International relations: How to foster host-national friendships

Elisabeth Gareis01 July 2012

Friendship with host nationals is a central predictor of the overall sojourn satisfaction of international students.

International students who make friends with host nationals have stronger language skills, better academic performance, lower levels of stress and greater life satisfaction. Friendships also aid overall adjustment and improve attitudes towards the host country.

Well-integrated international students, in turn, are more likely to participate in the classroom, thus enriching domestic students’ educational experience and advancing international perspectives.

The benefits of friendship between international students and hosts extend beyond the students’ sojourn. International students often fill influential leadership positions after returning home and can play an important part in fostering productive relations with the former host country.

Unfortunately, a significant number of international students have difficulty making friends with host nationals.

In a recent study, 38% of 454 participating international students studying in the US had no close American friend and were unsatisfied with this lack of contact.

Broken down into home regions, the percentage of students without host-national friends was highest among students from East Asia (52%) and lowest for students from northern and central Europe (16%) and Anglophone countries (10%).

In addition, the host region affected friendship numbers and satisfaction levels. Students attending college in non-metropolitan areas fared better than students in metropolitan areas, and students in the south of the United States fared better than those in the northeast.

A number of factors influence friendship development across cultures. Cultural similarity plays a role, as does intercultural competence, language proficiency, motivation and the level of identification with one’s native culture.

A potential deterrent – especially in large universities and metropolitan areas – are existing networks of compatriots and other international students. These networks provide a safe environment and readymade support for the students’ transition experience. The side effect can be a reduced need for engaging with host nationals.

Non-receptivity on the part of the hosts can further diminish the students’ drive for pursuing friendships. Negative attitudes can arise, for example, when a large influx of international students is perceived as a disadvantage for local students or a threat to their culture.

Recommendations

This situation is not new. A lack of meaningful contact with host nationals has been one of the uppermost complaints of international students for some time and in a variety of countries.

What has changed is the level of competition to attract international students. Students increasingly consult student satisfaction surveys in order to choose environments that are academically as well as socially optimal.

What can institutions do to promote contact between international and domestic students?

A number of measures suggest themselves, including short-term events to support contact initiation, long-term endeavours to provide opportunities for relationship development, and training measures for international and domestic students as well as faculty.

Examples of short-term events are orientation programmes with ice-breakers for domestic and international students, and bonding activities (such as camps, hikes and bike tours) for new students at the beginning of the academic year. Institutions should also offer frequent extracurricular social activities throughout the year (for example, field trips, film festivals, ethnic dinners, sporting events, parties).

Long-term measures include mixed residential facilities, pairing international and domestic students in peer mentoring programmes, weekly mingling opportunities (for example, international coffee hour, conversation clubs), and the creation of internationally focused student organisations (for example, intramural soccer, model United Nations, culture club).

Domestic participation in some of these activities could be encouraged by providing incentives (for example, making active engagement part of scholarship or honours programmes). Likewise, leaders from organisations for students from the more culturally distant countries (for example, Chinese student organisations) could be involved in the planning of intercultural events so that their social influence encourages their peers to participate.

Training for international and domestic students as well as faculty and staff can be provided in the form of classes and workshops on intercultural and oral communication (especially as it relates to friendship initiation and development). Projects could include video productions, social media and blogs on a variety of themes.

In addition, pedagogy workshops for faculty could focus on how to integrate international students in the classroom (for example, how to reach students with diverse learning styles, encourage participation in a culturally sensitive manner, and design effective mixed-group or buddy projects).

These measures have been tried in various institutions with positive effect. It should be noted, however, that many are unresearched. Further studies should determine what is successful in specific contexts.

Some universities have hired cross-cultural consulting firms to provide advice and launch public relations campaigns for showcasing their initiatives.

Even in the most favourable environments, accountability also lies with the students themselves. Students interested in host-national contact need intercultural and language proficiency. Although population density may pose distractions, students can make a conscious effort to avoid self-segregation even in metropolitan environments.

Likewise, domestic students should reach out more. It may help if institutions involve domestic returnees from study-abroad programmes in their efforts to internationalise.

Colleges worldwide are the prime location for intercultural encounters. Considering the far-reaching positive effects of friendship between international and domestic students, it is crucial that institutions provide the infrastructure that enables students to meet and to build relationships. Students should take advantage of the opportunity to establish a global network of friends.

* Dr Elisabeth Gareis is an associate professor of communication studies at Baruch College-City University of New York. 

