Australia: Strong Increase in International Student Enrollments Continues in 2017
As of May 2017, international student numbers in Australia increased by 14 percent over 2016. The gains come after strong growth already in the past year, which led to an almost 19 percent increase in spending by international students to a total of US$ 19 billion. The 2017 growth is to a large extent driven by increased enrollments in Australia’s vocational education and training sector from countries like China, South Korea and Brazil. The countries accounting for the biggest overall growth in both the vocational training and tertiary education sectors were Nepal with a 47 percent increase, Brazil (26 percent), China (18 percent) and Malaysia (18 percent). China and India remain Australia’s by far largest sending markets for international students.
ICEF Monitor
August 30, 2017
Pan-Asia: Asian Universities Gain in Times Higher Education World University Ranking
The number of Asian universities among the top 100 in the 2016/2017 THE world rankings has increased from eight to nine with a number of top universities edging up in position. The National University of Singapore (NUS), Asia’s top-ranked institution, moved from 24th to 22nd position followed by China’s Peking University at place 29. All Asian institutions in the top 100, except for NUS, are located in East Asia, while universities from South and South East Asia are notably absent from the top slots. Researchers explain the growing success of these schools with increased demand for higher education, strong government investments, growing internationalization and the return of Western-educated scholars. While Asia currently has 15 universities among the top 200 institutions combined, the U.S., by comparison, had 63 among the top 200, followed by the UK with 32, Germany with 22, and the Netherlands with 13.
SciDev.net
August 17, 2017
India: Education System is Growing, but International Student Enrollments Remain Low
India’s education system has experienced significant growth and is poised to soon overtake China as the largest education system in the world. According to the Association of Indian Universities (AIU), there are currently 33 million students attending almost 800 universities and 40,000 colleges. Even though India’s gross enrollment ratio (GER) remains relatively low by international comparison, the GER is expected to increase from 27 percent in 2015 to 30 percent in 2020. The system also has ample room for expansion in foreign student enrollments, which, according to the AIU, stood at only 30,423 in 2015, most of them from other Asian countries like Nepal, Afghanistan and Malaysia, and included a large number of non-resident Indians. This is far cry from a total capacity of 5 million seats for foreign students that the Indian system theoretically has if Indian universities were to fully exhaust foreign student quotas of 15 percent. The number of inbound international students has increased three-fold since 2000 and the AIU estimates may be too low compared to UNESCO data. Nevertheless, the number of inbound students is miniscule compared to the number of outbound students, which reached 255,000 in 2016.
ICEF Monito [1]r
August 16, 2017
China: Cash Rewards for Articles Published in Foreign Journals Increasing
First established by Nanjing University in 1990, cash-rewards for publications in foreign academic journals by Chinese scholars have become increasingly common in China and have reached new heights in recent years. A recent study of cash-rewards policies by academic departments at 100 Chinese universities revealed that the average award for publications in foreign journals has increased to US$ 1,000 to 2,000 in 2016, even though some rewards for publications in prestigious Western journals can be as high as US$ 160,000. According to the study, the average reward for publications in the natural sciences has since 2008 increased by 67 percent to US$ 44,000 – about five times the average annual salary of Chinese professors. Cash rewards tend to be higher at Tier 3 universities than at Tier 1 and Tier 2 universities, and tend to contribute to plagiarism, ghost-writing and other forms of academic dishonesty. Overall, Chinese publications account for 16.3 percent scientific papers published worldwide, making China the second-largest contributor after the United States.
University World News
July 13, 2017