Regional

Internationally Mobile Student Numbers Continue to Rise

The number of international students around the world is continuing to rise sharply, with provisional figures from Unesco’s Institute for Statistics showing an annual increase of 12 percent. The final figures for 2009, to be published in May, are expected to show the number of international students rising to 3.43 million from 2.96 million.

The Unesco data show a huge spike in numbers this decade, rising by more than 75 percent since 2000. Not surprisingly, according to the latest figures from the Institute of International Education, the United States is the most popular destination, hosting 691,000 international students in 2009/10 with an annual value to the economy estimated at around $20 billion.

Source: UNESCO

China sends the most students abroad (440,000), and there are plans to rapidly increase the number of overseas students coming to China’s universities, with an ambitious target of 500,000 places.

– BBC
March 9, 2011

Australia

Visa Applications Spiral Downward

The Australian Government recently released a report on student visa numbers providing significant insight on emerging student visa trends. The Student Visa Program Report outlines comparative student visa applications, grants and trends over the past seven years as well as application rates for the first six months of 2010-11.

The report shows that in 2009-2010, the top five source countries for international students (based on visas granted) were the People’s Republic of China, India, South Korea, Thailand and Brazil. The report also showed a decline in the number of student visa applications by 18.9 percent between 2008-09 and 2009-10. The higher education and graduate research sectors have seen the least change in applications lodged compared with the previous year.

– Department of Immigration and Citizenship. Australian Government
February 2011

Vast Majority of Foreign Students Satisfied with Their Educational Experience

A majority of international students in Australia are satisfied with their overall experience, according to a new survey by Universities Australia, an association of higher-education institutions. The survey of 36,308 students found that 86 percent were satisfied with their educational and living experience in Australia.

Despite the findings, Glenn Withers, chief executive of Universities Australia, said in a statement that universities could not see “the world through rose-colored glasses” and that there were significant challenges to better serving students from abroad. For example, he said, the survey “identifies mismatches between students’ expectations of living in Australia and their actual experiences.”

– Universities Australia
February 21, 2011

China

Rankings of Paramount Importance to University Leaders

According to the findings of a recent study, ranking performance is of primary importance to Chinese universities. The study, conducted by Liu Niancai, dean of the Graduate School of Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, researched 16 Chinese and international rankings, and found that rankings affects many institutions’ strategic planning.

The resulting report, “Empirical Research of University Rankings in China and Abroad: Index, weight and Impact,” found that university principals and departments have made pushing up the university ranks a common aim.

– Global Times
February 20, 2011

Bold Ambitions in Shanghai as City Chases Down US Ivies

China’s largest and possibly richest city, Shanghai, has already lured some Western universities to establish branch campuses there, and now it is chasing down America’s elite Ivy League schools.

In January Mo Fuchun, governor of Shanghai Minhang District, said at the annual meeting of the district’s People’s Congress that his team was in discussions with Ivy League universities and was planning to attract two of them to the city by 2015.

“We have reached out to the schools and things are so far going smoothly,” Mo said at the meeting, adding that Cornell University and Columbia University could be the first Ivy League universities to establish branches in Shanghai.

Alice Pell, Cornell’s vice-provost, acknowledged the approach. “We applaud the Shanghai government’s initiative in reaching out to American universities,” she told University World News, adding that Cornell had longstanding relationships with many Chinese universities.

Also in January, China’s Ministry of Education approved the creation of a campus of non-Ivy League New York University (NYU), which will be located in Shanghai’s financial center Lujiazui, within Pudong district. NYU Shanghai will be the third main campus of the university’s global network, along with NYU Abu Dhabi and its New York base. Scheduled to begin classes in 2013, the campus is expected to ultimately teach some 1,600 undergraduates each year.

The UK’s Nottingham University, which already hosts a successful campus in neighboring Ningbo, also received an invitation from the Shanghai city government last November, which it is reportedly giving serious consideration.

– University World News
February 20, 2011

Academic Journals Told to Cease Operations as China Continues its Crackdown on sub-Standard Publications

Chinese authorities have ordered a number of academic publications to cease operations in a new crackdown on sub-standard academic papers. During a meeting in February, the General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP), the government agency that regulates overseas news and other publications, decided to ‘punish’ eight journals and ordered six to cease publication.

According to official reports of the meeting, GAPP found that the publications were unable to guarantee the quality of academic papers. In one case a journal published up to 200 academic papers in a single edition.

