ASIA: The English language in the ‘Asian century’

Phan Le Ha08 June 2013 Issue No:275

Asia is seen as the future for the internationalisation of higher education, and the globalisation of English is enabling this future. Countries in Asia have therefore started to align their internationalisation strategies towards this Asia focus.

For example, Singapore’s Minister of Education Heng Swee Keat concluded in his talk at the Singapore Management University on 16 February: “Asia is going to be a critical part of our future. The more we understand what is going on in Asia, the better our future will be. We must position ourselves as a global Asian hub that connects Asia with the world.”

The internationalisation of higher education and the English language play a key role in Singapore’s endeavour to become a ‘global Asian hub’ and to identify and create ‘advantages that others find relevant’.

However, it seems that the internationalisation policies of countries and universities in Asia seldom question the global dominance of English and what consequences it may have for knowledge and scholarship building and the general well-being of Asian societies in the long run.

Let me now turn to a few interrelated issues to elaborate this problem further. 

Scholars continue to raise questions related to the overemphasis on the English-only curriculum and the English-only mentality when it comes to what counts as valid knowledge and as legitimate intellectual sources in knowledge exchanges and knowledge production. 

More and more (academic) knowledge is produced in English, while less and less is produced in local (Asian) languages, partly because publications in English are valued and seen as a desirable sign of intellectual integration.

Many scholars, including Asians, also admit that they have not tried to publish in Asian languages. Many others do not see the need to learn Asian languages for their academic work because they have many Asian students eagerly wanting to ‘teach’ them about Asia through the medium of English. Their engagement with Asia tends to stop at the surface, and I believe this can be improved. 

The case of Japan

In a forthcoming article on the internationalisation of higher education, the role of English and national cultural identity issues in Asia, I analyse in particular Japan’s Action Plan 2003 to ‘Cultivate Japanese with English Abilities’ and the ‘Global 30’ Project 2008.

The former endorses the critical role of English for Japan’s advancement and integration, and notes the essential requirement for global communication through English language skills in the 21st century.

The latter aims to introduce English-medium programmes in Japan’s top 30 universities to partly promote Japanese higher education internationally, to provide access to English to Japanese students and to attract more international students to Japan.

One argument put forward in this article is that “the Japanese government’s policies to strengthen Japanese culture and identity through its English language education and the internationalisation of higher education are causing more concern regarding the government’s perceived identity crisis and a decreasing interest in Japanese universities from both Japanese and international students”.

What is more, while Japan has for a long time been paying more attention to minimising the potential of ‘losing’ the uniqueness of its national cultural identity through contact with English and the West under the pressure of globalisation, Japanese scholars have now warned the government and Japanese universities about something bigger and more fundamental. 

Precisely, they point to over-reliance on English and the potential loss of knowledge production in Japanese and other Asian languages, should these languages not receive serious consideration at a national level. 

Over-reliance on English 

With the expansion of English-language programmes, courses, schools and universities across Asia as a part of the drive to become international hubs of education, innovation and scholarship, the over-reliance on English is becoming even more alarming.

In certain settings, students start learning in English at a very young age. It is more common, however, that students stop learning and being taught in their local languages once they enter university.

Many students and academics do not know how to present a topic in their local language because they do not know the norms, genres, styles, concepts, theories and vocabularies needed to perform such tasks. They become ‘illiterate’ and thus much less sophisticated in their own tongues. 

One may also say that for many people in Asia, English is their native language and thus other local Asian languages are not necessarily their mother tongues and-or native languages; yet this group is still a tiny minority in the vast context of Asia. 

This phenomenon has the potential to (re)produce an unequal and somewhat superficial engagement with scholarship under the banner of internationalisation that is largely driven by commercialisation, the overindulgence of English in government policies as well as a nation-building agenda that tends to take many shortcuts to English while undermining local languages.

After all, the international role of English does not have to result in the impoverishment of knowledge and scholarship in other languages, and this needs to be realised in policy and practice of the internationalisation of education and language policies across the Asian region.

Likewise, English is never going to entirely replace local languages. However, it will create a divide in local societies between those who use English and those who do not. 

