Regional

Proportion of Migrants with University Degrees Increasing, Recognition Less So

The proportion of migrants with university degrees has increased in line with the overall rise in global migration rates – with the most recent migrants to developed countries likely to be the best educated – according to recent statistics from the OECD.

One in three immigrants moving across borders to OECD countries in the last five years has a tertiary education (a total of 5.2 million people). The report, Harnessing the Skills of Migrants and Diasporas to Foster Development, found that in Canada, Australia, Ireland and the UK more than half of recent migrants have tertiary qualifications. A general increase in tertiary completion rates accounts for part of this trend, but the OECD points out in the report that while “educational attainment levels increased in most origin countries, the emigration rates of the highly educated also increased. This indicates a faster outflow of university graduates than the increase in their number in the origin country.”

However, a second OECD report, Connecting with Emigrants: A global profile of diasporas, found that migrants tend to be substantially over-qualified for the jobs they work, due largely to a lack of recognition for their qualifications. According to data available for 23 OECD countries, 26 percent of immigrants with a university degree hold low- or medium-skilled jobs compared to 29 percent of natives.

– OECD
October 5, 2012

Business School Applications Continue to Slide

Applications for two-year, full-time MBA programs, starting this fall, declined for the fourth straight year, according to new data from the Graduate Management Admission Council, which administers the Graduate Management Admission Test.

The median number of applications worldwide fell 22 percent in 2012, after a nearly 10 percent decline last year. For many programs, the losses come after multiyear application highs that occurred in the employment-holding period brought on by the financial crisis. But prolonged economic uncertainty might be making the back-to-school calculation a little harder, especially given the considerable cost associated with a two-year MBA program.

The GMAC survey included 744 MBA and other business programs at 359 schools worldwide. Some top schools experienced sharp declines. Columbia Business School reported a 19 percent drop-off in applications, after four years of rapid growth. However, the University of California, Los Angeles’s Anderson School of Management reported a 22 percent jump in applications to its two-year M.B.A. program this year, thanks in part to more aggressive marketing efforts.

Overall, 62 percent of U.S. schools reported declines in applications to two-year M.B.A. programs. Internationally, the story was a little different. Some 79 percent of two-year MBA programs in the Asia-Pacific region and 80 percent of those in Central Asia experienced application gains as more locals sought graduate certifications and international students considered the region’s strong job markets and economic opportunities. In Europe, 37 percent of one-year MBA programs saw an increase this year, compared to just 22 percent in 2011.

– Wall Street Journal
September 17, 2012

Canada

Ontario Universities to Introduce Credit Transfer System

Seven Ontario universities are launching a credit transfer initiative that will allow students to count any first year arts and science course taken for credit at a participating university for general credit at their home institution.

This blanket agreement will provide enhanced flexibility for students working towards a bachelor’s degree at any of the seven universities. The seven institutions have agreed on specific course equivalencies across more than 20 of their most popular programs.

The participating institutions are McMaster University, Queen’s University, University of Guelph, University of Ottawa, University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, and Western University.

– The Canadian Press
September 26, 2012

Canadian Skilled Immigration Program Proving Successful

Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced in September that 20,000 foreign graduates of Canadian degree programs have gained permanent residency in Canada under the Canadian Experience Class, which was launched four years ago.

The program is aimed at not only bringing talented foreign students and workers to Canada, but also to keep them there as a means of developing the knowledge-driven Canadian economy. The Canadian Experience Class offers a fast-track for qualified foreign students to move from temporary to permanent residency in Canada.

Under new program guidelines, foreign workers already in the Canadian workforce now have to show that they have only one year of Canadian work experience (instead of the two previously required) to be eligible.

According to a recent government report, there were 218,000 full-time international students in Canada in 2010, up from 178,000 in 2008 and more than double the number of students in 1999.

– CBC News
September 14, 2012

Chile

New Higher Education Law Cuts University Costs, But Doesn’t Placate Protesting Students

Chilean president Sebastián Piñera signed into a law an education review bill in September that increases funding by a billion dollars (9.4 percent) and cuts the interest on student loans from 6 percent to 2 percent.

The move will result in a 40 percent reduction in the cost of monthly payments plus other benefits such as a maximum of 180 payments, at the end of which the loan automatically is cancelled, said Piñera on signing the bill. In addition, a borrower’s maximum payment will be capped at 10 percent of salary once graduated. The new measures will benefit the estimated 300,000 students who carry more than US$40,000 in debt.

Previously, there were no such caps or employment conditions on repayment, meaning that the loans were largely taken out by middle class students looking to fund a private education. A change to that system has been one of the main demands of students who have been protesting for major educational reforms since 2011. Nonetheless, students are still unhappy and demanding that education be completely free in all public institutions, and that private higher education be abolished.

According to the government, $591 million of the extra tax revenue will be spent on scholarships, subsidies and loans for higher education, benefiting 90 percent of the country’s one million higher education students.

– Reuters
September 30, 2012

Mexico

Mexican University Receives U.S. Regional Accreditation

The private not-for-ptofit CETYS University System in Baja California became, in October, the first Mexican university to be awarded a certificate of accreditation from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), one of the six U.S. regional accrediting agencies.

While CETYS became the first non-U.S. university to receive WASC accreditation, it is the fifth in Mexico and seventh in Latin America to be awarded U.S regional accreditation.