Power and responsibility – The growing influence of global rankings

Richard Holmes01 July 2012

A few years ago I remember a dean at a Malaysian university urging faculty to look out for potential external examiners. There was one condition. They had to be at universities in “the Times” top 200. The dean, of course, was referring to the then Times Higher Education Supplement-Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings.

Time has passed and the THE-QS rankings have now become two rather different league tables. More global rankings have appeared and a succession of spin-offs, regional, reputational, subject and young university rankings, have appeared.

Rankings have become very big business and they are acquiring a prominent role in the policies of university administrators and national governments.

Times Higher Education used to be proud of the attention its rankings received. The THE ranking archives from 2004-09 contain this introduction:

“The publication of the world rankings has become one of the key annual events in the international higher education calendar. Since their first appearance in 2004, the global university league tables have been recognised as the most authoritative source of broad comparative performance information on universities across the world.

“They are now regularly used by undergraduate and postgraduate students to help select degree courses, by academics to inform career decisions, by research teams to identify new collaborative partners and by university managers to benchmark their performance and set strategic priorities.

“As nations across the globe focus on the establishment of world-class universities as essential elements of economic policy, the rankings are increasingly employed as a tool for governments to set national policy.”

Arbiters of excellence

Rankings have indeed become arbiters of excellence. They are cited endlessly in advertisements, prospectuses and promotional literature.

They influence government strategy in some countries and getting into the top 50, 100 or 200 is often a target of national policy, sometimes attracting as much attention as grabbing medals at the Olympics or getting into the World Cup quarter-finals.

There have even been proposals to use rankings as an instrument of immigration policy, presumably to ensure that only smart people are added to the workforce.

In 2010, politicians in Denmark suggested using graduation from one of the top 20 universities as a criterion for immigration to the country. The Netherlands has gone even further. Take at a look at this page from the Dutch government’s London embassy website:

To be considered a ‘highly skilled migrant’ you need:

“A masters degree or doctorate from a recognised Dutch institution of higher education listed in the Central Register of Higher Education Study Programmes (CROHO) or a masters degree or doctorate from a non-Dutch institution of higher education which is ranked in the top 150 establishments in either the Times Higher Education 2007 list or the Academic Ranking of World Universities 2007 issued by Jiao Ton Shanghai University [sic] in 2007.

“The certificate or diploma must also be approved by the Netherlands Organisation for International Cooperation in Higher Education (NUFFIC). To obtain this approval, you need to send your document(s) to: NUFFIC, Postbus 29777, 2502 LT Den Haag, The Netherlands.”

In another document those who meet the above criteria are described as “highly educated persons”.

Admission to The Netherlands under this scheme is not automatic. There are additional points for speaking English or Dutch, being between 21 and 40 or graduating from a university that has signed up for the Bologna declaration.

So no job and a poor masters in humanities from the university in 149th place in the 2007 THES-QS world university rankings (City University of Hong Kong)?

I suspect you would have problems getting a job in Hong Kong – but you could still be eligible to be a highly skilled migrant to The Netherlands, provided you spoke English and were in your twenties or thirties.

City University of Hong Kong graduates are fortunate. If the Dutch government had picked the 2006 rankings as the benchmark, the university would not have been on the list.

And too bad for those with outstanding doctorates in physics, engineering or philosophy from Tel Aviv university. In 2007 their university would not have been on the list, having fallen from 147th place in 2006 to 151st in 2007.

Also, perhaps someone should tell The Netherlands government about what one has to do to turn a bachelor of arts degree into a master of arts from Oxford or Cambridge.

Recently, Russia indicated that it will make a placing in the major rankings a condition for recognition of foreign degrees, and India has stated that local universities can only enter into agreements with those universities in the Shanghai rankings or THE rankings – to be precise only those in the top 500 of those rankings.

There is something odd about this. THE prints the top 200 universities and has another 200 on an iPhone app. So where are the other 100 coming from? Or was it just a journalistic misunderstanding?

Choice of rankings is disturbing

To some extent, all this appears to be another example of the pointless bureaucratisation of modern universities, where the ability to write proposals or list learning outcomes is more highly valued than actual research or teaching.

Most academics, left to their own devices, could surely judge the suitability of potential collaborators, external examiners or contributors to journals just as well as the THE or Shanghai or QS rankers.

As for using rankings to select immigrants, if the idea is to pick smart people, then the Wonderlic test would probably be just as good. After all, it worked very well for the US National Football League.

