GLOBAL: Academic reputation affects citation count

Geoff Maslen15 October 2014 Issue No:339

 

An academic’s reputation plays a key role in generating increases in a scientific paper’s citation count early in its citation life cycle, before a tipping point, after which his or her reputation has much less influence relative to the paper’s citation count. This is the intriguing finding from a study by a team of collaborating social science analysts in Belgium, Finland, Italy and the US.

Using data compiled by Thomson Reuters Web of Science, the team studied 450 highly cited scientists, nearly 84,000 articles in scientific publication, and 7.6 million citations tracked over the equivalent of 387,000 publication years!

The scientists studied included 100 top-cited physicists, 100 highly prolific physicists, 100 assistant professors in physics, 100 top-cited cell biologists, and 50 top-cited pure mathematicians.

In a paper published in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team describe how they analysed, for each central scientist, his or her production as measured by the number of publications in a year, the cumulative number of citations received by publications, and a quantitative reputation measure defined as the net citations aggregated across all publications.

Combining several empirical features of the analysis, the researchers then investigated the role of the reputation effect, showing that author reputation accounted for a significant increase in the number of citations an academic could attract.

“Over a scientist’s career, a reputation is developed, a standing within a research community, based largely on the quantity and quality of his or her publications. Here, we develop a framework for quantifying the influence author reputation has on a publication’s future impact,” they write.

“We find author reputation plays a key role in driving a paper’s citation count early in its citation life cycle, before a tipping point, after which reputation has much less influence relative to the paper’s citation count. In science, perceived quality, and decisions made based on those perceptions, is increasingly linked to citation counts. Shedding light on the complex mechanisms driving these quantitative measures facilitates not only better evaluation of scientific outputs but also a more transparent evaluation of the scientists producing them.”

The researchers say that scientific reputation has emerged as a key “signalling mechanism” to address the dilemma of excessive information that arises in tasks such as evaluating, comparing, and ranking publication profiles in academic competitions. As well, a scientist’s reputation plays an important role as a signal of trustworthiness and quality, “a role that addresses directly the ‘agency problem’ characterising the reward system in science”.

“With little time to read every paper on a given topic, this trustworthiness signal is anecdotally consistent with the common practice of perusing the author names when preliminarily evaluating the relevance of a newly found publication,” the team says.

“In the past, an author’s identity and associated reputation was mainly linked to reference lists and personal interactions. Nowadays, an author’s reputation is becoming increasingly visible through searchable publication databases, laboratory websites, press, and other media, in addition to citations.”

In their introduction to the paper, the researchers say that citation counts are widely used to judge the impact of both scientists and their publications. Although many factors outside the pure merit of the research or the authors influence such counts, few investigations have been made into identifying and quantifying the role of author-specific factors.

They note it is also likely that institutional affiliation and journal reputation play a role in the citation dynamics. But they suggest that disentangling the interaction between the multiple reputation sources will likely be challenging and remains an open avenue for investigation.

Nevertheless, as measures are becoming increasingly common in evaluation scenarios throughout science, the researchers say it is crucial to better understand what the citation measures actually represent in the context of scientists’ careers.

“Moreover, how does reputation affect a scientist’s access to key resources, the incentives to publish quality over quantity, and other key decisions along the career path?” they say. “In addition, what role does reputation play in the mentor-matching process within academic institutions, in the effectiveness of single/double blinding in peer review, and in the reward system of science?”

They note that it is also important to consider the role of reputation in light of the increasing orientation of science around team endeavours with “multiple levels of hierarchy and division of labour”. But, because it is difficult to evaluate and assign credit to individual contributors, they say there may be an increase in the role and strength of the reputation in overcoming the problem associated with asymmetric and incomplete information.

“In addition to the collaboration network, reputation also plays a key role in numerous other scientific inputs such as money, labour, knowledge, and so on, that inevitably affect the overall quantity and quality of scientific outputs.”

Young scientists lacking a reputation can be negatively affected by the social stratification in science, the researchers say, adding that the “appealing competitive advantage gained by working with a prestigious mentor may be countered by the possibility that it may not be the ideal mentor-advisee match”.

Nevertheless, they say that their results have broad implications across the scientific community, given the numerous careers that interact with top scientists via collaboration or mentorship. 

AUSTRALIA: Graduates of top universities earn more

Alexandra Hansen15 October 2014 Issue No:339

 

Bachelor-degree graduates from Australia’s prestigious Group of Eight, or Go8, and technology universities earn a greater amount over their lifetimes than those from the lesser known and regional universities, according to a new analysis that found their total income was 6% more over a 40-year career.

For graduates with degrees in science or commerce, this equated to about A$200,000 (US$175,000) more over their career. The data showed that bachelor degree holders from top universities actually earned about 10% more over their lifetime, but this dropped four percentage points when social advantages were accounted for.

Go8 universities were more likely to enrol students with better previous school grades, students from private schools, and students with parents who had degrees and high profile jobs, says a report by an independent think tank, the Grattan Institute.

This means some of the difference could have been attributed to the fact that Go8 and technology universities enrol students who would have performed better anyway, rather than it being the effect of the university itself, the report states.

A much larger discrepancy was found in chosen course of study, with a law graduate earning A$300,000 (US$262,000) more than a science graduate over their career, and a science graduate earning up to A$1 million (US$875,000) more than a creative arts graduate.

“The report shows that when it comes to earnings, what you study matters more than where you study,” Grattan Institute researcher Andrew Norton said. “Studying engineering at any university is likely to lead to a higher salary than studying arts at a sandstone university."

Vice-chancellor of the regional Southern Cross University, Peter Lee, said he rejected any proposition that the quality of the education experience at a regional university was less than that at a city university, leading to lower salary outcomes.

Lee said there were many other factors, such as gender balance and salary differences between cities and regions, which could have explained the difference. For instance, Southern Cross University was made up of 73% female students, and females consistently earned less than males even when allowing for career gaps while family-raising.

Lee also said there are large salary differences between the city and the regions, attributing to some of the difference: “A lawyer in a big city law firm does earn more than a lawyer practising in a smaller firm in the regions.”

A higher education analyst at the University of Melbourne, Dr Geoff Sharrock, said the report’s most important finding where earnings are concerned, was that a student’s field of study was far more important than the university itself.

“Some fields pay much better than others, regardless of which university conferred the degree,” Sharrock said. “This suggests that students should choose their field of interest and ability first, and their institution second. In doing so, they may also factor in price differences and how much debt risk they are prepared to take on.”

In a comment on the report, Rosemary Stanton, a visiting fellow at the University of New South Wales, asked why was there an assumption that “earning a little more over a lifetime was a good thing?”

“It may mean that these people work longer hours and thus spend less time with their families, possibly impoverishing them in ways that have nothing to do with money,” Stanton said.

*Alexandra Hansen is an editor with The Conversation where this article was published. 

