SCIENCE & EDUCATION

The number of jam-packed classes at Seoul National University, or SNU, is on the rise despite the Education Ministry’s policy to enhance higher education quality.According to state-run college information website Academy Info, 123 classes at the nation’s top university in the first semester of this year have 100 or more students. It marked a significant increase from 98 classes in the first semester of 2013, and 94 during the same period of 2012.

Six Canadian business schools – one of them new to the list – have made the Financial Times’ annual global ranking of executive education programs that cater to companies and individuals.Led by the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, Canadian schools made the FT’s top-70 global list of open enrolment programs (non-degree training for professionals from a cross-section of companies) and the top-80 list of customized programs that are tailored for an individual company.

The education ministry has decided to distribute textbooks on food and nutrition to primary, middle and high school students from fiscal 2016, according to ministry sources.The move is intended to enhance school education regarding food and nutrition, a ministry official said.The Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry will shortly set up a panel comprising academics and nutrition teachers to produce comprehensive, cross-curricular textbooks that cover topics ranging from the importance of food and table manners to food culture.

How can the Indian government improve the quality of education at the majority of the country's universities, colleges and institutes? This is more than a question for questioning's sake: it is of vital importance in a country of 1.27 billion people, half of them under the age of 25.According to recent reports, the employability rates of Indian graduates are estimated at between 34% and 53%. Going by such figures, it seems indisputable that India's colleges and universities are not getting their teaching right.

In his flat in central Tehran, Araz Alipour counts on one hand his college friends who have chosen to build a career in Iran. “Easily 90% of them have gone overseas,” the 29-year-old software developer said, reflecting on a middle-class flight that has seen many of the nation's best scientists and engineers leave.Photographs of new cars, homes and expanding families posted on Facebook and Instagram document some of the tens of thousands of Iranian lives transplanted each year, mainly to Europe and North America. Seyyed Hassan Hosseini, deputy chief of Iran's National Elites Foundation, said on 20 April that over the past two years at least 40% of top-performing students in science and engineering left the Persian Gulf nation.

Universities should aim to become powerhouses for positive transformation and idea generation, said Senior Minister of State for Law and Education Indranee Rajah last week. She has thrown down the gauntlet to universities in Singapore to come up with global ideas that have great impact, so that the republic need not always look to other countries.Noting that universities were "preoccupied" with equipping graduates with the skills they need for jobs they want, she said her wish was for Singapore's universities to become "powerhouses for positive transformational change and idea generation".

David Willetts, the Universities Minister, unveils plans to create new university campuses in areas identified as higher education "cold spots" such as Shrewsbury.  The Coalition has signalled the biggest growth in universities for more than 20 years with plans to create dozens of new campuses in higher education “cold spots”. David Willetts, the Universities Minister, told officials to investigate the possibility of establishing universities in cathedral cities, county towns and coastal communities that currently lack provision. He named Shrewsbury, Yeovil, Hereford and parts of East Anglia as areas that could have higher education sites for the first time. The move is designed to increase the number of school leavers taking degree-level qualifications combined with a drive to provide a boost to local economies. Mr Willetts has written to the Higher Education Funding Council for England asking them to identify “where there is evidence of ‘cold spots’” and provide advice about how university provision could be established.

Forty percent of students who enrol in an Italian university fail to graduate from their chosen course, a report released last Wednesday has shown, reports The Local. After the first year alone, 15% of students on three-year courses drop out altogether, while the same proportion switch courses, the report by educational agency Anvur found. The remaining 10% abandon university at a later stage of their course.

In many ways, Musab Al-Jamal makes for an unassuming rebel, writes Daisy Carrington for CNN. The former law professor from Damascus University has joined other academics to start offering lectures to students in liberated regions inside ravaged Syria and in neighbouring countries."The universities in Syria are basically like prisons for students," says Al-Jamal. "They capture or arrest anyone who opposes the regime. On the other hand, universities outside the country often don't accept Syrian students, or the students can't pay the fees or speak the local language."

Twelve new further education and training colleges will be built across South Africa because of increasing enrolments at universities and colleges, said President Jacob Zuma."Student enrolments at universities have increased by 12%, while further education and training college enrolments have increased by 90%," he said at the launch of a scholarship fund in Sandton.

Kyoto University is set to select a new president from outside its academic staff, doing away with a nearly century-old tradition of voting only for an in-house candidate, writes Tsuyoshi Sato for The Asahi Shimbun.The alma mater of several Nobel Prize winners is reportedly considering potential leaders from within Japan and within the university as well as from overseas, with an emphasis on management skills to improve the institution's international competitiveness.

