EducationWorld May 12

Higher education has become the latest battlefield in the polarising campaign among Republicans vying to challenge Barack Obama after one candidate branded the president “a snob” for suggesting that more Americans should go to university. “There are good, decent men and women who go out and work hard every day and put their skills to the test that aren’t taught by some liberal college professor that (tries) to indoctrinate them,” declared US senator Rick Santorum. He previously said that universities’ “radical secular ideology” strips students of their religious faith. “The indoctrination that occurs in American universities is one of the keys to the Left holding and maintaining power in America,” he added. But while such pronouncements have won tentative applause from ardently conservative supporters, observers doubt they will resonate with many voters. Polls by the San Jose-based Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) show 60 percent of Americans consider a university degree essential to succeeding in the job market, up from 30 percent just 10 years ago. Pundits have also gleefully observed that Santorum has an undergraduate degree and a law degree from Pennsylvania State University and a Masters in business administration from the University of Pittsburgh. Indeed, he is part of a field that may be among the most educated ever to run for president. The current Republican frontrunner, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (an alumnus of Brigham Young University who has two advanced degrees from Harvard University) would address the shortage of Americans with maths, science and engineering skills by granting permanent residence to foreign-born graduates with advanced degrees in those fields from US institutions. Meanwhile Santorum’s suggestion that expecting everyone to go to college is elitist seems to be making little headway. “Politically, in all my years I never heard anybody run for office say: ‘I’m going to make this…a better place by having fewer people go to college,’” says Pat Callan, the president of Hepi. (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)

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The Chinese government’s budget for basic research is set to increase by more than 25 percent this year, according to Science magazine’s Science Insider website. A draft budget published last week pledges more than 32 billion yuan (Rs.25,600 crore) for basic research in 2012. This represents a 26 percent increase on last year’s budget. Overall, Chinese state spending on science and technology is set to increase by more than 12 percent to nearly 230 billion yuan (Rs.184,000 crore). The news follows a succession of lavish increases for Chinese science funders in recent years. The budget of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the country’s main competitive funding agency, was doubled between 2009-2011. The impact of increased funding has been reflected in higher output. A report prepared for the UK’s department for business, innovation and skills last year by Elsevier shows China’s production of published research papers rose from just under 200,000 in 2006 to more than 330,000 in 2010. Likewise Thomson Reuters shows that China’s share of physics papers produced globally rose from 8.2 percent in 2001 to 18.6 percent in 2010. However, the quality of China’s papers continues to lag behind those of Western countries. The citation impact of its physics papers, for instance, has barely improved in the past decade and still languishes well below the world average. But a report prepared by Elsevier last year shows that China is increasing its world share of papers in 95 percent of fields in which it is already strong. (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)

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Two UK institutions have dropped out of Times Higher Education’s academic prestige Top 100 in the face of increased competition from Asia and mainland Europe. Harvard University tops the Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings, published on March 15, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Cambridge — an unchanged top three from last year’s inaugural survey. Stanford University leapfrogs its neighbour, the University of California, Berkeley, to take fourth spot, while the University of Oxford completes an elite group of six “super brands”. The US dominates the rankings, based on a worldwide poll of more than 17,500 academics, with 44 universities in the global top 100, followed by the UK with 10 institutions. However, both nations have ceded ground to universities in East Asia and continental Europe. Meanwhile, Chinese universities have performed well, with Tsinghua University up to 30th from 35th place and Peking University rising to 38th from 43rd. The University of Hong Kong, National Taiwan University and the National University of Singapore all rose this year, while Japan has five institutions in the top 100. New entrants include the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in Israel, University of São Paulo, Brazil, and the Middle East Technical University, Turkey. Wendy Piatt, director general of the Russell Group of large research-intensive universities — which represents all 10 UK entries in the top 100 — suggests that the rise of other countries’ institutions reflects greater state investment in higher education. “The UK’s leading universities punch well above their weight, and their global reputation remains very strong. But we are concerned that our global competitors in the US, East Asia and Europe are pumping billions into higher education, and money really matters,” says Piatt. According to Phil Baty, editor of the Times Higher Education rankings, while top reputations can take many years, even centuries, to build, in today’s information-rich and interconnected world, universities cannot sit back and rely on their history. “New forces are emerging and signs of declining performance are quickly identified, shared and spread. Established reputations can be highly vulnerable. Our data provide clear evidence that in terms of prestige among academics around the world, there is the start of a power shift from the West to East,” says Baty. (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)

