Regional

The Rise of Asian Research Output

Researchers and scientists in many Asian nations are translating huge national investments in research and development into big gains in research output, reports the New York Times.

According to the Thomson Reuters National Science Indicators, which tracks the number of articles published in about 12,000 internationally recognized journals, the Asia-Pacific region increased its global share of published science articles from 13 percent in the early 1980s to just over 30 percent in 2009. Over the same timeframe, the percentage of articles from the United States dropped to 28 percent from 40 percent.

The biggest publishing gains have been seen in China which has increased its share of articles to 11 percent in 2009 from just 0.4 percent in the early 1980s. Japan is next with 6.7 percent, followed by India with 3.4 percent. With a population of just under 5 million, Singapore has increased its number of indexed articles from 200 in 1981 to 8,500 in 2009. The small island nation currently apportions 3 percent of gross domestic product to research and development, and has plans to build that to 3.5 percent of gross domestic product by 2015.

According to the Times article, the increases come largely as a result of huge increases in funding by governments committed to building knowledge-intensive economies. Academics also say that the increasing influence of world rankings has spurred competition among Asian universities. Some of the most widely recognized rankings use the number of published journal articles and highly cited researchers as indicators, including the recently released rankings by the Center for World-Class Universities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Others have found that the increase in Asia’s research productivity has also come about in part because of a huge increase in collaboration between universities, both domestically and internationally, while funding for translation services so that articles can be published in English has also helped Asian researchers.

Despite the increase in the number of articles from the Asia-Pacific region, as a whole it still trails the United States in terms of how often its research papers are cited by others, which is broadly seen as an indicator of quality and impact in published works. Some Asia-Pacific countries, like Singapore, have already exceeded the world average in terms of the number of citations per paper, but the region as a whole remains 20 percent below the world average.

– New York Times
September 12, 2010

India and China to Recognize Each Other’s Degrees

The Hindustan Times reports that China and India will soon recognize each other’s degrees as equivalent, according to government officials, but this recognition will not extend to programs in medicine and pharmacy— the programs that have attracted the largest number of Indian students to China in the last eight years.

Kapil Sibal, India’s minister for higher education, is expected to discuss the agreement with Chinese officials during a visit to China in September when he attends the World Economic Forum. Unlike most higher education programs in Australia, Britain, and the United States, which are accepted in India, Chinese programs have not been recognized. For Indian students who have studied in China, this has been problematic when applying for jobs or higher studies in India. An estimated 7,000 Indians are currently pursuing higher qualifications in China, with medicine being the most popular field.

– Hindustan
August 27, 2010

Australia

Overseas Recruitment Stalls Amid Visa Changes and Anti-Immigration Debate

Australia’s lucrative market for overseas students has been expanding for years; however, there are now fears that this growth could be reversed. The well-publicized attacks on Indian students have caused a huge drop in the number of applications from the subcontinent for study visas. Now experts are warning that new visa regulations, a stronger dollar, and anti-immigration rhetoric during the run-up to the federal election in August may have damaged the sector even further.

There are also signs that demand from Australia’s other major Asian sources of overseas students – including China, Malaysia, Indonesia and South Korea may also be impacted by some of these factors. However, despite efforts to rectify “reputational” damage to higher education by institutions and the authorities, the university sector has found it difficult to directly influence two variables – the Indian media’s reporting of the attacks and the involvement of Australian vocational colleges.

Much of the violence has been against those studying at vocational education and training (VET) colleges, where students are frequently commuting in from poorer and potentially more violent neighborhoods rather than living on campus. Although university enrollments for overseas students are still up this year, VET institutions have already seen a downturn – a trend that is likely to feed through to higher education, as many students take preparatory courses at VET colleges before moving on to degree programs.

According to the latest official statistics – for 2009-10 – 28,055 student visas were granted for study at VET colleges, down from 69,156 the previous year – a drop of almost 60 percent. Offshore visa grants to Indian students for VET courses shrank from 31,451 to just 7,014 over the same period.

