Special! Milioane de lei pentru cercetare la Iași, în domenii spectaculoase!

Milioane de lei pentru cercetare la Iași, în domenii spectaculoase la Universitatea „Cuza” din Iași! Instituția a câștigat o finanțare de 4,8 milioane de lei la competiția „Proiecte de cercetare exploratorie” 2021, organizată de Ministerul Educației prin Unitatea Executivă pentru Finanțarea Învățământului Superior, a Cercetării, Dezvoltării și Inovării

Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza” din Iași (UAIC) a câștigat o finanțare de 4,8 milioane de lei la competiția „Proiecte de cercetare exploratorie (PCE)” 2021, organizată de Ministerul Educației prin Unitatea Executivă pentru Finanțarea Învățământului Superior, a Cercetării, Dezvoltării și Inovării (UEFISCDI). Cu finanțarea obținută la competiția PCE 2021, UAIC va implementa 4 proiecte de cercetare.

Milioane de lei pentru cercetare la Iași, în domenii spectaculoase

Astfel, cele patru proiecte sunt: „Studiul degradării atmosferice a unor solvenți organici curați”; „Potențialul de antiagregare a 6-hidroxi-L-nicotinei din Paenarthrobacter nicotinovorans pAO1 împotriva peptidei amiloidice: studii in vitro și in vivo”; „Instituții, digitalizare și dezvoltare regională în Uniunea Europeană” respectiv „Bioarheologia tranziției de la Evul Mediu la Epoca Modernă, la est de Carpați: orașe emergente din zona de contact dintre Occident și Orient”. Competiția „Proiecte de cercetare exploratorie (PCE)” are ca scop susţinerea şi promovarea cercetării ştiinţifice fundamentale, multi-, inter- și trans-disciplinare şi/sau exploratorii din România. Programul se adresează cercetătorilor cu performanţe demonstrate prin calitatea şi recunoaşterea internaţională a publicaţiilor ştiinţifice. La ediția 2021 a competiției PCE au fost depuse 857 de proiecte, care au concurat pentru o finanțare totală de 150 de milioane de lei.

Suport educațional și formativ pentru doctoranzi și tineri cercetători în pregătirea inserției în piața muncii

De asemenea, Universitatea „Cuza” a câștigat o finanțare de peste 1 milion de euro și pentru implementarea proiectului „Suport educațional și formativ pentru doctoranzi și tineri cercetători în pregătirea inserției în piața muncii”. Acesta își propune creșterea competitivității și a performanței profesionale a doctoranzilor și cercetătorilor post-doctorat de la Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza” din Iași în vederea inserției pe piața muncii urmare acordării sprijinului financiar, a formării de competențe de cercetare avansată cu componentă aplicativă, precum și a dobândirii de competențe transversale. Beneficiari ai proiectului vor fi 93 de doctoranzi și 24 de cercetători post-doctorat din cadrul UAIC, care vor primi sprijin financiar sub formă de burse pentru a le facilita efectuarea de mobilități de studiu și cercetare naționale și internaționale, participarea la conferințe și publicarea de articole științifice în reviste indexate în baze de date internaționale. Bugetul total al proiectului este de 5.683.624,49 lei, din care asistența financiară nerambursabilă care revine UAIC este de 5.196.753,77 lei. Proiectul „Suport educațional și formativ pentru doctoranzi și tineri cercetători în pregătirea inserției în piața muncii” va fi implementat de UAIC în parteneriat cu Academia Română – Filiala Iași, pe parcursul a 18 luni.

Așadar, sunt investite milioane de lei pentru cercetare la Iași, în domenii spectaculoase.

Publicație: Bună Ziua Iași

Offer rate for A-level students applying to top universities falls to 55%

Universities looking to stabilise numbers after Covid surge, says Ucas, while grappling with increase in number of 18-year-olds

The offer rate for A-level students applying to leading universities has dropped significantly, with medicine and dentistry courses even harder to get on to than in previous years, according to data from the Ucas admissions service.

Higher-tariff universities, including those in the research-intensive Russell Group, have tightened up their offers, with the proportion of applications that result in an offer down from 60.5% in 2021 to 55.1% this summer.

Meanwhile, fewer than 16% of applications to study medicine and dentistry – which are among the most competitive courses – resulted in an offer this year, down from 20.4% in 2021, leaving some of the country’s highest-achieving students disappointed.

The figures, released on Wednesday, confirm Guardian reporting last week that found many students predicted A* in their A-levels, who in previous years would have received offers from many of their preferred institutions, have instead received a string of rejections.

Matt Western, the shadow minister for higher education, said: “Labour urged ministers to work with universities last summer, we got a plan in place for this year’s results almost a year ago, but once again the government has sat on their hands. The government must finally work with universities to secure young people’s futures.”

According to Ucas, universities are seeking to stabilise student numbers after a surge over the last two years amid the Covid pandemic. The overall offer rate stands at 66.4% compared with 72% in 2019, before the pandemic.

The Ucas chief executive, Clare Marchant, said the trend was likely to continue in the coming years, as universities grapple with growing numbers of applications due to an increase in the number of 18-year-olds in the UK population. This is projected to continue for a decade, rising 2-3% almost every year. International student numbers are also growing.

