Israel

Israeli Higher Education Deteriorates and Brain Drain Worsens, Report Says

A report published by the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel says that nationwide spending on higher education has plunged over the last 40 years and universities are increasingly replacing senior faculty members with adjunct lecturers, according to the newspaper Haaretz.

The report also said that for every 100 Israelis working as faculty members at Israeli universities, 29 are employed at American universities—an emigration rate that it called the highest among Western countries. The findings echoed those of a 2008 report, also by the center’s director, Dan Ben-David, that was titled “Brain Drained.”

– Haaretz
October 8, 2013

Texas A&M to Open New Campus in Israel

Israel clamped down on foreign campuses a little less than a decade ago after a bogus-degree scandal arose with a flood of second-tier colleges, primarily from Europe, opening branches in the country, some accused of selling degrees with little or no real study attached. Now, Texas A&M University is looking to enter the country by taking over a college in Nazareth, a predominantly Arab city in Israel.

An agreement between Texas A&M, Israeli officials, and others was signed in October at a ceremony hosted by Shimon Peres, the president of Israel. Mr. Peres hailed the agreement as “historic,” but the document is a broad outline whose details are still unclear, reports The Chronicle of Higher Education. Nonetheless, the high-level government support apparent in the agreement suggests that Israel is keen to promote engagement with top-tier international universities.

The Texas A&M University at Nazareth-Peace Campus, as it will be known, is slated to open in the fall of 2015 and to serve Israeli and international students. It is the second foreign campus for the university, which opened one in the Persian Gulf kingdom of Qatar in 2003. Texas A&M says it will raise the estimated $65 million required to finance the project from private sources. In contrast, the campus in Qatar was subsidized entirely by the Qatar Foundation.

In Israel the venture faces legal hurdles. Under a 2005 amendment to Israel’s education law, branches of foreign colleges are not recognized as degree-awarding institutions. Officials say the law will be changed to encourage “very good institutions to set up shop.”

– The Chronicle of Higher Education
October 23, 2013

United Arab Emirates

Scottish University in Dubai Reports High Levels of Cheating, Blames Lax Admissions Standards

Heriot-Watt University Dubai has reported that almost one in eight of its students at the School of Management and Languages have been found guilty of cheating, with low entry standards being blamed for the figures.

The campus enrolled a total of 1,045 students in 2011-12 and 125 of them were found guilty of academic misconduct. Entry standards have also been blamed for students struggling academically at the campus, with close to one in 12 across the Dubai branch failing to progress to the 2012-13 academic year. The cheating issue was raised during a Heriot-Watt senate meeting in January, when the university’s principal, Steve Chapman, highlighted the “high proportion of cases involving collusion and plagiarism” at the campus, “particularly among students in the School of Management and Languages,” the minutes record.

In March, the senate considered a report into academic misconduct at the branch, which concluded that raising entry standards was an “important potential mechanism” for reducing cheating and improving progression rates.

A spokeswoman for Heriot-Watt said that there was a minimum entry tariff that applied across all its campuses, but standards above that threshold could vary according to “the number of places available, the strength of demand, various international education systems and in some cases background.” An “action plan” had been put in place to cut cheating at the school, the spokeswoman said, including “increasing awareness of required standards among entry-level students” and the use of anti-plagiarism software.

In 2012-13, cases of cheating at the school dropped from 11.9 percent of students to 4.7 percent, the spokeswoman said.

– Times Higher Education
October 31, 2013