Coursera to offer courses in Chinese

China Daily30 September 2012 Issue No:241

 

Chinese students head overseas in huge numbers, but some may no longer feel the need to leave home for education. Coursera, the online education platform that offers free courses from universities worldwide, is aiming to net some of the biggest consumers of overseas higher learning – Chinese – write Su Zhou and Lin Jing for China Daily.

The company, founded by Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, computer science teachers at Stanford University in California, announced recently that 17 US and international universities will begin offering free online courses. They say that as the Coursera site develops, more courses will be introduced in different languages, including Chinese. The founders are also seeking to team up with Chinese universities to achieve that goal.

There is little doubt that such courses have a huge potential market among Chinese, 158,000 of whom were studying in US colleges last year, accounting for more than a fifth of the overseas-student population there. Worldwide, about 340,000 Chinese were studying in overseas colleges as of May last year, accounting for 14% of the overseas student population, according to a report by the Social Sciences Academic Press in Beijing.

Full report on the China Daily site
 

UNITED STATES: Postdocs – A voice for the voiceless

30 September 2012 Issue No:241

In universities around the world, postdoctoral students are the unsung heavy lifters.

Not only do they take on much of the academic load in running tutorials for undergraduates but they are also crucial in many science and engineering research programmes, carrying out the most technically demanding tasks and helping write up papers but not always acknowledged by the professors who benefit from their work.

In a report in the journal Nature, Karen Kaplan says that in its first 10 years, the US National Postdoctoral Association, or NPA, helped to raise the profile of postdocs but that “championing their cause still presents challenges”.

“Before Alyson Reed became head of the association, she had only the vaguest ideas about what a postdoctoral researcher does,” Kaplan says. “Reed was hardly alone. After she took the job as the NPA's inaugural executive director in 2003, she learned that few outside science and academia knew what postdocs are or do.”

As is the case in the US, on university campuses in Britain, Europe and Australia, Kaplan says many postdocs feel invisible and anonymous, crucial to research but suspended in limbo with no means of networking, creating a community or being heard.

“We are ghosts,” as one declared.

But Kaplan notes that almost a decade of efforts by the NPA have helped generate change. Based in Washington DC, the non-profit organisation has worked hard on behalf of its 2,700 members and the nation's more than 60,000 postdocs.

“It has helped stakeholders – including federal agencies, members of Congress and policy-makers – become eminently familiar with what postdocs are, what they do and the conditions they face. It has raised the issue of shoddy compensation and highlighted the difficulties of career development,” Kaplan says.

“Yet most US academic postdocs still work long hours for trifling pay and have no clear route into a permanent position. Observers say that the NPA has made progress, but should do more. The association would like to boost outreach and advocacy and offer more services but a meagre budget, a small staff and funding challenges present significant obstacles.”

Reed told Kaplan that before her association could advocate for postdocs – not to mention collect data about their roles at research institutions – it had to define what a postdoctoral researcher was. The association helped the US National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation to adopt a formal definition in 2007.

That definition states, in part, that postdocs are “engaged in a temporary and defined period of mentored advanced training to enhance the professional skills and research independence”.

This helps institutions and principal investigators to see postdocs as trainees and protégés seeking to advance their careers, rather than as just a pair of hands at the bench, as is still the case in many universities around the world, Reed told Kaplan.

Kaplan says that perhaps the NPA's biggest accomplishment was encouraging US universities to set up their own on-campus postdoctoral offices and associations.

The national association now has about 130 member offices on US university and other research campuses, and has inspired the creation of postdoc organisations in other countries, with several fledgling groups asking for advice, including those in Australia, Canada, China, France, Ireland, Japan and Qatar. 

CAMBODIA: Concern over higher education quality as ASEAN community looms

Kounila Keo30 September 2012 Issue No:241

 

Veterinary student Kong Sokhom (20) from the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh still has two years to go until he graduates from Preak Leap National School of Agriculture. But he is filled with uncertainty about his future.

Sokhom opted for veterinary science hoping to acquire high-level skills to help develop his country, one of the poorest nations in South East Asia.

But he regards his education as almost worthless. The classes are packed with students who do not want to work hard, he said, and he regards his teachers as “under-qualified”.

“When I graduate, I don’t really know what I can do with the degree that I’ll get from this university, as I know the education quality is quite low,” said Sokhom grimly.

Every year Cambodia produces hundreds of thousands of graduates like Sokhom who are unfit for the job they have trained for, experts say. There is a big gap between subjects studied at university and workforce skills needed.

According to Chea Vannath, a sociologist and independent researcher, Cambodian graduates also find it hard to land jobs within their field of study.

Only one in 10 graduates finds work, according to figures from the Economic Institute of Cambodia. It is a worrying statistic for a country that has struggled to rebuild its economy and image three decades after a civil war that destroyed its financial, educational and justice systems.

“It creates a daunting challenge for Cambodia, which remains poor,” Vannath said.

ASEAN community looms

The problem could become more acute as Cambodia becomes part of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) community by 2015, when workers from ASEAN countries will have full mobility within the region.

The other ASEAN countries are Brunei, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Apart from Laos and Myanmar – the latter is facing similar problems – all are far more developed than Cambodia.

When ASEAN leaders announced the ASEAN Economic Community with free movement of goods, services, investment, and skilled labour, and freer flow of capital, by 2015, many Cambodians expressed concern about competing with highly skilled ASEAN citizens who might come to the country for work.

With poor curricula and facilities for teachers and students alike, local experts worry that Cambodians will not be able to take advantage of ASEAN community opportunities.

According to Sambo Manara, a professor of history and culture at various public and private universities, young Cambodians “are among the least skilled young people in the South East Asian region.

“As part of the ASEAN community, Cambodia will have to open its market to people from other ASEAN countries who have better skills and attract more employers and investors into the country.”

A long way to go

Cambodia has a very long way to go to catch up with its neighbours.

“Despite rises in productivity, the overall output level per worker remains low in comparison with other ASEAN countries. Raising productivity levels within Cambodia is vital if the country is to remain competitive in relation to its ASEAN neighbours,” according to the International Labour Organization.

Ministry of Youth and Sport surveys have found that a staggering 94% of the youth labour force has not completed secondary education – a major obstacle to ensuring gainful and productive work. And as recently as 2000, an estimated 63% of the adult population, 6.5 million people, were functionally illiterate.

Although education funding has improved in recent years, the overwhelming obstacle to increasing education levels is still financial.

“Looking at all the challenges that our education system has faced, I don’t think we’re going anywhere soon if we don’t take action right now,” Dr Van Chanpheng, deputy director general of higher education at the Ministry of Education, told University World News.

Young Cambodians ‘deserve more’

“Increased skill acquisition will help increase productivity that allows for higher wages and purchasing power. It will help young Cambodians, who deserve more,” Van added.

While the country has 20 public universities and nearly 30 private ones, the ministry has said that only around 150,000 students are currently enrolled in higher education, or some 10% of the age cohort.

Sambo Manara argues that higher education in Cambodia has improved over the past five years, with a few new, private universities providing a more appropriate curriculum for students. However, he said, there are still many universities interested only in profit, not quality.

At the education ministry, Van admitted that the education system needs improvement. “More university teachers need to be trained,” he said. The latest figure from the ministry's higher education section shows there are only 2,000 PhD holders in Phnom Penh.

“What can be done in the short term is to create more vocational training for more Cambodian adults. But it is easier said than done – we have seen people unwilling to learn more as they have to keep working.”