The Chinese continue to stress that they are determined to increase the supervision and the peer evaluation of academic journals, which are being criticized internationally. The government has said for some time that it wants to reduce the burgeoning number of journals published and bring in more quality control.

GAPP said it also wanted to “clarify the boundaries between academic and non-academic journals,” the newspaper Media in China reported. The distinction has become blurred in the rush by many Chinese academics to publish as frequently as possible. These rushed publications often occur before scientific or other research results have been completed, to ensure promotion within the university system.

– University World News
February 21, 2011

Enrollments from Abroad Hit New High

The Chinese Ministry of Education (MOE) reported in March that the number of foreign students in the country reached a record high of more than 260,000 in 2010. Statistics from the ministry carried by the state-run China Daily showed that 265,090 students from 194 countries were studying in China last year. That represented a jump of 8 percent from the 240,000 students in 2009. Meanwhile, new official figures from the National Bureau of Statistics revealed that there are now 31 million higher education students in China – a 35 percent increase in five years.

The ministry said it plans to use cooperative educational programs to draw 500,000 foreign students to China by 2020. According to ministry officials, the central and provincial governments provided a total of 910 million yuan ($138.5 million) in scholarships to international students in 2010.

Although the majority of the foreign students enrolled in Chinese schools last year came from Asian countries, official statistics show that the number of students from Western countries also increased. South Korea sent the largest group, followed by the United States, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Russia, Indonesia, India, Kazakhstan and Pakistan.

By the end of 2009, 282 Confucius Institutes and 272 Confucius Classrooms had been established in 88 countries and regions. They were teaching roughly 260,000 students in countries outside of China in 2009 – 130,000 more than in 2008 – about China’s culture and language, according to the institutes’ headquarters.

The figures from the MOE also show that an increasing number of Chinese are choosing to study abroad. The number reached 284,700 in 2010, while the number of Chinese returning from schools overseas was 134,800 for the same year.

– China Daily
March 4, 2011

India

End is Nigh for UGC

The University Grants Commission (UGC), which regulates and distributes funds in the university sector, appears to be in final stages of existence. In a clear signal of the winding down of the 54-year-old bureaucracy, the government plans to avoid appointing a new full-fledged chairman after the term of economist Sukhdeo Thorat ended in February.

The proposed National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER) will subsume many of the roles of the UGC and other regulators, including the All India Council for Technical Education. “But the end of the UGC is more than just the creation of a new regulator. It epitomizes the end of an era when the government micro-managed higher education. We now want to act as a facilitator,” a senior government official said.

While the NCHER will set standards in higher education, the new regulator will relinquish direct control of many other functions of the UGC, including funding universities and testing candidates for teaching jobs.

– Hindustan Times
February 10, 2011

Medical Training Set for Reform

Medical education at the undergraduate level is to be revamped to cater more closely to the health needs of the country, produce more doctors and include clinical training at an earlier stage.

Despite some 330 medical colleges and an intake of 35,000 students annually, the current ratio of doctors to the population in India is just 0.7 doctors per 1,000 people compared to a world average of 1.5 doctors per 1,000. Confounding the problem is the emigration of doctors, which, according to India’s Planning Commission, amounts to almost 5 percent of India’s medical workforce working and living in richer countries.

The Medical Council of India (MCI), which oversees medical education, released a reform document in January to improve the ratio to one doctor per 1,000 by 2031. To reach that target, the document outlined how India needs to double the current intake of medical students. Especially pressing, according to the document, is the need to improve health care provision for the poor and disadvantaged. It said medical graduates do not feel they have adequate training in primary health care, reflected in the lack doctors in rural areas and in primary health centers.

At the same time, while hospitals have updated laboratory techniques, undergraduate medical education (or MBBS) in India has not kept pace with developments in medical technology. The expert committee that drew up the MCI report recommended reducing undergraduate training from 4.5 years plus a year internship to four years and one year of internship.

“No one is suggesting that medical students be taught less. What the committee has proposed is doing away with a lot of redundant material in the curriculum and making it more relevant,” said a committee member interviewed by University World News who did not want to be named. The committee also recommended clinical exposure from the first year of undergraduate medical education instead of at the end of the third year. While there is no timeframe for publication of the final revised curriculum, the MCI is currently consulting widely on the reform proposals.

– University World News
February 13, 2011

Revised Rules for Foreign Business and Technical Schools Wishing to Operate in India

India will allow foreign business schools and technical colleges to establish campuses in the country, but under tight restrictions. The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) says foreign institutions can operate in the country, but they have to register as a non-profit, be affiliated with an Indian university, and cannot offer their own degrees. The revised norms, which replace a 2003 policy, come as India has been debating a proposal to allow foreign institutions of higher education of all kinds into the country. According to media reports, the council’s new rules are more restrictive than that of the proposed bill.

