ENGINEERING BULLETIN

Australia is the most expensive place for an international student to go to university but it is not seen as the best place for a top quality education. These were the findings of a survey of 5,000 parents from 15 countries which combined average course fees with the cost of living. At the top of the table, it was estimated an international student in Australia would spend more than $42,000 each year on fees and supporting themselves. In second place, students paid about $3,000 less each year to study in Singapore and they paid about $6,000 a year less in the United States.

Belgium's Ghent University has opened a branch in South Korea's Incheon free economic zone, or IFEZ, becoming the first European institution to open a campus here – and a ceremony that marked the opening of a branch of America’s University of Utah was held in the free economic zone in Songdo, also a home to the United Nations Green Climate Fund, reports Yonhap News Agency.Ghent University, one of the top-rated schools in the world for bioscience, is expected to offer classes to some 900 local and foreign students, with the University of Utah offering classes to some 270 students in psychology, journalism and social welfare.

A court in Dammam has sentenced two Saudi students to one year in prison and a SR5000 (US$1300) fine for forging seals on their certificates, reports Arab News.The two students had tried to have their certificates attested by the Ministry of Higher Education, but were told that the seals on the certificates were false and, accordingly, were referred to an investigative bureau for further action, said a local daily.

Australian universities are preparing for one of the biggest shake-ups higher education has experienced since a Labor government reshaped the sector by consolidating universities and colleges of advanced education in the late 1980s.Federal Education Minister Christopher Pyne appears to be preparing the ground to extend federal funding to for-profit universities and non-university colleges to create a United States-style system in Australia. In a speech in London last week, Pyne said that “a new wave of deregulation was needed to stop Australia's universities falling behind the rest of the world”. He said he was alarmed that only one Australian university, Melbourne, was in the top 50 in the world according to the Times Higher Education's World Reputation Rankings.

A growing number of universities in Japan are introducing software systems to detect plagiarism in academic papers amid the evolving controversy over the “STAP cell” papers produced by Riken, the state-backed research institute.Under an ordinance that took effect in April 2013, the education ministry has made it mandatory for all doctoral theses to be published on the Internet, replacing its decades-old rule requiring publication in print.

The UNESCO Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (UNESCO/IESALC) and The University of the West Indies (UWI) will convene the Second Conference on Higher Education in the Caribbean (II CCHE), May 8 and 9, 2014 at the regional headquarters of the UWI in Kingston, Jamaica. Under the theme, Best Practices in Higher Education: The Way Forward for the Caribbean”, II CCHE will focus on quality assurance and recognition of studies, titles and diplomas, research management and impact, and the financing of higher education. The conference will bring together presenters, facilitators and expert discussants from across the wider Caribbean and internationally.

Amid the pervasive violence within and just across Sudan’s borders and the devastation already caused to its infrastructure thanks to a decade long conflict in Darfur, Japan has offered $441,133 to help build elementary schools in the White Nile and Dassala states in Sudan. The project will fund nine schools, seven in the Al-Gitaina area in the White Nile state, and two in the al-Katmiya region of Kassala. Combined, the project will serve more than 1,400 students, and includes plans to construct eight classrooms and four office buildings. “Japan’s Embassy places great importance on supporting primary education in Sudan and the official launch of two projects today is clear indication of this approach,” said Japanese ambassador to Sudan Ryoichi Horie.

Universities Australia has announced an agreement with business groups to collaborate on vocational training to improve the employability of graduates. Universities Australia chair Sandra Harding made the announcement in Canberra last week. The agreement will assist students in undertaking work integrated learning. This includes work placements accredited for university course work, mentoring and shadowing programmes, and internships.

UK universities must go to India if they are to benefit from a shake up to international higher education which will see India enrolling the largest number of students into tertiary education in the world by 2020, warns a British Council report.Universities are being urged to move away from focusing on recruiting Indian students to forming partnerships in India, creating new opportunities for UK students and academics to study and teach there, as well as encouraging collaboration through research."By 2020, India and China will produce 40% of the world's graduate talent pipeline," says Lynne Heslop, British Council's senior education advisor in India and author of the report.