Quality is a concern

Five years ago there was an attempt by the World Bank to improve the quality of Cambodia's higher education institutions, with the formation of a national university accreditation committee.

The committee was created to force institutions to adhere to strict education requirements and quality. But the World Bank pulled funding for the scheme when it emerged that the new body would not be independent of government control.

Sambo told University World News that many Cambodian universities needed to improve significantly – lectures are inadequate, and the education system in rural Cambodia has been totally neglected.

Rural education is a daunting challenge. Many people drop out of school as facilities are poor and often far from home. Teachers are not well trained and, compared to other professions, are low paid, causing them to moonlight and pay too little attention to teaching.

“Cambodia is still developing its own education system and cooperating with other countries to develop better educational standards,” said Sambo.

Van added: “Before we develop anything else, don’t forget [we need] to provide the best education possible to young Cambodians, as this is the only way to raise Cambodia out of poverty.”

Related Links
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Poor quality drives us abroad – Students
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Forging regional higher education integration
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Key role for universities in healing society
 

GLOBAL: United Nations launches Education First initiative

Geoff Maslen28 September 2012 Issue No:241

 

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday launched a new education initiative called Education First, at a high-level event at the UN headquarters in New York.

In terms of the plan, the various UN agencies and programmes will “unite” with governments, business leaders and civil society in a push to put education at the top of the global agenda ahead of the 2015 Millennium Development Goals deadline.

Among the challenges to be tackled by the initiative is the global need for two million more teachers, which will require major upscaling of teacher training by universities and colleges in numerous countries.

In its PovertyMatters blog on Thursday, the UK’s Guardian newspaper said Ban’s initiative was “refreshing for its recognition of the role of teachers – drawing attention to the need to create two million new teaching positions, reprioritise training and professional development, and redignify the profession”.

During the event, Ban appointed 10 Education First champions of the UN’s global education initiative: the heads of state from Australia, Bangladesh, Croatia, Denmark, Guyana, Liberia, Russia, South Africa, Timor Leste and Tunisia.

He said that in 2000, 189 of the world’s nations had pledged to achieve universal primary education by 2015. It was the second of eight Millennium Development Goals aimed at freeing people from poverty and multiple deprivations.

“Although significant progress has been made, the latest data show a clear slow-down. Without a major effort, there is a real danger that more children will be out-of-school in 2015 than today,” he said.

Along with the Education First champions, Ban was joined at the launch by various business and civil society leaders and UN officials.

They included Sheikha Moza bint Nasser of Qatar, former UK prime minister Gordon Brown who is special envoy of the secretary general for global education, Irina Bokova, director general of UNESCO and executive secretary of the Education First steering committee, Anthony Lake, executive director of UNICEF, Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank, Aliko Dangote, president of the Nigerian Dangote Group and Chernor Bah, a youth leader from Sierra Leone.

Following the launch there was a panel discussion, at which the speakers were UNICEF Eminent Advocate for Children Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan; Aung San Suu Kyi, the new Burmese MP and Nobel peace prize laureate; Teopista Birungi Mayanja, a teacher representative from Uganda; and Charles Young, a student representative from Jamaica.

How the citizens of the 10 countries felt about the honour being bestowed on their leaders as ‘champions of education’ is unknown.

But in South Africa there were rumblings about the position going to the head of a government that has failed to improve a shockingly poor school system, although it has upped access.

And there was some wry cynicism in Australia’s universities and research institutes, where researchers fear the government is about to impose a freeze on new research grants as part of its efforts to slash spending and create a budget surplus.

The current uncertainty is generating increasing anxiety – and anger – among an estimated 1,700 young researchers who could lose their jobs by the end of the year.

Nevertheless, the lobby group Universities Australia congratulated Prime Minister Julia Gillard on her appointment. Chief Executive Belinda Robinson said Gillard's appointment reinforced the importance of education reform as a national priority and of ensuring Australia's education system remained world class.

The position, she said, “underscores the imperative of achieving the participation in education required for lifting national productivity and meeting the demands of the future workforce," although just last week Robinson had declared it would be an "astounding about-face" if the government were to cut or delay research funding.

Still, according to Robinson, here was an opportunity to make the point that investment in education had numerous benefits for society, underpinning productivity growth, innovation and economic prosperity – hoping the prime minister might read what she had said.
 

Universities in Europe and Asia must collaborate, say rectors

Yojana Sharma28 September 2012 Issue No:241

 

Universities in Europe and Asia must collaborate to make their graduates employable in a globalised world, with joint programmes and dual degrees paving the way for greater student mobility, heads of universities in 37 Asian and European countries heard at a major conference in The Netherlands this week.

Although some joint degrees exist between European and Asian universities, Karsten Warnecke, deputy executive director of the Singapore-based Europe Asia Foundation, said there were eight times more Asian students going to Europe than European students going to Asia.

With high graduate unemployment in many southern European countries, “it is not a solution for graduate unemployment in Europe for students to go to Asia [for jobs], but they should go to Asia to increase soft skills and to get a different perspective and experience,” said Warnecke.

However, “not enough European students at the moment see the advantage in going to Asia to study,” said Sibrandes Poppema, president of the University of Groningen, which hosted the third Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM) of university rectors on 25-26 September.

The conference recommendations, including promoting a credit transfer system within ASEM, were agreed to by 100 heads of universities from 27 European Union countries and 10 Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).

They will feed into a meeting of ASEM education ministers in Kuala Lumpur in 2013.

Interim mobility arrangements

But full credit transfer could take a while to be set up. “We need a transition period on the way to full mobility in which we help students to see the advantages [of overseas study] by organising special programmes,” Poppema told a press conference after the meeting.

Interim arrangements could include shorter non-degree programmes that should be set up jointly between partner universities with greater support for students studying in another culture. “We believe this is an attractive proposal and one of the ways to go forward,” Poppema said.

The need for international exchanges and experience of other cultures was emphasised time and again at the conference as being vital for student employability.

“Any opportunity to have a global perspective and feel part of the global community is fantastic,” said Vicki Baars, vice president of the UK’s National Union of Students. Student groups were invited to participate in the ASEM rectors’ conference for the first time this year.

Halbe Zijlstra, Dutch secretary of state for higher education, said in a keynote speech: “Every country that makes room for internationalisation in its higher education system, sees the quality of its own education improve.

“The countries with outbound students – because these students bring additional knowledge back with them on their return. And the countries with inbound students – because they receive top talent from across the globe. And this has a mutually stimulating effect.”

Imbalance in student flows

The imbalance in student flows between the two continents is a recurrent theme at ASEM higher education conferences.

One reason, identified at previous ASEM meetings, is the perception of European students that universities in Asia are not of comparable quality to those in Europe. Another is the inability to transfer study credits to their home institutions.

But Piniti Ratananukul, deputy secretary general of Thailand’s Higher Education Commission, speaking on behalf of the ASEAN University Network, said it would never be possible to balance flows as Asia had a huge population compared to Europe.

“We are looking at the quality of higher education instead,” he told University World News.

He said it was important that universities were of sufficient quality to meet the demands of the workplace. And quality included the cultural environment and adapting to rapid changes in society.

ASEAN is developing a quality assurance system to increase mobility within the region. “The job market in Asia is expanding and graduates should be able to work anywhere in Asian countries,” Piniti said.

ASEAN credit transfer scheme

A credit transfer scheme within ASEAN is also being developed. Credit transfer will also be extended to ASEAN partners such as Korea, Japan and China.

