India's Vision: From Scientific Pipsqueak to Powerhouse -- Bagla 330 (6000): 23 -- Science

India's Vision: From Scientific Pipsqueak to Powerhouse -- Bagla 330 (6000): 23 -- Science: "n a new report, a blue-ribbon panel decries India's systemic failure to capitalize on basic research findings. The report, released last week by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, offers a stinging indictment of India's scientific frailties, noting that science here is 'severely hampered by oppressive bureaucratic practices and inflexible administrative and financial controls.' Titled India as a Global Leader in Science, the 'vision document' also offers a blueprint for strengthening Indian science—one that will require heaps of money to implement."

The Global Academic Revolution: Implications For India- Lecture Excerpts | Look For Edu University

The Global Academic Revolution: Implications For India- Lecture Excerpts | Look For Edu University: "The first Foundation Day of the Kerala State Higher Education Council was celebrated after three years of its inception in the Senate Chamber, Kerala University Campus, Thiruvananthapuram on 12th July 2010. The Day was celebrated through a Foundation Day Lecture on the theme ‘The Global Academic� Revolution: Implications for India. It was delivered by Prof. Philip G. Altbach, (Monan University Professor of Higher Education & Director, Center for International Higher Education (CIHE), Boston College, USA)"

IGNOU to open study centres in six European countries

IGNOU to open study centres in six European countries: "New Delhi, Sep 22 (IANS) The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), the largest in the world, will open study centres in six European nations, including Germany and France, to offer personalised courses, its Vice Chancellor V.N. Rajasekharan Pillai has said.

'We will open our centre in Paris next month. Negotiation is going on with Germany. I hope we will start in Germany by the end of this year. Our target is to open five-six centres in Europe by July 2011,' Pillai told IANS.

The Netherlands and Austria are other European countries where IGNOU, the world's largest by student enrollment, is considering to open study centres. It already has a centre in London, the vice chancellor added."

University World News - FRANCE: 'Digital university' makes progress

University World News - FRANCE: 'Digital university' makes progress: "Presenting results of the programme after its first year, Pcresse said: 'For universities to remain attractive to students, to improve their image in the world of education, it is essential for them to be equipped with innovatory digital tools and services.'

The Wi-fi, podcast, digital environment for all programme was launched in July last year in response to a 2008 report by Henri Isaac, a lecturer at Paris-Dauphine University.

Isaac had warned that France was lagging behind in information and communication technologies in higher education and urgently needed to catch up to satisfy the demands of the new generation of 'digitally native' students."

Bad Forecast for U.S. Competitiveness, Says New Gathering Storm Report - ScienceInsider

Bad Forecast for U.S. Competitiveness, Says New Gathering Storm Report - ScienceInsider: "The storm threatening to wipe out U.S. leadership in global science and technology is now a Category 5 hurricane. So say the authors of an influential 2005 report called Rising Above the Gathering Storm in a 5-year update of their work being released today on Capitol Hill."

Mind control: Is the internet changing how we think? - CNN.com

Mind control: Is the internet changing how we think? - CNN.com: "I became aware of changes in my own thinking a couple of years ago,' Nicholas Carr, author of new book, 'The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains', told CNN.
'Like many people, I've spent a lot of time using the net and other digital technologies over the past ten or fifteen years, and I've enjoyed the many benefits those technologies provide.
'But I came to realize, some time in 2007, that I was losing my ability to pay deep attention to one thing over a long period of time. When I'd sit down to read a book, for instance, I was only able to sustain my concentration for a page or two. My mind would begin to crave stimulation and distraction -- it wanted to click on links, jump from page to page, check email, do some Googling."

Ideas Economy: Human Potential 2010 | The Ideas Economy

Ideas Economy: Human Potential 2010 | The Ideas Economy: "Today, humanity is on track to advance physically, economically, and intellectually more than ever before. But there are still serious challenges ahead.
For instance, how do we educate billions of new people in the coming decades—and manage their successful entry into the global economy—in an age of high unemployment and aging demographics? It is this kind of global challenge that can only be resolved by bringing together the smartest minds from government, academia and business—including education, human resources, healthcare, design, policy, science and technology—to debate tough issues and collaborate on practical solutions."

