INTO Knowledge - Market News Bulletin – October 1-17, 2010

UK

October 14- Lord of the market let competition and choice dive quality Browne's review of fees and finance calls for end to blanket subsidy and fees cap. Simon Baker writes

October 14- Mega-quango would control funding, access, quality and student issues Four higher education bodies would be merged to form a "super-quango" under Lord Browne's proposals.

October 13- Sir Menzies Campbell joins Lib Dem revolt against rising tuition fees. Former Lib Dem leader to vote against rise in tuition fees after Vince Cable reneged on party's election pledge to abolish them

October 12- Tuition fees: Heavy debts will not put students off university prize A blueprint for a transformed university system which will leave many students with massive debts after borrowing the cost of high tuition fees was unveiled today.

October 12- Universities face closure as tuition fee rise favours elite Universities face their most radical changes for 50 years as big rises in tuition fees and the withdrawal of government teaching grants force a reshaping of higher education.

October 4- Colleges protest over visa ‘misunderstanding’ Recent blunt comments by the immigration minister, Damian Green, that international students applying for further education courses "may, or frankly may not be the brightest and the best" has sparked a furious lobbying effort by principals of the UK's larger colleges, who claim the minister needs to update his understanding of what further education is all about.

USA and Canada

October 17- US-Africa: Universities for development Poverty alleviation and economic stimulation on the world's poorest continent are problems the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and Higher Education for Development intend to help solve.

October 13- Gates Foundation pushes technology for College preparedness The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced this week that $20 million is up for grabs for education innovations in a new push to prepare high school students for college.

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Australia and New Zealand

October 17-Universities face funding crisis A collapse in income from foreign student fees has begun to hit universities across the country with Monash University, the nation's biggest, facing a A$45 million (US$44.8 million) drop in revenue next year and the loss of 300 jobs.

October 15- Pain in store for top universities Budget cuts at Australia's biggest university, Monash, are "a warning" to other institutions, says University of NSW chief Fred Hilmer.

October 13- Australian conference focuses on drop in foreign students Australia's shaken image as an academic destination for international students cannot simply be fixed with new marketing, a plenary speaker at the Australian International Education Conference told higher-education officials here.

Asia

October 13- Hong Kong to raise higher education rate among young people to 65% in years Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Chief Executive Donald Tsang said Wednesday the city was likely to raise the attending rate of higher education among young people to about 65 percent, from some 30 percent in 2000.

October 10-Across the Middle East, a ‘Revolution’ in Arabic Studies As interest in Arabic-language studies has risen over the past decade among Westerners, language programs in the Middle East and North Africa face new challenges.

October 09- Self-funded Chinese students now ‘engine’ for US higher ed Along with the increasingly broad and deep educational exchanges between China and the United States in these 30 years, Chinese students have become a powerful "engine" for the U.S. higher education market.

October 3- Saudi Arabia’s education reforms emphasise training for jobs At the end of August, about 200 unemployed Saudi university graduates congregated in front of the Education Ministry, in Riyadh. The young men were there to demand government jobs; they held a banner calling for an end to their "oppression."

Africa

October 17- Study abroad to boost PhDs-proposal An expert study has recommended that a large number of South African students be sent abroad to study for doctoral degrees over the next 10 years, as one way to scale up the number of PhDs produced and boost the country's knowledge and innovation system.

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UK

Lord of the market: let competition and choice drive quality From: Times Higher Education, October 14, 2010 http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode= 413842&c=1

Browne's review of fees and finance calls for end to blanket subsidy and fees cap. Simon Baker writes

Dozens of universities could face a struggle for survival after a landmark report paved the way for a massive cut in teaching funding and an open market in fees and student numbers.

The independent review on higher education funding and student finance, unveiled this week, concedes that fees of £6,000 are unlikely to bridge the loss of public investment expected in the Comprehensive Spending Review on 20 October.

In an interview with Times Higher Education, Lord Browne of Madingley, who led the review, said that the panel had set a "soft cap" of £6,000 - above which universities would lose an increasing proportion of fee income to the state.

The figure was set lower than the level required to bridge the funding gap in order to drive efficiency.

"We'd like to see universities take on a challenge for efficiency, much as every part of society is doing at the moment. And this is a way of catalysing that," he said.

The review calls for an end to the cap on student numbers at individual institutions and, crucially, the extension of fee support to part-time students.

Lord Browne said that competition and student choice should be the main drivers of quality.

However, the report, Securing a Sustainable Future for Higher Education, has come under fire for being "inextricably linked" to the CSR and for paving the way for an end to public funding for all subjects except "priority" areas such as science and technology.

Ruth Farwell, chair of GuildHE and vice-chancellor of Bucks New University, warned that institutions focused on teaching students from poorer backgrounds would be hardest hit by the proposals.

She added that it appeared the review had been "hijacked" by the government's retrenchment agenda. The plan would not create a proper market, she said, as the "natural inclination" for most universities would be to charge £6,000 a year to replace lost income.

Bahram Bekhradnia, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, said he was "a little surprised and very disappointed" that cuts and the removal of the hard fee cap had figured so highly in a report that had many good points. 4

"The government is now able to make bigger cuts than it otherwise would have been able to," he said. He also attacked as "disingenuous" the idea that a sliding levy on fees would prevent some universities charging huge amounts.

Mr Bekhradnia also questioned whether the proposed student-finance system would save the government money, given that it would extend support in some ways.

"In cash terms, the generosity of this package will increase public expenditure in the medium term. However, because of creative accounting rules, the government would be able to borrow the much larger amount needed to pay all the upfront fees - and it would be for its successors to meet the costs," he said.

"I'm not sure if this counts as the sort of dodgy accounting that brought down the banks, but it certainly has that feel."

Roger Brown, professor of higher education policy at Liverpool Hope University, said allowing student choice to drive quality was "misguided" and risked creating a "two- tier" system.

Others welcomed the review's proposal to remove the cap on student recruitment.

Nicholas Barr, professor of public economics at the London School of Economics, said: "Market forces create incentives to quality unless you've got excess demand.

"It is terribly important to set quantity free so that you don't have excess demand. As somebody who cares passionately about access, I think this a good plan," he said.

Alasdair Smith, professor of economics at the University of Sussex and the institution's former vice-chancellor, said it would allow the best institutions to expand and force poor-quality providers to change or face closure.

However, he criticised the plan to focus remaining teaching funds on higher cost subjects, as there were "still social benefits from students studying history or economics".

Lord Browne said the proposals would not create an unfettered market in higher education. One source close to the review predicted that in reality no university would charge more than £9,000.

"The words 'free market' suggest to people the concept that there are no rules and that's not true; there are plenty of rules," Lord Browne said.

He also claimed it was "very unlikely" any failing university would disappear, but it might have to "change its shape".

Asked if institutions committed to widening participation, such as London Metropolitan University, would suffer, Lord Browne said that they would be "fully capable of sizing up the situation", adding: "They will have to find their way and they will have time to do that."

All attention will now turn to how many of Lord Browne's proposals will be adopted by the coalition government, given Liberal Democrat MPs' pre-election pledges to oppose higher fees. 5

Speaking in the House of Commons on 12 October, Vince Cable, the Lib Dem business secretary, acknowledged that the party's opposition to fees was "no longer feasible". He said the government agreed with the broad thrust of Lord Browne's recommendations, adding: "We are in a massive economic mess. We have to come to terms with reality."

Lord Browne insisted that the report had not been influenced by the coalition's politics and said that opposition figures, including new Labour leader Ed Miliband, had been briefed on its contents at the same time as the government.

He added that the decision to set a soft cap at £6,000 was made "quite a long time ago", although he did not rule out the CSR's influence.

Warning the government not to remove key planks of what the panel had agreed, he added: "This is a holistic system; all the key pieces fit together. This is a system that opens up choice and difference in university and I believe it is sustainable for the future."

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Mega-quango would control funding, access, quality and student issuesBy: Rebecca Attwood From: Times Higher Education, October 14, 2010 http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode= 413845&c=1

Hepi head claims that review panel has been commandeered by the government, reports Rebecca Attwood

Four higher education bodies would be merged to form a "super-quango" under Lord Browne's proposals.

A single Higher Education Council would replace the organisations responsible for funding, quality, access and student complaints.

The organisation would "set and enforce minimum quality levels across the whole sector".

It would also be responsible for identifying and funding "priority" courses, whose curricula it could shape by, for example, setting minimum contact hours.

Private providers would be allowed to apply for public funding for priority programmes but would have to meet the same quality requirements as public providers.

A key role of the council would be to support universities at risk of failing - by, for example, helping small and specialist institutions that experience temporary changes in student demand - via a "market transition fund".

The council would have powers to make recommendations to the governing body of an institution if it viewed the management as "ineffective"; where failure could not be prevented, it would explore the option of mergers and takeovers.

"The judgements involved will be difficult and sensitive, often raising acute political interest," the report notes.

The new body would incorporate the functions of the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the Quality Assurance Agency, the Office for Fair Access and the Office of the Independent Adjudicator.

A university's students would be able to access the Student Finance Plan only if the university agreed an "access commitment" with the council. Universities that did not meet their targets on access and dropout rates would have to agree a minimum spend on efforts to improve their performance.

A condition of grant would be that all new academics with teaching responsibilities undertake a teacher-training programme accredited by the Higher Education Academy and that this opportunity be made available to all staff. Universities would have to publish data on the proportion of teaching staff who hold such a qualification.

The government would also set a minimum entry standard for students using the Universities and Colleges Admissions Services' tariff system every year, but a proportion of places would be allocated directly to institutions by the council rather than through the tariff system. 7

On the OIA, the report argues that bringing regulation and student-complaints handling together "will enable regulation to be adapted in the light of decisions about student complaints where appropriate".

