Orientation Workshop on Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme (HKPFS) Presented by the EdUHK at UBB, Cambodia

On the evening of March 04, 2018, the University of Battambang (UBB) organized an Orientation Workshop in Hong Kong Ph.D. Fellowship Scheme (HKPFS) to study at the Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK), China. This fellowship is funded by the Research Grants Council (RGC) of Hong Kong since 2009. Prof. Lo Sing Kai, who is Associate Vice President and Dean of the Graduate School of EUHK, together with two other delegates, Ms. Poon Sin Yi Teresa, who is Assistant Registrar and Head of Administration and Ms. Wang Yifei who, is Special Project Manager of Graduate School have presented the detailed information about the fellowship and how to prepare an impressive application to succeed in this prestigious fellowship.

Consistent with the One Belt One Road Policy announced by the Chinese Government, the Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK) is keen to get Ph.D. students from Cambodia, particularly in the UBB. On behalf of H.E. Sieng Emtotim, Rector of UBB, lecturers and students, Dr. Sam Rany, Vice-Rector of UBB has expressed his profound thanks to the delegates who contributed their valued time and resources to motivate UBB’s staff and students to apply for this fellowship and he strongly hoped that UBB’s lecturers and students will get this Ph.D. Fellowship under their facilitation and cooperation. 

Rectors' Meeting in Brussels

Photo: March 6th - 10th, EURASHE (European Association of Institutions in Higher Education) and project coordinator co-organised meeting of twelve leading representatives from TACTIC partner universities from Cambodia, Vietnam and Mongolia. The Rectors’ Meeting took place in Brussels, Belgium in the EURASHE headquarters.

“UBB Delegates attended the TACTIC Rectors’ Meeting in Brussels” Responding to the official invitation from the European Association of Institution in Higher Education (EURASHE) under TACTIC Erasmus+ project, two UBB delegates, H.E. Sieng Emtotim, Rector of UBB and Dr. Sam Rany, Director of Institute of Foreign Languages have attended the Rectors’ Meeting at Brussels, Belgium on March 6-10, 2017. This meeting aims at providing educational leadership training for top leaders from six Asian Universities in Cambodia, Vietnam, and Mongolia, and strengthens the international cooperation among these countries. UBB delegate acquired new knowledge related the roles of stakeholder in development of European Higher Education Institutions including European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA), European Students Union (ESU), European University Association (EUA), and EURASHE. Furthermore, they learned how to apply for some academic and research projects funded by European Commission and agencies. The last day, our delegate has visited the Odisee University in Brussels.

The 3 days intensive program started by the TACTIC presentation by the coordinator of the project Violeta Osouchova from Masaryk University, Brno. Thereafter the presentations of each of the partner institutions followed with emphasis on the expectations from TACTIC project. After the lunch break, EURASHE Project Manager Marko Grdosic and Policy and Communications Officer Alexandre Wipf led the evaluating discussion about strengths and weaknesses of the partner universities, followed by two European Commission representatives Manel Laporta Grau and Antonella Giorgio who covered equally important aspect of the cooperation - the role and significance of European Union in supporting the capacity building in higher education outside European Union.

Second part of the program included presentations on importance of European associations for representing the interests of higher education institutions and role of stakeholders in development of higher education in Europe. Speeches were given by Michal Karpisek, EURASHE Secretary General, Paula Ranne (ENQA, European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education) and Anna Widegren (ESU, European Students Union).

On the last day of the program the participants visited ODISEE University College in Brussels. The day followed by presentation on management of higher education institutions in Belgium by Johan Cloet, former EURASHE Secretary General, former General Director of Lessius University College/Vice-General Director of Thomas More University College in Antwerp, Belgium. After that, with reflections of the participants the Rectors’ Meeting was officially closed. We are looking forward to the meeting of all partners in Hanoi, Vietnam, in December 2017.

A Colonial University for South-East Asia? The Indochinese University in Hanoi (1906-1945)

A Colonial University for South-East Asia? The Indochinese University in Hanoi (1906-1945)
By Sara Legrandjacques

(Sourse: Kyotoreview.org): The article is available at: https://kyotoreview.org/yav/indochinese-colonial-university-for-south-east-asia/

In 2006, Hanoi University celebrated its 100th birthday. In his celebratory speech, the University Rector, Prof. Dao Trong Thi, emphasized the importance of the institution’s history. Referring to its colonial birth, he highlighted almost a century of Vietnamese higher education.

Created by the French twice, in 1906 and 1917, the Indochinese University particularly developed in the interwar period after its rocky start. It remained open during WWII before its appropriation by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945. It might be suspected that this post-colonial era would have reduced its zone of influence; but from the start, Hanoi University always had striven to be a regional academic hub, especially in South-East Asia.

