International education news summary, August 2011: Australia, New Zealand

ACUMA Inc.: the Association representing tertiary campus service organisations in Australia & New Zealand News summary: International education, August 2011

News summary: International education, August 2011 Are student loan policies effective?

Anger as £78m Aimhigher support scheme for students is axed Research recruiters look to Indonesia A Level Flops Targeted By Oz Tourist Chiefs Be quids in at our branches abroad, Nottingham tells students in the UK Opinion: Ivory tower besieged by the new economic reality International student round-table issues Immigration officials cancel 159 student visas after airport interviews Rank shows role of fees in elite research School of hard knocks an experiment to watch Chase for foreign students State premiers look at plan to give foreign students special visas New Zealand to streamline student visas China-ASEAN education collaboration on fast track Resorting to headhunters a smart move in the search for the best Assaults on Indian students lower but robberies higher Must try much harder – report on universities Chinese cast stern eye over Western lessons We have 18 billion reasons to find a strategy Tourism a casualty as students quit Two years jail for IELTS fraud Is Higher Education More Like a Business? No, Business Is More Like Higher Ed When language is no barrier Australia and India foster higher education linkages Student swap to help fix India rift Bid for uni degree swaps with India Students flock to Canada instead of Australia New programs encourage education exchange Student visa applications on slide Offshore applications still spiralling out of control When opportunity knocks, students take a 'gap year' Australian and New Zealand Higher education resources: ACUMA Incorporated Are student loan policies effective?

University World News August 28 2011 In the latter part of last century, student loans policies became a central issue in higher education strategies in several countries. On the one hand, the explosion of university enrolments coupled with fiscal pressure, quite naturally pushed towards the participation of graduates in education costs. On the other hand, the debate in higher education policy had been characterised by growing attention to a cost-sharing approach....

Full article: http://goo.gl/xyVQt Anger as £78m Aimhigher support scheme for students is axed The Guardian, UK August 20 2011 Vice-chancellor attacks 'poorly timed' government closure of scheme as steep rise in tuition fees looms

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ACUMA Inc.: the Association representing tertiary campus service organisations in Australia & New Zealand News summary: International education, August 2011

Students read their A-Level results at Loughborough Grammar School in Leicestershire. Photograph: Rui Vieira/PA Critics have condemned the closure of a higher education outreach programme amid evidence that poorer students are likely to be put off by the trebling of tuition fees next year.

Professor Les Ebdon, vice-chancellor of the University of Bedfordshire, said the coalition government's closure in July of Aimhigher, a body that spent ÂŁ78m last year on visiting schools in the poorest areas to promote higher education, was "poor timing"....

Full article: http://goo.gl/V4tLh Research recruiters look to Indonesia The Australian August 29 2011 INDONESIA is one of the places where the University of NSW hopes to find more research students.

"We're neighbours, we're very close, we have an ability to get there quickly and to communicate easily with institutions,'' said Laura Poole-Warren, dean of graduate research.

A new audit report from the Australian Universities Quality Agency highlights improvements in research training at the group of eight institution.

It notes that international students starting postgraduate research, mostly PhDs, made up almost 40 per cent of research student load at UNSW....

Full article: http://goo.gl/iOmp0 A Level Flops Targeted By Oz Tourist Chiefs Sky News August 27 2011 British students who flunked their A Levels this summer are being targeted by crafty tourism bosses in Australia.

Sun, sea and surf awaits British students tempted by the ad campaign Down-in-the-dumps teenagers are being encouraged to go Down Under to get over their disappointing results....

Full article: http://goo.gl/S5slG Be quids in at our branches abroad, Nottingham tells students in the UK Times Higher Education August 25 2011 The University of Nottingham is offering financial incentives to UK students to jet abroad to study at its overseas campuses, raising the prospect of a potential new growth area for British institutions.

Same degree but rather cheaper for Nottingham students in China

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ACUMA Inc.: the Association representing tertiary campus service organisations in Australia & New Zealand News summary: International education, August 2011

The university is offering 10 full undergraduate scholarships to study at its branches in China and Malaysia this year - and says that from 2012, when tuition fees in England are set to rise, it will be cheaper for any English undergraduate to study at those campuses than at home....

Full article: http://goo.gl/MJ4cY Opinion: Ivory tower besieged by the new economic reality Vancouver Sun August 25 2011 We’ve just returned from our annual visit to the university bookstore, this time with our daughter. My wallet left light-headed.

A used copy of Clinical Drug Therapy For Canadian Practice cost $85.25. A new copy of Canadian Fundamentals of Nursing (Revised Edition) cost $147, its pages, apparently, made from the gossamer wings of fairies rather than paper. The lingering sting of our Visa bill will be soothed only by the knowledge that our daughter may one day have a decent job by the time she’s finished sucking us dry....

