First ever monument to the anonymous peer reviewer
MOSCOW (hse) -- The concrete block in the courtyard of the HSE Institute of Education, Moscow, has been a lasting image of the WW2 era. Last summer, the institute’s staff came up with the idea of turning it into a piece of art. The 1.5-tonne block has now been scupltured into a dice featuring on its sides some of the opinions reviewers typically give to academic articles, such as ‘Accept’, ‘Minor Changes’, etc. ... read more 26.05.2017
Russian-American university cooperation
MOSCOW (sputnik) -- Russian universities are constantly increasing the number of education cooperation areas with the United States, deputy science minister, Lyudmila Ogorodova said. From 2013 to 2016, Russian and American researchers jointly published more than 15,000 scientific papers. “Most of them are in the fields of physics, chemistry, engineering, biology, ecology, earth sciences, as well as clinical medicine,” she added ... read more 27.05.2017
Tuition fees in Portugal less expensive
LISBON (público) -- Studying in Portugal is costly, but slightly less than yesteryear. A university student pays 6,445 euros a year - and thus, 179 euro less than in 2011 ... read more .05.2017
Spanish universities apply facial recognition software
MADRID (el economista) -- The European
University Miguel de Cervantes (EUMC) and other Spanish higher education
institutions are testing facial recognition software for online
courses. The software verifies biometrical data through the webcam and
make these universities, as Yevgeny Morosov put it, “forerunners of the
control society” ... read more 01.06.2017
University access by lottery in France
PARIS (france24) -- It was the last act of the former government’s higher education minister and is the first of the new one: denouncing the lottery system to sort out university applications. Medical schools in the Paris region have become so popular that they could no longer cope with the sky-high number of applications, but other faculties of the humanities such as law, sociology and psychology are using a lottery as well. A petition calls of president Macron to stop this unfair practice ... read more | here | and here 26.05.2017
EU progress on 2020 education targets
BRUSSELS (aca) -- EUROSTAT has released the newest figures showing how far member states, and the EU as a whole, are on track towards reaching the EU 2020 targets on higher education attainment. Thirteen member states stated that they have already achieved the target that stipulates 40 percent of people should hold a tertiary education qualification ... read more 31.05.2017
New blacklist of predatory journals
LONDON (nature) -- Five months after a widely read blog listing possible ‘predatory’ scholarly journals and publishers was shut down, another index of untrustworthy titles is appearing — although this version will be available only to paying subscribers ... read more 31.05.2017
Irish universities concealed tens of millions in assets
DUBLIN (irish times) -- Several Irish universities — among them NUI Galway, University of Limerick and Dublin City University — have tens of millions of euro in private trusts and foundations which they have resisted declaring in their accounts. Audit records also show evidence of salary payments to staff over and above their public salaries worth hundreds of thousands of euro in at least two institutions .... read more 16.05.2017
Where the rich send their kids
WASHINGTON (aol) -- Wealth-X, a firm that does research on ultra-high net worth individuals, has revealed where the world’s wealthiest people went to college. The list is lead by US institutions, in Europe Oxford, Cambridge, LSE and the French business school INSEAD are on top ... read more 22.05.2017
Dutch exaggeration
THE HAGUE (quartz) -- A lobby group, Better Education Netherlands (BON), is threatening to sue the Dutch government over the “Anglicisation” of higher education in the Netherlands. Too many university courses are being taught in English in the Netherlands, they say, and it’s hurting Dutch students. More than half of Dutch university courses and more than 70 percent of the Master’s degrees are taught entirely in English ... read more 26.05.2017
German unis oppose competition on teaching quality
BERLIN (ihe) -- German universities have emphatically rejected a proposal that they fear could mean competing for funding on the basis of their teaching quality ... read more 26.05.2017
Greedy Irish managers jeopardise university autonomy
DUBLIN (hotpress) -- The University of Limerick, Ireland, allegedly “misled” the Department of Education during an inquiry into payments made as part of unauthorised and excessive severance packages to senior managers. This has led centre-right politicians like James Lawless to ask for greater oversight of universities. Fianna Fáil also criticised the attempts to discredit the whistle blowers ... read more 29.5.17
Dear Brexit
LONDON (science) -- The annual 1.1 billion euros that U.K. research now gets from Europe is, a report found, spread across all academic disciplines, but some will have a tough time finding alternative sources ... read more 23.5.17