Under the Foreign Educational Institutions (Regulation and Entry and Operations) Bill, 2010, foreign institutes would be able to offer their own degrees. As the revised AICTE policy mandates, they would no longer need to register as a society or a trust or Section 25 company.

Although the foreign education law is yet to be enacted, sources said the revised AICTE norms would allow foreign universities to set up campuses in India. “The revised policy gives a roadmap for enhancing collaboration between Indian and foreign institutions in teaching and research. It also lays down guidelines for foreign institutions to set up campuses in India,” a high-ranking source for AICTE told The Telegraph.

– The Telegraph
February 17, 2011

Indian Graduate Students in the U.S. Want to Go Home

According to a survey of Indian graduate students in the United States, only a small percentage has a strong desire to remain there indefinitely. The new report by Rutgers University, Pennsylvania State University, and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, in Mumbai found that 8 percent of about 1,000 Indians who are either pursuing or have completed a graduate degree “strongly prefer” to remain in the United States.

The researchers said the findings should be encouraging to Indian universities desperately trying to recruit faculty members from abroad to fill a vast number of vacancies at their institutions. Many institutions in India have assumed that those who go to the United States for graduate study are unlikely to consider jobs in India. The new study could give them new hope and incentive to recruit from overseas-trained Indians. While many cited obstacles to going home, their answers suggested that the right packages and conditions could attract many of them.

Another important finding of the survey showed that only 21 percent of Indian students in the United States who participated in the study said they would not have stayed in India for higher education even with access to American teachers. The finding is significant because it comes as parliament is set to debate the Foreign Educational Institutions Bill aimed at allowing top foreign universities into India.

– Rutgers News Release
March 7, 2011

Japan

Ministry Provides Details of International Mobility Programs

The Japanese government has refunded two new programs designed to promote the internationalization efforts of universities and exchange with universities abroad in order to reach a ministry-set goal of sending 300,000 Japanese students and workers abroad, and welcoming a similar number to Japan, by the year 2020.

Promoting Universities’ Activity with Asia and the United States is designed to support universities with projects on collaborative learning between Japanese and international students, while also promoting study abroad and receiving international students. It also aims to enhance the quality of higher education in an international framework.

Promoting Two-Way Student Exchange supports projects dealing with two-way international exchanges, public relations abroad, and a pre-arrival admission system for international students. It also offers scholarships for Japanese students studying abroad.

– Ministry of Education Science and Technology
January 2011

North Korea

U.S. College to Offer Study Abroad in Pyongyang

The P’yongyang Project, a Beijing-based non-profit organization, has been organizing study tours, or “delegations,” to North Korea since 2009. This summer, Lafayette College, in Pennsylvania, plans to become the first American university to offer a credit-bearing study abroad program in the insular state.

The 2.5-week program, organized by the P’yongyang Project, will focus on intersections between the cultures of China, North Korea and South Korea. Students will split their time between the three countries, spending five days in North Korea, traveling to Pyongyang, the capital; Nampo, on the western coast; and Kaesong, near the demilitarized zone. Per the itinerary, planned excursions and activities within North Korea include visiting Kim II Sung’s mausoleum, a Korean history museum and a “people’s commune”; meeting with students at Kim II Sung University and Kim Ch’aek Science and Technology University; attending the famous Arirang Mass Games, watching a performance of the Pyongyang Circus, and riding the rides (imported from Italy) at the Pyongyang Amusement Park. Students will tour the DMZ from the North with a Korean People’s Army guide, and will also have the opportunity, later in the program, to visit the DMZ from the South Korea side.

However, such opportunities come with restrictions that might seem to contradict the spirit of academic inquiry that study abroad is intended to foster. Among the rules listed for the P’yongyang Project’s various programs are limitations on not just photography but also publishing: “Joining a program with the purpose of writing or publishing articles, journalist pieces, and photographs is strictly forbidden. Our trust in [North Korea] — which allows us to accomplish what we do — has taken a long time to build. We do not want to put that trust in jeopardy. Therefore if you plan on publishing anything that you write or photograph from your program you must seek explicit permission from The P’yongyang Project before doing so.”

