29 iunie 2019

UMF a redevenit universitate cu „grad de încredere ridicat“, după scandalul admiterii

 Universitatea de Medicină şi Farmacie „Grigore T. Popa“ din Iaşi a fost înştiinţată de Agenţia Română de Asigurare a Calităţii în Învăţământul Superior (ARACIS) că a redobândit calificativul cel mai înalt – „grad de încredere ridicat“

După cum a prezentat în exclusivitate „Ziarul de Iaşi“ în 2016, echipa de evaluatori ARACIS care era la universitate în timpul scandalului cu locurile aranjate pentru studenţii străini a decis oferirea unui nou calificativ, „încredere“ în loc de „grad ridicat de încredere“. Aceştia erau la universitate în cadrul evaluării periodice, pe care ARACIS o desfăşoară o dată la cinci ani, au întrerupt vizita în urma desfăşurării cercetărilor penale şi au fost rechemaţi pentru a-şi finaliza analiza. UMF nu a aşteptat să mai treacă cinci ani pentru a schimba gradul, ci a solicitat încă din 2017 o nouă evaluare, ale cărei rezultate au fost prezentate joi, 27 iunie, în şedinţa Consi­liu­lui Agenţiei Române de Asigurare a Calităţii în Învăţământul Superior. Rapoartele implicite încă nu au fost publicate pe site-ul universităţii.

„Am intrat în normalitate. Scăderea calificativului de la «grad de încredere ridicat» la «în­credere» s-a datorat exclusiv situaţiei pri­vind tentativa de fraudare a admiterii studen­ţilor străini din toamna anului 2015. Misiu­nea ARACIS a venit din nou la UMF Iaşi în octombrie 2018, a reevaluat instituţional universitatea, recâştigându-ne calificativul de «grad de încredere ridicat»“, a declarat prof.dr. Viorel Scripcariu, rectorul UMF Iaşi.

La momentul retrogradării, UMF Iaşi era singura instituţie de învăţământ superior de stat din capitala Moldovei care nu a obţinut calificativul de „încredere ridicată“, care certifică faptul că instituţia respectivă în­deplineşte toate criteriile de curriculă, de transparenţă şi de integritate, şi că nu există niciun risc pentru studenţii care se înmatriculează la cursuri. În raportul final, comisia de evaluare vorbea de o serie de „carenţe“ în gestionarea administrativă a universităţii şi de faptul că, „la data vizitei, nu se poate vorbi de o administra­ţie eficace şi riguroasă“.

În şedinţa Consiliului ARACIS din 27 iunie 2019, au fost analizate şi validate 60 programe de studii universitare şi două evaluări instituţionale.

Publicație :  Ziarul de Iași

Lucruri reprobabile la Universitatea Alexandru Ioan Cuza! S-a ajuns prea departe: Scarile unui monument istoric au fost pur si simplu manjite

Scene reprobabile in aceasta zi la Universitatea Alexandru Ioan Cuza. O mana de oameni care au un conflict deschis cu rectorul UAIC, Prof. univ. dr. Tudorel Toader, s-au manifestat intr-un mod grobian. Dincolo de orice rivalitate care exista, oamenii ar trebui sa se gandeasca ca  au facut un gest care a depasit de mult granitele unor nemultumiri. Concret, in aceasta zi, mai multi oameni pur si simplu au manjit cu vopsea scarile celei mai vechi universitati moderne din Romania. Acesti oameni ar trebui sa fie amendati, mai ales ca exista si o lege in acest sens, Legea nr. 422/2001 privind protejarea monumentelor istorice. Precizam ca, inconstientul care a recurs la un asemenea gest incalificabil a fost asa zisul #rezist DIDE. Acesta a pus niste trupeti sa manjeasca un simbol al Iasului. Desigur, deja Universitatea UAIC a apelat la politie pentru a investiga cazul si a aplica masurile care se impun prin lege. Oricine poate intelege dreptul la libera exprimare, insa nu pot fi tolerate asemenea gesturi abominabile.

