Archive for the ‘Global Higher Education’ Category
Many questions as GRE format goes for revamp
The new format for the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), a standardised test required for admission to US universities, has led to apprehensions among city students. Geeta Garg, who wants to do PhD in Economics from a US university, said she is worried as no one knows what the new format will be like. “I am also a bit wary of the Analytical Writing section,” she said.
The new format was introduced on Monday and is the first major revamp in the exam structure since October 2002. The GRE consists of sections on Verbal Reasoning, Quantitative Reasoning and Analytical Writing.
The new format makes the test the longer, and the GRE now lasts four hours. In Verbal Reasoning, there will be “less reliance on vocabulary and more emphasis on reading”. Antonyms and analogies will no longer figure in the test. “This means less memorisation and more usage focus,” said an education advisor with the United States-India Educational Foundation. He added there will be more questions on Reading and Comprehension.
New navigation features, including the ability to edit or change answers and skip questions and go back to them later, within a section, will also be added to the test. In Quantitative Reasoning, there will be “Filling in a number or providing more than one response when asked”. Shaifali Singh, another GRE aspirant, said, “This could be tricky because if we miss even one correct answer, our response will be deemed incorrect.”
An on-screen calculator will be available under the new format. The advisor said the changes are friendly to the test-taker, but will require more concentration. Book stores have also started getting GRE study material based on the new format. “New course material for the re-designed test has starting coming in. In fact, in the past one month, we have sold some 50-60 books on the revised GRE,” said an employee of the Jain Book Agency in Connaught Place area of New Delhi.
Source: The Indian Express, August 2, 2011
>World’s top 100 universities: Reputations ranked by Times Higher Education
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The US boasts the most reputable universities in the world according to a new global reputation ranking out today. The list published today by the Times Higher Education, is the first of its kind looking solely at the reputations of institutions for teaching and research. Harvard comes top closely followed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) beating both Oxford and Cambridge universities.
The US dominates with seven universities in the top ten and a massive 45 in the total rankings. Taking 12 of the places in the top 100, the UK is second to the US with Cambridge university beating Oxford. Imperial College, University College London (UCL), London School of Economics and Edinburgh University also make the top 50.
The rankings also show Japan beating Canada, Australia and Germany with the flagship, University of Tokyo, at eighth place making it the only other nation apart from the US and UK to feature in the top ten.
With university fees rocketing and more applicants fighting for places, university reputation is set to be an even bigger focus for prospective students. Phil Baty, editor of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, said: “In an ever more competitive global market for students, academics and university administrators a university’s reputation for academic excellence is crucial.”
>Harvard Is the World’s Most Reputable University
>
Institutions of higher learning wondering what the world thinks of them can now point to a new Top 100 list for potential validation. The London–based Times Higher Education (THE) has ranked universities across the globe — according to their reputations for teaching and research. Harvard, which probably didn’t need a boost in self–esteem, takes the top spot, followed by MIT and Cambridge. Rounding out the top 10 are the University of California Berkeley, Stanford, Oxford, Princeton, Tokyo, Yale, and the California Institute of Technology. Nearly half of those on the entire list are in the United States. The UK trails the U.S. with 12, while Japan has five.
The new World Reputation Rankings are not to be confused with THE’s separate World University Rankings, which “included objective measures of research performance and funding.” The prestige rankings are based on a survey — conducted by Ipsos for THE’s rankings data provider, Thomson Reuters — of some 13,000 academics in 131 countries. The opinions were collected last year, and played a part in determining the University Rankings, which were published back in September. Schools that rank higher in reputation than they actually rank overall might have some soul–searching to do.
Source: Time, March 12, 2011
Indian students joining Oz courses down 50%
Indian student enrolment in Australia has declined by almost half following turmoil in its international education sector, legislative changes and global financial crisis.
In 2008-09, 65503 Indian passport holders were granted Australian student visas across all education sectors. But in 2009-10, the number fell to just 29721. Overall, 50540 fewer international students were granted visas to study in Australia in 2009-10 compared with 2008-09. According to The Age, global student visa numbers dropped over 16% last year. It was also said that the new figures were also due to student security issues putting pressure on student numbers.