As this would be a huge undertaking for the entire university sector in all ASEAN countries, Piniti told University World News: “We are looking at the leading universities in each country at first, then we can expand it to other universities locally.”

European universities also stressed the importance of transferable credit. But even within Europe the number of universities registered for the European Credit Transfer Scheme (ECTS) is still limited, and ASEAN could take some years to put its own credit transfer scheme in place.

Once this has been achieved, “the next step will be marrying the European credit system and the ASEAN credit system", Poppema said.

“This is an excellent time to ensure that the ASEAN scheme is similar to the European one. It would be wise for them to look at the ECTS, not to copy it, but to develop their own one. The next step would be to ensure they are [mutually] transferable,” Poppema told University World News.
 

Quality teaching is key to modernising universities – European Commission

The European Commission has launched a High Level Group on the Modernisation of Higher Education. Androulla Vassiliou, European commissioner for education, culture, multilingualism and youth, and Mary McAleese, former president of Ireland and chair of the group, explain why.

Also in Commentary, Emily R Miller and Richard A Skinner argue that imposing North American models of higher education governance elsewhere would not necessarily work. Goolam Mohamedbhai finds a pilot study for the African Quality Rating Mechanism flawed and says there will be challenges in moving forward, and Lucian J Hudson writes that now is the time for huge progress in widening access to higher education – but opening up access to content is not enough.

In Features, Lee Adendorff reports on the 24th conference, held in Bologna, of the Magna Charta Universitatum – a declaration on fundamental university principles that has now been signed by some 750 universities worldwide – and Chrissie Long investigates why a high number of medical graduates who studied in Cuba have failed licensing exams in Costa Rica.

Andrew Green probes Not In My Country, a website in Uganda dedicated to exposing corruption in higher education and rating academics, and Kounila Keo finds that despite a rapidly growing number of higher education institutions in Cambodia, they are struggling to meet growing demand and quality is a real concern.

Karen MacGregor Global Editor

Can U.S. Universities Stay on Top?

By MICHAEL J. SILVERSTEIN and ABHEEK SINGHI

At the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi—one of the best engineering academies in the country—we met Shriram, a 21-year-old man who ranked 19 out of 485,000 on the school's very demanding entrance exam. We call him Mr. Number 19.
Shriram can tell you the date and time when he found out his test results. The exam—and the preparation for it—dominated his teenage years. He was singled out as a "big talent" at an early age, with an aptitude for mathematics and science. To get ready for the IIT entrance exam, he enrolled at a private coaching institute that prepares students with aggressive drilling in the major testing areas—physics, chemistry and math. Over those two years, Shriram estimates that he studied 90 hours every week.

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When Shriram arrived at the IIT, he found a class filled with academic superstars. The faculty has high expectations. On the first math exam, his freshman class received an average grade of 30%. Shriram did poorly too but soon bounced back, sacrificing sleep so that he could study. "All my life I wanted to be here," he says. "I knew that if I could go to IIT, major in engineering, work and study hard, my life would be perfect. I would marry a beautiful girl, start a company, help my country advance and deliver on my family's hopes and dreams."
Both India and China have intense national testing programs to find the brightest students for their elite universities. The competition, the preparation and the national anxiety about the outcomes make the SAT testing programs in the U.S. seem like the minor leagues. The stakes are higher in China and India. The "chosen ones"—those who rank in the top 1%—get their choice of university, putting them on a path to fast-track careers, higher incomes and all the benefits of an upper-middle-class life.

The system doesn't work so well for the other 99%. There are nearly 40 million university students in China and India. Most attend institutions that churn out students at low cost. Students complain that their education is "factory style" and "uninspired." Employers complain that many graduates need remedial training before they are fully employable.

For now, the U.S. university system is still far ahead. But over the next decade, there will be a global competition to educate the next generation, and China and India have the potential to change the balance of power. With large pools of qualified students coming of age, the two countries have made reforming their universities a top priority.

How far do they have to go? At the Boston Consulting Group, we have developed a new ranking to determine the educational competitiveness of countries: the BCG E4 Index. It is based on four Es: Expenditure (the level of investment in education by government and private households); enrollment (the number of students in the educational system); engineers (the number of qualified engineers entering the workforce), and elite institutions (the number of top global higher-education institutions).

The U.S. and the U.K. are ranked first and second, driven by raw spending, their dominance in globally ranked universities and engineering graduation rates. China ranks third and India fifth, largely on enrollment (Germany is fourth). The reasons for U.S. supremacy are clear: For one, it spends the most money on education, disbursing $980 billion annually, or twice as much as China and five times as much as India. It is also the most engineer-intensive country, with 981 engineering degrees per million citizens, compared with 553 for China and 197 for India.

American universities currently do a better job overall at preparing students for the workforce. The World Economic Forum estimates that 81% of U.S. engineering graduates are immediately "employable," while only 25% of Indian graduates and 10% of Chinese graduates are equally well prepared. "Chinese students can swarm a problem," a dean at a major Chinese university told us. "But when it comes to original thought and invention, we stumble. We are trying hard to make that up. We are trying to make technical education the grounding from which we solve problems."
In China, Peking University, founded in 1898, is generally ranked as the country's top school. One student there told us in a very serious tone: "Good luck finding a place in the library. You can't find a seat even at three in the morning."

Peking University is now part of an effort launched in 2009 to create a Chinese counterpart to the Ivies—called the C9 League. The objective is to attract the best graduates and faculty with an array of super-funded institutions. The schools recently received $270 million each in government funding, and they are also drawing back "sea turtles"—Chinese Ph.D.s from abroad—to lead the renaissance, with relocation bonuses as high as $150,000.

Though the C9 schools have the greatest potential to break into the global elite, Chinese officials also identified 100 key universities at the next level, where they have invested a total of $2.8 billion.
The difference in student quality between these tiers is often insignificant. The Gaokao is China's national educational test, given to 10 million secondary students to determine their rank and placement at university. The top scorers become national celebrities. But critics say that the test's emphasis on memorization, fact recall and processing speed can determine college admissions too arbitrarily. "I did not feel well the day of the test," one recent graduate told us. "As a result I placed in the top 10%, not good enough to get into the C9. I felt like my life was over."

Compared with China, India has farther to go. A senior dean at IIT Delhi said that he deals daily with shortages of equipment, poor pay for teachers and quotas that sometimes put students who can't read or speak English in the classroom. (The quotas are meant as a remedy for the caste system.) "We are underfunded, we have too few Ph.D.s on faculty, and we have a fifth of our enrollment taken by quota with no remedial programs," he lamented in his hot, open office.

One of the reasons for the underfunding is the relative weakness of India's central government, which accounts for only 15% of total expenditure on education. The 28 states that account for the balance vary greatly by wealth and infrastructure. But unlike China, India has significant private education, with nearly 200,000 private schools and 17,000 private colleges. The World Bank and private investors are pouring billions of dollars into education there, and the government plans to expand its best-known universities, as well as community colleges. The current five-year plan proposes higher-education investments of more than $18 billion.

Even with the current push, the combined higher-education resources of India and China will just begin to match the $32 billion endowment of Harvard alone. But success in these countries is based as much on attitude as on funds. The IIT's Mr. Number 19 represents a generation of driven, talented students who are intent on improving their lives. In one student's room at Peking University, the commitment to advancement is summed up with a phrase on a poster board: "If you work hard enough, you can grind an iron rod into a needle."

