Regional
World’s 7th Largest Bank Partners with US College to Support Higher Education in South America
Banco Santander, the world’s seventh largest bank by profit, and Babson College [1] announced a partnership recently to support academic programs in South America in the areas of entrepreneurship and global management. The Spanish bank runs programs with more than 600 universities around the world through its Santander Universities Global Division.
The collaboration agreement will focus on the areas of faculty training, which will take place at the Massachusetts-based college and abroad in the areas of entrepreneurship and global management. Scholarships will be made available for 15-20 students from Latin America to study at Babson, while internships at Santander will be offered to Babson students. In addition Babson will support social entrepreneurship workshops in South America.
– Babson news release [2]
January 25, 2008
Argentina
Government Commits to Guaranteeing Free Higher Education
One of President Cristina Kirchner’s new government priorities is to introduce a law for higher education that guarantees free access to the state university system. The country’s first elected female president looks set to make higher education a priority and has stated that she wants to replace the current, controversial law that allows public universities to charge tuition fees. The proposed new law to prohibit all fees is proving unpopular with some rectors.
Experts say it is not yet clear how the new law would guarantee free access to higher education. Private education is becoming more and more important to Argentina and today some 234,000 students attend private universities: approximately 20 percent of all students in the country, and an increase of 47 percent over the last decade.
The new law is also likely to ensure the continuation of the National Commission for University Evaluation and Accreditation [3], while requiring it to be made up of more academics.
– University World News [4]
January 20, 2008
Chile
University of Phoenix Parent Buys Chilean University
Apollo Group Inc., the parent company of the University of Phoenix [5], announced in February that it is set to buy a 3,000-student university in Santiago, Chile’s capital, for as much as US$49 million.
The purchase will be the first for Apollo Global, a subsidiary formed in October with the Carlyle Group, a private-equity fund. Apollo said it would pay $40 million for the University of Arts, Sciences, and Communication [6], and up to $9 million more after four years, depending on the institution’s earnings. The university was founded in 1989 and offers 18 bachelor’s and two master’s programs. In 2004 it became the first in Chile to offer a fully online undergraduate program.
– Bizjournals [7]
February 20, 2008
United States
Number of Foreign Graduate Students in Engineering and Technology Increases Significantly
The number of new enrollments among foreign students in graduate science and engineering programs has increased year on year by 16 percent in 2006, according to the results [8] of a National Science Foundation [9] survey released in February. The number of students in all years of those programs grew by 1.7 percent in 2006.
The NSF’s “Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering” found that the increase in first-time enrollments among all students in these programs was 6 percent.
– National Science Foundation [8]
January 2008
Study: U.S. Losing Ground to Rivals in Foreign-Student Market
While the U.S. faces no imminent threat of losing its position as the number one destination for internationally mobile students, it is facing increasing competition from its traditional rivals such as the United Kingdom and Australia, in addition to emerging destinations such as Malaysia, Singapore and China, according to a survey of 11,000 students from 143 countries.
The results of the StudentPulse [10] survey by U.K.-based i-graduate [11] shows that international students have a growing number of destination choices. The survey questioned students about why they were seeking to study overseas and which factors they considered when choosing where to study. Not only did the study find that the US was losing ground to the UK, but that it was losing more ground than the UK to emerging smaller competitors, who collectively are increasing their share of international enrollments.
Security concerns and visa issues were the chief deterrents for students who might otherwise have come to the US, while quality continues to be the biggest pull. More than 50 percent of the respondents were from China and India. The survey’s findings reinforce some of the results of a larger recent survey of 28,000 students, which found that the perceived quality of foreign academic programs was a crucial factor for students when deciding where to study abroad.
– i-graduate [10]
January 31, 2008