Global universities spread the wealth - CNN.com

Global universities spread the wealth - CNN.com: "Globalization washes like a flood over the world's cultures and economies. Floods can be destructive; however, they can also bring blessings, as the annual floods of the Nile did for ancient Egypt.
The world's great universities can be crucial instruments in shaping, in a positive way, humankind's reaction to globalization and the development of humankind itself"

Three B.C. universities join courting mission to India - Report Card

Three B.C. universities join courting mission to India - Report Card

Three university president from B.C. will join a delegation travelling to India this fall in a bid to improve academic relations as that country prepares to open its doors to foreign universities. Clearly, there's a lot of excitement about India's proposed Foreign Education Providers bill, which would set ground rules for universities wanting to open campuses and grant degrees in India. "If you are a university with global aspirations, you simply cannot ignore India," Tim Goreof the Centre for India Business at Greenwich University told an AUCC workshop over the summer (as reported by Leo Charbonneau of University Affairs.)

But the legislation contains a few snags, Charbonneau reports.

1. Foreign universities wanting to open an Indian campus would be required to deposit $11 million US with the Indian government to protect students in case the school breaks the law or folds.

2. Foreign universities would be required to reinvest any profit in India

Blogging science

Blogging science

University World News - University World News - Global Special Edition

UNESCO Forum on Higher Education, Research and Knowledge

The UNESCO Forum on Higher Education, Research and Knowledge was established in 2001, to follow up the outcomes of two major UNESCO world conferences – the 1998 World Conference on Higher Education, and the 1999 World Conference on Science. The Forum provides a global platform for critical engagement with research issues and findings, and its mandate is to help chart, analyse and widen understanding of the systems, structures, policies, trends and developments in higher education, research and innovation.
At the conclusion of the first phase of activities in 2009, the UNESCO Forum published a Research Report, Systems of Higher Education, Research and Innovation: Changing dynamics, edited by Lynn Meek, Ulrich Teichler and Mary-Louise Kearney. The report takes stock of the numerous and rapid changes of the past decade, identifies new dynamics and trends in global knowledge systems, and synthesises the Forum’s main findings. In this Special Edition, University World News reports on a decade of the Forum’s work as encapsulated in the just-published Research Report.

University World News - University World News - Global Special Edition

University World News - AFRICA: Nineteen countries pledge to promote science

 

The 19 member countries of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa have come up with a raft of resolutions to boost science and technology, including the creation of a central fund to promote the sector.
At a summit held in Swaziland from 31 August to 1 September, under the theme "Harnessing Science and Technology for Development", heads of Comesa governments resolved that each nation should dedicate at least 1% of Gross Domestic Product to research and development, in line with the target set within the framework of the African Union.
Comesa countries have a population of 430 million people and cover a geographical area of 12 million square kilometers. They are Burundi, Comores, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sudan, Swaziland, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

University World News - AFRICA: Nineteen countries pledge to promote science

OurWorld 2.0

OurWorld 2.0 Solutions to the global challenges of climate change, food security, biodiversity loss and peak oil are within our reach. The Our World 2.0 web magazine shares the ideas and actions of citizens around the world who are transforming our lives for the better. This award-winning web magazine, produced by United Nations University Media Studio, exchanges these insights through video briefs, articles, debates, photo essays and public events.

Integrating Social Media into Online Education

Integrating Social Media into Online Education:: "Many people take it on faith that online education must be run through a learning management system (LMS) like Blackboard, Angel, etc. Those systems were originally designed to allow faculty to move their courses online without having to learn HTML coding. They provided all of the tools needed to deliver an online course in one package."

Cambridge ousts Harvard as world's best university | Education | The Guardian

Cambridge ousts Harvard as world's best university | Education | The Guardian: "Both of them have earned fistfuls of Nobel prizes, have educated enough statesmen to table a string of international summits, and inspired eminent scientists, philosophers and poets.

But Harvard today forfeits first place to Cambridge in a league table of the world's top universities, the first time in the list's seven year history that the Ivy League institution has been knocked off the number one spot.

British universities made a strong showing, with University College London, Oxford and Imperial all appearing in the top 10, while King's College London and Edinburgh appeared in the top 25.

American institutions dominate the list, however, taking 31 out of the top 100 places in the QS world university rankings."

The decline of studying : Macleans OnCampus

The decline of studying : Macleans OnCampus: ". In his upcoming book, Lowering Higher Education: The Rise of Corporate Universities and the Fall of Liberal Education, James Cote a sociology professor at the University of Western Ontario, analyzed a data set taken from 12,000 students from the U.S. and Canada and found similar results. Study times have gone down and grades have gone up, with the Canadian university average climbing from C to a B /A- over the past 30 years."

University World News - KENYA: Pressure to speed up universities bill

University World News - KENYA: Pressure to speed up universities bill: "Lecturers and politicians in Kenya have renewed pressure on the government to expedite a pending universities bill, which aims to revolutionise the country's shaky higher education sector. Among other things the bill seeks to bring all universities - public and private - under a common law and repeal the parliamentary acts of seven public universities."