Singapore and the United Kingdom will work together to raise standards in private education in both countries. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to do so was signed on Friday by the Council for Private Education (CPE) Singapore and the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) United Kingdom.
A group of leading independent schools is studying plans to set up an elite private university modelled on American liberal arts colleges, which concentrates on high-quality teaching for undergraduates rather than research.
But today they are facing two imminent threats to their near-monopoly of higher education. The first is the expansion of educational providers that exist solely on private support. The second comes from the small but growing efforts of for-profit universities, heavily influenced by commercial education ventures in the United States.
In 2007, the European Union adopted a lex specialis, Regulation (EC) No. 1394/2007 on advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs), a new legal category of medical product in regenerative medicine. The regulation applies to ATMPs prepared industrially or manufactured by a method involving an industrial process. It also provides a hospital exemption, which means that medicinal products not regulated by EU law do not benefit from a harmonized regime across the European Union but have to respect national laws. This article describes the recent EU laws, and contrasts two national regimes, asking how France and the United Kingdom regulate ATMPs which do and do not fall under the scope of Regulation (EC) No. 1394/2007. What are the different legal categories and their enforceable regimes, and how does the evolution of these highly complex regimes interact with the material world of regenerative medicine and the regulatory bodies and socioeconomic actors participating in it?
With most of the country still complaining about university fees being raised to £9,000 a year, it’s easy to forget that a small group of teenagers chose to pay double that by enrolling at A C Grayling’s elite start up, the New College of the Humanities (NCH), last October.
The leading lights of the for-profit higher education sector might be unfairly stereotyped as hard-nosed types. Meanwhile, people from Yorkshire have been unfairly stereotyped as keeping a particularly tight rein on their finances.
Only one message will have reached most of the public from Sir Andrew Foster's report on further education: that a significant (but unspecified) proportion of colleges are failing and should be taken over by private providers. Not surprisingly for a 113-page assessment of an entire sector, the real verdict is much more complex and generally more sympathetic to the colleges. Sir Andrew blames successive governments for giving further education too wide a brief, confusing employers and students while spreading resources too thinly. He suggests that higher education courses are among the distractions, and he advocates a model closer to the American community college. Sir Andrew Foster
Most women who travel from the United Kingdom to other countries for infertility treatment do so because of the long wait and shortage of donor gametes at home, show the results of a survey of “fertility tourists” from the UK. Of 51 women interviewed for the ongoing research project, more than 70% needed donor treatment, most of them with donor eggs or embryos but some with donated sperm, the principal investigator, Lorraine Culley, told a conference in London.
Coalition government plans to expand the number of private universities in the UK risks leading to higher dropout rates and lower academic standards, according to a powerful lobby of almost 500 professors, writes Graeme Paton for The Telegraph. It is claimed that giving profit-making companies access to state funding will create a system in which institutions pursue short-term financial gains at the expense of a decent education.
A controversial new university, the first of its kind in the United Kingdom, will open its doors in January 2015 – to students who can afford the annual £35,000 fees.
The bill on compulsory accreditation of all higher education institutions may not have passed political muster, but that isn't going to put brakes on the government's grand plans.
For example, the not-for-profit Regent’s College has become Regent’s University and the College of Law has become the University of Law, the UK’s first for-profit university.