After growing rapidly for two decades, higher education enrollments peaked in 2009, having risen fivefold to almost 2 million. This year, the numbers have tailed off and are set to fall farther, even though Poland’s university enrollment rate is the fourth highest among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations.Many universities – from the state and the private sector alike – are under threat because in the years of plenty they failed to prepare for the coming downturn in student numbers.40 percent of Poland’s higher education institutions had no international students at all, the report notes. Universities that are unable to attract international students have been forced to draw more from the shrinking pool of domestic students to maintain enrollments. And this has led to complaints that today’s students are less prepared for higher study than their predecessors were.With institutions’ resources now concentrated on science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects, he continues, social science and humanities faculties are particularly feeling the pinch. “Universities have said they will not continue to pump money into loss-making faculties, which should be made to pay their own way,” Stanley says. This has led to cutbacks, “certainly at postgraduate level.”

The UK is ‘lagging behind’ in science and maths at university level, according to new international rankings.The annual figures from QS show that, while the UK is still performing strongly in the arts and humanities, it is falling behind in STEM subjects.Analysis of the rankings found that only three of the top 50 universities for civil engineering were in the UK, less than Hong Kong and Australia.

The rising influx of foreign students to Swiss universities is bringing more international talent to the country. But the debate on who foots the bill for welcoming such bright young minds is tying academics and legislators in knots.Switzerland prides itself on having some of the lowest tuition fees in the world, subsidised by the federal and cantonal authorities. This gives students access to higher education regardless of income, but taxpayers are also shelling out for foreigners.Top universities are now bulging at the seams with new students and frequently cry out for more cash to help them cope. At the same time, the proportion of overseas students is constantly rising -  from 23% in 1990 to 38% in 2011.Swiss universities jostle with international competitors to reel in the brightest overseas talent to boost domestic prowess in science, technology and other fields of research. In addition, business leaders welcome highly educated foreigners to help plug workforce gaps.

On Jan. 22, the World Economic Forum announced the launch of its Forum Academy at its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. The initiative, started in partnership with edX as the platform provider, will begin in May with the opening course, Global Technology Leadership. According to WEF Chief Information Officer Jeremy Jurgens, who's leading the initiative, the idea is to put the WEF's huge network of industry leaders and opinion-makers at the disposal of a global audience.The WEF's launch of its academy is the latest in a number of increasingly popular online platforms that are moving to compete with traditional higher education institutions at a time when the cost of higher education in the United States is rapidly rising. Yearly tuition costs often reach $40,000 at American universities.

The government of South Korea wants to shut down universities that cannot attract enough students. As a result, universities and colleges in South Korea are merging and reorganising as they fight for survival, writes Tomoko Tamasita for The Asahi Shimbun.South Korea saw an increase in the number of universities in the 1990s in response to societal demands for a better educated populace. At the same time, though, another problem emerged – some of these new institutions were just not cut out to survive as universities. In 2004, the government introduced a restructuring plan to tackle the issue of ‘bad universities’.

Britain’s grading system is broken. At least, that’s what critics are saying about the 200-year-old tradition of classifying undergraduate degrees into five categories, from first class to fail.In an attempt to improve the system, 21 universities started to experiment in November with an American-style grade-point average in hopes that it would be a better evaluation of students’ efforts and help solve grade inflation and other problems. A grade point average is calculated by adding up the grade points awarded to a student and dividing that total by the number of courses in which they were earned.But not everyone in British academe is on board. Some say the effort is flawed from the start and may contribute to the erosion of centuries-old methods that undergird higher education here.

Kenyan universities are opening satellite campuses across the country as they seek to meet the growing demand for education. Currently, there are over 29 constituent universities across the country and the number is rising. However, some experts feel there is a better and cheaper way to improve access to education. This is by investing in e-learning.Njambi Muchane, the Director of Kenya School of Government e-learning and Development Institute (eLDi) says that instead of replicating the face-to-face learning in the main campus, universities should set up small offices but train via e-learning.

People in their sixties should go to university to retrain because they will be expected to work for longer before retirement, the Government has suggested.Older workers who take courses to keep their skills up to date will be more likely to keep their jobs, claims David Willetts, the higher education minister. Mr Willetts said the age limit on student loans to cover tuition fees had been lifted, making a degree course “great value” for older people. This would help them cope with the pressure they would face to keep up to date as they worked well into their sixties, he suggested.

Free interactive online university courses known as MOOCs - massive open online courses - are quickly spreading far beyond the United States, writes Simon Bradley for the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation. Lausanne’s Federal Institute of Technology and other Swiss universities are keen to experiment.The Lausanne Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) is an early MOOC adopter. It became one of Coursera’s 33 university partners last June, offering a course in Scala computer programming to which 53,000 students signed up, five times the number on campus.