8 april - The image of science as an exclusively male profession must be altered. Instead female role models and mentors help girls to choose sciences, say three CERN-researchers.
8 april - ESU raises strong concerns about the consequences of educational budget cuts around Europe. They believe that those cuts divert the EU from its strategy for inclusive growth. “Access to quality education needs to be in the frontline of the policy for economic recovery”
5 april - It’s a ‘single purpose vehicle’, the new university proposed in the State of California. No tuition, no faculty, no bureaucracy, just a lean structure to certify online learning.
4 april - EdX and Stanford team up to build an open source platform and the smartphone technology influences education in Africa. Also, on this week’s agenda, why are almost all the world’s largest solar panel producers in danger of going bankrupt?
3 april - While proponents of gun control start receiving death threats, America’s National Rifle Association suggests training teachers to use firearms: they think 40 to 60 hours will turn any educator into a Lara Croft or Rambo.
3 april - Australia (finally) gets its own MOOC platform, Open2Study. Critics said that Australian universities until now had engaged in “a lot of gnashing of teeth but not a lot of action.” Minister for higher education Chris Bowen ended this discussion by directly signing up for an anthropology course.
20 maart - President Obama proposed a trust fund to finance alternative energy transportation research. “The only way to really break this cycle of spiking gas prices, the only way to break that cycle for good is to shift our cars entirely off oil.
19 maart - The Russian Ministry of Education will monitor the effectiveness of universities by calculating the number of unemployed graduates applying for positions at job centers. This way universities that are producing the most unemployed graduates can be identified.
11 maart - European students are much less likely to invest money in their own education than Asian or American students. “Even though this is a far better investment than any long-term investment on the financial markets”, says OECD education expert Andreas Schleicher.
7 maart - Only one extra year of schooling among those employed increases the GDP per capita with 10.5 per cent. A U.S. think-tank combined educational data with macro-economic statistics and did the math.
6 maart - “Across the entire industrial landscape there are now gaping holes and missing pieces.” MIT produces an alarming report on the weaknesses of U.S. manufacturing. One of the dangerous consequences: learning is also outsourced.
5 maart - Why is Germany’s innovation policy so successful and what can the rest of Europe learn from it? The Advisory Council for Science and Technology Policy analyzed Germany’s success and discovered crucial roles for PhD’s, family businesses and international talent in this ‘project of national interest’.
4 maart - President Obama will appoint Ernest Moniz as the next Secretary of Energy. This MIT professor will replace that other world-class scientist, Nobel Prize winner Steven Chu. Moniz returns to a key level in energy-policy after being Clinton’s Undersecretary of Energy during his second term.
19 februari - The EU starts a mayor project to improve quality of life for European youth. “The ideas and wishes of young people should be a challenge to decision makers in politics and administration, and oblige them to make the necessary corrections,” says researcher Hans-Uwe Otto.
15 februari - In today’s labor market there is no place for average workers. One has to be excellent, whether a builder or brain-surgeon. Andreas Schleicher and Lord David Puttnam say Europe has to prioritize its educational investments since “the cost of poor education is unaffordable”.