– The Sacramento Bee
October 22, 2012

United States

Houston Community College a Hub for International Students

Houston Community College has the country’s largest two-year international student body with representatives from 147 different countries. The total enrollment of 6,250 international students ranks HCC as sixth among all postsecondary institutions, according to the Institute of International Education.

Across the country, more international students than ever are opting to begin their U.S. studies at community colleges as a means of making a four-year degree more affordable. Not only are students able to transfer credits for core courses to four-year institutions, but help for remedial English-language skills is often easier to find at the community college level.

At HCC, international students are primarily recruited through word of mouth, according to officials there who say that until they embarked on a recruiting trip to China this year, the school had not done any formal outreach to foreign students. Students are also attracted to HCC due to its presence in Vietnam and Qatar.

– Houston Chronicle
September 18, 2012

Quality Assurance Body Opens International Division

The Council for Higher Education and Accreditation (CHEA) has launched an international division, with a mission to help institutions work towards a shared global system of quality assurance.

Based in the U.S., CHEA is a non-profit advocacy group that represents accredited American colleges and universities. The September launch of its international division was undertaken to promote and facilitate dialog between colleges and organizations around the world to improve quality assurance in higher education.

Called the CHEA International Quality Group, or CIQG, the division aims to bring together universities, accreditors, businesses and government agencies from more than 40 countries to share information on their quality standards, identify trends in quality assurance, and promote international cooperation in improving academic quality in higher education.

The move comes at a time when institutions, students and academics are more internationally mobile than ever before. This movement of people, institutions and ideas has brought issues of quality assurance to the fore, particularly how academic quality at universities is defined and measured, and how these standards compare between countries.

“There is a growing importance related to the international dimension of quality assurance,” Judith Eaton, CHEA’s president, told University World News. “The more understanding we have about quality assurance, the more we can work with one another, and that’s extremely valuable.”

CHEA will play a largely convening role, said Eaton. What the quality group won’t do is accredit colleges and universities – that’s up to the institutions and the accreditors and quality assurance agencies in their own countries.

– University World News
September 19, 2012

Graduate Enrollment Drops Again

Although overall higher education enrollment rates are growing, new enrollment in graduate schools fell last year for the second consecutive year, according to a report from the Council of Graduate Schools.

The declines follow significant growth in enrollment in 2008 and 2009 as many unemployed workers sought refuge from the recession in education. Reasons behind the decline might include the increasing debt burden from undergraduate study, and state budget cuts forcing public institutions to reduce aid for graduate students.

The number of students enrolled in master’s and doctoral programs (excluding law and certain other first professional degrees like the M.D.) declined by 1.7 percent from the fall of 2010 to fall 2011. Among U.S. citizens and permanent residents, enrollment fell by 2.3 percent, while student numbers among temporary residents increased by 7.8 percent.

Temporary residents made up 16.9 percent of all students in American graduate schools, 45.5 percent of all students enrolled in engineering graduate programs, and 42.4 percent of those in American mathematics and computer science graduate programs. The sharpest decline in enrollment was in education (-8.8 percent), followed by programs for arts and humanities, where new graduate enrollment fell by 5.4 percent. Health sciences, on the other hand, saw the number of new graduate students rise by 6.4 percent.

While overall enrollment for graduate school declined, the number of applications rose by 4.3 percent. It was the sixth consecutive increase in application volume. The Council of Graduate Schools did not have data on how many schools the typical applicant applies to, so it was unclear if there were more people applying in 2011 than in the previous year.

– Council of Graduate Schools
September 28, 2012

Caltech Retains Top Spot in ‘Times Higher’ World Ranking

The California Institute of Technology has again topped the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. Oxford and Stanford were tied for second place, while Harvard University dropped to fourth on the list, a few months after being recognized by Shanghai Jiaotong’s Academic Ranking of World Universities as being the best in the world, and a couple of weeks after being recognized by the QS World University Ranking as being the third best (MIT was first).

As with all the major world rankings, U.S. universities once again dominate the list; however, 51 of the 76 American universities in the top 200 have dropped in the rankings, reflecting what the list’s editor, Phil Baty, said in a statement was a sign of “the start of the decline of a world-leading university sector” due to cuts in public financing for universities. Institutions from the Asia-Pacific region were largely responsible for picking up the slack of the U.S. institutions dropping in the rankings.

– Times Higher Education
October 1, 2012

Too Many Chinese Students?

This year, 781 of the 10,017 students enrolled at the University of San Francisco are Chinese nationals, many with limited English-language skills, prompting one of the university’s administrators to resign.

Dayle Smith, associate dean of undergraduate studies in the school of management, resigned her administrative post in September, returning to full-time teaching as a faculty member. Smith’s resignation, according to some on campus, reflects the competing priorities of academic integrity, efforts to diversify the private school’s student body and the considerable tuition that Chinese are willing to pay.

Enrollment from China increased by almost 200 students in 2012 from 589 in the fall of 2011, despite an increase in admissions requirements for English-language proficiency and a reduction in the number of “unconditional” admission slots. USF now requires foreign students to score an overall 79 on the Test of English as a Foreign Language and obtain a score of 17 on each section of the test.

In a letter to the staff regarding Smith, business school Dean Mike Webber said this year’s “considerable increase” in foreign students at USF isn’t a cause for concern, and he noted that the Chinese students had been accepted for admission on a “conditional” basis, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

One Chinese graduate of USF told China Daily that, “USF should admit a smaller percentage of Chinese applicants, as we pay for an English-speaking environment and prefer to be classmates of native speakers in America.”

– New America Media
October 18, 2012