Archive for the 'Newsletter' Category

Greece: Universities Face Grave Financial Threat

Published on February 3, 2012 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Makki Marseilles, University World News

Universities and higher education institutions in Greece that have not held elections for the composition of their new management councils are in grave and imminent danger of losing state financial support.

A severe ultimatum was issued by the Education Ministry to all universities and technology institutes that have not yet complied with the provisions of the law 4009/11 voted through parliament last September.

So far only two of more than 60 higher education institutions have completed the process and the ministry has announced that financial support will cease after 15 January.

Opposition to the law, regarded by the academic community as an attempt to privatise state higher education via the back door, was expressed by the majority of university rectors and they have vied to render it inoperative. More…

Dissing the Dissertation

Published on January 25, 2012 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed

SEATTLE — The average humanities doctoral student takes nine years to earn a Ph.D. That fact was cited frequently here (and not with pride) at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association. Richard E. Miller, an English professor at Rutgers University’s main campus in New Brunswick, said that the nine-year period means that those finishing dissertations today started them before Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Kindles, iPads or streaming video had been invented.

So much has changed, he said, but dissertation norms haven’t, to the detriment of English and other language programs. “Are we writing books for the 19th century or preparing people to work in the 21st?” he asked.

Leaders of the MLA — in several sessions and discussions here — indicated that they are afraid that too many dissertations are indeed governed by out-of-date conventions, leading to the production of “proto-books” that may do little to promote scholarship and may not even be advancing the careers of graduate students. During the process, the graduate students accumulate debt and frustrations. Russell A. Berman, a professor of comparative literature and German studies at Stanford University, used his presidential address at the MLA to call for departments to find ways to cut “time to degree” for doctorates in half. More…

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M.I.T. Game-Changer: Free Online Education For All

Published on January 17, 2012 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

James Marshall Crotty, Forbes Magazine

M.I.T.'s Simmons Hall

For Wall Street Occupiers or other decriers of the “social injustice” of college tuition, here’s a curveball bound to scramble your worldview: a totally free college education regardless of your academic performance or background.  The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) will announce on Monday that they intend to launch an online learning initiative called M.I.T.x,which will offer the online teaching of M.I.T. courses free of charge to anyone in the world.

The program will not allow students to earn an M.I.T. degree. Instead, those who are able to exhibit a mastery of the subjects taught on the platform will receive an official certificate of completion. The certificate will obviously not carry the weight of a traditional M.I.T. diploma, but it will provide an incentive to finish the online material. According to the New York Times, in order to prevent confusion, the certificate will be a credential bearing the distinct name of a new not-for-profit body that will be created within M.I.T.

The new online platform will look to build upon the decade-long success of the university’s original free online platform, OpenCourseWare (OCW), which has been used by over 100 million students and contains course material for roughly 2,100 classes. The new M.I.T.x online program will not compete with OCW in the number of courses that it offers. However, the program will offer students a greater interactive experience. More…

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Journal Axes Gene Research on Jews and Palestinians

Published on January 4, 2012 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

By Robin McKie, The Observer

A keynote research paper showing that Middle Eastern Jews and Palestinians are genetically almost identical has been pulled from a leading journal.

Academics who have already received copies of Human Immunology have been urged to rip out the offending pages and throw them away.

Such a drastic act of self-censorship is unprecedented in research publishing and has created widespread disquiet, generating fears that it may involve the suppression of scientific work that questions Biblical dogma.

‘I have authored several hundred scientific papers, some for Nature and Science, and this has never happened to me before,’ said the article’s lead author, Spanish geneticist Professor Antonio Arnaiz-Villena, of Complutense University in Madrid. ‘I am stunned.’

British geneticist Sir Walter Bodmer added: ‘If the journal didn’t like the paper, they shouldn’t have published it in the first place. Why wait until it has appeared before acting like this?’

To Read More…

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Announcing the Winner of the 2011 Award for Best Practice in Higher Education

Published on December 31, 2011 in Conference, Headline, News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

We are very pleased to announce that the Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Integrative Arts (CAiiA) – Planetary Collegium is the 2011 recipient of the World Universities Forum Award for Best Practice in Higher Education. Each year, the Award recognizes some of the most significant higher education practices, including curricula and research.

Founded and directed by Professor Roy Ascott, the CAiiA – Planetary Collegium is a PhD research program located primarily in the School of Art and Media at Plymouth University (UK), with nodes at the Nuova Accademia de Belli Arte, Milan and Hochschule fuer Gestaltung und Kunst, Zurich. The Collegium brings together a geographically and professionally diverse group of people, including artists, scientists, theorists, architects, and scholars, for doctoral and post-doctoral learning and research.   Meeting on-line, and face-to-face in research sessions, conferences and symposia, members of the CAiiA – Planetary Collegium focus on the intersection of emerging forms of art and architecture, new media, and technology, science and consciousness. This collaborative — and syncretic — approach, one nominator explained, “opens the exchange of ideas, where discovery, creativity and personal and professional development can flourish, with the support of the exceptional Planetary Collegium’s academic faculty.”

