PRESS statements by higher education minister Blade Nzimande confirm his eagerness to address issues in the public higher education arena. But what about the private education sector?
With a target of 75,000 foreign students registering at private institutions of higher learning by next year, the Higher Education Ministry has been talking with providers on ways to make Malaysia a regional hub of excellence, writes KOH SOO LING.
Malaysian Association of Private Colleges and Universities president Dr Parmjit Singh calls for regular dialogues between the Higher Education Ministry and private education providers with a view to blurring the boundary that separates public and private tertiary institutions.
Private higher education providers want fair competition for students. A new national regulatory body will be formed and universities will have to undergo the same accreditation process as private providers. The measures were welcomed by Andrew Smith, CEO of the Australian Council for Private Education & Training.
While generous compensation packages for college presidents have come under increasing public scrutiny, other university employees often earn far more.
Presidents of a number of colleges vowed in November to take a pay cut or otherwise give back part of their earnings as a way to help buffer their schools against the struggling economy.
The financial crisis that began last year has shaken higher-education systems throughout the nine states in the Northeast, totting budget cuts on public universities and shrinking the endowments of the region's many private colleges.
The article discusses the lack of enrollment at several private colleges in Japan. According to the article, Japan's ministry of education has announced that almost half of the country's 550 private four-year universities are below their government-set recruitment targets. Japan's low fertility rate and its demographic conditions are contributing to the schools' enrollment problem.
The article discusses fears among U.S. private colleges and universities that the state aid they receive may be among the first programs cut as states tighten their budgets. Fluctuations in state spending on private higher education are discussed, as are the types of aid, including money given directly to colleges and grants and loans to in-state students.
The article discusses Covenant University in a town outside Lagos, Nigeria. As a privately run, Christian university, it breaks with a Nigerian tradition of free public higher education. The demand among Nigerian youth for higher education is beyond what the state can provide, leaving an opening for private institutions.
The article profiles the private college Interdisciplinary Center, which is located in Israel and attracts donors and scholars from around the world. The center is the country's first private college, and offers competition to Israel's seven publicly financed major universities. The school has developed a stellar reputation among students and scholars because of its commitment to interdisciplinary work and community involvement.
The article reports on a study from Moody's Investors Services showing that institutions of higher education in the United States, especially private colleges and universities, face stiff challenges in 2009 and beyond. The areas of greatest challenge were identified as increasing pressure on tuition and financial aid, losses in endowments, liquidity pressures, and volatility in variable-rate debt markets.
The article discusses how Vietnamese citizens Ton Nu Thi Ninh and Dang Thi Hoang Yen have worked to support the creation of private universities in Vietnam. The author discusses the perception of private education in Vietnam.
With tuitions, fees, and room and board at dozens of colleges now reaching $50,000 a year, the ability to sustain private higher education for all but the very well-heeled is questionable. According to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, over the past 25 years, average college tuition and fees have risen by 440 percent — more than four times the rate of inflation and almost twice the rate of medical care.
The presidents of the nation’s major private research universities were paid a median compensation of $627,750 in the 2007-8 fiscal year — a 5.5 percent increase from the previous year — according to The Chronicle of Higher Education annual executive compensation survey.
Law on Education is expected to take effect in Azerbaijan soon. Regardless of ownership, the higher schools will receive status of state, municipality and private institutions.
“With this new piece of law, public and private universities will now operate under common regulations, which is good for ensuring quality and standards,” said Prof Freida Brown, vice-chancellor of the United States International University – Africa.
To cement Malaysia’s status as a global eduhub, plans are afoot to improve the nation’s higher education scene and the private sector is set to change in a big way.
Although the top brass of private IPTs were largely positive to the ministry’s proposed incentives, not all were as keen in acclimatising to the new requirements.
Wake Forest University and Elon University have both been named among the 100 best values in private higher education institutions by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. Wake Forest ranked 25th on the list of 50 private universities that combine economic value with exceptional education, while Elon ranked 28th on the same list.
The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) Friday vowed it will “get tough” and run after substandard schools, warning colleges and universities all over the country to improve their education standards or face closure.
The University Grants Commission recognises degrees offered by a foreign university through its affiliated body, the Malambe campus, Higher Education Minister Prof. Wiswa Warnapala told Parliament yesterday.
State Rep. John Quinn, D-Dartmouth, filed a House bill Thursday calling for a study of $20.7 million in state money given to private colleges, a response to private law schools' fierce opposition to the University of Massachusetts' plan to take over the Southern New England School of Law and make it the UMass law school.
State Education Minister Ramanlal Vora moved the Gujarat Private Universities Bill, 2009, seeking to set up private universities, in the Legislative Assembly here on Thursday.
