ENGINEERING BULLETIN

For decades, attending universities has been the Chinese version of the "American Dream", promising a rise from rags to riches for those who have studied hard and invested heavily in education.A recent slump, however, in the number of students enrolling to take the college entrance examinations has awakened Chinese universities to an inconvenient truth: the era of glory has gone and they will soon have to contend for the decreasing number of students.

A group of seventeen postgraduate students from China's elite Peking University will spend one year as teaching volunteers in the country's remote and underdeveloped western regions starting in August.This will be the 13th such team that the university, famed for excellency in humanities and social sciences, has sent student volunteers to teach for one year in Tibet, Qinghai, Yunnan, Xinjiang, Ningxia, Shanxi and Henan of central and western China since 1999.

The Ministry of Higher Education has made arrangements to provide three weeks of training in 'leadership and positive attitude development' to all the 2,200 students who have qualified to enter universities this year, writes AAM Nizam for the Asian Tribune.They will be given training in two batches, with 1,000 students in the first batch and the balance of 1,200 students in the second batch.

One-quarter of Scots would like to study part-time at university but are put off by tuition fees, finds a poll out today.The figure rose among unemployed people polled, with 73% of those saying the cost of studying part-time stopped them applying for courses that would help them back into work.“Access to higher education should be based on the ability to learn but many part-time students continue to have to pay tuition fees,” said Dr James Miller, director of the Open University in Scotland, which commissioned the MORI poll.“There’s clearly an issue about fairness but it is also a critical issue for government to address early on, if our economy is to grow and remain competitive.”Scottish students studying full time in Scotland pay no tuition fees. In a statement to the SNP party conference in March, First Minister Alex Salmond said “the rocks will melt with the sun” before he would allow tuition fees.

NAIROBI - The young boy studying at a secondary school in Nairobi, Kenya clicks a button to open a program on a computer.He waits keenly as the program loads up before giving the computer another instruction. Soon, he picks a textbook and starts working mathematical problems on the computer. He types a quadratic equation and uses the program to solve it.After completing the task, he draws a triangle using the program and starts to solve its various properties. In mathematics, the topic is known as trigonometry.

Approximately 30,000 students or 44% of the local tertiary education population in Trinidad and Tobago can now boast of being trained by fully-accredited and internationally-recognised higher education institutions, reports Brent Zephyrine for the The Trinidad Guardian.The statement was made last week by Acting Executive Director of the Accreditation Council of Trinidad and Tobago (ACTT), Michael Bradshaw, during a news conference held to commemorate the first institutional accreditation of three of the nation's largest tertiary education institutions.

Migration and Education, a seminar class led by Professor Merle Hummrich at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, was intended for 50 students, limited by how many term papers she could grade. But according to Carmen Eckstein, a student who vied for one of the spots, 400 students showed up the first day. For lack of seats, most sat on the floor or stood during the seminars.

MBA students have reason to celebrate this year as the job market continues to improve and recruiters predict a substantial increase in hiring of business school graduates.Though the news was widely expected, confirmation from the latest recruiter survey by GMAC, the Graduate Management Admissions Council, will allay many of the concerns experienced by MBA programme directors in recent years.

Singapore's four public universities have each received at least S$1 million in aid from Prima Limited, the Republic's first flour miller.The Nanyang Technological University (NTU), the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Singapore Management University (SMU) were each handed a cheque for S$1 million on the occasion of the Prima group's 50th anniversary.The Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), meanwhile, was awarded S$2 million in financial aid which it said will be used to fund student scholarships.

A record number of students have enrolled in Australian universities this year, 50,000 more than in 2009. Minister for Tertiary Education Chris Evans said that in 2011, more than 480,000 undergraduate places were being funded, an increase of 10% since 2009, reports PS News.

Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin Thursday said that a temporary freeze had been imposed on institutions of higher learning (IPT) in the country from offering new medical courses, effective May 1 this year.The freeze would be for five years, he added.