The 1906 foundation decree by Governor General Paul Beau (1902-1908) introduced this regional goal:

 “A set of higher classes for students from the colony and neighbouring lands is established, in Indochina, under the name “Indochinese University”. This institution aims to expand in the Far-East, especially through the use of French language, European scientific knowledge and methods.” ¹

Since 1902, Chinese students had started to enrol in Indochinese higher schools, mainly Hanoi School of Medicine.The university tried to enlarge this Asian recruitment in order to increase the French influence in the area through the propagation of French knowledge. At that time, Japanese higher schools, renovated in the 1880s, were attracting increasing numbers of students. The British were also creating new institutions in Hong Kong and Singapore. A French institution was seen as a way to compete with them and to prevent local students leaving the colony. As early as 1906, Paul Beau sent letters to French diplomatic representatives in China, Siam, the Philippines, Indonesia and a few more distant lands including Japan and India as an effort to attract potential students. But this regional advertising was hardly efficient: South-East Asian students stayed away from Hanoi and the first – and only – year group was comprised solely of Vietnamese, mostly from the Tonkin region of northern Vietnam. This project suddenly floundered: having opened in 1907, the Indochinese University was closed in 1908 because of financial issues.

This first failure did not prevent some Asian students from heading to Indochina: Chinese students from the borderlands, especially Yunnan, continued seeking out the school of medicine in the years that followed. They generally frequented Franco-Annamite or Franco-Indigenous schools in China. Furthermore, some of them were resuming their studies. Lieou Han Kouang from Kai-Houa (Yunnan), quit a military career to head to Hanoi to study medicine. This non-commissioned officer had learnt French in Shanghai and Mongtseu. After having his so-called “worthiness” checked, and thanks to support from Hanoi School of Medicine’s French director, Dr Cognacq, he left China on February 2, 1918 and enrolled in the school. ² The Hanoi University would reopen in 1917-1918 for the second time. However, French authorities were becoming increasingly suspicious of cross-border nationalism so some new rules were dedicated to this specific audience. Students were admitted for precise purposes, like helping and assisting French medical doctors in their country of origin.

Did the reopening of Hanoi University in 1917-1918 give a new momentum to this regional influence? It seems difficult to say. The renewed institution was comprised of five schools: medicine, public works, administration, teaching, and agriculture-forestry. Despite students from Southern China being attracted to Hanoi particularly by medical studies, this assessment must be put into perspective: most of the Chinese, according to the French historian Daniel Hémery, would rather chose France, ³ or other Asian, European or American countries, instead of Indochina. The Indochinese University’s audience remained local, all the more so as no mention of a regional purpose was included as part of Governor General Albert Sarraut’s plan in 1917:

“I’ve established a Board for Higher Education whose mission is to prepare the creation, organize the system and formulate the curriculum of higher schools that will be opened in Indochina to French and Native students and will be gathered to constitute the Indochinese University.” ⁴

When the Business School (1920), the School of Applied Sciences (1922), the School of Fine Arts (1924),  the School of Veterinary Training (1928) and finally, a Law School (1931) opened, this local trend still remained. By 1929, 511 students frequented the university. About half of them came from Tonkin, the northern province of Indochina where Hanoi is located. Around one-quarter were from the South, Cochinchina, and between 10 percent and 15 percent were from Annam (central Vietnam). In a nutshell, the Indochinese University was above all else a Vietnamese University. It was neglected by the Cambodians and the Laotians, even though their lands were parts of French Indochina. As Buddhist education was preserved by the colonizers, they were taught in pagoda schools, inside or outside the colony, in Siam for instance.

This trend would become noticeable in the later colonial period, when in 1939-1940, 732 students were studying at Hanoi university (table 1).

	French	Tonkin	Annam	Cochinchina	Cambodia	Laos	Chinese & Others

Biography of Dr. Sam Rany, Cambodia

Dr. Sam Rany was born on March 11, 1982, in Kampot province, Cambodia. He is currently the Vice-Rector of the National University of Battambang (NUBB), which is a public university in the northwestern part of Cambodia. Dr. Rany is the former Director of the Institute of Foreign Languages at UBB, from September 2008 to May 2017. He has also been a co-director of the Confucius Institute of the National University of Battambang (CINUBB) since 2019. 

He earned his Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration from the School of Educational Studies, University of Science Malaysia (USM) in 2016. His doctoral thesis is entitled "The Influence of Institutional Integration Factors on Students’ Intellectual Development: A Case Study of Three Cambodian Public Universities". He obtained a Certificate of General Administration from the Royal School of Administration, Cambodia in May 2017, and he received a Certificate of E-Teacher Certificate of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) from Oregon University and a Certificate of Using Educational Technology in the English Language Classroom from Iowa State University, sponsored by the U.S. Embassy to Cambodia in 2010 and 2021 prospectively. He graduated with Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in Law (LL.B & LL.M) from the Royal University of Law and Economics (RULE), Cambodia in 2004 and 2007 respectively. His bachelor's thesis is entitled" State Responsibility in the International Law", and his master's thesis is entitled" The Notions of Goodfaith in the International Sale of Goods."

 

He has also been a lecturer at NUBB since 2008; he has worked closely with the US Embassy in terms of educational cooperation since 2009. He had hosted three US English Fellows, Mrs. Connie Leonard, Dr. Virginia Simmons, and Mr. Adam Aultowski, who had been sent by the US Embassy to work at the University of Battambang. He has successfully completed a two-year project with 25 disadvantaged students funded by the US Embassy, namely, the English Access Micro-scholarship Program from 2015 to 2017 at NUBB. He is also actively involved in some project coordinators' work, including Erasmus+, KOICA, JICA, USAID, and World Bank (HEIP). His areas of interest included English for Specific Purposes (ESP), Legal Studies, Public Policy and Public Administration, Cambodian Educational History, Higher Education Leadership and Administration, Educational Assessment, and other Social Science Research.