Replying to a debate on the Private Universities Bill, 2009 in the Assembly on Friday, Education Minister Ramanlal Vora said the gross enrolment ratio in higher education (in the age group 18-23) in the state was lower, though marginal, than the national average.
Gujarat government on Friday admitted that the picture of state's higher education is not very rosy, one of the major reasons why it became essential to come up with the Gujarat Private Universities Bill, 2009. Concluding the debate on the Bill, education minister Ramanlal Vora said, the gross enrolment ratio in the age-group 18-23, or higher education, in Gujarat is lower than the national average. "It is 11 per cent in India, while it is 10 per cent in Gujarat", he said.
Exploding demand for higher education during the last decade, especially in developing countries, has been accompanied by extraordinary growth in private provision and rising tensions over the entry of foreign institutions into local markets.
Uganda's National Council for Higher Education has adopted stricter regulations for the registration of private institutions in an effort to ensure higher standards. It has warned that some private universities might be forced to close.
Private sector participation is seen necessary to reach the goal of doubling higher education's capacity. But the report lashes its whip at those private universities which make profitability their singular focus. It recommends massive modification in the legal framework to tighten regulations on auditing the accounts of such universities, on transparency, on paying a minimum salary to the teachers and so on.
The Delhi Declaration also acknowledges the role of private initiatives in meeting the rapidly growing need for higher education, particularly technical and professional courses. However, the participating nations were of the view that private institutions should be inclusive in their approach to access.
The collapse of a number of private Australian vocational colleges over the past year is damaging the nation's image abroad, according to angry students, many of them Indian, who have been left high and dry with their visas at risk.
Even as the Commission on Higher Education is not mandated by law to set tuition fee ceilings, Speaker Prospero Nograles said private schools have the social and moral responsibility not to treat profits as their reason for existence.
Higher education, however, remains a luxury for the majority of Indonesia’s younger generation. Universities, state and private, can accommodate only one third of more than 2 million senior high school graduates annually
Faced with a freshman class that is 20 percent larger than expected, Ithaca College in New York is paying 31 students as much as $10,000 each to delay attending the school for a year.
Most private institutions are in major cities and are rather small. They offer two-year courses in industrial, business and secretarial fields and some are affiliated with foreign higher education institutions, mainly in France, and provide joint higher level courses.
Qualified lecturers rarely do the teaching in the Congo's private universities. Instead, unqualified assistants take courses that are often obsolete, theoretical and useless for finding a job, says Le Potentiel of Kinshasa.
Private universities have sprung up like mushrooms in Ghana. In 1999, there were just two but since then 11 new private universities and 19 private polytechnics or colleges have opened their doors.
Chairman, Governing Council of the Lagos City Polytechnic, Ikeja, Mr. Babatunde Odufuwa has called on government at all levels to put necessary administrative structures in place to grant aids to students in private tertiary institutions in the country.
The government will allow the private sector to set up medical colleges in backward states, hilly areas and the northeast region, Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said on Monday. "We will allow the private sector to set up medical colleges in backward states, hilly areas and the northeastern region," Azad said here at a healthcare meet organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), an industry lobby.
The human resource development (HRD) ministry may allow private players to set up universities instead of going through the "deemed to be university" route. The ministry will also push for firm regulations which would demand transparency and accountability of the players in the education sector.
The Federal Executive Council on Wednesday in Abuja approved the issuance of provisional licences for the establishment of seven new private universities in the country. Nigeria currently has 96 universities, comprising 27 federal, 35 state and 34 private universities.
In this context the committee has noted with concern the unregulated growth of the private sector in education, in particular private institutions that have acquired the status of deemed universities chiefly to gain degree-granting powers with a commercial and profit-making motive.
The State Government has approved the first private university in the State to be set up by the Azim Premji Foundation under an Act of the Karnataka legislature. The university will promote quality education management programmes and training for teaching staff.
Shirley Ann Jackson, president of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, was the highest paid private college president in 2007-2008, according to a report published today by The Chronicle of Higher Education.
News usually thrives on controversy, so most of us would have no difficulty remembering J.A Kufour's last gesture as president, where he ordered the reinstatement of ACP Nathan Kofi Boakye with all his entitlements, and the public's reaction at the time. We would probably not remember that the NPP President had also promised $1billion as seed money to boost the capacity of one of the private universities in the country.
T. Riechert, F. Zhang, und S. Auer. Agiles Requirements Engineering für Softwareprojekte mit einer großen Anzahl verteilter Stakeholder, Volume XVIII von Leipziger Beiträge zur Informatik, Leipziger Informatik-Verbund (LIV), (2009)