Australia

Online Program Covers Aboriginal Group’s Language, Culture

Northern Territory University in Darwin has created a distance-education program to teach students one of the world’s oldest aboriginal languages. The program began this year, and some 50 students are currently enrolled, the majority of whom are based in Australia.

The university is working with the Yolngu people to study their language and culture, and also is using the latest technology to teach courses about the aboriginal tribe, a people in northeastern Australia whose history on the continent dates back 40,000 years. While the university has offered both undergraduate and graduate degrees in Yolngu studies, this marks the first time that an institution of higher education has offered the studies online. The cost for the entire program is around US$1,740.

— The Chronicle of Higher Education
March 1, 2002

Dramatic Surge in Visa Applications and Foreign Student Enrollment

More than 200,000 foreign fee-paying students are expected to enroll in Australian institutions of higher education this year, with well over 100,000 studying on the continent itself.

In 2000, universities enrolled 72,000 foreign students on their Australian campuses, with about 25,000 more studying offshore. In the past decade, Australian higher education enrollment has witnessed an increase of 230 percent. While the spike has come from many countries across Europe and Africa, the largest number of students is from China. That number alone has jumped 66 percent since the previous year.

Officials say the recent surge can be attributed to the July 2001 amendments in the country’s visa policies.

— Campus Review
March 12, 2002

China

Int’l Education Expo Held in North China Province

Some 50 overseas schools of higher learning and educational organizations attended the first China International Education Expo, held between June 6-9 in Shijiazhuang, capital of north China’s Hebei Province.

These overseas universities and educational organizations are from 18 countries and regions including Britain, the United States, Russia, France, Germany and Japan. Hebei’s 75 universities, key secondary schools and foreign languages schools have also signed up for the expo.

The event was jointly sponsored by the State Overseas Study Fund Commission and Hebei Province.

Participants discussed the educational systems of different countries, development trends in education, the role of international cooperation in higher education, educational development in China since it joined the World Trade Organization, international cooperation in the educational field and new openings for exchanges.

— Xinhua News Agency
June 03, 2002

Vice Premier Stumps for Improved Rural Education System

At a teleconference held April 26, Chinese Vice Premier Li Lanqing said two shifts in responsibility are crucial for the improvement of the rural compulsory education-management system – from farmers to government and from township level to county level. To further improve the system, he added, people need to focus on a few key points:

1. Establish a stable and effective system to guarantee funds necessary for rural compulsory education.
2. Create a comprehensive monitoring system to ensure effective and legitimate use of all funds.
3. Concentrate on poverty-stricken areas to keep their development of the compulsory education program abreast with everywhere else.

Li also stressed that student-work programs need strengthening so students from financially strapped families can complete their studies.

— People’s Daily
April 27, 2002

Nepal

Rebels Torch Sanskrit College

Maoist rebels set fire to Mahendra Sanskrit University Nepal’s only Sanskrit-language university in May, destroying administration buildings and damaging the college’s valuable collection of ancient texts. All student records, kept since the university opened in 1986, were destroyed, as well as an unknown number of Sanskrit books.

The rebels, who are fighting to overthrow the country’s constitutional monarchy, have demanded the government stop teaching Sanskrit, the language of Nepal’s aristocracy. This demand has been among the rebels’ priorities since their rebellion began in 1996. The fire was the second attack on the campus in six months.

— The Chronicle of Higher Education
May 31, 2002

Pakistan

Musharraf Blocks Aid to 115 Islamic Schools for Alleged Links to Terrorism

Pakistan has blocked financial assistance to 115 Islamic schools because of their alleged involvement in militancy, sectarian violence and terrorism, a senior cleric said Monday.

“The government will not release funds to those 115 madrassas whose students or heads have been linked to militancy,” said Mufti Abdul Qavi, a member of the Pakistan Madrassa Education Board, authorized recently by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf to purge Islamic schools of extremism. “How can we provide funds to those who are involved in militancy?”

Over the next three years, the government will release $250 million to some 8,000 Islamic schools – known as madrassas – but those on the blacklist will not get any money.

