From University World News
The European Union plans to publish a worldwide ranking of universities next year that it hopes will rival existing global league tables. The aim is to boost the place of European universities in the Shanghai Jiao Tong and Times Higher Education ranking systems, both dominated by US institutions.
In the last Shanghai Jiao Tong ranking, the whole of continental Europe had only 23 universities in the top 100. Yet Europe has some 4,000 universities and colleges that enrol more than 19 million students and employ1.5 million staff.
The new European rankings are being developed following acceptance early last year of a tender from a German, Dutch, Belgian and French consortium called CHERPA, a European network of leading institutions in this field.
To read more…
From Andrew Trounson and Christian Kerr in The Australian
Australia is in denial on racially motivated attacks against international students and has failed to take action to deal with the issue, an internationally respected Australian academic has told a major conference in Switzerland.
Melbourne University professor Simon Marginson, delivering a keynote address to the World Universities Forum in Davos, said the Australian government was trying to spin itself out of crisis following this month’s murder of Indian accountancy graduate Nitin Garg in a west Melbourne park. “The Australian government is in denial,” Professor Marginson told the high-powered meeting of academics. “Racist targeting is involved (in the attacks). Indian students do have a special problem. And there isn’t enough official and civil concern about international student security in Australia.”
Garg’s unsolved murder has sparked diplomatic, government and public protests in India, further weakened one of Australia’s most important education export markets and prompted a defensive response from Australia’s political leaders and Victoria Police.
To read more…
From Craig Lambert, in Harvard Magazine
Near the University of Bologna—the world’s oldest, founded in 1088—is a medieval museum displaying carved memorial plaques that honor great professors of the past. “They all show the professor on the podium, with the students below,” says Thomas Forrest Kelly, Knafel professor of music. “Often the students are asleep, playing dice or cards, or fornicating.”
Much has changed since the Middle Ages, but one thing that persists is the lecture. The medieval university invented lecturing—the word comes from the Latin verb legere, to read—to cope with the scarcity of books: a lecturer would read the only available copy of a book to the gathering of students. “That was high technology in the thirteenth century,” says Kelly, “but not high technology for the twenty-first century!”
To read more…
From Alan Osborn, in University World News
European universities have less ability to manage their own affairs than is generally realised and less than is desirable, according to a new survey by the European University Association. The report covers 33 countries and finds that genuine autonomy is lacking in several critical sectors, above all in that of finance.
This could have worrying consequences for the future of many institutions. The EAU said that at a time when the overall levels of public funding in education were stagnating and universities were increasingly being asked to look for alternative funding sources, the lack of autonomy was a real threat for the sustainability of Europe’s universities.
The report noted that many governments, the university sector itself and the European Commission had recognised increased autonomy for universities would be a crucial step towards modernisation in the 21st century. In practice, however, “public authorities still play too central a role in the regulation of the higher education system and, in a large number of countries, still exert direct control”.
To read more…