New reference book with historical economic/financial statistics

Copyright kikashi

International Historical Statistics; Africa, Asia and Oceania 1750-2005 is the latest edition of the most authoritative collection of statistics available.

It is available in our Reference collection at HG2 MITC (this means that you won't be able to take the book out, however, you can make photocopies)

Updated to 2005 wherever possible, it provides key economic and social indicators for the last 255 years, serving as an essential reference source.

Contents provides:

• statistical data in easy to use tables
• for the last 255 years (where available)
• of every country in the African, Asian and Australiasian continents

Covering:

• Population & Vital Statistics

Includes population of countries at enumerations, by sex and age groups, of major cities, vital statistics, international migrants

• Labour Force

Includes economically active population, unemployment, industrial disputes, indices of wages/earnings

• Agriculture

Main arable food crops; various foodstuff outputs; livestock, exports of various agricultural commodities

• Industry

Includes coal , crude petroleum, natural gas and iron ore production; assembly of motor vehicles, imports & exports

• External Trade

Includes aggregate current values, main trading partners and major commodity exports

• Transport & Communication

Includes length of railway open lines, freight/passenger traffic on railways, merchant ships registered, motor vehicles in use, civil aviation traffic, postal/telegraph traffic, radio/tv sets in use

• Finance

Includes currency/banknotes in circulation, demand deposits in commercial banks, savings, money supply, total central government expenditure,central government revenue (tax yields)

• Prices

Includes wholesale and consumer price indices

• Education

Includes number of children schools and higher education

• National Accounts

Includes national accounts totals , proportions of GDP by sector of origin, balance of payments

ScienceDirect's Hottest Articles April-June 2008

Every 3 months ScienceDirect distributes a list of the Top 25 Hottest articles published with in a specific subject area.

Here is the newest list available for Economics, Econometrics & Finance for the time period: April - June 2008. (For some reason Accounting articles are grouped with Business & Management - for the list of hottest articles that include Accounting please click here.)


Australian gold exploration 1976-2003 • Article Resources Policy, Volume 30, Issue 1, 1 March 2005, Pages 29-37Huleatt, M.B.; Jaques, A.L.
Cited by Scopus (3)

Exploration and discovery of Australia's copper, nickel, lead and zinc resources 1976-2005 • Article Resources Policy, Volume 30, Issue 3, 1 September 2005, Pages 168-185Jaques, A.L.; Huleatt, M.B.; Ratajkoski, M.; Towner, R.R.
Cited by Scopus (1)

Market efficiency, long-term returns, and behavioral finance • Article Journal of Financial Economics, Volume 49, Issue 3, 1 September 1998, Pages 283-306Fama, E.F.
Cited by Scopus (395)

Investor protection and corporate governance • Article Journal of Financial Economics, Volume 58, Issue 1-2, 1 January 2000, Pages 3-27La Porta, R.; Lopez-de-Silanes, F.; Shleifer, A.; Vishny, R.
Cited by Scopus (321)

How does foreign direct investment affect economic growth? • Article Journal of International Economics, Volume 45, Issue 1, 1 June 1998, Pages 115-135Borensztein, E.; De Gregorio, J.; Lee, J.-W.
Cited by Scopus (261)

Is Globalization Reducing Poverty and Inequality? • Article World Development, Volume 32, Issue 4, 1 April 2004, Pages 567-589Wade, R.H.
Cited by Scopus (53)

Information asymmetry, corporate disclosure, and the capital markets: A review of the empirical disclosure literature • Article Journal of Accounting and Economics, Volume 31, Issue 1-3, 1 September 2001, Pages 405-440Healy, P.M.; Palepu, K.G.
Cited by Scopus (181)

The theory and practice of corporate finance: evidence from the field • Article Journal of Financial Economics, Volume 60, Issue 2-3, 1 May 2001, Pages 187-243Graham, J.R.; Harvey, C.R.
Cited by Scopus (215)

