French Muslim students respond to the Paris attacks
PARIS (quartz) -- The Etudiants Musulmans de France, representing thousands of Muslim students in France, called the Paris attackers anti-Islamic cowards, and pledged their solidarity to France in a moving video ... read more 15.11.15
German-Arabian university cooperation
HÖXTER (nw) -- The Hochschule Ostwestfalen-Lippe, a university of applied sciences near Hanover in north-west Germany, participates in a Master’s programme with six Syrian and Jordanian universities. The Master’s course is part of the EU-funded programme “Environmental Engineering und Climate Change” (MAPEC) ... read more 10.11.2015
Israeli expert says Europen universities are too tolerant
LONDON (arutz sheva) -- In an opinion piece in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris, Dr. Amira Halperin of Hebrew University’s Truman Research Institute said, in the name of freedom of speech, terrorists are given almost free reign to incite at universities against Israel and Europe, and the wave of incitement at mosques likewise goes unchecked on the part of the European authorities ... read more 16.11.2015
Erdoğan uses universities as tool of state control
ISTANBUL (presstv) -- Police in Turkey have fired rubber bullets and teargas to disperse demonstrating students who were protesting against how the government uses the Council of Higher Education (YÖK) as an instrument of state control ... read more 06.11.2015
Larger universities oversubscribe to EU science grants
BRUSSELS (uwn) -- According to a FP7 funding report, 41 percent of European Research Council (ERC) grants were awarded to the top 31 institutions. The highest number of applications was sent in from Italy (15 percent); Germany (12) and the UK (10.6) ... read more 13.11.2015
EU too reliant of “Seven Wise Men”?
BRUSSELS (div) -- The EU Commission has created a new central instrument for scientific policy advice. The new High Level Group of Scientific Advisors of the EC Scientific Advice Mechanism (SAM) is composed of seven members with an outstanding level of expertise relevant for EU policy making. Critics consider SAM insufficiently evolved and developed ... read more | and here 10.11.
EC wants youth to have a say in decision making
BUSSELS (neth-er) -- Martine Reicherts, newly appointed head of the European Commission’s directorate-general for education and culture (DG EAC), said in an interview, that during her term she wants to make sure that “youth will be more involved in political decision-making and feel more engaged in societal issues” ... read more 10.11.2015
Dutch universities dodge flex contract rules for lecturers
THE HAGUE (dutch news) -- Dutch universities are getting around changes in the rules on temporary contracts by offering lecturers a fixed contract for one lecture a week plus a short-term contract for the rest of their work. The set up breaks the terms of the universities’ pay and conditions agreement, the paper says, and makes it particularly difficult for lecturers to get a mortgage ... read more 12.11.2015
Science and sexism: In the eye of the Twitterstorm
LONDON (science) -- Social media inflates the public discussion about the persistent problem of sexism in science ... read more 11.11.2015Science 2.0 in numbers
HAMBURG (zbw) -- A survey among 1300 German researchers shows Wikipedia as the main social media tool they use, followed by Dropbox and professional networks such as Research Gate ... read more 10.11.2015International academics step up for the Mosque of Cordoba
CÓRDOBA (el país) -- One hundred scientists from 36 universities in Spain, the US, UK, France, Portugal, Ireland, Turkey, Chile, Germany and Morocco released a joint statement against the appropriation of the Great Mosque of Cordoba by the Catholic Church. Using a Franco-era piece of legislation, the local diocesis registered the historic site as its own for just a few euros in 2006 and is now changing its Muslim character. They removed the “Mosque” from its name from all promotional tourism materials and declared the name of the building is the “Santa Iglesia Catedral de Córdoba” the previous year. The mosque was built over an older church in the 8th century, during the Arab occupation of Spain, and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984 ... read more | and here 05.11.2015
Huge class divide at Irish universities
DUBLIN (independent) -- The big class divide in third-level education is exposed in new figures showing how students from better-off families take most of the places in Ireland’s universities ... read more 10.11.2015
Brussels: First university on the stock market
BRUSSELS (de standaard) -- The Free University of Brussels (VUB) is the first university in Europe to be listed on the stock market. The institution has issued bonds worth 61.5 million euros, money, says rector Paul de Knop, it needs to expand. A critical threshold of privatisation has been passed, critics say and ask: Will students be confronted with the bill if revenues were lower than predicted? At the same time, the Arts and Philosophy faculty’s budget was cut by 800,000 euros ... read more | and here 2.11.15
Worrying funding trends at European universities
BRUSSELS (inside highered) -- The commercialisation of university funding has grown, as performance-based criteria have become more important all over Europe. Another worying trend, according to a new report of the European University Association, are shown by countries like Denmark and Finland with their decrease of formerly stable budgets ... read more 09.11.2015
UK government lifts tuition fees cap
LONDON (guardian) -- Universities in England will be allowed to charge students more than 9,000 pounds per year for tuition under a Green Paper published by the government that links improvements in teaching quality with fee increases. The Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) and the Office for Fair Access will disappear, with many of their functions taken over by a new structure, the Office for Students. Up to 10,000 young people marched through the city streets in protest ... read more | and here 06.110216
Turkey’s universities next on Erdoğan’s list?
