Business, Finance, IT and Engineering to be offered no later than September 2012

By Rania Moussly, Staff Reporter

Published: 00:00 June 5, 2011

Dubai: The British University in Dubai (BUiD) is set to expand its offerings with the introduction of undergraduate degrees within the next year, pending curriculum approvals from the Commission for Academic Accreditation.

By CHRISTOPHER F. SCHUETZE

Published: June 27, 2011

Universities have a new weapon in the battle to protect their reputations: the friendly student blogger

Tom Ridgewell’s YouTube advert for his university led to a job in its marketing department.

A few days ago, Vshuf, an international student, posted a message on the Student Room discussion site. He/she wanted to know which university – Glasgow, Birmingham, Warwick, Nottingham or the Institution (sic) of Education would be the best place to study business. The academic reputation of the institution was important, but there was another consideration: "How are people like in these universities?" the post asked. "I have watched some videos about Warwick on YouTube and it seems to me that the people are snobby and arrogant in contrast to those from Nottingham." Members were quick to defend Warwick, but Vshuf remained unconvinced.

The thread highlights the difficulty that universities face in the age of social media. At a time when reputation is more important than ever because of higher student fees and greater global competition, the ability to manage their reputations is increasingly falling out of their hands.

How to reach an increasingly networked generation that is more inclined to trust the opinion of their anonymous peers on the internet than official bodies such as universities was a problem discussed at last week's Youth Strategy Marketing Conference 2011.

Helen Pennack, head of marketing communications at the University of Leicester, says students now post queries on Facebook or the Student Room about open days or where to find their timetables, rather than simply contact the university directly. "When we do relationship marketing communications, we are trying to strike up a two-way dialogue with students and they are taking the conversation away from us and having it with other people," she says. "How we make ourselves part of that conversation again is quite a challenge."

Her university has responded by setting up a system that allows students to sync communications from Leicester with their Facebook account. But she says universities also need to be present in other web spaces used by students, such as Twitter.

Warwick, which appointed a digital and online communications manager last year, knows well the benefits of having a social media presence. "A year ago, an applicant tweeted, 'Oh, no. I hear the University of Warwick is closing, what am I going to do?'" says Warwick's spokesman, Peter Dunn. While this tweet could have caused huge problems if spread, the university was able to tweet back, "We're still here, honest".

He says the communications team check what is being said about the university on social media once or twice a day, and responds if someone is confused or asking for information. But it depends on the forum. "If they are on the Student Room we assume they want to bitch about us behind our backs," he says. "If it is on a much more public space like Twitter or Facebook, someone like us can see it and respond."

The challenge for universities is not only to know where to respond but when, and getting the tone right. "We are always careful about proactively intervening in the conversation because that would be seen as rude," says Pennack. "What is much more effective is if one of our students wades in there and puts somebody straight."

Some universities have already responded to this, she says, by having a group of students "primed to some extent to join the conversation and correct people where it is appropriate to do so". It is not something Leicester has tried yet, but, she says, "we may consider it".

While Imperial College does not prime students, it does recruit a team of official student bloggers to write regularly about their experiences at the university. They are not paid or moderated, and are free to blog about whatever they like. But there are occasional prizes for the most frequent bloggers. Pamela Agar, head of digital media at Imperial, says the college could potentially ask them to blog on a particular subject, but had not done so yet.

"They can and do say negative things about us," she says. "When they do, it's useful feedback." It can also make the blogs more authentic, she says – something that is particularly important to the social media generation.

Chris Fonseka, a third-year information systems student at Imperial, says he applied for a student blogger role because he was attracted by the idea of having a voice around campus. He blogs about his general activities at the university, including his membership of the chocolate society. He also receives regular emails from students and prospective students anxious to put queries about accommodation or finances to a real student.

He says he has never felt restricted in what he writes. "I think there's possibly a line that you cannot cross, but you would have to be pretty determined to cross it," he says. "If I honestly felt negative about Imperial, I would write about it."

Tom Ridgewell went a step further. While studying media at the University of Lincoln, he decided to create a television advert for the university and put it up on YouTube. "While television and parents prefer elevator music and false smiles in university propaganda, the internet and those who inhabit it prefer explosions and dinosaurs," he says. (His advert contained both.) "I labelled the videos as 'banned' simply because it's funnier to imagine that I actually showed them to a board of directors and got thrown out of the room. Also, videos generally do a little better with an exaggerated title."

