Regional

European Business Schools Enjoy International Recruiting Success

A growing number of Americans are pursuing management degrees abroad, while ever more business students are traveling abroad from other countries, and European business schools are one of the main beneficiaries of the trend, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education. Much of the recent recruiting success enjoyed by European business schools comes from their emphasis on multicultural classrooms and that most M.B.A. programs can be completed within one year, compared to the typical two years for American programs. This makes them considerably less expensive.

A study released in 2009 by the Graduate Management Admission Council, which administers the GMAT, found that the proportion of test scores that internationally mobile students were sending to programs in the United States has slid steadily from 75 percent in 2000, to 42 percent this year. At Madrid’s Instituto de Empresa Business School, 90 percent of students now come from outside Spain, with the biggest growth coming from Asia.

Experts suggest that the recruiting declines in the United States are likely due to the poor U.S. job market and tighter restrictions on work visas since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. At the same time, students overseas are finding more options closer to home as the demand for M.B.A.’s in their home countries increases.

Most European M.B.A. programs require students to speak more than one language; a new global M.B.A. program at France’s prestigious Essec Business School will require a minimum of three. Insead, another top French business school, has campuses in Singapore and Abu Dhabi and offers an M.B.A. program that can be completed in 10 intensive months. Students come from 83 countries, and 92 percent are from outside France. At HEC Paris ten years ago, most of the program’s students were French; today, only 20 percent are. The biggest increases have come from India and the United States, according to school officials. International students from 50 countries make up 80 percent of the M.B.A. enrollment at the University of Navarra’s IESE Business School in Barcelona. Applications from the United States jumped 25 percent this year over last, and this fall’s entering class of 280 includes 31 Americans.

The leaders of top M.B.A. programs in the United States say they, too, are preparing students to work in a global economy; however, that often involves creating alliances with business schools overseas. Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business offers student exchanges with several foreign schools, including HEC Paris, Essec, and the London Business School. The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School offers exchanges through its alliance with Insead and relationships with other foreign programs. International students from 68 countries make up 36 percent of Wharton’s M.B.A. enrollment, and nearly 40 percent of the faculty members are international, officials there say.

Between 2005 and 2009, the percentage of students enrolled in full-time M.B.A. programs in the United States who came from outside the country dropped to 25 percent from 29 percent, according to figures reported to the AACSB by 176 accredited schools.

– The Chronicle of Higher Education
September 24, 2010

International Students Have Different Motivations for Studying in Different Countries

According to a recent study, different study destinations have distinctly different pull factors for students looking to go overseas. Those choosing Britain largely do so for quality, while those choosing the United States go for career improvement opportunities, and those heading to Germany are attracted by low tuition.

The British Council’s Student Decision Making Survey includes online survey data from approximately 115,000 students from 200 countries, who hope to study abroad. The poll has been conducted over the past three and a half years. The survey found that when choosing a country, just over half of students put quality of education in their top three priorities. Just over a quarter (26.3 percent) view the reputation of a country’s universities as a key factor.

Of students naming Britain as their ideal destination, 59 percent said they considered quality of education the top priority – the highest rating of any destination country on that criterion. Prospective students looking at the United States were most likely to focus on enhancing their career prospects (38 percent).

Those thinking Australia or Canada were more inclined than others to see the opportunity to work while studying as a key consideration (24 percent), while those seeking a seat at a German university were most likely to mention low tuition fees as a priority (25 percent).

But overall the “cost of studying overseas does not feature strongly when students are choosing a study destination,” according to the survey, with only one in 10 citing low tuition as one of the three most important factors. The survey found that when asked to identify three factors that most influenced their initial decision to study abroad – before choice of destination – higher quality is cited by 54.2 percent, followed by career improvement (53.8 percent) and the chance to live overseas (51.5 per cent).

– British Council
September 2010

France

Elite Parisian Colleges to Relocate to Suburban Research Campus

The French government has invested approximately US$2.5 billion in a French “Silicon Valley” intended to rival the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Cambridge. However, enthusiasm among faculty members for the project, which will involve the sale of prestigious real estate in Paris, has been muted, at best, reports Times Higher Education.

Six grandes écoles, France’s top-tier academic institutions, are to relocate to the Saclay plateau south of Paris beginning next year. President Nicolas Sarkozy, speaking in September during a visit to a nanotechnology site at Saclay, argued that academics should see the move as an opportunity to break down barriers between institutions. While many academics find the idea of a French Silicon Valley appealing, there are also widespread fears that the new super-campus may not live up to expectations.

There are concerns that the contrived nature of the project will prevent innovation. In addition, a lack of infrastructure on the Saclay plateau, which under the current plan is set to welcome 12,000 academics and 30,000 students by 2019, is a key point of concern. Located about 20km south of Paris, the plateau presently has no student housing, no nearby Métro stop and no train services.