ISTANBUL (al-monitor) -- Following the electoral success of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s AKP and the seizure of critical TV channels with layoffs and arrests, it is feared that soon university administrations and properties will be brought under the control of pro-government trustees, too ... read more 06.11.2015
Arctic University before conception
MURMANSK (barents observer) -- With the Arctic becoming an object of steadily growing attention, Murmansk Oblast establishes the “Arctic University” to prepare Barents students for jobs in Arctic oil and gas projects. With the support of president Vladimir Putin, 600 professors and teachers are going to instruct 12.000 students ... read more 06.11.2015
Read also (in German): Battle for the Arctic
Hungary: Engineers in short supply
BUDAPEST (reuters) -- Employers face a shortage of skilled workers in Hungary. About half a million of Hungary’s 10 million people left for better paid jobs in western Europe. In the IT sector there are 20,000 empty jobs and the gap in the car sector has also reached tens of thousands ... read more 03.11.
Finland pushes for university specialisation
HELSINKI (yle) -- Imminent cuts and an open letter by education minister Sanni Grahn-Laasonen caused widespread resentment at Finland’s universities. The minister urges universities to specialise by 2025 ... read more 03.11.2015
Italian exodus
ROME (ilsole24ore) -- The number of new students at Italian universities has dropped by 7 percent in the last five years. This decrease has taken place nearly entirely in southern Italy, exacerbating the structural disadvantage of the region. A vicious circle, being excluded from additional public funds, southern universities raise tuition fees, such as the University of Naples with an increase of 400 euro only this year ... read more 02.11.2015
New Swiss-Russian scientific cooperation
MOSCOW (ch) -- In an official meeting, a new scientific and technological cooperation agreement was signed by Swiss and Russian counterparts in Moscow. 25 joint research projects were approved, covering fields such as robotics, bioinformatics, political science and literature ... read more 28.10.
Germany: Supervisor of plagiarised PhDs to be punished
MÜNSTER (forschung & lehre) -- The first time after several cases of plagiarised doctoral theses in medicine have been discovered the University of Münster, in northwestern Germany, plans to hold a supervisor responsible. The faculty of medicine now considers, after 23 cases of plagiarism in 2014, to discontinue payments and benefits ... read more 01.11.2015
How does digital innovation impact study travel?
LONDON (pienews) -- An increasing number of service industries have shifted their operations away from the analogue and into the digital. But what effect is this having on the landscape of study travel? Some stakeholders are developing a variety of online platforms and attempting to increase their market penetration … read more 23.10.2015
Russian students win gold in chess
YEREVAN (eusa) -- 82 participants from nine countries took part in the first edition of the European Universities Chess Championship in October. The Russian teams – the female as well as the male team from the Ural State Mining University – won gold. The next EUC in mind sports will take place in 2017 in Fuengirola, Spain ... read more 11.10.2015
European students oppose TiSA
BRUSSELS (esu) -- The European Student Union (ESU) demand an exclusion of education and other public services from the scope of TiSA, the international trade agreement under negotiation by over 50 countries (incl. the ones represented by the EU). ESU sees TiSA as a “threat for public responsibility” and endangers “education, both in terms of access and quality”. Two weeks earlier, 250.000 students and citizens took the streets in Berlin in protest against TTIP and TiSA ... read more 27.10.2015
30,000 protested against Danish cuts to education
COPENHAGEN (university post) -- 30,000 heeded the call made by 30 student unions and academic organisations to raise their voices against the planned Danish government 8.7 billion crowns (1.2 billion euros) cut of education funding over the next four years ... read more 30.10.2015
Commission adopts 2016 Work Programme
BRUSSELS (ec) -- The European Commission is to invest almost 16 billion euros in research and innovation in the next two years under the Horizon 2020 programme. On 27 October, the European Commission adopted its 2016 Work Programme, which contains among ten priorities a ‘New Skills Agenda’ and measures for working parents ... read more 27.10
Finland to charge international students
HELSINKI (fgnews) -- The Finnish government has submitted a bill to reintroduce tuition fees to be imposed on non European students: 1,500 euro per academic year in BA and MA programmes taught in languages other than Finnish and Swedish ... read more 24.10.2015
Neoliberal students gather in Heidelberg
HEIDELBERG (ef) -- 400 participants were expected to a conference of the neoliberal student association Students for Liberty in Heidelberg. Praising Friedrich von Hayek and promoting market-oriented social change, the speakers condemned the patronising state and praised “Austrian economics” and free trade ... read more 30.10.2015