Lord Browne's report says the panel examined whether there was scope to distribute funding by a metric of quality but concluded that there was no robust way to do this. Instead, it argues, student choice will have a vital role in improving the quality of higher education.

This "more targeted" approach to regulation would mean "greater autonomy for institutions" and less control by government, it maintains.

However, there was scepticism from the sector about this claim.

Bahram Bekhradnia, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute and who has previously worked at Hefce, said: "It's a great pity that the Browne review has been hijacked in several important respects by the government.

"This looks suspiciously like the bonfire of the quangos. Although it could be made to work, it will be suboptimal: there will be all sorts of conflicts of interest and cracks and duplications."

He added that part of the QAA's functions were once part of Hefce but this "didn't work".

"On the other hand, if the government removes a lot of the Hefce grant, as the review group obviously know it will, beefing up the funding council's role is an obvious thing to do," he said.

Don't supersize me

Peter Williams, the former head of the QAA, said that while there were "superficial attractions" to the idea of a single quango, the report indicated that the new body would have functions that represented a significant attack on the independence of universities.

The report's statement that the council would define minimum levels of quality for priority programmes - by setting what the report calls "basic programme content requirements" - "undermines at a stroke institutions' fundamental academic autonomy", Mr Williams said.

"Most significantly, though, the role of the council in carrying out the government's decisions on admissions leaves the reader in no doubt that, whatever the rhetoric about independence, the council would be no more and no less than an arm of government - Hefce in XXL-sized clothes - giving the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills new control over the day-to-day lives of higher education institutions.

"No government gives away power over money; under these proposals, higher education would finally become a state-controlled and regulated industry," he said.

"The costs of this mega-quango, with its task of 'setting and enforcing baseline quality levels' (whatever they are) aren't mentioned, but would undoubtedly be huge." 8

The report "gives the impression of being written by people who have forgotten much of what they should have learned over the past 20 years, or who view higher education institutions as simply the place that students go to be filled up with skills - rather like a BP forecourt," Mr Williams added.

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Tuition fees: Heavy debts will not put students off university prize By: Jeevan Vasagar and Jessica Shepherd From: guardian.co.uk, October 12, 2010 http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/oct/12/tuition-fees-debts-students- university-browne

A blueprint for a transformed university system which will leave many students with massive debts after borrowing the cost of high tuition fees was unveiled today.

The review by Lord Browne, the former head of BP, proposes that universities should be allowed to decide what they charge students. The new system of financing higher education will allow for a 10% increase in student places to meet rising demand for degree-level courses.

Under Browne's proposals, graduates will only start repaying the cost of their degrees when they begin earning £21,000 a year, up from £15,000 under the current system. They will pay 9% of income above this threshold. Half of graduates currently earn £21,000 in their first job.

The influential thinktank the Institute for Fiscal Studies described this as "more progressive than under the current system … in the sense that lower-earning graduates would pay less and higher-earning graduates would pay more".

Total repayments over the working life of a typical graduate would amount to around £20,100, including maintenance loans, under the assumption of a £6,000 annual fee, the IFS said. If all universities were to charge £7,000 a year, the average graduate would repay £22,100 in total. Under the current system the average graduate pays back £15,400 over their working life.

The Browne review has sought to curb very high fees by proposing a system under which institutions that charge more than £6,000 must hand over a proportion of their income to government.

A university that charges £7,000 will receive 94% of this fee, while one that charges £10,000 will receive 81%. At £6,000, the university gets the full fee.

Browne said universities that charged the highest fees would have to demonstrate they are widening access for students from poorer homes. "There are a variety of things they can do, including offering scholarships for living expenses," he said.

Speaking after the review was published this morning, Browne said that he did not expect students to be deterred by debt. "There is a lot of evidence that students don't just look at debt, but at the prize at the end as well, which is significant earning potential. If you look at the 40% of students who study part-time, we don't offer them anything, but they still come and study part-time."

He says that should change, and part-time students should have equal entitlement to government support for tuition fees. "Part-time study provides a second chance for people who missed out earlier in their lives, and it is important to level the playing field between part- time and full-time study," the review says.

Professor Julia King, vice-chancellor of Aston University and one of the Browne review panel, predicted that some universities would charge £10,000 a year – almost three times what they do now.

The review proposes an annual loan of £3,750 for living costs, and extra support for students from poorer backgrounds whose household income is below £60,000 a year. They will be entitled to up to £3,250 in grants. 10

However, universities would lose money under the benchmark scenario of a £6,000 fee, the IFS said. The thinktank said: "While their fee income would nearly double in this case, buried in the detail of the review's recommendations are proposed cuts to the teaching budget that would see some courses become entirely self-funded."

The loss of teaching grants – roughly £9,900 per student over the course of a degree – outweighs the increase in fee income, and universities would have to charge fees of £7,000 a year or more to make up for this reduction in funding, the IFS said. Universities that do not have the scope to raise fees above the fee cap would have to sustain a loss.

New universities which focus on teaching arts and humanities subjects are likely to be hardest hit under the Browne review's proposals. Government funding should focus on courses such as medicine and engineering "that are important to the wellbeing of our society and to our economy," the review says.

Browne proposes a slashing of the government teaching grant from £3.5bn to £0.7bn. "There will be scope for government to withdraw public investment from many courses to contribute to wider reductions in public spending; there will remain a vital role for public investment to support priority courses and the wider benefits they create," the review says.

Browne proposes that successful universities will be able to expand, while others will have to "raise their game" in response.

The market in higher education will be driven by the choices of university candidates, based on a range of information including students' evaluation of the standard of teaching; the course and university facilities; and details provided by the university such as weekly hours of teaching time and the proportion of graduates in jobs in their first year after leaving.

David Eastwood, vice-chancellor of Birmingham University and a member of the review panel, said: "In our view the system is very much student-led and student-driven. The importance of quality in what a university is offering – teaching hours, employability – all of these are clear upfront, so the student can make an informed choice."

The review acknowledges the gulf between children from the richest and poorest families over university access. "More than half of young people from the most advantaged areas in the country enter higher education compared to fewer than a fifth of those from the most disadvantaged areas," it says. This divide is accentuated when it comes to the most competitive universities.

Universities will no longer have to provide minimum bursaries to the poorest students, who qualify for a full maintenance grant. Instead, the review proposes that they should focus on activities that may be more effective, such as outreach to schools and preparatory classes for teenagers.

Every school will also be required to make individualised careers advice available to pupils.

The Browne review says there is no evidence that the introduction of top-up fees by Labour in 2006 had a negative impact on young people from the poorest homes. It quotes research showing that in the last five years there has been a sustained increase in the number of young people from the most disadvantaged areas of the country attending university.

The boom in university participation has also led to a more diverse student body. But black students in particular are concentrated in a handful of institutions. In 2007-08 the University of East London had half as many black students as the entire Russell Group of 20 research- intensive universities, which include Oxbridge.

Sir Peter Lampl, chair of the influential education charity the Sutton Trust, said there was a danger that higher fees for the most prestigious courses would make them "the preserve of the most privileged". Even children from middle-income homes might be deterred by fears of higher costs, he said. 11

"There are some sensible measures in these proposals. But our concern is that the headline figure of the costs of attending more prestigious universities might still deter those from non- privileged backgrounds from applying in the first place."

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Sir Menzies Campbell joins Lib Dem revolt against rising tuition fees. From: guardian.co.uk, October 13, 2010 http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/oct/13/menzies-cambell-joins-lib- dem-revolt-tuition-fees

Former Lib Dem leader to vote against rise in tuition fees after Vince Cable reneged on party's election pledge to abolish them

The coalition faces a challenge from a former leader of the Liberal Democrats after the business secretary, Vince Cable, reneged on an election pledge to abolish tuition fees and committed the government to raising the cost of a degree.

Sir Menzies Campbell, the chancellor of the University of St Andrews, said he would vote against a rise in fees after Lord Browne's review of university finance said universities should be allowed to decide what they charge students. "My credibility would be shot to pieces if I did anything other than to stick to the promise I made," he told the BBC.

Cable is seeking to contain a Lib Dem revolt with the suggestion that tuition fees should be capped at about £7,000.

In a letter to all Lib Dem MPs, Nick Clegg yesterday stressed that no decision had yet been taken but suggested he was likely to break the election pledge. He called it "one of the most difficult political decisions I have ever had to make".

He said: "It means doing something that no one likes to do in politics – acknowledging that the assumptions we made at election time simply don't work out in practice. With the benefit of hindsight, I signed a pledge at a time when we could not have anticipated the full scale of the financial situation the country faces now."

He emphasised three ways in which he thought Browne's proposals better: "Part-time students will have their fees paid up front and will be treated for the first time like their full-time counterparts. Poorer students will pay less, while wealthier students will pay more. And a much more progressive system than the current one both makes more generous maintenance arrangements for those on low incomes and raises the threshold at which repayments start to be made." Another former Lib Dem leader, Charles Kennedy, tabled a question asking what Cable's plans were for a cap on fees. Many unhappy Lib Dem backbenchers will look to him for guidance as he has described the party's stance on tuition fees as a "defining feature".

Government sources suggested Cable's idea of a £7,000 cap would be vetoed. Lib Dem backbenchers including Greg Mulholland and John Leech have warned they will vote against a rise. Julian Huppert, the Lib Dem MP for Cambridge, tweeted yesterday that he had again signed the NUS pledge to oppose a rise. All the party's MPs signed this pledge during the election.

In a statement published on his website Huppert said: "There is pressure to properly fund universities, but forcing students to take on huge amounts of debt is not the way." The MP said he would work with Cable to find a "better solution than that which Labour adopted and which the Tories would like."