Experts believe that although the attacks and media reaction are partly to blame for the drop-off in demand, especially from India, government policy, the high Australian dollar and the global financial crisis are also adding to the problem and affecting other important markets, including China. A visa change requiring a 50 percent increase in the funds that students must show to support their visa application has been particularly damaging. Another factor that may be affecting applications is the tighter control on other visas that many foreign students go on to claim in a bid to gain residency once their period of study has ended.

In the run-up to the federal election on August 21, there were fears that demand from overseas students may have fallen further as a result of the tone adopted by politicians, with migration being a hotly debated campaign issue.

– The Times Higher
August 28, 2010

International Student Group Forms in Bid to Raise Public Voice

The more than 500,000 international students in Australia are being given a stronger voice in the country’s education and immigration debates through a new advocacy organization, the Council of International Students Australia.

The council’s says its first order of duty is to assist and advise students who are in country but uncertain about their futures because of changes in immigration rules and the closures of certain vocational and English-language providers because of their unlawful practices or poor business decisions. The government has shut down 15 such private colleges that catered to international students, affecting 3,713 students in the process. According to the student-placement company IDP Education, 57 percent of those students have been placed with other educational providers or given refunds.

Many students came to Australia expecting to be able to apply for permanent residency upon graduation. But in July the federal government made this more difficult by shortening a list of professions from which graduates become eligible for residency. Another key issue the international-student council will take up is safety. In recent years, at least 25 Indian students in Australia have been assaulted, with one student brutally murdered early this year with no apparent motive for the attack.

– The Chronicle of Higher Education
August 31, 2010

China

UK University Launches Beijing-Based Journalism Program

Bolton University has launched a multimedia journalism degree program for students in Beijing. The masters program will be taught largely by lecturers from the British university and will focus on how to use photography, online media, and print journalism to cover breaking stories.

Bolton already operates a campus in the United Arab Emirate state of Ras Al Khaimah, which currently has more than 300 students in class. The university had previously run a photography degree in the northeastern city of Dalian, but has now shifted its campus to the Chinese capital. The new program, which will be taught in English, will demonstrate how to use new publishing technology and is geared towards Chinese students who intend to work abroad. The program will be jointly run with the Beijing Foreign Studies University and students will graduate with a Bolton degree.

– Manchester Evening News
August 26, 2010

Top Universities Plan to Increase International Graduate Enrollments

An official from Tsinghua University, one of China’s top universities, said in late August that the institution is looking to increase the number of foreign graduate students on campus from 7 percent to close to 10 percent by 2020.

“Top universities around the world without an English-based curriculum have about 10 percent foreign students in their graduate programs, so we’re aiming for close to that number by 2020,” Wu Yunxin, director of the Foreign Student Affairs Office at Tsinghua, said at a news conference.

Tsinghua has approximately 1,000 foreign students enrolled in its master’s and doctoral programs this year, compared to a total of 205 foreign students in 2004. Other Chinese universities, including Peking University, also are recruiting more foreign students both as a revenue source and through scholarships.

In 2009, 240,000 foreign students studied in universities across China, according to the Ministry of Education, a huge jump from 52,000 students in 2000. U.S. international graduate students enrolled at Tsinghua this year top the list for the first time, followed closely by South Korea, which has by far the most international students at universities across China compared to other countries.

– Associated Press
August 30, 2010

PhD Quantity but not Quality

According to an Asia Times report, China surpassed the United States in 2008 as the top producer of doctorates, however recent commentary in China Daily, a state run newspaper, suggests that there has not been commensurate growth in quality.

Approximately 70 percent of employers complain that employees who hold PhDs show little innovation in their work performance, according to a recent survey, which interviewed 1,392 PhD candidates, degree holders, professors and employers. The survey, conducted by researchers at the Institute of Education Sciences in Huazhong University of Science and Technology, found several flaws in Chinese graduate training, especially at the doctoral level.

The number of PhD students in China reached 246,300 in 2009, an almost fivefold increase from 1999, which has reportedly led to a severe shortage of qualified professors and advisors. Almost half of the professors polled were responsible for supervising seven or more PhD candidates. One supervisor said he was in charge of 47 candidates. Some 60 percent of PhD candidates stated that they have been assigned more than half of their professors’ research projects.