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In the run-up to the french presidential elections, the Socialist Party is insisting it will not backtrack on the current government’s controversial overhaul of higher education. Instead the party promises more funds for academia as investment in “economic development”. But despite widespread belief that substantially increased tuition fees are on the agenda for the next government regardless of its political hue, it remains an issue that neither the Socialist Party nor president Nicolas Sarkozy’s ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) dare address head on. “I’m all for universities gaining greater autonomy,” said Socialist presidential hopeful François Hollande in April last year, referring to a reform by the right-of-centre government that sparked massive protests in 2009. In 2007, Sarkozy completely overhauled higher education, giving public universities more autonomy and allowing them to raise funds from private sources. The reform was deeply resented and perceived as a first step towards cutting state funding for higher education. “Political parties who can’t see that academics want this reform repealed suffer from amnesia,” says Stéphane Tassel, head of the academic union SNESUP. Hollande says he will not repeal the reform, but wants to simplify funding and give state universities real freedom by investing in higher education. But with the economic crisis hitting France hard, his party is reluctant to put a figure on its ambitious investment plan for higher education. Hollande banks on reducing tax loopholes, and on France pulling out of the recession — a risky bet given that the eurozone is still reeling from the debt crisis. Sarkozy’s UMP is also reluctant to set out clear targets for the future. Currently, even keeping old promises is a challenge. In 2009, Sarkozy launched a loan programme to invest Euro 35 billion (Rs.234,500 crore) in the French economy, earmarking Euro 19 billion for higher education and research. In an interview with Le Monde, Laurent Wauquiez, the minister for higher education, insisted his government is “catching up on 30 years of funding shortages for higher education”. “We have started. But to succeed, we have to continue depending on the means at the state’s disposal.” Academics are still disappointed that neither of the two main parties has set out tangible investment targets for higher education. French state universities are underfunded — Paris-Sorbonne University (Paris IV) spends only about Euro 3,000 (Rs.2 lakh) per year per student, in contrast to the Euro 110,000 (Rs.73 lakh) spent on an undergraduate at Princeton University in the US, according to figures cited by the BBC in 2009. “It’s embarrassing that the parties are not displaying high ambitions for academia,” says Yves Lecointe, president of Nantes University. “But given the state of the economy we couldn’t expect much.” The Conférence des Grandes Écoles (CGE), an organisation that represents elite institutions, is calling on the government to allocate an extra Euro 20 billion (Rs.134,000 crore) — 1 percent of GDP — to higher education. The CGE suggests that students should contribute tuition fees amounting to Euro 3,000 (Rs.2 lakh) after they have…

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In November, 600,000 Colombian students walked out of lectures in protest at what they saw as the increasing privatisation of higher education in the country. Their action prompted the government to back down from plans to reform Law 30, enacted in 1992, which among other things accords higher education in the country the status of a public service. According to Andy Higginbottom, principal lecturer in international politics and human rights at Kingston University, the reforms would have “effectively (privatised) the remaining public sector aspects of higher education” in Colombia. But having noted the students’ campaign, which was supported by a number of academics, the government has now relaxed its stance and will enter into talks with the Colombian public, including students and educators. Colombians can now contribute to the reform process by posting their views on a consultation website. President Juan Manuel Santos’ government hopes this will address a crucial grievance behind the walkout: a feeling among protesters that the reform process is undemocratic as it lacks public discussion — particularly with students. The principles now up for debate are: the requirement that all Colombians should have equal access to higher education no matter what their background; the assurance of education quality and relevance; regional equity; and financial and institutional stability. These issues were also on the agenda in February when 32 university presidents met at the National University of Colombia’s Medellin campus to discuss how they could help to draft a reform bill that would focus primarily on students. Pressure group Justice for Colombia estimates that public funding for universities had dropped from 84 percent to 51 percent of the education budget. In spite of the government’s offer of dialogue, the group accuses President Santos of fudging the difference between education as a service and as a human right. The government’s decision to put its controversial reform programme on hold and engage its critics suggests it is listening to its opponents. But students and academics sympathetic to opposition concerns are withholding judgement until they find out what happens once the consultation process has concluded. (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)

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Giving a child a computer does not seem to turn him or her into a future Bill Gates — indeed it does not accomplish anything in particular. That is the conclusion from Peru (pop.29 million), epicentre of the largest single programme involving One Laptop per Child, an American charity with backers from the computer industry and which is active in more than 30 developing countries worldwide. Peru is enjoying an economic boom, but has one of Latin America’s worst education systems. Flush with mining revenues, the previous government embraced the laptop initiative. It spent $225 million (Rs.1,147 crore) to supply and support 850,000 basic laptops to schools throughout the country. But Peruvians’ test scores remain dismal. Only 13 percent of seven-year-olds were at the required level in maths and only 30 percent in reading, the education ministry reported in March. An evaluation of the laptop programme by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) found that even after  working on computers, the children did not show any improvement in maths or reading. Nor did it find evidence that access to a laptop increased motivation, or time devoted to homework or reading. The report applauded the government for providing much-needed hardware: less than a quarter of Peruvian households owned a computer in 2010. “But it now needs to improve teacher-training and the curriculum,” says Julian Cristia of IDB. Above all, the classroom environment needs to change. Part of the problem is that students learn faster than many of their teachers, according to Lily Miranda, who runs a computer lab in a state school in San Borja, a middle-class area of Lima. Sandro Marcone, who is in charge of educational technologies at the ministry, agrees. “If teachers are telling kids to turn on computers and copy what is being written on the blackboard, then we have invested in expensive notebooks,” says Marcone. It certainly looks like that. (Excerpted and adapted from The Economist)