She said, the 667,000 applicants in 2022 making almost 3m applications were “both records for this point in the cycle, and likely to be exceeded each year for the foreseeable future. A million applicants by 2026 remains a very real prospect.”

Writing in a blog for the Higher Education Policy Institute, Marchant said: “Universities and colleges have responded to the increase in applications by exercising more restraint in their offer-making.

“And some universities are choosing to stabilise their student numbers following growth over the last two years. This means the overall offer rate is 66.4%, compared to 72% in 2019, and this is also an indication of future cycles as universities and colleges adapt to having more applicants.

“This reduced offer rate means fewer students that applied to higher-tariff universities are holding four or more offers at high-tariff universities compared to last year.”

Marchant said, although offer rates had declined overall, applicants from the most disadvantaged backgrounds were the least affected, with a smaller reduction from 78.8% last year to 75.1%. This is likely to be determined by the type of institutions and courses students are applying for.

“However, the stark gap between the most and least advantaged persists, with an 18-year-old living in an advantaged area being 2.86 times as likely to hold a firm choice as their counterpart in a disadvantaged area,” Marchant wrote.

More than 43% of the UK’s 18-year-olds applied for university by the January deadline. According to Ucas, 281,500 of them are holding a firm offer, up 7,000 on last year and the highest on record, of whom 117,000 are holding offers at higher-tariff providers – the second highest figure on record.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We want all pupils with the ability and talent to study at university to be able to do so, and last year a record number of students secured places at university, including a record number of 18-year-olds from disadvantaged backgrounds.

“Every year there is competition for places at the most popular universities and on the most popular courses, but government works closely with the higher education sector to ensure students are able to progress to high-quality courses that lead to good outcomes.”

Publicație: The Guardian

English universities over-reliant on overseas students’ fees, report warns

Public accounts committee says institutions ‘potentially exposed to significant financial risks’, with 80 declaring annual deficit

Universities in England face danger from financial instability and falling student satisfaction, according to a report by MPs that blames the government and regulators for failing to ensure students receive value for money for their time in higher education.

The report, by the public accounts committee (PAC), says some universities are heavily reliant on overseas students’ fees, using that income to cross-subsidise research and other activities – leaving them “potentially exposed to significant financial risks” if international student numbers fail to keep growing.

The committee notes that the number of universities with budget deficits has risen for four years in a row, with inflation, the freeze on domestic tuition fees, pension costs and policy changes on student loans and minimum entry requirements making it likely that students will be affected by course cuts, lower quality teaching or restricted access, or even closures of entire campuses.

The report concludes that the Office for Students, the higher education regulator for England, has failed to make sufficient progress “in getting a grip on the long-term systemic challenges facing the sector”.

Susan Lapworth, the interim chief executive of the OfS, said: “In the main, universities and other higher education providers entered the pandemic in good financial shape, and there is evidence that the sector in aggregate is well placed to recover from the challenges of the last two years.”

The Department for Education said: “Despite the challenges faced by universities and colleges in recent years, the most recent reports from both the [National Audit Office] and the OfS make clear that, overall, the sector remains financially resilient.”

However, the PAC notes that 80 higher education institutions have recently reported annual deficits, while 20 institutions have been running deficits for three years or more.

The MPs are also critical of the DfE’s failure to anticipate the financial impact of recent A-level grade inflation on student recruitment, “which meant more students were able to take up places at high-tariff providers, and many medium- and low-tariff and specialist providers were undersubscribed.”

Meg Hillier, the Labour MP who chairs the PAC, said: “The A-level fiasco of 2020 and grade inflation have a long-term impact on higher education, adding to deep systemic problems in the financial sustainability of higher education. The number of providers in deficit rose dramatically in the four years up to the onset of the pandemic.

“Too many providers are too heavily dependent on overseas student fees to maintain their finances, research base and provision – that is not a satisfactory situation in a sector that government is leaning on to boost the nation’s notoriously, persistently low productivity.”

The two years of pandemic-related over-recruitment by selective universities has had a knock-on effect this year, with fewer students receiving offers.

In another report published on Wednesday, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) says university students from the poorest households are seeing the value of their maintenance loans shrink as inflation increases more rapidly than forecast.

The IFS’s economists predict that next year the value of government support for living costs for the poorest students will fall to its lowest level for seven years. “As a result, even students entitled to maximum maintenance loans will have to make do with substantially less than they would earn working in a minimum-wage job,” the IFS says.

It calculated that a 22-year-old student would earn £1,000 more than the maximum loan if they worked in a job paying the national minimum wage.

Ben Waltmann, a senior research economist at the IFS, said the real-terms cuts in support would cause hardship for students on tight budgets. “Bizarrely, this is happening because student maintenance loan entitlements are routinely adjusted based on outdated inflation forecasts, and forecast errors are never corrected.

“This makes no sense at all. The government should use more up-to-date forecasts and correct for any errors in the following year to avoid permanent cuts. Alternatively, maintenance entitlements could be tied to earnings on the minimum wage,” Waltmann said.

Larissa Kennedy, the president of the National Union of Students, said: “We’re hearing from students who are working three jobs to make ends meet, who can’t even afford to travel to their university library, and who are cutting back on cooking food due to spiralling energy costs. Our research has shown that thousands more are relying on food banks and buy now, pay later loans.”

Publicație: The Guardian