At the moment, the knowledge that circulates in the world of international education does so largely through the medium of the English language. It only indirectly touches those beyond the English-language world.

Part of the rationale for the internationalisation and globalisation of education is to make the world more equitable – that is, to allow people everywhere to have access to the same body of knowledge.

Does that rationale only apply to the English-language world? Or should policy-makers be thinking about how to move that equity beyond the language barrier, particularly in the context of the 'Asian century' and Asia-focused agendas worldwide? 

* Phan Le Ha lectures in the faculty of education at Monash University in Australia. She has been publishing in the area of English language education and international education. In her work, she engages critically with the debates surrounding the global status of English and the policy and practices of internationalisation. Email: ha.phan@monash.edu.

Kem Sokha’s CPP-Loyal Brother Given Police Promotion

By Chhorn Chansy - May 29, 2013

Kem Sokhon, the estranged brother of Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) acting president Kem Sokha, has been appointed to a senior role within the Interior Ministry’s national police department, a week after he gave a televised speech lambasting his sibling.

According to a May 22 sub-decree signed by Prime Minister Hun Sen and King Norodom Sihamoni that was obtained Tuesday, Mr. Sokhon was appointed deputy director of the national police’s department of central security—a role created specifically for him—and given the senior title of major general. 

The sub-decree was signed just days after the newly minted Maj. Gen. Sokhon appeared on Bayon Television, which is owned by Mr. Hun Sen’s daughter Hun Mana, and warned viewers that the opposition SRP and Human Rights Party—both of which he was previously a member of, and which merged to form the CNRP—were useless, including his brother, and that only the ruling CPP works for the people.

Prior to his promotion, Maj. Gen. Sokhon was an adviser to the government and a brigadier general in the Interior Ministry’s secretariat.

“He has been a brigadier general for many years,” national police spokesman Lieutenant General Kirth Chantharith said by telephone Tuesday.

“It is the right time [to promote him], because he has worked for many years,” Lt. Gen. Chantharith added, without specifying how many years Mr. Sokhon had been a brigadier general.

Maj. Gen. Sokhon declined to comment on his promotion, or relations with his politically active brother.

In his televised speech, which Mr. Hun Sen on Friday said should be replayed in villages around the country in the lead up to the July 28 national election, Mr. Sokhon said: “You have to decide between the CPP and the opposition party. Who is working to help you, and who is just lying and cheating on you?”

Reached by telephone, Mr. Sokha chose not to comment on his brother’s promotion. “I would not comment, but citizens can make their own evaluation and know the tricks of the CPP,” he said.

CNRP spokesman Yim Sovann said the ruling party is merely using Maj. Gen. Sokhon in order to attack the opposition.

“In the CPP, anyone who is good at insulting the opposition party gets a position and a promotion,” he said. “It does not affect the party. Cambodian citizens know about the national and world history.”

Opposition slow to bite back in crisis

Last Updated on 29 May 2013

By David Boyle and Joe Freeman

Last Updated on 29 May 2013

By David Boyle and Joe Freeman

 

Analysis

Blindsided by a damaging political scandal, the Cambodia National Rescue Party finally moved into crisis management mode on Monday, defending acting president Kem Sokha from allegations he had denied the existence of the notorious Khmer Rouge S-21 prison.

The response, however, came two days after the scandal broke, leaving observers to wonder why the opposition CNRP had dragged its feet for so long, and whether the delay says something about the party’s preparedness mere months before the national election.

“They have the spokesperson, but they don’t have a team, and they don’t have a good strategy,” said Pa Nguon Teang, director of the Cambodian Center for Independent Media. “They just wait for the media to approach them rather than approaching the media.”

On Monday, after refusing to speak to reporters about the controversy, Sokha offered some explanation of how his comments could have been cut out of context in the roughly one-minute edited clip to suggest S-21 was a Vietnamese invention.

At last, the CNRP issued a statement that afternoon, saying the comments were misleadingly edited from a more than year-old speech rather than a recent outing to Prey Veng province recent outing to Prey Veng province on May 18, as the Council Ministers’ website claims.

The CNRP further argued yesterday that Sokha was not even in Prey Veng on the day in question and said they have a recording of what they claim is the actual speech, devoid of any reference to S-21, which he delivered in Kampong Cham province that day.

