SCIENCE & EDUCATION

Fostering global human resources seems all the rage these days and several Japanese universities are jumping in, opening their doors to foreign students who aren't proficient in Japanese in a bid to snatch top-class talent from around the world.Under the Global 30 project initiated by the education ministry last year, by the end of fiscal 2013 more than 130 undergraduate and graduate courses conducted completely in English will be launched at 13 universities acting as Japan's "global education hubs."The schools, selected by the education ministry, include the University of Tokyo and Waseda, Keio, Meiji and Nagoya universities. Global 30 is one of the measures launched to achieve a goal set out in 2008 by then Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda to attract 300,000 foreign students a year by 2020.

For the first time, more women than men in the United States received doctoral degrees last year, the culmination of decades of change in the status of women at colleges nationwide, writes Daniel de Vise for The Washington Post.

While researchers at universities and institutes in many Western countries fret about budget pressures, scientists in many Asian nations are translating huge investments in research and development into impressive gains in research output, writes Liz Gooch for The New York Times.

During the past six years, Australia has had rapid success in recruiting students from a relatively new market: Latin America, writes Janaki Kremmer for The Chronicle of Higher Education. Since 2004, enrolment of students from the region has risen from 7,000 to 34,000.

Students at Carleton University in Ottawa will have the option of renting their textbooks from the beginning of the upcoming semester, reports CBC News.The school's bookstore is one of six across Canada trying out Rent-A-Text, which has been a successful programme in the United States, where it has helped to reduce student study costs.

With a rapid increase in the number of Chinese graduates enrolling in PhD programmes in the past decade, it seems the quality of education doctoral students receive is falling short, writes He Dan for the official agency Xinhua.The survey, which interviewed 1,392 PhD candidates, degree holders, professors and employers, found several flaws in postgraduate education, especially PhD programmes, in the country.

Scientists and Engineers at The University of Nottingham have built the world's smallest ultrasonic transducers capable of generating and detecting ultrasound.These revolutionary transducers which are orders of magnitude smaller than current systems - are so tiny that up to 500 of the smallest ones could be placed across the width of one human hair.

The Indian School of Business will enrol more than 200 students on its new campus in Mohali, Punjab in April 2012, following the beginning of construction work there this month. The 70-acre campus, which will be completed by March 2010, will be ISB’s second campus in India - the school established its first campus in Hyderabad in 1999 with the help of international business schools such as Wharton, Kellogg and London Business School.

Lund University in southern Sweden has introduced a separate admissions process for foreign students after criticism that the current system discriminates against even those with top grades.Criticism has mounted in both Sweden and Denmark during the summer over the new admissions system introduced in time for the autumn term 2010.The criticism has partly concerned the fact that applicants with foreign qualifications end up in their own quota group which is at times so small that few, or even none, get accepted, despite sound merits.

Sweden's higher education and research minister proposed launching an elite program for young scientists on Wednesday, citing the need to improve Swedish research.In an article on Dagens Nyheter's opinion page on Wednesday, Krantz wrote that the proposed elite program would give young researchers the chance to receive good funding for a certain amount of time and greater freedom to develop their research.Scientists will be recruited from different scientific disciplines. When fully developed, the program is expected to include around 100 scientists. The inspiration for the proposal comes from a similar project in the US, which has produced good results.

Scottish universities are breaking new ground this summer - literally - as work begins on Heriot-Watt's bespoke £35 million (US$55.7 million) campus in the Middle Eastern state of Dubai, writes Jackie Kemp for The Guardian. Glasgow Caledonian has opened a campus in London to help it to attract international postgraduates and, also this year, a nursing college in Bangladesh. Napier University has opened a biofuel research centre in Hong Kong within the last few months and an office in India last year.

TOKYO (Kyodo). - Japan should increase the number of doctoral degree holders capable of being internationally competitive in their academic and business careers, a government white paper showed Tuesday. The white paper on science and technology refers to concerns that the number of doctoral students in Japan has been declining since hitting a peak in 2003, although the number of PhD holders in China and a number of other Asian countries has been increasing.

A government policy drawn up four years ago to double the output of PhD students in Ireland is midway through its term, reports The Post. But now there are questions about whether the plan is on the right track and if it still has the merit it once had.In 2004 an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) review found that Ireland was lagging significantly behind most of its EU neighbours in PhDs. In response, a government strategy was drawn up to cover the period between 2006 and 2013.

The number of foreign students studying in New Zealand has risen for the first time in six years.New Zealand Ministry of Education figures show that 10,167 international students were enrolled for new semester starting from March 1, posting 4 percent up from last year. Half the enrolled students are at schools in Auckland, mostly in secondary schools.

Singapore top students prefer scholarships by local universities, an annual survey by JobsFactory found.According to the survey of close to 3,000 students, the National University of Singapore (NUS) undergraduate scholarship is the most popular scholarship, local TV broadcaster Channel NewsAsia reported on Thursday.Other than the NUS undergraduate scholarship, two other NUS scholarships - the merit scholarship and the faculty scholarship - take up three places among the top five scholarships of choice for top students.

Education minister Tatsuo Kawabata on Thursday consulted with the Central Council for Education on whether to continue the teacher license renewal system and whether the teacher training period should be extended. During last year's election campaign, the Democratic Party of Japan pledged to lengthen the training period to six years, but Kawabata did not include a specific length for the training period on a consultative document.

As hot higher education ideas go, the three-year bachelor's degree continues to get a lot of attention and praise, writes Scott Jaschik for Inside Higher Ed. Most recently, an op-ed in The New York Times made the case for three years of undergraduate study. As more colleges have announced new three-year options, students haven't flooded the programmes, but the idea is increasingly cited as one that could be part of the solution to a range of problems, including rising college costs and low degree attainment for those whose parents didn't go to college.

All higher education institutions in India and authentic information about them will soon become available on an official single web portal, writes K Sandeep Kumar for Hindustan Times. The proposed site - which will carry information on institutions' courses, infrastructure and resources and links to their websites - will act as a single window for all students, Indian and foreign, interested in studying in institutions that are recognised by competent authorities and bodies. The portal will also be linked to the higher education website of United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation, which contains similar information about educational institutions in 30 countries.

When the Canadian government created a $200 million pot to attract up to 20 of the world's best researchers in four target areas, university administrators had no trouble finding 36 stars that they wanted to hire. Diversity was another matter, however, writes Kelli Whitlock Burton for Science Insider. The list of 19 researchers was announced last week. The inaugural class of Canadian Excellence Research Chairs (CERC) have two things in common: they are all illustrious scientists. And they are all men. In fact, not a single woman was even nominated.

Taiwan has an increasing number of doctorate degree holders, yet it's getting harder for them to find full-time professor jobs, local media reported yesterday, reports The China Post-Asia News. Citing data from the Ministry of Education, the reports said PhD holders increased 2.5 times, from 13,000 to 33,000, between 1999 and 2009. However, job openings at colleges and universities did not catch up with the rise.