16 mei - Did students get better education since tuition fees have been increased?” Research shows that British students have 25 percent less workload than the Quality Assurance Agency assumed. Students are not satisfied with their current education, a third of the students would have chosen a different study.
13 mei - The British Education Secretary is making policy based on PR-commissioned opinion polls and University of Maastricht is ready to cook a cultured meat hamburger. Also ‘on the agenda’ this week, eScience shows that carnivorous plant throws out “junk” DNA.
10 mei - The EU member states lack great enthusiasm about the Erasmus ‘loan guarantee scheme’. They want to cut the budget, but is this really the final curtain for the proposal that is so dear to the European Commission?
7 mei - Figures by the OECD show that the large gender differences in science still exist. Although girls are equally good in science, they less often pursue a career in engineering. Big differences exist, The US and Western-Europe lag far behind Mexico, Chile and Slovenia in the number of patents filed by women.
6 mei - The location for the next ISTP is known, now the theme can be picked. Stanislaw Dylak from the Polish delegation suggests the ‘learning society’: “If you organize the learning society perfectly you don’t need evaluations, but when you organize a school like a factory, you need some strict quality assessments.”
3 mei - The number of students in the UK that already submitted their application is still lower than before the dramatic rise in tuition fees. Several universities might be in serious trouble, but for the first time ever, the figures per institute are not published. Is a new era for British higher education looming?
29 april - There are changes brewing for the education system in Turkey, says Turkish Daily Hürriyet. Minister Nabi Avcı thinks of cancelling the universal university entrance examinations.
26 april - According to the last negotiating paper, it will be 2017 before the research-budget of the EU and Horizon2020 will return to current levels. “Very unambitious”, says EP Budget negotiator Anne Jensen. The budget for ‘promoting active European citizenship’ is ironically cut too in this ‘Year of the Citizen.’
19 april - This week on the agenda, US Minister Duncan thinks that military veterans are a "tremendous source of teaching talent" and Medvedev feels ashamed when he enters some universities, but his minister won't get sacked.
15 april - The Russian Education Minister Dmitry Livanov’s might be losing his job over his highly controversial education reforms. Political expert Pavel Salin thinks that firing Livanov would make sense since it “would take the heat off Medvedev's government for a while”.
11 april - The new science education guidelines in the US include extensive lessons on human-made climate change. Although this means a breakthrough for the 40 states that adopt the guidelines, the final standards were substantially weakened compared to earlier drafts.
11 april - The debt burden of students that don’t complete their study at a public university amounts to more than half of their annual income, a study by the US Department of Education shows. Students that don’t complete their study at private institutes borrow on average $350 per credit earned.
10 april - “The current system sets up a mechanism that stimulates irresponsible research.” Educating researchers in scientific integrity is the way to prevent fraud, says American specialist prof. Ann Nichols-Casebolt. “Good and therefore slow research should be appreciated more, you should not want to score too fast and too often.”
8 april - Danish universities have to pay a fine of 13 million Euro for accepting more foreign exchange students than they have sent abroad. Minister of Education Østergaard is “considering if this is the right way to achieve our goals”.
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.