JENESYS 2016 Home-Stay Program for Young Cambodia Government Officials in OSAKI City

Japan (5-6 November 2016): It was my great pleasure and privilege to attend the homestay program organized by the JICE in Osaki City and Miyagi Prefecture. I and two other colleagues, Mr. Sun Sokhet and Va Vannak, from the Royal School of Administration had stayed with a Japanese family, Mr. Aoki Akira and Mrs. Aoki. Mr. Akira is retired high school teacher and a member of the BoD of the Non Profit Organization (NPO) in Osaki. 

During our stay with their family, we have learned a lot about Japanese cultures, living styles, and other routine activities. The most remembered activities are playing with autism children, walking around the village, farming some vegetables, and practicing mediation (concentration). Our sincere thanks go to their family who accepted us to stay in their house and treated us very well.

#JENESYS 2016
#JICE
#CAMBODIA

Young Cambodian Government Officials attended JENSYS 2016 (2nd Batch, Politics)

Japan (November 17, 2016): Twenty-five participants from the Royal School of Administration attended the Japan-East Asia Network of Exchange for Students and Youths (JENESYS 2016) that had been organized by the Japan International Cooperation Center (JICE) on the Theme of Politics from November 1, 2016, to November 2016. This program aims to provide good cooperation and understanding of Japanese culture and society to strengthen the spirit of solidarity with Asia through youth exchange activities.

Out of 550 students in the Royal School of Administration, I was selected to attend this crucial program among other 24 participants in Japan. I have obtained new knowledge and experiences of Japanese culture, public administration, national infrastructure, modernization, and people. I have attended one lecture on "National Public Employees in Japan" offered by Associate Professor Watanabe Yasuyuki, from the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), Japan. I have learned a lot from his perspectives and experiences on how to reform the civil services in the country. Also, he mainly focused on the professional code ethics of the civil servants or national public employees and other regulations. Japan is a good model country in terms of transparency and accountability. I also visited the National Diet of Japan (the House of Councillors), and the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 

Most interestingly, I visited the region of MINAMI SANRIKU which was destroyed by Sunami on March 11, 2011. The counselor has shared experiences on how to manage the national disasters and restore this region.

Moreover, I experienced two days of a homestay program with a Japanese family in Osaki City. I have learned Onseb Somuries at the Sebsyokan Hotel.

Taking in this blogger, I would like to express my profound thanks to the JICE and the Japanese government that provided me golden opportunities to explore Japanese culture, politics, and people. 

China’s Back Yard Cambodia

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/world/2015/09/05/the-push-and-pull-of-chinas-orbit/

CHINA: Foreign student scholarships spark anger as fees rise

Yojana Sharma24 October 2014 Issue No:340

 

 A new plan to lure foreign students with generous scholarships by China’s eastern Jiangsu province, host to a number of foreign branch campuses, has sparked anger in the province over resources being directed towards “wealthy foreigners” while Chinese students struggle with a rising fee burden.

Resentment has also grown as foreign students are provided with what is seen as far superior accommodation to that available for local students.

In mid-August, the province’s education bureau launched a ‘Study in Jiangsu’ programme to develop the province into a major destination for foreign students. Under the programme, annual scholarships of 50,000 to 90,000 yuan (US$8,200 to US$14,700) will be made available to applicants from overseas wanting to study at universities, including joint overseas ventures such as Duke Kunshan University and Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University.

Another 50 publicly funded universities in Jiangsu, many in the popular student cities of Nanjing and Suzhou are permitted to take foreign students.

Yang Shubing, director of publicity at the Jiangsu education bureau said the province had some 18,700 foreign students by the end of last year. “To encourage more such students, the provincial scholarship total has reached 15 million yuan each year,” he was quoted in official media as saying.

But the plan has sparked outrage, with local residents criticising the scheme on China’s microblog site Weibo, in particular because it was announced at a time when universities in at least nine Chinese provinces were introducing steep tuition fees rises for local students this year.

In some cases fee rises for locals will be as much as 50% compared to last year or even 75%, as was reported for Ningxia Autonomous Region – a poorer region in western China.

Scholarships and grants for local students have not risen in line with these sharp increases, angering students and families, the Shanghai Daily newspaper reported in August.

Fees burden

University tuition fees for local students remained at around 5,000 yuan (US$817) a year since 2006, when the government imposed a five-year moratorium on raising university fees.

Education commentator Bing Qi said 5,000 yuan today was around 18% of urban residents' per capita disposable income and 56% of rural residents’.

“Therefore, tuition fees should be reduced, not increased,” Bing said, adding in a commentary in Beijing Youth Daily that “the burden on households remains high despite rising incomes in recent years”.

Official figures show that in 2013, the overall value of scholarships totalled 57.41 billion yuan (US$9.38 billion) for 2.65 million Chinese students – or around 1500 yuan (US$245) per student.

“Contrast this figure with the sum Jiangsu is prepared to grant foreign students and it does appear that the concern about ‘discrimination’ or ‘double standards’ is not entirely misplaced,” Shanghai Daily commented.

Jiangsu’s “quest for a leading position in the global education landscape was justified only if it did not come at a cost to locals”, the paper added.

Citizens vented their anger online saying if the government had money for education scholarships it should not be spent on ‘foreign elites’ when many students in poor rural areas were unable to afford fees.

