A new wave of comprehensive schools backed by firms including the developers of the BlackBerry, Toshiba, Boeing and Rolls Royce will open in England next year as part of a new generation of vocational schools in which businesses will help shape the curriculum.Known as university technical colleges, the schools include one in Newcastle with a focus on engineering; one in Liverpool, specialising in life sciences and backed by the pharmaceutical firm Novartis, and one in Plymouth backed by the Royal Navy and Babcock, which manufactures defence equipment.Research in Motion, which developed the BlackBerry smartphone, will be one of the business partners of a school in Buckinghamshire, which is also being backed by Hewlett Packard and Cisco.

Denmark has launched the first-ever website which would enable talented Chinese students and professionals to connect directly with Danish universities and firms.Backed by top Danish companies and universities, the Sino-Danish Network (www.sinodanishnetwork.com) aims to become a platform for Danish companies to recruit from the pool of future Chinese talents, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.The website's partners include leading Danish companies such as Arla Foods, Carlsberg, Chr. Hansen, Danfoss, Grundfos and Maersk, which will provide the network with open vacancies for Chinese students and professionals.

Abu Dhabi: Abu Dhabi University has announced an e-learning programme that will offer undergraduate and postgraduate online courses starting this academic year. The online courses will follow the regulations given by the ministry of higher education and scientific research.

The movement to make research freely available got a high-profile boost this week with the news that Princeton University’s faculty has unanimously adopted an open-access policy. “The principle of open access is consistent with the fundamental purposes of scholarship,” said the faculty advisory committee that proposed the resolution.The decision puts the university in line with Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a growing number of other institutions with policies that encourage or require researchers to post open copies of their articles, usually in an institutional repository.

A university mapped out its blueprint for a new super-institution bringing together partners in southeast Wales. The University of Wales, Newport, talked of a new era for higher education in the region which would leave behind "any competition and rivalry that may have hampered collaboration in the past", writes Gareth Evans for the Western Mail.The new institution would be led by one vice-chancellor and a single management team, but would maintain "locally focused brands and missions" for each of its constituent parts. It would be called the University of South-East Wales or South Wales Metropolitan University, with an add-on specific to its location.

In a bid to extend its global footprint, Chinese business school Ceibs is to teach its first executive programme in Europe. The school, which started life in Shanghai but now has several campuses across China, already teaches an Executive MBA degree - an MBA for working managers - in Ghana.

New Zealand is aiming to expand its education services abroad to treble the number of foreign students enrolled and to double the economic value of international education to 5 billion NZ dollars (4.1 billion U.S. dollars) over the next 15 years.Tertiary Education Minister Steven Joyce Tuesday released the first version of the "International Education Leadership Statement," which "sets bold aspirations for the growth" that New Zealand wanted to achieve over the next 15 years.Doubling the economic value of international education to New Zealand was at the heart of the government's statement, said Joyce.

Five underperforming public universities in South Korea will have to undergo drastic reforms under government supervision, the education ministry said Friday.The five state-funded four-year universities -- Kangwon National University, Chungbuk National University, Gangneung-Wonju National University, Kunsan National University and Busan National University of Education -- are required to draw up reform measures by January next year and have the government check the progress each quarter.

Colleges and universities across Scotland are set to be merged under a major shake-up of further and higher education.Education secretary Mike Russell outlined plans for removing what he called "wasteful duplication" across the college sector, by establishing regional groupings of institutions.He also called for greater collaboration between Scotland's universities, outlining the possibility of mergers there too if they made "educational and financial sense".

As widely expected, applications to MBA programmes have dropped this year, according to the latest statistics from the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC), which administers the GMAT test, widely regarded as the entrance test for business school. But applications to specialised masters degrees are on the up.Two-year MBA programmes, the bread and butter of US business schools, have been particularly badly hit. More than two-thirds (67 per cent) of business schools offering two-year, full-time MBA programmes reported a decline in application volume in 2011 compared with 2010.