More disturbing perhaps is the choice of rankings. Few people would argue with using the Shanghai ARWU rankings to evaluate universities. Their reliability and methodological stability make them an obvious choice.

But the THE rankings are only two years old and underwent drastic methodological changes between the first two editions. Is India proposing to consider the 2010 or the 2011 rankings? If there are more changes in methods in years to come, what will happen to an agreement negotiated with a university that is the top 500 one year but not next?

Phil Baty, head of the THE ranking, has just published an article in University World News accepting that rankings are inherently crude and that they should be used with care. This is most welcome and it is certainly an improvement on those previous pronouncements.

Let us hope that the THE rankings do become more transparent, starting with breaking up the clusters of indicators and reducing dependence on Thomson Reuters and its normalised citation indicator.

Another dangerous thing about the Indian government proposals is that Thomson Reuters and ISI are the source for two of the Shanghai indicators, publications and highly cited researchers, and they collect and analyse data for THE.

The idea of a single organisation shaping higher education practices and government policy around the world, even deciding who can live in prosperous countries, is not an attractive one.

How to respond

So what can be done?

The International Rankings Expert Group has been getting ready to audit rankings, but so far there seems to be no sign of anyone actually being audited. Regulation does not seem to be the answer then.

Perhaps what we need is healthy competition between ranking, and constant criticism.

It would help perhaps if governments, universities and the media paid some attention to other rankings such as Scimago, HEEACT from Taiwan, and URAP from the Middle East Technical University, not just to the big two or the big three.

These could be used to assess the output and quality of research since they appear to be at least as good as the Shanghai Rankings, although they are not as broadly based as other world rankings.

But above all, Phil Baty’s admission that there are aspects of academic life where rankings are of little value is very helpful. For, things like collaboration and recognition, common sense and disciplinary knowledge and values should be just as valid, maybe more so.

* Richard Holmes is a lecturer at Universiti Teknologi MARA in Malaysia and author of the University Rankings Watch blog.
 

Uphill battle to reform high-stakes university entrance exams in Asia

Yojana Sharma01 July 2012

For millions of young people in China it has been a make-or-break month. Results of the national college entrance exam, the gaokao, are now being released and the scramble for the best university places has begun – and in many cases, for any place at all.

But while the annual hysteria over the gaokao, which took place over three days in early June, is beginning to wind down, the debate over reforms of the high-stakes exam continues.

Several countries in Asia have a similar admissions system that depends on a national selection exam.

University entrance examinations in Japan and Taiwan take place over two days, while South Korea allows only one day for six subjects, a system thought to increase the pressure on students. Vietnam’s university entrance exam takes place countrywide on 7 July.

Countries like South Korea have in recent years introduced reforms to the highly stressful college entrance system.

Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training said earlier this year it plans to change the one-size-fits-all exams from 2020, hoping to align them more closely to intended subject majors. With university entrance based on total marks, Vietnam has seen a severe mismatch between students and potential careers.

Some changes have already been introduced in Vietnam in time for this year’s exam. For example, students who have obtained first, second and third prizes in national exams can be recruited directly by universities without sitting the entrance exams.

And medical and pharmacology universities are now allowed to admit ethnic minority students and those with official residency permits for 62 disadvantaged districts without the entrance exam, which the health ministry’s science and training department described as an “important development” in this year’s admissions process.

Reforms to the gaokao

But the 600,000 students taking the Vietnamese exam pale beside China’s 9.15 million school students who sat the gaokao last month. Around three-quarters will qualify for a university place.

There has been criticism that those who score well and go to top universities are doing so partly because they are the best rote learners rather than the innovative thinkers the country needs.

From 2000 onwards, China’s authorities tried to counter some of the criticisms, introducing an essay to gauge creativity and imagination, and more problem-solving and logical thinking.

But centralised university entrance examinations in Asia have also been criticised for determining young people’s future through one test.

The Chinese government has said it will make further changes to the system.

In a recent 10-year education reform and development plan, education ministry officials acknowledged the unfairness of “a single examination that defines a student's destiny”. And in November the ministry promised “multiple measures” to spot talented young people.

The ministry wants to encourage top universities to use an independent exam to test students hoping to enter universities in 2012. “Encouraging universities to select students based on independent criteria is an important supplement to the country's system of college entrance exams,” said a ministry notice in November.

“It's unhelpful to talk of the complete abolition of the gaokao system, but there needs to be a re-evaluation of its importance,” said Xiong Bingqi, vice-president of the 21st Century Education Research Centre in Beijing.

