering their investors who could not get access to their money.
The troubles at the Endowment Fund are a black eye for Mr. Yusko, a frequent speaker at investment conferences who, after leaving the University of North Carolina in 2004, built a substantial hedge fund empire that at its peak in 2008 controlled $22 billion in assets. Today, he oversees $14 billion.
Mr. Yusko declined to comment on Monday.
He started the Endowment Fund in 2003 with Salient Partners, a Houston firm that managed money for wealthy individuals. It is a fund that invests in dozens of other funds, including some run by prominent managers who have stumbled in recent years, like John A. Paulson, Philip A. Falcone and Eric Mindich.
Several experts were quick to say they saw the gating at the Endowment Fund as a reflection of what that fund had invested in, not as a general trend among funds. About 35 percent of the fund’s assets are invested in real estate, energy and private equity assets — investments that the fund simply could not exit quickly if investors were to demand their cash.
The substantial redemptions in the Endowment Fund follow several years of weak returns. For the 12 months ending late August, the fund was down 2.5 percent, compared with an 18 percent gain in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index and a 0.9 percent decline in the average hedge fund. Over the last five years, the Endowment Fund returned 5.7 percent annually, lagging the 7.7 percent gain by the S.&. P. 500 and the 7.3 percent annual gain by the average hedge fund.
“Hedge funds, as an asset class, have underperformed the stock market and there are definitely some investors out there who feel like they haven’t been invited to the party,” said Stewart Massey, a partner at Massey Quick in Morristown, N.J., which invests money for individuals and institutions.
But the fees investors have paid the Endowment Fund for its lukewarm performance have been considerable, up to about 3.5 percent a year. Additionally, the underlying funds can receive as much as 25 percent of any profits they make.
On top of that, some of the fund’s investors who came in through Merrill Lynch financial advisers may have paid as much as a 2.5 percent upfront fee, similar to what is charged for other funds, according to internal Merrill Lynch documents. More...

By Michelle Zilio. A government program aimed at attracting international students to Canada is failing to do so, according to a recent report from Ipsos Reid.
The report, presented to the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade in March and recently made public, surveyed prospective students, parents and university educational advisors in Brazil, China and India to gather feedback for the development of Edu-Canada’s “Imagine Education in Canada” brand. The report found that, aside from Brazilian participants interested in language studies and one Brazilian education advisor, “Canada is not a top-of-mind destination for foreign study for participants of any of the three countries.”
“Imagine Education in Canada”, launched by DFAIT and the Council of Ministers of Education Canada in 2008, aims to brand Canada as a top study destination for international students. The program, in its fourth year, was allocated $1 million a year for five years.
The report found that participants were unaware of Canada’s “world-class educational establishments,” apart from a few mentions of the University of Toronto.
“While participants believe that Canada as a developed country must have an adequate level of education, there is no perception of a Canadian education advantage compared to others,” the report read.
Participants expressed a preference for educational institutions in the U.K. and the U.S., citing their prestigious reputations and high placement in world university rankings.
“Given that the presence of world-class educational establishments is the leading factor that drives the choice of a foreign destination for education, this lack of prominence is a serious obstacle,” the report states.
A number of top Canadian universities took a hit to their reputation at the beginning of October when the annual Times Higher Education World University Ranking was released. The University of Toronto dropped out of the top 20 this year, from number 19 to 21, while the University of British Columbia plummeted from number 22 to 30, and McGill fell out of the top 30 to 34th place worldwide. Four years after its launch, says the report, the “Imagine Education in/au Canada” still lacks a specific national brand — unlike Canada’s competitors. Participants said the Canadian brand lacked details about university rankings, top programs, famous or successful people with Canadian credentials, and Canadian institutions in scientific publications or the media.
“The absence of a clear national brand, which is present among Canada’s competitors, leaves participants wondering who the sponsor of the communications is,” the report read.
Statistics Canada data examining the number of international students attending university in Canada show international interest in Canadian institutions has flatlined in recent years. From 1992 to 2003, the overall percentage of international students at Canadian universities jumped nearly three percentage points, from 4.2 to 7.1 per cent. But from 2003 to 2008, that number levelled off, growing by less than half of a percentage point over six years. Canada’s international reputation as a leading study destination can be improved, according to the report.
The report called for a number of improvements in the marketing and advertising of Canada as a study destination: increased advertising for Canada’s advanced scientific research, adding English and French support for international students who wish to learn either language, using successful Canadian personalities in marketing, and pursuing a more aggressive outreach to prospective students through social media networks.
The report also said practical information such as the availability of cultural activities, quality of living and Canada’s natural beauty should be made available to prospective international students.
twitter.com/michellezilio, michellezilio@ipolitics.ca

By HEATHER MUNROE-BLUM. Let me explode the myths about international students. They enrich Quebec, and we have to get better at attracting them.
The great historian Marcel Trudel liked to talk about the myths and realities of Quebec's history. On my side, I'll talk about the myths and realities of the international role of Quebec's universities - a key role for the success of Quebec.
I'm going to use a question-and-answer format. And, because I'm a professor, I'm going to ask the questions and give the answers!
Myth or reality? International students are a drain on Quebec.
Myth. International students are essential contributors to Quebec's success. We cannot succeed without more well-educated, highly skilled, multilingual people. People who have knowledge and experience of the major cultures of the world; people who are comfortable with managing complexity, and who are welcoming of change.
International students are exactly what Quebec needs. They spend years in our institutions, they speak or are motivated to learn French, they know Quebec's values, and they are already integrating into our society. Collectively, we Quebecers have supported a portion of their education with our taxes, and, collectively, we Quebecers benefit from the investment made elsewhere in their early training and from who they are today. More...