Francois Hollande’s embattled administration faces a major test this summer as it attempts to push sweeping changes to higher education through the French parliament. With the Socialist government rocked by financial scandal and its leader’s approval ratings at a record low of 29 percent, opposition from university leaders to key parts of the draft bill […]
Universities, colleges and schools in the UK may take a leaf out of Australia’s book and lobby the government as one body over international education issues. That’s the view of Colin Riordan, chair of the UK Higher Education International Unit, who made the remarks during a debate on whether British institutions which educate international students […]
An Asian country has for the first time broken into the top 10 of national higher education systems, according to the second annual Universitas 21 rankings. Singapore jumped two places to ninth in the overall table, which ranks 50 countries on measures including investment, gender balance, international connectivity and research output. The UK remains in […]
Some history professors in Florida are paying more attention these days to the future than to the past. The historians have organised themselves to promote the value of their discipline against a growing sentiment that history is “non-strategic” in an economy that needs more engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs and workers in the health professions.
Growing up in the southern mexican town of putla Villa de Guerrero, Lili Gracida Jiménez watched with dismay as teachers lined up students by order of intelligence, calling the underperformers names.
“My teachers were cruel,” recalls Gracida Jiménez, who went on to graduate from Benito Juárez Autonomous University of Oaxaca and now teaches Spanish at a […]
The centre for higher education development (che) is responsible for what is arguably Germany’s best-known universities ranking system. Results are presented by means of a simple traffic-light method of classification: top-rated universities get green buttons, average ones yellow and low scorers blue. But the ratings paintbox has recently seen the addition of a new colour: […]
Barack Obama likes to call education “the currency for the information age”. His presidency has brought a big shift in America’s priorities, devoting more effort and resources — and an extra $2 billion (Rs.10,800 crore) — to children who have not yet started formal schooling.
That is part of an international trend. South Korea plans to […]
Here is a test. suppose you had $100 in a savings account that paid an interest rate of 2 percent a year. If you leave the money in the account, how much would you have accumulated after five years: more than $102, exactly $102, or less than $102? And would an investor who received 1 percent […]
Entering the European University Institute (EUI) has echoes of stepping back in time to one of the early monastic seats of higher education. Its hub, housed in a Medici-era church and monastery, sits high in the hills above Florence in San Domenico di Fiesole. Today the ancient cloisters are paced by serious-minded young scholars deep […]
Plans by Conservative Party ministers to limit international students’ use of the National Health Service (NHS) could further deter overseas applicants. The move coincides with an analysis published in early March, which concludes that overseas students are less of a drain on health and other public resources than the average citizen.
Following the Conservative party’s third-place […]
A conference in Tunisia has explored new opportunities and threats for universities in countries transformed by the recent Arab Spring. The event was organised by the Scholars at Risk Network and the Center for Dialogues, both based in New York University, and convened on February 21-22 at the University of Manouba’s faculty of letters, arts […]
When the Australian government declined in January to implement recommended increases in teaching funding, or permit the franchising of university degrees, some observers perceived a growing nervousness about the cost of the country’s uncapped higher education system.
Some academics believe the cost of the loans system could prompt a future government — particularly one from the […]
The suicide of a radical advocate of open access to academic research has elevated the topic to the forefront of conversation in the US, and could ultimately widen the availability of documents and prompt copyright reform.
The number of academic papers open to all without charge has increased rapidly in recent years, even before Aaron Swartz […]
A row has erupted in French higher education over a privately funded university that is facing legal action from the government. Université Fernando Pessoa (UFP), an institution based in the town of Toulon, has only several dozen students, but it is causing a stir within the education establishment.
The university, backed by French and Portuguese investors, […]
What is the most popular thing in the world? Music, guessed Donald Trump. No, replied his interviewer, Ali G; it is ice cream. The problem, however, is that ice cream drips. The solution, said the British comedian, is to sell “ice cream gloves” to stop people’s hands getting sticky. The Donald somehow kept a straight […]
Last December men armed with assault rifles burst into the canteen of Ban Ba Ngo school in the southern Thai province of Pattani and shot two teachers dead. The next day the teachers’ unions shut down all 1,300 state-run schools in the three provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat, and in four districts of neighbouring […]
Parents pore over them. teachers protest about them. Politicians preen when they are positive — and blame their predecessors if they are not. International league tables have acquired a central role in debates about education policy.
Data duels are a recent phenomenon. The OECD (a Paris-based developed-country think-tank) has published its PISA (Programme for International Student […]
The Chinese new year, which was celebrated on February 10, is a time of family reunions. But Xiao Chaohua spent his sixth new year without his son, who was abducted in 2007 by suspected child traffickers. China’s one-child policy has fuelled demand for children like his, thousands of whom are snatched and sold every year […]
Children returned to school in timbuktu in northern Mali on February 1, a week after Islamist groups retreated following a coordinated ground and air offensive by French and Mali government troops through January. Teachers say about half of all school children fled northern Mali in 2012 when Islamist groups took over much of the north and shut […]
Charlotte. Daniel. Olivia. Josephine. Ana. Dylan. Madeleine. Catherine. Chase. Jesse. James. Grace. Emilie. Jack. Noah. Caroline. Jessica. Benjamin. Avielle. Allison. In an especially emotional moment during a prayer vigil, Barack Obama read out the first names of the 20 children killed in the December 14 school shoot-out in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. The children were all […]
United kingdom: Foreign students exclusion pressure
Theresa May, Britain’s home secretary, has been accused by a vice chancellor of acting “like a Dalek”, and of “casting a dark cloud over British higher education” in her refusal to change course on student visas.
