Warwick University is bidding to become the first UK university to set up a campus in the United States. It has entered a global competition to open a science campus in New York - competing against leading universities from the US, Europe and Asia. New York's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, said that creating the science campus would be a "game-changer" for the city's economy.New York wants a research base to strengthen its technology industries.Warwick is up against 17 other bids to open a science and engineering research campus - which would help New York compete with US research powerhouses in California and Boston.

Yale University and the National University of Singapore have made official their plans to jointly establish a liberal-arts college in the city-state, one they would like to be a model for all of Asia."We hope to create a really exciting model of liberal arts, one many Asian countries will find attractive because of its broader perspective on the complex problems of the world," said Richard C. Levin, Yale's president, in an interview on Wednesday.The two institutions had originally made public a possible partnership last September but said at the time they still had to hammer out several budgetary and legal issues.

Vocational education, research universities and faculty development are to get priority in the 12th Five-Year Plan starting April next year. The three areas have been marked as the key elements in a concept paper prepared by the HRD ministry outlining its vision for the plan. The paper says vocational students should account for 50 per cent of all enrolment in higher education by 2020. At present, that figure is less than 5 per cent.

With the highest private-sector enrolment in Europe, the Polish university system could be a tempting model for Britain's coalition government. Around 300 private universities – some small enough to share premises with local schools – educate about 630,000 students a year, the highest private-sector enrolment in Europe. Unlike their fellow students at public universities, they have to pay fees, though both kinds of students are eligible for state-backed loans. And unlike public universities, their institutions do not receive any direct government funding.

Poland's higher education system will undergo significant changes if a bill signed into law today by President Bronisław Komorowski remains on the statute books. The bill is due to enter into force from October 1 but its constitutionality has been called into question.The Polish Press Agency (PAP) reports that, after Easter, the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party plans to raise questions abouth the constitutionality of the new law with the Constitutional Tribunal.

The number of students at private colleges and universities in the Czech Republic has increased almost 30-times in the past ten years, the Czech Statistical Office (CSU) and the Institute of Education Information (UIV) said at a press conference yesterday.In 2000, 2000 students attended these institutions, which was a mere 1 percent of the total number of university/college students, while last year their number amounted to over 57,000, that is some 14 percent of all university/college students in the 10.5-million Czech Republic, the CSU and UIV said.On the contrary, interest in private kindergartens and primary schools is very low.

An online journal for school students has been launched by the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.Knowledge@Wharton High School (KWHS), offers free articles, videos, podcasts, a business-related game and a glossary of more than 200 business terms. Features include stories about companies run by teenagers, business trends, profiles on successful entrepreneurs and technology reviews. There are also interviews with high school students.Up until now, Wharton has focused on providing business knowledge for older students, through the award-winning Knowledge@Wharton online network, that reaches 1.7m subscribers worldwide. Now, it is keen to broaden this service to younger generations around the world, helping them to discover business today.

The Chinese economic hub of Shanghai began construction of the New York University Shanghai (NYU Shanghai) on Monday, the first university jointly operated by China and the United States.NYU Shanghai is an independent entity authorized to grant degrees. New York University and the Shanghai-based East China Normal University (ECNU) will operate the institution.The two universities will strive to develop the joint venture into one of the world's finest comprehensive universities, said NYU President John Sexton during an interview before he attended the ground-breaking ceremony Monday afternoon.

KATHMANDU: With its new office — Open University Nepal Initiative — on the premises of the Ministry of Education, the government is gearing up to establish the much-awaited open university. However, the House must approve the Higher Education Bill, registered in the Parliamentary Secretariat, to establish the university. A 22-member steering committee, led by MoE secretary Shankar Prasad Pandey, has been formed to carry out the ground work. The ministry is working in coordination with Non-Resident Nepalis’ Association, Canada Foundation of Nepal and Athabasca Open University in Canada, to set up the open university.