Xiong suggested: “The responsibility for admissions [should be] shifted to universities themselves and [there should be a] focus on building up their independent recruitment abilities. The idea that students can only choose one university instead of receiving offers from different universities is not right.”

Korea’s reforms

China is not alone in questioning the value of its higher education entrance tests.

In 2008 South Korea bit the bullet and revamped its entrance system, based at that time entirely on the College Scholastic Ability Test or Su Neung.

Under the reform, universities got admissions officers to evaluate applications based on potential. Criteria include recommendations from schools and consideration of extra-curricular activities in addition to test scores.

The South Korean government was particularly concerned about the hours of after-school cramming over many years and the quality of private cram schools that prepared students for the eight-hour test marathon, normally held in November.

The new admissions system was adopted by just 10 Korean universities in 2008. Now 120 universities use it, with the help of increased government subsidies for introducing the system. The latest government statistics show that just over one in 10 students are now selected outside the national test system.

According to universities, selecting students who are more interested in, and display more specific aptitude for, the field they are applying in, rather than relying on the highest overall test scores, has meant students perform better during subsequent years at university compared to those with high scores. There have also been reduced drop-out rates in particular subjects.

But the university-administered admissions system comes with a price tag. The government subsidy for university-led admissions was 15.7 billion won (US$13.6 million) in 2008, and more than double that last year. It is expected to reach almost 40 billion won this year.

A challenge for China

The cost for China, with a much larger university system, would be huge, although no official estimates have been released publicly.

“These kind of services in China will require tremendous amounts of funding,” said Heidi Ross, professor of education policy studies and director of the East Asian Study Centre at Indiana University in the United States.

“It will require development and resources at all the institutions in China. Institutions will have to have admissions officers, data and research. Admissions officers are expensive and it carries financial risks when admissions officers don’t get the classifications right.”

And, says Yimin Wang, a doctoral student at Indiana University who has studied reform of the gaokao, there are huge differences between mostly urban South Korea and China, which would need to ensure fair admissions from rural areas.

Former high-school teacher Li Guangxue, writing in Shanghai Education News, argued that given China's large population, the gaokao is the most just and efficient way of assessing students in the country.

It would be almost impossible for Chinese admission officers to read the personal statements, recommendation letters and additional information of 10 million applicants within a limited amount of time, Li said.

And the government’s idea of special admissions offers for students with exceptional talents in certain fields that permit lower gaokao scores would pose a problem, Li argued. “Most of these opportunities are given to well-known high schools in the city. The poor rural population, which is the most desperate, does not receive such benefits.”

Corruption might be another problem if universities were to be given more autonomy to select students. “Since no standard test or requirement is in place for testing a student, there might be more room for students to bribe admissions officers,” Li added.

Many critics say the time and money required to travel to university interviews would also discriminate against poorer students.

The ministry has begun to allow some universities the right of ‘autonomous recruitment’ using exams designed by the university itself, sometimes supplemented by an academic interview with an admissions committee. But with so few universities granted this autonomy, it hardly amounts to a change in the system.

The few exceptions are touted in official media – Peking university used the system introduced in 2009 of using a high-school head’s recommendation as a basis for an onsite interview, while accepting a lower gaokao score. But it used this system to admit just 3% of its students.

“Shanghai has held spring university entrance exams in addition to the gaokao for years, but few students opt for this method,” Li pointed out.

Group admissions

The South University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, in the news for having more autonomy than other public universities, has selected students using its own tests – but these are in addition to the gaokao, which will still account for 60% of overall marks, while the university’s test and school performance will account for 40%.

“It is not a huge reform in the way the students are evaluated,” noted Heidi Ross. “Allocating 40% [outside the gaokao] is a long way off from 100%.”

An additional concern is that students will have to take more than one highly stressful exam, or even that learning for university tests interferes with gaokao preparation.

Top universities have formed admissions alliances, where one exam can be taken to try for admission to any one of a group of universities.

Tsinghua University, University of Science and Technology of China, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Xi'an Jiaotong University and Nanjing University formed China's first alliance, named the Hua League, in 2010.

A similar alliance was formed later the same year and includes the universities of Peking, Beijing Beihang, Beijing Normal, Nankai, Fudan, Xiamen and Hong Kong.

Reforms in future

“China needs to manage to have an equitable system and a quality system. There won’t be one without the other,” said Ross. “It is usually elite institutions that set the stage for reform, but the vast majority of students are not going to those institutions."

