China

International-Student Returnees Hit 1 Million

As of the end of 2012, a total of 1.09 million Chinese students had returned to China from abroad after a period of study. In the last five years alone, more than 800,000 students have returned from campuses around the world. Returning to China is a growing trend, with a compounded annual average growth rate of 36 percent. Given favorable workplace policies and economic incentives for returnees, this trend is expected to continue.

– edu.ifeng.com
March 25, 2013

U Pittsburgh to Create Joint Engineering Institute in China

The University of Pittsburgh is teaming up with Sichuan University to establish an engineering institute called the Sichuan University Pittsburgh Institute. Located in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, the institute is set to launch in the fall of 2014 with an estimated 100 students.

Under the terms of the partnership agreement, Sichuan University will invest roughly U.S.$40 million in construction and infrastructure costs for the new 100,000-square-foot building, which will be housed on its existing campus. The institute is launching with undergraduate degree programs in industrial engineering, mechanical engineering, and materials science and engineering.

Within seven years of the launch, Pitt expects the institute will reach its maximum enrollment of 1,600 students. Students will undertake their first two years of the program at the China campus and will then have the option of transferring to Pitt’s Oakland campus in the third year and will be able to earn a bachelor’s degree from both Pitt and Sichuan University.

– Pittsburgh Business Times
April 1, 2013

New University Programs Halted Due to High Unemployment

China’s Ministry of Education said in April that approval for over 250 tertiary-level programs had been refused at 60 institutions around the country due to high graduate unemployment and a lack of relevance among the proposed programs to the national job market.

These include golf industry management, global health studies, network security, geriatric care and law enforcement, a notice on the ministry website indicated. Institutions hoping to start new majors must demonstrate a market need and demand, according to University World News. According to rules approved by the ministry two years ago, even existing degree programs can be cancelled if fewer than 60 percent of graduates from two successive years fail to find work.

Citing surveys by the higher education consultancy group My China Occupations Skills (MyCos), official media is reporting that half of 6.8 million 2012 graduates were still unemployed months after graduation, while 8 percent of those who graduated in 2011 – some 570,000 graduates – had not found jobs by December 2012.

– University World News
April 4, 2013

U.S. Businessman Creates $100 Million China Scholarships Fund

Stephen A. Schwarzman, chairman and chief executive of the Blackstone Group LP, a private-equity firm, is creating a scholarship program that aims to send 200 students from around the world to study in China every year, with initial funding of U.S.$100 million. Mr. Schwarzman is seeking to raise an additional $200 million for the project, which is called the Schwarzman Scholars program. The program will pay all expenses for students to attend a one-year master’s program at Tsinghua University, in Beijing, which will be housed at a Schwarzman College that is being established there. The program’s stated aim is to prepare future leaders to deal with the geopolitical and economic challenges of an evolving shift in international power.

According to the New York Times, Mr. Schwarzman has already raised half of the additional capital for the program and is “backed by an array of mostly Western blue-chip companies with interests in China.” Donors include manufacturers like Boeing and Caterpillar; financial institutions like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Credit Suisse; and energy companies like BP, which produces and imports natural gas in China.

– The New York Times
April 20, 2013

Executive MBA Programs in High Demand

A new generation of middle-aged Chinese executives are flocking back to school to receive the business education they never got during the turbulent times of China’s Cultural Revolution, and top-ranking business schools are at capacity in meeting the demand, reports The New York Times.

Chinese executives, although extremely successful, are going back to school partly because, unlike their Western counterparts, many did not have the chance to study properly earlier in life. At the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University in Beijing, the average age of executive MBA students is 41 or 42, according to officials.

The dean of China Europe International Business School (CEIBS),  Charles Chen, told the Times that, “China’s economy has really been booming in the last 20 years. There is now a tremendous need to summarize past experiences in order to move forward. To understand how, as well as why.”

“Business schools in China are having some responsibility toward solving social problems in country,” said Xiang Bing, the founding dean at the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, which the Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing established in Beijing in 2002 as the first private business school in mainland China.

Leading Chinese executives or their companies pay as much as $96,000 for a part-time, two- to three-year program. Many fly across the country to attend four-day blocks of classes once a month. CEIBS, which has campuses in Beijing and Shanghai, plus a smaller presence in Shenzhen, has about 770 executive M.B.A. students. Today, China has 62 business schools offering executive M.B.A.’s to more than 8,000 students a year.

Four of the world’s top 10 executive M.B.A. programs listed in the 2012 Financial Times ranking are taught in greater China, though most of them are partnerships with Western institutions. In first place is a collaboration between the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Illinois and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. CEIBS, established under an agreement with the European Commission, is in the top 10. There is also a linkup between Insead in France and Tsinghua, and another between the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and Fudan University.

