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| January/February 2005 | Volume
18, Issue 1 |
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PRACTICAL
INFORMATION REGIONAL
NEWS FEATURE
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Regional
News
Asia/Pacific Australia New Survey Ranks International Standing of Nation’s Universities The Australian National University and the University of Melbourne placed in joint first place, followed by Sydney, Queensland, New South Wales, Monash, Western Australia and Adelaide universities. The rankings used six criteria: the international standing of staff, quality of graduate programs, academic standard of new undergraduates, quality of undergraduate programs, university resource levels, and a survey of Australian deans and overseas university executives. The survey garnered responses from 40 institutions worldwide and from 80 Australian deans. They were asked to rate each Australian university in comparison with foreign universities and then to rank the six categories. All respondents rated quality of staff as most important. The ranking is available HERE — The Times Higher Education Supplement IDP Downsizes in Response to Falling Overseas Demand Offices have been closed in countries deemed to have high operating costs, “low brand awareness” of Australia and where projections indicate significantly slower growth in student numbers. Offices were recently closed in Britain, Brazil, Brunei, Columbia, Mexico, South Africa and Sweden. It closed American operations in October and about 30 staff in Australia have been made redundant. In December, the IDP board described a strategy to shift from market diversification to consolidation in core and profitable markets, such as India, Malaysia, Singapore, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, which combined account for 75 percent of IDP’s recruitment business. IDP is jointly owned and funded by 38 member universities. The agency maintains that it still has their backing despite rumors that many of the larger universities are looking to increase their own recruiting activities. The downturn is attributed to a sharp and unexpected drop in demand from international students wanting to study in Australia, the stronger Australian dollar and increased tuition fees (see Nov/Dec issue of WENR). In related news, the government of Botswana announced in February that it would not be renewing its contract with IDP, ending one of the agency’s most lucrative contracts. The Botswana High Commission will take over the US$15 million student fellowship scheme under which 500 of its students are placed and supported in Australian universities. The contract was worth $1.25 million a year in administrative charges for IDP. — The Australian China Surrogate Test Takers Proliferate in English Exams In order to graduate from a bachelor’s program, all students in China are required to pass English proficiency exams know as the College English Test Level 4 (CET-4), regardless of their major. In January every year students sit for the CET-4, and in the months leading up to the exam campuses around the country are plastered with the notices of those looking for a test-taker, or test-takers advertising their services. Fees for a pass in the CET-4 are reportedly in the vicinity of US$120. Many of the ads are apparently placed by agencies, which have proliferated with the central government’s sanction to improve English language skills in the country. Many of the agencies are even brazen enough to advertise their services openly on the Internet. Their services extend beyond the CET-4 to tests such as TOEFL and IELTS, for which agencies charge as much as $1,500 for a pass. Compared with the growing business of fraud in exam taking, effective measures to curb the practice have been slow in coming. According to the police it is not a crime to act as a “gunman” and take a test for somebody else. It is up to education authorities to catch and punish the perpetrators, but according to the Shanghai Star gunmen are rarely caught. As for agency websites, they are the responsibility of the information authorities, who also have been slow to crack down on the business. — The Shanghai Star Durham Wins Contract to Assess Chinese Exams A high-level delegation, which included a mix of central government officials and academics headed by the Deputy Director General of the Basic Education Department, visited the University of Durham’s Curriculum Evaluation Management (CEM) Center and signed a US$865,000 deal. The three-year project requires CEM to set up two monitoring projects, which are expected to run for the foreseeable future. The University of Durham has long-established links with China through research, exchanges, consultancy and partnerships in a number of academic departments. A number of Chinese language variants of the Center’s projects are already run in Hong Kong. Projects include those that measure value-added, pupils’ attitudes, safety in schools, relationships, and learning and teaching processes. The analyzed data assists schools in self-evaluation and management processes. — BBC Quinghua University Signs Deal With Macquarie University Macquarie academics will teach the program, which will be virtually the same as that taught at the Sydney-based campus with slight tailoring in areas such as law, for the Chinese market. The program is targeted at prospective students in professions like banking, treasury operations, private equity, investment banking and corporate finance. Macquarie’s Master of Applied Finance is currently taught in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Singapore and Tokyo. The Australian university also