“On May 18, he was in Kampong Cham, and we have the full speech in Kampong Cham and that has already been broadcast a few days afterward, and we have that full recorded,” Kem Sokha’s daughter and CNRP deputy director of public affairs Kem Monovithya said yesterday.

“Why over a year ago wasn’t there any reaction from the public? And, of course, people listen to his speeches all the time,” she said. “What we are saying is that if it was offensive, people would have reacted over a year ago.”

But such defences came far too late; the scandal had already assumed a life of its own.

The CNRP statement came hours after Prime Minister Hun Sen picked up on the controversy in a speech and ran with it, using the CPP-distributed recording of Sokha, in which he appears to call S-21 a Vietnamese myth, to propose a law outlawing genocide denial.

Suddenly, Sokha found himself portrayed as a conspiracy theorist whose comments questioned the crimes of a regime that killed his own father.

Historians have written that the Vietnamese helped with the preservation of S-21, more commonly known as Tuol Sleng but had nothing to do with it when it was an active prison where about 13,000 Cambodians were imprisoned there before being killed by the Khmer Rouge.

Today, Sokha will for the first time formally address the press. But the CNRP still have not provided a clear and coherent explanation of exactly how Sokha’s comments in the short, ruling party-produced audio clip could have been twisted out of context, and their glacial response to the damning allegations has been hard for some to fathom.

Yim Sovann, a spokesman from one of the two parties that merged to create the CNRP last year, said it took time to release an accurate response, and that a team of three sifted through hour after hour of speeches to find the relevant tape.

“We had to check one by one. Oh, it took a long time. He went to many provinces, and many communes, we had to check one by one,” he said.

“We found out everything the CPP said was fabricated,” he added, accusing the ruling party of splicing the recording together to create a misrepresentation of Sokha’s views.

Sovann said a recording of the actual speech Sokha delivered on May 18 would be presented to the media.

Ek Tha, a spokesman for the Council of Minister’s Press and Quick Reaction Unit, yesterday emphatically denied that the recording of Sokha had been misleadingly edited, but would not say whether the PQRU would release the full audio clip so this could be verified.

“Whatever he said is from very strong evidence, and the Press and Quick Reaction Unit is very accurate. We do not make things up. We stick to the facts; we stick to comments made by Kem Sokha, and Kem Sokha’s comments were very unacceptable,” he said.

Though the PQRU has had his party on the ropes for the past few days, Sovann scoffed at the idea the CNRP needed a more sophisticated PR machine.

He pointed out that with no access to state radio and television, the opposition was limited to print media and a radio station with insufficient broadcasting reach as its only platforms.

“How can we communicate the message to the people? You know how many people read the newspaper? Only one or two people read the newspaper,” he said. “It is not a matter for human resources. It is a matter of CPP control of the media.”

But crisis communications is a new reality for all parties in Cambodia. The CPP’s PQRU is itself only a few years old and only recently created a position for a dedicated National Assembly spokesman.

Laura Thornton, senior director for the Cambodia wing of the National Democratic Institute, said her organisation provided training in media messaging for provincial officials with various party affiliations last year.

“There just doesn’t seem to be a lot of familiarity with the process,” she said. “They were less capable of identifying what their opponent might say about them.”

In the training, officials were asked to foresee what another party might say about them during an exercise called “message box”.

“Before a crisis happens, what could happen? What are your weaknesses? how can you address your vulnerabilities?” Thornton said. “I think all the parties are going to have to be savvier and more on top of this.”

And perhaps yesterday Sokha had heeded that message when he publicly announced he would support Hun Sen’s proposed law to outlaw genocide denial legislation, no doubt a primer for revelations at tomorrow’s press conference. As for the very top of the CNRP, the response was succinct. Answering a series of questions about the scandal, self-exiled president Sam Rainsy, who lives abroad to avoid prison terms in Cambodia, merely wrote:  “I am disturbed by this incident, which makes me feel sorry,” in an emailed response to the Post on Monday.  