Sabie cu doua taisuri

Normalitatea pare a fi un lucru extrem de rar in zilele noastre. Cel mai probabil, acesti oameni profani vor scapa de amenzi, sau daca vor fi amendati, vor lua ”foc” spunand ca ei sunt victimele si ca totul este o razbunare. Din pacate, asemenea gesturi sunt tot mai mult sustinute de o societate din ce in ce mai divizata.

Actualul corp A al universitatii, Palatul Universitatii, a fost construit intre anii 1893 si 1897 (si extins in perioada interbelica) dupa planurile arhitectului Louis Blanc si inaugurat in prezenta regelui Carol I si a reginei Elisabeta. Cladirea este o imbinare a stilurilor clasic si baroc, monumentala sa intrare ducand in faimoasa „Sala a Pasilor Pierduti”, decorata cu picturi realizate de catre Sabin Balasa.

Publicație : Bună Ziua Iași

Augar missed the chance to put English universities’ WP spending to better use

Means-tested fees discounts would remove the rationale for fruitless widening participation efforts, argues Norman Gowar

As someone long retired from leading a UK university, I have watched with dismay the effects of the government’s attempts at marketisation of our sector. Sadly, these had scant attention in the recent Augar review, but I do welcome the recognition that there has been a failure to achieve effective widening participation.

Augar is right that means-tested grants should be restored because they are the most effective way of encouraging students from lower-income backgrounds to go to university. But his proposals are far too modest. This is possibly because he does not want universities to have a diminished income, yet some rough-and-ready calculations show that much more could be done even without additional government funding.

Universities already devote £800 per student on efforts to achieve widening participation, according to Augar. University submissions to the Office for Fair Access (now subsumed into the Office for Students) put the figure at £1,000. That money would not need to be spent if a more effective, means-tested grant system were put in place.

Suppose, with Augar, that tuition fees are reduced from the current level of £9,250 to £7,500 – a reduction of £1,750. Let’s see what would happen if, in addition, 10 per cent of students got a means-tested 50 per cent discount, and a further 10 per cent got a 25 per cent discount. This would be a pretty generous scheme.

A simple calculation shows that the total cost of the discounts, for fees and maintenance, would be £1,125 per student per year, spread across all students. This figure is not a million miles away from the £1,000 per student widening participation spending reported to Offa: spending that would be rendered superfluous.

Assuming that the Treasury bore the cost of the discount, that would reduce universities’ remaining shortfall to £750 per student – about 8 per cent of the £9,250 fee. If fee income from home and other European Union students is about half the total university income (widely variable but take that as an example), this would amount to a 4 per cent drop in university income. A reasonably well-managed university could easily cope with this. There is considerable fat in administrative costs – in particular, in the high number and salaries of senior managers.

But is it fair that the Treasury should pay for the discounts? I believe that it is. I do not agree with Augar that other students, of middle incomes, should be made to pay by lowering the threshold for repayments or increasing the repayment period. It can be funded from the public purse largely within current expenditures.

Lowering fees automatically generates net revenue under the accounting rules recently dictated by the Office for National Statistics. At the moment, roughly 50 per cent of student debt (Augar uses the figure of 45 per cent) is expected never to be repaid. Cutting fees by £1,750 means, therefore, that the saving to the Treasury in unpaid debt is at least £875 per student.

In addition, students from lower incomes getting the grants are likely – based on empirical studies – to have relatively low incomes as graduates. This means that under the current rules, they repay less than average. So eliminating their debt from the equation raises the savings to the Treasury even more.

Some modification of the contingent-repayment scheme could help further. Examples include changing the salary threshold for repayment (currently £25,725), the rate of repayment (currently 9 per cent of income) or the upper cap on loan repayments (currently the loan plus interest accrued) and reducing the interest rate to the retail price index.