Ian Richards, press officer at Lincoln, says the university only became aware of the adverts once they were an online hit and Google alerts showed people were blogging about them. "We didn't know what to make of them, but when students were talking about them on open days we felt it was something totally left field, but a bit of a blessing for us." Ridgewell has since been commissioned to carry out work for the marketing department.

How far universities should try to control what members of their community say about them on social media is something some have already faced with academic bloggers. In 2006, Erik Ringmar resigned from his lecturing post at the London School of Economics after the university objected to him posting a speech critical of the university on his blog. A year later David Colquhoun was asked to remove his blog from the University College London site after complaints from alternative therapists.

But, while institutions are paying increasing attention to what is said about them on the web, most recognise that there is little they can do about it. "Is it realistic to control every word that's out there about us?" asks Richards. "I don't think so."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jun/20/universities-social-media-reputation

By Della Bradshaw

Published: June 13 2011

It is the proud boast of Abu Dhabi University, in the United Arab Emirates, that it hosts two Starbucks coffee shops on its campus in Khalifa City. It is not heavy sales that necessitate the duplication, rather that there is one café for male undergraduates, a second for female.

Gender segregation in education is just one of the distinctions in a region that has proved to be a magnet for western universities, business schools and training companies over the past decade. So much so, that from a real lack of management education a few years ago, the difficulty these days is determining quality courses among the quantity.

In Abu Dhabi, it is just one huge competition, says Annette Burke, director of executive education at Adicoe , the chamber of commerce’s centre for organisational excellence. “We went from no training to such an amount that we’re saturated.”

In Dubai it is a similar story. “Oversupply is the main problem,” says Ehsan Razavizadeh, regional director for Cass, the UK business school that set up in the Dubai International Financial Centre in 2007.

In a rush to grab a slice of what has been seen as an increasingly lucrative market, European institutions such as London Business School, Manchester, Bradford and Strachclyde have set up facilities in Dubai, while Insead has teaching facilities in Abu Dhabi and HEC Paris in Qatar. Executive education specialists such as Ashridge and Cranfield are also jockeying for business. Indeed, on one floor in the DIFC three normally competing business schools – LBS, Cass and Duke, from the US – sit cheek by jowl.

And in spite of the recent financial crisis, which has clearly affected Dubai, and the uprisings in the region, most notably in Bahrain, little seems to dent enthusiasm among business education providers. What they are competing for is a market quite unlike any other, with two different streams of students. On the one hand there are management programmes designed specifically to promote the local Emirati population, usually working in the public sector, to senior management positions; on the other there are those designed for the expatriate community, who make up 80 per cent of the UAE population.

For the former there are the local public and private universities – the three federal universities, which are free to the local population, include the women-only Zayed University. In a policy that echoes France’s business school network, degree programmes are also taught by the chambers of commerce. In Abu Dhabi, the chamber has recently set up a school of management that will focus on entrepreneurship and launch an EMBA in October with Babson College, the US entrepreneurship specialist.

“We are starting a new entity but we are using the Babson DNA,” says Mohamed Rashed Al Hameli, director-general of the chamber. “The idea is not to compete with LBS and Insead but to bring something new.”

In Dubai, the chamber of commerce has been offering degrees for years and started an MBA last September. Indeed, its University of Dubai  is accredited by the AACSB, the US accreditation body. Mohamed Ibrahim, dean of the college of business, is clear about the driving force in the higher education market. “The government is creating the market for education. The government wants to encourage local people to work for private companies.”

On top of this smorgasbord of local universities, the UAE authorities are encouraging world-class business schools to set up programmes and campuses. In Abu Dhabi, Insead has a 12-storey building, courtesy of the government, and New YorK University has a campus for undergraduate programmes. In Dubai, the authorities are creating a series of educational zones, such as Knowledge Village and Academic City, to attract universities and training companies. In the past five years, there have been nearly 180 applications, says Ayoub Kazim, managing director of the education cluster.

The aim of the zones is to help turn the UAE into a knowledge economy, he says, and points to Boston in the US as Dubai’s role model. “Boston is an education destination because they have more than 70 multi-tiered educational institutions, not just because they have Harvard and MIT.”

He sees his brief as bringing in everyone from PhD providers to those who conduct vocational training. “Some models attract only the Ivy Leaguers. They are catering for only 2 per cent of the population. What happens to the other 98 per cent? We don’t want to leave any student unable to pursue opportunities.”