Full article: http://goo.gl/1jqmf International student round-table issues The Australian August 24 2011 VISA processing emerged as a key concern of students as well as institutions at this week's international student round table in Canberra.

Council of International Students Australia president Arfa Noor said the recommendations from the roundtable fell into five categories: visa issues, student experience, student welfare, social inclusion and living costs. Visa regulation was top of the list, with students concerned about language testing and work rights....

Full article: http://goo.gl/RtAux Immigration officials cancel 159 student visas after airport interviews The Australian August 24 2011 MORE than 150 overseas students returning to Australia in the last financial year were intercepted by immigration authorities at the airport over visa breaches and put on a plane home within 72 hours.

Indians were the largest group (55) with student visas cancelled at the airport, followed by Chinese (37). And of the 470,221 people who arrived on a student visa, almost 9000 were questioned by immigration officials.

The figures were released by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship following an application by the HES under Freedom of Information legislation....

Full article: http://goo.gl/mG0XL

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ACUMA Inc.: the Association representing tertiary campus service organisations in Australia & New Zealand News summary: International education, August 2011

Rank shows role of fees in elite research The Australian August 24 2011 AMERICAN institutions continue to dominate Shanghai rankings, led the small news item in The Chronicle of Higher Education last week. It reported that Harvard remained in first place and that all but two of the top 10 institutions were in the US. At 127 words, the Chronicle's coverage of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Academic Ranking of World Universities appeared to be complete....

Full article: http://goo.gl/kHhpR School of hard knocks an experiment to watch The Australian August 24 2011 BRITAIN'S coalition government is an obvious source of inspiration for our federal opposition, with many ideas contained in its June white paper on higher education and in its more recent paper on regulating the sector.

Britain has mostly sidestepped the issue of whether government subsidies should be available at private institutions by ending government subsidies for all programs in England aside from those in engineering, medicine and science. Private institutions will be eligible for the remaining teaching grants, but they have to be not-for-profit. In Australia, this could provide the balance needed between maintaining the restriction on most higher education student entitlements to universities and their extension to all private providers, which is causing difficulties in Victoria's vocational education sector....

Full article: http://goo.gl/xzMTf Chase for foreign students The Sun Daily, Malaysia August 21 2011 ON Thursday, the A level examinations results were announced. About 240,000 students are eligible for places in British universities having obtained the minimum entry requirements. While foreign students including those from Malaysia have already been offered places and their applications for student visas are being processed, for locals, it is a mad scramble. Adding to the list are those who applied after the results are applicants who are re-applying or making fresh applications after taking a gap year. Every Briton is trying to get a place because next year, they will have to pay at least three times the present fees which are capped at ÂŁ3,000 (RM14,732) ....

Full article: http://goo.gl/U40gY State premiers look at plan to give foreign students special visas The Sydney Morning Herald August 20 2011 FOREIGN students who graduate with a university degree or equivalent vocational qualification could be offered three-year work visas to stay in Australia, under a proposal by the states and territories put forward at yesterday's Council of Australian Governments meeting.

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ACUMA Inc.: the Association representing tertiary campus service organisations in Australia & New Zealand News summary: International education, August 2011

The three-year visa would apply to graduates in areas where skills shortages exist.

The Premier, Barry O'Farrell, supported the idea, saying, for example, it would help alleviate chronic shortages of doctors in some regions....

Full article: http://goo.gl/1rFXc New Zealand to streamline student visas The Australian August 19 2011 HIGH quality New Zealand tertiary education institutions will be able to get their hands on international students much more easily than their low-quality counterparts, under risk management reforms being considered on the other side of the Tasman.

Immigration New Zealand chief executive Nigel Bickle said INZ was considering linking immigration settings to the New Zealand Qualifications Authority’s quality rating system, which is due to be introduced next year....

Full article: http://goo.gl/oqeeT China-ASEAN education collaboration on fast track Xinhua August 18 2011 Having studied at Guizhou University for three years, Jarunee Pourprasert from Thailand is not only fluent in Chinese, but can even use local Chinese dialects from time to time.

Preferring to be called "Pan Meimei," the tourism management major describes China as "a passionate, friendly and rapidly-developing country with a rich culture."

"I am glad to be here to see what the real China is like, as I used to watch Chinese sitcoms to learn Chinese at Siam University," she said....

Full article: http://goo.gl/GBy7M Resorting to headhunters a smart move in the search for the best The Australian August 17 2011 BRITAIN'S research excellence framework has put a cat among the pigeons of British academe. During the past six months studious and normally reclusive staff have been lining up for appointments with their heads of departments and deans and, like bankers, seeking salaries to match those they have been offered elsewhere. Poaching is rife.