Kingdom lacks engineers: minister

Students at Hun Sen University attend a graduation ceremony last February. Photograph: Heng Chivoan/Phnom Penh Post

 

Last Updated on 29 May 2013

By Rann Reuy

Because Cambodia’s youth has not focused enough on studying technical or engineering subjects, the Kingdom now faces a lack of human resources and the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports plans to reform the country’s education system, according to the minister in charge.

Minister Im Sethy said he foresaw businesses or office-work related subjects attracting more students at university level than engineering subjects.

“Now we see most [youths] have studied business, office work and communication, but they don’t pay attention and rarely choose subjects like engineering, and technical works,” he said.

Im Sethy said people who have had proper education, particularly university students, mostly focused on studying in fields where they don’t have to work in difficult areas, but prefer studying communication subjects, such as writing and speaking.

Education officials are learning from this situation and are looking to reform the education system in order to direct the youths to target their options for their jobs, he said.

He acknowledged that technical learning is important for improving the quality of work.

“We need to establish some places that are necessary in some provinces to train techniques [to the young],” he said. “We think further how to encourage youths – both boys and girls – who are studying in high school to have signals that direct them to study science and mathematics.”

According to the ministry’s Education Statistics and Indicators 2011-2012, Cambodia had 554,828 enrolled students studying from grade 7 to grade 12, while the students who finished high school totalled 90,000 last year.

Tech Samnang, adviser to the government and former secretary-general of the Accreditation Committee of Cambodia (ACC), agreed with Im Sethy, saying that most of the students have no confidence in their own decisions and chose subjects not based on their desires.

“They see immediate money and they flock to study that subject,” he said, adding that “when they apply for work, one company needs 10 employees, but applicants could be a thousand. How can they [be employed]?”

Cambodia needed a lot of engineering graduates, particularly in the agricultural sector, while most Cambodian youths thought that studying agriculture means going back to work on a farm, but they don’t know that they can use new techniques to produce more from the farms.

Heng Vanda, principal of the Vanda Institute, said recently there were about 8,000 students majoring in accounting.

He said the business major could be divided into many subjects, such as management, marketing, accounting and tourism which would enable the students to have jobs during their studying time, or let some of the students to set up their own businesses, such as running restaurants.

“Cambodia lacks human resources in higher skills such as financial analysis,” he said.

CHINA: Joblessness fears as record number of graduates hit market

Yojana Sharma22 May 2013 Issue No:273

 

A record 6.99 million students – an increase of 190,000 on last year's figure – will graduate from China’s higher education institutions this year. But graduate unemployment, a scourge in recent years, shows no sign of easing for the class of 2013.

Local media in a number of Chinese regions have been declaring 2013 as the toughest year ‘in recent memory’ for new graduates looking for their first job, with even the country’s top leaders voicing concerns.

Already official media is reporting that job vacancies for graduates in Beijing are at 98,000, a year-on-year decrease of 14%, with officials linking the drop to a slowdown in economic growth.

This month Chinese President Xi Jinping said in official statements that employment would be a top priority, at a time when economic growth has eased from double-digit figures to around 7.7% in the first quarter of this year, the slowest annual rate for over a decade. The manufacturing sector also declined slightly this year.

According to official estimates, every 1% drop in GDP growth figures wipes out around a million jobs.

Xi had paid a surprise visit to a job fair in Tianjin in eastern China on 14 May and urged relevant authorities to assist graduates who wanted to start their own businesses and those who were seeking employment.

Premier Li Keqiang said in the same week that the country faced an “unprecedented challenge” in finding jobs for the record number of graduates.

“In the first few months of the year, as economic growth has slowed, the employment trend has remained stable but employment pressures remain, and the problem of employment for tertiary students is particularly prominent,” Li said in a speech.

The figures

According to official media the number of graduates is "outrunning" economic growth.

“In the past nearly 90% of graduates could find a job six months after graduation but I’m afraid the figure may only be 86% or so if the economy does not rebound in the later half of the year,” Zhang Yi, an expert in labour economics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, was quoted as saying this month in the official China Daily.

The leadership has said that graduate employment will be the focus of government efforts in coming years, with the development of service industries, including promoting more internship programmes.

However, conditions are tough for final-year students, who graduate in July.