She believes that with demographic decline in China “the tier three and four universities are the ones that need to find their niche and seek out students. That’s where the impetus for reform will come from.”

But real root-and-branch reform of the system is still a long way off.

“No one knows how to get rid the exam because it is a last bastion of meritocracy,” she told University World News. “The gaokao has tremendous staying power.”

Professor convicted of ‘spying’ will not appeal five-month sentence

Jan Petter Myklebust01 July 2012 Issue No:228

 

Timo Kivimäki, the Finnish professor of international politics at the University of Copenhagen who in May received a five-month prison sentence for ‘mild espionage’, will not appeal against the sentence due to the high costs involved, according to the university’s newsletter.

In an interview with University Post, he also revealed more information on the case, stating that 99% of his cooperation with Russian diplomats was focused on research-based information, notably on the war in Iraq and a potential pre-emptive strike against Iran.

Kivimäki has been summoned to discussions with the leaders of Copenhagen University, which is normal procedure for a person receiving a prison sentence, a university spokesman stated.

He reportedly hopes to close the case and continue his work at the university. He has been suspended since April due to the case against him. The prosecutor had asked for the academic to be deported.

Helsingin Sanomat, the international edition of Finland's largest newspaper, said it is believed that Kivimäki will be able to serve his five-month sentence under a form of house arrest.

The prison sentence imposed on Kivimäki has raised fears over its implications for conducting research, for instance via knowledge-sharing meetings or being in dialogue with people from embassies.

Kivimäki was charged with a breach of section 108 of the Danish penal code, which covers so-called ‘mild espionage’.

He took part in a large number of meetings with Russian diplomats between 2002 and 2010. The prosecutor argued that Kivimäki had known he was meeting Russian agents rather than diplomats.

Kivimäki admitted to having planned to give Russian diplomats contact information on Danish researchers, but stressed that the information was publicly available on the world wide web. He said he had seen no evidence that the people he met were spies.

The case also raised concern over the implications for students whose names were passed to the Russian diplomats.

University entrance exam system costly and needs reform in Vietnam

Hiep Pham 01 July 2012 Issue No:228

 

Vietnamese school-leavers will sit national university entrance examinations that start on 4 July and last for almost a week, as they compete for places at some 58 universities and colleges, amid ongoing discussion that the exam system needs reform.

The nationwide exam is known as the ‘three commons’. All candidates tackle the same exam questions on the same dates and receive the results on the same date. According to the Ministry of Education and Training, 604,281 students will sit the exam this year.

But the overall number of higher education applications is down by 7.7% compared to last year – students on average make three to four applications to hedge their bets based on universities’ cut-off marks.

Hanoi, with the highest number of applications in the country at 164,000, is down 2,000 compared to 2011. In Thanh Hoa province the number of applications, 79,130 this year, has dropped by 11,000. In 2010 the overall number of applications fell by 12%, from 2.13 million to 1.87 million.

Under the current system, candidates submit several applications to universities in April and then wait for the cut-off marks for each university to be announced while they are preparing for the exam. Students only make the final decision, just before the exam date, about which university to have their entrance exam marked at.

Costly system

But allowing multiple registrations can be costly for universities.

Pham Thai Son, head of the education and training department of the University of Food Industry in Ho Chi Minh City, said the institution had to rent an extra 500 examination rooms to accommodate 22,000 students registered to take the exam. But not all of them would actually take the exam there.

“We will lose about VND600 million (US$28,680) this session, and this doesn't include the fees we must pay for the people who mark the exams. At the end of this session we expect the losses to reach into the billions [of dong],” he told official media in June.

The fee for taking exams is only VND67,000 (US$3.20) per student, and universities and colleges are reluctant to raise the fees to help cover their additional costs for fear that they will lose promising students, officials said.

In the past, universities have called on the ministry to provide additional resources for the exam season. This year both the ministry and provincial governments said they had improved guidance and support programmes for candidates to help them choose universities and reduce the number of speculative applications.

At the other end of the scale, some universities have said they cannot attract enough enrolments because, prior to the exam, candidates tend to apply to the trusted top public universities, which also have lower tuition fees.

Some newly established or private universities receive very low numbers of applications.

Some experts have warned that more education institutions could go bankrupt unless the system is changed.

To counter this, students who fail to gain their first choice have been allowed since 2005 to apply to other universities in a second round organised by the ministry in September or early October or even, in some years, a third round in November.