– China Daily
August 26, 2010

2 Percent of Graduates from China’s Top 100 Universities Continue Studies Abroad

It’s no secret that the number of Chinese students travelling overseas to study has risen dramatically in recent years, but recently released data delves a little deeper into the numbers and finds that many graduate students are coming from top Chinese universities, and the vast majority are self-financed.

In 2009, the number of Chinese students leaving China to study abroad increased by 50,000 to 220,000 compared to 2008, according to recent data released by Mycos, an education data research firm. Just under 90 percent of Chinese students abroad are financially dependent on their parents and relatives, while 9 percent rely on foreign scholarships, 3 percent depend on the incomes they make from part-time jobs, and the Chinese government or other agencies support only 1 percent.

The report shows that the proportion of Chinese graduates from ‘211 Universities,’ also known as ‘China’s 100 Universities of the 21st Century,’ who studied abroad was higher than from other lower-ranked universities. In addition, the proportion of 2009 graduates from the 211 Universities who studied abroad is nearly 2 percent, an increase of more than 0.6 percent compared with 2008. The proportion of graduates from other universities who studied abroad was almost 0.7 percent, an increase of more than 0.4 percent compared with 2008.

The most in-demand overseas majors were engineering, literature and management, accounting for more than 70 percent of the total. Students from the Yangtze River Delta region were most likely to study abroad. Of those interviewed for the study, 36 percent were looking to stay overseas in the short term, and 31 percent were looking to return home.

– People’s Daily
August 27, 2010

Higher Education Reform

Education reform in China has reached a crucial stage in which the system needs to produce an increasingly knowledgeable workforce equipped to handle the challenges of an economy that is not only growing extremely rapidly, but also becoming increasingly diversified and sophisticated, writes Gua-hua Wang in the Spring issue of China Currents.

Anticipated reforms for the next 10 years are outlined in a comprehensive plan called “State Guidelines for Medium-to-Long-Term Education Reform and Development Plan between 2010 and 2020,” otherwise known as the Development Plan. A second round of national discussion of the Development Plan was completed earlier this year, and more than 30,000 suggestions were collected, with various educational models also being studied.

On higher education, two parts of the reform are especially important: the guarantee of institutional autonomy from central control, and the opening up of the college admission process. Under the plan there are specific measures for the government to release central control by giving universities autonomy and allowing presidents and faculty to run their institutions. The government’s function is to be limited to providing services and funding, and to making general educational policies.

The other major aspect of the reform is the plan to drastically change the college admission process from a dependence on one centrally administered college entrance examination (Gaokao) to a thorough and holistic student evaluation using multiple tests and factors. A major concern with the proposed new system is that the various other factors such as teacher recommendations and extracurricular activities considered for admission will be open to bribery and corruption.

Ms. Wang points out that ultimately, “the success of higher education reform will be inextricably intertwined not just with the political and culture development of the society, but also with its ethical evolution.”

Other specific measures under the plan include the following: strengthening the quality of teaching faculty; increasing the government funding of education to 4 percent of GDP by 2012; completing education laws and regulations; and ensuring every step of the reform meets the laws and regulations. In order to accomplish these missions and goals, the Development Plan encourages educational institutions to design their own reform programs and policies. The goal of the plan – in a nutshell – is to make China’s higher education internationally competitive. The specifics of that goal are spelled out in much greater detail in the plan.

– China Currents
Spring 2010

Graduate Employment Opportunities Remain Scarce

In recent years China’s labor market has struggled to produce enough jobs to meet the increasing demand for white-collar positions from the record number of college and university graduates. Even as labor shortages plague manufacturing industries, more than one-quarter of this year’s 6.3 million Chinese college graduates are unemployed, according to the Education Ministry, which means companies can demand the most qualified people at the lowest price.

Due to rising university enrollments and a mismatch between what students learn and the skills companies need, the problem of graduate unemployment and underemployment has been building for years. In 1998, the government launched a plan to greatly increase university admissions to diversify China’s economic model away from cheap manufacturing to one based more on innovation. As a result, the number of graduates has risen threefold in just over a decade.

While the labor pool has greatly expanded, benefiting industry immensely, the outcome for graduates has been less satisfying, with white-collar salaries at the entry level remaining stubbornly low and graduate unemployment stubbornly high. The result is tens of thousands of graduates subsisting in squalor on the outskirts of China’s biggest cities.