has a partnership with Nanjing Normal University as well as cooperative programs with Suzhou University and Shandong University. The later two agreements are awaiting ministry approval. — Chinanews Shanghai Business School Tops FT’s Regional Rankings This is the highest ranking an Asian business school has ever achieved in an international business school ranking, and it is a big improvement for the Shanghai business school which ranked 53rd overall in last years’ ranking. The British newspaper considers 20 factors in composing its list including graduates’ income growth rate and career prospects. Statistics from top business schools and the views of multinational corporations, business school graduates and Financial Times experts were also taken into account. According to the findings, CEIBS ranked highest overall for the percentage of graduates finding employment within three months of graduation, beating out top business schools Harvard, Wharton and Columbia. CEIBS was jointly founded by the Chinese government and the European Union in 1994. — People’s Daily Online Large Increase in the Number of Foreign Students Almost 78,000 international students from over 170 countries studied at Chinese institutions of education from September 2003 to August 2004, with a 20 percent increase in the number of students pursuing master’s- and doctoral-level degrees. A large number are also coming to study Chinese as a foreign language. — People’s Daily Online Scottish Authorities Suspend HND Program After Student Fraud Accusations The SQA had extended a scheme across sixteen Chinese universities that offered the Scottish Higher National Diploma (HND) qualification in tourism, hospitality, computing, finance and business studies. Sea Rich, a Sino-British college in the north-east port of Dalian was granted permission to confer HNDs, validated by the SQA under a contract with the Northeast Normal University in Changchun. However, staff at Sea Rich raised concerns that many students were in fact not studying, but had been promised by the university a two-year-year HND for payments of US$2,200. In addition, these students had purportedly been promised assistance by the university to get UK entry clearance, including bank certificates certifying that their sponsors had funds deposited in the bank. The university strenuously denies the allegations and has said that it terminated the contract with Sea Rich because the college had refused to teach the students or to refund fees. Staff at the college also claim that attempts to inform Northeast Normal University were frustrated by local operators of the course and some were even threatened with violence. An investigation has since been launched and officials from the SQA will visit the area as part of their inquiries. — The Scotsman IndiaSupreme Court Overturns Private University Law
Chattisgarh has only two public universities serving a population of 21 million, and is therefore in great need of more universities. But, the Private Sector Universities Act of 2002 was hastily written and made it legal for virtually any outfit to obtain a university license, regardless of the overall number of universities in the state. Within the law there were next to no provisions for oversight of the new institutions and no monitoring body was ever established. As a result there was a proliferation of mainly substandard storefront entities mixed in with a handful of reputable and well-intentioned institutions such as Rai University, Amity University, Ansal Institute of Technology and Aptech University. The court ruling follows recent amendments to the law which required all existing private institutions to create a US$450,000 endowment from which students would be compensated if the institution turned out to be of no educational value. The amendment also called for universities to purchase a certain acreage of land on which to build physical facilities. Thirty-seven of the 112 universities met the amended requirements by the specified deadline, but have nonetheless been ordered to abide by the recent Supreme Court decision to cease operating. Those institutions have stated that they will appeal the ruling. In the mean time, the court has directed the institutions to seek affiliations with the two public universities in the state – Pandit Ravishankar Shukla University and Guru Ghasidas University so students can complete their courses. — The Hindu JapanNumber of Foreign Students Increases but Rate Slows Of the total international student body, 62,000 were attending universities and junior and technical colleges; 29,000 were attending graduate schools; and just under 29,000 were attending advanced vocational schools. More than 93,000 students came from Asian countries, most notably China, South Korea and Taiwan. — Kyodo News Flag, Anthem and Patriotism Causing Concern
