The TopUniversities.com guide to higher education news from around the world.
MIT and Skolkovo Foundation to develop new graduate university in Russia
After two years of negotiations, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – the world’s third best university according to the 2011 QS World University Rankings – and Russia’s Skolkovo Foundation have announced plans to build a new university near Moscow. The Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, called SkTech for short, will be a graduate research university, and is expected to open in 2014. It will enrol 1,200 graduate and 300 post-doctoral research students.
SkTech will be located in a technology park in Moscow’s suburbs which the Russian administration intends to turn into a Russian Silicon Valley. The project has drawn investment from major players in the technology industry, including Microsoft, IBM and Google. The architecturally magnificent Moscow School of Management, which opened five years ago, was the first phase of this plan.
Though the university will not carry MIT’s name, its faculty will be involved in recruitment and planning the curriculum, and the university’s president, Edward Crawley, is currently a professor at MIT. The Russian media reports that MIT will also be helping to develop 15 research centres in the country.
Full story: Chronicle of Higher Education
Latin America touted as future educational powerhouse by experts
While it is home to some of the world’s oldest universities, Latin America is perhaps not currently considered to be synonymous with higher education. However, according to experts at the second Reinventing Higher Education: the Role of the University in a Global Society conference, this could soon change as a consequence of the economic growth that the region has enjoyed over the past few years.
Brazil leads the way in this regard, with a rapid expansion of its private sector catering for a massive increase in demand. Consequently, enrolment has tripled over the past decade, from 2 to 6 million. Of course, for universities to be taken seriously on the world stage, they must produce research, and the nation’s universities have greatly improved in that regard too. As a benchmark of the increase in research volume, Brazil now produces 55% of the research that France does. Ten years ago the figure was 15%. However, a note of caution was expressed, with experts suggesting that Latin American universities need to address their insularity before they can make further progress.
One thing that is certainly on the up is interest in the region’s universities, which is evidenced by the fact that over half a million people viewed the QS University Rankings: Latin America™ within days of its launch. You can see the rankings here.
Full story: University World News
Australian student visa application data hints at recovery
Education, it is often said, is Australia’s biggest export after ore and coal. However, as the result of a number of factors - such as a small number of widely publicized attacks on international students, the strong value of the Australian dollar, and the tightening of visa regulations - Australia’s status as one of the world’s most popular study abroad destinations has come under threat.
Notably, commencements of international students have fallen this year, compounding a previous drop in 2010. 2011’s slump also includes students at universities, the only sector to emerge unscathed in 2010. The first half of the year also saw visa applications go down, which suggested that the decline was likely to continue. Measures have already been taken to address this, with relaxed visa regulations to apply to overseas students entering higher education as of next year (though this is not likely to really have an effect until 2013).
However it seems that the third quarter of the year has been a lot more positive for Australian higher education with an unprecedented level of applications for graduate research visas, and higher education visa applications at their second highest level ever (the highest was in 2008/09). The good news is tempered somewhat by the fact that the bulk of the applications were from within Australia, but the higher education sector can take solace in the stabilization of offshore applications.
Another positive revelation is that offshore visa applications from India have gone up by 150%. The Indian market, only eclipsed by the Chinese, has been an area of serious concern since the much-publicized series of attacks on Indian students in 2009. This news will certainly be welcomed by Australian universities, which have confessed that even in the light of these figures, 2012 will be a tough year.
Full story: The Australian
Eleven Chinese universities to form alliance
11 Chinese universities announced the formation of Beijing Tech this week, an alliance intended to foster innovation in the nation’s scientific and technological institutions.
The universities involved in the alliance are Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing Jiaotong University, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, North China Electric Power University, China University of Geosciences, China University of Mining and Technology, China University of Petroleum, Beijing Forestry University, Xidian University, and Harbin Engineering University.