While some complain of oversupply, others are unperturbed by the growing competition, particularly in MBAs. “The more providers of quality MBAs here, the better for all of us,” says Randa Bessiso, Middle East director of Manchester Business School, which runs its Global MBA in Dubai.

But the increasing competition, coupled with the financial crisis and the recent unrest in the region, has led to uncertainty in Dubai, and this means many business schools are cautious about future enrolment. LBS, for example, has seen enrolment on its EMBA programme drop this year.

. . .

One of the big problems, says Rahul Dhadphale, LBS’s regional director for the Middle East, is that many in the region do not understand the value of business school programmes as they would in North America or Europe.

“Here people are still learning the value of education. They are still trying to learn the difference between an EMBA and a full-time MBA.”

This means they often find it difficult to differentiate between different quality products, says Mr Kazim. “The biggest challenge is that most of these universities are under the perception that they are well-known in this area. This needs to be corrected. They need to promote themselves, they need to do their marketing. This is one of the mind-shifts needed.”

But no one doubts that the thirst for business education in the region will continue. Mr Razavizadeh believes it will not stop with the MBA. “I’m predicting Emiratis will all have PhDs. It will be the fashion.”

..................................................

Managers want case studies for the region

If there is one message being voiced loud and clear by practising managers in the United Arab Emirates, it is that they want teaching materials that relate to the region and the companies in it.

At the top of the wish list is research relating to the Middle East; out of fashion are case studies about US companies that are operating in US markets.

With the exorbitant cost of producing such geographically specific material, only a handful of business schools are really tackling the problem, preferring instead to impose more traditional case materials on the unsuspecting Emirati.

The Canadian business school Queen's, based in Dubai, is one school that has recognised the issue. “It would be great for someone to come here and write some cases because there are some really interesting stories,” says Tom Anger, executive director of the school’s Executive Development Centre. When teaching executive courses, he says schools have to come up with some “case vignettes” which are locally applicable.

“You make them up as you go; you come up with two or three pages. You’ve got to adapt to the region.”

At the UK’s Cass Business School, regional director Ehsan Razavizadeh says he is also trying to develop some cases from the region, adding “We will be able to use these cases in both London and Dubai.”

But it is Insead in Abu Dhabi that is investing most in research. Five full-time Insead faculty members are based on the UAE campus, says Dipak Jain, dean.

“The other people we want to attract here are case writers. We have access to the very top people in the region,” he adds, pointing out that these would make excellent subjects for narrative cases.

Miguel Sousa Lobo, assistant professor of decision sciences, is one of the first Insead faculty members to be based in Abu Dhabi. The aim, he says, is not for his research to be all about the region, but adds that “some things [in the research] are starting to be informed by Abu Dhabi”.

However, in common with Dipak Jain, he is aware that the UAE could greatly benefit from more academic study.

“Abu Dhabi needs a lot of research, not only on business but on policy, the role of government.”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/79fdf974-9372-11e0-a038-00144feab49a.html#axzz1PYGxPPyV

By He Na (China Daily)

Updated: 2011-05-30 07:51

Cheng Yin, 20, studies general finance at a university in Queensland, Australia. Her parents are satisfied with everything at the university, except her classmates. About 30 students take the same classes, and 12 of them come from China.

"I do not have any bias against Chinese students, but I am really worried about her English because she stays with Chinese classmates day and night," complained her father, Cheng Wenbin, in Shenzhen, Guangdong province.

"Honestly speaking, I don't have big hopes for my daughter in the financial field. What we thought is, send her to study in an English-speaking country and, after several years, at least she can speak fluent English when she comes back," Cheng said. "But now, I doubt it."

The Chengs are not alone.

"Our finance department has 200 students, 50 of whom are Chinese," said Cai Shuang, who is from Jinan, Shandong province, and is pursuing a master's degree at City University, London. "I like to sit with the Chinese in class and many other Chinese students feel the same way.

"If I forget the white and black faces in the classroom, it's more like a foreign teacher's class during my undergraduate university days in Hunan province," she said.

The number of Chinese students who seek further education abroad increases each year, so it is only natural that classrooms have more Chinese students. With such a high proportion, the label "Chinese class" is likely to pop up.

"It's hard to tell what the advantages and disadvantages are from it," said Cheng Ying, director of the Qingdao Branch of the US Department of Education International Cooperation program. "Nowadays, Chinese can be found almost everywhere in the world. No wonder they meet more Chinese faces in overseas classes."