The thrust of the report, and the area of primary concern, is the recommendation that schools nurture a sense of aikokushin. Literally translated the term means ‘love of country’. Many in Japan argue however, that it goes beyond this to encompass a particular idea of Japan as a “uniquely entitled nation supported by hard-working but unquestioning citizens”. Such reforms run the risk of deepening tensions with Japan’s neighbors, and re-igniting domestic rifts, argues the Economist. Many teachers have made no secret of their displeasure at developments. Furthermore, many teachers in the capital are infuriated by recent regulations set by Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara that push devotion to the flag and national anthem in school. — The Economist Malaysia Private Institutions Suffer Stagnating Overseas Enrollments Figures supplied by the Higher Education Ministry show that as of January 2005 the number of international students enrolled at Malaysian institutions of education was 40,686. This figure includes 25,939 students in private higher education institutions, 6,315 students in public higher education institutions, 3,376 in public high schools and 5,056 in private high schools. In January 2003, there were approximately 25,158 foreign students from 150 countries studying at private institutions of higher. Most of the students came from China (10,239) and Indonesia (7,503), followed by India (1,409), Thailand (1,369) and Singapore (1,296). Much of Malaysia’s appeal as a study destination is the low cost and availability of programs twinned with foreign providers. However, quality control issues have hit the country hard over the last few years with a number of fly-by-night operators tarnishing the image of the industry as a whole. The recent relaxation of regulations on the foreign provision of education in China is another contributing factor that has been raised by the ministry as to why international student numbers have plateaued. Incoming students from China – Malaysia’s largest source country – actually dropped from 10,239 in 2003 to 9,075 in 2004. Students in China seeking twinned or franchised foreign programs now have options domestically rather having to look to Malaysia or Singapore for affordable programs. — The Star Online Student Visas Scheme Altered to Allow Part-time Employment — New Straits Times New Zealand New Secondary Qualification Framework Reaches Maturity Amid Controversy The NZSTA statement comes amid rising criticism of the new qualifications framework. The Post Primary Teachers Association, New Zealand’s largest teacher’s union, has said that all levels of the NCEA should be examined as parents and students are losing confidence in the system. Concerns were originally raised because of poor student performances in the NZQA’s scholarship examination compared with previous years under the old qualifications system. As a result many top students have missed out on scholarship opportunities. Criticism has also centered on the wide variations in exam results between subjects, leading to claims that students may have a hard time gaining access to university. Under the new system students earn credits on the National Qualifications Framework from Level I through to doctoral level 10. The credits are recorded on their Record of Learning that lists all unit standard and achievement standard credits, National Certificates and National Diplomas achieved in the previous year. Students can accumulate credits over a number of years and from many providers until they have completed a qualification. The Record of Learning provides an employer or institution of higher education with a profile of a learner's achievements. The new qualification framework is designed to encourage learner mobility and lifelong learning, with students able to transfer their credits from one institution to another, or from one vocational training location to another. The Record of Learning does not show whether a student has failed a subject, rather it records a student’s (A) achieved, (M) merit or (E) excellence grade in each subject area.
— New Zealand Qualifications Authority — Fairfax new Zealand Limited Singapore MIT, NUS, NTU Relationship Deepens The Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA) has already graduated more than 500 students from the three programs in which it offers a range of master’s- and doctoral-level qualifications. Students graduating from SMA programs walk away with double honors from both MIT and one or both of the local institutions. The arrangement plays a key role in Singapore’s strategy to attract and develop top scientific talent. The newly agreed on expansion of the partnership will run a minimum of five years and programs in an additional four disciplines are on offer from July: advanced materials for micro and nano-systems, computational engineering, manufacturing systems and technology, and computation and system biology. Students spend at least one semester attending classes and undertaking research at MIT. While in Singapore, students continue to attend ‘live classes’ and research meetings in Boston through video conferencing. — The Straits Times New Film School Opens in June Last July a co-operative agreement was signed between Singapore and New Zealand, providing the impetus for the initiative. — New Zealand Press Association South KoreaLooking for More Overseas Students If there were a student equivalent to a national trade deficit, then South Korea would be deeply in the red. A large number of Korean students travel overseas each year to pursue their studies; however, a much smaller number come to Korea to study. The ministry wants to reverse the trend and has stated that to do so it will focus its efforts on attracting Asian students, who currently comprise 86.5 percent of foreign students studying in Korea. The government has set aside 1.4 billion won (US$1.36 million) in 2005 for universities that provide courses taught in foreign languages and Korean language study programs. According to ministry figures six percent of university courses are currently taught in English and 26 percent of universities are running Korean language study programs. For further information on study abroad programs in South Korea go HERE — Korea Herald
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A national survey has for the first time ranked the country’s universities in terms of their international standing. The “Group of Eight” oldest and most research-intensive institutions top the list of 39. 
