Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

From Associated Press writer Holly Ramer:

CONCORD, N.H.—The president of the University of New Hampshire outlined a 10-year strategic plan Tuesday he says is necessary to keep the state’s flagship public university from eventually sinking.

If the current trend continues, the typical New Hampshire family will be paying 75 percent of its disposable income to send a child to UNH by 2020, compared to 40 percent in 1978 and 60 percent today, Mark Huddleston said in a speech in Durham. That’s unsustainable, he said, and it’s time to move beyond asking families to work more to pay tuition and asking faculty and staff to simply make do with less.

Public colleges and universities around the country have been cutting costs, laying off staff and passing on much of their state budget shortfalls to students through higher tuition. But the current paradigm of higher education isn’t equipped to withstand the turbulence created by economic, political and demographic forces, Huddleston said.

“Either we change the paradigm or we go out of business,” he said. “This is not simply another year-ahead worry about UNH’s budget. It is about our ability to remain viable in the face of a gap between cost and ability to pay that grows into a true chasm when one looks ahead more than a year or two.”

For the article in the Boston Globe…

From Wagdy Sawahel, in University World News.

The 57 Islamic states have approved a plan to upgrade their universities as a means of achieving world-class status, as well as reforming them to become “functional developmental institutes” providing valuable resources for business, industry and society.

The plan was announced at a workshop, Achieving Excellence in Higher Education, in Ifrane in Morocco earlier this month. It was organised by the Islamic development bank of the 57 members of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and Al-Akhawayn University. The conference consists of countries from the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia, Caucasus, Balkans, Southeast Asia and South Asia.

The aim of the plan is to build a critical mass of world-class scientists and technologists in targeted science and technology areas, while also promoting relevant research and development outcomes for the private sector.

Fifteen institutions, five from Africa, Asia and the Arab world, were identified to carry out the upgrades and reform, and to promote scientific research in agriculture, nanotechnology and information and communication technologies.

The institutions were selected using international and regional university rankings, as well as their readiness to meet the demands and their likely impact on the development of knowledge-based economy.

To read more…

By Fazal Rizvi, Bob Lingard Routledge Taylor & Francis Group

List Price: $45.95

• ISBN: 978-0-415-41627-6
• Binding: Paperback (also available in Hardback)
• Published by: Routledge
• Publication Date: 13/08/2009
• Pages: 240

About the Book

Rizvi and Lingard’s account of the global politics of education is thoughtful, complex and compelling. It is the first really comprehensive discussion and analysis of global trends in education policy, their effects – structural and individual – and resistance to them. In the enormous body of writing on globalisation this book stands out and will become a basic text in education policy courses around the world.

- Stephen J Ball, Karl Mannheim Professor of Sociology of Education, Institute of Education, University of London, UK

In what ways have the processes of globalization reshaped the educational policy terrain?

How might we analyse education policies located within this new terrain, which is at once local, national, regional and global?

Over the past two decades, educational systems throughout the world have undergone significant changes as systems continue to interpret and respond to the ever-changing economic, social and political contexts within which education takes place. Educational policies have been deeply affected by these developments, as national governments have sought to re-align their educational priorities to what they perceive to be the imperatives of globalization.

In Globalizing Education Policy, the authors explore the key global drivers of policy change in education, and suggest that these do not operate in the same way in all nation-states. They examine the transformative effects of globalization on the discursive terrain within which educational policies are developed and enacted, arguing that this terrain is increasingly informed by a range of neo-liberal precepts which have fundamentally changed the ways in which we think about educational governance. They also suggest that whilst in some countries these precepts are resisted, to some extent, they have nonetheless become hegemonic, and provide an overview of some critical issues in educational policy to which this hegemonic view of globalization has given rise, including:

More….

Recently, the World Bank released a report by Jamil Salmi.

In September 2005, the new world ranking published by the Times Higher Education
Supplement was received like a bomb shell in Malaysia when it showed the country’s top
two universities slipping by almost 100 places compared to the previous year.
Notwithstanding the fact that the big drop was mostly due to a change in the ranking
methodology, the news was so traumatic that there were widespread calls for the
establishment of a Royal Commission of Inquiry to investigate the matter. This strong
reaction was not out of character in a nation whose current Ninth Development Plan aims
at shaping the transformation of the country into a knowledge-based economy with
emphasis on the important contribution of the university sector.

Preoccupations about university rankings reflect the general recognition that economic
growth and global competitiveness are increasingly driven by knowledge, and that
universities can play a key role in that context. Indeed, rapid advances in science and
technology across a wide range of areas from information and communication
technologies (ICTs) to biotechnology to new materials provide great potential for
countries to accelerate and strengthen their economic development. The application of
knowledge results in more efficient ways of producing goods and services and delivering
them more effectively and at lower costs to a greater number of people.

The full report may be download as a PDF here.