According to the http://MyCos.Com website, the 2013 job contract signing rate for postgraduates is at just 26%, down 9% compared to last year. For undergraduates and junior college students the equivalent figure is 35% and 32%, down 12% and 13% respectively compared to last year. The number of employment contracts signed is a key comparable indicator of job prospects.

The official Global Times this week reported a booming business in selling fake employment contracts to graduating students, as some universities have been demanding proof of employment before they will provide a copy of their qualification.

Universities rely on high graduate employment rates for government funding and other resources. The practice may be further inflating employment figures, distorting the dire unemployment situation, academics said.

In Shanghai the Municipal Education Commission said only 44% of around 178,000 undergraduate and graduate students in the city had signed employment contracts so far this year – a 2% decline compared to last year.

The commission’s Deputy Director Li Ruiyan said in a press briefing this month that the situation was “no worse” than 2009-11.

Nonetheless, he said the number of available positions in Shanghai had declined compared to the past two years, particularly in social services, manufacturing industries and private companies, according to the Shanghai Daily newspaper.

Universities offering incentives

Universities and colleges have been concerned for some time about the employment prospects of their students. Shanghai’s universities were reportedly offering incentives for students to return to their home towns to work. These include career training programmes, communications skills and other courses.

For example Shanghai Dianji University was offering transportation subsidies of up to CNY1,500 (US$242) and an additional CNY800 to students from outside Shanghai willing to return to their home towns to work after graduating. Incentives would also be offered to students carrying on to postgraduate studies, the university said.

Yao Wichun, deputy director of student affairs at Shanghai Dianji University, said there had been a 6% drop in the number of graduates with bachelor degrees who had secured a job, compared to this time last year.

Shanghai University was reported in Shanghai Daily as launching a training camp for students who had difficulty finding a job, to improve their skills.

There has also been a boom in private training centres that purport to make graduates ‘job ready’, teaching them interview technique and other soft skills sought by employers.

Shanghai students were said to have higher salary expectations compared to those in other cities, due to Shanghai’s higher living costs, and some ‘netizens’ speculated on the Sina Weibo social media site that graduates were demanding too much in salary.

Officials continued to insist that graduates’ expectations were too high. 

MALAYSIA: Court quashes new private college registration rules

New Straits Times25 May 2013 Issue No:273

 

KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysian Association of Private Colleges and Universities and 54 others yesterday obtained the green light from the High Court to quash a circular in relation to the new registration system of international students in local private institutions.

Judge Datuk Seri Zakaria Sam granted leave for a judicial review to the applicants after the leave application was not objected to by the Attorney-General's Chambers.

Besides the Malaysian Association of Private Colleges and Universities, the National Association of Private Educational Institutions, Aimst University and 52 other private institutions are the applicants in the leave application filed on April 30.

They named the Registrar General of Private Higher Educational Institutions and Higher Education Ministry as respondents.

In their affidavit in support, the applicants claimed that the registrar general had issued the circular on Jan 23 to all private institutions to introduce additional conditions for the students' registration.

The additional conditions include that all private institutions were required to use a new system called the Students Application and Registration System (Stars) to submit application for international student passes on behalf of the student.

They also claimed that the institutions would be required to pay a mandatory processing fee of RM1,000 to a government linked company, Educational Malaysia Global Services (EMGS), upon the submission of an application on the Stars system.

"The other fees which the private institutions would be required to pay are the medical screening fee of RM250 and the fee for the medical insurance policy selected by the student.

"The fees would be payable to EMGS directly."

They further claimed that they have incurred high additional costs as a result of the new conditions.

"The changes introduced by the circular has made the entire process more bureaucratic," they said.

The applicants are seeking, among others, a court declaration that the circular is ultra vires the Private Higher Educational Institutions Act 1996 and the Federal Constitution.

Zakaria yesterday ordered the applicants to file their judicial review application within 14 days.

Read more: Green light from the High Court for private colleges and universities - Latest - New Straits Times http://www.nst.com.my/latest/green-light-from-the-high-court-for-private-colleges-and-universities-1.283914#ixzz2UPaZs42o

NETHERLANDS: Foreign PhDs urged to stay during strong expansion

Jan Petter Myklebust and Eric Beerkens25 May 2013 Issue No:273

 

The number of doctoral candidates in the 13 Dutch universities jumped by almost 60% in the decade to 2010 and is now close to 4,000 students each year. An OECD country report on tertiary education in The Netherlands in 2008 said the proportion of foreign students at doctorate level was then 20%, with some 640 PhDs conferred.

