AUS Tertiary Update
Education levels rising in OECD countries
More people
around the world are completing university courses and other
forms of tertiary education than ever before, according to
the 2004 edition of Education at a Glance, an annual
compendium of education statistics compiled by the
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD).
The 456 page report, which was released this
week, shows that, on average across all OECD countries, half
of today’s young adults now enter universities or other
institutions offering similar qualifications at some stage
of their life. New Zealand ranks amongst the highest with 66
percent of young adults entering tertiary education.
Almost all OECD countries have seen a rise in education
participation levels over the past decade, and in some cases
the increase has been reported as spectacular. Between 1995
and 2002, enrolment in tertiary education increased by more
than 50 percent in the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary,
Iceland, Korea and Poland, and by more than 20 percent in
Australia, Finland, Ireland, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, Sweden
and the United Kingdom. Figures for New Zealand were not
provided.
The report also showed that, in general, people
with tertiary qualifications earned significantly higher
salaries than those with only secondary education. Earnings
for tertiary graduates in the United States are 86 percent
higher, while New Zealand is amongst the lowest with only a
28 percent differential. Those people with tertiary
qualifications also stand a higher chance of gaining
employment. On average in OECD countries, around 89 percent
of men and 78 percent of women are employed, compared to
around 84 percent of men and 63 percent of women who ended
their education at secondary level.
The report also
reveals that tertiary education is rapidly becoming more
international, with 1.9 million students enrolled in study
outside their country of origin in 2002. On average, foreign
enrolment increased by 34 percent between 1995 and 2002,
with international enrolments in New Zealand well above the
average with more than a 60 percent increase
reported.
Significant progress has been made in reducing
the gender gap in educational qualifications, with women now
far more likely to have completed a tertiary qualification
than in the past. What remains largely unchanged, however,
is the earning power of women, irrespective of their level
of qualification. Women with tertiary qualifications still
earn on average only 65 percent of equivalent male earnings.
A summary of the report is available at:
http://www.oecd.org/department/0,2688,en_2649_34515_1_1_1_1_1,00.html
Also
in Tertiary Update this week
1. Students’ anger at fee
increases
2. NZ universities in top 500
3. Massey head
resigns after no-confidence vote
4. Radical shake-up for
UK entry system
5. Head of Japanese university charged
with fraud
Students’ anger at fee increases
Students
have reacted angrily to Victoria University’s decision to
increase tuition fees for 2005 by an average of 4.5 percent,
and have called on the Minister of Education, Trevor
Mallard, to sack the University Council. Victoria University
Students’ Association President, Amanda Hill, said that the
Council had made the decision to raise the fees without
reference to the 2005 Budget, the Education Act or to any
other legislation that guides them. “In any other
organisation this would be considered incompetence and gross
negligence,” she said. “Mallard has sacked school boards for
incompetence and he should influence the Tertiary Education
Minister, Steve Maharey, to take similar action against the
Victoria Council.”
For the second year running, the
Council debate on fees was disrupted by protesting students,
further fueled this year by a decision to restrict numbers
able to enter the Council chamber to forty. Some of those
outside tried to force their way past security guards while,
inside, chanting drowned out attempts to start the meeting.
Like last year, it forced a change of venue before the
meeting was able to proceed.
The debate on fees lasted
for three hours before the Council reached its final
decision to increase the fees by an average of $144.
Chancellor Rosemary Barrington said the decision was reached
reluctantly, but was necessary to ensure the future quality
of teaching and research at the University. “The Council is
concerned about the low level of public investment in New
Zealand universities and urges the Government to increase
its investment,” she said. “The current level of public
investment per student is about half of that in Australia
and a third of that in the United States on an equivalent
purchasing basis.”
The Associate Minister of Education
(Tertiary), Steve Maharey, said that the Government had
increased funding at a rate above the level of inflation for
each of the last five years and was “disappointed” with
Victoria’s decision. In response, the New Zealand University
Students’ Association (NZUSA) has called on him to enter
urgent mediation with students and tertiary institutions to
stop further increases. NZUSA Co-President, Fleur
Fitzsimons, said that it was not too late for the Government
to intervene to prevent more increases for 2005. “The
protests at Victoria are just the beginning if fees continue
to rise, and Labour can expect to see more students on the
streets in the lead-up to the 2005 election as long as it
continues with the policy on increasing student-loan debt,”
she said.
Victoria is the first of the country’s
universities to set fees for 2005.
NZ universities in top
500
Three New Zealand universities have made it into the
annual Shanghai Jiao Tong University ranking of the top
five-hundred universities in the world. The Universities of
Otago and Auckland are ranked between twenty-second and
thirty-third in the Asia-Pacific region and between 202 and
301 in the world, while Massey University is ranked between
sixty-seventh and eighty-ninth in the Asia-Pacific region
and between 404 and 502 in the world.