A booming 'export'

Statistics released by the Ministry of Education show that the number of Chinese students overseas soared to 285,000 in 2010, a 24 percent increase from 2009. China "exports" more students than any other country.

"With China's continuing fast development, more and more Chinese families are able to pay the sky-high overseas study fees," Cheng said. "Meantime, the financial crisis still shrouds the economy of the Western world. More overseas universities are opening their arms to Chinese students by expanding enrollment quotas and loosening overseas study policies to stimulate their gloomy economies."

Add in the high school graduates who prefer to skip China's fierce national college entrance examination and to study overseas instead.

The 2011 Census on Chinese Overseas Students showed that 20 percent of the students who plan to go abroad are high school students. And a 2010 survey by the Education International Cooperation Group of 7,500 high school students in several big cities indicated more than 13 percent planned to seek overseas study, a 10 percent increase from the previous year.

Cheng said most high school students still have difficulty in foreign language study, so the majority attend language school for at least a year. The courses are designed for non-native speakers, so a high proportion of Chinese students is inevitable.

Feng Yunlong suggests another reason for the concentration of Chinese students in some classes: "Students and parents are likely to follow the crowd." Feng is a senior overseas study researcher at New Oriental Vision Overseas Consulting Co, an overseas education agency in Beijing.

"Take the United States, for instance. A majority of Chinese students latch on to studying business and engineering courses," he said. Then they limit their choices to a few universities in the American Northeast or West because their relatives and friends in China know about their good reputations.

With that kind of intense filtering, Feng said, people should not be surprised at the formation of "Chinese classes".

The effect of ranking

"As far as I know, our school has a strict proportion for international students, and the ceiling is 10 percent. So do other good-reputation schools," said Yang Li, 24, of Beijing. "I've been in the London School of Economics and Political Science for three years, and only have two Chinese classmates, one from Hubei, the other from Hong Kong."

"Chinese classes" are more common in lower-ranking colleges and universities, Yang said, because it's easier to get into them. Relatively few students receive offers from the world's top-ranked universities.

"Being the No 1 university in Australia, we've never had the situation of having many Chinese in the same class," said Ye Zhengdao, professor of linguistics at Australian National University, Canberra.

"I can only say we have more Chinese students than before, but they still account for a small proportion. Actually, we are now still working out methods to appeal to more Chinese elite students to study at our university."

"Chinese classes" are likely to develop through the increasingly frequent cooperation between domestic and foreign universities. They also might occur if schools pay a bounty to some education agents for each student they recruit, experts said.

Good and bad

Are "Chinese classes" helpful or harmful? Chen Hua, deputy general manager of Weijiu Education, a large overseas education agency in Beijing, leans toward helpful but with a caution.

"When students begin a totally new life in an alien country, they will definitely meet a series of difficulties, like living habits, communication barriers and cultural differences. They often feel especially lonely and have the strong desire to make new friends," Chen said.

"If they have Chinese classmates beside them at that time, their loneliness and helplessness will disappear quickly. They'll pass the toughest first two or three transitional months easily.

"However, if they make friends only within the scope of the Chinese during the first couple of months, their overseas life may be engaged only in that small circle," Chen said. "It will be hard to make friends with local people, which is bad for language learning and immersion into a foreign culture."

"To most students, one of the aims of studying abroad is seeking a foreign language atmosphere," said Zhao Cong, who is from Harbin, Northeast China's Heilongjiang province, and who just graduated from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. "But Chinese students like to stay together and communicate with each other in Chinese. It's really harmful for practicing a foreign language, hearing and speaking."

Overseas investment

The number of Chinese students who studied abroad between 1978 and 2010 totaled 1.91 million, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security reported this month. Nearly one-third of them returned to China over the same period.

"In some sense, to study abroad is also a kind of investment," said Li Yingxian, manager of Beijing Dingsheng Culture Spreading Co Ltd, an advertising company. "Why do companies offer much higher salaries to those who return from overseas? The most valuable selling points are their international education background, way of thinking, people network, working experience and foreign language fluency.

"Of course, these achievements depend on an individual's efforts in studying," Li said. "But I am sure, if someone always stays within the circle of 'Chinese classes,' his international level will definitely be reduced. Not all those who return from overseas are talented individuals."

Zheng Lili is an editor of China Kids English Journal, a Beijing-based publication for 5- to 13-year-olds. "I've never gotten the chance to be abroad and I admire those who have returned. But a friend of mine changed my idea.