New rules mooted

From 2020, when a new university law comes into effect, university entrance exams will only be held at top universities, allowing other universities and colleges to select students based on school records.

This was first made public last year when Bui Van Ga, the vice-minister of education, said during a press conference in Hanoi that by 2020, when the higher education system has the capacity to provide about four million places, the ministry-administered exam may be removed, except for some elite programmes.

The ministry would “only monitor the outcome through a quality assurance system”, Ga said.

Under an interim proposal released in February, the ‘three commons’ will continue until 2015 and key universities will be asked to submit new enrolment plans to the ministry for approval before that date.

During the past academic year, the ministry also encouraged several top universities to pilot a separate exam. But according to some university leaders, the government still appears reluctant to provide all universities with the autonomy needed to set up their own admissions schemes.

Prior to 2002, Vietnamese higher education institutions had full responsibility for entrance examinations. But the downside was more cheating and red tape during the selection process, which led to the ministry stepping in to set up the current system.

Bui Ngoc Son, vice-rector of Foreign Trade University, said the ‘three commons’ provided a “balanced solution” in terms of both the quality and cost of the exam.

A meeting of 400 university rectors, organised by the ministry in February, supported the removal of the ‘three commons’ but only in the long run. Many are still sceptical, saying it is not the first time that the ministry has proposed a timetable for change, but later cancelled it.

Others said making proposals for reform without proper consultations merely makes students and their families anxious.
 

End of sanctions may improve prospects for unemployed graduates

Naw Say Phaw Waa04 March 2012 Issue No:211

 

When Than Myint (47) took a tricycle rickshaw from the bazaar to her home in Yangon, she fell into conversation with the driver, who turned out to have graduated from university last year. The 22-year-old told her that jobs were hard to find, even with a degree.

Only arduous work like rickshaw-pedalling was available. “That’s why I have to do this work,” he said.

Than Myint said it was heartbreaking for her to see so few job opportunities for young graduates. But the problem is widespread.

“I was shocked when I saw a classified advisement in front of a huge house. It said only a graduate is qualified for a job as a security guard,” said Yangon taxi driver U Thar Htet (54).

Myanmar has around 616,500 students in higher education, according to 2009 figures, but chances of secure employment once they graduate are poor, and private sector salaries are low.

The government does not publish figures on graduate unemployment, but the problem is now being openly aired.

“I have learned that most of the graduates here are jobless,” National League for Democracy (NLD) leader Aung San Su Kyi told people in Waa Tin Ka village, 30 kilometres south of Yangon where she has been campaigning for a seat in by-elections that take place on 1 April.

“I believe that we [the National League for Democracy] should consider as a first step to provide job opportunities for people who have graduated, not yet graduated, middle-age people and old people,” she said on 11 February.

Investment and jobs

With the government appearing to be slowly breaking out of the isolation brought about by 50 years of military rule, Myanmar president U Thein Sein is relying on new foreign investment to create more job opportunities for graduates.

“Investors are eyeing the country,” the president told teachers and students in Sagaing, in the north-west of the country, during the opening of the Arts and Science University on 11 February.

“Efforts should be made to attract investment and to create jobs. When factories are mushrooming, skilled labour, intellectuals and the intelligentsia will be in high demand.”

The government has frequently blamed Western economic sanctions against Myanmar for high unemployment. But Myanmar observers say the situation has been difficult for graduates for most of the 50 years that the military government has been in power.

There are fewer public sector jobs available and students say nepotism and corruption are rife in public sector recruitment. Some students claim that not just contacts, but also bribes, are needed to secure good jobs.

Lifting economic sanctions

Some graduates are becoming more hopeful that things will change after the April election. During a visit in February a European Union delegation hinted that it might lift economic sanctions if enough progress is made on democratisation in the country. Other nations like the US, which first imposed sanctions in 1993 on human rights grounds, may follow.

“This is a transitional time in Myanmar and I wish the Americans and others could lift sanctions, then there would be more job opportunities’, said Zar Li Htun (21), who graduated last year with a degree in geology from Dagon University in Yangon. She is a clerk earning 60,000 kyats (US$75) a month, far below a graduate’s salary of around 150,000 kyats.

“The money is not enough,” she told University World News. But she added that she feels lucky to have got a job right away, as many of her fellow graduates are still seeking work.

Hnin Wutte Yi Phyoe (21), who graduated with a degree in chemistry last year from Mawlamyine University, also considers herself lucky as she joined the family business. “My parents sell clothes downtown. I’m not interested in selling things. But as everybody knows, jobs are very scarce in Myanmar.”