Moreover, if the least well-off entrants were protected by means-tested grants, some of the insurance in the contingent-repayment loan scheme could be lessened. Indeed, one could move to a mortgage-type repayment system or a graduate tax. Under the former, it can be calculated that over 30 years a student with a 50 per cent means-tested grant will be repaying only £25 a month on their remaining fees, and a student with no grant is still paying only £50 a month (multiplied by two if the full maintenance loan is taken).

Such a straightforward scheme would be likely to reduce the long-term unpaid debt to minimal amounts, arising only from eventualities such as serious illness or disappearance overseas. And means-testing would be cost-neutral to the public purse.

The whole contingent-repayment scheme uses a sledgehammer to crack a nut, and it is a pity that Augar did not see fit to question it.

Publicație : The Times

Lack of public confidence in AI readiness an ‘opportunity’ for HE

Gallup-Northeastern University report analyses views on AI revolution from survey of 10,000 members of public across US, UK and Canada

The public are not looking to higher education to give them the skills needed for the artificial intelligence revolution, but a similar lack of confidence in other sectors offers a “clear opportunity” for university leaders, according to a report on a survey of 10,000 people in the US, UK and Canada.

The online survey – of around 4,000 members of the public in the US, plus 3,000 in the UK and 3,000 in Canada – finds that only 3 per cent in the US, 10 per cent in the UK, and 12 per cent in Canada “strongly agree” that universities in their countries are preparing graduates for success in the current workforce.

“In all three countries, no more than four in 10 workers have considered returning to [education] in response to AI,” says the report, written by polling company Gallup for Boston’s Northeastern University.

It adds: “In Canada (59 per cent), the US (70 per cent) and the UK (58 per cent), majorities of workers look to on-the-job training offered by an employer to provide the education and training to upskill.”

But on lifelong learning there was agreement that large businesses (71 per cent in the US, 62 per cent in Canada, and 59 per cent in the UK) as well as government (78 per cent in the US, 71 per cent in the UK, and 65 per cent in Canada) are also not responding adequately.

The report says in conclusion: “The primary barrier to these respondents seeing higher education as a source of new skills and education is cost. Additionally, concerns about academic programmes not keeping up with changing workplace needs also play a key role in why adults in these three countries are not looking to higher education for additional skills.”

It adds: “The current lack of confidence in institutions and the acceptance of the value of lifelong learning provides a clear opportunity for leaders in higher education. Partnering with governments and businesses to provide affordable, relevant, bite-sized, lifelong education to workers in all three countries could restore confidence, not just for higher education, but for the other institutions as well.”

Publicație : The Times

UCU plans strike ballots over pay and pensions

Union sets out timetable for ballots over industrial action in relation to the pay and USS pension disputes

The UK’s biggest higher education union has warned universities to expect “serious disruption” as it announces strike ballots over pay and pensions.

The higher education committee of the University and College Union, which has more than 120,000 members across the UK, met on 28 June and agreed the ballots will run from 9 September to 30 October.

The final 2019-20 pay offer made by the Universities and Colleges Employers Association, which represents 146 higher education institutions, was a 1.8 per cent minimum rise. This rises to 3.65 per cent for the lowest paid.

This fell well short of UCU’s demand for an increase which was equivalent to inflation as measured by the retail price index – currently 2.4 per cent – plus 3 per cent, or £3,349 – whichever is greater.

“Pay has been held down for too long and USS members are running out of patience,” said Paul Bridge, UCU’s head of higher education.

The pensions dispute over the Universities Superannuation Scheme was the subject of a 14-day strike last year.

Employee and employer contributions are set to rise to 10.4 per cent and 22.5 per cent respectively in October, before another hike next April.

“Every day seems to bring some new damning revelation about USS. Their response has been wholly inadequate, as has that of Universities UK,” added Mr Bridge.

“If universities are not prepared to work with us on pay and pensions, then they will face serious disruption later this year.”

Members in around 140 universities will be balloted over pay and in 69 institutions will be balloted over USS pensions.

The ballots will be disaggregated so each institution will be polled separately.

