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.

Stockholm University is not only one of the largest universities in Scandinavia, with around 50,000 students, but is also generally ranked among the top 100 universities worldwide. That makes it a great choice for prospective students in search of a vibrant and diverse study environment.The institution has recently made great strides in its efforts to further international cooperation, in a bid to remain at the forefront of internationalization of the higher education sector.Earlier this year, Stockholm University's board voted to set aside 38 million kronor ($6 million) for increasing international research cooperation and recruiting overseas students. The cash will be made available in 2012 and 2013 but the internationalization investment, known as Stockholm University Academic Initiative, is already well underway.The investment will also finance visits from prominent guest lecturers, research trips, as well as ambassadorship activities, aimed at increasing connections between Stockholm University and other participating institutions.

Universities are raising their fees for home and European Union postgraduate students sharply, a survey suggests, prompting warnings about access to academia and other professions.The National Survey of UK Tuition Fees, for the coming 2011-12 academic year, indicates that rises in taught postgraduate fees for home and EU students outstrip increases for non-EU postgraduates and undergraduates.Based on data gathered from 147 UK higher education institutions, the fees survey shows that taught home/EU postgraduate fees range from £3,400 to £31,738.

The Taiwan-based Buddhist monastic order Fo Guang Shan has combined its four institutions of higher learning, located in three different countries, to establish Taiwan's first private inter-university system, reports Taiwan Today."Besides integrating resources available to the universities and facilitating the sharing of their academic research, this new system will help increase each school's international competitiveness," said Yung Chaur-shin, President of Fo Guang University.

Five international business schools are pooling resources to address some of the critical issues at the intersection of business and society. The five - the Tuck school at Dartmouth (US), Essec (France), Mannheim Business School (Germany), Fudan University (Shanghai) and Keio Business School (Tokyo) will work together on specific research topics and present the results at an annual conference.The Council on Business and Society, as the group is called, will hold its first conference in Paris towards the end of 2012 and the topic will be corporate governance and leadership.

For a small islands nation, Fiji has too many universities that are creating waste and un-necessary duplication of roles and courses, a Fiji-born lawyer and former diplomat has said, writes Samisoni Pareti for Islands Business.And Ravindran Robin Nair, who held the rare distinction of serving as a lawyer and diplomat for the governments of the country of his birth, Fiji, and his adopted country Australia, is proposing major changes to the focus and structure of the three universities currently based in Fiji - the University of the South Pacific (USP), University of Fiji (UOF) and the Fiji National University (FNU).

Foreign universities are getting ready to grab a bigger slice of the education pie in China by firming up their existing partnerships and forging new alliances with Chinese educational institutions. Much of the optimism in Western academic institutions stems from China's strong economic growth, the increased spending power of its citizens and its growing demand for quality education.At the same time, several extraneous factors like the global financial crisis and economic weakness in the United States and Europe have also forced several of these venerable educational institutions to seek greener pastures in countries such as China and India to offset their flagging revenues.

AUSTRALIAN universities are so chronically under-funded in their teaching activities that every domestic undergraduate is effectively subsidised to the tune of $1200 by international student fees. That almost matches the commonwealth's own subsidy for domestic law and business students of $1765 a year.Glyn Davis, vice-chancellor of the University of Melbourne, yesterday warned that this reliance meant that crashing international student numbers risked undermining the Gillard government's policies to dramatically boost domestic university participation.

A hard-hitting review of engineering research in Irish universities and its potential for making a contribution to economic development was recently published by the Irish Academy of Engineering, writes Professor John Kelley for the Irish Times.The figures show that in the four years from 2005 to 2009, the last government spent EUR1.35 billion (US$1.9 billion) of public funds on research in universities, with 85% allocated to the disciplines in sciences, 8% to engineering and 7% to other, mostly arts, disciplines.

South Korea will digitize all textbooks for elementary, middle and high school students by 2015, the government said Wednesday.The plan for "smart education," which requires about 2.23 trillion won (2.07 billion U.S. dollars), aims to materialize instructional methods customized to each student's level of ability, according to a report submitted to President Lee Myung- bak by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and the President's Council on "Information Strategies."Under the plan, digital textbooks will be introduced in elementary schools in 2014 and will be expanded to middle and high schools the following year, the government said.

