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Volume 12, Issue 3  
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REGIONAL NEWS
Primary Education
Cypriot children now start primary school at age five years and eight months instead of five years and six months, as before. Secondly, the maximum numbers of first- and second-grade pupils have been reduced from 32 to 30 and from 34 to 32, respectively.
Secondary Education
Plans are underway to connect all schools to the Internet and to utilize computers to enhance technical training. Moreover, the Ministry of Education and Culture has proposed a new procedure for appointing teachers with the aim of procuring the most qualified instructors for schools in Cyprus. As of last fall, this proposal was awaiting approval by the Cypriot Parliament.
Pedagogical Institute
Standardized testing in math and science was introduced at the start of the 1998/99 academic year. Such measures should facilitate efforts by the Ministry of Education and Culture to study the quality of education in these subjects from year to year.
Testing in other subjects is scheduled to follow.
— Le Magazine
The new institution has four campuses at the following locations: Esbjerg, Kolding, Soenderborg and the main campus at Odense University.
All four campuses will continue to offer the same international programs they provided before the merger. However, these programs will be developed more extensively in the future.
— Correspondence from the University of Southern Denmark
At the same time, a planned merger between two business schools in the South of France, ESC Lyon and ESC Grenoble, was scrapped. Instead, both institutions are now talking about forming international alliances.
More and more French companies are recruiting internationally and generally choose applicants who have graduated from top institutions.
With competition being played out on a global scale, business schools nowadays have to command substantial assets and resources to attract the best and the brightest. They also have to be big enough to operate internationally.
These factors impelled the local chambers of commerce and the owners of the Tours and Poitiers schools to join forces.
The Tours business school soaked up 55 percent of the budget allotted by the Tours Chamber of Commerce and could not ask for additional funding. Poiters, which is located 80 kilometers (50 miles) away, was suffering from dwindling student enrollments and an uncertain future.
As a result of that merger, the new ESCEM now enjoys a total budget of 80 million francs ($13.3 million), employs 45 permanent professors and has a student body of 1,500.
The Paris Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCIP) runs four major management training schools: the HEC (Hautes Etudes Commerciales), the Ecole Superieure de Commerce de Paris, the European School of Management and the CPA (Center for Management Proficiency).
Next year, HEC will merge with CPA while ESC de Paris will be joined with EAP. Moreover the CCIP recently concluded negotiations with INSEAD, an international business school based in Fontainebleau, which has agreed to exchange academic staff with the new institution formed by the HEC-CPA merger.
According to CCIP representatives, these mergers are emulating trends in the corporate world and are necessary to adapt to the changes brought about by the globalization in management education. They are aiming to attract at least 50 percent of their students and instructors from outside France.
There are close to 300 business schools and management centers in France. Thirty of them enjoy solid national reputations. Many educators say French schools need to become more competitive by looking at education as a market. Multinational corporations are setting up in-house universities and distance learning threatens to lure many students away from French institutions.
— International Herald Tribune
This represents a radical change from only a decade ago, when higher education was taught only in Germany by German professors (international schools at that time were primarily limited to the secondary level and were not part of the German educational mainstream).
The master’s program in international agricultural sciences (IAGS) at Humboldt University, for example, is taught in English, and more than half the students enrolled are non-Germans.
The program has partner schools in other countries: Wageningen Agricultural University in the Netherlands; the University of Stirling in Britain; the University College Dublin; and the University of Minnesota. All these institutions exchange faculty and students.
IAGS and the 59 other programs are relatively young. IAGS was launched in September 1997, while the others only started last year. The first classes of students are scheduled to graduate this summer, and additional programs are planned for the future. The success and expansion of international programs have resulted in competition with traditional schools, which many Germans feel have become too inflexible.
At the same time, however, some experts are concerned that the fast-growing number of private international high schools and university programs in Germany will lead to the emergence of a two-tiered educational system.
A similar educational trend is taking place in Austria. The country’s International Management Academy in Linz, for example, offers a global MBA in partnership with Emory University in Atlanta and the University of Toronto. The program is conducted in English and requires participating students to study in all three locations.
— International Herald Tribune
The new educational reforms include the following: canceling the national examination system starting in June 2000; setting up new study programs that are both flexible and optional at colleges and universities; establishing an “open university”; restructuring and upgrading curricula at both the university and non-university levels; expanding postgraduate study programs; and bolstering support for technical and vocational training programs.
— Le Magazine
The objective behind the merger is to improve professional teacher training programs in Iceland at all levels from preschool to university. The revamped University College of Education is scheduled to commence classes for the 1999 fall semester with a new curriculum.
— Le Magazine
In addition to expanding undergraduate education, the government has also increased funding for research at colleges and universities. Beginning this year, three of Sweden's 26 state colleges are being granted university status.
— Le Magazine
— www.shef.ac.uk/~gradsch/joinloc.shtml
The project was given impetus when the British Council, a quasi-official agency responsible for promoting British education abroad, received 6,000 inquiries about study in Britain from its office in Sydney.
Twelve British universities participated in the initial phase of the Australian recruiting mission. The British Council is supporting the campaign by providing academic advisors in Melbourne, Perth and Sydney, in addition to a toll-free telephone information line and an online tour of British higher education available through the council’s Web site, www.Britcoun.org/eis.
With Australian universities now charging fees, British institutions of higher education will attempt to increase their competitiveness by attracting more Australians.
Of the 196,346 foreign students attending British universities last year, only 1,132 were from Australia. The British Council hopes to boost this figure by 70 percent in the next three years.
— Chronicle of Higher Education
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Cyprus’ educational system is presently undergoing extensive reforms. These changes, some of which were proposed by the Ministry of Education and Culture, will affect all levels of schooling.