By Paul Benneworth in, Times Higher Education
France is using governance reform and investment to push its universities up the league tables. Will it work? asks Paul Benneworth
In his new book A Chance for European Universities, Jo Ritzen, president of Maastricht University, sums up French institutions, along with those of Spain, Germany and Italy, as the mediocre face of the European academy. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, too, ticked off France for its sluggish higher education reforms in its Economic Survey of France 2009.
Even France is not immune to a preoccupation with its performance in international higher education league tables. And in the latest Times Higher Education World University Rankings, three of the four French institutions in the top 200 are not even universities, but grandes écoles, highly selective institutions that receive more than a quarter of science funding but educate less than one in 20 French graduates.
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We are pleased to announce the first of many plenary speakers for the 2011 World Universities Forum.
Dr S. Gopinathan is Professorial Fellow at the Policy & Leadership Studies (PLS), Curriculum, Teaching & Learning (CTL) at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University. He served as the Dean of the School of Education (Mar 1994 till June 2000) and was the former Dean of Foundations Programme (July 2000 till June 2003) and Head, CRPP (May 2008 till Feb 2009). In this role he oversaw the development and implementation of the newly launched BA/BSc (Education) programme. He is a founder member of the Educational Research Association of Singapore and serves on the International Advisory Board of the Asia Pacific Journal of Education, and co-edits the Routledge Critical Studies in Asian Education.
To follow updates on plenary speakers or to visit the conference website, please click here.
by Suchitra Behal, in University World News
Career advancement prospects in Indian universities became more difficult last week with the University Grants Commission adopting a performance-based points system. From now on, lecturers will be graded annually on their performance and will be eligible for promotions based on their teaching, research and publication quality - not on seniority.
This is a move away from the earlier seniority-based promotions most universities relied on. The commission’s plans met with stiff resistance by many unions in the last two years but have finally been accepted by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, with the agreement of almost all the lecturers’ representative bodies.
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By David Jobbins, in University World News
The opinions of more than 13,000 academics will be used to build a picture of the standard of teaching and research in the world’s universities for the 2010 Times Higher Education World University Ranking.
Despite an increased sample size, the findings will account for 20% of final scores, compared with 40% under the methodology used from 2004 to 2009.
Meanwhile its main rival, QS, is introducing a rating system to better reflect the diversity of institutions by measuring their broader missions.
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