New skills

Meanwhile, with the NLD beginning to bring up the problem of unemployment, there is more pressure on the government to be seen to be acting to improve job prospects. Even if sanctions are lifted, government action will be needed to get graduates and others into jobs.

During a recent session of the Pyithu Hluttaw, the lower house of parliament, speaker Thura U Shwe Mann, in response to a question on how the government was handling unemployment, said it would provide up-to-date labour market information, adopt measures to link job opportunities and jobseekers, develop strategies to create job opportunities and access to foreign labour markets, and train job seekers to help them land a job.

But President U Thein Sein has also said graduates should not rely solely on academic degrees and must develop other skills.

Some observers say the country’s university degrees are not geared towards a modern job market and the way many disciplines are taught is simply out of date.

Students mainly enroll in traditional academic subjects such as physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics or Myanmar literature and are not trained for professions, making it difficult to find jobs that match their degrees. Even university teaching jobs are scarce.

Graduate Zar Li Htun said: “There are no jobs available for those who finish their first degrees with a science major.” And Htet Htet (22), a law graduate from Dagon University, described her degree as “just a piece of paper”.

Mismatch

“There is a big difference between the types of degrees students are graduating with and what the market wants,” U Aye Kyaw, managing director of MHR Human Resource Development, told the Myanmar Times recently.

“There are too few jobs related to the subjects students are completing, and the government cannot create enough jobs for them.”

He added that universities should be allowed to offer subjects needed for the job environment. “Businesses want journalists, human resources and marketing graduates, but universities do not teach these subjects,” he said.

Yet even engineering graduates cannot find appropriate work. Kyaw Thu Han (25) graduated in marine engineering from Myanmar Maritime University in 2009. He has had to work in a variety of non-engineering jobs, including as an interpreter and editor for an environmental NGO.

“Even engineering jobs are low paid. I'm planning to go to Singapore soon,” he told University World News.

Some three million people from Myanmar currently work abroad, often illegally. According to anecdotal evidence, many Myanmar graduates work in blue-collar jobs in countries like Malaysia and Singapore.

Even if Western sanctions are not lifted quickly, new development projects, infrastructure spending and investment growth from other Asian countries could improve graduate job prospects. The World Bank and other multilateral lending agencies like the Asian Development Bank have indicated that they are preparing to return to Myanmar.

Jobs may not have trickled down to Myanmar’s disheartened graduates yet, but recent developments point to improvements to come.

International help to upgrade Burma's neglected university sector

Yojana Sharma25 June 2012 Issue No:228

 

The United Kingdom has said it will help Burma improve its higher education sector, according to an announcement on Monday pledging support to education in Burma at both the school and post-school levels.

“Plans are afoot in tertiary education aimed at strengthening higher education institutions,” said Martin Davidson, chief executive of the British Council, after a meeting in London with Burma’s opposition leader leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

“We hope to provide support and opportunities for academic mobility and develop research and teaching links between academics and students in our two countries

The British Council told Suu Kyi it would continue its work to develop Burma’s education system, which is seen as vital to generate stability and opportunities for the country’s future.

Aung San Suu Kyi described education as key to Burma’s security and development in a speech to the UK parliament on 21 June, during an official visit which included collecting an honorary doctorate of civil law at Oxford University almost two decades after it was first awarded to her.

“It is in education in particular that I hope the British can play a major role. We need short-term results, so that our people may see that democratisation has a tangible, positive impact on their lives,” she said.

“Vocational training and creation of employment opportunities to help address Burma ’s chronic youth unemployment are particularly important.”

She added that in the longer term, Burma ’s education system was “desperately weak” and the country needed a change of attitude, “which is at present too narrow and rigid.”

“The great challenge that a democratic Burma has got, is the great expectations of young people,” said Davidson.

“At the tertiary level there has been decades of under-investment or non-investment and some time ago a great deal of suspicion about the activities of students on campuses, as a focus of dissent, so the university system is in quite a bad way,” Davidson told University World News.

He said partnerships with foreign universities would be based around academic and institutional strengthening.

“The sort of things we are in conversation about is the training of academics – there are relatively few academics who have postgraduate qualifications and postgraduate training; and institutional management and leadership: how do you run a modern university that has been completely cut off.

“There is the beginnings of a conversation on how that strengthening of academics and institutions might take place.”

Need for a plan

However, he added that a detailed government plan for higher education in particular had not yet been drawn up.