SOUTH KOREA: Lowest-ranked universities to see cut in funding

Korea Joong Ang Daily05 September 2014 Issue No:333

 

The Ministry of Education yesterday designated 19 universities and colleges in the lowest 15 percent in terms of their operations, restricting government financial support starting next year.

In an assessment of the nation’s 334 universities and colleges, the education authority singled out the schools in the poorest condition and suggested a restructuring via a reduction in their admissions quotas.

The ministry has sought to reduce university entrance quotas after it was discovered that XXX that there were too many universities in Korea based on the country’s number of college students and that many of them were operated irresponsibly.

Earlier this year, the government also began to invest 1.2 trillion won ($1.1 billion) in making universities more specialized in order to reduce the number of freshmen.

The assessment, which looks at nine criteria, including alumni employment rates and the number of students who received scholarships, encouraged schools to shrink admissions quotas by providing extra points.

“By suggesting a quota reduction in exchange for additional points, some universities and colleges … reduced their quotas by a total of 4,244 for next year,” a ministry official said.

One college went so far as to cut its entrance rate by 28 percent for next year to escape falling into the lowest 15 percent.

The ministry initially selected 35 universities in the lowest group and notified school officials on Aug. 22, explaining they could move out of the bottom tier if they shrank their admissions for next year by a certain extent.

Sixteen gave up admitting a total of 2,801 new students next year. The 19 remaining schools announced by the ministry yesterday rejected the suggestion to shrink their quotas.

Cheongju University, for instance, said it opted to forego some financial support from the government and maintain its entrance quota because a decrease in the number of its incoming freshmen would worsen its financial situation.

Those schools are excluded from being able to bid for government-run projects for financial support from next year. They will also be prohibited from increasing their admissions in certain departments. Additionally, new students at those institutions will be barred from receiving specific government scholarships based on their schools’ performance.

Seven out of the 19 universities and colleges in the bottom 15 percent in the poorest condition were dealt even harsher financial penalties.

Freshmen at those seven schools will be restricted from receiving government scholarships, and some will not be eligible for student loans in full.

BY KIM BONG-MOON AND YOON SUK-MAN [bongmoon@joongang.co.kr]

GLOBAL: Different ways of learning for students abroad

Hans de Wit05 September 2014 Issue No:333

When the European Commission recently published the results of the Erasmus programme for 2012-13, it was proud to announce an overall increase in numbers of students by 6% to nearly 270,000.

The numbers and trends presented in the press release are indeed impressive: the overall numbers, the percentage of European Union students who are spending part of their study abroad with the support of Erasmus – 10%, still only half of the target of 20% set by the Bologna ministers of education, though – the top receiving and sending countries (Spain is number one for both), as well as increases in staff mobility (13%), in teaching assignments (8.5%), in university cooperation projects (25.4% success rate) and in intensive language courses (9%).

What was in my view the most revealing information, but which received little attention, was the increase in job placements: 16%, compared to 3.8% in study placements.

Job placements vs service learning

Since 2007, Erasmus has offered students the opportunity for European traineeships, also referred to as internships or job placements. Since then, the numbers have increased and currently one out of every five Erasmus students does work experience in another country.

According to the commission, the largest group of students on Erasmus placements has either a social sciences, business or law background (31%), while students in humanities and the arts, engineering, manufacturing and construction counted for 17% each. France, followed by Germany and Spain, was the greatest sender; the United Kingdom, followed by Spain and Germany, the biggest receiver.

The inclusion of job placements in the Erasmus programme reflects the increased focus on employability within internationalisation: how can we prepare graduates to become European and global professionals?

If we compare this to the United States, we see less attention being given to traineeships in companies there, but more attention to International Service Learning, or ISL, stimulating students to have an international community service experience.

ISL is seen in the United States as an important part of study abroad and internationalisation, although not much quantitative information on ISL can be found, partly because it is in many cases integrated into study abroad.

In general there seems to be little quantitative data about international job placements and service learning beyond the data for the Erasmus programmes, while it appears as if a lot of activity in this area is taking place on both sides of the Atlantic.

Different rationales

The distinction between the increased emphasis on international job placements in Europe and on ISL in the United States reflects the different approaches to study abroad on the two continents.

While in the United States the main driver for study abroad at the undergraduate level is to make students less parochial and more interculturally and globally competent, in Europe academic rationales and – increasingly – the employability rationale are more dominant.

Global citizenship development versus global professional development, one could say.

At the same time, both in the United States and in Europe, the main focus is on study abroad and not on international job or community placements.

These two experiences might, though, have an even stronger impact on the development of intercultural and international competences than the study abroad experience because the student is confronted more intensively with society as a result and its population at large than within a purely academic environment.

Also little attention, certainly in Europe, is given to the opportunities that a combination of job placement and-or service learning with study abroad can provide.

Although the inclusion of job placements in the Erasmus programme has stimulated the interest of international officers for this aspect of mobility, in most cases international internships are dealt with either by units that manage local internships or by teaching staff and not by international offices.

This results in a situation in which international job placements are a marginal focus point for all three parties involved. This is also because international job placements are difficult to find, costly and time consuming to monitor.

In many cases, where the student manages to find a placement abroad, guidance and advice from the home institution is marginal.

To give only one small example: over the past month, after a desperate call from a student’s grandparents, my French wife helped a French student doing a two-month internship in a company in a small town in The Netherlands without any support from the home institution to solve the difficult communication problems she faced on her assignment and her living conditions.

This is, unfortunately, still more the rule than the exception in internships, certainly at the undergraduate level. Having a local supporting partner institution involved might make the experience more rewarding.

Need for a new approach

The current call for more employability, for more global citizenship development and for innovative ideas to enhance the internationalisation of higher education might make it a good idea to look for a new approach to old forms of work experience and community service and to integrate them into existing models of mobility and study abroad.

Over the years I have encountered very few examples in which universities include cooperation on job placement and community service learning in their agreements. Finding internships or community service opportunities abroad is left in most cases to the students themselves, teaching staff with personal contacts or commercial agencies.

Why not make use of the local network of partner institutions to find, monitor and evaluate internships and community service opportunities for students of the other university and vice versa?

Why not combine job placements and service learning with a summer course (for instance, in language and culture) and-or study at the partner institution, making the most out of this twofold experience?

A counter-argument might be that it is already difficult to find internships for local students – but more options could be opened up abroad for them via international partners to compensate for that. Also, internships could help to confront the frequent imbalance in student exchange-based study placements.

I cannot imagine that there are not already such forms of cooperation taking place and it would be interesting to receive some innovative examples in this area.

I have always found it surprising how little attention is given to service learning and in particular job placements as part of international learning experiences for students.

When we speak so frequently nowadays about global citizenship and global professional development, these two strategies are more important than ever.

* Hans de Wit is director of the Centre for Higher Education Internationalisation, CHEI, at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, Italy; professor of internationalisation of higher education at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences in The Netherlands; and research associate at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Email: j.w.m.de.wit@hva.nl.