The Best Practice Award will be announced formally at this year’s World Universities Forum, which will be held at the University of the Aegean, Rhodes, Greece from 8-10 January 2012.  This marks the fifth year of the Forum, which was inaugurated in Davos, Switzerland in 2008 and was held subsequently in Mumbai, India (2009), Davos, Switzerland (2010) and Hong Kong (2011). The 2012 Forum will continue the discussion of the current role and future possibilities of the university. We are pleased that this discussion will include recognition of the CAiiA – Planetary Collegium, Plymouth University, and the inspiration it provides for reinventing the ways in which universities develop degree programs and conduct research.

MBA Diary: No Research Required

Published on December 26, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Andrew Pollen, The Economist

Should it matter to students whether a business school has a strong research base? Andrew Pollen, a first-year MBA student at ESADE in Barcelona, thinks not

A COUPLE of weeks ago, my economics professor introduced a new case study for us to mull over. It was dense and packed with historical background. We were split into groups and most of the class had only just finished reading it when we reconvened to wrap up the session. The professor explained some fine points for the case and suggested which tactics we should employ. Then he said he was very disappointed in us.

“I wanted you to work on the case in groups,” he said, “and instead you read the case individually. If you had worked together, I think you would have noticed that the first 10 pages of the case were absolute nonsense that you do not need to answer the questions.”

It was a powerful pedagogic lesson in using teamwork to make the whole greater than the sum of the parts. I think ESADE emphasises the teaching ability of its faculty because it has never been a top research institution; faculty come from industry or consulting rather than academia. They view teaching as their motivation rather than an unpleasant side effect to their appointment. On the first day of my statistics class, the professor thanked the students and said, “Your being here allows me to do something that I love.” I felt that sentiment a lot less often during my time at a top American business school.

To Read More…

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Finalists for the International Award for Excellence

Published on December 22, 2011 in Journal and Newsletter. 0 Comments

universities_frontCongratulations to all of the Award finalists:

EU Plans Historic Rise in Research Funding

Published on December 19, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Peter da Costa, University World News

The European Commission has proposed an historic adjustment to its research and innovation policies with a view to stimulating economic growth and shoring up the competitiveness of the European Union. The plans include a EUR30 billion (US$40 billion) increase in funding and a 16-fold rise in the number of higher education students being supported in their training.

Under the proposed Horizon 2020 programme for 2014-20, announced last week, Brussels has set out budgets totalling EUR80 billion (US$108 billion) to push forward the EU’s scientific and research strategies against the background of a difficult and dramatically changing economic environment.

The sums dwarf anything the EU has spent on research before, and may even challenge spending by the US, Japan and other research-oriented countries in some sectors. The current 2007-13 seventh framework programme is spending EUR50 billion.

To Read More…

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Announcing the winner of the International Award for Excellence

Published on December 19, 2011 in Headline, Journal and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Congratulations to Rui Gonçalves, Ana Vitória Baptista, Catarina Lobão and António Melo the winners of the International Award for Excellence in the world universities field with their paper Evidence-Based Practice in Higher Education: Discussing its Value to Enhance Teaching and Learning.

Abstract: Nowadays, we observe that Academia is focusing a great importance on research in general and evidence-based practice (EBP) in particular. In fact, multidisciplinary, transdisciplinary and cross-cutting approaches within research are being increasingly emphasised. This knowledge and process may have a great relevance to improve several activities, namely the teaching and learning process in Higher Education (HE). In this paper, we assume that EBP may be defined as the use of conscious and explicit scientific evidence which will increase the efficiency and quality of the teaching and learning process at HE institutions. Even though there are several studies that prove the importance and success of this interactive pedagogical experience, they also point out the existence of several barriers within some scientific domains that make the implementation of this strategy somewhat difficult. Thus, we will reflect on some aspects mentioned in the literature regarding the implementation of EBP with the ultimate goal of better understanding the impact it may bring to teaching and learning in HE. In particular, we will reflect about the importance and impact this strategy has in what regards the promotion of students’ generic skills and competences. Along this paper we will emphasise the importance that research in general and EBP in particular may have in the development and enhancement of teaching and learning process.

Chinese Drive 5% International Student Growth

Published on December 15, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Alison Moodie, University World News

International student enrolment at American colleges and universities has been growing steadily for the past five years, reaching a record high of 723,277 in 2010, according to a new report by the Institute of International Education. The annual Open Doors study found that the majority of international students came from China, with their number rising by 23% – the fourth consecutive year of double-digit increases.

The overall number of international students increased by 5% in 2010, while new international student enrolment grew by 6% percent to 214,490, a significant improvement from the paltry 1% increase in 2009.

Of the overall figure, graduate international students make up 293,885, continuing to outnumber undergraduate international students as they have been since 2001.

“It is positive news that our higher education institutions continue to excel in attracting students from all over the world, and in preparing American students to succeed in an increasingly global environment,” Allan Goodman, president and CEO of the Institute of International Education, said in a statement.

To Read More…

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