A number of Indians were attacked in Australia triggering concerns. Stephen Connelly, President of International Education Association of Australia, said “drop was not surprising but very worrying. There is so much goodwill we generate from having international students in our country, and we are absolutely shooting ourselves in the foot at the moment”, he said.
Source: The Times of India, September 3, 2010
Indian students joining Oz courses down 50%
Indian student enrolment in Australia has declined by almost half following turmoil in its international education sector, legislative changes and global financial crisis.
Source: The Times of India, September 3, 2010
German varsities struggle to attract Indian students
Justus Liebig University in the student city of Giessen is named after the German chemist who gave the world artificial fertilizer and baking powder and was a member of its faculty alongside such luminaries of science as Wilhelm C. Roentgen, inventor of the X- ray. In December, the four century old institution acquired another distinction when linguistics professor Joybrato Mukherjee became its president (the equivalent of vice- chancellor in India) at age 35, the youngest to head a German university. Mukherjee was born in September 1973 to Bengali-Indian parents who moved to the Rhine valley area in the western part of then divided Germany in the 1960s. His father worked with a company that made agricultural machines. “I was born here, raised here, German is the language I am most comfortable in”, says Mukherjee, a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Bonn, who became a professor at Jus- tus Liebig at 29. “I know I am different. I don’t look German, there is something culturally (different) on top of my German identity”. His India connection perhaps partly explains why Mukherjee wants to attract talent from there to the university he heads, which has around 25,000 students in 11 faculties, and encourage academic exchanges with institutions in the country.
It won’t be easy and Mukherjee seems to know it. The language barrier isn’t easy to negotiate for Indians trained in English, or any other foreigner. Just 10% of the student strength at Justus Liebig, for instance, is from overseas. Germany doesn’t encourage foreigners staying over for employment after completing their education in the country, on ethical and economic grounds, although its ageing population means it needs young, skilled people for the future growth of Europe’s biggest economy.
The Anglo-Saxon orientation of Indian students and institutions doesn’t help either, although state-funded higher education is relatively inexpensive in Germany, costing as little as 500 per semester. German academia is against universities becoming profit vehicles and favours maintaining the purity of education and research, explaining why fees are so low, according to Mukherjee. “The language works against German universities”, says Mukherjee. “We are not like (universities in) Sweden and the Netherlands where every- thing is taught in English”.
He has been in touch with Indian universities, including Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi, to form strategic partnerships and exchange programmes that would help Justus Liebig University in drawing Indian students. He says the universities were unresponsive to his overtures. In Delhi, JNU spokesperson Poonam S. Kudaisya says there’s no reason why JNU, which has collaborations with “scores of universities”, would be unresponsive. “If they have not received any response, they should write to the coordinator, international collaboration, by giving reference of their earlier communication”, Kudaisya said.
Around 103,260 Indians students were studying in U.S. campuses in 2009, according to a report published in the Hindustan Times on 3 August. There are around 4,500 Indians — less than 5% of those in the U.S. — studying in German universities, according to the Indian embassy in Berlin. “It’s a pity”, says Klaus Tappeser, ministerial director, ministry of science, research and art, for the state of Baden-Wurttemberg, of which Stuttgart, a sister city of Mumbai, is the capital. “We have a language problem and we have a cultural problem”. Students from the country tend to prefer universities in the U.S. or the U.K. because courses are taught in English and also because they are home to large populations of people of the same origin, providing a comfort zone to Indians who tend to be “family-oriented”, Tappeser says. The U.S. is home to more than 2.2 million people of Indian origin and the U.K. to 1.5 million, according to the website of the ministry of overseas Indian affairs. Germany has 70,500 such people.
Sandeep S. Jolly, who runs a telecom business based in Berlin, recalls shifting in 1982 when he was fifteen-and-a-half to then West Berlin in divided Germany. His stepmother, a German, insisted on him going to school rather than spending all his time at his father’s grocery shop. “I did not speak German at all. I thought talking and knowing English would be fine”, says Jolly. “That was the main reason I shifted from Ludhiana to Bombay to a British standard school so that I could speak fluent English. I was quite disappointed when I came here because nobody spoke English with me”. Jolly had to take a German language course and repeat his ninth and tenth grade in a German school before going on to a pre-university course and then entering the Technical University in Berlin from where he graduated with a degree in information technology.