Vietnam: Universities still have little autonomy

Last update 16:02 | 31/08/2014 by Vietnam net bridge

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has bemoaned the slow process of delegating more power to universities to enhance their autonomy, saying relevant agencies should accelerate the process to increase the quality of education.

Chairing a meeting on autonomy at public universities in Hanoi Tuesday, Prime Minister Dung said that making universities responsible for all their operations is a right policy and has delivered initial positive results.

According to Dung, their autonomy aims to create a motivation and a breakthrough to improve the quality of education and facilitate sustainable development of universities.

However, the process has been moving slowly and should be speeded up so that universities can soon be autonomous in terms of finance, organization, training, curriculums and issuance of degrees and diplomas, Dung added.

At the meeting, participants also discussed the implementation of such a policy. Professor Dr. Le Vinh Danh, president of Ton Duc Thang University, said the tuition cap should be removed. Tuition fees should be decided by factors such as training quality and demand of learners, he added.

President of Vietnam National University of Hanoi Phung Xuan Nha shared the same view, saying the quality of education and learners’ needs should be used as criteria for setting tuition fees and that the quality of universities should be judged independently and publicly.

According to some university leaders, they have limited professional autonomy in terms of issues like providing new courses and curriculums, so they want more autonomy regarding these matters.

Dung told the Government Office and the Ministry of Education and Training to gather opinions of ministries, agencies and universities presented at the meeting to improve a draft resolution on autonomy for universities before it is discussed at the Government’s regular meeting this month.

According to Dung, the draft resolution needs to pay special attention to personnel, enrollment, new curriculums and scientific research.
SGT/VNN

MALAYSIA:Not guilty, says first academic charged with sedition

Emilia Tan02 September 2014 Issue No:33

Azmi Sharom, a law professor at the University of Malaya, was on 2 September charged with sedition in a court in Kuala Lumpur. The public galleries were packed with academics and students from the university, and other supporters and rights activists. He pleaded not guilty.

Azmi is the first Malaysian academic to be charged under the 1948 Sedition Act, although a number of opposition politicians have faced sedition charges in recent weeks under the law that dates back to the British colonial era.

The professor, who was granted bail during the Tuesday hearing, will appear again before the court in October. He said in a statement later that he would fight the charge, saying it was a blow to academic freedom and freedom of expression.

“I hope reason will prevail,” he told well wishers at the court. Sedition can carry a jail term of up to three years.

Shocking charges

Azmi said he was “shocked” at the charges for comments he made relating to a Malaysian online newspaper on 14 August, on a 2009 crisis in the state government of Perak, describing the events of the time as “legally wrong”.

“My statements were based on established case law and democratic principles. They were given in my capacity as a law lecturer of 24 years standing,” he said.

Academics have been horrified at the charge, which they see as being used to silence anyone who criticises the government.

“If you believe in world-class universities, academics should be allowed to make professional comments. He [Azmi] is from the law faculty. He shouldn't be charged,” Rosli Mahat, vice-president of the University of Malaya academic staff association, told The Malaysian Insider online newspaper.

Rosli, who was at court with many other university staff and students to observe the proceedings, said the charges were “an affront” to the university.

Lau Yi Leong, secretary for national affairs for the Malaysia Youth and Students’ Democratic Movement, said academics were simply expressing their opinions in their professional capacity. Students fear they could be next in the firing line.

“Furthermore, it is undoubtedly clear that, at a time when new students are being enrolled into universities, it is the government’s intention to also warn the new students not to be too keen in applying their knowledge to social, political and economic issues,” Lau said.

Vince Tan, secretary-general of Progressive, University of Malaya – a student group – said in a statement last Tuesday: “Such charges show that the authorities have no regard for academic freedom, when an academician can be punished for commenting on an issue related to his field of study.

“When the intention of the government [is] to repeal a particular legislation, it should no longer be used to prosecute anyone. Such prosecution is also in utter disregard of the intention of the government of the day,” Tan added.

PM promised to repeal the law

Two years ago Prime Minister Najib Razak promised to repeal the 1948 Sedition Act and said it was to be replaced by a new National Harmony Act.

In a statement this week, the prime minister's office reiterated that the act would be repealed and replaced with the National Harmony Bill, which was currently being drafted. No timetable was given.

The Centre for Independent Journalism, or CIJ, added to the criticism, saying the continued use of the Sedition Act “makes a mockery” of the prime minister’s legislative reforms and pledge to repeal the act more than two years ago.

CIJ said in a statement from its directors Sonia Randhawa and Jac SM Kee that “too liberal” a use of the Sedition Act would stunt the function of universities and institutions of learning to the point that they would not be able to function appropriately.

“Restrictions must be necessary and proportionate. To censure legal opinion without demonstrating the threat to national security, public order or public morality is unnecessary and disproportionate,” the statement read.

Some activists believe that the move could backfire on the government and lead to stronger demands to bring forward the repeal of the Sedition Act just as the government previously changed the Internal Security Act that affected students’ political activities and academic freedom.

A government spokesperson said that academics, like other citizens, must adhere to the law. 

Cambodia: More Than 70 Percent of Cambodia’s High School Students Fail Key Exam

Source: Radio Free Asia 

Students leave an examination center in Cambodia's Svay Rieng province, Aug. 4, 2014.

More than 70 percent of nearly 90,000 of Cambodia's high school students who sat for this year’s national examination have failed, the Ministry of Education announced Friday—the result of a government crackdown on bribery and cheating that had tainted previous exams.

It was a stunning reversal of the 80 percent pass rate last year and the previous year, forcing Prime Minister Hun Sen to give a “second chance” to unsuccessful candidates who have to sit for another examination around mid-October.

The ministry said in a statement that only 25.72 percent or 23,126 of 89,937 students passed this year’s Grade 12 examination held early this month under the watchful eyes of thousands of monitors recruited by the Anti-Corruption Unit.

Ministry spokesman Ros Salin said the result of the examination—a prerequisite for students wishing to pursue university level studies—underscored the government’s move to check cheating as part of deep reforms implemented at the ministry.

“This year’s examination was the first test of deep reforms that have been carried out at the ministry,” he told RFA’s Khmer Service.

Cambodia's Anti-Corruption Unit chief Om Yentieng this week praised high school teachers for overseeing the "cleanest-ever" national exam but warned that jail time awaits anyone who is found to be corrupt at the second round of exams, the Cambodia Daily reported.

He said that less than 500 of the more than 10,000 teachers who oversaw the exam were noted by ACU officials as not having done their job properly.

“There will be no exceptions at the second exam. At that time, you will at least be held in pretrial detention for one month—that would be long enough to remove your name from the payroll,” he was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

“You are the teachers and if you mistreat or cheat your own students it would not be different from a father raping his daughter.”

'Wake-up call'

Phann Nil, the principal of Chea Sim Samaki high school in the capital Phnom Penh, said the examination result was a “wake-up call” for students.

“This result will encourage students to study hard and parents must also pay attention to their children,” he said.