Foreign companies hiring in China are often finding that the recent graduates that they do hire are graduating with a lack of workplace skills. According to a white paper published in May by the American Chamber of Commerce, companies are finding they “have to invest significantly in training and development to bring their new hires up to par with their peers in other countries.” Further, companies are finding that Chinese college students are not trained to work collaboratively, be creative and innovative, or take risks.

As noted in the preceding article, the government is trying to improve the situation, announcing in July a “National Plan for Medium and Long-Term Education Reform and Development” that will boost spending on education at all levels and focus university curricula increasingly on practical. The blueprint 10-year plan is very clear about the flaws in the educational system,” says University of Hong Kong‘s Gerard Postiglione.

The city of Chongqing, meanwhile, has introduced special funds and tax rebates to support graduates who set up their own businesses. The central government is urging young people with college degrees to apply for official posts in the poor interior provinces. Already, the government is claiming a small victory of sorts, with the Education Ministry recently announcing that the rate of employment for recent graduates rose from 68 percent in 2009 to 72.2 percent this year. However, clearly the university sector and Chinese economy sector still have a long way to go before they mature to the point that they are producing and absorbing at a similar rate.

– Bloomberg Businessweek
September 1, 2010

Hong Kong

Government Enticing Quality Education Providers with Bargain Real Estate Deals

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the Savannah College of Art and Design opened a campus in the North Kowloon district of Hong Kong this month after transforming an historical courthouse replete with jail cells, public benches and prisoners’ docks into a state of the art digital media campus. The US$13 million restoration and renovation of the 1960s building was done with an eye towards preservation, under a 10-year lease that cost the U.S. college one Hong Kong dollar. The costs of the renovation and other campus development plans were the responsibility of the college.

In a bid to situate itself as a global education hub and to improve tertiary opportunities for local students, the Hong Kong government will be accepting bids for six similarly priced pieces of prime real estate in the coming years in a bid to attract branch campuses from top universities around the world. The Chronicle reports that starting this fall, the largest plot in Queen’s Hill, of more than 100,000 square meters, or nearly 25 acres—enough space to teach roughly 8,000 students—will be offered at the bargain price of HK$1,000 or US$129 U.S. Two more locations will be available in late 2010 or early 2011. Queen’s Hill will be marketed to interested parties around the world by Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices.

The hope is that an influx of higher-education institutions and undergraduates will promote the special administrative zone of China as a sophisticated, globalized gateway to the mainland. Hong Kong officials have pointed out that the bids will not automatically be won by a foreign campus or even to a single bidder. They are looking for reputable, self-financing, private colleges.

– The Chronicle of Higher Education
August 31, 2010

India

A Cautionary International Recruitment Tale

Britain’s Coventry University is currently embroiled in a dispute with an Indian recruiting agent who is demanding £300,000 (US$465,000) compensation from the university for breach of contract.

Times Higher Education reports that the agent, Ram Beegala, was hired by Coventry to establish a recruitment office in India, but was let go after having opened the office without receiving any compensation from the British university. Mr. Beegala claims he was “commercially exploited” and left unpaid, while two university employees have been questioned by police over allegations that they stole from his office.

Coventry denies the claims made by Ram Beegala, who was hired last August on a three-year contract to provide “consultancy services” and set up and manage a recruitment office in Chennai. The contract stipulated that there would be no basic salary or retainer, but instead he would be paid entirely on commission for recruitment above the university’s “steady state” of 450 Indian students a year.

However, in April 2010, Coventry served notice that it was terminating the deal in order to set up its own office. Two Indian staff, hired by Mr. Beegala for the university, remained in its employment. The two Coventry staff then allegedly took office equipment leased under Mr. Beegala’s name.

Coventry says that its employees did not gain unlawful access to the office, and that all the items removed belonged to the university.

According to Mr. Beegala, Coventry refused to pay him for his time recruiting, work he estimates is worth between £60,000 and £80,000. However, the university said it did not owe Mr. Beegala money as the number of Indian students recruited in 2010 was 421, meaning its threshold had not been breached. In a legal notice sent to the university, Mr. Beegala requests compensation of £300,000 for loss of past and future earnings.