Through the ongoing internationalisation of graduate education in The Netherlands, a broad variety of different PhD trajectories have emerged.

The PhD candidate as an employee of the university is the traditional model and is still widespread, especially in the hard sciences and life sciences.

Increasingly, however, foreign PhD candidates come to The Netherlands to pursue the degree while being funded by their own governments. Chinese government-sponsored students and DIKTI students – lecturers funded by the Indonesian Directorate General of Higher Education – are important examples.

The PhD premium

The output-based financing in the Dutch system – through a so-called ‘PhD premium’ where universities receive around €90,000 (US$116,000) for each graduate – is an important factor contributing to the growth.

Data collected by the Dutch Association of Universities indicates that 50% of PhD candidates at the three technical universities are foreign, with 60% from Europe, 25% from Asia and Oceania, and 10% from North America. The percentage of international employed PhD candidates for all universities was 45% in 2010, up from 35% in 2006.

The first five years after 2000 saw the third highest growth rate of international students in the world in The Netherlands, after South Africa and New Zealand.

According to a Nuffic report, in 2011-12, 69,450 international students were in the country, up 45% since 2007-08. But this large number included exchange students, while those enrolled in degree courses amounted to 56,131 in 2011-12.

Spain and France had more than 2,000 students at Dutch higher education institutions, while Italy, Bulgaria, the US, the UK, Poland, Indonesia, Greece, Turkey and Romania each had more than 1,000.

Not enough Dutch PhD students

But The Netherlands authorities are worried that doctoral training – especially in the fields of natural sciences, life sciences and engineering – is not attracting enough Dutch students, with many talented youths deterred from studying for a doctorate because only 30% of PhD holders are estimated to find work in academic institutions.

Furthermore, in many organisations outside the world of academia, a doctoral degree is not rewarded or is rewarded only to a limited extent.

The fact that PhD graduates are increasingly employed outside academe has been acknowledged by many Dutch universities and is reflected by the increased attention to transferable skills in many graduate schools.

The PhD Candidates Network of The Netherlands even set up a ‘professional PhD programme’ that provides students with the opportunity to work for several months outside their universities.

The Dutch authorities have tried repeatedly to address the imbalance between more doctorate holders leaving The Netherlands than those who graduated from local universities or migrated to The Netherlands with a degree taken elsewhere.

The Journal of Doctoral Studies published a report based on a survey that mapped the employment status of doctorate students at the time of graduation and looked at what factors influenced their initial labour market position.

The survey of 1,113 PhD candidates at four Dutch universities revealed that 86% of the respondents were in employment at the time of graduation, while 12% were working with a foreign university or university-affiliated organisation abroad.

Asked if they would seek work abroad, 11% reported they would go to another country, 14% were undecided and 75% said they hoped to find work in The Netherlands. Of internationally recruited PhD candidates who had come to The Netherlands to pursue their doctoral degree, 37% indicated they wanted to remain, 20% were undecided and 43% planned to leave.

The Social and Economic Council of The Netherlands, a powerful advisor to the government, published a report in January addressed to the Minister of Education and titled Making it in The Netherlands: Advisory report on retaining international students in The Netherlands.

The report calculates that if 19% of foreign students taking a degree in The Netherlands were to stay, this would generate €740 million a year in net return on investment.

It notes that, at present, only 7% of foreign students are studying science or technology – whereas in other countries the proportion is up to 52% – and calls for new strategies to recruit foreign students and retain them in programmes that will help alleviate labour market shortages.

Tax incentives

In an effort to boost the number of skilled workers and doctorate holders, the government introduced a 30% tax reduction scheme last year that also applies to postdocs. The extra incentives were intended to attract foreign specialists with specific skills or expertise that were scarce or not available in the local marketplace.

The most significant benefit is that the full Dutch taxable salary is reduced to a 70% salary, so that 30% of the agreed wage is exempt from payroll and personal income tax.