A UCU ballot over strike action on pay in 2018-19 fell short of the required 50 per cent threshold required for industrial action.

Publicație : The Times

David Willetts: new universities ‘converge on old models’

Former universities minister says institutions do not always succeed in maintaining founding diversity as he predicts ‘growth agenda’ will win in the UK

Young universities tend to evolve to mirror traditional higher education institutions even in cases where they are built to foster diversity, a former universities minister has warned, while predicting that England will further expand its university sector in the near future.

Lord Willetts, executive chair of the Resolution Foundation, said he believed that the “growth of participation in higher education is a good thing” for individuals and the economy more broadly, but noted that “the policy question is where this growth happens”.

“There are two options. One option is existing universities get bigger. The other option is new universities are created,” he told the Times Higher Education Young Universities Summit during a panel on opportunities for growth in higher education.

In the 1960s, France expanded existing universities, but the UK took the other approach of creating new institutions in response to the Robbins report, Lord Willetts highlighted.

The report argued, in Lord Willetts’ words, that “if you want to do something different in the higher education context, creating a new university is probably an easier route than trying to change customs and practices in an existing institution. Second, if you create new universities and you don’t have a massive influx of extra students into your existing universities, the character of your existing universities is less threatened.”

However, Lord Willetts, who was minister for universities and science from 2010 to 2014, questioned whether young universities “can hold that diversity”. While the University of Sussex and Keele University were founded on a “vision of a liberal arts course delivered over four years”, that model had “disappeared within 20 years”, he claimed.

“Funding pressures and the pressures of rankings and public prestige can lead even new, young universities to converge on old models – even if you’re initially created with an idea of being different,” he said.

On the current political agenda for universities, Lord Willetts said that the contrasts between the Department for Education (DfE) and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Beis) were “very vivid”.

While the DfE argued that too many people were going to university and that the economic returns of higher education were falling, Beis was advocating for “a growth agenda”, Lord Willetts said – a challenging scenario at a time when the Conservative leadership was being contested.

“The government’s official objective, which I hope Boris [Johnson] repeats and I expect he would, is to go from 1.7 per cent of GDP going on research and development to 2.4 per cent…Given that a lot of British R&D happens in universities, it is very hard to see how you get from 1.7 to 2.4 without more universities doing more things,” he said.

“We have one department with its foot on the brake and one department with its foot on the accelerator.”

Lord Willetts’ prediction was that “the foot on the accelerator will win. If you look at what the narrative is for global Britain in a post-Brexit world, one would expect technology, innovation and research to be a key part of it.”

During the same panel, Alison Jones, deputy vice-chancellor of health and communities at the University of Wollongong, highlighted the high dropout rates of students as an area of concern, but Lord Willetts said that “if anything, English dropout rates are too low” and reflect “risk-averse recruitment”.

“I think we have to accept that there will be some people who drop out,” he said, adding that the UK must come up with ways to provide evidence of the “distance [students] have been able to travel” even if they did not complete degrees.

Publicație : The Times

 

1 iulie 2019

Performanţe deosebite în Israel pentru doi studenţi ieşeni

 Doi studenţi de la Universitatea Tehnică „Gheorghe Asachi“ (TUIASI) au obţinut medalii de aur şi de argint la Olimpiada Internaţională de Matematică organizată de Universitatea Ariel din Israel. Studenţii Cristian Stelian Grecu şi Ioan Stanciu de la Facultatea de Automatică şi Calculatoare au obţinut o medalie de aur, respectiv una de argint la competiţia intitulată „International Internet Mathematical Olympiad“, rezultatele competiţiei care a avut loc pe 16 mai fiind publicate săptămâna trecută. 

Cei doi studenţi ieşeni au fost printre cei mai buni dintre participanţi, la competiţie concurând 214 tineri de la 64 de universităţi din întreaga lume. Performanţa celor doi este cu atât mai importantă cu cât nivelul de dificultate al olimpiadei este unul foarte ridicat, candidaţii fiind nevoiţi să rezolve zece probleme cu grad crescător de dificultate în cinci ore.