The party's deputy leader, Simon Hughes, said yesterday there was time to modify Lord Browne's proposals. "We have to seek to honour the pledges we gave to our constituents," he told the BBC. 13

Hughes reaffirmed the party's manifesto commitment to phasing out tuition fees. "Vince was anticipating that there may have to be a change of policy but we are not there yet – the policy of the Liberal Democrats as of today is to still make sure we don't increase tuition fees and that's where we start from."

Under Lord Browne's proposals, institutions that charged the highest fees would have to show they were doing more to widen access to the poorest teenagers. Graduates would start repaying when they earned £21,000. They would pay 9% of their income above this thresholdLord Browne, the former head of BP, revealed last night that he had started sponsoring Cambridge students from disadvantaged backgrounds through their undergraduate degrees.

Answering questions on The Student Room, an online forum, he defended proposals to make graduates pay more.

"I was fortunate enough to grow up in an era where very few people received an education for free. Now there are lots more students who rightly want to benefit from a degree, and in order to pay for that, graduates who get private benefits from their higher education should contribute to the cost.".

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Universities face closure as tuition fee rise favours elite By:Greg Hurst From:The Times, October 12, 2010 http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/education/article2763735.ece

Universities face their most radical changes for 50 years as big rises in tuition fees and the withdrawal of government teaching grants force a reshaping of higher education.

Fees of £6,000 or £7,000 are likely to become the norm, experts said, with universities unable to command such rates turning instead to shorter degrees or being forced to merge or close.

Lord Browne of Madingley, the former chief executive of BP, has recommended lifting the cap on fees and creating a market in higher education. His projections for future university income have been agreed with the Treasury.

Lord Browne said that fees of £7,000 a year would only replace cuts in higher education funding expected in next week’s spending review. He proposed that degrees be funded by student fees rather than teaching grants for all but a few essential courses, such as medicine and engineering.

Mike Boxall, of PA Consulting, said that dozens of universities would be forced to rethink their business models, and that about a dozen would face serious financial difficulty. He said that nearly half of all universities depended on teaching grants for large proportions of their income.

The report increased pressure on the Liberal Democrats, who had pledged to oppose higher tuition fees.

Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, admitted that he and fellow Lib Dem MPs would have to break their election pledge in light of today’s economic climate. But he alarmed some Conservative MPs by saying that wealthy parents should be penalised if they paid tuition fees up front to avoid a repayments system that would charge high-earning graduates more.

Prof David Eastwood, vice-chancellor of Birmingham University and a member of the Browne Review panel, said the interests of students would take precedence over the future of institutions.

Speaking to The Times from Shanghai he said: ―Students will make informed decisions and drive (up) quality in the system.

―We will have to look at the interests of students rather than the need to prop up certain institutions.

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Colleges protest over visa ‘misunderstanding’ By: Louise Tickle From: guardian.co.uk, October 04, 2010 http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/oct/04/visa-international-students- foreign-colleges#start-of-comments

Recent blunt comments by the immigration minister, Damian Green, that international students applying for further education courses "may, or frankly may not be the brightest and the best" has sparked a furious lobbying effort by principals of the UK's larger colleges, who claim the minister needs to update his understanding of what further education is all about.

Members of the 157 Group say they are offended and bewildered at the implication they take from Green's remarks, which is that their non-EU intake contains second- rate students who use FE as a front for bogus visa applications. The upset has been prompted by the government's wish to impose further visa restrictions on those wanting to come to the UK to study.

Green's position is that the candidates he wants to attract – and those the immigration system should help – are "the world's best students", whom he defines as those wanting to pursue their education at one of the UK's elite universities.

Cause for concern

Green's remarks about the variability of what is on offer at the FE institutions that attract large numbers of fee-paying international students to the country, taken together with his conclusion that not "every student visa issued is necessarily benefiting Britain", has caused concern that vocationally oriented non-EU students will be discriminated against. Principals are dismayed by what they feel is Green's failure to grasp what FE colleges offer, and why their difference from universities is so attractive to about 66,000 foreign students every year.

"It's very difficult to guide and assist ministers to understand further education," says Bradford College's principal, Michele Sutton. "Many people in politics or the civil service have not experienced FE … and their children don't either. We believe that the best of people often come to colleges like ours ... and I do think we provide an environment that gets people ready for work and gives them the knowledge and skills they need to get a job or build a career."

It's misguided to think that colleges don't recruit the brightest and the best, she says, and if the minister would like to visit her college to see for himself, he'd be very welcome. "We don't think students get a lesser experience or a lesser qualification – and we don't believe they're worse quality students. We've had students who've gone on to make a massive impact, not just on their families and communities but also on the wider world."

Despite FE's record in training people for highly skilled vocational jobs, there is still a lingering sense that further education is for people who are not quite top flight, complains Angela O'Donoghue, principal of City of Sunderland College and international spokesperson for the 157 Group of large colleges.

"With regard to international students, we are teaching technician level skills; telecommunications, travel and tourism, IT hardware and software and technical engineering," she says. "Our graduates are the people who can keep factories 16 running and that's what a lot of developing countries are looking for. That's the difference, that's what FE specialises in. We teach skills that employers want."

It's not just what countries with developing economies want: it's what the UK needs too, says Russell Strutt, principal of Central Sussex College. "I don't think he [Green] understands how an FE college turns an international student into someone who gains the skills to support our local businesses, which simply can't fill all their vacancies from the indigenous population," he says. "We're not acting as houses for illegal immigration – we're training people up to drive the local economy. In our area, the need is not just for academic graduates but for demanding, technical subjects."

There is indignation too. Recent tightening of visa requirements has meant that all colleges that wish to recruit non-EU students have had to jump through hoops to gain Highly Trusted sponsor status with the UK Border Agency, O'Donoghue explains. "I don't understand why we've had to go through that process and put all the effort and staff time in if we're going to have difficulties with visas afterwards," she says. "Our students don't disappear. We keep registers, we know where everyone is, and if a student doesn't turn up we ring them and find out what's happened."

This level of monitoring and pastoral care is a distinctive element of FE that universities don't undertake, so why, principals wonder, should the government assume FE colleges provide a cover for students who arrive on false pretences and then slope off? "If the government is concerned about the number of people who finish a qualification, whether FE or HE, and then stay on, that is not a problem of FE," says Sutton. "Their visa at an FE college is for the length of their course. As a college, we are not bogus: we were created by statute and we are publicly funded, inspected and audited."

Income stream

Further education colleges with Highly Trusted sponsor status have received no reassurances from the government regarding any protection for international applicants needing visas. For the larger colleges with higher numbers of non-EU students, a big cut in foreign students threatens an important income stream. Bradford College, for instance, gets £3m out of an annual income of £60m from its international cohort. In Sunderland, O'Donoghue says the financial implications aren't limited to fees but would reduce the money foreign students spend in the community.

"I estimate foreign students' total contribution to the FE sector at around £130m, and that helps us to do what we're being told to do – to be less reliant on public funding," she says, pointing out that non-EU students' fees contribute directly to improving facilities for UK students.

It's not just the threat to their bank balances that principals are concerned about. "Culturally, it's vital that our UK students have the chance to mix with international students," says John Mountford, international director at the Association of Colleges.

Although Cornwall College, for instance, recruits only around 60 non-EU students each year, its principal, Dave Linnell, says that in a highly rural area where many of his students are studying close to home, the perspective they bring is enormously valuable to the life of the college and to students' abilities to operate successfully in the increasingly internationally focused world of work.

On top of all that, say colleges, FE graduates form a significant part of the intake of universities, which recruit heavily from the FE sector. English language support and 17 college HNDs and foundation degrees can be a stepping stone for international students to pursue a degree at university.

Will international students be put off applying to college in the UK if they think they won't get visas? "I hope not," says Mountford. "But of course it's a concern. Students want to feel they're studying in a country where they feel welcome."

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USA and Canada

US-Africa: Universities for development partnerships By: Sarah King Head From: University World News, October 17, 2010

http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20101015200748915

Poverty alleviation and economic stimulation on the world's poorest continent are problems the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and Higher Education for Development intend to help solve. Last month the agencies announced strategic capacity- building partnerships between 22 universities in Africa and the US.

With the backing of up to $1.1 million each, detailed five-year strategic plans and comprehensive 10-year visions, the goal is to assist the realisation of Sub-Saharan initiatives for national and regional development through higher educational investment. The institutions will tackle issues ranging from food security and health to natural resource and climate management, energy and education in Africa.

One such partnership initiative is currently being brokered with the Sudan, a country recovering from nearly 50 years of civil war and where 95% of the population relies on subsistence farming.

Two symposia in 2008 identified ways of being able to deal with food security issues in southern Sudan through the invigoration of higher educational training in agriculture and natural resource management. At that time, collaborative efforts led by the Catholic University of the Sudan in partnership with the University of Juba, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and Virginia State University began to develop strategies.

But none of this could happen before the country's ravaged educational infrastructure was restored.

"The task of rebuilding infrastructure has been nearly beyond imagination," explains project director and acting Vice-chancellor of the Catholic University of Sudan, Friar Michael Schultheis, SJ. He adds that many of the initiatives were, in fact, begun - and subsequently abandoned - back in the early 1980s, following a lull in hostilities.

It took another 25 years, and the signing of a comprehensive peace agreement, before the country could begin the huge task of rebuilding.

Among the challenges southern Sudan faces are a myriad of environmental problems ranging from water pollution further upstream along the Nile to wildlife extinction, deforestation and desertification. Moreover, not only did civil war kill or displace at least four million people, but extreme poverty in rural areas is matched by a literacy rate of only 30%.

