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Former university leaders raise flag over funding

The system for funding American flagship public universities is “gradually breaking down”, said Robert J Birgeneau, a former chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, and the co-chair of a two-year project to examine the role of public research universities and recommend changes to help them stay competitive, writes Mikhail Zinshteyn for The Hechinger Report.
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With states’ investment in public universities having sharply declined since 2000, Birgeneau and Mary Sue Coleman, a former president of the University of Michigan, urged the adoption of new funding methods that rely less on tuition revenue and more on a combination of private, federal and state resources.

The recommendations came on 7 April, in the last of five reports by the group that Birgeneau and Coleman co-chaired, called The Lincoln Project: Excellence and access in public higher education, an initiative of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The report recommended that states reverse the deep cuts to their higher education budgets and, together with the federal government, create tax incentives for businesses to encourage donations to scholarships.
Full report on The Hechinger Report site

Universities may have to reveal student admissions scores

Universities may have to reveal student admissions scores
Universities may be forced to reveal their real course cut-offs including the lowest entrance scores they have accepted so students can make better decisions, writes Charis Chang forNews.com.au.
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According to a discussion paper, the Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham wants to make it easier for students to find out exactly what marks they need to get into a course. There is concern that some students are struggling to complete their courses and revealing cut-off marks will make universities more accountable.

This could include revealing minimum, median and top Australian Tertiary Admission Rank, or ATAR, marks for all students accepted into a course. The discussion paper hopes to get feedback on the best ways to make it easier for students to find out information, whether that be through an online platform, greater accountability for institutions or better education around high school scores and the ATAR.
Full report on the News.com.au site

Universities to lose power to allocate student funds

Universities will soon lose their powers to allocate National Student Financial Aid Scheme funds to poor students as the government body tightens its grip on finances, reports BDLive. Image result for student

Presenting the proposed new funding system at the University of the Witwatersrand last week‚ National Student Financial Aid Scheme, or NSFAS, Chairperson Sizwe Nxasana criticised universities for being part of the problem, hindering students from accessing funding to higher education. He said universities often did as they pleased when allocating NSFAS funds. In some cases universities would give students inadequate financial support and in return the same students would end up as drop-outs with bad debt.

According to the current NSFAS system‚ a single student qualifies for a maximum of R72,000 per year. Nxasana gave an example of a university that was given R400 million‚ but decided to allocate it to too many students. "As a result of that‚ each student got about R20,000 for that year and had to scrape around for extra funding for books and accommodation. Many of them dropped out and were left with heavy debt. This is the reason why we want to take control of every cent‚" Nxasana said.
Full report on the BDLive site

Calls grow for university chancellor ouster

The University of California's student association has called on University of California, Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi to resign amid revelations that the university paid to remove Internet references to a 2011 incident in which police pepper-sprayed students, write Sarah Parvini and Ruben Vives for the Los Angeles Times.
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The group is the latest to join a growing call for Katehi to step down after it was disclosed that UC Davis paid at least US$175,000 to clean up its online reputation. Newly released documents obtained by the Sacramento Bee show the university was determined to improve both its image and that of Katehi.

In a statement, UC Davis officials defended the efforts as an important part of an overall communications strategy. “It is important that the excellent work underway at UC Davis with respect to educating the next generation of students, pursuing ground-breaking research, and providing important services to the state is not lost during a campus crisis, including the crisis that ensued following the extremely regrettable incident when police pepper-sprayed student protesters in 2011,” the statement said.
Full report on the Los Angeles Times site

Higher university rankings mean higher price – Study

Australian universities with a higher position in global league tables tend to set higher international tuition fees, writes Natalie Marsh for The PIE News.
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The comparative analysis of international student fees in Australia was conducted by recruitment firm Studymove Consultants and looked at close to 4,300 programmes at all 39 Australian universities. A strong correlation emerged between the ranking position and the price of the annual tuition fees for international students.
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The institutions’ ranking positions were based on the QS World University Rankings. Australian National University was the country’s highest ranked university, in 19th place, followed by the University of Melbourne at 42nd and the University of Sydney at 45th. All three of these universities have their average international tuition fee set at over A$30,000 (US$23,200).
Full report on The PIE News site

Higher education boosts monthly earnings, says staff body

The Confederation of Unions for Professional and Managerial Staff in Finland has reminded young people that education truly pays off amid its concerns that the ongoing debate over unemployment has blurred public perceptions of reality, writes Aleksi Teivainen for the Helsinki Times.
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“Fewer than 7% of people with a postgraduate degree are unemployed, whereas 12.5% of the entire labour force are unemployed. Educated people are considerably more unlikely to experience even a short period of unemployment than they are to be employed for the whole duration of their career,” Ida Mielityinen, an expert at the Confederation of Unions for Professional and Managerial Staff or AKAVA, points out in a press release.

“The monthly earnings of people with a higher education degree (including undergraduate degrees) are €1,100 (US$1,240) higher than those of the average wage earner,” it states, quoting data on the structure of earnings released by Statistics Finland in 2014.
Full report on the Helsinki Times site

Pharma funnels millions into university sponsorship

The independence of Swiss universities from the corporate world has again been called into question as details of pharmaceutical sponsorship deals were broadcast by a Swiss public television channel. The programme found evidence that one firm may have manipulated academic research data, reports Swissinfo.ch.
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Research by Swiss public television channel SRF shows financial links between pharma giants – such as Roche, Novartis, Merck Serono and even the industry lobby group Interpharma – and several leading universities. Pharma funding paid for professorial seats and-or research at the universities of Bern and Basel, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne or EPFL.

The grants ranged from CHF450,000 (US$461,000) annually to a CHF12.5 million contract that runs for 25 years. This last sum was paid by Merck Serono for chairs in neuroscience, drug delivery and oncology at EPFL. The most damning revelation is that Merck Serono demanded to see research every three months and reserved the right to make “acceptable alterations” to results.
Full report on the Swissinfo.ch site