Schools are not predicting a slowdown in the growth of M.B.A. programs in the near future. “The economy of mainland China is very likely to catch up with that of the U.S. in 10 years,” Mr. Lu of Fudan University said. “China has 50,000 M.B.A. and executive M.B.A. graduates each year, which is far from enough to support China’s economic growth and companies’ demands in order to survive against global competition.”

– The New York Times
March 26, 2013

India

Germany to Help Establish Vocational University in India

India and Germany are planning to set up a jointly funded, central vocational university geared towards the needs of the local labor market. The university is likely to be based in one of the major cities of India and will provide technical education.

“We are looking at some jointly funded projects. We are looking at a couple of possibilities and one possibility is of setting up a central vocational university,” Indian Ambassador to Germany Sujatha Singh told IANS.

India and Germany signed two agreements in April to strengthen cooperation in education and research. Under one pact, the two countries agreed to launch a jointly funded initiative called “Indo-German strategic partnerships in higher education.” Both countries have pledged 3.5 million euro (US$4.5 million) each for an initial period of four years. The program will focus on establishing joint research projects that will include joint supervision as well as student and academic exchanges.

India and Germany have a long history of cooperation in education and research, with more than 250 collaborations between Indian and German institutions of education. The prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Madras was established with German assistance in 1959. Germany is also helping in setting up a new  IIT campus in Mandi, Himachal Pradesh.

– IANS
April16, 2013

Japan

22 Japanese Universities Rank Among Top 100 in Asia

The University of Tokyo is the best university in Asia, according to the inaugural Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings, and Japan has a total of 22 universities in the top 100, more than any other country on the continent. Japanese universities were trailed by those from Taiwan (17) and China (15).

After the University of Tokyo, the next best institutions in Asia according to the ranking are the National University of Singapore, the University of Hong Kong, Peking University in China, and Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea. Tsinghua University is China’s top-ranked institution (6th)

Phil Baty, editor of the ranking, said the Asia-only top 100 list was launched “to provide deeper and richer insights” into the performance of Asia’s institutions after only 57 universities from the region appeared on the THE’s World University Rankings top 400 list.

“Asia is the most exciting and dynamic continent right now in higher education terms,” he said. “Many of its nations recognize the central role that world-class universities play in driving the new knowledge economy and are investing heavily in university teaching and research, unlike their Western competitors.”

– Times Higher Education
April 2013

Malaysia

Government Backs Agency to Promote Country as Study Destination

The government of Malaysia hopes to attract 200,000 international students to its institutions of education by 2020, and to help meet this goal it has incorporated a new company, Education Malaysia Global Services (EMGS) to lead overseas promotional efforts and streamline visa processing.

Overseen by the Higher Education Ministry, EMGS operates as a one-stop shop for marketing and promotional efforts in addition to providing a single interface for foreign student visa applications, processing and issuance. The goal is to process all visas within 14 days of a completed application through the new agency.

EMGS commenced operations on Feb 1, and it seeks to reduce the number of students lost to inefficient visa processing, calculated at up to 20 percent of international student applicants in the past. Visa processing fees will be used to fund promotional efforts for the Malaysian education sector abroad.

– The Star
March 31, 2013

Myanmar

U.S. Fulbright Exchanges Resume

The U.S. Agency for International Development has reestablished its mission in Myanmar and Fulbright exchanges have resumed. The move comes in the wake of President Obama’s historic visit to Myanmar in November, and subsequent tours by American universities looking to engage with the country’s higher education institutions.

Officials with the State Department have noted however that neither universities nor individual students in Myanmar are likely to have the financial resources to fund exchanges themselves, meaning that those institutions interested in hosting Burmese students, scholars and staffers will have to identify their own sources of funding.

A report released in April by the Institute of International Education, which led a delegation including representatives from 10 U.S. universities to Myanmar in February, describes the extensive needs of the country’s higher education system and offers recommendations for universities interested in forming partnerships.

“The climate for partnership is more favorable than it has been for 30 years,” Meghann Curtis, the deputy assistant secretary for academic programs at the U.S. State Department, said in a conference call coinciding with the report’s release. The IIE report, however, is frank about the “dire” state of higher education in the country, stating that “the needs of higher education in Myanmar are extensive. The entire system requires nothing less than a complete renovation – from the physical infrastructure to the academic curriculum.” Specific areas cited as needing attention include information technology, administration and governance, and the quality of faculty; the report quotes one senior administrator as saying “there are chemistry faculty who have not conducted an experiment with proper laboratory facilities and mechanical engineering professors who have yet to handle hands-on equipment.”

