Afghanistan
Future of University of Kabul in Doubt
The American University of Kabul [1] is just half-complete, reports Ernesto Londoño for the Washington Post, and because the university is heavily reliant on foreign aid and is likely to be for the foreseeable future, Londoño wonders how much will endure at the university after the US military leaves by the end of next year.
Long-term funding for the university is uncertain, and many students have come to see their degrees as a ticket out of Afghanistan. Londoño notes, “as US troops prepare to end their combat mission in Afghanistan, there is a foreboding about the future on this campus, and a sense that the school may not survive as the incubator of talent and entrepreneurship that Washington sought to create.”
The country could be headed toward another civil war, said Sayed Mansoor Afzali, the vice president of the university’s student government association. The majority of students are making plans to leave the country, Afzali said, adding: “It’s a minor group, those who believe they can stay here and build a career for themselves.”
The university gets about 60 percent of its funding from USAID and the rest from tuition, much of which is subsidized by State Department grants. This year, USAID approved a new $42 million grant to keep the school afloat for the next five years.
– The Washington Post [2]
September 29, 2013
China
Country Attractive as a Study Abroad Destination, Universities Not So Much
According to a recent cover story in the state-run China Daily newspaper, “culture and economy may attract overseas students, but the education system does not. And that’s a big problem because the government is trying to attract more foreign students as part of an internationalization strategy, in an attempt to grab a slice of the international education market.”
The article goes on to state that China’s potential as a study abroad destination is being hampered by language barriers, limited career prospects and poor teaching facilities.
In 2011, there were approximately 4.3 million internationally mobile students in tertiary education worldwide, with 77,400 studying at colleges in China, according to statistics from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The Chinese Ministry of Education reported a higher number, saying that the country played host to 119,000 overseas students in 2011, including 88,500 college and undergraduate students, 23,600 graduate students, and 6,900 postgraduates. Under current plans, the government aims to host 500,000 international students at all levels by 2020, becoming the top Asian destination for overseas students. Among that number would be 150,000 overseas college and university students. Currently, an estimated 60 percent of foreign students in China are there to study the language.
– China Daily [3]
August 26, 2013
Increasing Number of Overseas Chinese Graduates Return Home Looking for Work
Facing poor job prospects overseas, a growing number of Chinese students are returning home, a trend that looks likely to continue in coming years, according to a recently released report.
The report by the Chinese international education service provider EIC found that 22 percent of returned overseas Chinese students thought they would have better prospects of finding a good job in their home country.
The survey interviewed more than 9,100 Chinese students by questionnaire over a five-month period, with more than 5,800 having been overseas students. “China’s high-speed economic growth in past years has motivated overseas students to come back and to look for job opportunities,” said Liu Yuan, general manager of EIC’s Shanghai branch.
“At the same time, it demonstrates the difficulty overseas Chinese students have in finding jobs in other countries.”
About half of the former overseas Chinese students polled cited the uncertain economic situation as the biggest obstacle to finding employment overseas. The 2012 survey by EIC showed that more than 70 percent of Chinese students returned home after studying abroad. In 2012, about 272,900 returned, almost 50 percent more than the previous year, according to a China Social Sciences Press report on 2013 China overseas study development. It predicted a larger tide of returning students in coming years. This year’s figure is not yet available, but similar reports have indicated continued growth in the return rate.
– People’s Daily [4]
October 17, 2013
Groundbreaking Ceremony Held for Elite Scholarship Program, China’s Largest Ever International Philanthropic Gift
Tsinghua University in Beijing will house the future location of Schwarzman College [5], a state-of-the-art residential institute designed specifically for the new Schwarzman Scholars program. A groundbreaking ceremony was held in October for what is being recorded as the largest ever internationally funded philanthropic effort in Chinese history.
Philanthropist Stephen A Schwarzman – chair, CEO and co-founder of Blackstone, a private equity fund – said at the ceremony that US$260 million (¥1.6 billion) had been raised for Schwarzman Scholars, the elite international scholarship program announced in April this year. The program was inspired by the Rhodes Scholarship, and designed for a 21st century world that will require future world leaders to have a deeper understanding of China, according to a press statement.
The scholars will be housed at Tsinghua University, one of China’s oldest and most respected institutions, which among other things is dedicated to interaction between Chinese and Western cultures. The fund will support 200 scholars annually, mostly from America but also from China and around the world, for a one-year masters at Tsinghua University in one of the following disciplines: public policy, international relations, economics and business and, later, engineering. Admissions will open in 2015.