“There has to be a willingness of government to invest in tertiary education, and some of the restrictions on academic gatherings are going to have to be relaxed. There is going to have to be the resources and the support, to make institutions fit for purpose,” Davidson said.

Nonetheless, he said assistance to the sector should not wait.

“I would like to think within the next three to six months [the British Council will] have something on the ground in Burma.”

Strengthening teacher training at tertiary level is also a major task, as primary and secondary education participation needs to be increased – one in six children in Burma never get into education and many drop out of primary school.

The British Council has already reached an agreement with Burma’s Ministry of Education to implement a schools programme, training 10,000 English teachers per year from the 20 state teacher training colleges, reaching 41,000 schools and two million Burmese youngsters.

More international help sought

Suu Kyi has frequently stressed the importance of education for her country’s development.

Apart from British initiatives in the pipeline, a number of international higher education cooperation projects have been initiated since the elections in April, when Suu Kyi won a seat in the Burmese parliament. Western countries moved to remove some sanctions.

According to local media in Burma, Rangoon University will cooperate with Johns Hopkins University of the United States to improve its law and political science programmes; Mandalay University will receive aid from the universities of Lyons and Montpellier in France; and Pathein University will receive aid from for training in bioscience research from Montpellier.

India has agreed to open an internet technology university at the location of the Institute of Development of Nationalities in the town of Sagaing by 2013.

And South Korea has offered assistance to build the Myanmar Development Institute, modelled on the Korea Development Institute, providing research and analysis on economics and policy, according to presidential advisor Ko Ko Hlaing.

He told local media in June that special education development centres would be established at the universities of Rangoon and Mandalay with the aim of upgrading overall education standards in Burma.

“Some foreign organisations have offered to promote the Myanmar [Burma] education system. We hope to upgrade the universities including the former Yangon [Rangoon] University,” he said

Higher education politicised

Upgrading the university system is a highly political issue as many of the country’s renowned universities were broken up and moved to the outskirts of cities to prevent students from uniting against the military dictatorship.

Controversy has already been sparked over restoration of the origianal Rangoon University campus in the centre of the former capital, historically a hub of the country’s political movement since the time of Suu Kyi’s father, Aung San.

Classes have not been held in the central Rangoon buildings since the 1990s, after the then military junta began a policy of moving universities to the suburbs to suppress student dissent.

U Myint, a government economic advisor, wrote an open letter in May in his personal capacity in which he suggested restoring university buildings including student hostels in the centre of Rangoon, and reinstating classes as a way of developing Rangoon University into a world-class institution.

Most controversially of all, he suggested rehousing the student union there. The former union building at the Rangoon campus was demolished by General Ne Win after mass student protests against the 1962 military coup.

Government officials disassociate themselves from the open letter.
 

Workers in Thailand dubious of firm’s offer

Friday, 29 June 2012, Eighty Cambodian workers trapped without their passports at a construction site in southern Thailand fear Thai firm Christiani & Nielsen (Thai) Public Company Limited will not keep a promise to allow them to return home.

The workers have complained that almost all of their salaries had been extorted through various fees and that some of them were arrested, stripped, beaten, fined and had their heads shaved by Thai police simply because they had work visas for the wrong location.

Lim Srum, a representative of the group that was sent to a construction site in Songkhla province’s Hat Yai district by Cambodian firm Ap Tse & C Cambodia Resource Co, Ltd, said that the workers were due to get their passports back today.

“We are happy about the pledge of the company, but we are still anxious. We fear the company will lie to us. I miss my wife and daughter,” he said.

The company had agreed to let them return to Cambodia in two separate groups for two weeks each, though it is unclear why any of them would be willing to return.

“Before, we suggested 20 days, but we were afraid the company would not allow.”

Sith Vichey, director of Ap Tse & C Cambodian Resource, said the workers had not completed their contracts so they could not return permanently.

“If they want to come back home, not just to visit, they must wait until the work contract is finished,” he said.

Moeun Tola, head of the labour program at the Community Legal Education Center, said Ap Tse & C Cambodian Resource and Christiani & Nielsen had blatantly breached contractual obligations.

“In fact, the worker can come back home, not just visiting for two weeks; they can terminate the two-year contract because the company is wrong for sending them to work in the wrong place,” he said.

A source close to the Cambodian Embassy in Bangkok said Christiani & Nielsen (Thai) Public Company Limited, which has not responded to inquiries from the Post, had absolutely no right to withhold workers’ passports. Sen David