To get a job in Germany after studying in a university in the country isn’t easy for foreigners. Only those who earn a minimum 60,000 euros a year are allowed to work. Trade unions are worried about too many foreign workers finding employment, says Tappeser. Employment rules being eased for foreigners is a sensitive issue at a time when Germany is just starting to emerge from a recession that caused economic output to contract by 5% last year in the wake of the global financial crisis. Germany is discomfited by the idea of allowing foreign students to work in the country after they complete their education also on ethical grounds. “Do you want to attract international students at the cost of their home countries”, is the argument of those who are opposed to the idea, says Mukherjee.
German universities have been hit by the brain drain syndrome themselves, having seen the departure in past years of scholars and researchers for countries such as the U.S., which he is hoping will stop as American universities pare budgets, suspend pensions and cut back on research after the financial crisis. In Germany, professors can’t be fired even if a university has to shut down. “This is our chance really to stop the brain drain and turn it into brain regain”, Mukherjee says.
(Article written by Anil Penna who was lately in Germany as a guest of Robert Bosch Stiftung GmbH. Prashant Nanda contributed to this story).
Source: Mint, August 6, 2010
German varsities struggle to attract Indian students
Justus Liebig University in the student city of Giessen is named after the German chemist who gave the world artificial fertilizer and baking powder and was a member of its faculty alongside such luminaries of science as Wilhelm C. Roentgen, inventor of the X- ray. In December, the four century old institution acquired another distinction when linguistics professor Joybrato Mukherjee became its president (the equivalent of vice- chancellor in India) at age 35, the youngest to head a German university. Mukherjee was born in September 1973 to Bengali-Indian parents who moved to the Rhine valley area in the western part of then divided Germany in the 1960s. His father worked with a company that made agricultural machines. “I was born here, raised here, German is the language I am most comfortable in”, says Mukherjee, a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Bonn, who became a professor at Jus- tus Liebig at 29. “I know I am different. I don’t look German, there is something culturally (different) on top of my German identity”. His India connection perhaps partly explains why Mukherjee wants to attract talent from there to the university he heads, which has around 25,000 students in 11 faculties, and encourage academic exchanges with institutions in the country.
It won’t be easy and Mukherjee seems to know it. The language barrier isn’t easy to negotiate for Indians trained in English, or any other foreigner. Just 10% of the student strength at Justus Liebig, for instance, is from overseas. Germany doesn’t encourage foreigners staying over for employment after completing their education in the country, on ethical and economic grounds, although its ageing population means it needs young, skilled people for the future growth of Europe’s biggest economy.
The Anglo-Saxon orientation of Indian students and institutions doesn’t help either, although state-funded higher education is relatively inexpensive in Germany, costing as little as 500 per semester. German academia is against universities becoming profit vehicles and favours maintaining the purity of education and research, explaining why fees are so low, according to Mukherjee. “The language works against German universities”, says Mukherjee. “We are not like (universities in) Sweden and the Netherlands where every- thing is taught in English”.
He has been in touch with Indian universities, including Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi, to form strategic partnerships and exchange programmes that would help Justus Liebig University in drawing Indian students. He says the universities were unresponsive to his overtures. In Delhi, JNU spokesperson Poonam S. Kudaisya says there’s no reason why JNU, which has collaborations with “scores of universities”, would be unresponsive. “If they have not received any response, they should write to the coordinator, international collaboration, by giving reference of their earlier communication”, Kudaisya said.
Around 103,260 Indians students were studying in U.S. campuses in 2009, according to a report published in the Hindustan Times on 3 August. There are around 4,500 Indians — less than 5% of those in the U.S. — studying in German universities, according to the Indian embassy in Berlin. “It’s a pity”, says Klaus Tappeser, ministerial director, ministry of science, research and art, for the state of Baden-Wurttemberg, of which Stuttgart, a sister city of Mumbai, is the capital. “We have a language problem and we have a cultural problem”. Students from the country tend to prefer universities in the U.S. or the U.K. because courses are taught in English and also because they are home to large populations of people of the same origin, providing a comfort zone to Indians who tend to be “family-oriented”, Tappeser says. The U.S. is home to more than 2.2 million people of Indian origin and the U.K. to 1.5 million, according to the website of the ministry of overseas Indian affairs. Germany has 70,500 such people.