All this makes the prospects for developing a workable higher education mandate seem insurmountable. But Schultheis and his partners remain confident.

Along with efforts to repatriate the University of Juba from its temporary residence in northern Khartoum, one of the first steps was the decision to establish the Catholic University in Juba as the national university in 2007.

A year later the faculty of arts and social science was opened, and in 2009 the faculty of agricultural and environmental sciences began offering programmes. Based in the town of Wau in the state of Western Bahr el Ghazal, the latter faculty provides a general programme of study, leading to a five-year BSc specialising in agronomy, animal science or environmental science.

19

So far there is a total of 260 students in both faculties of the Catholic University, with the first cohorts of BA and BSc students in their third and second years respectively.

Though they may be small steps and the road ahead not expected to be easy, Schultheis is hopeful: "The question ahead is 'What will this baby become?'"

Coming from someone who, for more than 40 years, has taught and been involved in establishing curricula at higher education institutions in Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique and Ghana, there is every reason to assume that this project will indeed mature and bear fruit.

The 10 other partnerships are similarly driven by the need to ensure that the resources and expertise of the developed world are put at the service of and are utilised by developing countries in innovative and sustainable ways.

Peter McPherson, President of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, extolled the virtues of the partnerships when he underlined the importance of higher education in building a strong Africa: "These partnerships will combine the knowledge and resources of African and US universities to solve some of the critical issues hindering economic development in African countries."

The collaborative alliances also include the following projects:

* The International Institute for Water and Environmental Engineering in Burkino Faso will be working with Tuskegee University in Alabama to improve hydrological and environmental science and technology. Future partnerships would include expertise from faculty of the University of Benin, and the University of Mines and Technology in Ghana.

* Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia and the University of Connecticut seek to lay the foundations for an integrated water resources engineering programme to train professionals capable of addressing associated development challenges.

* The College of Health Sciences at the University of Ghana in Legon, Accra, and Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, plan to establish a National Educational Centre of Excellence to create and support multidisciplinary programmes in HIV-Aids research and the training of health care providers.

* Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya, and Syracuse University in New York State will be training secondary school teachers and supporting elevation of this profession in the region. Building on an existing institutional relationship, the partners intend to collaborate with other institutions in Kenya and the US.

* The University of Nairobi in Kenya and Colorado State University are spearheading a partnership among other Kenyan, Tanzanian and Malian universities to develop programmes to address the challenges of agricultural and natural resource sustainability among regional dryland communities.

* The University of Malawi in Zomba with Michigan State University and Lincoln University in Oxford, Pennsylvania, will work together to address the problems that population growth, uneven economic development and climate change are progressively wreaking on the country's physical and human environment. In establishing a centre of excellence in ecosystems science services, economic growth will be matched by poverty alleviation in a sustainable fashion for the future.

* The University of Liberia in Monrovia and Indiana University in Bloomington will be seeking to redress the shortage of life science professionals following 15 years of civil war. Assisted by the University of Massachusetts School of Medicine and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, curricular enhancements and physical infrastructure improvements will build up a life sciences workforce able to meet the needs of the country's 3.5 million people.

* L'Université Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis, Senegal, and Ohio State University will develop a 20 degree programme in agro-ecology to better manage the intensification of a burgeoning agricultural export industry and the potential degradation of fragile Sahelian ecosystems.

* The University of Cape Town in South Africa and the University of Cincinnati intend to explore the use of solar power energy as a means to meet the energy needs of Sub-Saharan Africa. Relying on an innovative new technology and the expertise of industrial partners in the US, the South African university will serve as a centre for training researchers to expand on these technological developments.

* Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, and North Dakota State University seek to establish centres of excellence that will oversee population health and food security issues associated with the spread of pandemic zoonotic and vector-borne diseases. The centres will coordinate responses ranging from surveillance and risk assessment to policy development and communication.

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Gates Foundation pushes technology for College preparedness By: Jenara Nerenberg From: Fast Company , October 13, 2010 http://www.fastcompany.com/1694686/gates-foundation-pushes-technology- for-college-preparedness

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced this week that $20 million is up for grabs for education innovations in a new push to prepare high school students for college. The Gates Foundation announced a request for proposals for its "Next Generation Learning Challenges" from innovative programs that have a working technological or online component and a sound educational intervention to put the technologies to use in the service of preparing high school students for college. The foundation has previously focused on education in low- income, marginalized communities, but this is the first time the foundation is focused explicitly on educational technologies for college preparation.

"We're really excited about technology in education," Gates Foundation Senior Program Officer, Josh Jarrett, tells Fast Company. A former software entrepreneur and former McKinsey consultant with a Harvard MBA, Jarrett has a thing or two to say about innovation in technology and education.

With 63% of jobs at the end of the decade requiring a higher degree, says Jarrett, there is an urgent need for innovation in college preparedness programs.

The foundation is looking to invest in programs that center not only around innovators, but also adopters. In other words, the foundation wants to see that there is a ready and eager market for the innovations they invest in, since currently "there's not an efficient marketplace for that," Jarrett says. Specifically, the three criteria for investment are student outcomes, scalability, and financial sustainability.

One Laptop Per Child may come immediately to mind for some readers, but "what you do with the hardware is most important in terms of outcomes," Jarrett says. "We're investing in interventions, rather than infrastructure."

The Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon, for example, is a current Gates investee that uses digital tutors and targeted face-to-face learning and what used to take, say, 10 weeks for a student to learn a curriculum, it now only takes five weeks, effectively "doubling the pace of learning," says Jarrett.

The Signals Program at Purdue is another successful, innovative example--the program uses learning analytics and predictive models to help students understand how they're doing in class. Not only that, but teachers openly share with students when it looks like they're going to fail and that gives students the extra push they need to focus and succeed. The model uses a red, yellow, and green signaling system and has increased success rates by 50%.

And while the goal of the new initiative is to establish visible benefits in the U.S., applicants can be from anywhere. "This is an opportunity for cross-pollination across countries," says Jarrett. The foundation is highly motivated to help innovators connect with each other--a startup applicant from India, for example, could be matched up with a U.S.-based partner to help maximize social outcomes and fit the foundation's criteria better.

"We're very optimistic. We look forward to drawing out the great work in the field that helps students get to completion," says Jarrett. And with a direct mandate from Bill and Melinda, it's no wonder that technology will play a central role in the new push.

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High profits mean online providers here to stay By: Sarah King Head From: University World News, September 26, 2010 http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20100925161222181

A cancellation of a large online project between the California community college system and Kaplan University reflects a dilemma faced by higher education in the US: many contact universities rely on for-profit online providers to train the masses.

Kaplan was poised to have been a major beneficiary of the articulation arrangement, both with exposure to a 2.89-million student market and through the revenues it would have earned. But the cash-strapped community college system also stood to gain an affordable way of scaling up operations without having to invest in infrastructure.

It is a situation found throughout the US and worldwide: the challenge of institutional overcrowding, systemic funding cuts and demand for college-level skills in an increasingly globalised economy. And, it is one the for-profit online higher education sector is poised to remedy.

Kaplan's counterpart, the University of Phoenix, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Fortune 500 Apollo Group, enrolled nearly half a million students in 2009-10.

As the largest propriety online college in the US, the university embarked on articulation agreements with more than 200 campuses domestically and abroad, including Britain's first for-profit higher education institution, BPP University College of Professional Studies.

It is also the main higher education provider to serving members of the US Armed Forces.

Importantly, providers like these offer something unique: they cater to the eponymous 'non- traditional' student interested in career, vocational or technology-focused programmes delivered in a flexible manner.

Armed with the knowledge that online education holds advantages to the traditional face-to- face model, colleges have therefore sought to justify their record earnings by claiming they are making education accessible to those people otherwise excluded from the benefits of higher education.

The profits are high, indeed, with 14 of the largest for-profit providers in the US valued at more than $26 billion in July 2010. The most recent quarter earnings for the Apollo Group were $1.34 billion, up nearly 28% from last year. Meanwhile, Princeton Review brought in second quarter earnings of $56.2, a 79% increase on last year.

But, ironically, it is because students in this sector are eligible for federal support that alarm bells have begun to ring. In 2009 alone, their students received more than $20 billion in loans from the Department of Education and $4 billion in Pell Grants.

Significantly, however, not only do students in the for-profit sector receive disproportionately more than their counterparts at public and non-profit institutions, they have the highest default rates. In 2009, it was 11.6% as opposed to 6% (public) and 4% (non-profit).

With such statistics in hand, federal authorities and higher education administrators have stopped to take stock of the situation. In August, findings of the Government Accountability Office led to the proposal of regulations that, as Education Secretary Arne Duncan noted, "will ensure that career college and training programmes use federal aid to prepare students for success."

The measure of their success or President Barack Obama's 2020 college graduation targets aside, for-profit online education, as delivered by on-the-ground colleges or unstable operators, appears to be here to stay. 23

Australia and New Zealand

Universities face funding crisis By: Geoff Maslen From: University World News, October 17, 2010 http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20101015202357234

A collapse in income from foreign student fees has begun to hit universities across the country with Monash University, the nation's biggest, facing a A$45 million (US$44.8 million) drop in revenue next year and the loss of 300 jobs.

In an email to staff last week, Monash Vice-chancellor Professor Ed Byrne announced that overseas student numbers were expected to fall by 10% "at best" in 2011. Byrne said foreign student fees accounted for more than 20% of Monash's annual income, "so the drop will have a significant adverse impact upon the university's budget". Planned expenditure for 2011 would need to be reduced by around $45 million".

"Regrettably savings are required in the university's salary budget," the email stated. "In order to achieve necessary savings whilst minimising the impact upon staff the university will be seeking expressions of interest in voluntary separation packages."