"She went abroad after finishing high school. I met her during this year's classmates gathering in February. I thought she would speak English fluently with a genuine British accent, but to my disappointment she speaks no better than I," Zheng said.

"From talking to her, I learned that she studies in a university that we never heard of before and in a class where 90 percent of the students come from China . . . Luckily she hasn't accomplished nothing, for at least she can speak Cantonese pretty well now and manages to understand Cantonese channels and films without reading the Chinese subtitles."

Sun Nini, also from Harbin, is enrolled in a translation and interpretation studies program at Macquarie University in Australia. All her classmates are Chinese, but she said she speaks English as fluently as native speakers and has many non-Chinese friends.

"In fact, not only Chinese, but students from other parts of Asia also like to be together," she said by phone. "It's no excuse for someone who couldn't learn English well.

"During my first year here, I also had that concern. But gradually I learned that if you do not speak and show your hospitality to foreigners, even if you are surrounded by foreigners you are still a loser. People's character and efforts weigh more than the environment."

http://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-05/30/content_12603571.htm

By Della Bradshaw

For corporations, there is just one message to come out of the recession about business school executive development programmes: it is a buyers’ market where the customer is king. And for most business schools, there is also only a single message: rethink your business model if you want to survive.

By Asian Correspondent

THE world of medical education is undergoing rapid change – and Asia is benefiting. Internationalism is driving higher education and medical schools are embracing this change as both a challenge and an opportunity. As the world of medical science develops, this field of education is becoming more internationalised. No longer are students and teachers following the “traditional approach” of a localised curriculum developed in home countries but expanding and appreciating the methods of teaching and extent of education from countries far and wide.

Medical education has developed into a competitive field that stresses an international approach, mobility for teachers and students, and the ability to foster and exchange relationships with universities from other countries.

With an increasing need to train upcoming medical professionals from the East in world-class research and education, Asia and all its hopeful doctors are presented with an advantage – an opportunity to move beyond their countries to absorb the full potential of unrivalled and outstanding education. As more universities from across the world not only open their doors to international students, but make efforts to spot the talent within Asia, programmes and degrees are being crafted to attract the very best from across the world.

Singapore and Malaysia are leading these collaborations with India and China following close behind. More than a third of Singapore’s 4,500 doctors train abroad; Malaysia has increased medical training from 700 doctors 10 years ago, a quarter of which would practice abroad, to over 3,000 doctors a year today and a prediction of increasing this by a thousand in the next five years. Both these countries, and several others in Asia, are either focussing on the importance of homegrown doctors or bringing home medical talent after they have completed degrees in other countries.

Indian education is also quickly getting an international makeover. The country’s medical education sector is one of the largest in the world – with over 300 medical colleges and an intake of 35,200 towards the undergraduate MBBS degree. The country is fast increasing foreign collaborations with the growing need for more doctors. India estimates a need for a further 800,000 doctors, even though there are currently almost 750,000 doctors on the rolls. In order to meet these requirements medical education is accelerating, with a need for 500 more medical schools. This also results in students from the country being encouraged to move to foreign universities to receive the best education there is in order to help fill this shortfall.

Renowned ophthalmologist from Kolkata, Dr PB Sarkar from Salt Lake Eye Foundation, explains the benefits of an international education for Asian students. He tells Asian Correspondent: “Firstly, these students get to access advanced medical facilities with diagnostic procedures. Secondly, they are also educated in basic treatment protocol – treatments in India and other Asian countries are often varied depending on the doctor whereas it is more uniform in the West. The exposure that they get to experienced and senior foreign faculty is definitely an important part of their learning. Moreover, a foreign medical education also guarantees discipline of the medical practice.”

There has also been a surge in collaborations between British and US medical schools and those from the East. These partnerships have also encouraged institutes in Asia to heighten the quality of training and research, truly absorbing the best of international education. Partnering with schools in other countries also allow their students to soak in the expertise of the exchange faculty along with the culture of a different country.

http://asiancorrespondent.com/54708/leading-medical-schools-for-asian-students/

Pierre Tapie's proposal sounds like a call to arms. The president of the Conférence des Grandes Écoles has urged France's universities to embrace globalisation and tap into the rapidly growing and increasingly mobile student populations of India and China.