Cambodian Independent Teachers’ Association deputy president Ouk Chhayavy said the association endorsed the examination result but was not supportive of the decision to give students who failed a second chance, citing the financial strain on the government.

“I congratulate the students because the result they obtained was based on their own knowledge,” she said.

Sorn Chovorthey, a student who excelled in the examination, said it was the result of hard work.

“My advice to those students who failed: don’t be discouraged because you have a second chance. You have another month to study. Please study hard, day and night, and be confident,” he said.

Minister of Education Hang Chuon Naron, who has been credited for the reforms at his ministry, said strict measures had to be taken to eliminate irregularities in the examination.

He said the ministry would provide additional classes for key subjects to students who failed in preparation for the re-test, which he pointed out would be as vigorous as the earlier examination.

“Even though we have only one and a half months left, you must study hard,” he told the students.

Reported by RFA’s Khmer Service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Parameswaran Ponnudurai.

ASIA: Expanding graduate education in Malaysia and Thailand

Chiao-Ling Chien and David W Chapman13 June 2014 Issue No:324

 

Across Asia, higher education enrolment has experienced explosive growth over the last few decades, from 20 million students in 1980 to 84 million in 2011. To serve this growing enrolment, graduate programmes needed to expand, both to supply more instructors and to upgrade existing instructors’ qualifications in cases where unqualified lecturers were hired to teach in response to increasing numbers of undergraduates.

The expansion of graduate education has translated into positive outcomes. In the Philippines in 2002, for instance, only about 8% of faculty members in higher education institutions had doctoral degrees, with another 26% holding a masters degree. In 2012, the proportions had increased to 13% and 41% respectively.

From the government perspective, expanding graduate education has an attractive secondary benefit. Many governments see universities as centres of research that will yield positive economic returns to the country.

University research is typically done at the graduate level. Therefore, expanding graduate education is viewed as a means of increasing the economic competitiveness of the country.

The report Higher Education in Asia: Expanding out, expanding up, recently published by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, examines the dynamics associated with the expansion of graduate education, with a particular focus on middle-income countries in Southeast Asia.

Included in the report is a case study of Malaysia and Thailand, conducted to elaborate on the reasons why governments and universities have been expanding graduate programmes and the impacts of that expansion.

The case study is based on interviews with senior administrators and faculty members in selected public research universities, officers in the Ministry of Education, and international organisations in the region.

Expected outcomes

In Malaysia and Thailand, the governments believe that investing in graduate education contributes to national economic development.

The views of Malaysian interviewees are that a substantial investment in education will build an educated workforce. The evidence of an educated workforce will attract international investment, which will boost national economic development.

For this investment in graduate education to yield the expected outcomes, top universities not only need to be good but must be recognised as being effective internationally. Many interviewees viewed global university rankings as a way to earn international attention and respect.

Designated research universities

Recent policies designating top-tier universities as research universities and increasing funding for university research activities exemplify the value governments are placing on expanding graduate education.

In Malaysia, graduate enrolment has increased by 400% over the last decade, and this increase reflects the government’s high priority in offering graduate education. The government aims to enhance indigenous research capability and reduce reliance on industrial research conducted by foreign companies.

To support this priority, the government has been generous in providing inputs into graduate education. In 2008 and 2009, the government selected five research universities to receive a 70% increase in public funding, compared with the amount in the previous year.

Similarly, graduate enrolment in Thailand has grown by 300% since a decade ago. One reason is the government’s belief that Thailand’s competitiveness in research is a significant indicator of the production and quality of human resources of the country.

To this end, in 2009 the Ministry of Education initiated the National Research Universities Project with an additional 12 billion baht (US$370 million). Currently there are nine universities selected to participate in the project. These research universities are expected to achieve higher world university rankings.

University rankings

Both government officers and university personnel are concerned about the placement of their universities in international rankings.

This thinking can be summed up with an analogy expressed by a Malaysian interviewee: the performance of a nation’s football team in an international competition tends to be the basis on which observers judge the football prowess of the entire country.

If the national team does well, the presumption is that there is wider football strength in the country. Fair or not, the image of the whole country is usually based on the perception of a few.

It is the same in higher education. International observers judge a higher education system on the basis of its leading institutions.

In Thailand, university personnel took a somewhat more benign view. They also sought high international rankings for their universities. However, the cost of raising their rankings could get in the way of other objectives that they valued. Rankings are important, but the relevance of universities to Thai society is also important.

Publication, graduate students

Since the publication rate is a key ingredient across most international university ranking systems, pushing faculty members to publish in top-tier international journals was viewed as an important strategy for high rankings.

In Malaysia’s research universities, the pressure to publish in top-tier international journals is intense. Universities have sought to raise publication rates by modifying accountability and incentive systems.

The government, working through the universities, has introduced a system of key performance indicators, aimed at specifying the level of productivity – number of publications, amount of teaching, grants and public services – expected of each faculty member.

Research universities in Thailand also emphasise publications in top-tier international journals, but with more nuance. Some faculty members are concerned that if they publish in top-tier journals in the English language, the results will be largely inaccessible to wider Thai society, most of whom do not understand English.

There was a strong view that it was important for universities to give back to Thai society. Moreover, a frequent observation was that some faculty members may be less comfortable writing in the English language at the level required for top-tier international journals.

Graduate students are viewed as important contributors to publications, both because they assist in conducting faculty members’ research and because they publish as part of their graduate programme requirements.

In Malaysia and Thailand, PhD students in selective universities are required to publish their research in journals as a condition of graduation. Perceiving graduate students as valuable in helping move their institutions up university rankings, research universities involved in this study are in the process of reducing undergraduate enrolment while increasing graduate enrolment, with a target ratio of 1:1 for undergraduates to graduates.

Performance pressure

In summary, in both Malaysia and Thailand, the initial rationale for expanding graduate education was to provide qualified instructional staff to serve expanding undergraduate enrolment.

In both countries, this rationale was eclipsed, to a large extent, by the view that graduate education would help fuel national economic development.

The focus on economic development triggered an intensified emphasis on universities being placed high in international rankings, which led to pressure for more research. This pressure led some faculty members to focus more of their time and energy on research, sometimes at the expense of teaching.

In short, ‘expanding up’ has changed organisational dynamics and the nature of faculty work in important ways.

* Chiao-Ling Chien is a researcher at the UNESCO Institute for Statistics in Montreal, Canada. E-mail: cl.chien@unesco.org. David W Chapman is Birkmaier professor of educational leadership at the University of Minnesota, USA. E-mail: chapm026@umn.edu. The full report is available in the UNESCO Institute for Statistics Document Library: www.uis.unesco.org. This article was first published in International Higher Education, Number 76: Summer 2014.

GLOBAL:Higher education challenges post-2015 – UNESCO

Wachira Kigotho09 May 2014 Issue No:319

 

Unequal access to university education is likely to persist in most countries globally despite concerted attempts to expand opportunities by 2030, according to a UNESCO Position Paper on Education Post-2015.