—Mr. Silverstein is a senior partner at the Boston Consulting Group. Mr. Singhi is a partner and director of its India consumer practice. Adapted from "The $10 Trillion Prize: Captivating the Newly Affluent in China and India," co-written with Carol Liao and David Michael, to be published on Oct. 2 by Harvard Business Review Press.

Education Strength

Which countries have the most competitive educational systems world-wide? The Boston Consulting Group's new E4 index assigns points in four categories, each equally weighted in the final score. Of the 20 countries ranked, here are the top 10.

Country	Total points	Enrollment points	Expenditure points	Engineering grads points	Elite university points
U.S.	237	25	73	48	91
U.K.	125	4	26	46	48
China	115	86	17	4	8
Germany	104	5	25	37	38
India	104	90	4	3	6
France	87	4	24	41	18
Canada	85	2	25	39	18
Japan	72	7	31	19	16
Brazil	38	17	16	2	3
Russia	32	9	10	10	3

 
Source: Boston Consulting Group analysis

A version of this article appeared September 29, 2012, on page C3 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Can U.S. Universities Stay on Top?.

 

An international hub for higher education?

By Professor Dr Francois Therin. Posted on August 28, 2012, Tuesday

RECENTLY, foreign universities such as the United Kingdom’s Heriot-Watt University and the University of Reading announced opening branch campuses in Malaysia. Several other universities also intend to expand their operations here, including Manipal University of India which plans to open a campus for up to 20,000 students. The news is hardly surprising as the Ministry of Higher Education has indicated that up to 25 foreign universities have applied to open branch campuses in the country.

Inevitably, it has triggered a strong reaction from the existing players, with some trying to convince the ministry that by allowing an overly large number of foreign branch campuses to operate, the competitive landscape would be adversely affected.

Such a reaction would be deemed quite normal in any industry, but it would be interesting to ponder whether it is reasonable or not. Firstly, let us look at some figures related to higher education in Malaysia. Currently, there are approximately 1.1 million tertiary students in Malaysia, including 500,000 pursuing bachelor’s degrees and 400,000 pursuing diplomas. Among the 1.1 million students, some 80,000 are international students with the majority representing five countries — China, Iran, Indonesia, Nigeria and Yemen.

Yearly, the higher education sector sees an enrolment of 400,000 new students while 250,000 graduate from different universities throughout the country.

These students are served by 21 public and 23 private universities, including five foreign branch campuses. They also come from 21 private higher education institutions with university college status. In fact, more than 20 other foreign universities are already actively operating in Malaysia through twinning programmes with the university colleges. So is it likely 25 new players would negatively affect the competitive landscape?

Clearly, Malaysia aims to become a higher education hub. Despite marketing higher education internationally much later than Singapore, it already has more international students, the number having doubled since 2006. The objective now is to reach 200,000 by 2020. Of course, many of the universities exist to diversify the sources as the current major ones could be subject to internal political changes, which could consequently affect the number of students sent to Malaysia. For example, Oman recently announced that it would send up to 4,000 students a year compared to only 400 in 2010.

Meanwhile, student intakes from India and Egypt, as well as neighbouring countries such as Thailand or Vietnam, are very low and have not met the forecasted numbers. For instance, there are only 1,400 students from India.

In Malaysia, a bachelor’s degree has become the minimum requirement for one to land a first-time skilled job. Malaysia’s economy is doing very well and employers’ increased need for qualified staff has created a demand for more graduates, particularly from critical fields such as engineering, business and medicine.

There is a natural growth in the local student population. We can expect the population to continue to grow, and subsequently, a greater demand for universities to offer higher degrees. There are currently only 63,000 students pursuing studies at the master’s level and 21,000 at PhD level.

Malaysia is making a clear stand on quality, though at the start of the internationalisation process, and as many other countries did, more importance was placed on quantity rather than quality. Take the recent issues in Vietnam, for example. Malaysia is now very carefully monitoring the quality of the existing institutions, both public and private, and is becoming more and more exacting when considering the applications of new players. The implementation of a very detailed and stringent rating system for the country’s universities, the Setara Rating System for Institutions of Higher Learning, is helping raise standards.

In the field of business, for example, public institutions have been asked to go for international accreditations such as Equis (European Quality Improvement System) and AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business). Not compromising on quality will certainly convince local students to study within Malaysia rather than go overseas.

Currently, around 80,000 Malaysians are studying abroad — 30,000 of them under scholarships and 50,000 self-sponsored.

This indirectly raises the attractiveness factor for international students to pursue their tertiary education in Malaysia, particularly those from countries where the number of higher education institutions is still too low to meet internal demand and/or where the move towards quality has not been effectively implemented.

Therefore, I do not share the concerns of some of my colleagues on the competitive risk. On the contrary, I believe that more competition can help to strengthen the path towards better quality. It will also offer a wider choice for local and international students in Malaysia, and subsequently, reinforce the country’s vision of becoming an international education hub.

Professor Dr Francois Therin is the dean of the School of Business at Curtin Sarawak.

The Most Educated Countries in the World

By Michael B. Sauter and Alexander E. M. Hess | 24/7 Wall St – Mon, 24 Sep, 2012 1:31 PM EDT

 College graduation rates continued to improve around the world during the recession, according to a recent international economic study. In more developed countries, the percentage of adults with the equivalent of a college degree rose to more than 30% in 2010. In the United States, it was more than 40%, which is among the highest percentages in the world.

However, improvements in higher education are harder to achieve in these countries. More developed economies have had the most educated populations for some time. While these countries have steadily increased education rates, the increases have been modest compared to developing economies. At just above 1%, the U.S. has had one of the smallest annual growth rates for higher education since 1997. In Poland, an emerging market, the annualized rate was 7.2% from 1997 to 2010.

[More from 24/7 Wall St.: The Happiest Countries in the World]

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Education at a Glance 2012 report calculated the proportion of residents with a college or college equivalent degree in the group’s 34 member nations and other major economies. Based on the report, 24/7 Wall St. identified the 10 countries with the highest proportion of adults with a college degree.

The majority of countries that spend the most on education have the most educated populations. As in previous years, the best educated countries tend to spend the most on tertiary education as a percentage of gross domestic product. The United States and Canada, among the most educated countries, spend the first and third most respectively.

In an interview with 24/7 Wall St., OECD’s Chief Media Officer Matthias Rumpf explained that educational funding appears to have a strong relationship to how many residents pursue higher education. Private spending on educational institutions relative to public expenditure is much larger in the countries with the highest rates of college-equivalent education. Among the countries with the highest proportion of residents with a tertiary education, a disproportionate amount of spending comes from private sources, including tuition and donations. The OECD average proportion of private spending is 16%. In the U.S., 28% of funding comes from private sources. In South Korea, another country in the top 10, it is more than 40%.

Having more education helped people all over the world stay employed during the recession, according to the OECD. Between 2008 and 2010, unemployment rates among developed nations jumped from 8.8% to 12.5% for people with less than a high school education, and from 4.9% to 7.6% for people with only a high school education. For those with the equivalent of a college degree or more, the jobless rate went from 3.3% to just 4.7%.

Among the 10 countries with the highest proportion of educated adults, unemployment rates for those with a college equivalent ranged from 2.8% in Australia to 5.4% in the Canada. In each country, the rate remained lower than that country’s national average.

[More from 24/7 Wall St.: America’s Richest States]

The OECD provided information on the percentage of residents aged 25 to 64 with a tertiary education for each of its 34 member countries, as well as for eight other nations. 2010 statistics on educational attainment, graduation rates, GDP per capita and unemployment rates also were provided by the OECD. The latest figures covering country-level education expenditure are from 2009.

