University doubts

The European Association of Universities (EUA) has issued a statement highlighting a number of potential threats in the field of higher education and research, which are associated with the introduction of amendments to the new data protection rules by the European Parliament. The EUA's joint statement against the amendments was signed by the heads of more than 60 scientific and educational organizations, as well as individually some major EU scientists.

We are talking about the draft comprehensive reform of the law on data protection developed back in 2012 by the European Commission on Education, as a result of which, according to the developers, "the confidentiality of online information in the field of law and economics should be strengthened." The EU's position is to restrict access to any personalized information in these areas, including for scientific purposes.

In this regard, in its latest statement, the EUA sounds the alarm that some amendments (in particular to Articles 42, 81 and 83) "are fraught with restrictions that may inadvertently hinder the development of research in a number of educational and research areas". "In the field of medicine and related areas in particular," the statement said, " the preventive effectiveness of personalized data can be seriously undermined."

New type of Erasmus

Under the new Erasmus+ program, at least 250,000 Britons will study or work abroad until 2020. The plan also provides for a twofold increase in the number of students entering the UK compared to British students traveling to study abroad. In total, about 4 million young people will have the opportunity to study or train in new countries under the Erasmus+ EU mobility program, which was presented in London in early May.

Speaking at the launch of the program, L. Vassiliou, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, noted that more than 3 million people across Europe have already benefited from Erasmus+. According to A. Vassiliu, from now on Erasmus+ It will open "a new chapter in a fantastic success story in the development of European mobility".

The new stage of Erasmus+ impresses with its budget. The latter is almost 15 billion rubles. EUR (US $ 21 billion) for the next 7 years: this is 40% more than before. The budget funds will be used for grants for students and interns, as well as teachers, instructors and youth representatives participating in the EU mobility program.

Until now, Erasmus+ offered mainly individually designed online advanced training courses (mainly language). Significant changes have now been made to the program. For the first time, an indicator of quality improvement at all levels of language training is being introduced, including more effective use of ICTs for students and teachers. Also, for the first time, a section dedicated to sports as "a means of social significance, social integration, and improving health" was introduced. In addition, it is proposed to introduce guarantees for educational loans. It also provides for the reform of vocational education and training. Finally, Erasmus+ will be open to third countries, allowing students from all over the world to conduct research activities in the EU (and vice versa).

"In short," said Vassiliou, " Erasmus offers a new type of partnership between all subjects in the field of education and training, as well as between education and the world of work, giving 4 million people a chance to study, train and work productively in any country of the united Europe."

The growing threat of hackers

Reports from universities about hackers ' attacks on their official servers are becoming almost commonplace in the United States, the source said. FoxNews.com. So, at the end of April, the University of Maryland administration reported that the university's server was hacked for the second time in the last four weeks. The server of Indiana University was also subjected to a hacker attack, as a result of which confidential personal information on 146 thousand students and graduates of the university was potentially threatened with disclosure. Earlier, when hackers broke into the server of the University of North Dakota, confidential data of more than 200 thousand students, teachers and employees of this university was revealed. This is probably just the beginning, suggests FoxNews.com.

Cybercrime is not a new type of crime. But now its complexity and intensity are growing at an alarming rate. At the same time, it is universities that are becoming the easiest prey for cybercriminals, since they have an open structure with long information storage periods. For modern hackers, hacking the servers of any university is relatively easy.

All this, notes FoxNews.com It is becoming quite threatening, especially given the fact that today hackers are actively carrying out orders from criminal organizations operating in countries that are hostile or at least hostile to the United States.

Different interests of British and Americans

The indicator of the number of British students who declared their desire to study abroad for higher education for the period March 2013 - April 2014 shows a pronounced upward trend. A survey of 2,630 students from various universities in the UK showed that 37% of respondents actually consider the possibility of obtaining an education in foreign universities (March 2013 - 20%). The opposite trend, however, is true in the United States. A survey of 4,680 American students showed that the number of applicants to study abroad in 2014 decreased to 44%, compared with 56% in 2013. These data are given in the report "Expanding the horizons of foreign research" by the Council for Higher Education in Great Britain.

As for the motivations that determine the desire to get an education abroad, the report highlights the following. In the UK, 57% of students pointed to lower tuition fees (27% in 2013), 19% - the desire to learn about other cultures, 16% - the desire to simply go abroad. In the United States, respectively, 33% of respondents indicated the factor of research work, 23% - the desire to get acquainted with other cultures, and 21% - the desire to simply go abroad.

At the same time, in the United Kingdom (data are not available for the United States), 41% of respondents said that they do not think at all about the possibility or necessity of traveling abroad for education (65% in 2013).The share of undecided students was 22% (15% in 2013).

U-turn on quality assurance

The Swedish Government has made a U-turn in the field of educational services to ensure their quality. In particular, it is stated about the modernization of the model of education in the relevant field.

This is the government's response to the fact that 37 rectors of all members of the Swedish Higher Education Association (SUHF) and the head of the Swedish National Union of Students published a joint memorandum stating: "We are fully capable of ensuring quality control of the educational activities of national universities. New monitoring of quality control of higher education should be developed in cooperation with universities."