Sandeep S. Jolly, who runs a telecom business based in Berlin, recalls shifting in 1982 when he was fifteen-and-a-half to then West Berlin in divided Germany. His stepmother, a German, insisted on him going to school rather than spending all his time at his father’s grocery shop. “I did not speak German at all. I thought talking and knowing English would be fine”, says Jolly. “That was the main reason I shifted from Ludhiana to Bombay to a British standard school so that I could speak fluent English. I was quite disappointed when I came here because nobody spoke English with me”. Jolly had to take a German language course and repeat his ninth and tenth grade in a German school before going on to a pre-university course and then entering the Technical University in Berlin from where he graduated with a degree in information technology.
To get a job in Germany after studying in a university in the country isn’t easy for foreigners. Only those who earn a minimum 60,000 euros a year are allowed to work. Trade unions are worried about too many foreign workers finding employment, says Tappeser. Employment rules being eased for foreigners is a sensitive issue at a time when Germany is just starting to emerge from a recession that caused economic output to contract by 5% last year in the wake of the global financial crisis. Germany is discomfited by the idea of allowing foreign students to work in the country after they complete their education also on ethical grounds. “Do you want to attract international students at the cost of their home countries”, is the argument of those who are opposed to the idea, says Mukherjee.
German universities have been hit by the brain drain syndrome themselves, having seen the departure in past years of scholars and researchers for countries such as the U.S., which he is hoping will stop as American universities pare budgets, suspend pensions and cut back on research after the financial crisis. In Germany, professors can’t be fired even if a university has to shut down. “This is our chance really to stop the brain drain and turn it into brain regain”, Mukherjee says.
(Article written by Anil Penna who was lately in Germany as a guest of Robert Bosch Stiftung GmbH. Prashant Nanda contributed to this story).
Source: Mint, August 6, 2010
US recovery far, invest in education: Bill Gates
Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, said on January 25 that the U.S. economy could take years to recover from recession and predicted taxes will have to rise to bring the federal budget into balance. Speaking on ABC’s “Good Morning America”, Gates also warned against too much government intervention and urged President Barack Obama to focus policy on long-term issues such as education to combat the effects of the worst recession since the Great Depression. “When you have a financial crisis like that, it’s years of digging out,” said Gates, who co-founded Microsoft and remains its Chairman.
US recovery far, invest in education: Bill Gates
Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, said on January 25 that the U.S. economy could take years to recover from recession and predicted taxes will have to rise to bring the federal budget into balance. Speaking on ABC’s “Good Morning America”, Gates also warned against too much government intervention and urged President Barack Obama to focus policy on long-term issues such as education to combat the effects of the worst recession since the Great Depression. “When you have a financial crisis like that, it’s years of digging out,” said Gates, who co-founded Microsoft and remains its Chairman.
Indian students number in Oz may drop by half: Study
In the backdrop of a spate of racial attacks in Australia, Down Under could witness about a 50 per cent drop in Indian students in the next session, according to an international educational recruiter. “In our India offices we’re expecting our 2010 February intake to be down by about 50 per cent,” IDP Education chief executive Tony Pollock said, according to an ABC report. IDP which works with 400 institutions across Australia and takes in 35,000 students released a survey today conducted on over 6,000 students from eight countries including 1,100 students from India.
The survey was to find out what foreign students thought about Australia in comparison to other English speaking destination, he said. “The somewhat surprising result and indeed promising result is that they believe Australia to be the safest destination,” the survey said.
In the backdrop of a spate of racial attacks in Australia, Down Under could witness about a 50 per cent drop in Indian students in the next session, according to an international educational recruiter. “In our India offices we’re expecting our 2010 February intake to be down by about 50 per cent,” IDP Education chief executive Tony Pollock said, according to an ABC report.
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