Although Byrne denied a decision had been made regarding the number of redundancies, the National Tertiary Education Union said it had been advised that 300 jobs were on the line "in the first instance".

The situation facing Monash is not unique and nor is the university's failure to prepare for the downturn. Universities have been subject to warnings for years that their reliance on foreign student fee income has placed many in a dangerous financial situation.

But few suspected the federal government might act to cut back on the continued rapid expansion in the export trade in education by restricting student visas and curbing skilled migration. In April, the government announced changes to its skilled migration programme and imposed new regulations covering foreign students applying for permanent residency.

Tens of thousands of overseas students have used Australia's education system as a means of gaining access to the Australian workforce with dodgy vocational education colleges springing up to offer dubious courses in cooking and hairdressing.

The government crackdown has forced dozens of the colleges to shut and now universities have been caught up as well. Once Indian students in particular realised that studying for an Australian business or commerce degree no longer offered them automatic entry, they began turning away in droves.

As University World News reported last month, enrolments by overseas students could plunge more than 100,000 by 2015 with a potential fall in university revenues of $7 billion (US$6.4 billion) over the next five years along with a loss of more than 1,850 jobs.

A study prepared for the Australian Technology Network of Universities by Professor John Phillimore and Paul Koshy of the John Curtin Institute of Public Policy at Curtin University in Perth, The Economic Implications of Fewer International Higher Education Students in Australia described the alarming consequences for the Australian economy.

"International education is Australia's third largest export industry, generating $18 billion in exports in 2009," the report stated. "It is 50% larger than tourism-related travel, and has grown by 94% since 2004; in 2009, there were 629,918 international students in Australia of whom 203,324 were in higher education, 232,475 attended a VET [vocational education and training] provider and 135,141 were in an English language course."

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Although higher education had only 32% of the total foreign student market, it was the most economically significant part of the post-secondary sector, generating 57% of export revenue, the authors noted. On average, each foreign university student spends almost $51,000 a year, with just over a third on fees and the rest on goods and services, mainly for accommodation, food and retail purchases.

The Group of Eight research-intensive universities joined the nation's vice-chancellors in warning that a savage downturn in foreign student numbers would threaten universities. The two bodies have called on the government to take urgent action and save the international education industry from the brink of potential disaster.

Both have urged changes to student visa arrangements to ensure legitimate students are not discouraged from applying to enrol in Australian universities, warning that tightening visas to tackle problems in the training sector, particularly dodgy colleges, had resulted in "collateral damage" to universities.

Academics and general staff most at risk at Monash are in the country's largest economics and commerce faculty, which has a high proportion of foreign students. Faculty dean Professor Stephen King wrote in a blog last month that the federal government had three choices in preventing a funding crisis for universities:

"Fix the visa issue so the Australian education system remains internationally competitive and the cross subsidy to domestic students can continue; or massively increase the funding per domestic student so it covers the true cost of that student's education (either backed up by an increase in Hecs [higher education contribution scheme] or via taxpayer funding); or prepare to inject billions of dollars into the tertiary sector in the form of bailouts over the next two to three years".

King wrote that because option three was "the default option, I expect that option three will occur. And if it does, the federal government will be responsible for trashing the reputation of our universities and killing a viable long-term export industry in education".

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Australian conference focuses on drop in foreign students By: Janaki Kremmer From: The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 13, 2010 http://chronicle.com/article/Australian-Conference-Focuses/124908/

Australia's shaken image as an academic destination for international students cannot simply be fixed with new marketing, a plenary speaker at the Australian International Education Conference told higher-education officials here.

The number of foreign students in the country is on the decline, triggered in part by attacks on Indian students in 2008 and 2009, and by investigations into shady private colleges that offered courses like cooking and hairdressing only to help people immigrate and become permanent residents. In response, the government has tightened student visa rules.

Describing Australia as "a dumb blonde, more in the decorative than useful category of nations," Simon Anholt, an expert on national identity and branding, said the country needed to emphasize how its educational system can be of use to Asian nations.

"Education is the best gift anyone can offer, and Australia is in a unique position to offer its services to the rising Asian powers," said Mr. Anholt.

Australia has set out to promote itself as a center of scientific and innovative thinking, but a new logo alone will not appeal to the rest of the world, he said.

Other speakers and panelists raised similar concerns during the conference, which is titled "Engaging With the Future" and has almost 1,300 attendees from 32 countries.

According to the Australian government, enrollments by international students declined by 0.4 percent in the 12-month period starting August 2009. Those declines were driven by steep drops in English-language classes.

Colleges and universities are still experiencing a rise in enrollments by students from abroad but predict the numbers will decline in 2012 in part because English-language institutes often feed students into universities. Some signs of that impending falloff 26 have appeared already with enrollments by Indian students into university courses falling 19 percent.

The country's leading universities recently asked the Australian government to consider revising immigration regulations as a result.

Some conference participants expressed frustration that the government had not done more to ameliorate educators' concerns.

"We are unhappy about the government responsibility and its failure to see beyond the dollar signs," said Anthony Pollock, chief executive of IDP Education, a company that recruits students and offers English-langauge testing. Public officials "have taken a long time to get beyond this to the importance of Australia's relations with the rest of the world."

Despite this, Mr. Pollock was optimistic, saying that Australia is looking at only one more year of difficulty before enrollment rates turn around.

Private colleges have "already managed the transition to courses more relevant to the students, and we just need to stay engaged in the region," he said about Asia.

Gulshan Kumar, president of the Association of Australian Education Representatives in India, however, said the country needed to ease rules for foreign students if it wants to get them back. For example, he said Australia requires Indian students to prove they have the necessary funds to pay for their education costs for several years.

Mr. Kumar said that the rules should be changed so that more students—and those who are genuinely interested in studying—will start to apply to Australian institutions again. "We need to go to a reasonable system of showing funding for one year," he said.

Rising Dollar Creates Cost

Rising education costs have also been a burden for foreign students, with the value of the Australian dollar rising in recent years, said Melissa Banks, director of Banks Consulting, a higher-education consulting company in Melbourne.

"We are now the most expensive country to live in as a foreign student," she said. "It is now 30 percent cheaper for a Chinese student to study in the U.S. than in Australia."

While currency rates are something the government has little control over, Canberra can help international students with other policy changes, said Simon Marginson, a professor of higher education at the University of Melbourne.

He suggested that the government not view student-visa holders as part of its effort to lower overseas immigration levels.

While visas are a huge issue, security is another problem that discourages student enrollments.

"Most students say they feel safe in the country, but it's their parents who see what's happening on TV and worry that it might be the wrong place to send their children," said Stephen Connelly, president of International Education Association of Australia. 27

One way to deal with safety—and to reduce costs for students—is for the federal and state governments to support subsidized housing for domestic and foreign students, said Mr. Connelly.

He said in Victoria, for example, universities and other education programs generate $5-billion annually, but the state government only contributes a "tiny amount" of $13- million to $14-million every few years.

Mr. Marginson agreed. "A major infrastructure program, federally financed, to create student housing for mixed local and international populations ... makes housing available and affordable, gets internationals off the public transport lines late at night, and it is the best way to bring the two groups of students together so that deep and lasting friendships form," he said.

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Pain in store for top universities By: Bernard Lane, Pia Akerman From: The Australian Education, October 15, 2010 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/pain-in-store-for-top- universities/story-e6frgcjx-1225938920860

Budget cuts at Australia's biggest university, Monash, are "a warning" to other institutions, says University of NSW chief Fred Hilmer.

Professor Hilmer said the loss of foreign students could force budget cuts on other universities in the elite Group of Eight unless the government made it clear to potential students overseas they were welcome.

"If (nothing is done) and the decline starts to pick up pace, then you will get budget cuts because (overseas student income is) a big part of all our budget streams," he said.

Monash vice-chancellor Ed Byrne said the university had to find $45 million in savings because of bigger-than-expected declines in overseas student numbers.

"The indications that we're getting from (our major markets in) Southeast Asia and China is that this is not a Monash issue, this is an Australian issue," he said.

The multi-billion-dollar education export industry has been hit by tougher rules for student visas, the high Australian dollar, bad publicity from attacks on Indian students, doubts about quality and aggressive recruitment by the US and Britain.

The University of Melbourne's vice-chancellor, Glyn Davis, said many institutions faced "significant falls" in overseas enrolments beginning next year and Indian student numbers could plummet by 90 per cent.

"The entire Australian higher education system depends on revenue from international students, so the people who will lose out from this are the Australian students whose study is strongly supported by income from international students," he said.

Domestic students might end up paying higher fees, he said.

Media coverage has focused on the collapse of colleges as new skilled migration rules make it more difficult for foreign students to parlay low-quality diplomas in cooking and hospitality into permanent-residency visas.

But the Howard-era system that linked education and migration was also a revenue- earner for universities, who were expected by government to expand without a corresponding increase in their base funding rate for domestic students.

"The universities that have become more reliant on international student income are more exposed now," said Jeannie Rea, president of the National Tertiary Education Union. "The chickens are coming home to roost."

Professor Byrne said Labor's reform of the trade in low-value qualifications and permanent-residency visas was necessary. 29

But the tougher rules and checks for visas were undiscriminating and were discouraging bona-fide applicants who wanted to study, not migrate.

"There's been an unintended overshoot and the quality university providers are starting to be caught up in it," he said.

A middle-class family in China, for example, had to lodge up to $130,000 in a bank account for six months to show the ability to cover three years in course fees and living expenses, he said.

Professor Hilmer said a student from a first-rate Malaysian university with government sponsorship to do a PhD would be subjected to the same intensive background checks as someone with poor English coming for a low-level qualification.

