HE News Brief 6.9.11

by Abby Chau

• SCOTLAND: Collaboration between academia and businesses is on the surge
• INTERNATIONAL: Publication of the QS World University Rankings^®
• INTERNATIONAL: The correlation between university degrees and financial stability
• EU: Expanding the Erasmus beyond EU countries
• GREECE: New higher ed reforms amidst economic turmoil
  • According to a new report by Interface, a Scottish Funding Council supported organisation, the ties between academia and business is on the rise. They report that between 2010 and 2011, there was a 47% increase in collaboration. 2 million dollars’ worth of deals were signed in the past year, with 144 contracts in place. Interface director Siobhan Jordan says that this has helped Scotland’s growth. For example, the organisation helped to link a cruise company looking to increase its use of green energy with six institutions with the industry knowhow. Full Story: BBC News
  • The QS World University Rankings^®, which measures Academic and Employer Reputation, Faculty-Student ratio, Citations, and internationalisation, has been published recently. Cambridge topped the league tables with Harvard close behind. The top 50 is dominated by institutions in North America and the United Kingdom. Among the international institutions, ETH Zurich places at 18^th position, the University of Hong Kong at 22^nd, and the University of Tokyo at 25^th. Full Story: Guardian More: Huffington Post
  • The meme regarding whether university degrees are worth the paper they are written on has dominated the blogosphere. The latest musing discusses the augmentation of students pursuing higher education (22% increase in North America, 74% in Europe, 144% in Latin America, 203% in Asia) with the increase in the automation of white-collared jobs and the outsourcing of work, particularly in the I.T industry. Full Story: The Economist
  • Polish Minister for Higher Education, Barabara Kudrycka, has called for the expansion of the Erasmus programme, which a majority of European universities participates in and has a yearly budget of over $600 million dollars. The programme was hailed as the seed which sprung the Bologna Process because Erasmus has allowed students and faculty to transcend national borders in pursuit of higher education. The programme began in 1987 and has sent over two million students to study abroad. Kudrycka said that she would like to widen the programme to non-EU countries. Poland currently holds the EU presidency until December. Full Story: University World News
  • Amidst Greece’s economic woes, parliament has passed a bill which would revolutionise the country’s higher education system. The national quality assurance agency will now be managing the distribution of finances as well as overseeing how well an institution prepares their graduates for the job market. In addition, the bill calls for a revamping of university governance and selection of university leaders. Among the more controversial reforms is the doing away with the asylum provision that disallowed police to set foot on campus unless they had the permission of university administers, students, and faculty. Full Story: The Chronicle of Higher Education