This is part of the lead-up to the REF, an exercise in which British academics' best four research outputs will be evaluated by their peers as world leading (4*), internationally excellent (3*) or internationally (2*) or nationally recognised (1*)....

Full article: http://goo.gl/Csjrn ACUMA Inc.: the Association representing tertiary campus service organisations in Australia & New Zealand Locked Bag 1333, Launceston, Tasmania 7250, Australia Tel: +61 3 6324 3935 || Fax: +61 3 6324 3670 || admin.acuma@acuma.org.au http://www.acuma.org.au || http://twitter.com/acumainc || http://www.scribd.com/acumainc

ACUMA Inc.: the Association representing tertiary campus service organisations in Australia & New Zealand News summary: International education, August 2011

Assaults on Indian students lower but robberies higher The Canberra Times August 12 2011 Indian students are less likely to be assaulted than the average Australian, but the rates of robbery against them are higher, new figures show.

The Australian Institute of Criminology examined the rates of assault, robbery and theft of international students from 2005 to 2009 after media attention suggested Indian students were being targeted.

The findings, issued yesterday, analysed almost 15,000 reports of crimes against students from India, China, South Korea, the US and Malaysia ‘ the five largest groups of student visa holders....

Full article: http://goo.gl/7EpO9 Must try much harder – report on universities WalesOnline.co.uk August 11 2011 UNIVERSITIES across the globe are operating in “the eye of a hurricane” and need to move beyond the status quo, according to a report.

Business advisory firm Deloitte believes higher education institutions have to adapt as budgets are squeezed, students become harder to attract and competition heats up.

“It is often said that when you are in the eye of a hurricane, a false sense of calm can prevail,” warns the report....

Full article: http://goo.gl/jtvWI Chinese cast stern eye over Western lessons The Australian August 10 2011 CHINA'S higher education revolution has moved from cringe to criticism, as a new generation of university leaders frowns on the Western systems where they refined their management skills.

Philipp Ivanov, a former deputy director of the University of Sydney's Research Institute for Asia and the Pacific, said China's top university chiefs were discarding their "culture of humiliation"....

Full article: http://goo.gl/Hk1RD We have 18 billion reasons to find a strategy The Australian August 10 2011 AUSTRALIA sells to overseas markets 120,000 tonnes of oranges annually, second only to chickpeas in fruit and vegetable exports. The Australian dollar is killing orange exports, so the industry is calling on Australians to eat more of them. I'm eating an orange a day at the moment, although that's partly because bananas are so expensive.

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ACUMA Inc.: the Association representing tertiary campus service organisations in Australia & New Zealand News summary: International education, August 2011

I know all this because Alan Kohler mentioned it on television. It spurred me to do bit of research -- it's not easy to find out about orange exports. The best I could establish was that fruit and vegetable exports earn between $500 million and $1 billion annually. Not bad for a niche industry....

Full article: http://goo.gl/VpmIr Tourism a casualty as students quit The Australian August 10 2011 THE record tourism deficit could be a consequence of collapsing overseas student numbers rather than the high Australian dollar. The tourism lobby has blamed currency exchange rates for a growing imbalance in tourist numbers, with short-term resident departures exceeding short-term visitor arrivals by more than 1.5 million a year.

"People are leaving with empty bags and returning with bulging suitcases," Tourism and Transport Forum chief executive John Lee said last week. But official figures reveal the dollar is having only a minor effect and plunging overseas student numbers may be a more significant contributor to the imbalance....

Full article: http://goo.gl/55uiL Two years jail for IELTS fraud The Australian August 09 2011 THE former Curtin University admin worker who falsified International English Language Testing System results has been jailed for two years.

Keith Low, 32, was sentenced today in the District Court of Western Australia after pleading guilty to 15 counts of accepting bribes to help foreign students applying for Australian residency. He will be eligible for parole in 12 months....

Full article: http://goo.gl/EWUXr Is Higher Education More Like a Business? No, Business Is More Like Higher Ed Huffington Post August 08 2011 With college costs rising and state budgets at the breaking point, everyone is talking about how to make colleges and universities run more like businesses. Although it isn't widely recognized, colleges are already moving toward privatization. Universities long ago sold off their bookstores to Barnes & Noble, outsourced their IT to Google and Microsoft, and contracted their cafeterias to Aramark and Marriott.

My own campus, the University of Michigan, has cut nearly $159 million in annual spending over the past seven years....