The price of innovation: new estimates of drug development costs • Article Journal of Health Economics, Volume 22, Issue 2, 1 March 2003, Pages 151-185DiMasi, J.A.; Hansen, R.W.; Grabowski, H.G.
Cited by Scopus (546)

The curse of natural resources • Article European Economic Review, Volume 45, Issue 4-6, 1 May 2001, Pages 827-838Sachs, J.D.; Warner, A.M.
Cited by Scopus (120)


Performance management: a framework for management control systems research • ArticleManagement Accounting Research, Volume 10, Issue 4, 1 December 1999, Pages 363-382Otley, D.
Cited by Scopus (85)

Designing payments for environmental services in theory and practice: An overview of the issues • Article Ecological Economics, Volume 65, Issue 4, 1 May 2008, Pages 663-674Engel, S.; Pagiola, S.; Wunder, S.
Cited by Scopus (1)

Understanding cultures and implicit leadership theories across the globe: an introduction to project GLOBE • Article Journal of World Business, Volume 37, Issue 1, 1 March 2002, Pages 3-10House, R.; Javidan, M.; Hanges, P.; Dorfman, P.
Cited by Scopus (54)


Capital markets research in accounting • Article Journal of Accounting and Economics, Volume 31, Issue 1-3, 1 September 2001, Pages 105-231Kothari, S.P.
Cited by Scopus (139)

Low-frequency collection of materials disassembled from end-of-life vehicles • Article International Journal of Production Economics, Volume 111, Issue 2, 1 February 2008, Pages 209-228Krikke, H.; le Blanc, I.; van Krieken, M.; Fleuren, H.


Design for control: A new perspective on process and product innovation • Article International Journal of Production Economics, Volume 113, Issue 1, 1 May 2008, Pages 346-358Bordoloi, S.; Guerrero, H.H.

Economic consequences of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 • Article Journal of Accounting and Economics, Volume 44, Issue 1-2, 1 September 2007, Pages 74-115Zhang, I.X.
Cited by Scopus (7)

Oil prices, inflation and interest rates in a structural cointegrated VAR model for the G-7 countries • Article Energy Economics, Volume 30, Issue 3, 1 May 2008, Pages 856-888Cologni, A.; Manera, M.
Cited by Scopus (2)

The balance on the balanced scorecard a critical analysis of some of its assumptions • Article Management Accounting Research, Volume 11, Issue 1, 1 March 2000, Pages 65-88Norreklit, H.
Cited by Scopus (93)

Corporate governance and firm cash holdings in the US • Article Journal of Financial Economics, Volume 87, Issue 3, 1 March 2008, Pages 535-555Harford, J.; Mansi, S.A.; Maxwell, W.F.
Cited by Scopus (1)

Corporate governance and pay-for-performance: The impact of earnings management • Article Journal of Financial EconomicsCornett, M.M.; Marcus, A.J.; Tehranian, H.


Technological innovation systems and the multi-level perspective: Towards an integrated framework • Article Research Policy, Volume 37, Issue 4, 1 May 2008, Pages 596-615Markard, J.; Truffer, B.
Cited by Scopus (1)

Financial distress and corporate risk management: Theory and evidence • Article Journal of Financial Economics, Volume 87, Issue 3, 1 March 2008, Pages 706-739Purnanandam, A.


Do firms manage earnings to meet dividend thresholds? • Article Journal of Accounting and Economics, Volume 45, Issue 1, 1 March 2008, Pages 2-26Daniel, N.D.; Denis, D.J.; Naveen, L.

Consumer acceptance, valuation of and attitudes towards genetically modified food: Review and implications for food policy • Article Food Policy, Volume 33, Issue 2, 1 April 2008, Pages 99-111Costa-Font, M.; Gil, J.M.; Traill, W.B.

Fannie and Freddie Fixed ...