Heeding appeals from pro-Taliban clerics, thousands of students at Islamic schools opposed the decision, calling it a betrayal and demanding that coalition forces in Pakistan be sent home.

— Boston Herald
June 3, 2002

The Philippines

Educated Filipinos Look Abroad for Better Life

Educated young professionals and their families continue to leave the Philippines in large numbers. Despite promises from successive governments for a stronger economy at home, the exodus began before the downfall of dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 and has not abated.

This mass exodus is quickly eroding hopes of building a stable middle class and restructuring the political system, which is still encrusted with the oligarchs of the past. While all types of people flee – nurses, doctors, and computer analysts among them – the most recent trend appears to be young female graduates going to Japan.

Reluctant to compromise the interests of the country’s power elite, the successive governments during the 1990s did not encourage foreign investment in important industries, a practice that hindered job creation. Hence, increasing numbers of Filipinos have left their homeland in search of greener pastures overseas. The majority of them go to the Middle East, Australia, Japan or the United States. Official government statistics show that 5 million Filipinos currently live abroad, while economists put that number around 7.5 million.

Their remittances – the money they send to friends and family – make up the nation’s second-largest source of foreign exchange, behind the nation’s exportation of electronic goods.

— The New York Times
April 8, 2002

Taiwan

Taipei Launches Cyber-Academy for Civil Servants

The Taiwanese government has introduced a US$76.5 million, six-year, national-development program that aims to turn Taiwan into a “digitalized state.” In early May, it launched the cornerstone of the program, a cyber-academy designed to encourage civil servants to enroll in life-long learning courses.

“We hope,” said Lin Chia-cheng, chairman of the government’s Research, Development and Evaluation Commission, “that the inauguration of the e-learning academy will help materialize the building of a digitalized Taiwan.”

The E-learning Civil Servant Academy offers 10 courses to the nation’s 600,000 civil servants. “To respond to a fast-changing world, it’s important to provide civil servants — whoever they are and wherever they work — with a new way of learning, so they’ll remain abreast of the most updated information,” Lin said. The online academy was in development for nine months.

According to one official, 67 of Taiwan’s 200 universities, or about 30 percent, acknowledge the credentials of online programs (about 44 percent of the 3,000 universities in the United States offer online programs and acknowledge their credentials). That same official suggested the government needed to significantly raise this percentage if this “digitized Taiwan” is to take shape.

— http://www.taipeitimes.com
May 11, 2002

Thailand

Thai Government to Recruit More Foreign Students

The Ministry of Education plans to spearhead a massive drive to attract more foreign students to study in Thailand, and at the same time to try to prevent Thai students from studying abroad.

Education officials recently announced that a conference entitled “Studying in the International System in Thailand — Better than Studying Abroad” was scheduled to take place near the end of June. It is hoped that the conference will serve to promote Thailand’s education system, encouraging it to meet quality standards that would give it greater appeal both domestically and internationally.

According to the same officials, there is growing interest among students from Myanmar, Nepal, China and Bhutan to study in Thailand. Furthermore, the government hopes to instill Thai parents with greater confidence in Thai-based education, making them think twice about sending their children abroad to study.

At present, the international education industry pulls in US$169 million a year for Thailand, but more money leaves the country on account of Thai students pursuing their studies abroad.

— Xinhua News Agency
June 3, 2002

Kingdom to Recruit Retired English Teachers

Plans are underway to entice retired native English teachers to move to Thailand and teach in state-run schools situated in touristic regions where language skills are poor, according to education sources.

“We will give them incentives”, promised Prapatpong Senarit, head of the Ministry of Education’s Curriculum and Instruction Development Department. “The Education Ministry will help find cheap accommodation for them. They will be employed for one semester or two.”

The project is expected to begin in 2003 and is aimed at raising the teaching standards in tourism-dependent provinces like the southern island of Phuket and Chiang Mai in the north.

While English has been taught in Thailand for more than a century, nearly all of the language teachers in primary schools lack the training to teach effectively, said one official in the ministry . Embassies of English-speaking countries might be asked to help entice retired teachers to join the project.

— The News Mexico
March 24, 2002