– Times Higher Education
October 7, 2010

Germany

Adding General Education to the University Curriculum

In defining curriculum objectives for the European Higher Education Area, European education ministers and other stakeholders involved in the Bologna reforms wanted to ensure that students would be graduating with skills that would not only bring expertise in a particular discipline, but would also make them employable in a broader workplace context.

Of the 10 ‘action lines’ defined under the Bologna reforms, European universities translated ’employability’ and ‘lifelong learning’ as curricular terms that would require students to learn the generic skills, outside of academic knowledge, required by the workplace. These personal, practical, social and communication skills have become known as ‘soft skills.’

According to a recent article in University World News, by early 2009, 80 percent of German universities were offering training in soft skills, either integrated into regular courses or organized by their career centers. By December 2010, Florian Vollmers wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in February 2009 that when the three degree cycles are set to be established in universities across Europe, the percentage of German universities offering soft skills training will be at least 90 percent.

While many in the academic community welcome the addition of soft skills to university curricular, critics say that universities are rushing to meet Bologna guidelines and deadlines by the end of 2010, without understanding precisely how to teach ‘key competencies,’ the umbrella term for soft skills.

– University World News
October 3, 2010

Portugal

Government Focuses on University Innovation and International Partnerships

The Portuguese government hopes the country’s institutions of higher education can help launch the nation’s future by focusing on university research, under a plan to turn the country into a hub for innovation. To help achieve this, the government has increased spending on scientific research and development from 0.4 percent of gross domestic product in the late 1980s, to 0.81 percent in 2005 and 1.55 percent just three years later.

Central to Portugal’s new knowledge-economy agenda are ambitious overseas partnerships with four U.S. institutions—Carnegie Mellon University, Harvard Medical School, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Texas at Austin. The partnerships involve the expansion of academic and research programs, and the exchange of faculty. The government is spending almost US$64 million a year on these relationships, while business-sector partners contributed more than 1.6 million euros in 2009 to just one of the programs, between Portugal and Carnegie Mellon. Under the strategy, Portuguese universities would be better linked to international scientific networks and industry in key areas like advanced computing, bioengineering, energy, medical education, and transportation.

Equally necessary, according to government officials, is to get Portuguese universities to work together on common research problems. Individually, many of the country’s 13 public universities lack the capacity to tackle large-scale research projects. Those involved say that persuading domestic institutions to work together has proven to be problematic, as they have traditionally viewed one another as competitors.

Collaboration with industry has also traditionally been minimal, in part because the country’s industry has not typically been research-intensive. That has been changing over time, but Portuguese companies still spend only the equivalent of 0.2 percent of gross domestic product on research and development. The U.S. university partnerships have helped build industry collaboration with Novabase, Portugal Telecom and Nokia Siemens representing three of the original industrial partners of the Carnegie Mellon-Portugal program. That partnership alone now involves more than 50 private-sector companies, say program officials.

Together, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and Texas offer three advanced-studies certificates, seven master’s degrees, and 10 doctoral programs. (The youngest partnership, with Harvard Medical School, differs somewhat in that it focuses on postgraduate clinical training and medical education.) Portuguese universities hope that the doctoral programs will persuade top Portuguese students to stay in country for graduate studies.

Several indicators show that Portugal’s investment in research and education is yielding results. The number of scientific papers published by Portuguese academics in internationally recognized journals increased to 12,108 in 2008, up from 6,597 in 2002. Portugal recently hit the average for industrialized Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries in terms of the number of researchers per thousand workers. And for the first time, Portugal is a net exporter of technology.

– The Chronicle of Higher Education
September 14, 2010

Republic of Ireland

Government Sets 50% Growth Targets for International Student Enrollments

The Irish government has launched a new strategy aimed at increasing international tertiary student numbers by 50 percent and English-language student numbers by 25 percent within five years.

The blueprint entitled “Investing in Global Relationships” predicts that the international education sector will be worth €1.2 billion (US$1.68 billion) annually to the Irish economy by 2015. Current estimates peg the worth at €900 million per year. As part of the strategy, the government has also launched a new immigration scheme for international students, reforming entry requirements but imposing safeguards to prevent abuse of the system.

At present there are 17,000 full-time students in the Irish system, or about 10 percent of the total full-time student population. The aim is to increase that to 25,500 by 2015. There are also more than 100,000 English-language students in Ireland and the government hopes to increase that to at least 120,000 by 2015.

– The Irish Times
September 22, 2010

Romania

Turkish Businessman Opens University in Bucharest

Turkish and Romanian officials attended the opening of Lumina University in Bucharest in October. The Turkish entrepreneurs behind the institution have a goal of making the university one of the best in the region, according to local news reports.

Ayşe Sinirlioğlu, Turkey’s Romanian Ambassador, said at the opening ceremony that relations between Turkey and Romania are excellent and cooperation in education will further improve those relations.

