Italian scientific research and university systems are in a dramatic position. The poisonous fruit of the recently approved university reform—referred to as the Gelmini law— assisted by the actions of successive governments, are reaching their goal: downsizing the university system and introducing a political control, never attempted before, on basic research. Now a vast movement of researchers across Europe is organising a series of initiatives during the autumn with the aim of bringing research and innovation to the public attention and at the centre of governments’ action. Read more [...]
Back in 2012, the UK’s universities minister David Willets warned that the European Commission’s project to develop a new approach to global university rankings, U-MultiRank, risked being dismissed as a self-serving exercise. It could be viewed as “an attempt by the Commission to fix a set of rankings in which European universities do better than they appear to do in the conventional rankings”, he told a House of Lord’s European Union Committee enquiry on the modernisation of higher education. Two years on, now that the first ranking is live and we can see which institutions have – and more importantly have not -- chosen to join the bold experiment, it would seem that the minister’s warning was remarkably prescient. Read more [...]
Dear Editor, I was fascinated to read Janna Degener’s interesting piece on university rankings. Rankings are an endlessly interesting subject. It is important to understand why they exist. At a superficial level, they are designed to sell copies of magazines that publish them, or advertising in these publications, or are a commercial undertaking in some other way. More fundamentally, they owe their existence to competition and market forces. World rankings illustrate this point. Read more [...]
There are a number of worldwide university rankings, which are often used as a guide for future education and career progression. These include, among others, the ranking of The Times Higher Education (THE), the QS World University Rankings, the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) , also known as the Shanghai Ranking, and the very recently launched U-Multirank, funded by the EU. While some few universities from Western Europe and North America still dominate most of these rankings, there is a trend for the emergence of young universities from newly-industrialised countries such as China and India. Read more [...]
How much is too much? For all the talk that the publishers of major journals such as Science, Nature and the Lancet are charging too much for their wares, it seems a limit has been reached. French universities, in particular, have had enough and are just saying “non!” and cancelling their journal subscriptions. Is this the wake-up call the big publishers need? Should other universities follow suit, researchers organise a wider boycott, or is there another way to make the journal oligarchs realise that enough is enough? Read more [...]
Demand for university education is on the decrease, mainly due to demographic factors. This trend, combined with a rise in the breadth of diversity of the educational offer, has caused an increase in competition within the higher education sector of Western European countries. Competition is happening, both nationally and internationally. It is therefore essential to understand the factors determining the international demand for higher education. Read on... Read more [...]
Examples of men who are really interested beyond professional boundaries in one of their – often clearly younger – female colleagues are widespread. Typically, the men do not want to accept these women’s refusals and start harassing them. Often, the trouble is that the harassment is underhand. One difficulty is that there is a fine line between providing compliments and harassing someone, often due to cultural differences. Although women are mostly affected, men are also victims of sexual harassment. Read more [...]
Several initiatives on research, innovation and higher education have found their way into the next two years' (2014-2016) workplan of the Regional Cooperation Council (RCC) - a regionally owned and led framework for the promotion of cooperation in South Read more [...]
French universities have undergone a transition towards financial and operational autonomy since 2007 law was passed. A vast operation aiming to reduce the cost of payrolls, the move to autonomy has been tantamount to transferring financial and operational responsibilities to the universities without the necessary allocation of funds to meet the new costs. Read more [...]
The Euroscientist looks into the details of the proposed French reforms on of Universities and Research. Some minor aspects of the law have been widely debated in the public sphere, whereas the in-depth changes it brings to the research and education system have unsettled its stakeholders across the political spectrum. Between past legacy and future needs, the new law appears to have reached the only politically acceptable compromise. Read more [...]
The long-awaited reform of Croatia’s science and higher education policy suffered a sudden setback last week when the prime minister, Zoran Milanovic, backtracked on the left-wing government’s changes to the existing science laws, leading a key science Read more [...]
Two recent reports have shown that corruption remains a major problem in Balkan universities. A four-year study by the Belgrade Open School’s Center for Development of Education on corruption at Serbia’s biggest university, the University of Read more [...]
European science conversations by the community, for the community
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