Boosting foreign student numbers

Jiangsu is not alone, however: Shanghai is aiming to attract 70,000 foreign students by 2015, up from 40,000 this year and will increase the number of scholarships for those on longer degree programmes.

Some will be worth 200,000 yuan or US$32,700 over four years of study, including accommodation costs – a huge sum compared to loans and grants for local students, even when taking account of the higher accommodation costs for foreigners.

The Beijing government is actively trying to attract more foreign students and has said it will provide scholarships for as many as 50,000 international students by 2015. Some 18,000 scholarships have been made available for students from Africa since 2013.

Although the majority of foreign students in China are currently from the US and South Korea, Liu Jinghui, secretary-general of the China Scholarship Council, has said Chinese higher education would be promoted more strongly in Europe. Liu said he hoped to increase the 1,087 scholarships provided to European students last year.

As the barrage of online criticism against funds being “diverted” to foreign students rose, the China Development Bank last month announced 14 billion yuan of “new loans” for local students this year through the state loan scheme that benefits some 2.5 million students.

The bank said the cap on the loan amount would be increased by 33% to 8,000 yuan (US$1,300), up from 6,000 yuan previously for each undergraduate applicant. Graduate students will receive up to 12,000 yuan.

The increase of 2,000 yuan per undergraduate student is the first such increase since 2002, with official inflation running at an annual rate of 5 to 6% in recent years. Students in some provinces, including Hainan, held protests last year about the rise in fees and other costs, including canteen food.

"The previous [loan] standard was implemented for more than a dozen years, and many students with financial difficulties said it was far from enough," said Zhang Guangming, director of the China National Centre for Student Financial Aid under the Education Ministry.

FRANCE: Low fees but jobs needed to meet costs

Jane Marshall24 October 2014 Issue No:340

 

Students in French universities pay among the lowest fees in Europe. But although education ministers claim that, despite austerity, funding for student benefits has kept up with purchasing power, student organisations say the cost of starting the new academic year for students is up to 2% higher than last year.

The government has not gone down the route of charging students high sums for university studies, and fixes the modest rates by decree. For the 2014-15 academic year, enrolment fees have increased by 0.7%, to €184 (US$236) annually for a three-year licence (bachelor equivalent) course, €256 for a masters, €391 for a doctorate and €610 for an engineering diploma.

But while students do not have to worry about high fees, they need money to live on during the university year. In its inquiry La Vie Étudiante: Repères, the Observatoire de la Vie Étudiante, or OVE, identified the main sources of student income.

The most common was family support, accounting for 30% of student resources and paying an average of €308 a month. This was followed closely by wages from paid work, at 29%, providing €618 on average; then public benefits such as those from the government and from local and regional authorities, representing 25%, and an average of €307 monthly.

Other sources, each representing 6% or less of student income, included contributions from a spouse or partner, savings, and, at a bare 1%, student loans, which are available from some banks under government guarantee.

Nearly one in two students did paid work during the university year, according to OVE, which found that 20% who had a job considered it had a ‘negative impact’ on their studies. More than half considered their employment essential for survival.

OVE reported that a third of the students lived with one or both parents, a third in rented accommodation either alone or in a couple with or without children, and 12% were in private rentals shared with others. Only 11% lived in subsidised university housing. Rents averaged €426 across the country, and were highest in Paris at €597.

The 2015 budget allocated €2.5 billion (US$3.2 billion) for ‘student life’, an increase of €42 million, or 1.7%, over last year.

In September, marking the start of the university year, the Minister for Education, Higher Education and Research, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, and State Secretary for Higher Education and Research, Geneviève Fioraso, stressed their first priority was to ensure academic success for the greatest number of students, with more help for those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Among measures they announced were increased grants for more students, continuation of an intensive student housing construction plan and government rental guarantees for those looking for accommodation in the private sector.

However, the government has this year discontinued merit grants, previously awarded to about 7,000 new students each year for three years, in favour of increasing grants paid according to social criteria.

In spite of more generous benefits, students and their families face stiff cost-of-living increases at the start of this academic year, according to the Fédération des Associations Générales Étudiantes, or FAGE, and the Union Nationale des Étudiants de France, or UNEF.

FAGE calculated a student had to spend an average of €2,525 to start the university year, 1.5% more than last year while UNEF reckoned the increase was 2%, “four times the rate of inflation for the past year”. The main causes were higher rents, and increases in unavoidable expenses such as enrolment fees, university meals and social security payments.

While previous reforms had improved the purchasing power of 160,000 students by cutting their study costs by 7.4%, the remainder faced substantial increases of 5.5% for those on grants, and 3.6% for the others, claimed UNEF.

The union said grants reform was “still far from the promise of a student autonomy allowance” made by François Hollande during his presidential campaign, and it urged further benefit increases and widened access for more students.

FAGE asserted that 28% of students had to take paid work to get by, and that there was a 50% risk of academic failure for those who worked more than 12 hours a week. It called for the government to open urgently a “comprehensive and ambitious plan for students’ living conditions”. 

SINGAPORE: Rising fees cloud international hub status

Emilia Tan24 October 2014 Issue No:340

 

Rising university fees for international students are casting a cloud over Singapore’s future as an Asian regional hub for international students – particularly from the rest of Asia. This is despite many parents in the region believing that paying for education is a good investment.