It warns that the problem will not be limited to scarcity of places: there will also be a knowledge divide caused by lack of chances to acquire skills in technology.

Notably, considerable disparities will be experienced in most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where the total number of entrants to education declines steeply as students move from primary to higher levels of education, in comparison to other regions of the world.

The crux of the matter, says the position paper, is that the quality of schooling in many countries has continued to suffer from limited learning resources, teacher shortages, teacher absenteeism, and distance and safety to travel to and from school.

Such factors result in high drop-out rates, especially among girls.

In the face of growing concern about increasing global social inequity, unequal participation in development and social unrest, UNESCO says more attention should be paid to the central role of education in promoting peace and social cohesion.

“Education is a right that transforms lives when it is accessible to all, relevant and underpinned by core shared values,” said UNESCO Director-general Irina Bukova.

“Because quality education is the most influential force for alleviating poverty, improving health and livelihoods, increasing prosperity and shaping more inclusive, sustainable and peaceful societies, it is in everyone's interest to ensure that it is at the centre of the post-2015 development agenda.”

Post-2015 educational imperatives

UNESCO identifies six educational imperatives for the post-2015 development agenda:

• Equitable access to quality education for children, youth and adults should be provided for all, from early childhood to higher education.
  
• Quality education and learning at all levels and in all settings should be at the core of the post-2015 education agenda.
  
• A focus on equity is paramount and particular attention should be given to marginalised groups.
  
• Gender equality requires continued and central attention.
  
• Opportunities to acquire knowledge and skills for sustainable development, global citizenship and the world of work must be enhanced.
  
• Lifelong learning is a central principle of the post-2015 education agenda. Flexible lifelong and life-wide learning opportunities should be provided through formal, non-formal and informal pathways, including by harnessing the potential of ICTs to create a new culture of learning.
  

Taking into account that higher education in the past has not always delivered better working skills, especially in developing countries, the underlying challenge for the post-2015 education agenda is to increase relevant skills and lifelong learning opportunities.

UNESCO is urging countries to expand their tertiary education systems in order to allow the most qualified students to access studies leading to university diplomas and degrees – and to improve quality so that students succeed one they have accessed high-level education.

“An increase in access to and attainment of quality tertiary education is central to ensuring better living conditions and getting access to specialised and better-paid jobs,” says the UN agency.

A skills mismatch, joblessness

Such sentiments were also expressed in an OECD study conducted with the Ford Foundation. According to their report, All on Board: Making inclusive growth happen, a skills mismatch is now a serious problem in most developing countries.

“The issue is of great worry in that joblessness is more widespread in developing countries among the highly educated than among individuals with primary levels of education or less,” said Angel Gurria, OECD secretary general, in a report released last week.

Describing the situation in the Middle East and North Africa, the report noted that a significantly high number of tertiary graduates have careers in the social sciences, humanities or law, rather than in technology or science-related disciplines.

“Recruitment work agencies in these countries report scarcity of tertiary level graduates qualified for technical fields, such as the extractive industries, logistics, the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, manufacturing and agribusiness,” the report notes.

An emerging scenario in many countries is that a tertiary degree is not guaranteeing a job, as a result of poor student choices or mismatches between skills and what job markets need.

“Quite often, although skills are a powerful determinant of employability, there is a mismatch between the qualifications of workers and the demands of employers, which implies a waste of human capital,” said Gurria.

According to the OECD report, the global distribution of university education-acquired skills among the adult population post-2015 and beyond will continue to be largely determined by socio-economic background and status.

Disparities in access and gender

“Disparities in access to higher education persist regionally within countries, driven by factors such as wealth, location and gender,” says UNESCO.

For instance, in Latin America more than 70% of children whose parents are tertiary educated also complete tertiary studies, but only 3.1% of children with parents who did not complete primary school attain this level of education.

There are various barriers to higher education, including for young people living in rural areas. UNESCO predicts that in the post-2015 period and beyond, access to higher education in developing countries will become harder for young people in urban slums.

Interestingly, whereas female enrolment at tertiary level has grown almost twice as fast as that of men over the last four decades in most countries as a result of social mobility, enhanced income potential and international pressure to narrow the gender gap, there are indications that gender equality will require continued central attention in post-2015 era.

According to Edward Fiske, principal author of UNESCO’s World Atlas of Gender Equality in Education, a group of developing countries – including Afghanistan, Chad, the Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea, Mali, Niger and Tajikistan – have university enrolments heavily skewed in favour of men.

In contrast, a range of small island states in the Pacific including Anguilla, Antigua, Belize, Bermuda, Dominica, Jamaica and St Lucia, have more women than men in their higher education systems. Other countries in this category are Iceland, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Significant differences are expected to persist post-2015 in the extent to which men and women pursue education at various levels.

Developing and implementing a post-2015 agenda

UNESCO is urging countries to develop a global post-2015 education agenda based on lessons learned from the Education for All initiative and the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

“However such approaches should be embedded in national educational plans in order to strike a balance between the globally-comparable and measurable targets and their national adaptability,” says UNESCO.

According to the position paper, in their efforts to implement proposed post-2015 education development goals, governments are being encouraged to provide free and compulsory basic education as well as improve access to higher levels of learning.

They are also being encouraged to strengthen participatory governance and accountability mechanisms, and improve planning and monitoring processes at all levels of education.

“In addition, strong partnerships are required in order to contribute to the common goal of education for all and ensuring everyone’s right to education is fulfilled,” says UNESCO.

In Sub-Saharan African and other developing countries, governments will be required to establish a broad coalition of partners including stakeholders from international donor groups and charities, civil society, academia and the private sector.

“Even then, monitoring and accountability mechanisms for the post-2015 education agenda should be country-driven while UNESCO will provide institutional capacities in developing countries,” said Bukova in a statement.

UNESCO is in the process of ensuring that the future education agenda is fully reflected and anchored within the overall framework of the global post-2015 development agenda.

On the delivery of relevant higher education skills, UNESCO affirms that it will continue to encourage the use of technology for online and distance learning. Tertiary education systems are being urged to establish appropriate, high quality massive open online courses, or MOOCs.

UNESCO expects the post-2015 education agenda to be clearly defined, balanced and holistic, with a lifelong learning approach.

A strong common strand running through UNESCO’s post-2015 education policy paper is that investing in relevant higher education and skills will pay long-term dividends for economies and enhance the abilities of individuals to be competitive in the job market.
 

GLOBAL:The end of academic journal editors?

Jüri Allik09 May 2014 Issue No:319

 

The model of scientific publishing where the reader pays for the costs of publishing seems abnormal. It is clear that new knowledge is mainly beneficial to the public. As most science is done with the taxpayer’s money, it would be expected that all scientific results achieved with such support must be publicly available.