These are the 10 most educated countries in the world.

1. Canada

Thinkstock> Pct. population with tertiary education: 51%
> Average annual growth rate (2000-2010): 2.4% (5th lowest)
> GDP per capita: $39,050 (11th highest)

Canada is the only nation where more than half of all adults had a tertiary education in 2010. This was up from 40% of the adult population in 2000, when the country also ranked as the world’s most educated. Canada has managed to become a world leader in education without being a leader in education spending, which totaled just 6.1% of GDP in 2009, or less than the 6.3% average for the OECD. A large amount of its spending went towards tertiary education, on which the country spent 2.5% of GDP, trailing only the United States and South Korea. One of the few areas Canada did not perform well in was attracting international students, who made up just 6.6% of all tertiary students — lower than the OECD’s 8% average.

2. Israel

Thinkstock> Pct. population with tertiary education: 46%
> Average annual growth rate (2000-2010): N/A
> GDP per capita: $26,531 (13th lowest)

Israel only joined the OECD in 2010. That year, its GDP per capita was more than $7,000 below the OECD’s average. Despite this, the country’s high school graduation rate was 92% in 2010, well above the OECD’s 84% average. Some 46% of residents had a tertiary education, versus 31% for the OECD. Israel spent 7.2% of GDP on educational institutions in 2009, the sixth most among all nations. And for the first time, preschool education will become free in 2012 even for children as young as three years old, Haaretz newspaper reported. This should benefit Israel as, according to the OECD, “early childhood education is associated with better performance later on in school.”

3. Japan

Thinkstock> Pct. population with tertiary education: 45%
> Average annual growth rate (2000-2010): 2.9%  (10th lowest)
> GDP per capita: $33,785 (18th highest)

In 2009, Japan spent 1.6% of GDP on college or college equivalent education, on par with the OECD’s average, and just 5.2% of GDP on education overall, well below the OECD’s 6.3% average. Despite its relatively light spending, the country still had a high school graduation rate of 96%, the second best among all nations in 2010, while the percentage of its population with a tertiary education was 14 percentage points higher than the OECD’s average. However, according to The Wall Street Journal, recent university graduates in Japan have struggled to find work, with 15% those graduating in the spring of 2012 neither employed nor enrolled in further education as of August.

4. United States

Thinkstock> Pct. population with tertiary education: 42%
> Average annual growth rate (2000-2010): 1.3% (2nd lowest)
> GDP per capita: $46,548 (4th highest)

Although the U.S. is one of just a few nations where more than 40% of people had a tertiary education in 2010, its education system is not without problems. Among the concerns, the graduation rate for upper secondary students in 2010 was 77%, well below the average rate of 84% for the OECD. Even though graduation rates were relatively low, the U.S. is one of the biggest spenders on education, with related expenditures equaling 7.3% of GDP in 2009. The U.S. was also the world’s largest spender on tertiary education in 2009, at 2.6% of GDP. The majority of funds for higher education, totaling 1.6% of GDP, came from private sources.

[More from 24/7 Wall St.: America’s Poorest States]

5. New Zealand

Thinkstock> Pct. population with tertiary education: 41%
> Average annual growth rate (2000-2010): 3.5% (13th highest)
> GDP per capita: $29,711 (17th lowest)

The tiny country’s population has grown 13.2% between 2000 and 2010, as has the country’s education system. The number of people with a college or college equivalent education rose from 29% to 41% over the period. The country also has become a destination of choice for international students, who made up 14.2% of tertiary students in 2010. New Zealand is also a leader in educating scientists, with 16% of students choosing a science for their field of study at the tertiary level — the highest proportion of any country.

6. South Korea

Thinkstock> Pct. population with tertiary education: 40%
> Average annual growth rate (2000-2010): 5.2% (6th highest)
> GDP per capita: $28,797 (16th lowest)

Between 2000 and 2010, the percentage of South Koreans with a college education or more rose from 24% to 40%. In addition to being well-educated, many residents also invested considerable amounts towards their schooling. In 2009, only Iceland spent more than South Korea’s 8% of GDP. That year, no country in the study contributed more private funds for education at all levels than South Korea, at 3.1% of GDP, or for tertiary education, at 1.9%. Despite the investment, education does not appear to have a measurable impact on job seekers. The unemployment rate in 2010 for those with a tertiary degree was 3.3% — low relative to the OECD average of 4.7%, but not much lower than the 3.7% rate for all workers in the country.

7. United Kingdom

Thinkstock> Pct. population with tertiary education: 38%
> Average annual growth rate: 4.0% (10th highest)
> GDP per capita: $35,756 (15th highest)

Between 2000 and 2010, the percentage of U.K. residents with a tertiary education rose 12 percentage points. The country’s universities are also popular among students from other nations. International students make up 16% of enrollment. The country recently has had a shift in how education is financed. While in 2000 the percentage of funds from private sources was 14.8%, it rose to 31.1% by 2009. Students also must cover more of the cost of higher education than in the past, as the cap on tuition fees was raised from 3,290 pounds to 9,000 pounds for the 2012-2013 year.

8. Finland

Thinkstock> Pct. population with tertiary education: 38%
> Average annual growth rate (2000-2010): 1.8% (4th lowest)
> GDP per capita: $36,307 (14th highest)

Finland spent 6.4% of its gross domestic product on education in 2009, with 97.6% of these funds coming from public sources, more than any country in the report. Between 2000 and 2010, high school graduation rates rose by just two percentage points, while the number of people with a college education or more rose by just six percentage points. As a result, Finland fell from fourth to eighth place among the world’s most educated countries. Finnish workers with a tertiary education were far more likely to be employed than those without such an education — the unemployment rate was 4.4% for residents with a degree and 8.4% for those without.

9. Australia

Thinkstock> Pct. population with tertiary education: 38%
> Average annual growth rate (2000-2010): 3.2% (12th lowest)
> GDP per capita: $40,790 (6th highest)

Australia is a preferred destination for many international students, which is why it should come as no surprise that they accounted for 21.2% of the country’s tertiary students in 2010, higher than every country other than Luxembourg. Finding a job in the country is not especially hard for those with a college degree. The country had an unemployment rate of just 2.8% in 2010 for workers with a tertiary degree, compared to a rate of just 5.2% for all workers.

10. Ireland

Thinkstock> Pct. population with tertiary education: 37%
> Average annual growth rate (2000-2010): 7.3% (the highest)
> GDP per capita: $40,478 (7th highest)

From 2000 through 2010, the percentage of people with a college education or more in Ireland nearly doubled, rising at an annual average of 7.3% — faster than any country in the study. High school graduation rates also rose during that time, from 74% to 94%. Education has become especially critical for male job seekers in Ireland’s workforce, as 6.3% of men with a tertiary education were unemployed in 2010 versus 15.2% for all men nationwide.

UNITED STATES Quality and accreditation body goes global

Alison Moodie19 September 2012 Issue No:240

 

The US-based Council for Higher Education and Accreditation, CHEA, has launched an international division, arguing that as internationalisation spreads there is a pressing need for institutions around the world to work together to establish a shared global system of quality assurance.

For many years, the role of universities was relatively straightforward: educate the youth and produce original research. But in an increasingly globalised world, tertiary institutions serve a more complex purpose.

They function more as nodes in a much larger global network that involves not only other universities, but also a slew of businesses, non-profits and organisations that have a vested interest in an institution’s educational activity and financial outcomes.

