Regional

Science Degree Spans the Globe

Despite being thousand of miles apart, students in Ireland, the US and Australia will tackle the world’s most pressing problems together and in the same classroom. Students at the universities of Dublin City, Colorado and Wollongong are the first in the world to take a BSc in international science. The newly created four-year degree offers science undergraduates what the academic community, industry and governments acknowledge they typically lack: a strong international perspective to their studies.

Students undertaking the degree program major in a science subject, but they must also take part in twice-weekly video conferences with students from one of the other three universities that offer this degree. Twice a term, all three universities get together to convene via this method. Through the video conferences, students come to appreciate that while in Australia, the solution to drought might be x, in Colorado it is y and in Dublin z.

All these students will spend a compulsory six months, preferably a year, in one of the other participating universities, something science undergraduates rarely do because of the highly structured nature of their degree programs.

Creating a syllabus and forms of assessment that can be used across three different higher education systems has proven to be difficult. The degree was almost abandoned two days after the three universities first reached an agreement. Now several universities have asked if they can also participate, and program staff are keen to add a Chinese university, although they say that they would like to graduate their first class in 2010 before doing so.

– The Guardian
May 29, 2007

Canada

Court Orders Vancouver-Based e-university to Stop Issuing Degrees

The Supreme Court of British Columbia ended a 15-year dispute in May by ordering Vancouver University Worldwide (VUW) to stop granting degrees. With its decision, the Court raised serious questions about the monitoring of online universities and where exactly jurisdiction for such monitoring actually lies. According to the Supreme Court decision, jurisdiction lies in British Columbia (B.C.) because the institution maintains an office in Vancouver, and it is therefore breaking the Vancouver Degree Authorization Act by offering degrees without permission. However, Raymond Rogers, president of VUW, told the Vancouver Sun his private institution does not conduct degree programs in British Columbia, and that degrees are printed and signed in other jurisdictions outside B.C.

Judge Stephen Kelleher disagreed, ruling that because some degrees are mailed out from within the province, the university is indeed in violation of the act. “If a degree is posted in B.C.,” the judge wrote in his ruling, “I am satisfied that it amounts to conferring a degree in B.C. although the recipient may be elsewhere.”

Vancouver University Worldwide was first warned not to advertise its degrees in B.C. 15 years ago when the government took issue with the institution using the word “university” in its advertising. Yet, even after the latest ruling, Rodgers says that there will be no change to the university’s programs. According to its website, the only degrees that Vancouver University Worldwide offers in B.C. are in theology, which is exempted from the Degree Authorization Act.

In the U.S., any address, physical site, electronic device, or telephone number within a jurisdiction is enough to bring that institution under that jurisdiction’s law. Also, a school-organized meeting of two or more students, a computer server hosting web pages, advertising, or an administrator operating in the jurisdiction can also determine its location. The laws are less clear in Canada, hence the 15-year battle with VWU and the existence in B.C of other outfits operating without license.

– Macleans
May 11, 2007

University College in Sault Ste. Marie Upgraded to University

The Ontario government announced in May that Algoma University College will be upgraded to independent university status. The college, which was originally established in 1965 as an affiliate of Laurentian University in Sudbury, will become Algoma University. Currently, the institution offers bachelor’s degrees in the arts and sciences issued by Laurentian University. Algoma University will be Canada’s newest public university since the University of Ontario Institute of Technology was established in 2003, and like the UOIT model, Algoma will offer a highly focused curriculum responsive to the needs of the regional economy and population.

With a student body that has grown by 73 percent since 1998, there is no shortage of applicants to fill the new university. With this announcement, Sault Ste. Marie will be a regional hub for higher education having both a full-fledged university and a college in the city.

– Macleans
May 31, 2007

Chile

Students Protest, Demand Improvements in Public Education

Some 200 students occupied the administration building of the Universidad de Chile in Santiago earlier this month, demanding the government improve public higher education. Giorgio Baccardo, president of the Federación de Estudiantes, characterized Chilean higher education as facing a crisis of quality, infrastructure, academics, public health, and transportation due to a lack of qualified professionals directing the country’s universities. Protesting students also stumped for the elimination of the Prueba de Seleccion Universitaria (PSU), the national college entrance examination, arguing that it favors wealthy students with the resources to prepare for the test.

