From David Jobbins, in University World News
The parting of the ways between Times Higher Education and QS, its international league table number-cruncher for the past seven years, was bound to cause ripples when it was announced late last year. The two former partners are now vying with each other to capture hearts and minds for their diverging methodologies as they gear up for the 2010 rankings cycle.
QS, or Quacquarelli Symonds, the research and information specialists behind the QS World University Rankings, begins work this week on its academic and employer surveys for the 2010 rankings. It also continues a partnership with US News and World Report to reproduce the league tables alongside the magazine’s domestic rankings with the publication late last month of a mid-year update.
That there are now to be two rival northern hemisphere English-language rankings to spar with the Academic Ranking of World Universities compiled by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University will be bound to reinforce criticisms that international league tables favour universities in the European and North American mould and discriminate against institutions elsewhere, especially where academics tend to publish in languages other than English.
To read more…
From University World News
Europe produces more research papers than the US or Japan but needs an influx of venture capital to turn inventions into commercial success, according to Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, EU commissioner for research, innovation and science.
The Euractiv.com newsletter says that as the EU’s newly- installed innovation commissioner, Geoghegan-Quinn listed venture capital among a series of bottlenecks to innovation in Europe when briefing journalists on her first day in the job.
Venture capital has been creeping up the agenda in recent months and was highlighted by a panel of business exports who reported on the state of Europe’s innovation infrastructure for the European Commission last year, reports Euractiv.com.
The European Investment Fund (EIF) provides venture capital and loan guarantees to small businesses and has stepped up its activity since the outbreak of the financial crisis. Geoghegan-Quinn cited the example of the MP3 standard for compressing audio files which was invented in Europe but commercialised in the US.
To read more…
From Geoff Maslen at University World News
A rapidly growing number of universities across the world are establishing branch campuses in other countries. In fact, the number has almost doubled to 162 in the past three years alone and has jumped eight-fold since 2002. Although the US continues to dominate with its offshore campuses scattered around the globe, more countries have become involved as hosts and providers.
A report by the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education* says that among the host countries, the United Arab Emirates is the clear leader, hosting a quarter of all international branch campuses in the world.
The report says that of the existing campuses, only 35 were operating before 1999. Since September 2006, at least 49 new campuses have been established - 30% of the current total - with three new ones to be opened soon. In the same period, five international branch campuses have closed.
To read more…
From Wagdy Sawahel, in University World News.
As a result of plagiarism and academic misconduct scandals associated with the country’s newly appointed Science Minister, Iranian professors in US-based universities and research centres have called on their peers at home to uphold high ethical standards, including safeguarding the integrity of the academy, curriculum, scholarly contributions and publications.
Despite questions being raised about his academic credentials, the Iranian parliament approved the nomination by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of 52-year-old space scientist Kamran Daneshjo as the country’s new Science, Research and Technology Minister.
Daneshjou, the former election chief who oversaw the disputed vote tally in June, is a professor at the Tehran-based school of mechanical engineering of the University of Science and Technology, the same institution from which Ahmadinejad graduated.
Read more…
By Philip Fine, Wagdy Sawahel and Maya Jarjour University World News
Women outnumber men in worldwide university enrolments and graduation rates, according to Unesco’s 2009 Global Education Digest. The number of female students in tertiary education rose six-fold between 1970 and 2007compared with a quadrupling of male enrolments during the same period. In terms of graduation, women outnumber men in 75 of the 98 countries, the Digest reports.
Tertiary enrolment ratios of men and women reached parity around the year 2003. Since then, the average global participation of females has been exceeding that of males. In 1970, the male-to-female enrolment ratio was 1.6. In 2007, it flipped, with the female-to-male ratio becoming 1.08.
In North America and Europe, a third more women than men are on campus. Latin America, the Caribbean as well as Central Asia also show high rates of female enrolments. In a number of countries, at least two females graduate for every male.
Read more….
From Keith Nuthall at University World News
A €3.2 billion programme of research spending that will try to pull Europe out of recession and into a sustainable economic recovery has been launched by the European Commission. At a ceremony in Brussels witnessed by more than 800 senior researchers and industrialists, the commission put scientists on notice that millions of research euros would soon start to pour out of three private-public partnerships funding R&D projects across Europe.
They will last until 2013 and will cover three topics:
* Developing innovative manufacturing technologies, materials and processes to produce more while consuming fewer materials, less energy, and producing less waste.
* Creating more energy-efficient buildings, improving new construction design and greening existing buildings through new materials and construction techniques.
* Building greener cars and smarter transport systems, including the electrification of road and urban transport, and research into hybrid technologies. More…
From The New York Times:
Graduate education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).
Widespread hiring freezes and layoffs have brought these problems into sharp relief now. But our graduate system has been in crisis for decades, and the seeds of this crisis go as far back as the formation of modern universities. Kant, in his 1798 work “The Conflict of the Faculties,” wrote that universities should “handle the entire content of learning by mass production, so to speak, by a division of labor, so that for every branch of the sciences there would be a public teacher or professor appointed as its trustee.”
More…