Punctajul pentru aceste probleme nu este prestabilit – există un minim şi un maxim la fiecare, acesta fiind stabilit prin împărţirea la numărul de studenţi care reuşesc să rezolve problema respectivă. Prin urmare, explică lect.dr. Marcel Roman, directorul Departamentului de Matematică şi Informatică de la TUIASI, nu se pune accent doar pe rezolvarea a cât mai multor probleme, ci şi pe rezolvarea unor probleme pe care alţii nu au reuşit să le desluşească.

Publicație : Ziarul de Iași

 EXCLUSIV! In Platoul BZI LIVE este invitat rectorul Universitatii Tehnice Gheorghe Asachi, prof. univ. dr. ing. Dan Cascaval. DETALII si INFORMATII de ULTIMA ORA

Luni, 1 iulie 2019, incepand cu ora 15.00 cea de-a 335-a editie – dialog pe zona educationala, cLulturala, artistica, muzicala, istorica, religioasa si a ideilor respectiv schimbarii mentalitatilor il are in prim-plan pe rectorul Universitatii Tehnice (TUIASI) Gheorghe Asachi – prof. univ. dr. ing. Dan Cascaval. Universitarul va prezenta detalii importante ce tin de institutia de invatamant superior pe care o administreaza, despre cele mai noi proiecte in care Universitatea este implicata, strategii pentru imbunatatirea sistemului de invatamant universitar, investitii in infrastructura, promovarea resursei umane, cercetare si relatia cu studentii. De asemenea, detalii ce tin de Admiterea 2019 la Politehnica ieseana, activitati de recredibilizare a invatamantului superior ingineresc, actiunile de promovare nationala si de internationalizare ale TUIASI, realitati din mediul universitar romanesc, tehnici si strategii de imbunatatire a politicilor publice in Educatie vor fi alte repere ale acestei editii BZI LIVE.

Publicație : Bună Ziua Iași

Turkey attempts to bridge the quality gap

Budget restrictions, a focus on teaching and a paucity of internationalisation all hold back Turkish research, says Hakan Ergin

“Quality” has recently become a magic word in Turkish higher education. Politicians, officials, academics, students and even the man in the street are concerned about it. Increasing numbers of academic articles and theses are being published about it. Universities work with international quality assurance bodies and proudly advertise accreditation on their websites.

One reason for this explosion of interest is massification. Ever since it came to power in 2002, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party has made intensive efforts to expand higher education. It directly established new public universities and also encouraged independent foundations to establish their own, with the result that the number of public universities has shot up from 53 to 129 and the number of foundation universities has climbed from 23 to 77 in the past 17 years, according to statistics from government agency the Council of Higher Education (CoHE).

Hence, access is no longer a critical issue. The total number of university students has risen from 1.8 million to more than 7.5 million, with 3.9 million of them in formal education programmes and the rest in open programmes. Statistics from the Measuring, Selection and Placement Center (OSYM), the university admissions body, indicate that 2.3 million candidates took its multiple-choice entrance exam in the summer of 2018, and almost 1.4 million of them started a higher education programme in the autumn.

This expansion pleased all segments of Turkish society for a while. It meant more places for students, more positions for academics, more educated workers for employers and propaganda for the governing party. In an address in February, Erdoğan recounted Angela Merkel’s surprise when he proudly told her that there were now almost 8 million university students in Turkey – compared with (according to her) only about 3 million in Germany.

However, the honeymoon did not last long. Massification has not delivered the anticipated improvements in national productivity, while educated unemployment has shot up: it was recently reported that graduate unemployment has climbed above 1 million, fuelling a common perception that Turkish universities churn out too many low-quality graduates. And in the past five years, more than a million students have dropped out or suspended their registration: a possible sign that trust in higher education is decreasing.

