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Regional
U.S. Government Promises to Send More Students to Latin America and the Caribbean
The U.S. government has said that it wants to bolster student exchanges with Latin America and the Caribbean by sending 100,000 American students to study in the region over the next 10 years.
Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Secretary of State, made the commitment at a forum in April on ties between Brazil and the United States. In addition, the government wants to bring the same number of Latin American and Caribbean students to America each year. The forum, which was focused on education and business cooperation between Brazil and the United States, was held as part of an official visit to the United States in April by the Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff.
The education effort, known as 100,000 Strong in the Americas, was announced by President Obama during a trip to Chile in March and mirrors a similar initiative to send 100,000 students to China.
– White House
April 9, 2012
Brazil
Delegation of 30 Canadian University Presidents Visit Brazil to Build Ties
Canadian Governor General David Johnston is leading a group of 30 university presidents to Brazil — the biggest such delegation ever sent abroad to promote Canadian education. The group is meeting with academics and business leaders in the hope of attracting Brazilian students to Canada, and forging academic partnerships with Brazilian researchers. The 10-day trip wraps up May 2 with planned visits to Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro, Campinas, and Sao Paulo.
Last year, the Brazilian government announced funding for 75,000 scholarships for undergraduate and graduate students to study abroad. The private sector stepped up to finance an additional 26,000. Canada is looking to bring as many Brazilians as it can to its universities under the program, while also promoting research partnerships and other new scholarship programs.
The delegation includes 10 presidents from Canada’s 15 major, research-oriented universities. Three parliamentary secretaries and three MPs from different parties are also in the group. Johnston will meet Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, attend meetings and deliver speeches at a couple of conferences.
– Canadian Newswire
April 19, 2012
Canada
Canadian Professors Get the Best Global Bang for Their Salary
According to a recent report looking at professorial paychecks, Canadian professors are the best off in the world. Those in the United States are not only worse off than their Canadian peers, but also those in India, Italy, and South Africa when it comes to the purchasing power of their salaries and academic fringe benefits, according to data compiled jointly by the Laboratory for Institutional Analysis from the Higher School of Economics in Moscow and the Boston College Center for International Higher Education.
The data, which cover 28 countries, look only at full-time professors at a time when adjuncts are employed in greater numbers, and the data deal only with professors at public universities. Canada has consistently reported the highest faculty salaries for years, mainly because most professors are unionized.
– ACAREM
March 2012
Business Schools Lead the Way in Campus Internationalization Efforts
At Canadian universities, business schools are doing the heavy lifting when it comes to raising the campus’ global profile. Intensive foreign student-recruitment efforts, friendly Canadian immigration rules, mandatory study-abroad requirements, and, in some cases, the option to pursue programs in multiple languages have made Canadian business schools highly attractive to international students in recent years.
At the top schools, foreign students often make up 30 percent or more of enrollment in undergraduate programs in business administration and commerce, and close to 50 percent of graduate business studies. By contrast, international students typically account for 5 to 10 percent of students on the main campus of Canadian universities.
Canada is the sixth-most-preferred destination for international students, but it ranks third behind the United States and Britain based on the number of overseas business-school applicants taking the Graduate Management Admission Test.
While competitors, business schools in Canada are also working collaboratively together to attract students. For example, working under an informal banner dubbed “Yes You Canada,” seven business schools are collaborating at international-recruitment fairs to promote the country as a study destination for prospective graduate business students. Business faculties are also being helped by Canada’s immigration rules that allow students to get a work permit for up to three years after graduation, compared with tighter provisions in other countries.
The most recent data from Statistics Canada show that one in five international students chooses business as a field of study, up from one in seven in the 1990s.
– The Chronicle of Higher Education
April 1, 2012
Chile
Government Partners with University of Southern California to Offer Scholarships
The University of Southern California (USC) has announced that it will be partnering with the Chilean Ministry of Education to give Chilean doctoral students full tuition and living stipends, beginning in 2013.The university will pay for the tuition and living stipends and the Chilean Ministry of Education will provide support needed for travel.
Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are the only other universities that have the same agreement with Chile’s Ministry of Education. The fellowships, through the Chilean National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research, follow a 2008 Memorandum of Understanding between Chile and the state of California to encourage collaboration. In 2011, USC and the Ministry of Taiwan signed a similar agreement, which will go into effect in the next academic year.
– The Daily Trojan
March 22, 2012
Ecuador
14 Institutions of Higher Education Have Operations Suspended
A total of 14 universities and polytechnics, educating 6 percent of the country’s 621,000 tertiary students, had their operations suspended in April due to a “lack of academic quality.”
The action was taken by the Board of Evaluation, Accreditation and Quality Assurance, or CEAAES, after a round of inspections that began in 2009. CEAAES measured Ecuador’s 70 universities in terms of their students, teaching, research, administration and infrastructure. With widely varying standards, the institutions were grouped into five categories, with 27 in the bottom group. These institutions were tested again this year, and 14 failed to meet the criteria set out by CEAAES and were suspended, with only three passing. Eight more institutions, deemed ‘partially acceptable’ by assessors, were allowed to carry on activities with some restrictions. The failed institutions are likely to be shuttered within a year.
Students in their final year at the schools slated for closure, 10,000 in total, will finish their degrees there under temporary administrators appointed by the government. The rest will be offered places at other universities. The contingency plan will cost the government US$60 million.
Seeking to reform the sector, the government passed a new Law on Higher Education in 2010, which aims to increase full-time university teachers from 30 percent to 60 percent by the end of 2012, and ensure that by 2017, 70 percent of professors have doctoral degrees and that all new teachers have a masters degree and can only be promoted if they obtain a doctorate. Only three universities in Ecuador currently have doctoral programs, so scholarships to study abroad have been introduced, with 1,070 awarded in 2011. Numbers are expected to triple this year.
– University World News
April 19, 2012
Mexico
Quality Concerns in the Private University Sector, Regulation Needed
Approximately 30 percent of Mexican students attend private universities and there are concerns about the quality of many of the new institutions.
While the majority of Mexican students still attend public universities, which have around two million students, or 70 percent of enrollment, restrictions on places at public universities have opened up significant opportunities for private institutions. Private enrollments are especially strong among lower income students, according to the Mexican Association of Universities and Higher Education Institutions (ANUIES).
The number of students attending these institutions has increased dramatically from 400,000 in 2006 to around one million this year, while the number of private universities in the country has jumped from 995 in 2006 to approximately 1,500 currently.
In response to demands for more regulation, the Ministry of Education is this year planning to introduce new measures aimed at improving standards in the private tertiary sector. The vast majority of institutions undergo no assessment or quality assurance at present. The incoming system would see government-approved inspectors assessing private providers’ services and defining their strengths and potential. If problems are highlighted, institutions will be required to take action to improve programs, signing a commitment to the education authorities. The inspections and assessments will be carried out by national assessment bodies contracted by the education ministry.
– University World News
March 18, 2012
United States
University Funding at Record Lows, Enrollments at Record Highs
A new report from the State Higher Education Executive Officers reveals that funding from state and local coffers hit lows not seen in a quarter century for the second year in a row, while enrollments continued to hit record highs.
From the 2007-8 fiscal year to the 2011 fiscal year, college enrollment increased nationally by 12.5 percent, to 11.5 million students, the report says. But state and local appropriations have decreased by $1.3 billion over the same period. The national average for combined state and local support is now down to $6,290 per full-time student—2.5 percent less than in 2010 and the lowest amount in the past 25 years, the report concludes.
To close the gap, tuition revenue per student reached $4,774 in 2011, an all-time high, according to the report. Over the past 25 years, the percentage of educational revenue supported by tuition has climbed steadily, from 23.2 percent in 1986 to 43.3 percent in 2011.
