McKinsey at Luxembourg’s university
LUXEMBOURG (paperjam) -- The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, one of the worlds worst tax havens (Oxfam), has a university, too. Its budget has risen from 48 to 160 million euros plus 60 million for fees and grants since 2006, so there is plenty of reason to fight about the money. The squabbles are between rector Rainer Klump, on sick leave, and the university board who called McKinsey to analyse a deficit of nearly 27 million euros and to make saving proposals ... read more 03.04.2017
Commission rules against Hungarian university law
BRUSSELS (rferl) -- The European Commission has concluded that Hungarian legislation which threatens the Central European University (CEU) with closure is unlawful. The regulation is “not compatible with the fundamental internal market freedoms,” the Commission announced today. The laws violate the freedom to provide services and freedom of establishment, as well as rights to academic freedom and education, it said. The Hungarian government has been notified of the finding and has one month to respond, ... read more 26.04.2017
German students and academics unite
BERLIN (spiegel) -- Reports of the German weekly Spiegel need to be taken cum grano salis, however, sit-ins, protest cafés, occupations and other kinds of initiatives unite students with lecturers and administrative staff at several German universities in protest against the “economisation of knowledge” and in favour of participative democracy at universities ... read more 26.04.2017
Snowden at universities in great demand
WASHINGTON (detroit news) -- For an enemy of the state, Edward Snowden has a remarkably public life. And at universities he seems to be in greatest demand. The list of those that have paid to hear him speak is long, and includes not just illustrious private institutions like Princeton, the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins University but also publicly funded ones such as Ohio State University. The same goes for Europe, the University of Rostock (Germany) even wants to award him a honorary doctorate ... read more 22.04.2017
March for Science events around the world
(nature) -- Tens of thousands of people gathered on Saturday in Washington DC, and at least 600 other cities around the world, in what may have been one of the largest-ever demonstrations in support of scientific research and evidence-based policymaking ... read more 21.04.2017
Muslim PhD student argues the world is flat
SFAX (worldcrunch) -- The world is flat, the Big Bang never happened, light and sound travel at the same speed, and the stars exist to stone the devils. This is the essence of a doctoral thesis by a PhD student at a university in Tunisia. In order to comport with the Koran, the Muslim student has turned thousands of years of scientific fact on their head. From Pythagoras to Copernicus to Magellan, Newton and Einstein, they’re all wrong – because the Koran says so ... read more 06.04.2017
Autonomy over ethics at Oslo University
OSLO (uwn) -- A secretary of state has demanded that a PhD student give up his grant because of views he gave to a magazine questioning the value to society of people with Down’s Syndrome. The student is the journalist and blogger Aksel Braanen Sterri. The rector of the University of Oslo, Ole Petter Ottersen, said it is unheard of that a politician should interfere with who is going to be recruited for a scientific position, and that the university does not act as a “filter for opinions” ... read more 20.4.
Greek research budget doubled
ATHENS (alfa vita) -- Greek science minister Costas Gavroglu has a lot of reforms in the pipeline. Public research funding has doubled since 2014 from 0.5 to 1 percent, and a programme is starting from which 4000 young scientists are going to benefit. A selection process in underway which will bring a thousand new teaching staff into higher education ... read more 25.04.2017
“Everybody out who doesn’t want to die!”
PALERMO (pt) -- On April 4, a student entered a dining hall of the University of Palermo screaming “Who is a satanist and wants to die, stay, all Catholics, Muslims or Hebrews get out!” causing everyone to flee the premises. The student of Moroccan origin who has psychological health problems, has been arrested and faces expulsion from the country. His imminent deportation has caused student protests and a parliamentary debate ... read more 22.04.2017
Danish universities keep government at bay
COPENHAGEN (uwn) -- Danish science minister Søren Pind has dropped the controversial proposal to select the heads of the governing boards of universities. The proposal faced opposition on a united front from Danish universities and professional organisations, who characterised the intervention as a break with the tradition of keeping an “arm’s length distance between the universities and the ministry” ... read more 19.04.2017
Students oppose new Serbian government
BELGRAD (balkanisight) -- Since early April, thousands of people are hitting the streets nightly across Serbia, protesting against the rule of Prime Minister and President-elect, Aleksandar Vucic. Many are students, who not only demand a removal of Vucic’s “dictatorship”, his influence over media, his party members’ control of state-owned companies, but also a priority shift in the economic and social policies such as entirely publicly financed educational and health services ... read more | and here23.04.2017
Austria: One in seven university courses in English
VIENNA (presse) -- Austrian universities are hospitable: one in seven course offers are now in a foreign language, mostly in English. Looking closer reveals however that nearly all of these English-taught programmes are Master’s and PhDs ... read more 21.04.2017
March for Science - ESNA PODCAST FROM BERLIN
BERLIN (esna) -- Over 600 cities participated in the March for Science, so did Berlin with at least 2000 people walking to the Brandenburg Gate. It was a demonstration of solidarity and of criticism: against fake news and ‘alternative facts’, against pseudo science and populism, but in favour of science-based policy-making and democratic universities. ESNA went along and gathered some voices ... listen to our podcast (3'45'') 22.04.2017
What’s Emmanuel Macron science policy?
PARIS (esna) -- Emmanuel Macron, former banker and minister of economy, wants to “give universities and grandes écoles the freedom to recruit teachers and researchers according to international standards of quality and independence” which means further liberalisation, he promises to “make science a national priority” but does not mention budgets, he advocates “internationalisation” and thus a continuation of university mergers, and he announces more “diverse universities” which indicates more performance-oriented funding and public-private partnerships ... read more | and here 22.4.
UN report: poor students miss out
PARIS (the news) -- According to a new UNESCO policy paper, governments across the world are struggling to keep pace with the rapidly rising demand for higher education as well as high fees, which often have to be carried by families that cannot afford them. In Europe, households paid for 15% of the cost of higher education, in other high-income countries, household expenditure was higher: 40% in Australia, 46% in the USA, 52% in Japan, and 55% in Chile ... read more 22.04.2017