The United States Congress has taken this seriously and the Federal Research Public Access Act was proposed in 2006, ordering all publications using federal money to be publicly accessible. What does this mean? It means that many US scientists can no longer publish in journals that request money from readers in exchange for access to the content.

Right away, publishers smelled the possibility of further profits and made a proposal for those impacted by the act to make their articles publicly accessible by covering not only the publishing costs but the owners’ sturdy profit, too. As a result, some articles in the electronic versions of closed journals bear the ‘public access’ tag.

At the beginning of 2000, Nobel prize winner Harold Varmus, Stanford biochemist Patrick Brown and computer scientist Michael Eisen posted a petition in which they called on all scientists to boycott science journals with closed access. Journals with closed access are those that request payment in order to read the entire year’s worth of issues, a single issue or a single article.

At that time, the great majority of scientific journals were closed access. A reader who hadn’t paid for access could only read the title and abstract. Acknowledging the publishers’ right to profit, the authors of the petition made a compromise, allowing a variation of open access, which would come into effect after a moratorium of, say, six months.

This should have been acceptable to all publishers, as an axiom of the publishing business is that most of the profits are made in the first couple of months after publication.

PLoS One

Brown and Eisen followed their call to arms with a project they named the Public Library of Science, or PLoS. In 2002, philanthropists Gordon and Betty Moore gave US$9 million to the PLoS as a gift.

With this starting money, a series of journals were launched, all with PLoS in their name – PLoS Biology, PLoS Medicine etc. But the flagship would be PLoS One which, at least at the level of declarations, does not discriminate against any field of science.

In the case that a manuscript is technically sound, anyone can publish his or her work in the journal after paying a publication fee of US$1,350.

(In real life, things aren’t that easy. In practice, the journal doesn’t exactly follow its promises. The scientists who are asked to review an article often act as though it were a typical closed journal. Still, one thing is certain: the shallow nature of quality control has had no dramatic effect when it comes to the quality of published works.)

Of course, publishing involves an electronic version. Paper probably couldn’t handle the popularity of the journal.

In 2013, PLoS One published over 31,000 articles, which made – it is easy to calculate – more than US$40 million for the journal. Sixty-four of those articles had at least one scientist working in Estonia among the authors.

Currently, PLoS One is the world’s largest scientific journal. In spite of the vast number of articles and low threshold of submissions, the impact factor of the journal is quite high, at 3.7 in 2012 (This is the quotient between the number of articles published in PloS One in 2010 and 2011 and the references made to them in 2012).

Unfortunately, the bad habits of closed scientific publishing have reached open journals.

One thing is clear: in the combination of a single fixed price for an article and the unexpectedly large torrent of articles, profits have been growing at a quicker rate than maintenance costs. The public was shocked when it turned out that Joseph Esposito, CEO of the PLoS journals, had a salary of over US$500,000.

The number of open access publications has grown really fast.

For example, in 2011 there was public access to half of the scientific articles published in the world.

Big publishers also gain

One would have thought that the world of closed publications, where Elsevier, Springer, Wiley-Blackwell and other publishing houses reign, would just wither and die out. But the actual picture is quite the opposite.

The big publishers have gained the most profit from the open access revolution. As many scientists can no longer publish in closed journals, payments have doubled. The library pays to subscribe to the journal, while the author pays to make his or her article public.

Springer has been especially aggressive, as it bought one of the biggest open access publishers, BioMed Central, with all of its 258 journals, which continue as open access journals under the new owner.

Actually, it doesn’t make much difference for the publisher if the author or reader of a scientific article pays for them. Probably the scheme in which the author pays has even less risk as there will be no trouble distributing the journals.

The worst of all possible worlds

I hope I have succeeded in showing that the existing world of management for science is by no means the best possible one. In some aspects, it’s even the worst, as it does practically nothing to protect the author’s dignity, let alone the truth.

I can imagine the joy that everybody vocally criticising all kinds of bibliometry feels while reading this. One cannot trust the number of publications because the acceptance or rejection of an article is often biased towards some kind of ideology (of science).

How can one keep a straight face when talking about the number of references if one can gain over a thousand references with data that’s basically fabricated?

In my opinion, it’s not very important how scientific significance is judged. For example, The John Hopkins University is much smaller than even the University of Tartu, be it in the number of students or lecturers (the latter being 609).

In spite of this, 20 researchers or professors from this university have won the Nobel prize over time, not to mention the eight Nobel prize winners who started working here after they had already received their prizes.

Appreciation is definitely a good measure to use when evaluating a scientist’s scientific significance.

One of Estonia’s science administrators has justified the obvious poor financing of Estonian science, stating that our scientists don’t deserve greater backing as they haven’t achieved anything remarkable thus far. There haven’t even been rumours about anyone being chosen to be a candidate for the Nobel.

In my opinion, it doesn’t much matter if scientific significance is thought to be based on the number of publications, patents or, for example, grants received. Certainly, counting references has its considerable shortcomings, too, as it’s not the best indicator of whether somebody has had something important to say to the world.

However, my mind refuses to accept knowledge of a couple of exotic details as scientific intelligence – for example, something scandalous about the relatively unknown laundry bills of DH Lawrence – something which is nice to share with your two friends.

Where is the world of science heading?

It’s quite obvious that the system of closed scientific journals is being substituted by open access. It probably doesn’t even require green thinking to end journals printed on paper. Instead, printing is becoming a private affair – everyone can use on-demand printing to have a paper copy of a journal if he or she should happen to need it.

One doubts that peer review will remain unchanged as well, as two primary reasons for it are becoming extinct – the reader who finances the printing of a scientific article and the constraints on a journal’s volume.

One possibility is that peer review (censorship, in fact) will vanish altogether. Physicians, for one, have for more than 10 years used arXiv, managed by the Cornell University Library, where one can post his or her article without it going through the ordeal of review.

The format of an article must be .pdf or LaTeX. The archive can be freely accessed by all, and every month 7,000 manuscripts on average are added – quite an amount to read.

Another possibility is to make the review system interactive, offering the author a chance to argue with the reviewer if the former considers the latter to be wrong or unjust.

Such a system is used by the journals published as Frontiers, founded by Swiss scientists Henry and Kamila Markram. The first journal in the series was Frontiers in Neuroscience, and the first issue was published in 2008.

In 2013, Nature Publishing Group bought all the Frontiers journals. Frontiers is distinguished by its interactive reviewing system. After an article is accepted, the names of the reviewers are made public, so, in a way, they share responsibility for the article.

Publishing an article there is not exactly cheap, but a scientist working in an establishment and getting grants can afford the expense of €770 to €1,600 (US$1,070 to US$2,230).

(A good alternative would be SAGE Open, which asks only US$99 for publishing an article shorter than 10,000 words. Although the journal is open to all social and humanitarian sciences, it hasn’t achieved the same kind of popularity as PloS One. This will probably change when Web of Science starts to index it.)

Many journals with open access have maintained anonymous reviewers but lowered the threshold substantially.

