- Asia: UNESCO Report Advises More R&D
- US: Intl Students: Why they Stay or Leave
- Singapore:Rise of International Academics
- Turkey:Turkish university to open in U.S.
A report by the UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS) has found that global higher education enrolments increased from 32.6 million in 1970 to 182.2 million in 2011. Forty-six per cent of growth was in the East and South East Asia region due to changes in demographics, school participation and the public’s improved perception of higher education. As a result universities and governments alike have been put under pressure to respond to the explosion in demand and have done so mainly by constructing new universities, expanding graduate level programmes, and increasing tuition fees. The report, Higher Education in Asia: Expanding out, Expanding up, brings together data on expansion strategies from different sources in 26 Asian countries to be a guide for future policy makers in the region. Rising the global profile of universities in world rankings is another key objective of governments. The report compares the systems of the THE World University Rankings, Academic Ranking of World Universities and the the QS World University Rankings and how they impact university development.
The main sources of dissatisfaction for international undergraduate students at U.S. institutions relate to finances, according to new research on retention released today at the annual NAFSA: Association of International Educators conference. International students who responded to a national survey cite access to jobs or internships (37 percent), affordability (36 percent) and availability of scholarships (34 percent) as their main reasons for dissatisfaction, followed distantly by meal plans (26 percent) and quality of housing (17 percent). Students who do not plan to transfer from their college of first enrollment are more than twice as likely to say that institutional aid or scholarships are among their top two sources of funding than are students who intend to transfer. Students who do not plan to transfer also have higher grades: although the majority of students in the sample reported relatively high grade point averages of 2.9 or above, those who intend to transfer are more likely to report GPAs on the lower end of that scale — 2.9 to 3.4 — than are their peers who don’t plan to transfer (42 versus 30 percent). This suggests, not surprisingly, that academic preparedness issues play a role in driving attrition even if students don’t explicitly cite academic difficulties as a reason for dissatisfaction.
Singapore has been rising in international university rankings, spurred by strong research and an international outlook. That comes down to a will to attract academics and students from overseas to its shores.However, with growing local disquiet over immigration generally, the rising proportion of foreigners in the city-state – including academics – is becoming highly political. Some Singaporean academics are talking of an ‘imbalance’ being caused by hiring many international academics and researchers.And some young Singaporean doctoral students and faculty members fear they are being passed over for academic jobs and promotions in favour of professors from abroad.
Bahcesehir University, a private, Turkish university, will commence operations in Washington DC in September, the university’s chairman and founder, Enver Yucel, said Tuesday. Meanwhile Sinem Vatanartiran, founder rector of Bahcesehir University, said “at first the politics, international affairs and economic-finance departments will be accepting students for undergraduate education and students will also be able to apply for postgraduate education in Executive Master of Business Administration and Economic Law.” Vatanartiran added that the University will require the same criteria as other American universities and will have both American and Turkish teaching staff as well as the capacity for 3,000 students.
