Lille universities forced to work together

LILLE (lavoixdunord) -- Thierry Mandon, French state secretary for higher education and research, has announced plans to visit Lille in March in order to meet with key figures at the city’s higher education institutions, following the failure of Lille universities to qualify for Idex, an excellency initiative which provides funding to top-performing universities. This comes after a meeting of Lille’s university presidents to discuss possible synergies, demonstrating once more the power of public incentives to reinforce inter-university co-operation … read more 09.02.2016

Influx of EU students in the UK

LONDON (the) -- Several English universities have increased their recruitment of EU students by more than 40 per cent, following the removal of controls on undergraduate places. Universities stated that the rise came after a concerted effort to increase diversity in the higher education sector, but critics have expressed financial concerns, claiming that EU graduates will be less likely to repay publicly funded tuition fee loans … read more 06.02.2016

Partial merger of Graz universities

GRAZ (kleine zeitung) -- Another form of university cooperation is now being displayed by the Karl Franzens University and Technical University in Graz. A centre, combining four science and civil engineering institutes from both universities, is to be set up and given financial autonomy … read more 6.2.16

French students eligible for EU Master Loan Scheme

Berlin comes out on top

BERLIN (telegraph) -- Berlin has been named the top city for British university students. According to a survey by TransferWise, Berlin comes out on top as a result of its efficient transport system, low living costs and free tuition. Surprisingly only a third of UK students would consider studying abroad despite the high university fees … read more 10.02.2016

Migrant students more motivated

LONDON (bbc) -- Migrant students are more likely to be an asset to their new homes than a burden. OECD education director, Andreas Schleicher, stated that their research shows that first generation immigrants are more willing to push themselves than their native peers and have more ambitious career expectations … read more 10.02.2016

Replenishment for Austrian universities and research

VIENNA (futurezone) -- Recognising the importance of progression and adaptability with regards to new and improving technology, The Austrian Council for Research and Technology Development has demanded more funds for universities and scientific research. Council chairman Hannes Androsch asks that a further 800 million euro be made available for research funds, whilst 1,4 billion euro should be given to universities for research and technological development. … read more | and here 10.02.2016

Huge publishing scandal in South Korea

Celebrities made ghostwriting popular

BERLIN (welt) -- The ghostwriting business has boomed since famous cases like German defense minister Theodor von Guttenberg or the education minister Annette Schavan attracted wider public attention. In an interview, ghostwriter Herbert Jost-Hof said the universities, as they focus on quantity instead of quality, are the ones who create the market for these writing services ... read more 6.2.16

German excellence internationally invisible

FREIBURG (badensche) -- 4.6bn euros of extra funding for excellency at German universities hasn’t improved their standing in international rankings. Critics say teaching quality must be improved substantially if the next round is to be more successful ... read more 02.02.3016

Corbyn criticises mental health services for students

LONDON (huffington post) -- British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn has spoken out on the lack of adequate, easy to access mental health services at UK universities. He has called for more investment into the field, as the numbers seeking help for mental health problems have risen dramatically in the past few years … read more 04.02.2016

Declining professionalism in Denmark

COPENHAGEN (borsen) -- A decline in student professionalism and ability is dragging down Denmark’s universities, according to the chairmanship of 400 examiners. Their letter to the Education Minister complaining of the low-grade entry requirements is supported by Danish industry, a company interest group, suggesting employers are also beginning to fear a decline in graduate standards … read more 08.02.2016

University-business was striving in 2015

BERLIN (esna) -- With her diagnosis, “the Berlin Wall between universities and the economy has fallen,” former French higher education minister Valérie Pécresse was right. European university managers and policy makers hurried further down the road of university-business relations and financialisation in 2015. The Netherlands head the list with their universities having accumulated 800 million euros of debt ... read more

EU Parliament commits to TiSA

BRUSSELS (politico) -- A resolution in favor of the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), which the EU is negotiating with the U.S., Canada, Australia, Chile, Turkey and others, was backed by 532 lawmakers, with 131 against and 36 abstentions. Excluded from the negotiations will be EU public services, such as education, health and social services. While the four largest political groups — the European People’s Party, Socialists & Democrats, European Conservatives and Reformists, and the Liberals — backed the text, the Greens and far-left as well as far-right MEPs voted against it. “Our concern is that the Commission will largely ignore this resolution and not respect it fully in the negotiations,” Green MEP Ska Keller said ... read more 02.03.2016

EUA approves roadmap on open access

BRUSSELS (eua) -- “The European University Association has come up with a set of well-defined objectives and priority actions for the university sector that will be taken forward in the coming months,” explained Jean-Pierre Finance, chair of the expert group ... read more 5.2.16