The PloS journals, for example, say that, when reviewing, mostly the reliability and technical quality of the means used is evaluated, not the prospect of possible scientific contribution. Unfortunately, the reviewers often cannot follow the guidelines, as the line between the content and technical quality is often really vague.

When trying to conclude what is happening, one has to admit that open access hasn’t led the world’s science astray.

Scientific articles produced under conditions of open access haven’t turned out to be much worse than the closed science with its strict censorship. Based on what has happened, one can predict that not very much would change if most of the 80% of articles that the journals used to reject were in fact published.

The only risk the journals would have is contributing to the already vast number of articles that no one ever references. On the other hand, it’s very likely that some of them would have a lot of citations and advance science.

One of the virtues of open access publications is the modern technological platform inherent to them. PloS journals will tell the reader how many times the article has been accessed via the internet, how many times it has been downloaded as a text document, how many and which other publications have referenced it, and if it has made any waves in social media.

For instance, in 2009 the article on the “Genetic Structure of Europeans” by Andres Metspalu’s research group was published in PloS One.

In the following 57 months, the article was viewed over 12,000 times and the full article was downloaded over 3,000 times. In addition, we found that journals indexed by the Scopus database have already referenced the article 99 times and Wikipedia articles have mentioned it 14 times.

So, the indicator of an article’s relevance would be its ‘life’ after it’s published and the activity surrounding it which, in the case of the article mentioned above, has been remarkable.

With this in mind, it doesn’t seem strange at all that the four main authors of the article – Mari Nelis, Tõnu Esko, Reedik Mägi and Andres Metspalu – are among the 1% of scientists referenced the most in the fields of molecular biology and genetics, according to the current chart of the world’s scientists, renewed by the Essential Science Indicators every two months.

Electronic publishing

Internet-based, open-for-all publishing has brought along the predictable extinction of many old concepts.

I remember the uplifting feeling and the smell of chalky paper from my distant youth, as I took the fresh issue of a journal out of the envelope, containing my own article next to others. For sure, approximately 200 articles later, the feelings are much more subdued, but the main thing is that the conception of ‘an issue’ is rather up for debate when it comes to electronic publishing.

Most standards of referencing, nowadays entrusted to computer programmes such as EndNote, don’t even require you to refer to the issue number of a journal. As the pages are counted throughout the volume or the year, the numbers of these are enough for precise identification of the article. Although some electronic journals are still imitating a virtual single issue of a journal, there isn’t much point.

One of the best things about electronic publishing is that one doesn’t have to wait a year or so between the acceptance of a manuscript and its publication. In fact, it only takes a few minutes or an hour until the article is available on the web, after the decision to accept it has been made. The biggest delay comes from waiting for the publication fee to be transferred.

The numeration throughout the volume and the year is a thing of the past as well. A scientific article published on the internet is an autonomous entity. Its location is no longer determined by these numbers.

The more recent scientific articles have their own digital object identifiers. This is enough to identify every article, as well as recognising and finding its location, or at least the address of its location.

All these developments hint that after some time passes, the concept of a journal as such will become vague, too. When there’s no peer censorship – I mean, peer review – anyone who has finished his or her manuscript can put it on his or her homepage where it will be available to the whole world.

Really, why should I pay €1,600 to someone else for putting my article on the internet? At the moment, the trouble is the vastness of the internet, with my article possibly just vanishing. But it’s highly likely that soon there will be a device that finds the articles, indexes them and makes them visible to all who are interested.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, have already given scientists a present, as they have created a search engine called Google Scholar.

This search engine finds virtually every scientific publication on the internet and identifies all other publications that have referenced it. Moreover, each scientist can create his or her researcher profile that will automatically start counting everything the scientist has published, as well as which other publications have referenced his or her output.

My good colleague Andres Metspalu, for example, has no trouble writing his CV, as it’s always possible to visit his Google Scholar profile and learn that by today (23 April 2014) his works have been referenced 9,390 times.

If no one else will do the job first, then Google alone could possibly make centralised journals extinct, with something that one could call the social network of science taking their place.

Still, I’d argue that scientific journals will not vanish altogether.

The centralised editing practice, making enormous profits for the owners of publishing houses, will cease to exist. With distributed editing, all authors are editors as well. Naturally, there will be no use in maintaining the entire bureaucratic machine of the editorial staff. Anyone interested in this topic can just visit the e! Science News portal.

Compared to other analogous portals, it’s definitely not worse. It might even be better and more interesting and, what is most important, more operative. The only substantial difference would be the lack of an editor.

This electronic news engine has been directed by an artificial intellect since it was started in 2008. The code was written by Michael Imbeault, a student of virology and bioinformatics, using the high-level programming language Drupal, created by another doctoral student Dries Buytaert.

In my opinion, this is a really convincing example that there’s no point for a human being to do the job that a computer can do much better.

The losers

As I see it, the revolution looming in the near future has a sole loser – the big publishing houses, which will lose their enormous profits.

But when thinking about the great mass of scientists who have to – in addition to their main job and often instead of it – do the work of the editor and reviewer, which is not only mostly thankless but also, as I hopefully made clear, simply meaningless, then the number of winners is bound to be much greater.

The biggest winner would be science, as the amount of pointless work would decrease.

I really hope that some influential group of researchers will soon join forces with some capable programmer, resulting in a model of a scientific journal using, for example, the above-mentioned Drupal, where there will be no editor or peer review. Registering could just require the address of a university, just as when creating a Google Scholar profile.

The quality of articles published would be determined by post-review: the number of all views, downloads, likes, comments and references would offer a suitably diverse evaluation of the ideas in the article.

* Jüri Allik, professor of experimental psychology at the University of Tartu in Estonia, belongs to the top 1% of the world’s most cited scientists in his field. Allik has written two other articles on scientific publishing: “Brave New World of Scientific Publishing” and “The Crazy World of Peer Review”. This article was first published on the University of Tartu blog.
 

Malaysia cannot succeed unless equal opportunity given to non-Muslims, says Obama

The Malaysian Insider – 2 hours 33 minutes ago

Malaysia must ensure non-Muslims in the country also have equal opportunites as its Muslim majority if the Southeast Asian nation wanted to continue prospering, United States President Barack Obama said today of his landmark visit, 48 years after the last American president paid a visit.

"Malaysia won't succeed if the non-Muslims do not have the same opportunity,” Obama said in a townhall meeting for Asean youths at Dewan Tunku Cancelor in University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur today.

Obama said non-Muslims in Malaysia are currently facing hostility, and some have felt oppressed.

"There shouldn't be reason to discriminate, and you have to make sure that you are speaking out against this in daily life.

And as you emerge as leaders, you should be on the side of politics that brings people together rather than drive them apart," Obama said to cheers from the crowd.

Obama said this today when answering a question from a Myanmar youth on factors of cooperation that can bring Asean together given its diversity.

He pointed out that the biggest source of conflict and war and hardship throughout the world was due to people treating those who were not like them differently.