Carnegie Mellon University plans to open a branch campus in Rwanda next year, making it one of the few American colleges offering degrees in Africa.While a number of American universities work on the continent, often establishing partnerships with local institutions on research, faculty-training programs, and other educational ventures, Carnegie Mellon's appears to be the largest commitment to date.The Pittsburgh-based institution will be the first American university to operate a full-fledged campus in Africa, said Kevin Kinser, co-director of the Cross-Border Education Research Team at the State University of New York at Albany, which tracks branch campuses worldwide.

New laws will be introduced to discourage government university lecturers joining private universities, Higher Education Minister S B Dissanayake said. The minister said laws will be introduced to prevent government lecturers joining as full time staff of private universities within three years after resigning from state universities. “However, government university teachers will not be prevented from functioning as visiting lecturers of private universities,” he added. Higher Education Ministry sources said that the ministry has decided to initiate these measures since there is a tendency for state university lecturers vacating their posts to join private universities for better perks and privileges.

The Malaysian government is conducting a study to find out the total number of universities - public and private - needed by the country in order to produce the desired number of graduates. Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Khaled Nordin said the purpose of the study was to maintain the quality of Malaysian universities and strengthen the higher education sector, writes Husna Yusop for The Sun Daily.

A failure to retain female researchers remains a major barrier to recruiting an extra 1 million researchers by 2020, a leading European official has warned. Stefaan Hermans, head of the European Commission's research and innovation unit, said too many female postgraduate researchers were dropping out of a research career because entry-level jobs were "precarious" and unsuited to family life. Speaking this week at an international conference in Manchester organised by the research career development body Vitae, Mr Hermans said the lack of women in the profession could frustrate the commission's efforts to recruit an extra 1 million researchers by 2020.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has lifted its two-year-old ban on MPhil and PhD courses through correspondence, the U-turn apparently forced by legal opinion against the move following protests from universities.Open universities like Ignou and several general universities had protested the ban on the ground that their respective laws, passed by Parliament or legislatures, allowed them to offer such courses. Ignou had even continued to offer such programmes. Faced with the resistance, the higher education regulator sought legal opinion on whether it could override such powers conferred by the acts to the universities.

LONDON, Sept. 6. - One of China's top business schools opened an office in London on Tuesday.The Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (CKGSB) is Chinese mainland's first "homegrown" business school to establish an overseas branch. The school seeks to provide customized business courses for European executives who are or will be dealing with business issues related to China and the rest of Asia.CKGSB's European branch will offer leading corporate clients insights into China's economy and businesses, like how multinational corporations, state-owned enterprises and private companies compete and collaborate in China, East Asia and even in the global market.

The Higher Education Relevance and Quality Agency (HERQA) of Ethiopia announced last week that it had banned five private higher education institutions because of quality concerns, writes Yonas Abiye for Ezega.com.The agency also said it had given another 13 private colleges one year to improve the quality of their education and achieve the necessary standards based on the inputs and directives the agency demands.

Sri Lanka is on track to attract about 10 foreign universities under an initiative to expand tertiary education, with the Bangkok-based Asian Institute of Technology among them, reports Lanka Business Online. The AIT is expected to set up a campus in Hambantota in southern Sri Lanka, Higher Education Ministry Secretary Sunil Jayantha Navaratne said. India's Manipal University is to set up a campus near Negombo, north of Sri Lanka's capital Colombo.

The first qualifying round of the Sweden-India Nobel Memorial Quiz 2011 will be held in this tech hub Sep 10, the Swedish embassy said on Thursday.Being organised by the embassy in partnership with leading Swedish firms operating in India during the upcoming Nobel Memorial Week, the inter-collegiate quiz contest will celebrate the spirit and contribution of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish innovator, entrepreneur and philanthropist."The quiz will bring together undergraduate and post-graduate students from colleges and institutes in the city. Winners of the Bangalore round will represent the city at the grand finale to be held October 15 at IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) in New Delhi," the embassy said in a statement.

Malaysia is the 11th most sought-after country for tertiary education among international students, reports the official agency Bernama. Private Higher Education Institutions Deputy Director-general Datin Dr Siti Hamisah Tapsir said last week that Malaysia now accounts for 2% of the international student population around the world.