With all these competing interests, programmes and objectives, has come growing recognition that a mechanism needs to be put in place to ensure universities aren’t working at cross purposes.

To address this challenge, the US-based CHEA – a non-profit advocacy group that represents accredited American colleges and universities – on 13 September launched an international division to promote and facilitate dialogue between colleges and various organisations around the globe to improve quality assurance in higher education.

Called the CHEA International Quality Group, or CIQG, the division aims to bring together universities, accreditors, businesses and government agencies from more than 40 countries to share information on their quality standards, identify trends in quality assurance, and promote international cooperation in improving academic quality in higher education.

“What can Europe learn from Asia, what can the US contribute and learn from others so we’re not these closed regional institutions?” asked Stamenka Uvalic-Trumbic, consultant for CIQG and former chief of the quality assurance section of UNESCO.

“It’s the spread of the familiar.”

The international dimension of quality assurance

Nowadays, the majority of undergraduates spend at least one semester abroad, faculty in different countries collaborate on research projects, and a student in Singapore can obtain a Yale degree without ever visiting the United States. Universities are no longer islands unto themselves, but rather members of a dynamic, evolving global campus.

The cross-pollination of students, faculty and ideas has brought issues of quality assurance to the fore, particularly how academic quality at universities is defined and measured, and how these standards compare between countries. As the internationalisation of higher education continues to spread, there comes a pressing need for institutions around the world to work together to establish a shared global system of quality assurance.

“There is a growing importance related to the international dimension of quality assurance,” Judith Eaton, CHEA’s president, told University World News. “The more understanding we have about quality assurance, the more we can work with one another, and that’s extremely valuable.”

Quality assurance is crucial on a number of levels. It holds a university accountable by assuring taxpayers (in the case of a public university) and the government alike that its teaching is of a high standard; it gives students a reliable platform to compare different courses and universities; and it gives a university national and, in many cases, international recognition of the standards of its degrees.

But quality assurance has been jeopardised by the commercial aspect of internationalisation.

Universities – many crippled by ongoing budget cuts – are in competition with one another to attract foreign students, who pay higher fees than residents. In the past 20 years, universities have opened branch campuses around the world in an effort to attract international interest.

But critics say this dogged focus on revenue is affecting the quality of education, and as a result the reputation of universities.

CQIG isn’t the first initiative aimed at establishing a shared standard of quality assurance across borders. Launched in 1999, the Bologna process set out to create a mutually recognisable accreditation system across Europe and the European Higher Education Area.

The reforms are ongoing and loosely structured, and challenges have cropped up particularly to do with different interpretations of the rules among the 47 participating European countries.

Some challenges

And this is the challenge facing CHEA’s new quality group.

When dealing with a host of different countries, reaching agreement on a base level of what qualifies as quality has its challenges. Countries differ – often widely – in the basic structures of their educational systems, their mode of evaluation, and the length of their courses and degrees, which makes comparison difficult.

Additionally, universities, as purveyors of independent thought and academic freedom, have a responsibility and a right to protect these fundamental values as they see fit.

Each university determines, to varying degrees, its standards for quality assurance based on its own unique philosophy and academic environment; the challenge is striking the balance between this self-regulation and accountability to the public.

To add another layer, the number of quality assurance agencies has grown around the world, many of them with competing approaches to quality.

Uvalic-Trumbic said all these conflicting principles and practices need to be compared and assessed.

“You have new forms of thinking about quality and interpreting what quality is,” Uvalic-Trumbic told University World News. “These need to be looked at from an international perspective to see what is most useful for countries.”

A convening role

CHEA will play a largely convening role, said Eaton. What the quality group won’t do is accredit colleges and universities – that’s up to the institutions and the accreditors and quality assurance agencies in their own countries.

“Although CHEA does review US organisations for quality and recognition, CHEA does not have the expertise or capacity to look beyond US accreditation,” said Eaton.

CHEA – which represents nearly 3,000 accredited American colleges and universities – plans to appoint an advisory council later this month to provide guidance on what issues the quality group should focus on.

The council, which will have its first meeting in December, will be made up of academics and representatives from quality assurance agencies worldwide.

The ultimate goal is for universities around the world to shift from competition to cooperation, united by a shared purpose of strengthening community and ensuring students are receiving the highest quality education, wherever they are. 

CHINA Country scores top ranking in overseas student numbers

China Daily23 September 2012 Issue No:240

 

 

An international education exhibition in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, attracts dozens of colleges and universities from 12 countries, including the US, Britain and Australia. China boasts the highest number of students studying overseas. Dong Jinlin / for China Daily

China continues to top in terms of student numbers at international educational institutions
The number of Chinese students pursuing higher education in overseas universities increased to 339,700 in 2011 and accounted for 14 percent of all the international students studying overseas, says a recent report.

The report prepared by the Center for China and Globalization and published by the Social Sciences Academic Press on Sept 17, gave China the top ranking in terms of overseas students. It is also part of the efforts by the government to provide statistical information on Chinese students studying abroad.

"A lot of people want to know the actual number of Chinese students studying abroad, but till now there has been no formal mechanism to collate the actual data into a report," says Wang Huiyao, director of CCG and editor-in-chief of the report.

Wang says that with China having become the second-largest economy in the world, more Chinese families can now afford to educate their children abroad. Due to the international financial crisis many countries have loosened their visa policies and earmarked education as an important revenue earner, he says.

"The desire to pursue an overseas education has also been propelled by China's WTO membership. Many parents believe that an overseas education would increase the competitive advantage of their children and also provides an alternative to the rigid Chinese educational system."
According to the report, demand for overseas education will continue for the next five to 10 years, with the average age of the students pursuing overseas education dipping further. The report says that many high school students are giving up on the gaokao (Chinese national college entrance examination) and opting to study abroad.

Last year, some 76,800 high-school students went abroad for studies, accounting for 23 percent of all the Chinese students studying abroad, the report says.
In 2009, 10.2 million students took the gaokao, while in 2010 it fell to 9.57 million. Last year, the number fell to 9.33 million, according to information provided by the Ministry of Education.
Jiayu Li, founder of USAdaxue.com, a consultancy for Chinese students in the US and a former overseas student, says disillusionment with the Chinese education system is growing as it focuses more on teaching rather than developing independent thinking capabilities of students.
"Most universities in China ask students to learn by rote, whereas universities in the US urge students to work on more projects to develop their creativity," Li says.

Zhang Chen, a graduate from Columbia University and founder of AIC Education in Beijing, a consultancy on overseas education, says the practice of top Chinese students pursuing overseas education is unavoidable.

"Most of the Chinese students are not satisfied with the fact that there is a gap between Chinese universities and US universities. The US universities are also far ahead of the Chinese universities in their capability to attract top-notch talent," Zhang says.
He says that due to globalization, it has become much easier for people to travel around the world.
"A decade ago you could not imagine how you could fly from New York to Beijing, but now it is a normal thing," Zhang says.

The report also says that most of the Chinese students studying overseas, particularly in the US, are pursuing postgraduate studies. Last year, Chinese postgraduate students accounted for 49 percent of the international students in the US, a 16-percent increase compared with 2010.
Finance continued to be the top major pursued by Chinese students, with more than 6.3 percent opting for courses in the subject. Other majors such as information management and environmental science accounted for 3.3 percent and 1.8 percent of the total.