In a recent editorial in the daily newspaper Le Monde, Dr Tapie advocates trebling the number of foreign students in French higher education, boosting the proportion from 12 per cent of the total number of students to 30 per cent in the next 10 years.

His plans would see students from outside the European Union charged fees close to £12,000. A system of scholarships would be introduced for outstanding students who could not afford to pay their way.

Dr Tapie, who heads ESSEC Business School, argues that it is crucial to act quickly.

"The opportunity for growth is now. If we don't grasp it, in 10 years it will be too late and France will have failed to position itself as one of the world's key destinations."

The course of action advocated by Dr Tapie makes him something of an iconoclast in a country that is run by a tightly knit elite of leaders, businessmen and engineers who were all educated in the country's grandes écoles.

But Yves Poilane, director of Telecom ParisTech, another of the grandes ecoles, has argued that the expansion of courses taught in English rather than French is an important step in boosting higher education enrolment.

"In computer sciences and telecommunications, we struggle to recruit the best students available because competition is so very, very intense," he said, adding that the students he would like to recruit do not necessarily speak French.

Dr Tapie goes as far as calling for the Toubon law, which restricts the use of English in France, to be repealed in higher education.

Under the terms of this law, all university courses must be taught in French, with the exception of language courses and those offered by institutions that welcome foreign students or provide "international courses".

The law's vagueness offers the grandes écoles room to manoeuvre. But the elite institutions know they are treading on sensitive ground, and they have felt forced to issue denials that they are turning their back on the French language.

Many insist that their English-speaking foreign students leave university with a better grasp of the French language, and even more importantly, a love of French culture.

"France has nothing to lose, because our lifestyle will not only be more protected than if it were kept in a museum, but it will be more vivid if we share it with others," said Dr Tapie.

"France is exactly like China. We have a very robust culture that is several thousand years old. At ESSEC, foreign students enrich the life of the school. Instead of diluting our culture, they make it more universal."

Scholarly use of French defended

Nevertheless, Dr Tapie admitted that calling for France to embrace globalisation was an extremely unpopular idea.

"When we first presented our ideas at a press conference in March 2010, they were perceived as very embarrassing," he said.

Le Monde waited six months before publishing the editorial it commissioned from Dr Tapie on the issue. Staunch advocates of the French language were quick to criticise his proposals.

In a rebuttal also published in Le Monde, Bernard Sergent, a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), accuses Dr Tapie of giving up on the French language and of playing into the hands of the far-right National Front.

"French is the world's second most important scientific language and Dr Tapie's proposals will destroy it," he wrote.

While such arguments do not hold water with the majority of France's scientists, others have campaigned to defend the scholarly use of French.

In 2008, several thousand researchers signed a petition calling on the AERES, the French equivalent of the UK's Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, to stop snubbing academic work published in French.

Christine Solnon, president of the French Association for Constraint Programming, has denied prioritising the use of French over opportunities for international impact, but said that her efforts are meant to support young researchers who are not yet fluent in English.

"I'm not asking for AERES to rate scientific journals written in French as highly as international journals, but our work should be taken into account," she said.

AERES insists, however, that the language of publication does not figure among the criteria its evaluators use to assess scientific journals.

Dr Tapie has found some allies beyond the elite classrooms of the grandes écoles, but has yet to recruit the full support of the academy.

Jean-Charles Pomerol, president of Pierre and Marie Curie University, France's largest scientific complex, said that while he believes in increasing tuition fees for non- European students, he has held back on introducing any new policies.

"We take our cue from the state, so we are waiting to find out whether we should impose higher tuition fees on foreign students," he said, adding that he believed it was unfair to ask French taxpayers to fund the education of wealthy foreigners.

Professor Pomerol acknowledged that tuition fees are a sensitive question, and said that academic and student unions would battle hard to prevent a fee hike for foreign students.

"They would say that it was just the first step before introducing fees for everybody," he said, adding that it was difficult to tell if their fears were justified.

Meanwhile, the academic union SNESUP (Syndicat National de l'Enseignement Supérieur) argues that offering classes in English is a luxury few universities could afford, even if foreign students paid higher tuition fees.

"Universities are so underfunded today that I can't imagine opening such courses, because we struggle to pay our regular language teachers," said Stephane Tassel, the union's secretary general.

Damaging to research

Mr Tassel claimed the decision of the grandes écoles to target more foreign students would damage research and higher education in France.

"We are going to see four to five ivory towers emerge in an academic desert in which it will be impossible to do any proper research," he said.