A report by the HSBC Bank The Value of Education found that families in Asia were willing to pay high fees, but recent developments in the city state have shown that tolerance levels for high fees are being reached.

Singapore is now one of the most expensive countries globally to obtain an undergraduate degree once the high cost of living in the city state is taken into account. Foreign student numbers have fallen as fees have been rising – and at a much faster rate than those for locals.

At Singapore’s top-ranked public universities, undergraduate fees for foreign students are around S$15,300 (US$12,000) for humanities and social science degrees, an increase over last year of more than 11%, compared with an 8.6% increase for Singaporeans.

The cost of a business degree or management degree has risen in the past year by as much as 15% for foreign students – to S$31,200 (US$24,500), compared with a 6% increase for Singaporeans that allows them to obtain the same degree for S$9,250 (US$7,200).

Fees for undergraduate law degrees have risen by an eye-watering 17% in the past year compared with 8% for Singaporeans, according to official figures. The fees rise coupled with high living costs has been exacerbated by a strengthening of the Singaporean currency, HSBC notes.

With undergraduate tuition fees and living costs per year combined, Singapore is second only to Australia in terms of cost among 15 major higher education destinations for foreign students.

HSBC puts Singapore at US$39,229 a year compared with US$42,000 in Australia. Comparable amounts for the US and UK are US$36,500 and US$35,000 respectively.

Drop in numbers

Despite higher fee rises for foreign students and the indication that their enrolments had dropped, Singapore’s Education Minister Heng Swee Keat noted that the amount collected in tuition fees from international students had barely increased between 2012 and 2013.

In 2013, the amount was S$176 million (US$138 million) compared with S$172 million (US$135 million) in 2012 – after jumping significantly from S$158 million (US$124 million) in 2011.

Immigration authority figures show that some 75,000 foreign student pass holders were issued in July, compared with 84,000 two years ago. The number will be even lower for university students as these figures include those attending secondary schools in Singapore.

Singapore had set itself the headline target of attracting 150,000 foreign university students by 2015 compared with about 30,000 a decade ago. But it is now clear it will fall well short of its ambitions.

The education ministry announced a drop from 18% to 15% in the proportion of places for foreign students overall in Singapore. Nonetheless, in some institutions such as the National University of Singapore, the proportion of foreign students at around 35% of the intake, has not changed since 2011.

The Economic Development Board, which has been promoting Singapore as a hub, declined to comment on whether the 2015 target of attracting 150,000 foreign students had been abandoned.

Jobs situation

Foreign students hoping to stay on after graduation also say that finding a job in Singapore has become more difficult, making it harder to justify the increased costs. Singapore has offered generous scholarships to foreign students but public funding of such scholarships has recently been questioned.

The government revealed earlier this year that foreign graduates who receive Singapore government scholarships and are bound to work in the city on graduation, were taking longer to find jobs. This had led to ‘repayment holidays’ that weigh on the public purse.

The climate has changed in the past two years and now there is rising local hostility towards immigration as jobs have become harder to find, in part due to slowing economic growth. According to official figures, overall graduate unemployment rose from 3.3% to 3.6% in the first half of 2013, higher than the average unemployment rate in Singapore of around 2%.

While no longer speaking of targets, Heng told Parliament in March only that Singapore welcomed foreign students and that it was good for local students to mix with foreign peers.

Fewer places

As part of Singapore’s desire to promote itself as an international hub for education, a number of top overseas universities have been drawn to its shores in the past decade. Almost a dozen foreign branch campuses have been established along with a large number of joint degree partnerships with international institutions.

For example, some 23 Australian institutions are offering courses in Singapore – the largest number offered by foreign universities. Around a third of the intake is comprised of foreign students.

Bringing in foreign students was one of the stated aims of Singapore’s Global Schoolhouse initiative that started in 2002 and included start-up loans and subsidies to foreign institutions to set up branch campuses.

But a tightening of regulations on foreign institutions has led to a number of international institutions shutting down, while others have abandoned Singapore, finding their operations unviable once Singaporean subsidies ended. Local Singaporean students also found the fees too high compared with local universities and overseas students failed to arrive in the numbers hoped for.

The University of New South Wales closed its Singapore branch in 2007 after just one semester after it attracted far fewer students than predicted. In July this year, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business announced it was pulling out of Singapore in favour of Hong Kong.

In November last year, Tisch Asia, New York University’s arts school, shut its Singapore branch, reportedly because of huge deficits due to high running costs, while a joint law course with NYU failed to attract enough students, even after offering scholarships.

Against these mini-disasters, the long-planned Yale-NUS, a liberal arts college, opened its doors last year and a new joint medical school with Imperial College London has come on stream, both charging high fees to international students. 

MALAYSIA: Loan defaulters barred from leaving

Emilia Tan24 October 2014 Issue No:340

 

With the cost of university education rising faster than inflation and increasing sums taken out in loans, more and more students are defaulting on their loan repayments. For some, this means being barred from leaving the country.

In fact, almost 85,000 recipients of student loans from the government’s low-interest National Higher Education Fund Corporation have to date been stopped because of loan arrears. They join criminals, tax dodgers and pension fund defaulters in facing departure bans.

Rising costs affect even students from middle-income families who are now graduating with a large debt after a three-year undergraduate degree that costs more than RM60,000 (US$18,000).