Copyright svilen001

Fannie And Freddie's 15-Month Fix
Maurna Desmond

It's been described as one of the largest government bailouts in U.S. history, but Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's four-pronged rescue of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is merely a temporary solution, leaving a cloudy view on what the two mortgage giants will look like in the future.

The government seized the mortgage finance companies over the weekend in the form of a conservatorship, promising to buy the companies' preferred stock, buy mortgage-backed securities from their portfolios and provide a lending facility. What Paulson did not say: whether these companies will be permanently nationalized.

Instead, the plan calls for the run-off of their portfolios of mortgage-backed securities starting in 2010, which is a little more than 15 months away. That is about as much time the next Congress would need to come up with a permanent fix. More

University news from the West

Living the dream
Students' expectations of college life are formed long before they arrive, but blaming them for a lack of realism isn't the answer. Hannah Fearn reports


Tory promise: more students, more freedom
Shadow Minister says he wants a bold new direction for higher education

Students more satisfied than ever before
Most are happy with teaching, but assessment is still a concern

RAE table will be shaken by use of journal rankings
Panel member says leaders who chose entries on impact factor may be surprised

‘MTV generation learns through fun’
Dull teaching styles risk losing students to online education, US innovator warns

Noddy management
Treat your staff to lashings of 1940s-style good sense and you jolly well won’t go far wrong, advises Enid Blyton devotee Sally Feldman


Grand masters of vinyl
Prog rock devotee Greg Walker takes an affecionate look at an intelligent and gloriously ambitious genre, and asks us to celebrate the era when rock’s dinosaurs roamed the Earth


Book of the week
Tara Brabazon acclaims a monograph of merit: Wendy Griswold’s Regionalism and the Reading Class



A Community College Divided
At Thomas Nelson, a president who outraged faculty elsewhere runs into trouble again — and leaves an institution split over priorities, race and right to dissent. more


In New Orleans, Move-In Day (Again)
As students return to Loyola U. campus after pre-hurricane evacuation, the campus is neat and the mood upbeat, but storm clouds loom (literally). more


Print Journalism Squeeze Hits Campuses
As newspapers across the country face declining revenues, student publications are feeling the brunt, too. more

Different Measures of Community College Outcomes
Six states test new set of performance measures in response to the limitations of the federal graduation rate formula.

EUROPE: Impact of sharp population decline Keith Nuthall
European academics are preparing to gather at a high-level conference to discuss the problems caused to higher education by a sharp decline in the European population. The debates at the European University Association conference come as the latest figures from the European Union statistical agency Eurostat confirm the number of young people in European countries is already shrinking and will get smaller

GLOBAL: Higher education expanding rapidly Diane Spencer
The higher education sector has expanded rapidly worldwide over the past decade, says the latest annual report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Education at a Glance 2008 shows that 37% of school-leavers went to university in 1995 whereas 57% on average now do in the 30 member countries of the OECD. In Australia, Finland, Iceland, Poland and Sweden, three out of four school-leavers go on to a degree course. The 500-page report also shows that public expenditure on higher education has increased but that private investment has risen even more.

GLOBAL: North America far ahead in new rankings Rebecca Warden
North American universities are the clear winners in the latest edition of of The Web Ranking of World Universities, published by the Spanish National Research Council or CSIC's Cybermetrics Lab. The council has US and Canadian universities between them accounting for 123 of the world's top 200 universities. Europe comes in a very poor second with 61 universities while the Asia-Pacific region manages a total of 14. The league table, produced twice yearly since 2004, ranks institutions according to the size and quality of their presence on the internet and its wider impact.


CANADA: Tuition-fee patchwork siphons students Philip Fine
Hundreds of bargain-hunting Canadian students have moved to Newfoundland and Labrador, a province with the lowest tuition fees in the country. The recent student migration is one of the strange things to emerge in a country where individual provincial governments fund university operations, while the federal government is relegated to observing the wild patchwork of varying fees.