– University World News [6]
October 24, 2013
Shanghai as an Education Hub
Shanghai is working hard to develop itself as a regional and global center for educational exchange and one of Asia’s most popular study destinations, city officials say.
“We want to build an international education city full of diverse culture attractions,” said Yang Weiren, who works in international exchange and cooperation for the Shanghai Education Commission. Yang revealed that the city is working towards becoming a cosmopolitan education city through international cooperation agreements and the setting up of top-tier international schools, ranging from high schools to vocational schools and universities.
The latest step is the first China-US high school, co-established by Shanghai Qibao High and Dwight School in the United States. The three-year boarding school will be open to Chinese and overseas students, and the first batch of 100 students will be enrolled in the fall of 2014, the school said. City education officials are looking to develop a number of other internationally cooperative high schools in the coming years.
Last year, Shanghai New York University [7] was founded through an agreement between NYU and Shanghai’s East China Normal University. This year, about 500 Chinese students took part in the first round of admission interviews, with 151 eventually accepted. The next step for the city’s education authorities, according to Yang, is to establish a cooperative vocational school. The education commission is looking for qualified international bodies for cooperation, he said.
Meanwhile, the number of international students in the city has been rising. Last year, about 51,000 overseas students were studying in Shanghai, most from South Korea, Japan and the US. City authorities hope that number will increase to 70,000 by 2015. Shanghai has been offering scholarships to international students since 2005, and more than 25 million yuan ($4 million) is granted to students each year, Yang said. The Shanghai Education Commission plans to further those efforts through a comprehensive scholarship system designed to attract outstanding students to long-term programs.
– China Daily [8]
October 24, 2013
Importance of English on College Admissions Test to Be Downgraded
Education authorities in Beijing are making plans to reduce the weighting of the English section in the all-important college admissions test, or gaokao, from 150 points to 100 points. The move will be implemented in major cities by 2016, China’s official newswire Xinhua reported [9].
Officials also plan to boost the value of the Chinese section from 150 to 180 points. Currently, the test weighs English, Chinese and maths equally. Education authorities are also considering scrapping mandatory English lessons before the third grade. They currently begin on the first day of primary school. Chinese schools currently mandate English classes until university, giving rise to a sprawling £3.1bn private English training industry. Xinhua called the proposals “no more than a minor tweak,” emphasizing that they would change the way that English is taught without diminishing its importance.
Shandong and Jiangsu provinces, as well as Shanghai, have all said they may remove English from the gaokao entirely. Public consultation on the proposal began in October, Xinhua reported.
– The Guardian [10]
October 22, 2013
Hong Kong
SAT Brings Thousands of Chinese Students to Hong Kong
Thousands of mainland Chinese students are flocking to Hong Kong to take the SAT for a shot at U.S. education, reports the Wall Street Journal.
According to AsiaWorld-Expo chief executive officer Allen Ha, his venue this year will have hosted more than 50,000 students taking the SAT, the exam widely used by U.S. universities to evaluate applicants. The exam is offered half a dozen times a year internationally, said the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority.
More than 90 percent of the students that take the exam at AsiaWorld-Expo hail from the mainland, Mr. Ha said. Inside China, the exam is only administered in international schools, or those authorized to enroll students with non-Chinese passports.
For many students, the SAT is an attractive alternative to China’s notoriously grueling college entrance exam, the gaokao, which 9.12 million students took this year, according to Xinhua, down from 9.15 million the year prior. In addition to Hong Kong, the SAT is administered in Taiwan and Macau and numerous other countries in Asia, including Japan.
– Wall Street Journal [11]
October 16, 2014
India
Funding for Higher Education Expansion Plan to Move Forward
India is planning to inject funding into state universities under an ambitious higher education plan that would link university performance to funding and create new institutions, as it looks to increase access while also promoting quality standards.
The Ministry of Finance recently approved Rs250 billion (US$4 billion) in funding for Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA), which proposes to spend a total of Rs990 billion (US$16 billion) between 2013 and 2022. The Ministry of Human Resource Development will now approach cabinet for approval to implement the project in the current fiscal year.
Under the RUSA plan, the focus will be on strengthening state institutions and building their capacity to use resources efficiently. Currently just 6 percent – or 500,000 – of students studying in public institutions are enrolled in centrally funded institutions while state-controlled public institutions enroll the rest, approximately 7.9 million students. Nonetheless, the majority of funding from the central government goes to centrally funded institutions.
