House of Lords redefine “international students”
LONDON (varsity) -- The House of Lords voted to pass an amendment removing international students from net migration statistics. This modifies the government’s Higher Education and Research Bill after universities criticised Prime Minister Theresa May for damaging the British education service sector. Incoming student numbers have decreased by 90,000 in one year due to stricter student visa rules. Statistics show that of 437,000 or 19 percent of students in the UK are foreigners, only one percent stays in the country after graduating ... read more | and here15.03.2017
Mega-trends in international higher education
TORONTO (hesa) -- Demand of transnational student mobility will remain strong, HESA director Alex Usher prognosticates, but sending-country governments could start to deny students exit visas and begin discriminating against graduates of foreign universities in the labour market. “Such moves are by no means unthinkable in Xi’s China, Putin’s Russia or Erdogan’s Turkey”, he writes ... read more 03.03.2017
Nationalists want to censor critical universities
JENA/VIENNA (standard) -- After a right-wing politician pressed charges against the University of Jena, in central Germany, sociology professor Klaus Dörre worries. The scope of antifascist action at universities could become even more limited, he fears, while “right-wing groups continue to expand their influence”. In the same direction points the recent parliamentary question of an FPÖ member in Austria who would like to ban Marxist criticism from lecture halls ... read more 09.03.2017
Spain instrumentalises scientific diaspora
BALTIMORE (nature) -- Many Spanish scientists had to leave their country due to bad career chances at home, and now the Spanish government calls them “key partners” to “reinforce its scientific presence in strategic countries”. In an opinion piece, the astronomer Amaya Moro-Martín puts the facts straight: since 2010 cuts caused the brain drain of thousands of scientists in the first place and now, in mid-February, young researchers in Spain were dismayed to find the terms of their contracts changed retroactively ... read more 14.03.2017
Precarious employment rampant at Austrian unis
VIENnA (orf) -- Part-time and temporary contracts are on the rise at Austrian universities. Of 2,500 professors and 37,000 academic staff, at least 80 percent are in precarious employment ... read more .03.2017
Ankara spies on academics in Switzerland
BERN (srf) -- The latest case has been a conference at the University of Zurich with Can Dündar, Editor-in-chief of center-left Cumhuriyet newspaper, where people have been filmed and photographed. An anonymous researcher told the press that “it is common practice that persons shoot pictures of participants of lectures on behalf of the Turkish government” ... read more | and here 13.03.2017
Towards a European open science cloud
BRUSSELS (sb) -- The European Commission has the ambition to make it easier and cheaper to share research data: a European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). “We don’t know how to do it at the moment, so we’re talking to a lot of people for ideas,” said Juan Bicarregui, coordinator of the EOSC pilot, a two year project that kicked off in January. “The cloud is a broad vision and it will have a lot of funding streams running into it” ... read more 14.03.2017
Denmark maintains high PhD quality
COPENAGEN (uwn) -- Despite more than doubling the number of PhD students, Danish PhDs have maintained their high quality, a new study shows. The country’s intake of PhD students grew from 1,200 in 2003, to 2,600 in 2010 as universities established 53 research schools in one of the largest investment programmes in Scandinavian higher education ... read more 07.03.2017
Belarus’ first university nanosatellite
MINSK (belta) -- The Belarusian State University has created Belarus’ first university nanosatellite. The extremely small spacecraft represents a kind of a flying education and research lab for university students and can be used to cheaply and promptly test new technologies, acquire and process space data, and offer practical training to aerospace industry specialists ... read more 07.03.2017
Irish government asks industry for university funding
DUBLIN (irish times) -- The Irish education minister Richard Bruton is due to announce details of a consultation process with industry over a new “employer-exchequer investment mechanism” to help plug the funding gap. The Government needs extra cash from employers in return for thousands of new college places in areas linked to skills’ shortages. The move is likely to spark concerns that big business will have too much influence over the future of higher education ... read more 07.03.2017
Brain Games in Azerbaijan
BAKU (azernews) -- Khazar Intellectual Youth Club, one of Azerbaijan’s biggest youth organisations, just launched a competition of brain games. The games will be organised at the Azerbaijan State University, comprise 25 rounds to be held within a year, and the most influential authors of questions will work out 24 questions for each round ... read more 10.03.2017
Slovak university invites fascists as guests
NITRA (správy) -- The invitation well-known neo-fascists to a ceremony at the Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, western Slovakia, has caused a wave of anger not only in the social networks. Academics wrote an open letter to the rector demanding an apology for inviting Holocaust deniers like Marian Kotleba, Ján Kecskés and Milan Uhrík, who “support extremism and socially unacceptable opinions based on racial and ethnic intolerance” ... read more .03.2017
Serbia plans new higher education law
BELGRADE (blic) -- The Serbian education ministry is preparing a new law regarding higher education and research. Following a €180 million World Bank loan in January for a public services reform, the new education minister Mladen Šarčević said he wants to get universities to work closer with industry and adapt courses to modern labour market demands. The Science Academy member Dušan Teodorović, however, fears a merely cosmetic law that does not address the main problems of universities: plagiarism, nepotism and low teaching quality ... read more | and here 08.03.2017
Andrej Holm stays!
BERLIN (konkret) -- 350 students continue to occupy the faculty of social sciences at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Their protest at the dismissal of their professor and former state secretary Andrej Holm worked out fine, the University has withdrawn his notice of termination. The students now demand more means for better teaching ... read more | and here 01.03.2017
Crappy journalism
LONDON (ns) -- The Guardian has become worse than any yellow press because it excites the lowest instincts with a fake leftish-bohemian allure. Like a guy with rotten plimsolls deboarding an SUV. Such is the news about the sexual harassment “epidemic” at British universities, an article written after a Freedom of Information inquiry that surely made great reader ratings — at the price of discrediting public institutions ... read more 09.03.2017