UK: Students underestimate debts Diane Spencer
As the British university term is about to begin, new students are being warned not to underestimate how much they are likely to be in debt by the end of their courses. A survey from the National Union of Students reveals that prospective university students are underestimating the basic costs of living such as groceries, household bills and travel by nearly £450 (US$822) a year.


GERMANY: Studying too expensive Mike Gardner

Yet another damning report has been released on social background and studying in Germany. This time the Deutsches Studentenwerk or DSW, the country's student welfare organisation, has drawn attention to the fact that more and more school-leavers in Germany are choosing not to study owing to difficult financial hurdles. Even among the group with top marks in the Abitur higher education admission certificate, parents' income is clearly a decisive factor in career planning.

GERMANY: OECD statistics cause for concern Michael Gardner
German first-year student numbers appear to be stagnating, according to OECD statistics. The country is also performing poorly in terms of graduation figures, says the organisation's Education at a Glance 2008 report released last week. President of the Hochschulrektorenkonferenz (HRK - the conference of higher education heads in Germany), Professor Margret Wintermantel, is worried that Germany is increasingly lagging behind other countries and has called for more funding for higher education.

SOUTH KOREA: KAIST conference attracts leading researchers Douglas Rogers*
The big-budget conference circuit with high-profile international speakers hits Korea in October. This year, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), in Daejon, has got in early with a series of activities straddling the weekend, reflecting the dynamic leadership of the President, Dr Suh Nam-Pyo.



Universities Looking More Like Corporate Research Labs steven bell
University “tech transfer” offices have boomed from a couple dozen before the law’s passage to nearly 300 today. University patents have leapt a hundredfold. Professors are stepping away from the lab and lecture hall to navigate the thicket of venture capital, business regulations and commercial competition. None of these are necessarily negative outcomes. The primary concern is that its original intent — to infuse the American marketplace with the fruits of academic innovation — has also distorted the fundamental mission of universities.

Green Buildings And Alternative Energy Will Be Sprouting On Campus steven bell Five years ago, green residence halls or organic dining would have seemed like cutting edge improvements of a campus’ environmental impact, but no longer. The U.S. Green Building Council says 250 campus buildings have received its stamp of approval, a LEED certification, and another 1600 are on the way. Wind and solar power generation is taking off; even high-tech projects like greywater reuse are finding a home on some campuses. As everything from printing labs to public transport gets a greener lift, here are nine projects that stand out.
Studying Student Shopping Behavior...For Their Courses steven bell Most colleges and universities have fairly lenient drop/add policies. Students can drop a course well into the semester, and courses can be added during a short time window at the beginning of the semester or term. During that course add period, some students do course shopping. They sign up for a course, attend the first couple of sessions, then drop the course and replace it with another course. Some students course shop regularly and extensively. Researchers studied course shopping in urban community colleges—nine Los Angeles community college campuses, to be specific. They used data collected as part of a larger study of transfer and retention issues in urban community colleges. The researchers offer a variety of suggestions that might help students make those wise first choices.

Download up to 20 articles from ScienceDirect at the same time!

ScienceDirect has a brand new function!

It's called Document Download Manager and enables you to download up to 20 full text articles at a time whilst still doing normal searching and working in ScienceDirect.

Download Manager enables researchers to automatically name downloaded full-text articles according to their own naming convention and pre-select a preferred destination for downloads. This helps reduce the irritation factor of lost files, and makes the process much more intuitive. .

Confused?

Here is how it works: (Click on the images to enlarge them)

Step 1: Do a search on ScienceDirect

When you get the list of results you will see a new button just above the results (on the image marked in black) - Download Pdf's. This button allows the downloading of more than 1 full text article at a time.

You can either mark certain articles and then click on Download Pdf's - or you can click on it without marking any items. (If no items have been marked you will get a pop-up stating that the first 20 articles will be downloaded.)