The rules also point to the restricted, or at best shepherded nature of the programs: “While in North Korea, you will be accompanied by North Korean staff at all times. There is extremely limited individual freedom of movement in North Korea and you are strictly forbidden from leaving the group without explicit permission from The P’yongyang Project staff. You are not allowed outside of hotels without Korean program staff present.”

– InsideHigherEd
March 9, 2011

South Korea

South Korean Universities Hiring from Abroad in Increasing Numbers

With many colleges and universities in the United States and Europe slashing hiring budgets, dozens of South Korean universities have taken the opportunity to make offers to those in the West struggling to find jobs in academia. And many of those South Korean universities are recruiting successfully, especially as they are able to offer compensation packages comparable with those of better American institutions.

Although only 4,957, or about 7 percent, of South Korea’s 77,697 full-time faculty members are foreign, according to the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology, the figure is up threefold in less than a decade. That already puts it well ahead of neighboring Japan’s 5 percent (out of 353,000 full-time professors), despite a much longer history of foreign hires there.

Most observers expect the South Korean figure to grow sharply in the coming decade as the country’s universities continue to improve. Sogang, a private liberal-arts college set up by Jesuits from Wisconsin, is at the vanguard of this burgeoning internationalization. It plans to recruit 60 new foreign professors over the next four years, as it strives to push English-language teaching from 20 percent of its classes to 50 percent.

In the last five years, South Korea’s two top science colleges, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (Kaist), and the Pohang University of Science and Technology (Postech) have brought in hundreds of American and European professors and switched to all-English campuses with a view to competing with the best institutions in the world. Seoul National, Yonsei, and Korea Universities are following suit with programs of their own.

The government’s World Class University Project, which received 825 billion won ($752 million) last year, has fueled the process, pushing colleges to hire “outstanding foreign scholars.” Seoul National University alone invited 59 foreign professors last year. Foreign hires are now a key criterion for government financial support, say experts.

However, it is not all smooth sailing, with the cost of recruiting from abroad coming under fire in the South Korean news media, since foreign hires often earn nearly twice that of a Korean professor at a public university. Foreign lecturers have also complained of being left out of department and faculty decision-making processes, with many meetings being conducted exclusively in Korean. This in part accounts for the fact that the average tenure of foreign faculty is currently just four months, according to an Education Ministry survey of 288 foreign academics last year.

– The Chronicle of Higher Education
February 27, 2011

Taiwan

Colleges Start Recruiting from the Mainland

A February announcement by the ministry of education has set the quota allotted to each university and college in Taiwan for recruiting from mainland China for the 2011-12 academic year, which starts in September.

According to the ministry, 67 universities will be allowed to admit 1,123 Chinese students while 65 technology colleges can take 877, in line with an annual quota of 2,000 imposed by the government. The ministry will first target various prominent high schools in six provinces and cities in China’s coastal regions as part of its efforts to promote Taiwan’s higher-education institutions, said He Zhuo-fei, director of the ministry’s higher education department.

– CNA
February 9, 2011

Compulsory Education Proposals Move Forward

Taiwan’s Cabinet gave preliminary approval for two Ministry of Education proposals in March that will extend Taiwan’s compulsory education and provide affordable preschool care.

Following the policy announcement by President Ma Ying-jeou in his New Year’s address Jan. 1, Taiwan will start implementing 12-year compulsory education in several stages, beginning in August. The latest Ministry of Education proposals will see qualifying students attending vocational high schools receive tuition waivers. The state will also offer subsidies to students attending private senior high schools.

By the time the new education system is fully implemented in 2014, all of Taiwan’s senior high schools will be tuition free, and most students will not be required to take an entrance exam to attend senior high school. In addition, the government will offer tuition subsidies of NT$14,000 (US$474) and NT$30,000, respectively, for 5-year-olds entering public and private kindergartens.

– Central News Agency
March 15, 2011

Thailand

U.S.’s Babson College Partners in Bangkok

Babson College has added a new school to its international consortium—Bangkok University.

Babson, based in Wellesley, Mass., will help Bangkok develop an entrepreneurship center and train and mentor faculty members from Bangkok University, says Shahid Ansari, provost of Babson. Babson professors will also help Bangkok administrators set up incubators for student-created products.

“Since Babson College is small, we don’t have the resources to be everywhere in the world, but these partnerships help us reach the rest of the world without establishing a presence entirely on our own,” says Mr. Ansari. The entrepreneurship center is slated to open this fall. In the past year, Babson has signed similar partnerships with schools in Pakistan, China and Chile under its Global Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education (GCEE) program.

– Babson News Release
February 18, 2011