Danes fight for double degrees
COPENHAGEN (tv2) -- There are a few reasons you might want two degrees. Maybe to combine two areas of expertise, or perhaps your first bachelor’s hasn’t proved employable. But the Danish education ministry wants to put a stop to double degrees, as it’s the state that pays for them. 60,000 Danes have now signed a petition opposing the plans. One student planning on doubling up after struggling to find a job with her current degree says, “there is something called quality of life, and the whole thing is not just a spreadsheet” … read more
Unis of Ghent and Leuven reorganise academic year
GHENT (knack) -- The Belgian universities of Ghent and Leuven are toying with a reshuffle of the whole academic year and examination process. The proposals would have the year beginning on 1st September and ending in May, with a modular system of exams every five weeks. For students this would mean retakes in June or July instead of August or September, potentially leaving more time for extracurricular activities … read more 14.12.2016Norway to centralise quality assurance
OSLO (uf) -- The Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education (NOKUT) will bring quality assurance measures under its wing, where previously it regulated institutions’ own QA systems. NOKUT also proposes stricter accreditation of post-graduate degrees … read more 14.12.
Dissatisfaction with Swedish research bill
LUND (lundagard) -- “I am pleasantly surprised that there is such a strong research budget,” said Torbjörn von Schantz, rector of Lund University, in reference to a new research bill in Sweden, “but I think having investments targeted for us is problematic.” That’s not all that the scientific community finds irksome about the proposals. Other academics have label the emphasis on collaboration with business “naive”, and worry about the lack of interest in higher education, which is directly affected by research conditions … read more 13.12Romania eases recognition of foreign degrees
BUCHAREST (avocatnet) -- The process of recognising foreign degrees in Romania could undergo a major simplification. A new draft law stipulates that entry barriers and the number of credits awarded in the foreign country would no longer be taken into account … read more 13.12.2016
Solutions for refugee scientists
BERLIN (hf) -- Science4refugees, a European Commission initiative offering research jobs for asylum-seeking scientists, has failed categorically. In nine months, not a single refugee has applied to a flagged position. An initiative by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation seems to be working better. 46 refugees, mostly from Turkey, have received a grant from the Foundation, going on to work at 39 German institutions ... read more 13.12.2016
Student grants in Latvia need reform
RIGA (delfi) -- So-called ‘budget places’ (i.e. subsidised tuition for certain students) in Latvia currently operate on an ‘historical basis’. President of a parliamentary committee on education, Ilze Viņķele, has called for this to change to a more qualitative approach because of “the growing sense of injustice among students and university representatives” … read more 06.12.2016
Portuguese petition against precarious work
LISBON (publico) -- The issue of precarious employment affects thousands of people involved in higher education Europe wide. On Monday, 4,000 Portuguese people had signed a petition created by the National Union of Higher Education to end job insecurity in science … read more 12.12.2016
Breakthrough for foreign degrees in Greece
ATHENS (foititkanea) -- After a long wait, 3,300 degrees from foreign colleges and universities will be considered for recognition by the Greek accreditation council SAEP. The degrees in question were attained between 2012 and 2015 and some were completed at private US colleges based in Greece. About 10,000 students are currently enrolled at private colleges in Greece … read more 11.12.2016
Corporate culture spreads to Scandinavian institutes
LONDON (nature) -- If an editor of a journal owned by one of the world’s biggest publishing corporations (Springer) is worried, we should be too. The latest edition of nature warns that the trend of turning universities into businesses is limiting research freedoms in traditionally liberal institutes in northern Europe. It is time, it reads, for scientists to regain lost ground ... read more 14.12.2016
Bachelor’s thesis scrapped at Italian universities
BOLOGNA (div) -- Several courses at the universities of Milan, Palermo and the Ca’ Foscari in Venice, amongst others, have replaced final year theses with exams. Now an economics course at the University of Bologna is the latest to join the bunch, to the chagrin of students. Undergraduates protested against a lack of consultation and the removal of one of the only creative elements of their degree … read more | and here 08.12.2016
Dutch uni starts international MOOC co-op
DELFT (science guide) -- “On an exchange programme the students travel, in this case it is the exam that travels.” This is how Ernst ten Heuvelhof, director of open online education at the Technical University of Delft describes the new MOOC exchange system between his institution, the Australian National University, the University of Queensland and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. It is the first time that universities have agreed to recognise international digital education and credits … read more 09.12.2016
Hungarian academics’ wages to rise
BUDAPEST (hirado) -- Hungarian Secretary of State for Education Palkovics László has announced a wage increases for higher education staff next year. The increase will be accompanied by a more competitive graduation based on five-yearly evaluations … read more 07.12.2016
Portuguese researchers warn of overfishing
LISBON (rtp) -- Around 100 Portuguese marine scientists have signed an open letter to the Ministry of the Sea calling for “sustainable and knowledge-based fishery management.” Only 55 percent of fish stock is caught sustainably and policy is made without scientific consultation. “This undemocratic behaviour has maintained a pattern of overfishing” … read more 09.12.2016
Popular French physicist accused of plagiarism
PARIS (div) -- One of France’s best-known scientists, Étienne Klein, stands accused by French newspaper L’Express of plagiarising the works of Émile Zola and Stefan Zweig among others in his recent biography of Albert Einstein. After defending himself by claiming he had forgotten to cite “internalised” passages, L’Express published another story on Wednesday with seven more examples of plagiarism from several other writings by Klein … read more | and here 07.12.2016
Peer review on a knife edge
MICHIGAN (science) -- PubPeer, a website that allows anonymous reviews of scientific papers, has won a legal battle that could set a global precedent for online academic journalism. Fazlul Sarkar, sued commenters for costing him a job offer, but a court of appeals upheld their anonymity … read more 07.12.
Free University Brussels demands satisfaction
BRUSSELS (science guide) -- A recent visit to the Free University Brussels (VUB) by the Flemish Universities and Colleges Council (VLHUR) ended in dissatisfaction - on both sides. After receiving a verdict of “unsatisfactory” by the VLHUR, VUB threatened the organisation with a lawsuit if they published the results … read more 07.12.2016