Italian scholar tortured and killed in Egypt

COVENTRY (conversation) -- “Giulio Regeni’s murder is a direct challenge to the academic freedom that is a pillar of our higher education system,” says his friend Neil Piper from Coventry University after his body was found in a ditch in Cairo on February 2 ... read more 05.02.2016

Consultants opt for private higher education in Spain

MADRID (abc) -- Private universities in Spain are continuing to source new ways of funding. A report by the consulting firm KPMG suggests possible methods, including an increase in public-private partnerships and privately funded research centres, state ‘fee’ vouchers for students, which could be cashed in at private universities, as well as more international students being admitted … read more 03.02.2016

Inflation of private degrees in Spain

VALLADOLID (diario) -- The Platform for a Public, Laic and Free School of the Spanish region Castilla y León have demanded that the education minister end the ‘inflation’ of private university qualifications … read more 05.02.2016

Education reform on the cards in Turkey

ISTANBUL (yeniakit) -- Yekta Saraç, president of the Turkish Higher Educational Council YÖK, has announced detailed plans for higher education reform. He focused closely on regional development, new forms of university management, the formation of an independent quality council, and the formation of specialised universities … read more 30.01.2016

Pontificial university ascending to new spheres

ROME (stampa) -- The Pontifical University of St. Anthony in Rome and the online university Uninettuno have signed a cooperation agreement to offer blended learning courses for their students ... read more 04.02.2016

R&D budgets continue falling

PARIS (oecd) -- Budgets for research and development in the OECD area continued their downward trend since 2010 after briefly stabilising in 2014. Among countries for which 2015 data are available, two thirds have decreased their R&D budgets in real terms and the estimated area total has dropped by 1.3 percent. Tax incentives, which have been increasing in relative importance over time, have mitigated this trend ... read more 04.02.2016

Dwindling staff numbers at Finnish universities

HELSINKI (hs) -- Concern has been expressed about the number of redundancies and job losses at Finnish universities. Helsinki University expects to lose almost 1000 workers to retirement or redundancy, whilst last week it was reported that over 300 members of staff at Aalto University had lost their jobs due to budget cuts … read more 02.02.2016

Judge rules against Italian Education Ministry

ENNA (ilfattoquotidiano) -- A judge in Caltanissetta, Italy, has ruled that the medical school set up in Enna, Sicily, by Romania’s University Dunarea de Jos of Galanti is legitimate and should be allowed to continue teaching, despite an appeal filed against the university by the Italian Education Ministry. Government officials had expressed concerns that the courses, aimed at healthcare professionals and funded by the local Proserpina Fund, were illegitimate under EU law … read more 03.02.16

Increased tuition fees in Croatia

RIJEKA (vecernji) – Croatia’s University of Rijeka has announced plans to raise tuition fees in the next academic year, to the outrage of current students and of other Croatian universities, who are concerned that the move will force them to follow suit … read more 02.02.2016

New Bulgarian education minister

SOFIA (balkan insight) -- Meglena Kuneva, is to be the new Bulgarian Minister of Education and Science. The deputy Prime Minister for European affairs studied law in both the US and the UK before beginning her political career in 2001. She was elected to the National Assembly in 2014 as an MP from the Reformist Bloc electoral alliance. This last minute election followed her predecessor, Todor Tanev’s, dismissal for his attempts to change the national history curriculum … read more

Open access roundup 2015

INT (plos) -- Last year it was France getting tough on the toughest negotiator: Elsevier. This year, the Netherlands took it right to the brink of cutting Elsevier loose. Major Austrian science funders plumped for a non-commercial open access future and a group of German science organizations and university libraries spelled out their position on this path ... read more 2.2.16

English degrees on the advance

LONDON (bbc) -- The number of university courses taught in English in non-English-speaking countries has more than quadrupled in seven years. The highest concentration is in Denmark, where 38 percent of university programmes are English-taught courses, followed by the Netherlands at 30 and Sweden at 24 percent … read more 03.02.2016

Universities better together in Russia

MOSCOW (Interfax) -- Russian education minister Dmitry Livanov has announced plans to support the creation of regional universities through mergers. It is hoped that the program will create around twenty such institutions in 2016, and around thirty in 2017 ... read more 27.01.16

French uni libraries stay open

EVRY (20minutes) -- The number of library seats in France is growing at a slower rate than the number of students, and university libraries open on average 61 hours per week (69 in Germany). This has prompted Thierry Mandon, state secretary for higher education, to present an ‘Open Libraries’ plan: at least one library in every university must be open until 10pm Monday to Friday, on Saturday afternoons, and during the Christmas and Easter holidays … read more 01.02.2016