– Times Higher Education
August 12, 2010

Proposed Tertiary Regulatory Body Meets with Resistance

A central part of the Indian government’s reform plans for the higher education sector is the establishment of a single regulatory body that would replace an overlapping web of such regulators. According to Indian media reports, the bill to create the proposed National Commission for Higher Education and Research has already been approved by India’s cabinet, but has recently run into unexpected opposition from the ministries of law and health.

The ministries want to keep law and medical schools under their own jurisdiction, and have now proposed their own bills to compete with the one introduced by Education Minister Kapil Sibal in Parliament in May. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has reportedly been asked to make a final decision on the issue.

– IndiaEduNews
August 9, 2010

Contrary to Expectations, New IIT Enjoys Success in Recruiting Faculty

When it was announced in 2008 that the Indian government would be opening eight additional branches of the Indian Institutes of Technology, the conventional wisdom among critics was that the new locations would only exacerbate faculty-recruitment problems at the existing seven campuses of India’s flagship technical institutes where faculty shortages stand at 20 to 25 percent.

However, according to a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, one rural campus in Punjab is enjoying great success in recruiting young and energetic researchers to its faculty body. Much of the new faculty have graduate degrees and postdoctoral work from foreign universities and research centers, and have been attracted by the opportunity to lead cutting-edge research opportunities, a proposition that would be highly unlikely as a young faculty member in, say, the United States. In addition, there is much less emphasis on publishing at the Ropar campus , where, for now at least, the emphasis is more on pure research than on publications.

Ropar has tapped alumni networks abroad and marketed its advantages as a flexible new player in a mostly rigid system. The median age among faculty is 33, and that youth is reflected in the work and teaching that is being done on campus according to students and faculty interviewed by The Chronicle.

While salaries are meager, averaging $1,000 a month, expenses are low and job security high. But the real incentive lies in being able to focus on India’s promising future—and gain a stake in creating it from the foundation up. The country’s economy is growing by more than 7 percent a year, and the government is investing heavily in research. In this frontier environment, a new idea can make an immediate difference, professors say.

A recent article in University World News suggest that the phenomenon of young post-docs returning to India to staff faculty positions is not limited to IIT Ropar.

– The Chronicle of Higher Education
August 14, 2010

New ‘Innovation Universities’ to Focus on Global Problems

The Indian government has offered additional details on the nation’s plans to create 14 ‘innovation universities,’ which are meant to help India become a global hub for education and provide a model for other already existing Indian institutions of higher education.

Each of the new institutions will have different governance and research structures and will work to solve a variety of pressing social issues, such as hunger, poverty, and diseases like tuberculosis and malaria through cutting-edge technology, said the minister in charge of higher education, Kapil Sibal, reports the Business Standard newspaper. The institutions will also emphasize social sciences and the liberal arts, he said.

As was the model with the famed Indian Institutes of Technology, the innovation universities are looking to work with prestigious international universities that would act as mentors. Yale University, for example, reportedly has said it wants to serve as a mentor to the new institutions.

– Business Standard
August 16, 2010

Lobbying for Permanent Foreign Faculty Positions

The elite Indian Institutes of Technology are asking the government for changes in the law that would allow them to hire foreign faculty members on a permanent basis. Currently, foreign lecturers are permitted only on a contract basis, for a maximum of five years.

Hiring from abroad is seen as one measure to address the severe faculty shortages, currently averaging 25 percent at IIT campuses. The Hindustan Times reports that the proposal comes at a time of growing interest in IIT faculty positions from abroad — including from Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs). The current five-year contract limitations at IITs and central universities is considered a disincentive for many PIO academics teaching at universities abroad who may otherwise be willing to join the IITs as faculty, an IIT director said, speaking to the Hindustan Times on the condition of anonymity.

– Hindustan Times
September 2, 2010

South Korea

Government Takes Measures to Make Korean Universities More Attractive to Foreign Students

The government of South Korea has announced that it will make significant regulatory changes in a bid to attract more foreign schools to the country, in addition to more foreign students, with a goal of drawing in more than 100,000 international students by 2012. As of last year, 75,850 foreign students were enrolled at Korean universities with Chinese nationals accounting for 70.5 percent of them.