Even Erdoğan has admitted recently that there is a problem. In his academic inaugural address to university administrators last autumn, he said that his government had achieved quantitative successes in higher education but had been unable to raise its quality. He asked administrators and academics to do more to ensure that Turkish institutions appear near the top of world university rankings.

The CoHE has not been unmindful of quality. In 2015, it established the Higher Education Quality Council (YÖKAK), whose 13 members from universities and other government units are charged primarily with conducting detailed quality assessments of universities, including campus visits. But quality cannot be improved overnight, and many challenges remain to be overcome.

One is that teaching is considered more important than research in Turkey. This means that academics are kept busy teaching large numbers of large classes, which prevents them from focusing on academic production. The problem is exacerbated by recent budget restrictions, which have limited the number of academic positions becoming available and discouraged young academics hoping to start their careers.

Turkish universities’ sole dependence on their limited governmental grants also makes it quite difficult for them to fund many research projects. Moreover, they lack the international scholars who typically make significant contributions to research and development in their host countries: international academics make up just 2 per cent of academics in Turkey.

It will not be easy to systematically drive through national quality improvement from Ankara, given Turkish universities’ autonomy and varying institutional cultures. The road ahead is likely to be long, requiring perseverance, funding and the collaboration of different stakeholders. But at least Turkey has begun along it. And if the country can get to the end and match quantity with quality, it will be a higher education player to be reckoned with.

Publicație : The Times

Cardiff ordered to pay £9K to anti-vaxxer healthcare student

Case hinged on university’s failure to promptly read a form on which the student declared their opposition to immunisations

A Welsh university has been ordered to pay more than £9,000 compensation to a student whose anti-vaccination beliefs meant that they were unable to continue with a healthcare course.

The ruling by the Office of the Independent Adjudicator hinged on the fact that the student had informed Cardiff University that they had not had any vaccinations, and would not consent to having any in future, but that the university did not read the form stating this until the course was under way.

The OIA ordered the university to pay the student £9,342.

A case summary published by the watchdog on 1 July says that the student had completed an occupational health questionnaire before starting their course declaring their anti-vaccination beliefs, but that Cardiff’s policy at the time was to wait until enrolment before reviewing the forms to avoid having to read the responses of applicants who did not go on to sign up.

When the form was reviewed a couple of months later, staff raised concerns about the student’s suitability for practical work. They spoke to the student about the consequences of not being immunised while initiating a fitness-to-practise process.

While the fitness-to-practise committee acknowledged the student’s right not to be vaccinated, it ruled that allowing the student to continue on the course would put their health and the health of patients at risk, and the student was withdrawn, albeit with permission to transfer to a non-professional programme.

The student lodged a complaint, which was upheld by Cardiff, with the institution acknowledging that its processes had been unclear and too slow. There had been no reference to vaccination requirements on the university’s website or on its offer letter, and students had not been told that their occupational health questionnaires would not be reviewed immediately.

Cardiff offered the student £5,000 compensation but rejected an appeal by the student against the fitness-to-practise ruling.

The student then went to the OIA, which rejected the complaint about the fitness-to-practise ruling but recommended the payment of £5,000 compensation because of delays in the process. It upheld the complaint about the student’s treatment by Cardiff, highlighting that the student had paid for accommodation that they might not have needed if the provider had told them about the vaccination requirements before they started the course. The OIA recommended that the university offer further compensation to £4,342.

In a separate case summary, also published on 1 July, the OIA said that it had told Wrexham Glyndwr University to compensate eight students who had complained about the quality of a healthcare-related course.

The watchdog said that the students had complained that a key part of the course had not been taught as promised, meaning that they were not given the necessary skills to practise safely. Some teaching hours were cancelled for some modules, and the group also complained about the behaviour of a staff member, who they said was “unapproachable and aggressive”.

The OIA, which ruled that the complaint was partly justified, said that Glyndwr should refund tuition fees of £2,140 to each student, and pay an additional £1,500 compensation to each of them for the inconvenience caused.

Publicație : The Times