Full article: http://goo.gl/0EyR4 When language is no barrier The Age ACUMA Inc.: the Association representing tertiary campus service organisations in Australia & New Zealand Locked Bag 1333, Launceston, Tasmania 7250, Australia Tel: +61 3 6324 3935 || Fax: +61 3 6324 3670 || admin.acuma@acuma.org.au http://www.acuma.org.au || http://twitter.com/acumainc || http://www.scribd.com/acumainc

ACUMA Inc.: the Association representing tertiary campus service organisations in Australia & New Zealand News summary: International education, August 2011

August 08 2011 Another day, another story about a dodgy tertiary institution exploiting international students.

But this time it’s not happening in Australia. It’s a similar story, though, of migration-driven demand for higher education places.

The University of Northern Virginia in the US is accused of breaching federal rules for administering student visas. The US Department of Home Security recently raided the university and took away files and computers....

Full article: http://goo.gl/9Lm1G Australia and India foster higher education linkages Media release: Chris Evans August 02 2011 New exchange programs for academics and college principals were among a range of initiatives designed to foster higher education links between Australia and India announced today by Minister for Tertiary Education, Senator Chris Evans.

“There are currently more than 300 collaborations between Australian and Indian universities, business and industry which involve the sharing of knowledge and expertise,” Senator Evans said....

Full article: http://goo.gl/1eVvo Student swap to help fix India rift The Age August 03 2011 AUSTRALIAN students will be able to complete part of their degrees at Indian universities, and Indian students in Australia, under a new scheme being worked out between the two countries.

After a serious rift over a spate of attacks on Indian students in Melbourne and Sydney, and a massive fall in the number of Indian students coming to Australia, the federal government is trying to rebuild the relationship and targeting the country's massive, and growing, tertiary education sector....

Full article: http://goo.gl/KPHOl Bid for uni degree swaps with India The Sydney Morning Herald August 03 2011 INDIAN students in Australia will be able to complete part of their degrees at Indian universities - and Australian students encouraged to study in India - under a program being worked out between the two countries.

After a serious rift over attacks on Indian students in Melbourne and Sydney, and a big fall in the number of Indian students coming to Australia, the federal government is trying to rebuild the relationship and is targeting the tertiary education sector....

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ACUMA Inc.: the Association representing tertiary campus service organisations in Australia & New Zealand News summary: International education, August 2011

http://goo.gl/aKfSg Students flock to Canada instead of Australia NineMSN.com.au August 02 2011 International students are flocking to Canada at the expense of Australia due to uncertainty over visa rules and not because of the high Australian dollar, according to a major education company.

One of the biggest providers of English courses to overseas students, Navitas, says parents in China and Vietnam are confused by changes to Australia's visa rules and are now choosing to send their children to other english-speaking countries....

Full article: http://goo.gl/hJCJM New programs encourage education exchange NineMSN.com.au August 02 2011 More students and academics will have study exchange opportunities in Australia and India, Higher Education Minister Chris Evans says.

The minister used a visit to the University of Delhi on Wednesday to announce a range of new programs to foster a closer relationship between the two nations.

A scholarship program will allow Indian students to study at The Energy and Resources Institute in their country and Deakin University in Victoria....

Full article: http://goo.gl/PMKDr Student visa applications on slide The Age August 02 2011 OFFSHORE international student visa applications from India dropped almost 63 per cent in the last financial year, as applications fell by almost 20 per cent across the board, a federal government report shows.

The Immigration Department's quarterly report on the student visa program, released yesterday, shows the number of offshore applicants from India dropped from 18,514 in the 2009-10 financial year to just 6875 in the 2010-11 financial year....

Full article: http://goo.gl/pC09V Offshore applications still spiralling out of control The Australian August 01 2011 Offshore student visa applications tumbled 20 per cent in 2010-11 in worrying market signal. But applications from international students who are currently in Australia have helped contain the total fall to a more modest 5 per cent.

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ACUMA Inc.: the Association representing tertiary campus service organisations in Australia & New Zealand News summary: International education, August 2011

Offshore applications are a key indicator of future demand.

Total visa applications, which include onshore applications, were down 5 per cent, compared with a 19 per cent fall in 2009-10....

Full article: http://goo.gl/RdIsR When opportunity knocks, students take a 'gap year' The Tennesseean August 01 2011 McKenzie Andrews points out the route she will take for her gap year abroad in Taiwan to study Chinese. Andrews deferred admission to Stanford for a year to study abroad.

McKenzie Andrews didn’t plan on taking a year off between high school and college, but the recent University School of Nashville graduate changed her mind once she found out she was chosen to study abroad.

Andrews, who deferred her admission to Stanford University, will leave home in about two weeks to spend a year in Taiwan studying Chinese at a college there. After an application process that took months, she learned in the spring that she was one of 650 students selected from a pool of more....

Full article: http://goo.gl/QSwhw Australian and New Zealand Higher education resources: ACUMA Incorporated

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