European Universities Games 2016 coming up

ZAGREB (eusa) -- University teams and athletes from all over Europe are invited to participate in the 3rd edition of the European Universities Games in July 2016. The event will be held in the Croatian capital Zagreb and the coastal city of Rijeka. The Games include 21 sports: Badminton, Basketball, Basketball 3x3, Beach Volleyball, Bridge, Chess, Football, Futsal, Golf, Handball, Judo, Karate, Rowing, Rugby 7’s, Sport Climbing, Swimming, Table Tennis, Taekwondo, Tennis, Volleyball and Water Polo ... read more 11.01.2016

Microsoft advances in Ireland

DUBLIN (dcu) -- The Irish education ministry is launching a new Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) designed solely for teachers. The course, entitled ‘21st Century Learning Design’ is the result of a ‘smart partnership’ between Irish education institutions and Microsoft, bringing together the public sector, the Irish SME sector and foreign direct investment. Whilst Brian MacCraith, president of Dublin City University, enthused that this is “an example of how Irish education and eLearning companies are leading the way in innovations for teacher education and teacher professional learning”, Irish higher education is in fact chronically underfunded: budgets have been slashed by a quarter in seven years, with staff numbers falling by 4,500 and student numbers rising … read more 28.1.16

Immigrant integration is the key

BERLIN (deutschland funk) -- In a radio interview, the German education minister, Johanna Wanka, criticized those who see immigrants as a solution to professional demand as short sighted. With 50% of refugees being under 25, she emphasized education as a means of integration as the most important factor… read more 31.01.2016

Bulgarian Education Ministry, you’re fired

SOFIA (noinvite) -- Bulgaria’s Prime Minister, Boyko Borisov, has demanded the resignation of Education and Science Minister Todor Tanev and his entire team. Borisov criticised the ministry’s suggested curriculum reforms, which were not put forward for public discussion and has demanded that a new team to run the ministry be presented by the end of today… read more 02.02.2016

Private online education in Malta

VALLETTA (times of malta) -- Evarist Bartolo, Malta’s education minister, announced that online courses are being considered to address the country’s education deficit… read more 01.02.2016

A Michelin-guide for Open Access?

BRUSSELS (scienceguide) -- How can we make the debate on ‘Open Science’ more alive and active? Over 60 European stakeholders met in Brussels to exchange ideas that will feed into a new European Action. Some suggest a ‘Michelin’-ranking: one star for an article that is only accessible to researchers, two stars when accessible to everyone and three stars when not only the article, but also the research data are open accessible ... read more 22.01.2016

Belgian higher education budget grows

BRUSSELS (le soir) -- The francophone higher education institutions will receive over 100 million euros in funding over the next four years. The Catholic University Association (Segec) criticised that the hautes écoles are “still underfunded and art schools have been forgotten” ... read more 30.1.16

Germany’s excellence program, episode 2

BERLIN (science) -- Germany should continue awarding billions of euros in extra funding to its top-performing universities, an international commission recommended today. That is one of the best ways to build on the country’s Excellence Initiative, a decade-long programme with the objective to boost German universities to world-class status. The commission, chaired by Dieter Imboden of the ETH Zurich in Switzerland, presented its long-awaited evaluation of the programme today. It had, he said, a “very positive” influence ... read more 29.01.2016

Research excellence in Russia

MOSCOW (tass) -- Only ten percent of Russia’s state research universities can make breakthrough developments,  president Vladimir Putin said at a meeting of the Council on Science and Education ... read more 21.01.2016

German rectors against elite regions

BERLIN (tagesspiegel) -- Horst Hippler, president of the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK), has criticised the idea of creating ‘excellency regions’ in the upcoming round of German excellency initiatives. He sees this as a danger to universities deserving of individual financial support. Experts are concerned that the funding left to individual universities would be considerably diminished due to the amounts given to these ‘top regions,’ whilst the regional concentration of high performing science departments would be accelerated… read more 26.01.2016

Belarus state support for student start-ups

MINSK (belta) -- Belarusian education minister Michael Zhuravkov has announced plans to focus more closely on the commercialisation of university research projects. The Ministry of Education will work to promote student start-up projects, increasing support for students developing business plans and preparing to present their ideas to investors … read more 28.01.2016

Financial crisis at Bulgarian university

VELIKO TARNOVO (dnevnik) – Veliko Tarnovo University has requested state funding in order to avoid its imminent bankruptcy. The university rector, Hristo Bondzholov, has admitted that one reason for the university’s financial concerns is the number of unfilled courses … read more 26.01.2016

Recognition for Moldovan degrees

CHIȘINĂU (publika) -- The Spanish government has agreed to recognise Moldovan higher education qualifications for the next five years. Currently 500 Moldovans study in Spain with this agreement making it easier for more to apply … read more 27.01.2016