The fact is that since 2012, the protocol of the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) has been suspended in Sweden, since more than 20% of the programs of 189 educational institutions in this country are rated "unsatisfactory". In this regard, ENQA has put forward a request to the National Agency for Higher Education of Sweden to "deal with anomalies in the system of national quality assurance of educational services" in the next two years.

Among the most pressing problems of higher education in Sweden, according to student surveys, the most significant are::

* poor quality of teaching;

* high cost of tuition for paid additional courses;

* insufficient access to computer-based learning;

* insufficient control over the quality of educational services provided on a paid basis, etc.

The issue of the need to revise the existing quality assurance model has become the subject of consideration by the National Parliament as a result of a number of sharply critical speeches by major Swedish newspapers. Reacting to this, the Ministry of Education, represented by its current head, H. Wallberg-Henriksson stated that "the existing model for ensuring the quality of work must necessarily be revised in order to meet the quality principles at the European level." The relevant recommendations are formulated in the SUHF memorandum.

In an effort to implement the recommendations of the SUHF, the Parliament and Government decided to conduct "a large-scale analysis of trends in the development of higher education in Sweden over the past 20 years in order to identify its shortcomings in ensuring the quality of educational services." The analysis is intended to achieve the main goal - how well the supply of educational services in Sweden is brought into exact compliance with current European standards.

Responding to a nationwide challenge

A Swiss-wide referendum on immigration could have negative consequences for academic exchanges in the European region in general and the influx of foreign students to Switzerland in particular. This is how the scientific community of Switzerland assessed the results of the referendum, which voted in favor of limiting immigration quotas to this country.

The EU reacted to this as a violation of the principle of "free movement of people". Negotiations between the EU and Switzerland on two important programs - Horizon 2020 ($110 billion) and Erasmus+ ($15 billion) - have been postponed. The result, experts predict, may be disastrous for the Swiss higher education system, both financially and in terms of international cooperation and academic exchange within the framework of the "Global Partnership Perspective" with the United States, China, South Africa, etc.

In particular, cooperation programs of the University of Basel with the University of Virginia (USA), East China Normal University in Shanghai (China) and the University of Cape Town (South Africa) may be curtailed. In addition, the prospect of cooperation of another leading university in Switzerland, the Joint Technical Higher School of Zurich (Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule Zurich) with universities in 4 Southeast Asian countries-Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam-is under threat.

Responding to this challenge, the leadership of the University of Basel announced an ambitious program "Internationalization Strategy". Other Swiss universities also announced their interest-

We are interested in mitigating the consequences of the referendum on academic exchange. The problems that have arisen are expected to be discussed at a joint seminar in Singapore, tentatively scheduled for June-July of this year.

China's New Plan

The Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China has unveiled a new plan aimed at increasing the role of universities in advising the government of the country. The plan provides for the creation of special university centers and special research centers, whose task is to conduct research, firstly, to promote the development of recommendations for national policy, and secondly, to develop recommendations for the activities of specific ministries.

"University centers and research centers will have to deal not only with fundamental theoretical research, especially in the field of social sciences, but also find application in practical research programs that are closely linked to the process of developing state decisions," the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China said in a press release.

The new plan provides for raising the requirements for China's think-tank standards to the level of standards of leading international consulting firms and analytical centers. Many international consulting companies have now significantly increased their research on China, actively advising local businesses, which means their growing role in China, especially in the fields of economics, finance and foreign policy. Even many Chinese companies are beginning to turn into foreign subsidiaries of these research groups, which causes considerable concern to the Chinese government.

"There is a clear need for new think tanks with Chinese characteristics," Chinese President Xi Jinping said in April 2013. By the spring of 2014, he repeated what he had said several more times, emphasizing the importance of creating "state-of-the-art think tanks with Chinese characteristics as the most important goal of the national development strategy."

Several similar centers have already been established. The elite Fudan University in Shanghai announced the opening of a Center for the development of Research on China's Socio-economic policy. Tsinghua University, which specializes in social, economic and environmental sciences, also announced a similar center. The Academy of Social Sciences of the People's Republic of China, with its more than 3 thousand students, is also becoming a similar center. researchers.

In the report of the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, in particular, it is noted that from now on state support for centers, including primarily funding, will be significantly increased. This should lead to a new stage of growth of research centers. Even a promising goal has been set for the coming years-to approach the corresponding indicator to the level of the United States, where there are 1828 such centers.

The Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, by the way, published data on the contribution of already established centers to state policy. In particular, as of April 2014, Chinese universities actively participated in the development of about 600 projects for national ministries, as well as provided more than 1,600 consulting reports for the government. This work will be expanded "in the area of consulting for all government decisions, including providing additional reports for the military sphere."

Information about plagiarism

An increasing number of Japanese universities are trying to implement software systems for detecting plagiarism in scientific papers. The most popular product now is iThenticate, which uses a database containing over 130 million dissertations.