Step 2: Make sure the pop-ups are not blocked

Step 3: Click on the Download Pdf's link

Step 4: Choose the name of the file as well as where you want the pdf's to be downloaded to (e.g. flash drive, specific folder etc)





You can give your own naming convention to the list:


Once you are down naming the file and choosing a place for the pdf's you can see the status of the files as they are being downloaded



Once the download is complete you will see an icon of the pdf:


If you go to where you've saved the files you will see all of them are there:


I think this will save a great deal of time for researchers since you can still go on with the searching in ScienceDirect, while your files are being downloaded in the background.

USA's Higher Education's inflation index released

Copyright yirsh

The Higher Education Price Index (HEPI) is an inflation index designed specifically to track the main cost drivers in higher education in the USA.

It is an essential planning tool for educational managers, enabling schools to project the future budget and funding increases required to maintain real purchasing power and investment. HEPI is issued annually by Commonfund Institute and is distributed free of charge to educational institutions.

HEPI is a more accurate indicator of changes in costs for colleges and universities than the more familiar Consumer Price Index. It measures the average relative level of prices in a fixed basket of goods and services purchased by colleges and universities each year through current fund educational and general expenditures, excluding research.

HEPI is compiled from data reported and published by government and economic agencies. The eight categories cover current operational costs of colleges and universities. These include salaries for faculty, administrative employees, clerical employees, and service employees, fringe benefits, utilities, supplies and materials, and miscellaneous services.

HEPI has been calculated every year since 1983 and includes inflation data going back to 1961. Since fiscal year 2002, HEPI has been based on a regression formula. In 2005, Commonfund Institute assumed responsibility for maintaining HEPI and calculating its annual rate of change.

Links to publishers for new books

Copyright david_ming

Time is almost running out to order new books for 2009 - and the Faculty still has about 38% of the book budget left.

Remember you will lose what you do not spend.

To help you choose new relevant titles, here is a list of publishers with links to their economic/accounting/finance books:

Blackwells:
Economics, finance, accounting

Cambridge
Economics, finance & accounting

Elsevier
Accounting
Economics

Institute of Economic Affairs
2008/9 catalogue

MIT Press
Economic, Finance & Business

Oxford University Press
Economics & Finance Catalogue 2008/9

Springer
Economics

Taylor & Francis
Economics
Accounting & Finance
Reference

Palgrave
Banking & Finance
Economics
Reference

Wiley
Economics, Finance & Accounting

New information on SARB website

The following publication has been added to the -South African Reserve Bank website:

• Quarterly Bulletin No 249 - September 2008
• Statement on the Governor's term of office Issued by Mr T T Mboweni, Governor of the South African Reserve Bank

Credit cards usage on the up in emerging markets

Copyright LotusHead

According to a new Forbes article, credit card usage is on the rise in the emerging economies of the world:

" The growth of credit card use in Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe signals continuing financial development in these markets. However, the experience of South Korea in 2003 demonstrates that excessive growth in this type of consumer credit has the potential to threaten economic stability. In recent years, the credit card industry in emerging-market economies has expanded rapidly: --Between 2004-07, the number of credit cards in Brazil and Mexico more than doubled, while the number of cards in circulation in Poland tripled. --Russia has also seen major growth. --Outstanding credit card debt in India tripled over the same period. --In China, growth in the number of outstanding credit cards averaged just over 23% from 2004-07. It surged to nearly 93% in the first half of 2008. " For more on the article, click here.

For scholarly articles discussing credit cards and emerging markets click:

• here for articles from EbscoHost
• here for articles from ProQuest
• here for articles from ScienceDirect

Top 50 CEO's in Asia

Forbes Business just released a list of CEO's of the Top 50 companies operating in Asia:

Council for Medical Schemes releases 2007/8 annual report

Copyright by miqueias

The Council for Medical Schemes (CMS) released their Annual Report for 2007/2008 yesterday.
As the regulatory authority responsible for overseeing medical schemes in South Africa (SA), the Council for Medical Schemes (CMS or Council) administers and enforces the Medical Schemes Act 131 of 1998 (MSA or Act).
The CMS is an autonomous public agency funded through levies charged to medical schemes and is accountable to the Minister responsible for national health matters.