Two English universities are actively considering becoming private institutions, research suggests.This would mean they would no longer get direct funding for research or teaching from the government. The government has said it wants to open up the system to private providers of higher education.The two universities, which have not been named, took part in a survey of vice chancellors by management consultants PA Consulting Group.

Dutch universities are planning to introduce a range of measures, including compulsory attendance at lectures, in an effort to boost standards. As well as making lectures and exams compulsory, universities want to reduce the number of retakes and increase student selection.

Multilingualism advocates say there is considerable evidence that university students and academics are keen to learn an African language as part of their courses, writes Dianne Hawker for the Independent Online.A group of academics who call themselves the South African Interest Group on Multilingualism plan to meet in September to discuss ways in which universities and academics can promote the use of and instruction in African languages at university level.

The Vision 2030 directorate has called for a well-planned elevation of tertiary colleges to universities, even as orders for elevation of Narok, Kisii and Dedan Kimathi colleges to fully fledged universities by Commission for Higher Education (CHE) seemed certain. The CHE has also earmarked five other mid-level colleges to be elevated to university-college status, bringing the number of such institutions to 20.They include Kibabii Diploma Teachers, Kirinyaga Institute of Technology, Garissa Teachers Training, Taita Taveta and Machakos Teachers Training.

Colleges charging less than £6,000 a year in tuition fees will be free to recruit more students under government proposals that could lead to a new generation of polytechnic-style institutions teaching vocational skills.A forthcoming white paper is expected to herald the expansion of employer-focussed education in courses ranging from engineering and social care to zoology and graphic design.Further education colleges could form a new generation of polytechnics – although the term is unlikely to be revived – offering a "no frills" alternative to the classic university experience of spending three years away from home.

From champagne to handbags and designer frocks to yachts, the growing consumer demand for luxury goods has resulted in a growing number of management programmes to train managers to work in these industries.In September Skema, the French business school created through the merger of Ceram and the Lille School of Management just a few years ago, will launch its Masters in Luxury and Fashion Management on its China campus in Suzhou in September. The programme is already taught on Skema’s Sophia Antipolis campus. Dean Alice Guilhon says the demand from students in China has been tremendous.But companies are also looking for such programmes, she says. “There’s a lot of demand from French (luxury) companies who want to be present in Shanghai. It’s a good opportunity for us to feed the market.”

Insead has joined forces with L’Université Panthéon-Assas, the Sorbonne law school, to launch a business law degree from September in Paris and in Singapore, where both institutions have campuses.The one-year LLM International Business Law (Droit International des Affaires) is organised around 16 seminars, eight in law and eight in business. The degree is intended for those with a masters degree in law or business and at least four years professional experience. The degree will prepare them to handle large-scale transactions such as cross-border mergers, major acquisitions, stock-market operations, financial engineering and leveraged buyouts.

Students are increasingly turning to universities in the United States amid growing competition for places on British degree courses. Harvard University – ranked the best in the world – has seen the number of applications from Britain rise by more than a third in just 12 months, figures show. Other elite Ivy League institutions, including Yale, Columbia and Cornell, have also reported an increase in demand. It is believed that the cap on places for home students at English universities – coupled with the prospect of £9,000 fees from next year – is fuelling the rise. The disclosure comes just a week after one of Europe’s leading universities – Maastricht in the Netherlands – reported a 10-fold rise in the number of applications from Britain.

Beginning this academic year, Environmental Science will be a mandatory subject at graduation level. On June 7, a Government Resolution (GR) to this effect was issued. The Supreme Court had earlier directed universities across the country to introduce a subject on environment and also directed the University Grants Commission (UGC) to consider the feasibility of making such a course compulsory. Many universities did not implement the guildelines at the time citing infrastructure issues.

Korean university students are denied quality education services even though they are paying exorbitantly high tuition fees, according to an OECD survey that ranks the country last among member countries in terms of college education environment. Korean universities have 32.7 students per professor on average, more than double the OECD average of 15.8. The number is 16.9 in the U.K., 16.2 in France, 15 in the U.S., 14.4 in Mexico, 11.5 in Germany, 10.4 in Japan, and 8.5 in Sweden.