The outlay is much higher at a private university or a foreign branch campus. In a public university, a medical degree can cost as much as RM300,000 (US$92,000) whereas private colleges charge three times that much.

Generally, private sector costs have increased by 20% to 25% in the past five years where there are now more than 100 colleges and foreign branch campuses. HSBC Bank estimates the total annual cost of an undergraduate degree, including living expenses, at around US$13,000.

Earlier this year, Yemen’s higher education and scientific research ministry said it would end new government scholarships for its students to enrol in private Malaysian universities because of “poor educational quality and high costs”. Some 9,000 Yemeni students are enrolled in Malaysia, 4,000 of them in private universities.

Although the Yemeni case is unusual, the decision attracted wide publicity and dented the government’s attempts to portray Malaysia as a low-cost alternative to universities in the West and in Singapore.

Loans

While students are able to get low-interest government loans – loans for private university courses are about a third of all government-backed loans – these do not cover the whole cost at private institutions. Yet more and more students are enrolling in the private sector because of a lack of places in the top public universities.

Overall cost of living rises are also putting financial pressure on families. The Keadilan Youth or KeADILan, the youth wing of the National Justice Party of Malaysia or PKR, said that with low starting salaries, Malaysian graduates “cannot make ends meet”.

“Many local graduates have the added burden of repaying their PTPTN [National Higher Education Fund Corporation] education loans and this can cost up to RM300 a month," the group said in a statement.

PTPTN chief executive officer Agos Cholan said the corporation had to resort to barring the defaulters from leaving Malaysia because they had ignored repeated reminders to repay their loans. To have the ban lifted, Agos said defaulters would need to make some payments immediately, depending on their income, and would need to sign papers committing them to pay monthly sums.

Rapidly shrinking fund

Although the number facing bans is unacceptably high, it is down from some 130,000 in 2007 after the government converted some loans to grants for top performing students. More than 14,000 blacklisted PTPTN borrowers paid back their loans in 2013 compared with some 10,000 the year before.

In a statement, PTPTN said as many as 500,000 borrowers had defaulted on their loans since the fund was established in 1997. While not all have been barred, it means the amount of money in the fund is rapidly shrinking and affecting the PTPTN’s ability to lend to new students.

Fund chairman Shamsul Anuar Nasarah said the corporation was finding it too difficult to finance new students because of the high number of defaulters and with RM1.2 billion (US$367 million) in unpaid loans outstanding.

The 2015 budget announced this month gives PTPTN borrowers an incentive to make lump sum payments by March next year when they will receive a 20% discount on their loans. Those who pay consis¬tently for 12 months until the end of 2015 will be offered a 10% discount.

But student groups criticised the government for being more concerned about propping up the loan corporation than easing the fees burden on students with more scholarships.

Their criticisms of the government came after Malaysia’s second Education Minister Idris Jusoh said PTPTN loan defaulters stretching back to 1998 could be blacklisted on a bank database used to sanction new loan applications. This would have an effect similar to being declared bankrupt and could affect graduates’ ability to buy a house, for example.

PTPTN has disbursed RM5.3 billion (US$1.62 billion) to more than 990,000 students since 1998.

GLOBAL: Public higher education versus private

24 October 2014 Issue No:340

At the tertiary level, public expenditure per student in both public and private institutions averaged US$9,221 in OECD countries in 2012, the Education at a Glance report says. But the amount varied from about US$2,000 in Chile to more than US$17,000 in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden – the four countries where the share of private spending is small or negligible.

In all countries with available data, except Hungary and Latvia, public expenditure per student is greater for public than private institutions. But patterns in the allocation of public funds to public and private institutions differ, the OECD analysts say.

In Denmark and the Netherlands, at least 90% of students are enrolled in public universities and most public money goes to these institutions. In the two countries, private funds complement public spending to varying degrees although private expenditure is less than 6% of total spending on public and private institutions in Denmark but above 28% in the Netherlands.

In Belgium, Estonia, Hungary, Iceland and Sweden, public expenditure goes to both public and private institutions. Government allocations per student in some private institutions is at least 58% and more than 100% of the level of public spending per student in public universities.

However, these countries also have different participation patterns. In Hungary, Iceland and Sweden, at least 80% of students are enrolled in public universities, whereas in Belgium and Estonia, they are mainly in government-dependent private institutions. In all three first-mentioned nations, the share of expenditure on private tertiary institutions is below the OECD average, while in the remaining two countries, taxpayers’ money goes mainly to private universities.

Public expenditure on tertiary education amounts to nearly one-quarter of total public education spending on average across OECD countries. But in the OECD and partner countries, the percentages range from less than 16% in Korea, to 32% in Finland, 36% in Canada and 38% in Turkey.

Grants and loans to students

OECD research indicates that a robust financial support system is important for ensuring good outcomes for higher education students, and that the type of aid is also critical, the report says. A key question in many OECD countries is whether financial support for students should be provided primarily in the form of grants or loans. Advocates of student loans argue that these allow available resources to be spread further.

If the amount spent on grants were used to guarantee or subsidise loans instead, aid would be available to more students, and overall access to higher education would increase. Loans also shift some of the cost of education on to those who benefit most from higher education, namely the individual student, and reflect the high private returns of completing tertiary education.

