The TopUniversities.com guide to the latest university news from around the world, on 12 September 2013.
Global: EdX and Google to provide open-source MOOC platform
The online course provider edX has partnered with Google to create an open-source MOOC platform called Open edX that will enable anyone to create online courses, reports Inside Higher Education. It will be available on the website MOOC.org, and will launch early next year. The president of edX and professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Anant Agarwal, said: “All of us are learners and all of us are teachers. I think this is a way to enable anybody to experiment with courses.”
Russia: More funding to get universities into top 100
The Russian government will give selected universities RUB592 million (US$18.1 million) this year to help raise their position in global university rankings, reports University World News. The Ministry of Education based its decision on an evaluation of universities’ development programs, with the result that many leading technical universities will get funding, including Tomsk Polytechnic University and the Higher School of Economics, Moscow. The aim is to get at least five Russian universities into the top 100 of the global rankings by 2020.
Canada: University fees reaching record levels
According to research by a think tank, university fees in Canada are expected to reach triple the amount they were in 1990, reports CBC News. From CAD$1,464 (US$1,418) in 1990-91, it is expected to be CAD$7,437 (US$7,204) in 2016-17, and adjusted for inflation, those figures are US$2,173 in 1990-91, and US$6,628 in 2016-17. Many provincial governments have implemented a cap on the amount of public debt a student can accumulate, but they are still borrowing from other sources to fund their educations. The Canadian Federation of Students wants reductions and freezes in tuition fees across Canada, and more widespread provincial grant systems.
Nigeria: Thirty months teaching lost to strike action in 10 years
The President of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), Mr. Yinka Gbadebo, has spoken against a strike by university lecturers that began on 1 July, reports This Day Live. Gbadebo said that 30 months had been lost to strike action in the last 10 years, and urged members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to return to work, saying that NANS was uncomfortable with the effects of the strike on the lives of students. The current strike is a protest against the federal government’s inaction on some issues that had been agreed with the union in 2009.