Today the World Universities Forum Newsletter will be re-launched - marking the start of a new approach to connecting with and reaching out to our Universities Community. The Universities Newsletter will be sent out on a monthly basis and will contain important community news, conference updates, and publication information.
It is the hope of Common Ground Publishing that this newsletter will provide you with a more positive experience connecting with the Universities Community.
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Location and Date
The 2011 World Universities Forum will be held at the Hong Kong Institute of Education in Hong Kong from January 14-16. For more information, please visit http://www.UniversitiesForum.com
Call for Papers
If you intend to present a paper at the conference, your participation begins with submission of a paper proposal. For information on proposals, presentation types, and other options please follow this link. To submit a proposal, please click here. If your proposal is accepted, you will then need to register for the conference.
Registration
Those who submit paper proposals should register following the acceptance of the proposal. Conference delegates who do not intend to present may register at any time. For registration options, or to register for the 2010 World Universities Forum, see: http://ontheuniversity.com/conference-2010/register/.
Themes
Theme 1: In the Interest of the Academy: Perspectives on the Nature, Purpose and Working of the University
Theme 2: Academic Interests: Setting Intellectual and Practical Agendas
For more information on our overall themes, please click here.
From Geoff Maslen, in University World News
A private US foundation has proposed increasing the proportion of Americans with “high-quality degrees and credentials” to 60% of the population within 15 years. President and CEO of the Indianopolis-based Lumina Foundation, Jamie Merisotis, told a conference in Miami the goal was to boost the proportion of higher-education qualified Americans from the current 40% to 60% by 2025.
Speaking during a panel discussion at the Clinton Global Initiative University, Merisotis said Lumina was working on increasing completion rates via its funding commitments to college preparation, success and productivity.
To read more…
by Sabrina Tavernise, in The New York Times
LAHORE, Pakistan — The professor was working in his office here on the campus of Pakistan’s largest university this month when members of an Islamic student group battered open the door, beat him with metal rods and bashed him over the head with a giant flower pot.
Iftikhar Baloch, an environmental science professor, had expelled members of the group for violent behavior. The retribution left him bloodied and nearly unconscious, and it united his fellow professors, who protested with a nearly three-week strike that ended Monday.
To read more…
From Sarah King Head, in University World News
Students likely to benefit most from a university education are not those from socially advantaged backgrounds. Instead the opposite appears to be true, according to a report in the American Sociological Review.
A study by Dr Jennie E Brand of the University of California at Los Angeles and Dr Yu Xie of the University of Michigan suggests students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds, who completed university, changed their socioeconomic status in a more profound way than did those for whom higher education was culturally inevitable.
The authors based their research around a cost-benefit analysis of the long-term outcomes of students from the 1960s to the present day. They derived their data from two sources: the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study 1957.
To read more…
By William Branigin, in The Washington Post
President Obama signed into law Tuesday a package of revisions to his new health-care overhaul that includes a measure aimed at making higher education more affordable.
The provision ends what Obama called a long-standing “sweetheart deal” for banks in federally guaranteed student loans.
In a speech and signing ceremony at the Alexandria campus of Northern Virginia Community College, Obama said the health-care reform legislation and the revisions represent “two major victories … that will improve the lives of our people for generations to come.”
To read more…
From Cathleen McCarthy in Cal Alumni Association
Academics try to sift truth from subterfuge in the blogosphere.
Online, J. Bradford DeLong is, first and foremost, a liberal muckraker. His blog thrives when there is plenty of right-wing muck. Subtlety is not DeLong’s style, one reason other bloggers love to riff on his posts. As GOP resistance to Obama’s bills heated up, DeLong found his voice again. Last August found him authoring a series of posts on Republican subterfuge, including “Why the American Right Lies So Much” and in case we missed the point, “Republicans. Lying All the Time. About Everything. Because the Press Won’t Call Them on It.”
To read more…
From Yojana Sharma in University World News
With more than three million students studying outside their own countries, and rising, universities and governments are keen to know what kind of environment increases the inflow and outflow of students, and how countries compare in encouraging collaboration overseas.
A new index launched at the Going Global conference attempts to quantify how open to different ways of international collaboration a country’s higher education system is.
Developed by the British Council with the Economist Intelligence Unit, the index tracked policies in 11 countries to quantify international collaboration, overseas branch campuses, joint academic programmes, publications and patents, academic and student mobility, visa policies, quality, access and recognition of foreign degrees.
To read more…
The first issue of Volume 3 of the