Regional

New QA Agencies Added to Continent’s Register

As part of Europe’s commitment to higher-education reform, undertaken through the Bologna Process, the region created a quality assurance register that would guarantee certain standards among agencies it listed. Created in 2008, the European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education (EQAR) had nine agencies on its register before listing a further eight in October.

The new agencies are the AGAE (Spain), AHPGS (Germany), AQA (Austria), ARACIS (Romania), HETAC (Ireland), IUQB (Ireland), NEAA (Bulgaria) and the VLIR (Belgium).

To be included, quality assurance agencies have to show they work in line with agreed European principles, set out in the European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance.

– EQAR news release
October 8, 2009

Mobility under Flagship Program Slows Overall, Declines in Many Countries

The European Commission would like to see 3 million students studying abroad under its flagship overseas-study program, Erasmus, by 2012. This could be considered a tough ask at a time when academic mobility numbers are slowing within Europe and dropping for many sending countries.

Currently, 4,000 higher education institutions in 31 countries are involved in the program, which has been running for 22 years and has just celebrated the participation of its 2 millionth student. Since the program was set up in 1987, the number of Erasmus students has increased from just 3,200 students annually to approximately 162,000. However, this only accounts for 3 to 4 percent of Europe’s student population.

In ten countries the number of outgoing students has decreased, sometimes by more than 10 percent. In Sweden, the number of outgoing students has dropped from about 3,300 students ten years ago to approximately 2,300 students today. The United Kingdom, on the other hand, saw a 42 percent increase in outgoing Erasmus students between 2006-07 and 2007-08, from 7,235 to 10,278, following the program’s introduction of work placements.

– Times Higher Education Supplement
October 25, 2009

A Ranking to Differentiate Best Programs and Reduce Overlap

The head of the European Commission’s education and culture directorate told The Chronicle of Higher Education in October that the commission is looking to encourage differentiation among Europe’s universities, which she believes currently overlap in focus too much. The commission would like to see strong departments strengthened rather than having universities all pursue the same goals.

The director general, Odile Quintin, told The Chronicle that Europe has “generally good-quality universities. We are much less good on the top, on the excellence part. Our main problem is strong fragmentation. We have too many universities. And of course when you have too many universities wanting to do the same thing, it’s difficult to get excellence.”

To differentiate between university departments, the commission is developing what Ms. Quintin describes as an alternative rankings system, one that takes a “multidimensional approach” to evaluating institutional strengths. The rankings will look at how well universities do in teaching and employability of graduates, and at their disciplinary strengths, among other things.

While the European Commission does not directly oversee higher education in Europe, it sets policies that influence member nations and runs projects that support international research and academic exchange. Although ultimate authority over higher-education systems rests with the individual member countries that belong to the European Union, the commission can set goals for the union as a whole, provide a venue through which countries can share their best strategies, and offer grants and scholarships for programs that promote their goals, such as mobility through the Erasmus Program (see above).

Ms. Quitin spoke to The Chronicle after a two-day, higher-education-policy forum in Washington held by the U.S. Department of Education and the European Commission’s Directorate General for Education. The meeting was the first in a series, with a goal of creating more partnerships between universities in the United States and Europe.

– The Chronicle of Higher Education
October 25, 2009

Cyprus

New Business Schools to Meet Management Needs of a Booming Economy

Universities in Cyprus have joined forces to lobby their government to help make the country a regional center of higher education, the Cyprus Mail newspaper has reported. Representatives of the six public and private institutions on the island have said that the government must take action to support the sector. Charis Charalambous, chair of the University of Cyprus, said that the autonomy and independence of universities should be established in law and more should be spent on research. He also called on the Education Ministry to promote Cyprus to foreign students and fund a system for approving student visas.

– Cyprus Mail
October 26, 2009

France

University Officials in Hot Water Over Irregularities in Admissions and Graduations of Chinese Students

France’s minister of higher education in October suspended the president of the University of Toulon and two top aides in a growing scandal over irregularities in the admission and graduation of Chinese students at the institution’s Institut d’Administration des Entreprises, or IAE. The allegations that led to the suspensions involve allegations about both the awarding of degrees, possibly in return for bribes, and charges that the university blocked an investigation into the situation from going forward.

– Washington Post
October 20, 2009

Germany

Bologna Degrees Need Curricula Reforms

Germany’s state education and science ministers have stated that they will encourage institutions of higher education to revise the structure of new Bologna-inspired masters and bachelor degrees. Federal Education Minister Annette Schavan welcomed the move, saying it would help promote the Bologna reforms in addition to creating greater acceptance of the new degrees.

Key ministerial proposals include extending the stipulated length of study, simplifying examination structures and easier credit transfer from institution to institution.

Referring to the implementation of the Bologna process Jan-Hendrik Olbertz, Saxony-Anhalt’s Cultural Affairs Minister, said, “Reshaping the curricula should not merely mean halving traditional courses. Bachelors’ courses need to be fundamentally newly conceived.”