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Asia

Across the Middle East, a ‘Revolution’ in Arabic studies By: Brooke Anderson From: The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 10, 2010 http://chronicle.com/article/Across-the-Middle-East-a/124867/

As interest in Arabic-language studies has risen over the past decade among Westerners, language programs in the Middle East and North Africa face new challenges.

According to educators in the region, students today want courses that emphasize colloquial Arabic and expect classes to have a greater focus on cultural and social issues. Historically, programs in the region taught grammar and classical Arabic, which is used in the Koran and other Islamic texts.

The shift in focus has left Arabic programs scrambling to change how they teach and to find enough qualified instructors.

"There's been a revolution" in Arabic studies, says Zeinab Ibrahim, who began teaching Arabic in 1980 at the American University in Cairo and who now teaches Arabic to businesspeople at Carnegie Mellon Qatar, in Doha. "We're employing the same methods and same approaches that are being used for English, French, and German—a communicative approach."

Since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, academic interest in the Arab world has steadily increased, and along with it, study abroad. During the 1999-2000 academic year, 695 American students studied in the Middle East, according to the Institute of International Education. That number rose to 3,416 by 2007-8, the latest year data are available.

Students today want courses that emphasize colloquial Arabic and cultural and social issues, educators say.

Students today want courses that emphasize colloquial Arabic and cultural and social issues, educators say.

As a result, new university programs, along with new private providers, have cropped up in the region. And existing programs have had to expand their capacity to meet demand.

At Qasid, a private language institute in the Jordanian capital of Amman, enrollment has jumped from 80 students to more than 200 students per term over the past three years. Many of those enrolled are college students, who receive course credit for language training.

"There are a lot of high achievers who are going into Arabic for their careers and not just because they love the region," says Omar Matadar, program coordinator at Qasid, an American who himself learned Arabic as an undergraduate in the United States.

Teaching Methods Mature 31

As the levels of students have become more advanced, so have the teaching methods.

"Now, it's more student-centered learning," Mr. Matadar says. "In 2000, there was very much a grammar and translation approach. Now, students are engaging in society, by learning some form of Aamia," or colloquial Arabic.

This approach creates a more active classroom environment, where students are expected to think on their feet and take initiative. It is an approach that requires more selective hiring criteria for language instructors. They can't always be found at universities in the West, where qualified instructors are scarce. Even in Arab countries such as Jordan, Mr. Matadar says, finding the right instructor isn't easy. Last fall the institute had 300 applicants, 100 of whom they interviewed; seven went through training, and three were accepted for a three-month trial.

"Sometimes the best teachers aren't always the most experienced," he says, adding that a lot of them are sensitive to being evaluated or having to change their methods. "We like to hire people who are open to new ideas and methodologies. If they can grow with the organization, then we give them experience and prefer them to someone with a Ph.D. and 20 years of teaching."

Evolving Textbooks

The regional specialization of Arabic language study also means that standard textbooks are likely to be replaced by books that emphasize local cultures and dialects. The most widely used textbook for modern Arabic is now Al-Kitaab, published by Georgetown University Press, which holds most of the market.

The Saifi Institute for Arabic Language, founded in Beirut in 2008, has created its own textbook, called Urban Arabic—a beginners' manual for learning the Lebanese dialect. Unlike most institutions, Saifi teaches students the local spoken Arabic before they learn the standard language, because, as its instructors point out, that's the natural way children learn.

Saifi, which started in one room with 10 students, now has its own facility in central Beirut, complete with dorm rooms and a cafeteria, and it can house up to 120 students in a given term. Mac McClenahan, who co-founded the institute with his wife, Rana Dirani, says that up to 95 percent of their students learn urban Arabic because "there's more demand from Westerners to learn Arabic to communicate." (Saifi is working on a way to give its students university credit for their course work at the institute.)

Mastering the Language

It is increasingly this more integrated and modern approach to Arabic language teaching that is appealing to students who want to master the language.

"As an American lawyer, my primary interest is international law. Building my Arabic skills could help lead to a future career in international law," says Steven Koh, 27, who started studying the language while at Cornell three years ago. He has just completed an intermediate-level intensive summer course at the American University of Beirut and plans to continue studying Arabic until fluent. He has found that most of his classmates, like himself, are learning the language for the long term. He was surprised to learn that the vast majority of these students had no Arab heritage, but they had previously visited the Arab world. 32

At the American University of Beirut, the administration has made it a point to keep class sizes low—no more than 12 students, and preferably even fewer. The rest they direct to Lebanon's other language institutes, which number about 20. Most of them have opened within the last five years.

Lebanese American University, which has been running its own Arabic program in Beirut for over a decade, will now be expanding into the spring term, adding to its existing summer and fall terms. "Students are reaching more advanced levels, and they want to continue," says Mimi Jeha, director of the university's Summer Institute for Intensive Arabic Language and Culture.

Other well-established Arabic teaching schools in the region are facing similar growing pains. At Mohammed V University at Souissi's study-abroad program, in Morocco, which opened in 1998, the founder and academic coordinator Mohamed Ezroura says more demand has meant more competition between the various language institutes, including some U.S. institutions that have established themselves in Morocco.

"This, of course, has led to a number of things: more demand for quality teaching (à l'Américaine), globalizing the American way of teaching—which sometimes might not allow these students to learn the authentic ways of teaching by the Moroccans— ways that are certainly behind the more sophisticated current U.S. pedagogic ways. ... The Moroccan teachers become required to perform like the U.S. teachers in the U.S.," Mr. Ezroura says in an e-mail message.

He believes that this switch in teaching style is having a cultural effect. The American approach is more student-centered. "The student-centered approach gives the student's participation in class more weight, and the teacher does not lecture all the time. The Moroccan traditional method conceives of the master teacher as the source of all knowledge and the student is mainly a receiver, often not allowed to challenge the voice of the master. All of this has political implications for the society at large."

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Saudi Arabia’s education reforms emphasise training for jobs By: Ursula Lindsey From: The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 3, 2010 http://chronicle.com/article/Saudi-Arabias-Education/124771/

At the end of August, about 200 unemployed Saudi university graduates congregated in front of the Education Ministry, in Riyadh. The young men were there to demand government jobs; they held a banner calling for an end to their "oppression." The rare public protest highlighted the tensions and expectations that make higher-education reform in this kingdom a daunting prospect, despite the hundreds of billions of dollars the government is dedicating to the endeavor.

Saudi Arabia's oil wealth may be enormous, but it has created an economy with very little diversification and a bloated, underproductive public sector. The reformist King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud and others know that even with its sizable resources, the kingdom can no longer offer cushy administrative jobs to a majority of its booming population, and that to prosper the country needs educated young Saudis with marketable skills and a capacity for innovation and entrepreneurship. That's not generally what Saudi Arabia's educational system delivers, steeped as it is in rote learning and religious instruction.

A few weeks before the protest, the Saudi Council of Ministers, which sets national policies, passed the country's latest five-year development plan. It calls for spending about $200-billion on expanding access to schools and universities, and for substantially increasing vocational training by 2014.

In the past seven years, under King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia has spent lavishly on higher education. About a quarter of each yearly budget goes toward education and vocational training; this year's allocations, amounting to $36.5-billion, represent a 12.4-percent increase over those of 2009. The King Abdullah Scholarship Program has sent more than 90,000 Saudis to pursue graduate studies abroad. The number of public universities in the country has risen from eight to 24; a few of them now appear in world university rankings.

The development plan calls for nearly doubling the number of university students, from 860,000 to 1.7 million, by 2014. The king and his allies are serious about the need to improve and expand higher education, says John Sfakianakis, chief economist at Banque Saudi Fransi, who helped draft the plan. "They understand there is a problem that has to be fixed."

Many Saudi university students continue to pursue degrees in fields such as social studies, religious studies, history, and literature, despite the labor market's being saturated with social-science and humanities majors.

About a quarter of the Saudi annual budget goes to education and vocational training, such as this program at Technical Trainers College in Riyadh.

About a quarter of the Saudi annual budget goes to education and vocational training, such as this program at Technical Trainers College in Riyadh.

Mohammad Al-Ohali, deputy minister of educational affairs, says that is why the Ministry of Higher Education has placed "more emphasis in the last three or four years on technical, engineering, science and medical programs," as well as "fields of 34 study related to the job market," such as administration and computer science. "These are the main focus of the new universities we have established," he says.

It may take a while, however, for students' expectations to line up with the new educational policies. The protest in front of the Education Ministry was organized by graduates of Arabic-language programs to demand teaching jobs in government schools. "Anyone who has a degree from a Saudi university aspires to a government job," says Mr. Sfakianakis. Government clerks earn around $1,500 a month, have job security, and, with the public sector's "relaxed working hours," can often take a second job, he adds.

While a job in public administration remains most Saudis' ideal, the country's private sector is overwhelmingly powered by the foreign workers who make up about a third of the country's 28 million residents. The government is imposing minimum quotas of Saudi employees on companies and decreeing that certain businesses, like gold shops, travel firms, and car dealerships, be staffed by Saudis. It considers this "Saudization" of the private sector necessary to limit dependence on foreign labor, create a more dynamic economy, and stanch rising unemployment.

But "one of the main issues that the private sector faces," says Mr. Sfakianakis, "is the fact that there aren't enough well-trained Saudis in the kind of jobs that are needed."

That holds true both for high-skilled jobs in finance, engineering, and medicine and for the service sector, where many Saudis are reluctant to take jobs as, say, taxi drivers or hotel receptionists, and expect higher salaries than those paid to expatriate workers.

"It is not the scarcity of jobs that is the biggest problem," says Mr. Al-Ohali. "It's a very complex problem related to people's habits, to people's culture."

