Dutch universities - ‘money factories’
AMSTERDAM (nos) -- The new chairman of the Dutch university association, VSNU, is Pieter Duisenberg. His appointment has stirred worries with students and staff alike, as he is well-known for his policies in his former position as spokesman for education of the conservative-liberal party, VVD. He wanted to investigate the political leanings of university staff, advocated labour-market oriented course design and the reinvestment of student loan revenues. “He is a neoliberal from tip to toe,” says Felienne Hermans, assistant professor at Delft University of Technology. “He sees universities as small money factories” ... read more 7.9.17
France and Germany to ‘make our planet great again’
PARIS (uwn) -- A Franco-German joint research programme has been launched with the scope of attracting international scientists to take part in sustainability research on the topic of climate change, energy transition. The initiative is part of the French ‘Make Our Planet Great Again’ initiative, based on a pledge by the French government in June to provide €30 million for climate research ... read more
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8.9.2017
Baltics spending big on education
RIGA (baltic course) -- The Baltic States are showing the highest education budgets as a share of budget expenditure in the EU. Latvia spending 16.2 percent, Lithuania – 15.4 percent, and Estonia – 15.1 percent. For perspective, the EU-wide average stands at 10.3 percent of budget expenditure... read more 00.09.2017
Hungarian philosopher snubs Putin
DEBRECN (novinite) -- 82-year-old Mihaly Vajda has said on Facebook that he has returned his honorary doctorate from the University of Debrecen, to avoid association with Vladimir Putin, or “an institution that has proclaimed Vladimir Putin to be an honorary citizen”. Vajda, a left-wing intellectual, was a famous dissident during communist rule in Hungary, who was banned from working in Budapest until 1989 ... read more 05.09.2017
Controversial reform in Polish higher education
WARSAW (finanse) -- Polish science minister, Jarosław Gowin is set to announce a draft law on his higher education reform on the 19th of September. While it already has many supporters, some of its contents are highly controversial. The proposal to divide universities into research, didactic research and teaching was met with much criticism ... read more 10.09.2017
Spanish universities fast-tracking accreditation
SALAMANCA (la gaceta de salamanca) -- New policy attempts to make the accreditation of courses simpler for struggling universities in Spain. The new system allows courses to be accredited in blocks, reducing the amount of paperwork required by an order of magnitude ... read more 11.09.2017
Italy: Numerus Clausus on the brink
MILAN (deutschlandfunk) -- Ever since the introduction of a numerus clausus in Italian universities, it has been the center of furious debate. Now the Università Statale in Milan has stepped in, with a professor saying “the purpose of this faculty is to train conscious people”, advocating students’ right to decide which topic they are interested in ... read more 06.09.2017
Romanian education minister shown the door
BUCHAREST (romania curata) -- Two Romanian opposition parties, the USR and PNL, have made a motion to dismiss education minister Liviu Pop, before his policies cause irreversible damage to the country’s education system. The motion follows Pop’s proposal to introduce a national ‘manual’ for schools, which some compared to state sponsored indoctrination ... read more 8.9.17
Privacy concerns in French student residence
RENNES (ici) -- Students in Rennes have brought up concerns over privacy, after it was found out that internet-connected beds had been installed in their residence. The contractors responsible insist that they’re “not Google” and simply intended to use the sleeping pattern data collected to automatically plan when best to carry out maintenance work ... read more .05.2017
Lonely at the top in Bulgaria
SOFIA (economic) -- The Bulgarian association Leaders for European Education has launched an attack on the power structures within universities. They say that too much power is concentrated in the rector’s institution, and that it should move to a system of collective management, while giving more power to students and student bodies ... read more 11.09.2017
Russia’s regional universities reduce brain-drain
MOSCOW (vesti) -- Russian education minister, Olga Vasilyeva, has commented on the implementation of the “supporting universities” scheme, saying that they should become centres of cultural development for their regions. A year and a half into the project, and the “outflow of talented youth” has been decreased. The 33 participating istitutions also attracted employers to educational programmes and research projects and helped launch social projects as well as technoparks ... read more 06.09.2017
More Portuguese students choose private universities
LISBON (observador) -- Private universities in Portugal have seen an increase in demand of up to 36 percent on last year. This is reflective of a larger trend of increased university enrolments in Portugal ... read more 01.09.2017
English creates a new academic elite
AMSTERDAM (uwn) -- A study conducted by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts has found that English taught courses in Dutch universities are damaging Dutch as a language of academia, and threatening to alienate the Netherlands’ society at large from its academic tradition ... read more 01.09.2017
Czech education policy “worst since 1989”
PRAGUE (echo24) -- With general elections looming, Mikuláš Bek, the rector of Masaryk University in Brno, the country's secend biggest university, has criticised the government for decreasing education funding by 18 percent over the last 16 years. Bek warns that under-funding in schools has a negative impact in student numbers entering higher education, it leads academics to seek alternative financing, and it induces universities to reduce student places ... read more 02.09.2017
The price of the Netherlands’ ‘golden route’
AMSTERDAM (scienceguide) -- The transition from a subscription based model of a scientific publication to Open Access could be funded with pre-existing library budgets with offsetting deals, a Max Planck Society study found. An appeal to the Freedom of Information act has now forced the public disclosure of these deals in the Netherlands, and their cost to universities ... read more
Close quarters combat
MUNICH (sz) -- The Bavarian social democrats (SPD) have proposed a new model for student accommodation, in an effort to lower rent. At least 15 percent of the 375,000 students in the state should be living in publically supported halls of accommodation, Andreas Lotte, SPD spokesman for housing policies said. For Bavaria, this would mean the construction of almost 20,000 new places. Subsidised investors should be obliged to provide long-term affordable student flats. Munich is Germany’s most expensive university city, Berlin the one with the fastest growing prices ... read more 05.09.2017