Students voiced similar opinions about the way the Bologna reforms were being implemented at protests this summer. The main theme of student protests was that too much was being crammed into individual programs with insufficient attention to learning outcomes.

– University World News
October 25, 2009

Spain

The Search for Spain’s Centers of Academic Excellence Moves Forward

The Spanish government is sponsoring a competition called Campus of International Excellence, which it launched last summer to inspire universities to improve quality with the promise of supplemental funds and a new brand of excellence. Winning institutions in the first round were announced recently, with 15 public and three private universities advancing.

The initiative ultimately seeks to transform the select group of winning institutions into centers of excellence by 2015, centers that would be able to compete with other top universities around the world. Universities are being judged on specified projects according to standards in teaching, research, innovation and integration, reports the Spanish daily El País.

Winning projects include Cantabria University‘s joint proposal with Menéndez Pelayo to develop the area’s resources into building a ‘knowledge region’; Cordoba University’s drive to create a campus of excellence in agro-industries involving four other Andalusian universities; Valencia University’s institution-wide project entitled health and sustainability, and the Autonomous University of Barcelona’s plan to integrate the 23 research centers which share its Bellaterra campus.

Projects from Madrid and Barcelona account for seven of the 18 short-listed projects. Universities now have until November to develop their projects further and at the end of the month the names of the final winners will be announced. The universities selected will share total funding of just under EUR200 million (US$291 million) until 2011. Private universities are not eligible for funding, but can qualify for the campus of excellence brand.

– University World News
October 4, 2009

United Kingdom

Pakistanis Facing Visa Delays

Visa-processing delays for some 14,000 applicants in Pakistan have prevented thousands of university students from traveling to Britain to begin classes, The Guardian reports. Britain’s high commissioner in Islamabad told the newspaper that the UK Border Agency, which processes applications from Pakistan in its regional office in Abu Dhabi, had hired 100 more staff members to help clear the backlog and that “now we are prioritizing the students.”

– The Guardian
October 4, 2009

Foreign Students Act as Cornerstone of University Budgets

The annual cost of a British university education for international students beginning this fall is as high as £20,000 (US$32,000), figures show, and The Guardian newspaper asserts that, “overseas students are propping up UK universities’ finances.”

The highest fees are being charged by Imperial College London, with students from outside the European Union enrolling on undergraduate degrees in the sciences paying up to £20,400 in fees. At Oxford University, fees for overseas students starting undergraduate arts degrees this autumn are up to £17,100, according to Mike Reddin, a former academic at the London School of Economics, who gathered the data.

Most overseas students starting an undergraduate degree in the sciences will pay an average of £10,781 in fees for each year of their course, the data shows. This is a 3.7 percent increase on last year’s fees, Reddin found. Universities receive about £7,000 to cover the fees of each British or EU undergraduate for each year of their course.

Overseas students contribute £4bn a year in fees, according to the UK Council for International Student Affairs (Ukcisa). More than 8 percent of the total income of UK universities comes from overseas students’ fees, the Higher Education Statistics Agency has found.

Industry professionals interviewed by The Guardian point to how substantial international students fees have become, while warning that British universities are now very vulnerable to market shifts in international student mobility trends, especially as lower-cost venues grow in popularity and reputation.

– The Guardian
October 14, 2009

International Enrollments Double in Decade

Industry group Universities UK reports that there are almost twice as many non-European international students studying in the UK now as there were 10 years ago. International students provided a bigger source of income for UK universities in 2007/08 than government grants for research, the report adds.

Ten percent of enrollments – 229,640 students – were from outside the EU. In 1998-99, the figure was 117,290. In 2007-08, £1.88 billion of UK universities’ income came from non-EU students, while £1.76 billion came from government research grants, according to the report Patterns of Higher Education Institutions in the UK.

China provides the most students to UK universities, with 19,385 enrollments for first degrees, and 21,990 enrollments for graduate degrees.

– The Guardian
September 24, 2009

International Expansion the Norm at Britain’s Universities

According to research by law firm Eversheds, “a surge in UK higher education institutions exploring overseas partnerships, with India and China topping the table of global targets,” is expected in the coming years.

The UK Universities’ International Ambitions Report found that 71 percent of institutions are pursuing more international collaborations than previously. India is the most popular potential partner, being courted by 35 percent of institutions, followed by China (29 percent) and countries in Africa (12 percent).

Some 88 percent of respondents said that overseas collaboration was a “vital way of advancing the objectives of their institution,” and 76 percent said they would consider using e-learning technologies to access previously unviable territories. Nearly half (41 percent) would also consider setting up a campus abroad.

– The Times Higher Education Supplement
October 27, 2009

(Scotland)

International Enrollments Plateau, Domestic Enrollments Drop

The Scottish government released data in September that show the number of Scottish students studying in Scotland has fallen in the last year to 273,000, while the number of enrollments from abroad has remained steady at 35,165. India was the number one source country (3,815), overtaking China which sent 3,756 students.

– The BBC
September 30, 2009