To be eligible for funding under RUSA, each state will have to set up a higher education council, which will channel funds from central government to colleges and universities – unlike the current system, where the money is paid directly to universities. States will not be permitted to shrink their education-related budgetary allocations during the RUSA funding period, with a requirement that at least 4 percent of states’ gross domestic product be spent on higher education.
Other prerequisites to qualify for funding include academic and institutional governance reforms, setting up state accreditation agencies and filling faculty positions. Another important aspect of the RUSA plan is that it will focus on improving existing institutions rather than setting up new ones. For instance, RUSA will limit the number of colleges affiliated to a university to 200, in order to improve governance.
Colleges will be encouraged to gain academic and administrative autonomy, become responsible for the curriculum and assessment, and become eligible to receive funds directly. “The idea is to support some of the best colleges to develop into universities rather than starting new universities,” an education ministry official said.
– University World News [12]
September 27, 2013
New Zealand
Government Introduces New Initiatives to Attract International Students
The total enrollment of international students at New Zealand’s institutions of higher education for the first four months of 2013 declined by 3 percent versus the same period last year. The decline has, generally speaking been attributed to the global financial crisis, increasing competition in international markets, and the lingering effects of major earthquakes in 2010 and 2011.
In response, the government announced in October a package of new policy initiatives designed to make New Zealand a more attractive study destination for international students.
These include: changes to visa requirements to make it easier for visiting students to work during their studies, strengthening quality standards for education providers, and enabling streamlined visa processing via partnerships with education providers. The changes will take effect in January 2014.
The modifications will allow more English language students to work part time, and will also provide full-time work rights during all scheduled holidays to international students who take a program of one academic year or more. International PhD and masters students will now have unlimited work rights. Immigration New Zealand [13] will also pilot a new partnership with educators, under which up to 25 selected institutions and schools will be able to offer streamlined and prioritized visa processing. The pilot will begin in 2014 with the expectation that it will be expanded to a wider field of providers in 2015.
Both the pilot and any subsequent expansion of this streamlined processing model will be implemented via New Zealand’s recently announced Immigration Online system [14], a new initiative that will allow many visas to be processed entirely online. In a bid to strengthen quality standards, Immigration New Zealand will no longer approve visas for students intending to study with the few education providers classed as Category 4, the lowest status granted by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority.
– ICEF Monitor [15]
October 11, 2013
South Korea
Korean Students Increasingly Choosing China
Traditionally Korean students abroad have chosen the United States as their study location, but in recent years focus has shifted towards neighbor and global economic powerhouse, China.
China is South Korea’s biggest export destination, taking around a quarter of its exports–and it’s also taking more than a quarter of its foreign college students. The number of South Koreans enrolled in Chinese universities more than tripled to 62,855 last year from 18,267 in 2003, according to data from Seoul’s education ministry. That’s 26 percent of all South Koreans registered at foreign universities, behind only the United States, which attracted 31 percent of the total.
Part of the benefit of a U.S education is practice speaking English, which is still seen as the most important language for job seekers, but Korean employers are increasingly looking for graduates with experience in China. Samsung Group, for example, said two years ago that job applicants with Chinese language skills would get bonus points.
Chinese universities attract a wide array of students, thanks in part to low tuition fees. On average, Chinese colleges charge $3,500 a year for undergraduate study, according to China’s University and College Admission System [16], the Beijing-based application service provider for international students.
– Wall Street Journal – Asia [17]
October 17, 2013
Taiwan
Taiwan Looks to Establish as a Chinese-Language Hub for International Students
Taiwan’s Executive Yuan has drafted an eight-year plan to develop Taiwan into a major destination for Chinese language learning amid rising global enthusiasm for learning Chinese language and culture.
But according to Ministry of Education data, the number of foreign students coming to Taiwan to learn Mandarin showed negative growth for the first time last year, dropping 4 percent to 13,898. In 2004, according to the ministry statistics, 7,600 foreign students were in Taiwan on language programs, increasing steadily to 14,480 in 2011.
Chen Po-hsi, chief executive of the Steering Committee for the Test of Proficiency-Huayu, attributed the rare decline in the number of foreign learners in 2012 mainly to strong competition from China. According to Chen, China has been investing heavily in promoting Chinese language learning all over the world and has been offering generous financial incentives to attract foreign students.
Bi Chu-an, an MOE official in charge of international education affairs, said the Executive Yuan has formed a special task force to draft a plan to develop Taiwan as a Chinese language destination. Under the plan, the number of independently operated language centers will increase from current 37 to 75, while the number of ‘cram schools’ eligible to recruit foreigners will increase from three to 25.
– Focus Taiwan [18]
October 16, 2013