The company behind Lumina also operates primary and secondary schools in the two countries. The university will reportedly have a 1,000-student capacity, with 16 laboratories and a research center. The university is currently offering programs through its engineering, political science and economics departments.

– Today’s Zaman
October 9, 2010

United Kingdom

Enrollments from Outside Europe Double in a Decade

According to figures released by Universities UK (UUK), 251,310 students from outside Europe were admitted to British institutions of higher education in 2008/9 compared with just 122,150 a decade earlier. The 106 percent rise comes amid claims that foreign students – who can be charged far more than their British peers – are seen as an increasingly lucrative source of income.

Similar data released by the Higher Education Statistics Agency in September reveal that the total number of international students, including from the EU, attending British universities jumped 24 percent in the five years to 2008/09. The HESA report shows that the number of non-UK students increased by 22 percent to 185,585 at the undergraduate level, and by 27 percent to a total of 183,385 at the graduate level. The total number of students at UK institutions grew by 7 percent during the same period – from 2.2 million to 2.4 million.

According to UUK, which represents university vice-chancellors, the number of international students dropped in 2006 and 2007 because of the strength of the pound and the growth in student numbers from the European Union after the expansion of member states in Central and Eastern Europe. Currently, those from EU member states are counted the same as British students. But the study, an annual snapshot of the student body, said the trend had changed in the last 12 months.

“There was a small fall between 2006/07 and 2007/08, which may have been a signal of the sensitivity of these markets to movements in exchange rates and the impact of EU enlargement, but this has now been reversed,” said the report.

Last year numbers increased by nine percent, three times the rise in domestic enrollments. China sends more students to Britain than any other country, with more than 49,000 enrolled in undergraduate and graduate programs in 2008/9. Students from India, Malaysia, Hong Kong and the United States also make up a large proportion of the student population. Students from outside the EU accounted for 6.6 percent of the total student population a decade ago, but that had grown to 10.4 percent last year, according to the UUK report, Patterns of Higher Education Institutions in the UK.

While the government places strict quotas on domestic (British and EU) enrollments at each university, with fees currently capped at £3,290 (US$5,300), institutions can admit unlimited numbers of foreign students who are charged up to eight times as much.

– Universities UK
September 10, 2010

Welsh Universities to Welcome Many More Foreign Students

Despite a freeze on UK undergraduate enrollments, Welsh universities were expecting an increase of as much as 20 percent in international student arrivals this fall, reports the BBC.

The Welsh Assembly Government wants universities to take on more foreign students to improve their financial situations. Approximately 12,000 international students enrolled in Welsh universities last year, contributing more than £150 million (US$235 million) to the Welsh economy. Data released by the Higher Education Statistics Authority shows the number of places for overseas students has grown three times more than for domestic students over the last five years.

– BBC
September 24, 2010

Scotland, India Sign Educational Cooperation Agreements

India and Scotland in October signed four memoranda of understanding in October designed to facilitate student and faculty exchange and encourage the development of joint degree programs.

According to Indian Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal, “the agreement with Scotland advances our sweeping reform agenda for higher education. We intend to empower our students by providing access to the finest university education the world has to offer.”

The first of the agreements was signed between the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad and University of Abertay Dundee for joint research and academic exchange in digital media, arts and (video) games, business and management, biotechnology, bioinformatics and food technology. Agreements were also signed between Glasgow Caledonian University and Delhi’s Sitaram Bhartia Institute of Science and Research, and between the University of Edinburgh and University of Delhi for academic exchange in various fields.

The fourth agreement was between India’s National Accreditation Board and Training (NABET) and the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) to develop professional and academic accreditation and qualifications. The two sides, however, clarified that the agreements did not involve the setting up of Scottish campuses in India for the present time.

– Indo-Asian News Service
October 12, 2010

Quotas on Recruitment of Skilled Immigrants Could Threaten University Departments

The British government has established interim immigration restrictions that would require universities to impose specific recruitment caps on overseas academics. The UK Border Agency (UKBA) has given each university a quota on recruitment from non-European Union countries under Tier 2 of the points-based immigration system, which covers “skilled workers.” The quotas cover new visas – and renewals for existing staff – between July 19, 2010 and March 31, 2011, when a permanent cap will be imposed.

University College London, which has more than 4,000 staff, said it had been allowed just 78 places under the interim cap. Universities are trying to bridge the gap by recruiting under Tier 1, which covers “highly skilled workers.” In this category, however, the skills threshold is higher and the number of visas allocated is subject to a monthly national cap.

Universities UK voiced the sector’s concerns saying that that the UKBA has failed to appreciate that academic careers are inherently international and that the lengthy training period for new entrants means universities cannot rapidly switch to a “British-only” policy.

– Times Higher Education
October 14, 2010