The Government of the country, for its part, is committed to supporting this initiative by unveiling the "STAP Riken" plan for educational organizations and research institutes. According to the relevant government decree, the Ministry of Education of Japan plans to make this event mandatory for all doctoral dissertations, which must be published on the Internet at the same time as publication in the "paper" press.

The official representative of the company selling plagiarism verification systems, commenting on the growing demand of universities for this product, said: "I believe that more and more universities will switch to implementing our systems. For if we do not fight plagiarism, it will call into question not only the authority of any particular university, but also the overall quality of the entire national higher education."

Exploration of the Arab East

The first joint university with the participation of France and Arab states will be established in the capital of Egypt, Cairo. The main task of the joint university is to improve the quality of higher education and develop research cooperation. The goals, objectives and activities of the Arab-French University, as described by the Cairo Al-Ahram, are "to produce internationally competitive research and a new generation of graduates, scientists and technologists, as well as to fully promote the Arab-French scientific and cultural dialogue." Membership in the university will be open to all higher education institutions in France and the Arab world.

The announcement was made in preparation for the first Franco-Arab conference on higher education and research to be held in Luxor, Egypt. at the end of 2014 In addition to France, the conference is expected to be attended by 22 Arab States (8 from Africa, 6 from the Persian Gulf and 8 from the Asian region).

At the same time, the United States also announced its intention to develop integration ties with the Arab region. In particular, the University of New England (UNE) has opened its campus in Tangier, Morocco, "in order to further internationalize higher education." This is the first university in the United States to create its own campus for joint training of American and local students in the higher education program. At the UNE campus, students are offered a wide range of natural sciences and humanities courses.-

higher professional training courses. Additionally, there is also the possibility of an in-depth study of the Arabic language, as well as, in particular, the history and culture of Morocco.

Scholarships to the best universities in the world

The Government of the Republic of Indonesia (RI) has expressed its desire to help increase the number of people with higher education in innovative areas of socio-economic development of the country. For this purpose, the Government of the Republic of Korea has initiated a program of presidential scholarships to study at the best universities in the world.

The aim of the scholarship program is to cover the costs of training young Indonesians in the top 50 universities in the United States, Great Britain, China, Canada, Australia, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, France, Singapore, South Korea, Denmark, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The list includes, in particular, such universities as Harvard, Columbia, Cambridge and Oxford.

"These scholarships," said RI President S. B. Yudhoyono, presenting the program, " will help our country prepare future leaders who will be able to lead Indonesia in the next 10 to 20 years from the stage of a developing economy to the stage of a truly developed economy.

According to the Minister of Education and Culture of the Republic of Korea, 100 grantees will be selected each year. Currently, more than 50 applicants, including 28 women and 23 men, have already passed the selection process. Two of them will study at the state expense: two at Harvard, one at Stanford, three at Oxford, two at the University of Tokyo, six at the Imperial College of London, eight at the Australian National University and three more at the University of Edinburgh.

The scholarships cover such fields as agriculture, medicine, food industry, energy, IT and telecommunications, high technology, economics, legal economics, finance, business, religion, politics, social sciences and culture.

Grantees will be required to return to Indonesia after completing their studies. Serious legal sanctions are provided for non-returnees.

Recommendations on sexual violence

The White House is going to increase pressure on colleges and universities in the United States to encourage them to tighten their methods of countering the increase in cases of sexual violence on university campuses. Since the beginning of 2014, the White House has held 27 hearings, including online ones, with the participation of parents, representatives of university administrations and student associations, the main goal of which is to find effective practical measures to counter this phenomenon in university institutions throughout the country.

"Colleges and universities," said U.S. Vice President J. R. R. Tolkien. Biden, " we must face the facts of increasing sexual violence. You can no longer turn a blind eye or pretend that the problem doesn't exist. And of course, in our search for ways to counter this threat, we must provide all the necessary support to those affected by it.

In response to the Vice President's call, the hearing responded by developing recommendations for "new federal educational activities for students and teachers, as well as new guidelines for dealing with related claims." The recommendations also call for " voluntary self-examination of campuses to better understand the scale of the problem itself."

Bleak forecast

A rather disappointing forecast for the employment of graduates of higher education in the Philippines is given by local trade unions. According to them, about 700 thousand university graduates this year expect "alarmingly high unemployment".

According to labor unions, the Philippines ' unemployment rate was 7.5% in January and 6.5% in the second quarter of 2014 (up from 7.1% a year ago). Currently, the number of unemployed people in the country is about 2.96 million. Every fifth of this number is a college graduate. Unemployment among "fresh" university graduates can reach 45%.

- At the same time, - said the representative of the Congress of Trade Unions of the Philippines L. Tanyusay, - graduates of prestigious universities in the world have the best prospects. Large companies (for example, in the field of marine engineering, transport and other promising innovative areas) offer scholarships, as well as provide guarantees for employment after graduation.

Many problems of employment of university graduates are caused, by the way, not only by the fact that the national economy of the Philippines is stagnating. The problems are largely dictated by the "administrative resource" - in particular, the high cost of expertise in issuing qualification permits for employment after graduation, as well as the" review of classifications "that is too expensive for"fresh" graduates.

Based on University World News

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