The report itself is quite long (177 pages), but the key goals of the CMS, taken from the report, are:

Goal 1: We monitor the impact of the Medical Schemes Act 131 of 1998 and recommend improvements.

Goal 2: Secure adequate protection for beneficiaries by approving the manner in which medical schemes carry out business and by monitoring their financial performance.

Goal 3: Support the work of trustees and promote public understanding of the way in which medical schemes function.

Goal 4: Take fair and timely enforcement actions when required.

Goal 5: Investigate and resolve complaints of beneficiaries.

Goal 6: Foster the development of the CMS as an attractive workplace and an employer of choice.

Goal 7: Develop strategic alliances with counterpart regulators and others.

Jacob Zuma @ UJ

Copyright David Sandison

Jacob Zuma, the president of the ANC, will address a public lecture here at the University with the theme of his talk being: Access to justice in a democratic South Africa.

Date: 9th September (this Tuesday)
Time: 14:30 for 15:00
Venue: UJ Sanlam Auditorium (E-Ring) here on the APK Campus
RSVP: Barenice van Reenen (x6662)

Sasol Inzalo attracts 300 000 shareholders

The Sasol Inzalo Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) offering has attracted a total of 300 000 new shareholders, Sasol Chief Executive Officer Pat Davies said on Tuesday.

This had exceeded the target of 200 000 new shareholders."Sasol has met the objectives of delivering a transaction that will help make broad-based black economic empowerment tangible and a practical reality in the lives of the previously disadvantaged communities.
"We are proud that as Sasol we have met our objectives and we are able to initiate a dialogue with our 300 000 new shareholders," he said.

The Sasol Inzalo Black Public Invitations was opened in June this year and was closed on 9 July.Mr Davies said the vast majority of the successful applicants were individuals seeking 200 shares or less. Read more at BuaNews

Dual career academic couples - what you need to know

Meeting the needs and expectations of dual-career academic couples— while still ensuring the high quality of university faculty—is the next great challenge facing universities. This according to Standford University's report: Dual-Career Academic Couples: What Universities Need to Know (August 2008)

Academic couples comprise 36 percent of the American professoriate—representing a deep pool of talent. The proportion of academic couples (i.e., couples in which both partners are academics) at four-year institutions nationally has not changed since 1989.

What has changed is the rate at which universities are hiring couples. Academic couple hiring has increased from 3 percent in the 1970s to 13 percent since 2000.

And universities in the US are being to take notice and devoting attention to dual-career issues. In recent years, a number of conferences and collaborative efforts have sprung up, and university hiring practices are evolving to keep pace.

There are three key reasons for taking a new look at couple hiring:
Excellence.
The study suggests that couples more and more vote with their feet, leaving or not considering universities that do not support them. Support for dual careers opens another avenue by which universities can compete for the best and brightest.

Diversity
The new generation of academics is more diverse in terms of gender and ethnicity than ever before. With greater diversity comes the need for new hiring practices - and one of these practices is couple hiring.

Quality of Life
Faculty today are a new breed determined more than ever to strike a sustainable balance between working and private lives. Couple hiring is part of a deeper institutional restructuring around quality-of-life issues. To enhance competitive excellence, universities are increasingly supporting faculty needs, such as housing, child care, schools, and elder care, in addition to partner hiring.

University news from Africa

AFRICA: New head for African universities association/Karen MacGregor The new Secretary General of the Association of African Universities, Professor Goolam Mohamedbhai, took up his post this month. His priorities include growing the AAU's membership, strengthening its secretariat and collaborating with continental development bodies to drive a revival of African universities. This is no easy job - but one for which the former president of the International Association of Universities and University of Mauritius vice-chancellor is exceptionally well qualified.