Official unemployment in Saudi Arabia stands at almost 11 percent. Unofficial estimates place it as high as 35 percent among men in their early 20s with high- school diplomas. In addition to university graduates who must accept that there are no government positions for them, the relatively new category of young, urbanized job seekers of modest means and limited skills is what worries Saudi authorities. That jobless cohort is destined to swell as the 40 percent of the population that is currently under 15, along with more women, enters the labor force.

Accordingly, the government plans to finance a major expansion in vocational training as part of its development plan. It calls for the construction of 25 technology schools, 28 technical institutes, and 50 industrial-training institutes.

Relying on Research

The plan also suggests spending $240-million in grants for research projects each year, and calls for the establishment of dozens of research centers and technology incubators at universities.

The Ministry of Higher Education has already overseen the establishment of 14 university research centers specializing in such areas as chemical engineering, energy research, and nanotechnology, says Mr. Al-Ohali. The centers, evaluated by international advisory boards, are supported by government funds for their first five years. The ministry hopes to increase their number to 25, he says. 35

Saudi education officials regularly invoke their determination to turn the kingdom into a "knowledge economy." In 2009, the king created the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, or Kaust, as it's known, and personally donated its $10- billion endowment, saying he hoped it would "become one of the world's great institutions of research."

The university, Saudi Arabia's only co-educational institution, offers doctoral degrees in chemical and biological engineering, applied mathematics and computational science, and environmental, chemical and computer science, among other fields. Its nonacademic operations are managed by the oil company Saudi Aramco.

But Kaust is an elite, and largely foreign, institution. Neil Partrick, a lecturer at the University of Westminster, in England, and a consultant on Middle Eastern politics and economics, estimates that only 8 percent of Kaust's students are Saudis.

The university is "a platform for foreign-company-assisted R&D," he says. "If it goes hand in hand with foreign companies setting up shop in the kingdom, then indirectly that might benefit Saudi nationals." But even if cutting-edge research takes place on the campus, he says, the question is, "Does that permeate out to the wider economy and society?"

Although King Abdullah and his appointees in the Ministries of Education and Higher Education may feel that changes are necessary, Mr. Partrick says, they face "enormous constraints" imposed by entrenched bureaucracy and religious conservatism. In addition, among members of the ruling family are "tension about the direction of the country and politicking around these issues. There's a problem in joining up [government] departments and following up on plans."

How Fast? How Much?

Another hurdle is "the nature of the education that's being received at an early age and the pressure against changing it," says Mr. Partrick. At least a third of Saudi primary and secondary education is taken up by religious studies.

In the 2007 "Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study," produced by the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics, Saudi schoolchildren ranked near the bottom of the 48 countries surveyed. Mr. Sfakianakis, of the Saudi bank, says government officials are well aware of the need to improve mathematics and science proficiency, and that about 30 percent of the Education Ministry's budget is going toward retraining teachers in primary and secondary schools with that in mind.

But how fast to move to reform the educational system, and how much to rely on foreign expertise and the private sector, are complicated questions for the kingdom's rulers.

In recent years the government has encouraged the private sector to enter the higher-education market, and dozens of private universities and colleges have been established. The pan-Arab newspaper Dar Al Hayat recently reported that the Higher Education Ministry is studying 120 more requests to establish private institutions.

"One of the major objectives is to create competition to improve the quality of higher education" and eventually to reduce the tremendous cost of free public higher education, says Mr. Al-Ohali, the deputy minister of educational affairs. With that in mind, Saudi authorities support the establishment of private universities through 36 loans and land grants, he says. A recent royal decree stipulated that the government would pay half the tuition costs of all students pursuing private higher education.

Saudi universities have also signed more than 300 agreements with counterparts in the United States, Europe, and China, Mr. Al-Ohali says, under which foreign faculty members teach at the Saudi institutions, which design and evaluate the curriculum together with their foreign partners and engage jointly in research.

Even so, the kingdom's leadership has "decided not to push ahead the model of Qatar and the model of the United Arab Emirates," says Mr. Sfakianakis, referring to Persian Gulf emirates that have opened their doors to foreign branch campuses. In Saudi Arabia, "They want to have higher education in the hands of the state, and the curriculum to be controlled by the state."

That state faces a gargantuan task. Creating better-skilled, employable Saudi university graduates, says Mr. Partrick, involves reforming the entire educational system, restructuring the country's labor market, and encouraging a "cultural shift in terms of attitudes toward work—what Saudis will do—and education—what it's appropriate to teach to Saudi children."

All that will have to take place at the same time that increasing numbers of young Saudis pursue higher education. "As we are expanding access," says Mr. Al-Ohali, "there is a lot of emphasis not to lose quality."

37

Wooing academics home By :Richard Lim From: The Star online, October 10, 2010 http://thestar.com.my/education/story.asp?file=/2010/10/10/education/7168105& sec=education

The Higher Education Ministry will cooperate with the Talent Corporation to attract academics in the Malaysian Diaspora and beyond.

Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin said that his ministry would identify and encourage local academics working abroad to work in Malaysia.

Speaking at a press conference after the launch of Universiti Putra Malaysia’s diagnostic nuclear imaging facility in Serdang, Selangor, Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin said that with the march towards greater globalisation , those with skills were much sought after.

―We will coordinate closely with the Talent Corporation to bring home local academics,‖ he said. ―It is important for us to get the best knowledge to transmit to our people.

―When we talk about talent, we are not limiting ourselves to Malaysians as we are looking for anyone with high knowledge.‖

Mohamed Khaled said that his ministry was in the midst of coming out with guidelines for public universities to work on the matter.

―It will be a key performance indicator for public universities as we can gauge the strength of their networking,‖ he said.

The minister added that the nation would benefit from the move as top foreign academics would bring their extensive network and publishing history along with them.

This, he said, would improve the academic culture and raise the rankings of local universities.

Internationalisation is encouraged under ministry guidelines and foreign academics must constitute 20% of a research university’s academic. Comprehensive universities have the bar set at 15%.

The government had recently said that it will establish the Talent Corporation to identify skill shortages in key sectors, and attract and retain necessary skilled human capital. While the country is facing a shortage of skilled manpower, there are more than 700,000 Malaysians working abroad.

The Talent Corporation is expected to spearhead Malaysia’s initiative to attract the Malaysian diaspora back to the country to contribute to the country’s skilled manpower needs. For this, the Talent Corporation will provide an integrated Skilled Human Capital Blueprint with the cooperation of the public and private sectors.

In addition, the Talent Corporation will become a one-stop centre to coordinate with relevant government agencies, including immigration matters, for the entry of skilled workers into the country. 38

Hong Kong to raise higher education rate among young people to 65% in years From: University World News, October 13, 2010 http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90785/7165471.html

Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Chief Executive Donald Tsang said Wednesday the city was likely to raise the attending rate of higher education among young people to about 65 percent, from some 30 percent in 2000.

"Education is the largest single expenditure item in our budget, representing over 20 percent of (Hong Kong's) total government recurrent expenditure," Tsang said in his annual policy address at the city's 60-member Legislative Council, which was live broadcast to Hong Kong's 7 million people.

He said Hong Kong would continue allocating resources to provide quality and diversified education for young people and nurture talent for the community.

Degree programs organized by the city's 13 higher education institutions aside, Hong Kong's post-secondary institutions offer sub-degree programs covering various disciplines, and youngsters have many other options in continuing education and vocational training.

Tsang proposed forming a fund with a total commitment of 2.5 billion HK dollars (322 million U.S. dollars) for the development of self-financing post-secondary education.

The fund will offer scholarships to students of self-financing post-secondary programs, and support institutions to enhance the quality of teaching and learning, he said.

Tsang also proposed to increase publicly-funded first-year- first-degree places to 15,000 for each cohort from the 2012-13 academic year, and to double senior year intake places to 4,000 each year to provide more articulation opportunities for sub-degree graduates.

Upon completion of these measures, he said over 30 percent of Hong Kong's young people in the relevant age group would have the chance to take self-financing or publicly-funded degree programs.

Tsang also said the city's government would increase opportunities for students to participate in Chinese mainland learning and exchange activities.

"Our target is to subsidize every primary and secondary school student to join at least one Mainland exchange program," he said.

The city would organize more exchange activities together with voluntary groups through the "Passing on the Torch" program, providing 4,000 additional places a year, Tsang said in his policy address.

Policy address is the annual address by the Chief Executive of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Usually, it is addressed in October, on the opening of the city's Legislative Council.

39

Self-funded Chinese students now ‘engine’ for US higher ed From: People’s Daily Online, October 09, 2010 http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90782/7160289.html

Along with the increasingly broad and deep educational exchanges between China and the United States in these 30 years, Chinese students have become a powerful "engine" for the U.S. higher education market.

China sent its first batch of 50 government-sponsored students to the United States in 1978, and there were about 100,000 Chinese students at U.S. universities and colleges in 2009.

Students from China have started studying in the United States at a younger and younger age, and their selection of majors has also become wider.

Hundreds of thousands of international students have not only become the United States' potential talent bank, but also provided the country with nearly 18 billion U.S. dollars in tuition fees each year. According to statistics from the U.S.-based Institute of International Education, there were over 670,000 foreign students in American higher education institutions in the 2008-2009 school year. Nearly 270,000 of them were undergraduates, and more than 280,000 were graduate students.

China has been one of the three countries with the most students in the United States in recent years, and now there are nearly 100,000 Chinese students in the United States, roughly the same number as that of India, which has sent the most students to the United States for several years.

Due to the shrinking U.S. economy and job market, fewer students from India and South Korea have gone to study in the United States, but the number of Chinese students is still increasing, and they have become a powerful "engine" for the U.S. higher education market.

