University World News

July 26, 2008

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University World News and the Study International Network are collaborating to provide the latest information about higher education for administrators, academics and students around the globe.

University World News is a weekly, online global higher education publication focusing on international news and analysis, developments, events and announcements.

Issues covered by our writers include international university rankings and league tables, globalisation and higher education research and analysis, international students, tertiary education systems, policies and reforms; higher education funding and liberalisation; academic posts and tenure; college accreditation; English language tuition; GATS and the Bologna Process.

We are also working to highlight academic job opportunities, new academic posts, conferences and events, research grants, research jobs and further education news.

U niversity World News is read by vice-chancellors and their deputies, professors and university managers, lecturers, higher education researchers and postgraduate students at universities and colleges worldwide, as well as by government policy-makers and officials, and people working in higher education funding and advisory bodies, research councils, think-tanks, donor agencies, and national and international organisations.

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NEWS: University World News

CORRESPONDENTS WORLDWIDE REPORT

AFRICA: New initiative to boost science
27 July 2008
Three networks of universities in sub-Saharan Africa have been named as the first to benefit from a new partnership initiative to build scientific capacity in Africa. The Regional Initiative in Science and Education, RISE, will provide grants - each worth $800,000 - over two-and-a-half years to the three networks which are based in South Africa, Malawi and Tanzania but also involve universities in eight African countries.

EUROPE: Higher education’s global role
27 July 2008, Alan Osborn
As a demonstration of how the top higher education people from across the world can meet, debate, agree and disagree without ever losing sight of their common goals as academic leaders, you would find it hard to better the four-yearly conference of the UNESCO-based International Association of Universities.

FRANCE: Big budget increases - and big job cuts
27 July 2008, Jane Marshall
Academics and researchers reacted with alarm to an announcement by French Higher Education and Research Minister Valérie Pécresse that their institutions faced significant losses of tenured posts next year. They accused the government of endangering French research by replacing permanent jobs with short-term contracts, and of striking “heavy blows” against scientific employment.

GREECE: Coimbra Group critical of Bologna
27 July 2008, Makki Marseilles
Not everyone is enamoured with the Bologna agreement or with the way it is set up and is operating. The Coimbra Group, an association of traditional universities, is extremely sceptical of the process despite the fact Bologna is gaining friends and admirers within and outside the European Union.

GLOBAL: Future of higher education research
Diane Spencer
Higher education around the world has expanded massively in recent decades so that its character and performance have significant implications for all members of society, not only economically but for social cohesion, equity, mobility and integration, says a new report by the European Science Foundation. The report says more needs to be known about how universities and other higher education institutions are changing in the 21st century. It says that expansion of the sector has implications locally, nationally and globally, as well as how it shapes the lives of individual citizens.

EUROPE: First Mediterranean university launched
Keith Nuthall
A new Euro-Mediterranean University based in Slovenia has been launched with higher education courses that will focus on issues of importance to European, African and Levantine countries bordering the sea. Creation of the new institution was part of a joint declaration issued by heads of state and government from 43 countries at a Paris summit establishing a Mediterranean Union organisation.

FRANCE: More super-campuses announced
Jane Marshall
Valérie Pécresse, Minister for Higher Education and Research, has announced the four remaining locations for Operation Campus - a plan aimed at making French universities internationally competitive through substantially increased funding for a selected few. While Paris was conspicuously absent among the first six projects chosen at the end of May, three of the four new campuses will be situated in the capital or the surrounding Ile-de-France region. But a decision has been postponed on which of two inner Paris proposals will go ahead.

AUSTRALIA: Internet speeds up to 100 times faster
It has taken four years to develop but now, thanks to a small scratch on a piece of glass, University of Sydney scientists say the internet is set to become up to 100 times faster than current networks. The scratch will mean almost instantaneous, error free and unlimited access to the internet anywhere in the world.

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NEWSBRIEFS

UK: Green naming and shaming
The universities of Gloucester, Plymouth and the West of England topped a “Green League” table published by the student campaigning organisation People and Planet. The group noted a remarkable improvement in environmental management and performance as universities had increased their environmental staff by 25% but more action was needed, it said.

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FEATURES

AUSTRALIA: International quality assurance
David Woodhouse*
As universities around the world internationalise their curricula and their research links, or offer courses abroad or enrol foreign students, these activities should be subject to internal quality assurance. By the same token, external quality assurance agencies must be able to assess the nature and effect of these internal processes. This is the “QA of internationalisation”.

EUROPE: Raising education standards
Alan Osborn
The 27 EU member states will have to speed up their educational progress if they are to meet a range of self-imposed targets deemed necessary if the Lisbon strategy for growth and jobs is to be successful by 2010. A report by the European Commission* acknowledges that progress has been made in five key areas (though not in low achievement in reading) and that long-term reform processes have been launched. “Although progress towards… targets is slow, it is mostly going in the right direction,” said Ján Figel, Commissioner for Education. “But much work still needs to be done,” he warned.

WORLD ROUND-UP

US: ‘Emergency’ data request raises suspicion
Stymied in its efforts to alter federal laws and regulations to make it easier for students to transfer academic credits from one institution to another, the US Education Department plans an “emergency” survey of federal Pell Grant recipients that seems designed to build a case that changes are necessary, reports Inside Higher Ed. The request has agitated some higher education officials, who questioned both the premise and the purpose of the department’s information expedition.

INDIA: Doors shut on top UK universities
Since it began market reforms in the early 1990s, India has rolled out the red carpet for many British corporations, reports The Independent. Vodafone, British Telecom and Rolls-Royce all have operations there, helping to push foreign direct investment to nearly £8 billion (US$16 billion) last year. But while Britain’s phone companies, cars and expertise in higher education are welcomed, its universities are not.

SOUTH AFRICA: At least six more universities needed
Mergers between black and white universities in South Africa to transform higher education after apartheid have been “difficult and messy” and distracted attention from expanding student numbers, the country’s vice-chancellors believe, reports Education Guardian. South Africa will need at least six more universities to raise participation in higher education from the current 15% and the sector was asking whether the mergers ordered by the government (known in some quarters as the “murders”) had been necessary, said Roy du Pré, vice-chancellor of Durban University of Technology and spokesman for Higher Education South Africa which represents the heads of the country’s universities.