The Shanghai Jiao
Tong ranking measures universities by several indicators of
academic or research performance, including articles
published in journals such as Nature and Science, staff and
alumni winning Nobel or other prestigious prizes, and on
academic performance with respect to the size of the
institution.
The original purpose of the ranking was to
measure the gap between Chinese universities and world-class
universities, particularly in aspects of academic or
research performance. The current ranking is intended to
help compare and identify universities wordwide. Shanghai
Jiao Tong says, however, that the quality of universities
cannot be precisely measured by “mere numbers”, and that no
ranking is absolutely objective. It cautions against
reliance on such rankings, including its own.
American
universities, headed by Harvard and Stanford, comprise eight
of the top ten universities internationally, with Cambridge
and Oxford at numbers three and eight respectively. Japanese
universities occupy four of the top five places in the
Asia-Pacific region, with the Australian National University
ranked third after Tokyo and Kyoto Universities.
Massey
head resigns after no-confidence vote
Just weeks after
staff passed a vote of no confidence in his performance,
Massey University’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor of its College of
Business, Professor Keith White-Hunt, has resigned and will
leave his employment at the end of the year. He has cited
international and business opportunities, and being more
conveniently located to members of his family still in the
United Kingdom, as the reasons for his departure.
The AUS
initially raised concerns about Professor White-Hunt’s
performance when he failed to meet staff after taking up his
appointment. Staff then learned he had plans to restructure
their College, but only when a proposal was presented to the
University Council. Despite repeated requests to meet with
AUS and staff over the restructuring plans, he failed to do
so.
Later, in July, it became apparent that Professor
White-Hunt had entered an arrangement with Hong Kong
Polytechnic University that would allow some Massey Bachelor
of Business Studies degrees to be awarded after one year’s
“Massey” course study, with two years’ “local” study
cross-credited. He proposed that the degrees would be taught
by Hong Kong staff using Massey materials.
This action
triggered a petition and the vote of no confidence in
Professor Keith-White by staff. It was carried by
eighty-four votes to none, with seven abstentions
Since
the announcement of his resignation, Professor White-Hunt
has been on sick leave and, in an email to staff, Massey
Vice-Chancellor Professor Judith Kinnear said that due to
the nature of his illness he would not be returning to work.
It is understood he has already left the country but, when
contacted, his office said it had no idea of his
whereabouts.
Requests by the AUS to the University
Council and the Vice-Chancellor for a full investigation
into the matters have not been responded
to.
Worldwatch
Radical shake-up for UK entry
system
Prospective students will not be able to apply to
enter British universities until they have received their
A-Level examination results, if recommendations released
this week by the Education Secretary, Charles Clark, are
accepted. In what is described by the Daily Telegraph as the
most radical change to university admissions in fifty years,
the current system of offering university places on the
basis of an applicant’s predicted grades will be scrapped.
According to a committee examining admissions to higher
education institutions, half of the predictions made by
teachers on likely A-level results were “highly unreliable”,
thus depriving other students of a place at the university
to which they may be best suited. Instead, the committee has
recommended developing a universal aptitude test which would
be taken by all university applicants, revamping the
existing application form and urging universities to provide
better feedback to unsuccessful applicants about the reasons
for their rejection. In that way, it says, the admissions
process will be fairer and more transparent. It has also
recommended that A-Level examinations be taken one month
earlier.
The committee has also cleared the way for
universities to choose students from ethnic minorities over
other applicants in order to increase diversity in
universities, but has ruled out blanket
discrimination.
Head of Japanese university charged with
fraud
The owner of a private Japanese university has been
charged with defrauding the Government out of around $NZ10
million in subsidies over a five year period, while his
institution ran up huge debts and became close to
insolvency.
Ichiro Hotta, Chairman of Tohoku Bunka Gakuen
University, was arrested after complaints were filed by the
Education Ministry and the Municipal Government of Sendai.
It is alleged that Mr Hotta kept a false set of accounts
which reported donations against which the Ministry and City
Government provided subsidies. It is not unusual for private
universities in smaller cities in Japan to be offered
subsidies to make them more attractive to local students who
might otherwise leave for major cities like Tokyo and
Osaka.
The Municipal Government of Sendai said it also
planned to file criminal charges against Mr Hotta for
misappropriating City funds after it was also alleged he
submitted a false claim for construction work already
completed and paid for three years earlier.
The
University has incurred debts of more than $300 million
under Mr Hotta’s
leadership.
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AUS
Tertiary Update is compiled weekly on Thursdays and
distributed freely to members of the Association of
University Staff and others. Back issues are available on
the AUS website: www.aus.ac.nz . Direct enquires should be
made to Marty Braithwaite, AUS Communications Officer,
email:
marty.braithwaite@aus.ac.nz