The global geographies of stem cell research activity and policy

Today’s Financial Times includes a full page analysis (‘An industry to grow‘) that examines aspects of state-society-economy relations with respect to stem cell research.
The author, Clive Cookson (who also runs the FT.com Science Blog), deftly weaves five threads through the article: the role of the state, and inter-state competition, in shaping a very geographically uneven [...]

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QS.com Asian University Rankings: niches within niches…within…

Today, for the first time, the QS Intelligence Unit published their list of the top 100 Asian universities in their QS.com Asian University Rankings.
There is little doubt that the top performing universities have already added this latest branding to their websites, or that Hong Kong SAR will have proudly announced it has three universities in [...]

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More debates about foreign technology workers (many of whom were foreign students) in the USA

Further to our 6 April entry ‘Debating the possible decline of the USA’s attractiveness to foreign students and highly skilled foreign professionals‘, the New York Times sponsored a related debate (‘Do We Need Foreign Technology Workers?‘) on 8 April.  The six contributors (and the titles of their statements) are:

Vivek Wadhwa, Pratt School of Engineering at Duke [...]

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Debating the possible decline of the USA’s attractiveness to foreign students and highly skilled foreign professionals

The USA’s experience with the ongoing economic crisis has been generating some illuminating debates about the possible tightening of post-graduation options for foreign students (including in the STEM disciplines, as well as in Business).  Today’s Washington Post, for example, includes an article titled ‘U.S. visa limits hit Indian workers: job offers rescinded or hard to [...]

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Graphic feed: OECD reviews of higher education in regional and city development (2004-2010)

Source: OECD (2009) Higher education in regional and city development, accessed 30 March 2009.
Note: green indicates completed reviews; pink indicates ongoing or committed reviews in near future.

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Strategic actors in the Eurolandscape: meet ‘The Lisbon Council’

Earlier this week we posted an entry on a new European Commission ‘Communication’ – a Strategic Framework for International Science and Technology Cooperation.
In working up this entry it became clear to us that some of the state-crafting language to describe different stages of the policy process in the construction of Europe [...]

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Global higher ed players, regional ambitions, and interregional fora

How do dominant national and regional players in global higher ed speak to, and engage with, other parts of the world, especially when these parts are viewed as ‘less developed’? This is a complicated question to start answering (not that it is possible, in fact!).
History matters, for it has laid a foundational path, including taken-for-granted [...]

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Strategic communications via global higher ed: the Uniting Students in America (USA) proposal

Further to our entry on the new Rand report (U.S. Competitiveness in Science and Technology), today’s Chronicle of Higher Education includes coverage (‘Subcommittees Debate Proposal to Bring International Students to U.S.‘)of some global higher ed-related testimony on 19 June 2008 at the United States House of Representatives. This news item is, in some ways, the [...]

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Science and the US university: video lecture series by editor-in-chief of Science and former (1980-92) Stanford University president

The Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley, is one of the more active centres of its type in North America. They sponsor an excellent working paper series (e.g., see ‘Universities, the US High Tech Advantage, and the Process of Globalization’ by John Aubrey Douglass. CSHE.8.2008 (May 2008)), workshops, seminars, [...]

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‘Malaysia Education’: strategic branding leads to growth in international student numbers 2006-8?

Several months back in our round-up of the global higher education student mobility market, we reported that Malaysia might be viewed as an emerging contender with 2% of the world market in 2006 (this was using the Observatory for Borderless Higher Education figures which reports only on the higher education sector).
Last week, Malaysia’s leading [...]

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EUA launches ‘Council for Doctoral Education’ to strengthen Europe’s global competitiveness

This week Georg Winckler, President of the the European Universities Association (EUA), launched what is billed as the first organization of its kind across Europe – the Council for Doctoral Education (EUA-CDE) committed to the development of Europe’s doctoral degrees.
According to Winckler, the purpose of the EUA-CDE is to develop greater levels of cooperation and [...]

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Brainpower famine in Eastern Europe: food for thought

The Brussels based think-tank, The Lisbon Council, sees trouble ahead for the countries of both Western and Eastern Europe. The Eastern European low-wage, low-tax, FDI-driven growth rates of today, accelerated by membership of the EU, are not going to last. A combination of low-birth rates and increasing brain drain will combine to fix [...]

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