"Finance is still in the limelight as many students feel that if they obtain a degree in the subject, they can easily get a job in China," Li says. "But it is a pity that Chinese people do not choose to study majors like humanities, which are essentially the essence of Western thought."

Though more students are expected to study abroad in the next few years, Wang says parents must exercise caution and be sure that their children can adapt to a foreign environment.
"It is a good thing that these children can experience a different culture and environment, but they need to know first whether they can adjust to the new environment," Wang says. "This is especially so for many, as they are the only children in their family."

More wage-earner families are now sending their children abroad for education, the report says. Before 2009, wage-earner families accounted for just 2 percent of the total overseas student population. However, by 2010, the number of such families had risen to 34 percent.
"Most of these parents are the post-60s generation in China and those who want better education for their children," Li says.

Wang Boqing, founder of Mycos, a Beijing-based education data consultation and assessment company, says that due to the renminbi appreciation and the higher per capita income of urban families, more Chinese wage-earner families can now send their children to study abroad.
"Studying abroad will soon become a normal thing in China," Wang says. "It will be just like the people who left their cities to pursue education in Beijing or Shanghai during the 1990s."
liaoxue@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 09/21/2012 page3)

 

IRAN Spelling errors may harm rankings of universities

Rasha Dewedar23 September 2012 Issue No:240

 

Linguistic inconsistencies in translating and spelling out the names of Iranian universities in international publications may be lowering the positioning of the country's universities in global ranking systems, according to a study.

By analysing more than 1,600 university name entries in author affiliation fields in journal publications listed in the citation database ISI Web of Science, researchers found that more than a third contained misspellings and some had more than 100 spelling variations.

Almost half of the 84 Ministry of Science, Research and Technology universities analysed had more than 10 different spellings each.

The authors of the study, which was published in July in the journal Scientometrics, say this variation may lower the universities' standing in international rankings, such the Academic Ranking of World Universities, which usually take each spelling to represent a different university.

"Despite great strides made by Iranian universities to promote their position in global ranking systems it appears that what they get is much less than what they really deserve and truly have done," concludes the study.

The authors put the misspellings down to author negligence, a lack of Persian language expertise on editorial boards of international journals, and a lack of standard spelling rules in Persian.

“Authors and native speakers follow a lot of unnecessary variations and quite often do not follow the spelling and writing rules,” said Mohammed Reza Falahati, one of the study's authors, based at the Regional Information Center for Science and Technology in Iran.

Falahati said the problem could be resolved if Iranian authors sought the help of Iranian editors or colleagues fluent in both Persian and English, or at least complied with the spelling used on their university's website.

He also suggested setting up standards for translating Persian script into English, especially for university names.

"I'm currently working on this sort of standardisation," Falahati told SciDev.

"I'm trying to compose algorithms that can account for the variations [of writing the Persian universities' names in English] and algorithms that can identify variant forms of a single term and consider them a single entity [in English] while processing the text."

The authors also suggest embedding a standardised list of Iranian universities in word processing software, such as Microsoft Word, which will automatically check university name spellings.

Tarek Adnan, head of scientific activities at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, told SciDev that spelling inconsistencies may be specific to Persian, and that the political situation is one of the main barriers to better adapting word processing software for Persian.

* This article by Rasha Dewedar, titled “Spelling errors may harm rankings of Iran's universities”, was first published on 17 September by SciDev. It is republished under a Creative Commons licence.

More grants for students from outside Europe

Jan Petter Myklebust20 September 2012 Issue No:240

 

In its budget for 2013 the Swedish government has proposed doubling the grant for students from outside Europe. The move should help attract foreign students to Sweden, which saw a dramatic drop in numbers following the introduction of fees for non-Europeans in 2011.

Earlier this month the major newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, reported a reduction of 80%, compared to 2010, in the number of foreign students admitted to higher education institutions in Stockholm.

The grant for students from outside Europe is to be increased from SEK50 million to SEK100 million (US$15 million) and distributed to universities from the Swedish Institute in Stockholm.

The funds will include students from OECD and Development Assistance Committee (DAC) countries outside Europe. A further SEK60 million is to be provided for students from countries not on the DAC list.

The application fee at Swedish higher education institutions is SEK900 (US$137) and the average tuition fee per year for students from outside Europe is SEK120,000 (US$18,300).

Defending its 2011 introduction of tuition fees for non-European students, an education ministry press release argued that Swedish higher education must compete globally through its quality rather than by virtue of tuition-free education.

But the budget increase comes as a reaction to numerous calls for grants from Swedish higher education institutions, amid reports of increased workloads in running marketing campaigns to attract foreign students and finding grants from other sources.

There have also been complaints about lack of good students on international masters courses; until 2010, foreign students from outside Europe were often in the majority.

Magnus Mörck, director of studies at the University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, said the number of masters students from outside Europe had decreased from 45 in 2010 to just four in 2012.

And KTH, the Royal Institute of Technology, said there might need to be a reduction in courses and even in personnel, due to lack of masters students.

Rector of Stockholm University Professor Kåre Bremer told University World News: “Doubling the number [of grants] is welcome but it is still far from satisfactory, and we need more grants – not only for students from developing countries but for students from any country outside Europe where tuition fees apply.”

He explained: “The grant programme is for students from countries defined by the UN as ‘developing countries’, but Sweden needs many more incoming students from, for instance, the US and other developed countries outside Europe, where students have to pay tuition fees in Sweden.”

At Stockholm University 81 students paying tuition fees started this autumn term, with the largest numbers coming from China (17), Ukraine (nine) and the US (eight). Of these, 64 were at masters level (32 of whom received a grant).

Niklas Tranaeus, a manager at the Study in Sweden programme of the Swedish Institute, told University World News that the institute welcomed the funding increase: “This will help universities to recruit students from a larger number of countries. It is good for students and it's good for the internationalisation of Swedish higher education.”

But Daniel J Guhr, managing director of Illuminate Consulting Group, questioned whether doubling grants for students from outside of Europe, while undoubtedly a “generous measure”, was the most effective approach to recruiting talented international students to Sweden.

For one thing, he argued, even SEK100 million was “a far cry from what would be needed to directly and indirectly attract substantial numbers of talented international students.

"Moreover, scholarships are only one tool in a larger toolkit Swedish universities must deploy. This toolkit also includes regulatory clarity, sufficient national brand support measures, and institutional structures that support a tuition fees-based recruiting model.

“It is not unlikely that SEK50 million would be better spent supporting institutional recruiting efforts, creating a larger presence of Swedish education at international events, and supporting new and innovative partnering approaches. The latter has worked rather well for Canada, and it should work well for Sweden.”

In terms of the increased funding made available for grants, around 60 scholarships are to be for citizens of the following countries with which Sweden has long-term development assistance programmes: Bangladesh, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

International students seeking financial help are also advised to examine the web page of the university in Sweden where they want to study.

Related Links
SWEDEN
Scholarships to woo back foreign students
SWEDEN
Fees deter foreign applicants

First formal alliance links universities in UK and Australia

Geoff Maslen18 September 2012 Issue No:240

 

The University of Warwick in Britain and Monash University in Australia have established a joint alliance and on Monday announced that Professor Andrew Coats will serve as the alliance’s first academic vice-president and director.

This follows the signing of an agreement earlier this year between the two universities to create an alliance “that will clearly establish both as globally connected universities”.

