Brazil

University Entrance Exam Postponed After Fraud Report

Brazil’s Education Minister Fernando Haddad announced in October that the national university admission examinations would be postponed after a local daily reported fraudulent activities surrounding the tests.

The examinations were to take place two days after a report in O Estado de Sao Paulo that two people had tried to sell printed copies of the entrance papers to reporters from the daily. The copies were found to be genuine, forcing the authorities to call off the tests scheduled for the weekend. The Education Ministry said that a new version of the exam would be administered in 30 to 45 days. Over four million students from all over Brazil are to sit the exams this year.

– Xinhua
October 2, 2009

Canada

Indian Institution Looks to Set Up Shop in Canada

Mumbai-based S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research is hoping to further increase its enrollments of the world’s estimated 30 million “non-resident Indians” by opening a business school in Canada.

The institution already has campuses in Singapore and Dubai, and is currently undertaking due diligence regarding the new project, according to the Business Standard. The newspaper said the expansion plan was indicative of the ways in which business schools are gearing up for the competition they could face from international universities once they are permitted to set up campuses in India.

– Business Standard
August 17, 2009

International Students Working but not Studying

According to a Canadian immigration official in South Korea, some foreign students are abusing a federal program that allows them to study and work in Canada by neglecting to study, while working full time. The immigration official claims that a majority of prospective Korean students destined for private language schools in Canada do not actually attend a single course.

Instead, they use the work permits they get as part of the program to land jobs, Martin Mundel says in a memo obtained by Vancouver lawyer Richard Kurland under Access to Information legislation.

“The tuition fees paid in the private language schools effectively become the cost of purchasing a work permit, the value of which has recently increased given the prospect of obtaining work despite the global economic downturn and being able to apply for PR (permanent resident) status on the basis of the work experience,” Mundel wrote.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada, alerted to the problem by Mundel in his May memo, told Canwest News Service in an e-mail it takes such allegations of fraud seriously and that the government is “looking closely at this issue with a view to taking action against abuse.” But it said education institutions in Canada are not required to report student absences to the government, meaning it relies on intelligence to learn of cases of abuse.

Mundel said the popularity of the scheme is reflected in the significant jump in demand for internship and co-op placement in Canadian schools from less than 10 percent of Korean university and college students in 2007 to more than 40 percent in the first four months of 2009. Students from South Korea – a total of 13,942 – accounted for the largest number of foreigners studying in Canada last year. China was second with 13,668, according to government figures.

In 2008, the government issued a total of 9,902 work permits to students from a range of countries under the education-and-work program.

– Canwest News Service
September 13, 2009

United States

International Recruitment Agents Representing Individual Universities Need not Apply

The U.S. State Department has issued guidance that bars its EducationUSA centers from forming partnerships with commercial recruitment agents who represent specific universities.

The guidance, which applies to the 450 EducationUSA centers that are designed to provide objective advice to international students contemplating study in the United States, cites the lack of objectivity of commercial recruiters among other objections, many of which are consistent with concerns raised by the National Association of College Admission Counseling and other groups.

– EducationUSA
September 2, 2009

Washington Monthly Ranks Berkeley No.1

The University of California at Berkeley is the nation’s most socially responsible university, and Amherst College the top liberal-arts college, according to The Washington Monthly’s latest ranking, published in September.

The ranking aims to challenge the influence of U.S. News & World Report’s college rankings. The Washington magazine ranks colleges based on measures of how much social mobility, research, and public service they foster, in a bid to build a “measure of not just what colleges can do for you, but what colleges are doing for the country.”

– Washington Monthly
September/October 2009

A Ranking to Rank all Rankers

While most understand that rankings are a highly imperfect means of judging quality among institutions, they continue to exert considerable influence on the budgetary and administrative decisions of university leaders (who, some would say, are looking to game the system), while heavily influencing the decisions of those shopping for a university education.

Now CBS MoneyWatch.com has ranked the rankings, based on their ranking methodologies, and determined that “America’s Best Colleges ’09,” by Forbes magazine, is the best university list-maker. Forbes beat out U.S. News & World Report, Kiplinger’s, The Princeton Review, Washington Monthly, and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni because the business magazine “actually attempts to measure the quality of the education students receive.”

– Money Watch
September 24, 2009

Reverse Brain Drain

USA Today reports that an increasing number of U.S.-education skilled immigrants are leaving the land of opportunity for new frontiers of opportunity: whence they came, (re-) raising concerns that the U.S. is losing its competitive edge in science, technology and other fields.

“What was a trickle has become a flood,” Duke University’s Vivek Wadhwa, who studies reverse immigration, told the national daily. Wadhwa projects that in the next five years, 100,000 immigrants will go back to India and 100,000 to China, countries that have experienced rapid economic growth in recent years.

“For the first time in American history, we are experiencing the brain drain that other countries experienced,” he says.

Others interviewed by the newspaper felt that the U.S. economy would suffer with a smaller pool of skilled immigrants to hire from. And it’s not the faltering U.S. economy that is fueling the exodus, rather the growing number of management opportunities at home, which suggests this is a long-term trend and not one that will reverse with a turnaround in the U.S. economy.

– USA Today
September 20, 2009

Growth in International Graduate Enrollments Slows in ‘08

The growth in international-student enrollments at U.S. graduate schools leveled off considerably in 2008, while enrollments of domestic graduate students spiked, according to a new report from the Council of Graduate Schools.

The number of foreign students on temporary visas enrolling for the first time in American graduate schools rose by 3.3 percent last year, compared with a 4.7 percent increase in first-time enrollments of U.S. citizens in such programs, according to the council’s report, based on an annual survey of colleges and universities. The numbers mark the first time since 2004 that enrollments of domestic students rose faster than enrollments of international students at such institutions.

In both 2007 and 2006, U.S. graduate schools’ enrollments of international students rose by 10 percent, while enrollments of domestic students rose by 3 percent in 2007 and actually declined, by 1 percent, in 2006. The authors of the report have largely attributed the slowdown in foreign enrollments to the economy, which began its nosedive in 2008, and likely caused many to reconsider the high costs of a U.S. graduate education, especially with the credit markets freezing up. Increased competition for students from universities in other nations is also considered a contributing factor.

The rise in demand for graduate education among American students is also likely a product of the economy, and the labor markets specifically, with many concluding that they would be better off in graduate school than out looking for a job.

– Council of Graduate Schools
September 2009

Study Abroad Numbers Drop with the Souring Economy

The economy has been blamed for the first drop in more than a decade in the number of students travelling overseas to study. Nearly 60 percent of colleges and independent study-abroad providers surveyed by the Forum on Education Abroad said enrollments had fallen from the previous year. The same percentage of respondents said their study-abroad budgets had been cut.

The survey concluded September 24 and was completed by 165 forum members, for a 44 percent response rate. Until the 2008 financial meltdown in the United States, the number of students participating in overseas study for academic credit increased nearly 150 percent over the last decade, to almost 241,800 in the 2006 academic year.

Eighteen percent of those that reported decreases said participation was down from 1 percent to 4 percent, while 15 percent reported drops of 5 percent to 10 percent.

Nine percent of those surveyed—14 colleges or providers—had enrollment decreases of 26 percent or more. U.S.-based study-abroad organizations and public universities appear to have taken the biggest hit with regards to reporting drops in study-abroad participants.

– The Forum of Education Abroad
September 15, 2009