Opponents argue that student loans are less effective than grants in encouraging low-income students to pursue further education. They also argue that loans may be less efficient than anticipated because of the various types of support provided to borrowers or lenders and the costs of administration and servicing.

Finally, the report notes that a high level of student debt may have adverse effects both for students and for governments if large numbers of students are unable to repay their loans.

Allocations to higher education

OECD countries spend an average of about 22% of their public budgets for tertiary education on support for students “and private entities”. In Australia, Chile, Denmark, Iceland, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the UK and the US, government support for students accounts for more than 25% of public spending on tertiary education.

Only Argentina, the Czech Republic and Indonesia spend less than 7% of total public spending on the tertiary sector in supporting their students. In the Czech Republic, subsidies for students’ grants are sent directly to institutions which are responsible for distributing them among students.

A dozen of the 36 countries for which data are available rely exclusively on scholarships, grants and transfer payments to private institutions. Iceland provides only student loans while other countries make a combination of grants and loans available. Both types of support are used extensively in Australia, Chile, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, the UK and the US.

In general, the countries that offer student loans are also those in which public support for students comprises the largest proportion of all public spending on tertiary education. In most cases, these countries also spend an above-average proportion of their tertiary education budgets on grants and scholarships, the report says.

MYANMAR: Students to hold emergency meeting over education law

Mizzima17 October 2014 Issue No:339

 

 

Myanmar students are planning an emergency meeting to deal with concerns over the draft higher education law. Here students protest at Dagon University on September 2 against the proposed law. Photo: Nyain Thit Nyi/Mizzima

 

 

(MANDALAY) – The All Burma Federation of Student Unions (ABFSU) is planning to hold an all-Myanmar students’ emergency meeting in November, said ABFSU central working committee and research committee official Aung Hmine San.

“The ABFSU, in cooperation with other organizations, needs to oppose the national education law,” Aung Hmine San said. “We think other students organizations also need to collectively oppose it. That’s why we plan to organize the students emergency meeting so that ABFSU, the University Students Union and other students organizations will be able to work together to make plans.”

Students and civic groups say the proposed law allows centralized control of universities and curtails efforts to bring about autonomy of the country’s institutions of higher learning.

An organizing committee was set up on October 4 to arrange the students’ emergency meeting. The committee comprises of 10 members of the ABFSU and 10 members of the University Students Union.

Students and education experts will discuss the national education law on the first day of the two-day meeting.  On the second day, the students propose making plans as to how to proceed.

The time, date and venue for the students’ emergency meeting have not yet been announced.

CHINA: Universities to get more autonomy

Global Times17 October 2014 Issue No:339

 

Pessimism lingers regarding effectiveness

China's top education authorities have approved new regulations for nine top universities, which seek to increase the schools' autonomy, while observers have expressed concern about their effectiveness.
The nine universities include the country's top two universities, Peking University and Tsinghua University, the Ministry of Education announced on its website on Wednesday, adding that the newly established regulations will help the systematic reform of higher education and aid academic development.

Since 2013, a total of 32 universities have already seen their new regulations, which were drafted by the universities themselves, approved by the authorities.

All other Chinese universities are scheduled to establish their own regulations by the end of next year, according to the ministry.

To run a university according to its own regulations is the foundation of academic independence, Professor Xiong Bingqi, an expert in higher education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, told the Global Times.

With these new regulations, the universities' management is supposed to operate with a higher-level of academic autonomy than previously, he added.
Peking University's new regulations indicate that more power over school management should be delegated to students.

The university set up a supervision committee for the first time to deal with disciplinary violations by students and school staff. The committee consists of students, teaching staff, members of non-Communist parties and the university's disciplinary watchdog.

Under its new rules, Peking University students also have the chance to become members of the school's academic board, allowing them to supervise the election of academic staff and investigate academic corruption, along with professors and delegates appointed by the university president. The number of delegates appointed by the president cannot surpass 15 percent of the board members.

No details have yet been revealed regarding any selection standards or what proportion of the board will be made up of student delegates.

Although the university is encouraging students to join these new bodies, students seem to be less enthusiastic, judging by the responses of students reached by the Global Times.

"We know very little about how those student delegates will be selected and who will select them. Even if we can participate in discussions about university affairs, the administrative staff will still be in charge of making any decisions," a history postgraduate student studying at Peking University, surnamed Huang, told the Global Times.

Tsinghua University has also emphasized its autonomy as it highlights the importance of budget independence.

Xiong expressed pessimism about the enforcement of these regulations as these universities' officials are still appointed by the government and universities are still entirely government-funded.
 

GLOBAL: How Germany managed to abolish university tuition fees

The Conversation17 October 2014 Issue No:339

 

If Germany has done it, why can’t we? That’s the question being asked by many students around the world in countries that charge tuition fees to university. From this semester, all higher education will be free for both Germans and international students at universities across the country, after Lower Saxony became the final state to abolish tuition fees.

It’s important to be aware of two things when it comes to understanding how German higher education is funded and how the country got to this point. First, Germany is a federal country with 16 autonomous states responsible for education, higher education and cultural affairs. Second, the German higher education system – consisting of 379 higher education institutions with about 2.4m students – is a public system which is publicly funded. There are a number of small private institutions but they enrol less than 5% of the total student body.

Back and forth with fees

Until 1970-71, West-German higher education students had to pay tuition fees at the level of about 120 to 150 German Marks per semester. There were needs-based exceptions but basically these fees had to be paid by every student.