Overseas students starting courses at Cambridge University next year are set to be hit by a 10% hike in tuition fees. Under the proposals, many international arts and humanities students will pay at least £13,000 a year, while some science courses will cost almost £20,000. The increase comes at a time when Cambridge has said it will be running a cumulative deficit of around £30 million over the next three years. The figures, published in the Cambridge University Reporter and first reported in the Times Higher Education magazine, show that new international students starting courses in 2012-13 will pay an extra 10% on the 2011-12 fee.

Molecular Profiles, one of The University of Nottingham’s spinout companies, has won the prestigious Queen's Award for Enterprise — the UK’s highest accolade for business success.The award, the second for Innovation, has been made in recognition of the company’s cutting edge pharmaceutical development services that significantly improve and speed-up the introduction of new drugs.

Cambridge will fail to take in more students from state schools after a sharp rise in tuition fees, the university has admitted. Documents submitted to the Government’s Office for Fair Access confirm that the university merely hopes to maintain existing numbers of deprived undergraduates from 2012. The move risks leading to a further breakdown in the relationship between top universities and the Coalition following claims from ministers that institutions seeking to charge £9,000 should “dramatically” increase their intake of poor students. It represents the first official warning that the Coalition’s higher education reforms risk failing to widen access to elite universities. Under its plans, all universities seeking to charge more than £6,000 must submit an “access agreement” to Offa outlining plans to increase participation among deprived students. This includes proposed fee-waivers and outreach programmes to attract more applications from disadvantaged communities.

The first astronomical society encompassing all of Africa has been formally launched at a meeting of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in Cape Town, South Africa. The African Astronomical Society (AfAS) debuted at the Second Middle East-Africa Regional IAU Meeting on 14 April – just three years after the society was first proposed. The ceremony was attended by astronomers from each of five regions of Africa: Northern, Southern, Eastern, Western and Central. There were also representatives from a sixth region designated as the African Diaspora. This society follows in the wake of the African Physical Society (AfPS), which launched last year.

The government is planning to triple funds for research in next year’s budget, the minister for education and vocational training, Dr Shukuru Kawambwa, has said.Speaking to journalists after opening the 6th Higher Education, Science and Technology exhibition in Dar es Salaam yesterday, Dr Kawambwa said due to its importance in development, the government intends to set aside Sh100 billion for research.In the 2010/11 Budget, the government allocated Sh10 billion while currently, Sh30 billion has been disbursed to finance such research.“Currently research receives inadequate funds due to limited budget. We aim at increasing the funds to Sh100 billion during the next financial year,” he said.

Soochow University, Laos (SUL), an overseas affiliate school of Soochow University in China's Suzhou, is expected to officially open in 2012. This will be the first overseas university run by a higher education institution from the mainland.Soochow University began education cooperation with Laos in 2007 and has since been laying the groundwork for the opening of SUL. In 2010, Soochow University obtained the approval of the Lao government to provide undergraduate and graduate education in the country, becoming the first foreign educational institution to gain such approval.

China has the largest number of overseas students in the world, with a record 1.27 million studying abroad at the end of 2010, according to the latest statistics from the Ministry of Education.About 285,000 of them were new students who began their overseas studies last year, up 24 percent over 2009, said the ministry.Self-financed students now make up the largest group of those going overseas, and among more than 100 countries they selected, more than 90 percent of the students chose to study in the top 10 destinations - the United States, Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Canada, Singapore, France, Germany and Russia.

Universities are planning a huge increase in foreign students to boost their income following swingeing government funding cuts, it emerged last week Some top institutions want to almost double the number of undergraduates recruited from outside Europe.

When a chart of all cuts in the 2011 budget passed by the US congress on Thursday was made public earlier last week, international education advocates received an unpleasant surprise: funding for foreign language and area studies programmes within the Education Department could be cut by as much as $50 million, rolled back to levels last seen before 9/11.