Monthly Archive for March, 2011

Egypt: Authorities Move Swiftly on University Reform

Published on March 28, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

By Ashraf Khaled, in University World News

Less than a month after long-standing president Hosni Mubarak was ousted in a popular uprising, Egypt’s higher education authorities have taken steps towards long-sought-after independence for public universities. State police are leaving campuses, and new student union elections will be held within months.

Presiding over his maiden meeting as Minister of Education, Ahmed Gamal Moussa told the Higher Council for Universities, which oversees academic institutions, that student unions will be dissolved and elections for new unions will be held within 60 days of re-opening universities after a month-long mid-year vacation.

Students opposing the Mubarak regime said recent student union elections had been rigged in favour of students loyal to the police and the formerly ruling National Democratic Party.

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India: Ancient University Resurrection A Step Closer

Published on March 21, 2011 in News. 1 Comment

By Alya Mishra, in University World News

India’s dream of resurrecting one of the world’s oldest seats of learning, Nalanda University, came a step closer on Tuesday with the first meeting of the board of governors. The governing body announced that the university, which has lain in ruins for 800 years since being razed by foreign invaders, will be functional (tentatively) by 2013.

Five countries – Japan, China, Singapore, Thailand and India – have undertaken to build the new Nalanda, which will start with a strong focus on postgraduate education and research in the humanities.

Other departments will include information sciences and technology, business management in relation to public policy and development, and ecology and environment, in addition to languages and literature, religion and philosophy, historical studies, international relations and peace studies, and Buddhist studies.

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They’ve Started, but Will They Finish?

Published on March 16, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From Zoe Corbyn, in Times Higher Education

Like many in the community college system in the US, Wise Allen feels that he is in a bind. The federal government expects him to improve the 30 per cent graduation rate at the colleges he oversees, but money is tight.

“It is impossible unless you put a lot of resources into individual tutorials and remediation work and we are starved to death in terms of dollars…We are turning away students as we speak,” explains Allen, the interim chancellor of the Peralta Community College District, which serves Berkeley and Oakland residents in California’s San Francisco Bay Area.

The four community colleges that Allen oversees are part of a network of around 1,200 community colleges across the US. Collectively they enrol around 13 million students, generally in two-year programmes; funding is provided largely at state level, with the federal government administering need-based grants to low-income students.

The institutions have generally done brilliantly on issues of access, but are now being told they must do more to ensure that the students who start their programmes successfully complete their studies.

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Europe: Universities Face Looming Funding Crisis: EUA

Published on March 5, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

By Dave Haworth, in University World News

The rise in Europe’s student population and public funding cuts across the continent are combining to produce an unprecedented higher education crisis which can only be met by much greater diversifying of income sources, experts heard in Brussels on Tuesday at the launch of a major European Universities Association survey of 27 countries.

“European Union universities are seriously underfunded and are falling behind their major competitors elsewhere,” Maria Carvalho, a former Portugal higher education minister and member of the European Parliament, told the gathering of more than 100 experts.

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