Christian Humborg wants German universities and corporations to know: They’re being watched.As managing director of Transparency International Germany, a nongovernmental organization that fights corruption, Mr. Humborg sees a troubling trend in German higher education, as more top-name universities embrace “strategic partnerships” with business and seek to commercialize their research.Such collaborations are not entirely new to Germany — and are certainly common in the United States. Still, as the education budgets of Germany’s 16 federal states, which are largely responsible for funding universities, have stagnated, more institutions have sought alliances with corporations.

The rise of online instruction will upend the economics of higher education.Universties have not changed much since students first gathered in Oxford and Bologna in the 11th century. Teaching has been constrained by technology. Until recently a student needed to be in a lecture hall to hear the professor or around a table to debate with fellow students. Innovation is eliminating those constraints, however, and bringing sweeping change to higher education.Online learning takes many forms. Wikipedia, a user-generated online encyclopedia, contains wonderfully detailed explanations. YouTube offers instruction on how to boil an egg as well as lectures on cosmology. Within many universities the online is displacing the offline. Professors publish course materials and videos of their lectures on the web. Students interact with each other and submit assignments by e-mail. Even those living on university campuses may nonetheless learn largely online, skipping lectures and reporting only for the final exam.

Students may soon be able to receive credit for the free online courses that are reshaping higher education, reports Associated Press. The American Council on Education (ACE) announced last Thursday that it is recommending degree credit for five undergraduate courses offered by Coursera, a company that provides massive open online courses – MOOCs – from leading universities."A rigorous evaluation of these courses showed that they meet ACE's standards for college credit recommendations," said Molly Corbett Broad, the ACE president.

A group representing some of Europe's leading universities has withdrawn its support for a new ranking system funded by the European Union, warning that it could pose "a serious threat" to higher education.The League of European Research Universities, or LERU, which represents 21 leading research-intensive universities, has disassociated itself from the U-Multirank project, which is due to publish its first results in early 2014.

Myanmar’s universities were once considered by many to be among the best in East Asia. But years of mismanagement and a disastrous nationalisation process left the education system in such shambles that many students seek educational opportunities abroad, reports Voice of America.Since entering parliament, opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has made restoration of Burmese schools a priority, and a new attitude towards learning has emerged among policy-makers.

The true cost of a university degree will rocket to up to £100,000 for today's students, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.Thousands of people currently studying at university will end up paying that amount over their career because of interest charges and other fees – several times the £27,000 or £36,000 in fees that most three- and four-year courses charge.The landmark figure, revealed in the Government's own documents, is far higher than the £70,000 in repayments that it was previously thought students would end up paying over their lifetimes. The Government figures confirm that graduates who find well-paid jobs – in finance and law, for example – will be able to save tens of thousands of pounds by paying off their loans more quickly than the vast majority of their counterparts on middle incomes.

While other industries talk about globalizing, higher education, particularly in the United States, has long been heavily international, drawing students and faculty members from around the world. Still, universities, here and elsewhere, need to do more to ensure that the next generation of scholars and researchers has an international perspective and the ability to work in diverse settings, said speakers at the annual meeting of the Council of Graduate Schools.Such skills are increasingly important as classrooms fill with even more international students and as many academics pursue careers abroad. They are equally crucial, speakers at the four-day conference noted, for the growing number of doctorate recipients who pursue careers outside the academy.

Online courses provided by some of the top universities in the United States are going to be used by students at local community colleges, in a project funded by the Gates Foundation.The edX project, set up by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, announced a plan to "bring a new teaching model to the classroom".It will blend edX's online lectures and materials with classroom learning.EdX president Anant Agarwal pointed to the value to tight college budgets.Online courses have become an increasingly important topic in higher education - particularly in the United States, where they have been seen as a way of widening access and tackling spiralling costs.