The number of lecturers choosing to combine part-time teaching with a second job in a related field is on the up, writes Debbie Andalo for The Guardian.Whether they are doctors, city economists or musicians in their non-academic life, part-time lecturers say teaching forces them to keep their practice, and their knowledge, up to date. But they also believe they bring a different perspective to the workplace compared to colleagues who are full-time academics.

Australians will have direct access to the thoughts of some of the country's brightest minds through a new independent news and information website, The Conversation. The not-for-profit service is backed by CSIRO and Australia's leading universities, providing information, analysis, commentary and research news from their researchers and academics.Launched today, The Conversation's journalists work with the institutions' academics to put their views straight to the website in areas including business, the environment, science and politics.

Energy management, one of the most fashionable topics on the business school curriculum, is to be the subject of an executive masters programme to be taught in London and Madrid by ESCP Europe. The programme has previously been taught on ESCP’s Paris campus and in Norway.The programme, which will focus on the corporate management of energy issues, is designed for those who need an overview of the energy management business.

New York University’s Stern school is to drop the requirement for students on its Executive MBA programme to sit the GMAT or GRE tests in order to gain admission to the programme. The school already operates a waiver policy for many of its EMBA applicants.Stern is following in the footsteps of many schools offering EMBAs - MBA programmes for senior working managers. The main reason is that EMBA participants are usually in their 30s or 40s, and are usually accepted or rejected on the basis of their previous academic achievements and, more particularly, the relevance of their work experience.

A strong academic base, English-language instruction and superb career prospects have made Stockholm University School of Business one of the most popular destinations for overseas master's students in Sweden.Many students see postgraduate degrees in management or business as a way to make themselves attractive to the best employers and boost their earning potential. Stockholm University School of Business is attracting students from around the world with its English-language master's courses.

Students at Abu Dhabi University will soon be able to register for courses, check their grades, take quizzes and contribute to classroom discussions on their mobile phones as the university launched its pilot of an application called Blackboard Mobile last week. As many as 75 students will participate in the trial before it is rolled out to other regional universities in September, writes Erin Conroy for The National.

Bangor and Aberystwyth universities are planning a "strategic alliance" as institutions around Wales look to work more closely, reports the BBC. A decision to form a "super university" in Wales was also recently announced. Education Minister Leighton Andrews has challenged universities to "adapt or die".

With healthcare reform on the agenda in the US and the UK, business school students are showing much more interest in an industry that until a few years ago attracted only small numbers of MBAs.The increased interest comes at a time when the job market remains shaky and sectors such as finance are still recovering from the credit crisis and the recession. Healthcare, say career counsellors, is a growth industry that offers business graduates opportunities to solve complex challenges, work toward the public good and draw a substantial salary.Policymakers in countries around the world are dealing with the problems of rising healthcare costs as well as an increasingly older population. President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul aims to expand health insurance to cover millions of uninsured Americans while curbing costs. And in the UK, David Cameron, the prime minister, has pledged to make fundamental changes to the National Health Service, the state-run healthcare system.

The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry likely will ease procedures to be completed by foreign doctors in entering this country to engage in medical training, ministry sources said.The move is part of the government's new growth strategy adopted in June, which includes an initiative to transform Japan into a center for foreign tourists seeking medical treatment.By relaxing such formalities, the ministry hopes to increase the number of foreign doctors coming to Japan under a government program designed to give them local medical training and improve their knowledge and skills.

China awarded more than 21 million academic degrees, including 335,000 doctorates, since 1981 when a landmark regulation provided a legal frame for the country's higher education.The academic degrees also included 2.73 million masters' degrees and 18.3 million bachelors' degrees, according to statistics revealed on Saturday at a meeting to mark the 30th anniversary of the implementation of the country's Regulations on Academic Degrees.

More than a year after classes began, the University of Paris Sorbonne's Abu Dhabi campus on Al Reem Island was opened officially last week, with the help of the French Prime Minister Francois Fillon, who was making his first visit to the region, writes Caline Malek for The National.Sheikh Hamed bin Zayed, President of the Crown Prince Court, opened the ceremony by saying the establishment of prestigious universities was a significant step towards turning Abu Dhabi into a cultural and scientific hub.