The number of international students from China in American higher education institutions increased by 21 percent in the 2008-2009 school year, of which undergraduates rose by 60 percent and doctoral students rose by 130 percent.

According to U.S. media reports, even universities and colleges that used to be unpopular among Chinese students have admitted a large number of students from China, and it has become a tough problem for some American schools to prevent Chinese students from clumping together and speaking only Chinese.

American educators look forward to a further increase of students from China. Some education experts believe that China's higher education institutions are still unable to meet the domestic demand, and more Chinese families will send their children to study abroad along with the Chinese economic development. These experts, who "remain vigilant in time of peace," even suggested that the U.S. government should introduce new policies aimed at attracting more international students and better competing with Australia, Canada and other countries.

40

Africa

Study abroad to boost PhDs-proposal By: Sharon Dell From: University World News, October 17, 2010 http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20101015200903623

An expert study has recommended that a large number of South African students be sent abroad to study for doctoral degrees over the next 10 years, as one way to scale up the number of PhDs produced and boost the country's knowledge and innovation system. The proposal is one of 10 contained in a report launched last week by the Academy of Sciences of South Africa, Assaf.

It is based on 24 key findings about the South African PhD and embraces the fundamental premise that capacity in the current higher education system is inadequate to meet the national goal of 6,000 science, engineering and technology graduates by 2018 - a five-fold increase in current numbers.

Entitled The PhD Study: An evidence-based study on how to meet the demands for high-level skills in an emerging economy, the report highlights the need for a realistic assessment of existing national production capacity and resources. It also calls for a "creative plan" for moving the various elements of the science system in the same direction and proposes an "overarching and interconnected national planning strategy" to achieve it.

The study was authored by an eight-member team of education experts led by University of Free State Vice-chancellor Professor Jonathan Jansen. Taken together, its findings present a comprehensive sketch of the current South African PhD landscape.

South Africa produces between 23 and 27 PhDs per million of the population per annum. Between 2000 and 2007, this amounted to an average of 1,039 doctoral graduates per year.

Although numbers of PhDs are growing, at around 6%, South Africa sits at the lower end of the PhD production scale, completely outperformed by such countries as Portugal, which produces 569 PhDs per million of the population per annum, Australia, which produces 264 per million, Korea at 187 per million and Brazil at 48 per million. The United States and the United Kingdom produce 201 and 288 per million per annum, respectively.

The Assaf study found that in 2007, most doctoral graduates were white South African men in their thirties. Improvements in racial representation, the study found, were offset by similar increases in numbers of non-South African graduates, with the overall share of South African doctoral students decreasing from 89% in 2000 to 73% in 2007.

Most doctorates are produced in the social sciences, with these graduates outnumbering their counterparts in engineering sciences, materials and technology disciplines by five to one.

Among the report's recommendations is a call for urgent attention to so-called pipeline issues on the basis that "constraints on doctoral production lie deep within the school system".

According to the study, only 16% of school-leavers qualify for university entrance. "So, from the very start of undergraduate entry, the pool of available students from whom postgraduate entries will be determined, is very small,' the report states.

But there are also pipeline challenges within universities themselves - the structure and design of undergraduate programmes and the "anachronistic" honours degree which prevents students from entering a masters programme directly.

This prompted the study panel to recommend the introduction of stronger incentives for students in early postgraduate programmes and the creation of innovative programmes to 41 attract and retain larger student numbers.

Included in recommendations aimed at eliminating barriers to greater numbers of doctoral students and the pool of competent supervisors, the study suggests that the creation of graduate schools at individual institutions could enhance throughput rates and become centres for marketing, recruiting and retaining top doctoral students.

Defending the recommendation to send South Africans students to overseas' institutions, the Assaf study argues that inadequate numbers of competent supervisors is a "very real constraint" on the overall capacity of the higher education system to produce the requisite number of doctoral graduates.

The study found that the average ratio of doctoral students to supervisors in 2007 was about 2:1 across all institutions and only a third of all permanent academic staff members at public higher education institutions in South Africa hold a doctorate.

"There are simply not enough supervisors, even assuming all those available were qualified and that the supervisor [to] student ratio was equally spread. This means that any attempt to rapidly increase the number of doctoral graduates will have to happen outside of universities," the report states.

The study also suggests that public-private partnerships would have only limited impact on increasing student numbers as universities - as the only institutions able to award degree qualifications - would still need to be integrally involved.

It argues that the recommendation for sending PhD students to international universities "with massive external funding" has a successful precedent in the large number of United States- funded black postgraduate students who were sent to that country for tuition during the terminal years of apartheid. The report notes that over 90% of graduates returned to South Africa to work in government and the private sector.

The report estimates that the cost of producing 1,000 foreign-trained PhDs in 10 years to be about R2 billion and calls for leadership by the South African government, its major departments and the National Research Foundation in the implementation of such an initiative.

The injection of large numbers of externally-trained PhDs across all fields over the next decade would address the lack of supervisory capacity in South African institutions, inject intellectual diversity into the knowledge system, build bridges between local and international knowledge systems and introduce new approaches to graduate education, states the report.

Other recommendations include the expansion of funding levels for doctoral studies to enable more students to study full time, the promotion of public awareness around the significance of a PhD and the application of strong quality assurance measures to the PhD to prevent "irresponsible massification" of the degree in the light of funding incentives, and to improve quality.

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International

International group announces audit of University rankings By: Aisha Labi From: The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 26, 2010 http://chronicle.com/article/International-Group-Announces/124882/

University rankings organizations could soon find themselves on the receiving end of the kinds of evaluations that have made them so newsworthy and influential. At a conference here last week for academics and institutions focused on rankings, the organizer unveiled a project that would effectively rank the rankers.

The IREG Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence, which was created a few years ago to develop quality-control mechanisms for rankings, announced that a volunteer trial audit of two or three rankings will soon be under way.

The International Ranking Expert Group, or IREG, first met in Washington in 2004 and two years later came up with a set of principles on the ranking of higher- education institutions.

There has "always been the idea that IREG could evolve into a quality assurance" body, said Gero Federkeil, who oversees the rankings of German institutions by the CHE Centre for Higher Education Development, which co-hosted last week's conference.

As rankings proliferate around the world, they are increasingly having a direct impact on the decisions of students, academic staff, institutions, and policy makers, but each of those groups differs in its use of rankings and the sophistication it brings to evaluating them.

Less informed groups, such as students, "don't have a deep understanding of the limitations of rankings," Mr. Federkeil said, and an audit would provide an assessment tool for users. The rankers themselves also need to be held accountable for possible deficits in their tabulations or methodological flaws, he said.

The audit project, which he is helping to manage, will be based closely on IREG's principles, which emphasize clarity and openness in the purposes and goals of rankings, the design and weighting of indicators, the collection and processing of data, and the presentation of results.

"We all say that rankings should aim at delivering transparency about higher- education institutions, but we think there should be transparency about rankings too," Mr. Federkeil said. The audit process could eventually give rise to an IREG quality label, which would amount to an identification of trustworthy rankings, thereby enhancing the credibility of rankings and improving their quality, Mr. Federkeil said.

At the Berlin meeting last week, Mr. Federkeil and Ying Cheng, of the Center for World-Class Universities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which produces the best- known and most influential global ranking of universities, outlined the proposed methodology and procedure for the audit. The IREG executive committee will nominate audit teams consisting of three to five people. The chair of each team must not have any formal affiliation with a ranking organization, and at least one member of the audit team must be a member of the IREG executive committee. Audits will be 43 based on self-reported data as well as possible on-site visits, and each full audit is expected to take about five months to complete.

Skepticism and Unease

Whether the audit will actually work remains to be seen. Many of the people who attended the meeting expressed deep skepticism and unease about how effectively a rigorous and independent audit procedure could be applied.

"In principle, I think it's a good thing," said Ben Sowter, head of the intelligence unit at QS, which produces the QS World University Rankings. But "there is a long way to go before this audit looks like the kind of measure it needs to be."

Still, if it eventually evolves into a widely accepted and respected quality-assurance mechanism, the audit could become a useful tool "and enable us to counter some of the criticism that we receive," he added.

Robert J. Morse, director of data research at U.S. News & World Report, said the magazine would most likely participate in the audit, but only "after we fully understand the processes and how it's going to be scored."

He agreed that it is important for rankers to be held to standards and to be transparent in their work.

"We communicate very frequently with academics, but maybe we would need to also post in more detail about the mathematical processes and quality controls and other steps we take from the academic level, and that's something that we would consider doing," he said.

Mr. Morse and others also asked whether there would really be critical distance between the audit committee and IREG's executive committee.

Ellen Hazelkorn, executive director of the Higher Education Policy Research Unit at the Dublin Institute of Technology and a well-known critic of the growing influence of rankings in shaping institutional and governmental policy, noted that rankings have become an intensely competitive business, and that any audit procedures would need to be clear and open enough to ensure that competitors were not pronouncing on one another's work.

She also said that auditors should ensure that all constituencies are involved in the process, including academics, policy makers, and students.

"I think it could potentially go somewhere," she said of the audit project. "I'm just not sure as to how it would work and who might subject themselves to it."

Some people invoked a comparison between the proposed audit and the accreditation process in the United States, in which universities participate voluntarily, but Ms. Hazelkorn emphasized that "universities have a compulsion to participate in accreditation" in order to secure eligibility for such financial benefits as Pell Grants, and that such an incentive is absent in when it comes to rankings.

But Nian Cai Liu, dean of the Graduate School of Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which began producing the Academic Ranking of World Universities in 2003, applauded the effort. 44

"We need something, we need to start," he said. "I think there will be more and more rankings, but there will be in a sense be more concentration of rankings," he predicted. Those with an IREG approval label will grow in influence, but the rest will lose significance.