The Tax and Customs Administration offers a maximum effective tax rate of 36.4% so foreigners can cover their extra-territorial expenses, and these may include the costs of water, gas and electricity etc if prices in The Netherlands are higher than in the country of origin.

PhD and masters graduates who are hired within a year of completing their studies also benefit from a relaxation of the rules.

Conclusion

The high quality of Dutch researchers is demonstrated by the number of European Research Council grants awarded to young scientists at Dutch host institutions, second in the EU-27 grant round after France. A relatively small proportion of Dutch grant holders selected a host institution in another country, indicating untapped potential for recruitment of international talent.

Dutch PhD candidates were traditionally employed by the university where they earned their doctorate, but now universities want more flexibility by having the opportunity to offer scholarships instead of salaries.

But there is a lot of opposition from the PhD candidates, who fear a worsening of their working conditions. Universities, however, believe a more flexible system would increase the opportunities to recruit new PhD students, especially from abroad.

Professor Jo Ritzen, a former education minister in three Dutch governments and president of Maastricht University from 2003-11, says: “The Netherlands’ prosperity, its economy and Dutch higher education will all benefit enormously if talented foreign students can be persuaded to study in the country and remain after graduation.

“I am tremendously pleased with the dramatic increase in foreign PhDs. This is a great contribution to our future welfare because they bring talent and make academia blossom in international openness.

“Many play a substantial role after completion of their PhD either within The Netherlands or in other countries as partners in academic or economic activities which spur the development in The Netherlands”.

* Eric Beerkens works at Leiden University on internationalisation policies and strategies.

SINGAPORE: Lack of students closes joint law course with NYU

Adele Yung25 May 2013 Issue No:273

 

A joint degree run by New York University and the National University of Singapore that awarded a master of laws degree from both universities is being scrapped after just five years, due to poor uptake by students.

The one-year graduate course started in 2007 with 39 students, with ambitions to enrol up to 80 students a year. However, according to National University of Singapore (NUS) figures it averaged only around 40 students a year.

Although the degree attracted students from more than 20 countries, just 21 students will enter the programme this year, completing the degree in 2014.

Tuition fees for the course taught by faculty members from both universities are around S$62,600 (US$50,000) a year – almost double the cost of NUS’s graduate law programmes.

According to local reports, “at least” 50 scholarships were offered in each of the first four years of the programme but that did not appear to boost the intake.

Singapore’s Economic Development Board, which provides incentives for private businesses to set up in Singapore, had provided some financial support “based on the understanding that it would be financially sustainable after a few years”.

Students study in the Singapore institution for a law degree before going to the US. New York University (NYU) said in a statement: “The incoming class that begins its studies in May 2013 will be the last intake for the programme.

“This group is the last that is covered by the order of the New York State Court of Appeals that allows NYU@NUS graduates to sit the New York Bar examination. It also enjoys generous scholarships and financial awards that the programme has secured for outstanding applicants from around the world.”

The degree was initially established for four years until 2011 and then extended for another three until 2014.

“We have now agreed to conclude the programme without seeking additional financing to extend it. In the last few years, the cost of graduate legal education has risen significantly, and running the programme in Singapore has been made possible by a generous grant by the government of Singapore to fund the numerous scholarships offered,” NYU said.

“Unfortunately, the programme did not become self-financing in the way we had hoped it would; continuing it in its present form would entail a significant diversion of financial resources on the part of both NYU and NUS.”

NUS said that about five or six of its students go on to study in the US every year.

The Economic Development Board said it had provided financial support to the NYU@NUS programme on the understanding that it would be financially sustainable after a few years.

However, other law education providers have not been dissuaded from the Singapore market.

The UK’s College of Law announced last year that it would set up a Singapore campus – its first venture outside the UK – in conjunction with the Singapore Institute of Legal Education, to develop new courses in the city state.

It will be an accredited provider of continuing professional development programmes in law, which became compulsory in Singapore from April 2012, as well as developing undergraduate and graduate courses.

Singapore is seen as a hub of international legal and arbitration services for the region, but in practice most law graduates in the commercial field work for British commercial law firms.