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A member of the Afghan parliament is attempting to level the playing field to ensure that female students from the country’s more remote and unstable provinces have the same access to higher education as their urban-educated peers. Mujeeb u-Rehman Chamkani, an MP for Paktia, a remote, mountainous and unsettled province in southeast Afghanistan, is pressuring the government to implement a policy that will automatically grant extra points to young women from remote provinces writing university entrance examinations. Violence in the more volatile, distant and poor provinces of Afghanistan, especially in the east and south, prevents many children from attending school. Girls are at an even bigger disadvantage because cultural and social norms stop many from attending secondary school. Last year Dr. Chamkani successfully lobbied Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s president, to help Paktia’s young women. Karzai instructed the ministry of higher education to add an extra 20 points to the entrance exam scores of women from remote provinces. His initiative ultimately helped not only young women from Paktia but also from Helmand, Kandahar and Ghazni. Dr. Chamkani is attempting to have the initiative repeated this year. On January 28, 75 young women from Paktia took university entrance exams along with thousands of male students. “If the ministry of higher education sticks to the standards (for admissions), it is clear girls from Paktia will not get a higher education,” says Dr. Chamkani, insisting he is not asking for anything illegal and that women have a right to education. However, there has been resistance to the initiative in Afghanistan’s governing council of ministers, mainly because of tribal and ethnic rivalries within the government. As access to education is more difficult in the unsettled Pashtun ‘belt’ of the country, it is mainly Pashtuns who will benefit from the scheme. This is something members of other ethnic groups in the government are unhappy about. “I am trying my best to make them understand that this is in the best interests of all Afghans,” says Dr. Chamkani. (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)

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A proposal to sanction the use of indigenous languages in primary schools in polyglot Timor-Leste (East Timor) has divided members of government, civil society and educators, raising questions about how language can spur harmony — or discord — in the young nation. The ‘mother-tongue’ programme is spearheaded by the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco), which has promoted similar programmes in other countries. Programme organisers say children best develop cognitive skills when taught in the language spoken at home during their early years of school, rather than in official national languages — Tetum and Portuguese in the case of Timor-Leste — which are less commonly used in community settings. About one in five children in Timor-Leste must repeat the first year of schooling, and half of the students who enroll in primary school do not complete it, according to the most recent UN Human Development Report. “Portuguese resonates historically, socially and culturally for Timorese like no other language, but the reality is that in many homes across Timor-Leste, neither (Tetum or Portuguese) is the first language of communities, so their use inhibits (children’s) ability to acquire new knowledge,” Kirsty Sword-Gusmão, an Australian-born social activist who is head of the country’s Unesco office, told IRIN. Poor education and the limitations it imposes on job opportunities for young people are among the leading potential causes of future friction, she adds. Youth gang violence has until recently been problematic in cities, but is now declining. Portugal controlled Timor-Leste as a colony until 1975. Less than two weeks into Timor-Leste’s independence, Indonesia invaded and began a brutal 24-year occupation. A quarter of the island nation’s population perished under Indonesian rule. Many of Timor-Leste’s independence leaders were educated in Portuguese and have promoted it as the language of resistance to emphasise historical and cultural differences between their would-be nation and surrounding island territories controlled by Indonesia. They also deemed Portuguese to be a neutral language among the people of Timor-Leste, which has dozens of indigenous languages. When Timor-Leste achieved independence, its leaders chose Portuguese and Tetum as the country’s official languages and media of instruction in schools. Though most adults in Timor-Leste speak Tetum, many have a tenuous grasp of the language during their early years of schooling. The mother-tongue programme will facilitate instruction to students in the language spoken at home during their initial years at school, after which Tetum and Portuguese will be gradually included. A pilot programme is scheduled to be introduced in 12 primary schools across the country. Opponents say the project will be difficult to implement because most of the country’s indigenous languages have little or no script and limited vocabularies. More importantly, they argue, mother-tongue instruction could jeopardise national unity in a country with less than a decade of self-rule and a history of bloody flare-ups derived from regional factionalism. “This policy would inculcate a sense of division… it would slowly start to destroy national identity and unity,” said a statement reflecting the strong opposition to the plan…

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