Mr Tassel also argued that in the race to woo international students, the grandes écoles have a head start.

"It's interesting to note that these proposals come from the grandes écoles, which receive two to three times the funds allocated to (non-elite) universities," he said.

In a sector known for strikes and demonstrations, it would appear that all the ingredients for unrest are in place. But most observers feel it is unlikely that any will occur before the next presidential elections.

It is more likely that the grandes écoles, some of which are private institutions, will continue to quietly usher in change.

Business school HEC Paris, for example, has long embraced globalisation and high tuition fees. Overall, the institution's enrolment is 24 per cent non-European. And of the students on its prestigious MBA programme, 70 per cent are non-European and an additional 15 per cent come from European countries other than France.

"We're already there," said HEC Paris general director Bernard Ramanantsoa. "For us the change was progressive."

He added that the internationalisation of higher education had already blurred divisions between grandes écoles and universities. While some universities are entering the fray of international competition, others are stalling.

"It's a question of willpower for some," he said, "but for others it's a question of resources."

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=415970

by  Lajwanti D'souza  

 Indian b-schools, the only semblance of being ‘global’ is either the exchange programmes with foreign universities or the few foreign students hanging around in the campuses. World over, ‘global campus’ is the biggest USP for b-schools, which has percolated right into the classrooms – a typical MBA class at INSEAD or Nanyang Technological University has students belonging to as many as 86 nationalities.

Why are we not going global then? Are Indian b-school students losing out on the cutting global edge?

Starting right

It all begins with the right marketing: possibly the first stage in getting the desired mix of students. Admissions and marketing officials from b-schools abroad do immense amount of travelling across the world to net the right audience. Rashmi Udaykumar, Head of Admissions at SP Jain Singapore says: “No other way to get international students than to go where they are. We hold a lot of fairs in countries varying from China to Australia.”

Kara Keenan, Associate Director of Admissions, Marketing and Financial Aid at INSEAD, says that her b-school uses a mix of different approaches to get the required international bunch. “INSEAD hosts weekly  information sessions on both of our campuses in Fontainebleau and Singapore and in cities around the world. We also hold frequent virtual chats and online sessions on our website. In addition, we have also been utilizing social media with our presence on Facebook, Twitter and our new blog. This kind of outreach definitely helps us to connect with applicants globally as evidenced by our Class of 2011 which includes over 85 nationalities.”

And Singapore and France are not the only countries gung-ho about the global pitch. The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, does pretty much the same thing. Deputy Director of Admissions in the Office of MBA Admissions and Financial Aid, Ankur Kumar says that his team travels extensively to international markets.  “We  have recognized that much of future world growth is going to come from countries that  have not been part of international MBA programmes. Hence, we deliberately host many information sessions for prospective students in places like Africa, the Mideast and Southeast Asia.”

Criteria make the difference

With admissions also come the criteria. It is not just marketing to a world audience, it is also choosing the right kind. Besides GMAT, GRE or TOEFL scores (and a few others), the b-schools are very selective about the students they enrol – a global perspective is a must.

INSEAD for instance, likes its students to have some international exposure before they join, plus learn a foreign language. “The INSEAD MBA equips our alumni to work anywhere in the world. Accordingly, we attract applicants with cross-cultural sensitivity and an international outlook. We like if they have also traveled abroad, if nothing else. Being fluent English is a prerequisite to be at INSEAD. In order to start the programme you must also prove that you have at least a practical knowledge of another language,” said Keenan.

With National University of Singapore (NUS), the focus is to get students who show leadership skills in a global environment. Angelyn ANG, head of Marketing and Admissions at NUS says that her school picks students who want to learn about Asian as much as world business. “The world is getting smaller as companies are opening up across the world. We look at students who can take up these challenges,” says Angelyn.

For Nanyang, it is a little similar – global MBA with an Asian focus. SORIANO Nicanor Lazaro Director, Marketing & Admissions says Asia is where the global markets are shifting-its increasing influence is now a reality in global business. “We like to take on students who understand and realize the influence of global business. Singapore is a strategic hub in Asia, which offers more China, India, SouthEast Asia and Asia Pacific access.”  True to their promise, this year 87% of the Nanyang student body is international while at NUS, about 18 % come from India and Korea each and about 12 % from the US and Europe.

http://www.pagalguy.com/2011/04/with-the-world-shrinking-is-it-not-time-for-indian-b-schools-to-go-global/