Meanwhile in end December, the House of Lords European Union Committee became the fifth parliamentary […]
Ten Australian universities are performing “above the world standard” for research, including four performing “well above” world standard, according to an evaluation of Australian research.
The Excellence in Research for Australia 2012 National Report, published on December 6, shows there has been a 24 percent increase in the research undertaken since the previous exercise in 2010. There […]
Even as India’s Foreign Education Providers (Regulation of Entry and Operations Bill 2010) has been stalled in the country’s unparliamentary Parliament for several years, whether for the narrow purpose of generating revenue or the broader goal of engaging more deeply with a rapidly emerging and ever more important nation, foreign universities are scrambling to recruit […]
The proliferation of neighbourhood care points (NCP) has had the effect of popularising preschool education throughout Swaziland (pop. 1.38 million) in just over a decade. NCPs were originally a response to the wave of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) created by the country’s staggering HIV rates. With 26 percent of people aged 15-49 living with […]
The number of overseas students attending university in the US reached a record 764,495 during the academic year 2011-12, according to figures from the Institute of International Education.
The data, published annually in partnership with the US Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, shows a 6 percent increase on the previous year and […]
When former University of South Australia vice chancellor Denise Bradley in her landmark 2008 report recommended that Australian higher education move to a demand-driven system, she was equally clear that an independent national regulator was required to ensure that teaching quality did not suffer. Previously, higher education had been officially regulated by the country’s states […]
Of the many reforms that China’s new leaders will be expected to tackle after they took over in mid-November, one of the most urgent yet potentially divisive is giving migrants and their families the same opportunities in the cities as other citizens. Recently in Beijing, mere talk of allowing children of migrants from the countryside […]
After serving 14 years as president of the Republic of Ireland, one could be excused for wishing to take a step back from public life. However, just a year after stepping down as head of state, Mary McAleese has returned to public service as the chair of a new European Commission inquiry into higher education. […]
The trial of a university dean has raised concerns about the future of higher education in Tunisia and the longer-term plans of the dominant Ennahda (Renaissance) Party.
It was in Tunisia that street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set fire to himself on December 17, 2010 in protest against ill treatment by local police, thereby sparking the regionwide […]
Until recently Grace Wambui, a 14-year-old pupil in Nairobi, had never touched a tablet computer. But it took her about “one minute”, she says, to work out how to use one when such devices arrived at her school, a tin shack in Kawangware, a slum in the Kenyan capital.
The stone is worn and chipped, but you can still make out the motto inscribed above the 111-year-old McKean Gate that leads to Harvard Yard: “Veritas”, it says. Truth. It’s ironic, then, that in August the US’ oldest and most prestigious university was embarrassed by allegations of a cheating scandal involving a reported 125 students.
Not so long ago business management students flocked to Europe. Compared with their American counterparts, European schools were cheaper and their student bodies more diverse, both attractive features — and the salaries of European MBA graduates were often higher. Some of these attractions remain undimmed. But they are no longer enough to bring in the […]
Asian universities, especially in the republic of Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and China, performed particularly well in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2012, published on October 3, rising by an average of almost 12 places. The US continues to dominate the rankings. Its universities claimed 76 places in the top 200.
It may seem odd that Timbuktu, the malian city on the south-west fringe of the Sahara desert, is twinned with Hay-on-Wye, a placid little town on the Welsh side of the border with England. The reason for this partnership is books. Hay is famous for its bookshops and an annual literary festival. Timbuktu has a […]
Universities in Brazil have long been for the privileged few. Only 11 percent of the working-age population has a degree — and such scarcity has brought rich rewards. Graduates earn on average, 2.5 times as much as those without degrees, and five times as much as the majority who don’t finish secondary school. Until recently, […]
Dr. Anant Agarwal looks out the window of his new office on the seventh floor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Stata Center for Computer, Information, and Intelligence Sciences and muses aloud — and without evident irony — about the future of online education. “We’re going to change the world,” says Agarwal, who is heading […]
How Chinese is Hong Kong? Two recent issues have highlighted the territory’s contradictory attitudes toward the mainland. On August 22, seven Hong Kongers belonging to the Action Committee for Defending the Diaoyu Islands returned to a heroes’ welcome. They had sailed their fishing boat to those barren rocks (known as the Senkakus by the Japanese, […]
London Metropolitan University (LMU) which had to expel 2,600 including 350 Indian students because of visa irregularities in July could be taken over by a private buyer if the loss of its visa licence leads to insolvency. The institution is mounting a legal challenge to the UK Border Agency’s decision to revoke its highly trusted […]
The Buddhist monk, staring intently at the smoke rising from an incense stick, says the government is destroying state-provided education because it’s “easier to control uneducated fools”. Maduluwawe Sobitha is an influential figure among Sri Lanka’s majority Sinhala population. He is also a loud critic of the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa. The monk’s new […]
Chile’s only university owned by the global arm of US for-profit education giant Apollo Group has had its accreditation withdrawn.
On July 18, following an unsuccessful appeal, Chile’s National Education Council confirmed a decision of the National Accreditation Commission to stop accrediting the University for Arts, Sciences and Communication (UNIACC). Consequently the university’s students will be […]
Indian Institute of Technology Madras’ (IIT Madras) Centre of Excellence for Road Safety (CoERS) has launched a landmark ‘Data Driven Hyperlocal Intervention’ (DDHI) programme to .....Read More
At least five people, including three children, were killed and several others injured in a suicide attack on a school bus in Pakistan’s restive Balochistan .....Read More