Director of Higher Education for the Ministry of Education, Julio Castro, responded to the students by asking them to report their grievances to the higher education advisory established last year by President Michelle Bachelet. Mr. Castro also refuted the insinuation that poor students were limited in their opportunities to attend university and cited that currently 60 percent of all Chilean college students are the first generation of their family to enter higher education.

– La Prensa (Spanish)
Jun. 12, 2007

Colombia

Universities Shuttered by Student Protests

Student protests and blockades in May forced the closure of four main campuses of Colombia’s National University. The latest closings left most of the nation’s public university system shut down for two weeks due to a controversy over who will pay for huge pension costs. The university officials’ decision to suspend classes at the four campuses, in Bogotá, Manizales, Medellín, and Palmira, followed weeks of sometimes violent protest marches and blockades of buildings throughout the country by student organizations. The demonstrations have paralyzed activities at most of the nation’s more than 30 public universities.

The students oppose a National Development Plan recently approved by Colombia’s Congress, which they say would cripple the public universities by shifting some pension payments for faculty and staff members from the national government to the universities, forcing them to raise tuition or even go into bankruptcy.

– The Chronicle of Higher Education
May 21, 2007

United States of America

International Science and Engineering Graduate Admissions Rebound

The National Science Foundation has released statistics showing more evidence that international enrollments are on the rebound in the United States. In 2005, first-time graduate enrollments of foreign students in science and engineering were up 4 percent over 2004, the first increase since 2001. While total foreign enrollments in science and engineering were down, the first-time enrollment figure is considered crucial because most programs last several years. The NSF data are consistent with a series of surveys from the Council of Graduate Schools, which have found that post-9/11 declines in the number of international students attending U.S. universities are being reversed.

– National Science Foundation
February 2007

Graduate Students Studying International Health in Growing Numbers

The number of graduates enrolling in US-based master’s degree programs in international health has grown by 69 percent in the last decade as a part of an overall boom among students interested in saving lives in the world’s poorest regions. At Boston University’s School of Public Health, enrollment in the Department of International Health has nearly doubled in four years, to 225 students from 120 in 2003.

Jim Yong Kim, chairman of Harvard Medical School’s Department of Social Medicine, told the Boston Globe that just a handful of people in his Harvard Medical School class two decades ago expressed any interest in global health. This year, he said, roughly a third of the 130 first-year students petitioned him and Paul Farmer, with whom he was teaching a course on social justice in medicine, to put more global health material into their class.

Around the nation, the number of schools of public health now stands at 38, up from 27 a decade ago, according to the Association of Schools of Public Health, based in Washington, D.C. In those schools, the association found the 69 percent increase in students studying international health.

– The Boston Globe
June 4, 2007

House Passes Study Abroad Bill

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill in April that would greatly increase the number of American students studying abroad. The legislation approved by the House, known as the Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act (HR 1469), would create a foundation whose goal would be to send one million American students abroad each year within the next 10 years.

Only 206,000 students studied abroad during the 2004 academic year, the latest for which figures are available. That number represents about 1 percent of all university students. The bill authorizes Congress to appropriate $80-million annually for the foundation, which would distribute the money largely in the form of grants to students through universities and other study-abroad providers.

– Nafsa News Release
June 5, 2007

Venezuela

Government Announces Plans to Open 28 New Institutions

This May, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced plans to open 28 new universities throughout the South American nation. Mission Alma Mater, as the initiative is known, will open 11 new national universities, 13 regional universities and 4 new technical institutes. The 29 technical institutes and schools that currently operate in Venezuela will have their status upgraded to that of technical university as part of the ambitious plan.

Other changes in store for Venezuelan higher education announced by Chavez include the implementation of pay raises for all university staff, improvements in university cafeterias and computer labs, an increase in the number and amount of scholarships awarded to post-secondary students for the upcoming academic year, and the elimination of all entrance examinations for public universities.

His new budgetary concessions made for this expansion of higher education came in the midst of weeks of student protest and shutdowns at national universities as a result of unpopular government policies.

– Venezuelanalysis
May 27, 2007