The two main regulatory changes are the lowering of mandated health insurance premiums for foreign students (halving them to $30.5 a month) and the simplification of immigration procedures. Education Minister Ahn Byung-man unveiled the package of measures in mid-August, a week after his ministry submitted a bill designed to make it easier for domestic universities to open overseas branches to the National Assembly, which will take effect as early as January next year.

The latest measures are part of the government’s efforts to boost the nation’s international competitiveness by reducing regulations that have restricted foreign schools from opening campuses in Korea, while preventing overseas recruiting campaigns by Korean schools and their campus expansion plans in other countries. Among the Korean universities seeking to expand overseas are Soongsil University (to Vietnam), Dongkuk University and Hongik University (both to Los Angeles).

Students enrolled at a number of reputed schools will be exempted from cumbersome paperwork to renew or extend their visa, while those who complete a pre-school language training course before the regular semester begins will be allowed to stay in Korea during that time. Under the current rules, foreign students have to leave the country during scheduled breaks.

– Korea Times
August 11, 2010

Addressing the Demand for a Foreign Education at Home

Jeju Global Education City hopes to host 12 branches of prestigious Western elementary and secondary schools on its English-only campus by 2015. The government-financed, 940-acre project is one part of a broader free economic zone, or free international city, that will also include healthcare facilities, high-tech businesses, residential space, port facilities and tourist attractions. Jeju Global Education City is deigned to be a self-contained community within the town of Seogwipo on the island of Jeju off the southern tip of the mainland, where everyone — students, teachers, administrators, doctors, store clerks — will speak only English. The first school, North London Collegiate, broke ground for its campus in August.

In addition to those schools establishing campuses on Jeju, individual campuses are opening elsewhere. Dulwich College, a private British school, is scheduled to open a branch in Seoul, the capital, in the coming weeks, and the Chadwick School of California is set to open a branch in Songdo, a new town being constructed west of Seoul, around the same time.

The demand for Western-style elementary and secondary schooling is being fueled by parents in Korea and elsewhere in Asia who want to be able to keep their families together while giving their children a more global and English-language curriculum. Many parents want to send children abroad so they can learn English and avoid the exam-focused pressures of the Korean educational system. The number of South Korean students from elementary school through high school who go abroad for education increased to 27,350 in 2008 from 1,840 in 1999, according to government data. But this arrangement has often resulted in the breakdown of families, with the mother accompanying the children abroad and the father staying behind to earn the money to finance the hefty costs of an overseas education and lifestyle.

English fluency is important in a country that sends more nonimmigrant students — 113,519 in the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, 2009 — to the United States than any other country except China, according to the United States Office of Immigration Statistics. However, many Korean students who have returned from long stints abroad have suffered in the domestic job market because they have lost Korean fluency and also lack an understanding of Korean corporate culture.

– New York Times
August 23, 2010

Sri Lanka

Government to Allow Foreign Education Providers

Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Higher Education said in August that reputable foreign universities would be permitted to open branch campuses there to broaden educational opportunities for Sri Lankan students, according to local media reports.

More than 40,000 Sri Lankan students qualify for admission to higher education, an official said, but local universities can accommodate only 22,000. About 10,000 currently go abroad for a college education.

– Colombo Page
August 21, 2010

Taiwan

Revisions on Recognition of Mainland Degrees Passed

The Legislative Yuan approved amendments to three acts in August allowing mainland Chinese students to study in Taiwan’s universities and recognizing higher education degrees from the mainland. Degrees will not, however, be recognized retroactively.

The revisions to the Act Governing Relations Between Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area, the University Act and the Junior College Law also include some restrictions. Students from the mainland will not be allowed to apply to departments related to national security and will be barred from participating in national examinations unless they hold Taiwanese citizenship.

While degrees from 41 mainland Chinese institutions will be recognized, medical degrees will remain an exception. Lawmakers say this provision remains in order to ensure the quality of Taiwan’s medical care and the health and safety of the people.

Lawmakers also passed a resolution prohibiting mainland students from working full-time or part-time, on or off campus, during their studies in Taiwan, and requiring that their tuition fees be equal to or higher than the lowest private university tuition.

– Taiwan Today
Aug 18, 2010