– State Higher Education Executive Officers
March 14, 2012
Public High Schools Grow International Enrollments
Facing state budget cuts and declining enrollments in rural and urban communities, some public schools are filling seats and helping to balance budgets by reaching out to international students. This option has become appealing for foreign parents who can’t afford to send their children to an American boarding school, which routinely charge in excess of $40,000 a year in room, board and fees.
Costs at private non-boarding schools are less, while the costs at an American public school are less still: between $10,000 a year on the low end and $30,000 a year on the high end. While a record 725,000 foreign students attended U.S. universities and colleges in 2010-11, only 1,135 foreign students, according to the Department of Homeland Security, are currently enrolled in U.S. public high schools. Nonetheless, that represents huge growth from five years ago when just 309 students were enrolled. In the private sector, the growth has been even more startling. From China alone, volume has increased from 65 in 2005-06 to 6,725 last year. The vast majority, both in the private and public sector, are matched by agencies in the home country with schools in the United States.
Facing the prospect of widespread urban and rural school closures, more than 1,000 public schools have passed the federal certification process, allowing them to enroll foreign students. Those numbers will likely hit major new highs if the “Strengthening America’s Public Schools Through Promoting Foreign Investment Act” is passed by Congress. The Act would allow foreign K-12 students to enroll for more than one year at U.S. public schools, as they are currently able to do at private and parochial K-12 schools.
– Reuters
March 8, 2012
International Graduate Applications Rise Again in 2012
International applications to U.S. graduate schools rose significantly again this year, and especially so from China, according to the Council of Graduate Schools’ annual look at international application and enrollment numbers.
This year’s 9 percent growth marked the seventh year in a row that applications from abroad to U.S. graduate schools have increased, and builds on 11 percent growth last year. China was again the engine driving growth, with an 18 percent surge in applications on top of 21 percent growth last year. Overall, applications from prospective Chinese students accounted for nearly half of all international applicants to graduate programs (47 percent).
The survey is based on data collected from more than 500,000 applications to universities that award a combined 60 percent of the total number of graduate degrees granted to foreign students. In contrast to continued growth from China, applications from South Korea (-1 percent), Taiwan (-2 percent) and India (+2 percent) remained basically stagnant, while the growth curve of applications from the Middle East slowed to 6 percent after three years of double-digit growth.
In the Americas, applications were strong from Mexico (+17 percent), Canada (+9 percent), and Brazil (+14 percent). Applications from Africa dropped 5 percent, while applications from Europe were up 7 percent. This is the first year that the survey included those countries and regions. In previous years, the council, which started its annual report in 2004, only offered application trends from the three largest sending countries, China, India, and South Korea, along with the strategically important Middle East and Turkey. Together, the top-five countries (including Taiwan and Canada) account for 63 percent of all foreign graduate students.
– Council of Graduate Schools
April 3, 2012
University of California Admits 55% More Students from Abroad
The University of California admitted 43 percent more out-of-state and international students for 2012/13 than last year, significantly boosting its efforts to reach out to those higher-paying freshmen, according to data released in April.
But it remains uncertain how many of these students will actually enroll since non-Californians are less likely to enroll than resident students, officials said. The UC, which has one of the biggest international student bodies in the country, offered fall entrance to 61,443 California students to at least one of its nine undergraduate campuses, a rise of 3.6 percent from last year. It made offers to 18,846 students from other states and countries, up from 13,144 last year. A total of 8,537 offers of admission were made to freshman applicants from abroad, representing a huge 54.6 percent increase.
Those students will pay an additional $23,000 a year and help ease the university system’s budget woes caused by huge recent cuts in state funding. University officials hope to raise the overall enrollment of non-Californians to 10 percent of undergraduates in a few years, up from approximately 6 percent currently, although some campuses like UCLA and UC Berkeley already have much higher shares of out-of-staters.
– Sacramento Bee
April 18, 2012