SCIENCE & EDUCATION

Along with the increasingly broad educational exchanges between China and the United States in the last 30 years, Chinese students have become a powerful 'engine' for the US higher education market, reports People's Daily Online.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced last week that US$20 million is up for grabs for education innovations in a new push to prepare high school students for college, writes Jenara Nerenberg for Fast Company.

The decision by a Chinese business school to set up in Africa highlights Western schools' reluctance to engage with the continent. FOR anyone seeking proof of the extent of China’s reach into Africa, this year’s graduation ceremony for executive MBA students at the partly state-run China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in Shanghai would have been a good place to start. Alongside the predominantly Asian faces delightedly collecting their degrees were 30 Ghanaians and 12 Nigerians—the inaugural cohort on CEIBS’s Africa programme.

The Higher Education Ministry is confident that the targeted increased intake of foreign students will help spur the economy, said its minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin. He said the ministry is targeting intake of 150,000 foreign students into Malaysia’s public and private higher learning institutions by 2015.

Business faculties that are selected into the Malaysian government's special programme for top business schools will enjoy some flexibility not offered to other institutions, writes Lee Yen Mun for The Star. The faculties are set to have their curriculum and resources enhanced under the Higher Education Ministry.

Lumina University, established in Bucharest by Turkish entrepreneurs with the goal of becoming the best in the region, has celebrated the start of its first academic year with a ceremony attended by Turkish and Romanian officials, reports Today's Zaman.

Some interesting new entrepreneurship programs at various business schools including the Carey School of Business at Johns Hopkins and international entrepreneurial experiences at Pace University. Entrepreneurship takes an eye for opportunity and a willingness to take risks, business school officials say. These new M.B.A. programs offer unconventional ways to help channel an entrepreneurial spirit.

The Great Mosque of Cordoba in Spain is the inspiration for the grand, domed entrance to the American University in Cairo’s new campus. Its architects wanted to symbolise the height of intellectual and mathematical achievement in Islamic civilisation.

Rotterdam School of Management (RSM), Erasmus University in the Netherlands has announced it will begin a new specialized Executive MBA program in Water Management in January 2011. The new program will be offered together with Wetsus, Center of Excellence for Sustainabile Water Technology.

Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) has announced a new, four-month, part-time Innovation and Entrepreneurship (PRIE) program for non-business Stanford University graduate students and local Bay Area residents.

Sixty years ago there were just 20 foreign students studying in China. By 2020, there should be 500,000. That's what will happen if a plan released last week by the Chinese Ministry of Education does what it sets out to do, reports The Independent.

The decline of Italy's universities, none of which currently appear in the world's top 200, is a constant source of lament among the country's chattering classes, writes Michael Day for The Independent. But the reason for this sorry state is laid bare by new research that shows the extent of nepotism in higher education.

The number of universities and academic programmes in Japan is rising, particularly among professional graduate schools. But there is one obvious problem: not enough students are signing up, writes Miki Tanikawa for The New York Times.

Higher education leaders from 17 countries last week agreed to a set of principles for assessing the quality of postgraduate education and research training. Employment skills, research supervision structures, student experience, research impact and communication, and interdisciplinary and global research experiences underpin the new global framework, or Brisbane principles.

Scotland’s elite universities have dropped down the world higher education rankings as part of a slump in Britain’s international standing.The universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, St Andrews and Aberdeen all dropped places in the 2010 global top-200 list.

Bursaries are failing to attract students from less privileged backgrounds to England's leading universities, research shows. A report by the Office for Fair Access says outreach work would be a more effective use of funds.  It found that a higher proportion of students from poorer backgrounds were attending universities with lower levels of bursary.

Brazil is not a hot spot on the international academic scene. Universities looking for institutional partners, foreign students looking to study abroad and professors searching for posts in other countries rarely consider Brazil as a first choice, writes Andrew Downie for The Chronicle of Higher Education. But circumstances are slowly changing.

The government is being urged not to encourage the expansion of private universities in England's higher education system.Universities Minister David Willetts has suggested that he would bring forward legislation to enable this.But UCU head Sally Hunt has warned against moving towards more US-style universities run for profit.

Rob Dixon, dean of Durham Business School, says that business schools must adapt to the new economic realities.THE challenges facing business schools and companies are inextricably linked. Both need to be agile, adapt quickly and avoid complacency in what is a changed economic landscape.

The Global Competitiveness Report published by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, is likely to raise concerns about dropping maths and science standards in Ireland, reports Sean Flynn for the Irish Times. The report ranks Ireland 24 out of 139 countries for maths and science, down 10 places since last year.