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Regional

Erasmus Mundus Budget Quadruples

The European Parliament in October agreed to boost four-fold the budget for one of the European Union’s flagship academic mobility programs, which aims to attract top academic research talent from non-EU countries.

Unlike its parent mobility initiative, the 20-year-old Erasmus program, Erasmus Mundus targets exclusively graduate-level students, in addition to professors from non-EU countries. It was launched in 2004 as a measure to restore Europe’s leading position in university research.

The successful results of the pilot phase (2004-2008) have led European policymakers to quadruple the project’s budget from €230 million to €950 million for the next five years. The pilot phase provided financial support to 103 international master’s and doctoral programs as well as to 4,424 participating third-country students. The other important target of the program was the creation of partnerships with educational institutions beyond the EU’s borders. Of 323 universities participating in the first phase of Erasmus Mundus, 58 were based in third countries.

The second phase seeks to involve more students and universities worldwide. European students will also be able to apply for scholarships to participate in sponsored graduate programs. European officials have called on member states to simplify their visa procedures and make it easier for qualified students and scholars to join programs offered at EU educational institutions.

– Euractiv
October 22, 2008

Student Mobility Increases 70% in Last Decade

According to a recent report, there are currently more than 2.5 million tertiary students studying abroad, a massive 70 percent increase from a decade ago. China sends by far the most students abroad, with 400,000 of its students currently enrolled in foreign universities, followed by India, which sends closer to 150,000 abroad for tertiary studies. Rounding out the top five sending nations are South Korea, Germany and Japan.

With the top two sending nations, it is no great surprise that the Asian region has the most students studying abroad. With 45 percent of the total studying abroad, Asian students significantly outrank Europe (28 percent), Africa (12 percent) and the Americas (10 percent). The report, Les Etudiants Internationaux: chiffres clés / International Student Mobility: Key Figures, published by CampusFrance, the national agency for promoting French higher education abroad, was released in September and derives its findings from the most recent statistics from the Unesco Institute of Statistics and the French Ministry of Education.

– Campus France
October 2008

Romania

Higher Education Sector Making Great Strides

In the last 20 years, Romanian higher education has been transformed from a crumbling Soviet underperformer to a competitive system enrolling seven times more students. The system now has more than 100 institutions, many of which are conducting cutting-edge research. In addition, investment in higher education has increased 30-fold in the past seven years.

When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, Romania’s 20 universities enrolled just 600 students per 100,000 people, according to Unesco figures. Today that number has risen dramatically to 3,500 students per 100,000 people. Today there are more than 100 institutions of higher education – 49 public universities and the rest private colleges and universities.

University reform began in earnest in 1997, and has received significant help from the Phare program, a European Union funded program designed to assist central and eastern European countries prepare for accession. Major funding has also been received from the World Bank.

Despite the success of reforms, the sector still faces challenges related to brain drain and a lack of qualified academics, especially among the younger generation. Corruption is also considered a major problem as is quality assurance, which is often the case with systems that see such rapid growth. In response, a quality assurance board was established in the late 1990s, followed by the Romanian Agency for Quality Assurance in Higher Education in 2005, and the introduction of a comprehensive peer review and assessment system that has been identifying weak institutions.

– University World News
October 5, 2008

Spain

U.S. Music School to Open Campus

A Boston-based music college has broken ground on a $145 million sister campus in Valencia, Spain, a coastal city on the Mediterranean. Built in partnership with the Spanish Society of Authors, Composers, and Publishers, a copyright and licensing group, Berklee Valencia will be the largest offshore American music college in the world, college officials from Berklee College said. It will focus on contemporary music, international business, and music technology.

The college, scheduled to open in 2011, will enroll 1,000 students, with nearly 200 slots reserved for visiting Berklee students.

– Berklee News Release
October 19, 2008

Turkey

Looking for Increased Overseas Enrollment

Turkey’s university regulator is developing a plan to make its institutions more appealing to students from abroad. The Higher Education Board, or YÖK, has been seeking to encourage private universities to lower tuition costs for foreign students, while also asking public universities to find ways of increasing overseas enrollments. YÖK has also announced preliminary plans to alter its Foreign Student Exam, for those from abroad wishing to enroll at Turkish universities and which many have said is too difficult.

In 2007-08, there were 16,829 foreign students studying at Turkish universities. A majority of those students came from neighboring Turkic republics and other closely related communities under the Great Student Project scholarship scheme. On the flip side, an increasing number of Turkish students have been traveling abroad for tertiary studies in recent years, because of high tuition costs at the nation’s private universities, and quotas on the Student Selection Examination (ÖSS) in addition to other problems. Cheaper study destinations, such as Bulgaria, have benefitted with increased Turkish enrollments. Approximately 5,000 Turkish students are currently enrolled in Bulgarian universities.

The top-ten source countries last year were: Cyprus (2,337), Azerbaijan (1,953), Turkmenistan (1,507), Bulgaria (1,178), Iran (906), Greece (875), Mongolia (815), Kazakhstan (681), Kyrgyzstan (549), Albania (533).

– Today’s Zaman
October 7, 2008

United Kingdom

New University Opens

In September, the University Centre Milton Keynes (UCMK) opened to provide a hub for regional institutions and key courses for the creative industries. UCMK will offer its own foundation degrees working as a “hub” with other universities including Oxford Brookes, Northampton University, Bedfordshire University and the Open University.