Coats, who is an accredited physician and cardiologist in the UK and Australia, has extensive experience in applied health. He was CEO of the Norwich Research Park and a professor-at-large at the University of East Anglia. He was also a visiting professor of medicine at the University of Sydney and a consulting professor for research strategy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The two vice-chancellors, Warwick’s Professor Nigel Thrift and Monash’s Professor Ed Byrne, said that the partnership would help meet the increasing student, industry and government demand for universities to produce graduates with a global education, as well as undertaking research to address “world relevant and strategically important problems that have proved too big for any one institution to address”.

They said a core priority was to deliver “a seamless international experience for students, and prepare them for life in a globally integrated labour market". This would lead to a range of jointly delivered degrees with students undertaking study at both universities.

“Each university brings their own network of international locations that will enhance the other's position as globally connected universities,” Thrift said.

“I believe this will be a highly sought after model for research-led universities.

“The world will sustain perhaps 50 such globally networked research-heavy universities in many locations, which do research in many locations, and which will produce students who will live, learn and research in many locations,” said Thrift.

Byrne added: “Higher education is in a state of great transition globally. Twenty years from now the definition of a university and the nature of tertiary education will be vastly different from what it is today.

“We’re moving towards a future where globally networked university ‘systems’ will be needed to meet rapidly increasing demand in research and education. This alliance anticipates this need and delivers both universities an important first-mover advantage.”

Key initiatives already under way include:

• £500,000 (A$775,000) awarded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council under its 'Building Global Engagements' programme for connections in the physical sciences.
  
• A$100,000 (£66,000) received from the Australian government to support student mobility.
  
• A$320,000 (£200,000) from the Australian Research Council to build collaborations in engineering.
  
• Green Steps, Monash University’s sustainability education programme, ran its first international course for students at Warwick in July, with a larger programme planned for 2013.
  
• Students from both universities will co-produce Reinvention, Warwick’s online peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the publication of high quality undergraduate student research from all disciplinary areas.
  
• A joint PhD agreement with course applications and regulations IS being finalised to enable recruitment from late 2012.
  

 

Plagiarism on the rise at Swedish universities

The Local23 September 2012 Issue No:240

 

Some 800 students were suspended or received a formal warning due to cheating at Swedish universities last year, an increase of 5% compared to 2010, according to a new report from the Swedish National Agency for Higher Education, reports The Local.

“Plagiarising has increased dramatically over the last decade. In 2001 there were only 68 cases,” said the agency’s legal expert Pontus Kyrk in a statement. Plagiarising is the most common form of cheating among university students, according to the study.

The largest number of disciplinary cases reported was at Blekinge Institute of Technology and the lowest number was at University of Gothenburg. Of the detected cheaters, 639 were suspended and 151 received an official warning. Compared to 2010, the number of suspensions increased by 8%, while the issued warnings have decreased a little. 

Full report on The Local site
 

VIETNAM More university courses in English, in internationalisation drive

Hiep Pham23 September 2012 Issue No:240

 

Three postgraduate courses at Vietnam National University-Hanoi – masters and doctoral degrees in organic chemistry, and doctorates in Vietnamese studies – are the latest to switch to being taught in English from the semester that began this month.

They join 14 other courses, seven undergraduate and seven postgraduate, delivered in English since 2007 at the country’s largest multi-disciplinary university, under its Nhiem vu chien luoc (Strategic Tasks) programme to lay the foundations for internationalisation.

The programme also has extra funding to increase the number of international students and academic staff, as well as for research and international publication, in order to push the university up the global university rankings.

Academics are obliged to spend more time on research, and curricula and textbooks have been introduced from prestigious partners such as Tokyo University in Japan, the University of New South Wales in Australia and the University of Illinois in the United States.

All courses under the programme must be delivered in English, partly by local lecturers and partly by international lecturers from partner institutions.

Students must follow a preparatory English course in their junior year and are only eligible to register for their major course after achieving a minimum ILETS score of 5.0. A score of 6.0 is required by the end of the programme.

So far, around 126 students have received bachelor degrees and 26 masters degrees under the Nhiem vu chien luoc project, which is funded by the Ministry of Finance.

“Many of them were sponsored to continue postgraduate studies in reputable foreign institutions,” Dat Vu, a Nhiem vu chien luoc coordinator at Vietnam National University, told University World News.

More broadly, the Ministry of Education and Training is monitoring a separate Chuong trinh tien tien (Advanced Programmes) project launched in 2008 under which 35 undergraduate courses are delivered in English at 23 institutions nationwide.

The first fruits

The hope is that by 2020 the Vietnam National University-Hanoi (VNU-HN) and ministry projects will lead to at least one Vietnamese university being in the top 200 of global rankings.

There is some scepticism among academics that this goal is achievable, and VNU-HN and the ministry may have to be satisfied for the time being with early fruits of the internationalisation programmes; four of 14 courses under Nhiem vu chien luoc were recently accredited by the ASEAN University Network.

All 20 technical courses in Chuong trinh tien tien are following the guidelines of the widely recognised Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology.

And it is considered an achievement that VNU-HN has enrolled two foreign students for degrees that traditionally are not in Vietnam’s areas of competitive advantage – in business administration and computer science.

“We had full-time international students before but mostly in Vietnamese studies and some other social science majors like South East Asia studies and Vietnamese literature,” Dat Vu said.

However, there are obstacles such as lack of motivation and preparedness of lecturers, teaching and studying in English and lack of clarity on how the programmes will be funded in the long term.

Challenges for teaching

“We can read and write an article, we can communicate with our international peers, but it’s a big challenge for us to teach in English,” said Quan Nguyen, a physics lecturer at VNU-HN.

“It’s difficult, almost impossible, to transfer scientific insight to local students in a language that’s different from their mother tongue.”

He said many of his colleagues prepared syllabus notes, lectures, slides and other documents in English, but in class tended to communicate in Vietnamese with students. Consequently, some students do not understand when lecturers talk in English.

Some private universities, like Hoa Sen in Ho Chi Minh City or Nguyen Trai University in Hanoi, are also piloting teaching some courses wholly or partly in English.

At Hoa Sen University, “students and parents seemed to be lured by our plan to teach some undergraduate courses in English in the two last years, without any awareness of how carefully they will need to prepare their English-language skills in the first two years,” said Rector Phuong Bui.

Financial constraints

The most challenging constraint is financial and so the outlook for teaching in English is uncertain.

Students under both the Nhiem vu chien luoc and Chuong trinh tien tien programmes receive special funding from the government. But when these projects come to an end in 2017 and 2015 respectively, the question for VNU-HN and ministry officials is where the financial resources will come from to maintain the quality of teaching in English.

The full annual cost per student taught under the two programmes is around US$4,000 to US$5,000, which is eight to 10 times more than for regular students, and currently government subsidies have been made available to make up the difference.

“An increase in the tuition fee is not a possible solution because those who can afford to pay US$4,000 to US$5,000 will choose to study abroad rather than stay in Vietnam,” Dat Vu said.

Student loans are another option. However, since the government’s first regulation on student loans in 2007 there has been little take-up.

One reason may be that the maximum of 800,000 dong (US$40) a month may not be enough for students to live in expensive cities like Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, or simply that Vietnamese students are unaccustomed to the idea of student loans and may be unaware of them, according to experts.

“Few students benefit from this [the loan regulation],” said Huong Nguyen, a specialist in public financial reform from Hanoi.

Talking to Chuong trinh tien tien students in Ho Chi Minh City in April, Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan promised that the government would adjust its policies to make student loans more attractive.

Nevertheless, “the situation does not seem to have changed much”, said Huong Nguyen.