– Inside Higher Ed
April 15, 2013

New Zealand

Victoria Ranks as Top NZ Research University

Conducted every six years, New Zealand’s Performance Based Research Fund evaluation of research institutions has found Victoria University of Wellington to be the strongest in the country, recording the highest average score for its researchers, with the University of Auckland second and the former top institution, the University of Otago, dropping to third.

Government funding over the next six years is tied, in part, to the results of the evaluation, however, the University of Auckland, New Zealand’s largest university, will take the biggest share of that funding, and also of other parts of the Performance Based Research Fund, which are recalculated annually based on research degree completions and on external research income. The university was found to be the best in all three components combined, winning 28 percent of the funding available on the basis of the quality evaluation, 33 percent of the research degree completion funding and 36 percent of the funding allocated on the basis of external research income.

The top 10 by average research score

1. Victoria University of Wellington
2. University of Auckland
3. University of Otago
4. University of Canterbury
5. University of Waikato
6. Massey University
7. Lincoln University
8. Auckland University of Technology
9. Unitec New Zealand
10. Te Whare Wananga o Awanuiarangi

– University World News
April 11, 2013

Thailand

Ministry to Roll Out Large Scholarship Program

In anticipation of a looming academic shortage, Thailand’s Education Ministry plans to grant 25,000 full graduate scholarships to train university lecturers. The Ph.D scholarships will be offered for study locally and overseas.

Education Minister Phongthep Thepkanchana said many lecturers who hold doctorates will approach retirement age in the next 10-15 years. The country will be left with a shortage of lecturers with doctorates unless something is done.

A meeting of higher education staff suggested financial support should be offered to lecturers at all universities to encourage them to pursue doctoral degrees, locally and overseas. “Within 10 years, 25,000 scholarships should be granted to produce doctoral lecturers,” Phongthep said.

– Bangkok Post
April 15, 2013

Vietnam

In Drive for Quality, Ministry to Cut Enrollments at 23 Institutions

Vietnam’s Ministry of Higher Education and Training has said it will cut enrollments by thousands of students at 23 universities and colleges. Deputy Education Minister Bui Van Ga told local media in March that the new policy was to “focus on quality instead of quantity.”

The announcement was made in advance of upcoming nationwide university entrance examinations in July. The ministry said that quotas would be cut “between 10 percent and 100 percent” at the 23 institutions “because of failures to meet required conditions on lecturers and facilities.”

Too many new institutions and the upgrading of some colleges into universities had led to ‘over expansion,’ according to analysts quoted in official media. The ministry has also released a list of universities that will not be allowed to enroll any students at all in 2013, including Hung Vuong University in Phu Tho province in northern Vietnam, the College of Technology, and Saigon College of Economics and Technology. The official reason given for the enrollment freeze was “deficiencies in infrastructure and teaching staff.”

Institutions would be allowed to resume enrollments the following year if they could resolve their “internal problems.” They will be required to submit a dossier to re-register programs that have been discontinued this year. Deputy Minister Bui Van Ga said earlier this month that the ministry would also veto any plans to set up new universities between now and 2020.

Institutions that have been affected by the quota restrictions are in both the public and private sectors.

– University World News
March 22, 2013

Many Vietnamese Study Abroad, Few Return

According to Vietnam’s State Committee for Overseas Vietnamese, there are nearly 4.5 million Vietnamese living around the world, including 400,000 who have bachelor and higher degrees. Unofficial data estimates that students studying abroad who have stayed overseas number between 10,000 and 20,000, despite conditions of government scholarships requiring that they return home to work in the state sector.

In March 2004, Vietnam’s Communist Party enacted Resolution 36 on Overseas Vietnamese. Its objective was to persuade Vietnamese abroad to come back to support development in every sector, including in the economy, science and culture. However, the resolution while successful in bringing in increased remittances to Vietnam and foreign direct investment from overseas Vietnamese, was less successful in luring academics back to the country. And those who did return often left again, complaining of red tape, lack of autonomy and unsatisfactory working environments.

According to expatriate Vietnamese academics interviewed by University World News, low pay at Vietnamese universities is not the main obstacle for people who have tenured positions in developed countries. The work and research environment is more important.

In December, under the Resolution 36 scheme, the government released a draft regulation for consultation. It is aimed at attracting back highly qualified Vietnamese currently at overseas universities, to work in Vietnam’s higher education sector, particularly for shorter stints that might encourage them to stay longer. The draft addresses some of the returnee academics’ concerns, including income tax waivers and favorable treatment when buying or renting a house, but there are still major concerns about autonomy from government control.

– University World News
April 6, 2013