It will offer courses in the creative industries, business management and marketing, accountancy and finance, computing and information technology, purchasing, supply and logistics, teacher training, social science and psychology, counseling, health, nursing and social care, and sport.

– The Guardian
September 23, 2008

One-Year Master’s Degrees Problematic for Europeans

Britain’s one-year master’s degree is proving to be a sticking point for education officials in continental Europe who are reforming their education systems to meet the norms set out through the Bologna Process. The equivalence issue is also raising questions about length of study for other degrees, reports the Times Higher Education Supplement.

The Bologna Process seeks to create the European Higher Education Area, within which degrees are equivalent and students and academics can transfer easily between universities. One of the overarching goals is to improve the attractiveness of Europe as a study destination to overseas students. Under the terms of the agreement, by 2010, European universities should offer a three-cycle degree system to doctorate level – bachelors, masters, PhD – with a minimum of three years study toward a bachelors degree and one to two years for a masters.

For some systems, this entails much greater restructuring than for others. Countries such as Italy and Germany have had to radically overhaul their system, reducing five-year first degrees to a three-year format. Others, such as the UK, have taken a backseat, saying that their structure is essentially in line with Bologna standards – to the chagrin of many east of the British Channel. A report from the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) illustrated this view earlier in the year. “This lack of Bologna-inspired reform has been perceived in some quarters as a spirit of aloofness,” it says.

Central to the debate is the British one-year master’s degree. Although Bologna does not require a two-year master’s degree, it has become standard at most Bologna-compliant European universities, where the degree is typically seen as a research-intensive program designed to prepare students for a PhD and a career in academia. In the UK, it performs a quite different function – offering the high-level professional skills required by the workplace.

With Bologna set up to ensure equivalence across Europe, the master’s degree is a clear sticking point. The Norwegian Council of Universities has already publicly stated that it does not consider a one-year master’s to be suitable preparation for a PhD. The Hepi report recommends that British universities engage more with Europe to promote greater understanding about British master’s degrees.

For some disciplines, however, the problem is more complex. The undergraduate engineering degree in the UK is a four-year MEng, leading to a master’s qualification.

This may be more difficult for European counterparts to understand. As Bologna gathers pace, recruitment to the MEng degree could struggle as students consider it to offer only the bare minimum when compared with other Bologna-compliant institutions, which raises concerns for transferability and employment prospects abroad. Under the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS), credits are measured according to student effort hours, in and out of the lecture hall. An engineering student in the UK needs to put in 4,800 effort hours to graduate with an MEng degree. To achieve a comparable qualification in Germany, a student must work for a minimum of 8,000 hours.

– The Times Higher Education Supplement
October 2, 2008

New Diploma Gets Off to Disappointing Start

The number of high school students undertaking the U.K.’s new vocationally oriented Diploma programs is less than one-third the government’s original target of 40,000. The 12,000 students that started one of five newly introduced Diploma programs are far less than the government’s recently revised target of 20,264.

The Diplomas are offered in industry sector subjects, which mostly combine practical and theoretical learning. They are being delivered by consortiums of schools, colleges and employers and ultimately will cover 14 employment areas, plus the academic subjects of humanities, science and languages.

One of the major concerns for students is the reticence of top universities to accept the new qualification for admissions. According to government officials, prestigious universities have now said they would consider applications from students with Diplomas.

– BBC
October 13, 2008

Universities to Append 2-Page Report to Degree Certificates

Britain’s 200-year-old system of first, second and third-class degrees will soon be accompanied by a two-page report giving a comprehensive list of students’ achievements.

Eighteen universities including Manchester, Newcastle, St Andrews, University College London, Leicester, Aberystwyth, Northumbria, Derby, Northampton, Greenwich and Keele will be among the first to use the Diploma Supplement-style addition as part of a trial program beginning next year. Other universities across the UK are expected to follow by 2012.

The initiative follows the publication of an influential report last year which claimed existing honors degrees were “far too blunt a tool” to judge student ability. Figures show the number of students achieving a first has more than doubled since the mid-1990s, with critics claiming students’ achievements have been undermined by grade inflation.

The new “Higher Education Achievement Report” (Hear) will contain facts about a student’s degree program, including dates, program requirements, modules taken and an explanation of how courses were assessed. It will also include grades for each unit and list the wider skills students have mastered. It will initially be used by students taking English, biology, accounting and creative arts degrees. If successful, it will be extended to other universities.

– The Telegraph
October 20, 2008

Commonwealth Scholarship Scheme Back from the Abyss

Responding to vigorous university lobbying, the British Government announced a U-turn on its decision to axe approximatley £2 million of annual funding from its Commonwealth Scholarship scheme. The cut in funding would have ended scholarships for masters and PhD students from developed Commonwealth countries such as Canada and Australia.

It was one of several cuts for overseas students, including the removal of £10 million a year from the Overseas Research Student Award Scheme and a reduction in funding for the Chevening scholarship. Universities argued forcefully that cutting funding would damage the competitiveness of UK higher education and put off potential students at a time when global rivals were increasing their support. In response, the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills announced £450,000 in funding to reinvigorate the scheme. Although the change of heart has been hailed as a victory for universities, the money available is much less than the original amount, and is for PhD students only. Scholarships for students from developing Commonwealth countries, which are funded by the Department for International Development, are not affected.

– The Times Higher Education Supplement
October 16, 2008