He said the situation in Myanmar right now was that the country was going through a transition after decades of oppressive government, and it was now trying to open things up, which he said is to be lauded.

"However, the danger now that they are democratising, is that there will be groups inside Myanmar that might organise themselves politically around religious or ethnic identities instead of principles of justice or rule of law and democracy.

And you can actually see conflict that would move Myanmar in a bad direction," he said, adding that one of the problems in Myanmar was that the rights of its minority Muslim community were not protected.

Obama then added that the situation was not unique to Myanmar, and that in Malaysia, which had a majority Muslim population, there were instances where those who were not Muslims found themselves experiencing hostility.

He also said that even in the US, historically, the biggest conflicts arose around race, but over the course of generations the situation had improved, to the point that he could be elected as a president.

"All of us have within us biasness and prejudices against people who are not like us or people who are not raised in the same faith or come from different backgrounds, but the world is shrinking and getting smaller.

"You could think that way when living separately in villages and tribes and did not have contact with each other.

“But with the internet and smartphones, cultures all colliding, no country is going to succeed if part of its population is sidelined and being discriminated against," he added.

He then went on to say that similarly, Malaysia would also not succeed if non-Muslims were not given the opportunity, while the same would happen in Myanmar if the Muslim population was oppressed.

"Malaysia won't succeed if non-muslims don't have equal opportunity, Myanmar won’t succeed if the muslim population is oppressed.

"No society is going to succeed if half your population made up of women are not getting the same education and employment opportunities as men too," he added.

As such, he called on youths to embrace culture and be proud of who they were, while also appreciating differences in languages, food and how differently one worshipped God, adding that these were things to be proud of and not a tool to look down on a person.

He also called on the new generation to stand in "other people's shoes and look at things through their eyes".

Obama said that almost every religion teaches the basic principle of "do unto others as you want others to do unto you" and to "treat people the way you want to be treated".

"And if you are not doing that, then we are going backwards instead of going forward and this is true for all over the world," he told the 700-strong crowd of youths and civil society representatives. – April 27, 2014.

Putin calls Internet 'CIA project'

AFP News – Fri, Apr 25, 2014

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday called the Internet a "CIA project" and warned Russians against making Google searches.

Putin assured a group of young journalists that the Internet was controlled from the start by the CIA and its surveillance continues today.

"That's life. That's how it's organised by Americans. You know all of this started during the dawn of the Internet as a special project of the CIA. And it keeps on developing," Putin said in televised comments.

Responding to questions from a young pro-Kremlin blogger, Putin warned that information entered on Google "all goes through servers that are in the States, everything is monitored there". 

He also made ominous comments on Russia's most popular search engine Yandex, suggesting it could become more tightly controlled.

Yandex is "partly registered abroad and not just for tax reasons, but for other reasons too", Putin said, mentioning it is partly owned by international investors and reiterating his fear of foreign control of the Internet. 

When Yandex was starting out, Putin said, they were "pressured" to have "that many Americans and this many Europeans among the executives".

"We must fight determinedly for our own interests. This process is happening. And we will support it from the government side, of course," he said without explaining what he means in detail.

Yandex handles some 60 percent of search queries in Russia and has a presence in several other countries. It allows users to search blogs and rates the most popular entries.

Yandex's shares fell over 4.3 percent on the NASDAQ after Putin's comments.

The company said in a statement quoted by news agencies that registration abroad is not done to dodge taxes but due to issues of corporate law, while foreign investment is a common feature of any Internet startup.

"Since our main business is in Russia, we pay almost all taxes in Russia," Yandex said.

While the Internet remains the main sphere for political discussion, Russia has recently cracked down on debate, with a new law allowing the government to block blacklisted sites without a court order.

Opposition leader Alexei Navalny had his popular blog blocked and a widely read news site that covered opposition causes sacked its long-term editor and changed its stance after a warning on extremism from the state watchdog. 

Russia this week passed in its initial stage new legislation that would force popular bloggers to register their sites and comply with similar regulations as mass media.

The 61-year-old president has frequently been scathing about the Internet, which he once described as "half pornography", unlike Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who posts snaps on Twitter. 

Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted this month that the president is a regular Internet user and even sometimes laughs at jokey Photoshopped images.

VIETNAM: Too many graduates for too few jobs

VietNamNet Bridge – The number of graduates produced by Vietnam universities every year is 10 times demand.

That is the word of the unemployment report released last month by the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs, which spotlighted the high unemployment rate of workers with higher education.

According to the report, over 1.2 million workers were reported as “lacking jobs” by the end of 2013, accounting for 2.63 percent of total laborers. Of this amount, 900,000 laborers had been reported as “unemployed”, which accounted for 1.9 percent of the labor force. 

The proportion of unemployed workers finishing junior colleges (3-year training) and universities (4-5 year training) was relatively high, at 20.75 percent. More than 72,000 holders of bachelors and masters degrees are unemployed.

However, the figures have not surprised analysts at all.

Professor Nguyen Minh Thuyet, former Deputy Chair of the National Assembly’s Committee for Culture, Education, Youth and Children, commented that the situation was foreseeable: the number of workers with higher education simply far exceeds demand.

In a report he released in 2004, Thuyet estimated Vietnam would only need 13,000-15,000 new bachelors every year. At that time, Vietnam had about 100 industrial zones (IZs) and export processing zones, which could utilize 500,000 workers at maximum. Of the workforce, 5-7 percent had junior college or university degrees, 60 percent were skilled workers, with the remaining cohort unskilled.

Supposing that Vietnam developed 10 new IZs every year, and 10 percent of workers with high education retire, Thuyet posited. Vietnam would then need to prepare 13,000-15,000 new workers [with college degrees] ever year.

At the time of Thuyet’s report, ten years ago, junior colleges and universities in Vietnam were already producing more than 200,000 bachelors every year, 10 times higher than demand. Today, the “capacity” of the universities is now double that, at 400,000.

Under the national human resource (HR) development program, Vietnam set a target of 3.5 million of workers with higher education by 2015. However, the country already had 3.7 million workers with higher education by the end of 2013.

Deputy Minister of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs Doan Mau Diep said on Tuoi Tre that a large percentage of Vietnamese <intellectuals | degree holders> remain unemployed or have to take low-paying jobs because of the “oversupply of unqualified workers with higher education”.

However, ignoring warnings about the surfeit of workers finishing junior colleges and universities, schools continue to scale up, producing more and more baccalaureates every year. Vietnam is striving to have 460 universities and junior colleges by 2020.

Diep attributed the problem to an unrealistic education program. 

Dr Luong Hoai Nam, an analyst, has pointed out that 37 percent of university graduates cannot find jobs because they lack the necessary job skills. Moreover, 83 percent of them lack life skills, in the eyes of employers,

Nam, who as a senior executive of big corporations has interviewed thousands, noted that enterprises, or employers, usually have to re-train their employees before assigning duties to them, and prepare them with basic skills they should have learned at school.

Chi Mai