When they came to power in the late 1960s, Germany’s Social Democrats supported higher education expansion by promoting widening participation and equal opportunities and by increasing the number of higher education institutions. From 1971 onwards, a system of state financial assistance for students was established and tuition fees were abolished. The assistance came first as a grant, later as a mix of half repayable-loan and half grant.

During the peak period of higher education expansion in the late 1960s, exclusive funding of higher education by the states became too much of a burden. New provisions were introduced for a framework law laying down the general principles governing higher education across West Germany. The first law, introduced in 1976, included a prohibition of tuition fees.

Despite a flirtation with the idea of re-introducing tuition fees under the conservative-liberal coalition government in the 1980s, a stalemate ensued over whether tuition fees would lead state governments to reduce their regular funding to universities.

Fees win out in late 1990s

The fall of the Berlin Wall and German Unification put all reform plans on hold for several years until the whole East German system of higher education institutions and academies had been evaluated and reformed. A new discussion about tuition fees then started around the mid-1990s, with their re-introduction seen as a solution to a number of existing problems in the higher education system.

Around the end of the 1990s, the dam of resistance broke by allowing the introduction of fees for so-called long-term students: students who had been enrolled several semesters past the regular duration of their study programme and had not finished.

Those states with a conservative government filed a law suit in 2002 against the framework law of higher education, arguing that its prohibition of tuition fees was an illegitimate intervention into the legal authority for educational matters of the states. The Federal Constitutional Court upheld the complaint in 2005; immediately, seven states introduced tuition fees.

In 2006, the framework law was abolished under wider reforms of German federalism. Tuition fees were capped at 500 Euros per semester, but Berlin and all East-German states refused to introduce them.

Excellence and crisis

Yet the same reform of federalism led the states to reclaim complete authority and responsibility for their higher education. This led the Federal Ministry for Education and Research to refuse any further co-funding with states on higher education. And it left the federal ministry with a lot of spare money. A large part of this was eventually invested into the German Excellence Initiative, a competitive funding programme launched in 2005 to support a group of universities to become global players.

But this also meant that the poorer states faced a funding crisis for their higher education institutions. The problem was aggravated by the fact the a number of the poorer states were located in East Germany, where all states had decided not to introduce tuition fees in the hopes to attract more students.

Gradual abolition

In successive years, as soon as state government elections have elected social democratic or green party governments, tuition fees have been abolished. The state of Hesse, for example, had tuition fees for only a single year. In the end only two states were left with tuition fees: Bavaria and Lower Saxony. The conservative government of Bavaria gave into the mainstream and abolished tuition fees in the winter semester 2013-14, with Lower Saxony abolishing fees in the winter semester 2014-15.

But the heads of higher education institutions negotiated with their ministries, arguing that they could not properly do their job of offering high-quality student experience if the loss of income from tuition fees was not compensated one way or another.

So most states have agreed to compensate their higher education institutions with extra money – not quite covering the loss in fees though – which was to be invested exclusively into the improvement of the quality of studies and teaching. Most ministries decreed that students had to be involved in decisions about how and for what purposes the money was going to be spent.

How funding works now

The present situation is that all higher education institutions receive a budget from the responsible ministry of the state in which they are located, based on annual or biennial negotiations. This basic budget is complemented by additional agreements between higher education institutions and the state concerning the intake of additional numbers of students and the money to compensate the loss of income from tuition fees.

There are additional funding programmes – some funded jointly by the states and the federal ministry – for supporting and promoting research, in the competition for excellence.

Of course, most higher education institutions continue to feel underfunded. The pressure on academic staff to attract external research funding has increased, as has competition for such grants. Still, compared to other countries in Europe, German higher education institutions continue to be rather generously funded by their states – an estimated 80% of their overall budgetary needs. There are also ample opportunities and considerable amounts of external research funding available.

Publicly funded, but for how long?

Despite the fact that competition for funding and accountability has increased in German higher education, there is still a general consensus that it is a public system and should be state-funded. The abolition of tuition fees, even by conservative state governments, reflects this consensus too. In fact, the new Federal Minister for Education and Research, a member of the Conservative Party, recently announced a major increase in the levels of needs-based state financial assistance to students that will start in the 2016-17 academic year.

But funding varies considerably depending on different institutional and regional factors. The winners of the German Excellence Initiative have received and are receiving considerable amounts of additional funding in the hope that more German universities will be able to achieve better positions on world university rankings. There were 12 German universities in the 2014-15 Times Higher Education World University Rankings, up from 10 the year before.

Higher education institutions in the poorer states (most of them in the east of Germany) receive less money and academic staff are being paid lower salaries while higher education institutions in the richer states (typically in the south) are better funded.

The debate about tuition fees – though dead for the moment – can easily be revived in the future. It has not been dropped from the agenda once and for all. Government policies continue to be in favour of tuition fees, most representatives of institutional leadership are as well, though for different reasons. But there is currently a lack of general public support. Once this has changed – and influential advisory bodies and think tanks are working towards such a change – the idea of tuition fees will be introduced again.
 

GLOBAL: Academic reputation affects citation count

Geoff Maslen15 October 2014 Issue No:339

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AUSTRALIA: Graduates of top universities earn more

Alexandra Hansen15 October 2014 Issue No:339

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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