Research concentration in few big universities
DAVOS (the) -- The concentration process of universities, public and private alike, has reached a new peak. As a report presented at the Davos World Economic Forum shows, the 27 biggest institutions alone publish 7 percent of the world’s research output and attract 11 percent grant funding awarded to top global universities ... read more 25.01.2018
Chinese research catches up rapidly
LONDON (nature) -- China has overtaken the United States in terms of the total number of science publications, according to a report
by the National Science Foundation, but stays still far
below the European Union’s research output. However, with a 19 percent
growth rate of spending in research and development it has overtaken the
EU ... read more 18.01.2018
Elsevier deal with a Finnish university consortium
HELSINKI (electrochem) -- After long negotiations, finally a deal with scientific publisher Elsevier in Finland could be struck. The three-year deal with FinELib will allow 35 Finnish institutions access to about 1,850 journals online, a deal valued at around €27 million ... read more | and here xx.01.2018
Foreign lecturers discriminated in Italy
BRUSSELS (telegraph) -- British lecturers have appealed to the EU over pay discrimination at Italian universities. Italy has been condemned six times by the European Court of Justice for paying them, as well as French, Belgian and other lecturers as little as half what Italians received. The Scotsman David Petrie, chairman of the Association of Foreign Lecturers in Italy, says that Brussels’ response to the saga of the lecturers’ hardship showed that despite its rhetoric on citizens’ rights post-Brexit, the EU was failing to ensure the protection of workers in the EU ... read more 23.01.2018
New Austrian education and science minister
VIENNA (aca) -- The new Austrian coalition government, led by Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP), has chosen Heinz Faßmann, a human geographer, former professor and vice-rector, as minister of education and science. According to ACA, the appointment “entails a redefinition of the ministry’s mandate. In earlier Austrian governments, school education and higher education and research had often had their own ministries. Under the last ‘grand-coalition’ government, higher education had simply been turned into a department of the Ministry for Economic Affairs” ... read more 31.01.2018
Welsh universities face 14 days of strikes
CARDIFF (wales online) -- Four Welsh universities are among 61 institutions across the UK that will be hit with 14 days of strike action. The dispute centres on plans to remove benefits from the pension scheme (USS). The teachers’ trade union (UCU) says this would leave a typical lecturer almost £10,000 a year worse off in retirement ... read more 29.01.2018
40% more European students in Russia
MOSCOW (tass) -- Russian universities attract students not only from the CIS countries, India, China, Vietnam and most African countries. According to the Russian education ministry, the share of students from Europe grew by 40 percent within one year ... read more 29.01.2018
Turkey continues academic purge
ANKARA (uwn) -- A further 438 members of Turkey’s higher education community have faced criminal detentions, investigations and prosecutions since July. Some 698 have been dismissed or expelled from their institutions and subjected to travel restrictions ... read more 16.01.2018
Luxembourg can afford it
LUXEMBOURG (delano) -- The government of Luxembourg announced it would spend €1,44 billion for research and higher education between 2018 and 2021. This budget already grew by €284 million, or 25 percent, over the period from 2014 to 2017 ... read more 12.01.2018
EU students owe Denmark a lot of money
COPENHAGEN (politiken) -- Foreign students owe Denmark €57 million. The European Union has rejected the Danish government’s request to help it claim back this unpaid student debt. The quarrel follows a cap on EU students eligible for grants installed by science minister Søren Pind in April 2017 ... read more | and here 14.01.2018
Romanian students in the streets
TIMIȘOARA (esu) -- Romanian student organisations have repeatedly warned about the danger of the legislative changes to the criminal law, which were proposed or sanctioned by the parliament majority. Protest marches in Timișoara, the main city in western Romania, carried a coffin wrapped in the flag and tagged “Justice” ... read more | and here 23.01.2018
Modernising university law in Malta
VALETTA (times) -- When he saw Austria, Britain and Holland which had introduced governing boards to help with running universities, Maltese education minister Evarist Bartolo wanted the same. Now not only students are up against him, but his own experts, too ... read more | and here 23.1.18
Norwegian universities open up
OSLO (universitetsavisa) -- The reports are now out. After months of stalemate, where several Norwegian universities withheld reports on their working conditions, Senior Advisor Kristin Wergeland Brekke of the rector’s staff at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) has announced that 52 reports dating back as far as 2016 will now be released. The issue had been a trial of strength between the institutions and the ministry... read more 18.01.2018
Alleged plagiarism by Finnish presidential candidate
HELSINKI (yle) -- Finnish populist-right presidential candidate, Laura Huhtasaari has been accused of plagiarising her bachelor’s thesis. Her alma mater, the University of Jyväskylä is conducting a preliminary investigation into the work alleged to contain direct copies of texts produced by others ... read more 16.1.18
Dutch shortage of professors
AMSTERDAM (nos) -- Dutch students must share their teachers with more and more people. Between 2012 and 2016, the number of students grew by eleven percent, the number of teachers went up by just six percent ... read more
Russian ‘anti-ranking’ reveals plagiarism
MOSCOW (mosaica) -- The online community ‘Dissernet’, which reveals plagiarism in scientific texts, has launched a so-called ‘anti-ranking’. The ranking sheds light on Russian universities with large numbers of plagiarised works. Moscow Pedagogical State University headed the list, with 232 plagiarised dissertations. On the flip side, four Russian universities have entered the top 100 in the THE university ranking, bringing the country closer to its 5 to 100 goal ... read more | and here 17.01.2018