ZIMBABWE: Unqualified Mugabe supporters access HE/Clemence Manyukwe Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu-PF party is forcing the admission of young supporters into higher education institutions even though they do not meet entry requirements. Students claim the party is using them to destabilise the student union movement by reporting on its activities.

Mugabe scraps student elections/Clemence Manyukwe Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe is tightening his grip on the country's institutions of higher learning by scrapping elections to choose student leaders.

EGYPT: Universities must open during holy month/Ashraf Khaled Egyptian Minister of Education, Hany Helal, has caused a stir by opposing a suggestion that the new academic year be postponed until the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Insisting that studies at universities and other education institutions begin on 20 September, Helal was quoted in the press as saying: "Postponing the academic year until the end of the [lunar] month of Ramadan would give a bad impression in the West that Muslims are lazy."


NIGERIA: Controversy over university entrance system/Tunde Fatunde University teachers and the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) are once again at loggerheads over Nigeria's reformed higher education admission policy. The board, which operates a competitive national entrance examination, is unhappy about universities being allowed to conduct their own admission exams - and has accused some of using the tests to make money.


TUNISIA: New agency to promote research and innovation A new national agency to promote research and innovation in Tunisia was established in August, under the supervision of the Ministry of Higher Education.


SENEGAL: University students reluctant to leave campus Students remaining at Senegal's biggest university, Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, have finally left the campus after water and electricity supplies were cut off last week. They had been refusing to leave their accommodation at the end of an extended academic year, protesting that they had not received their grants.

Humorous look at how you spend your time

So, how do you spend your time?

Higher Education in Europe beyond 2010

Higher education institutions are being subjected to a variety of pressures that seek, primarily, to enhance higher education’s contribution to the successful creation of so-called ‘knowledge societies’, together with, and receiving only slightly less emphasis, the achievement of greater equity and social justice.

The report Higher Education Looking Forward: An Agenda for Future Research has examined the relevant higher education research literature in terms of its underlying conceptual approaches and empirical findings across a number of selected sub-themes (see below) in order to derive a future research agenda that will address scientific questions of long term strategic concern to the future of higher education.

The Themes
The five themes that have been addressed are:

• Higher education and the needs of the knowledge society

Key questions within this theme will be the adequacy of human capital theory in explaining
changing relationships between higher education and work, the balance between initial formation and continuing professional development in knowledge-based economies, and the division of labour between higher education institutions and employers in meeting education and training needs.

• Higher education and the achievement of equity and social justice

Key questions here concern the relationship between higher education’s roles in social reproduction and its roles in extending opportunities for social mobility and the achievement of greater social justice.

• Higher education and its communities: interconnections and interdependencies

Key questions will concern whether new function can be performed without detriment to the old and what are the change mechanisms within higher education institutions and systems needed to bring about effective realignments between higher education and its various communities

• Steering and governance of higher education

Key questions for this theme are to do with the implications of different forms of decision-making, accountability and funding for higher education’s ability to perform existing and new functions.

• Differentiation and diversity of institutional forms and professional roles

The questions raised within theme five relate to the preceding themes and to whether further differentiation within national systems will be accompanied by greater convergence between systems if higher education is to respond effectively to changing social and economic climates in European countries

Download the whole report for or see the Project Summary a quick overview .

University news from the West

Image Copyright by merla

IHEs Spend Lots Of Money On The Wrong Things
If colleges were spending most of their money on initiatives that improve the quality of education for students, you might regard price hikes running at two to four times the rate of inflation as a necessary evil. But spending on palatial dorms, state-of-the-art fitness centers and a panoply of gourmet dining options? Maybe not. Colleges could help ease the pressure by adopting cost-containment practices that are standard in private business. But most schools are nonprofits. And without the pressure to produce earnings, they have little incentive to slash expenses or improve productivity. Says Ron Ehrenberg, an economics professor at Cornell University and author of "Tuition Rising": "For nonprofits the goal is to raise all the money you can, then spend it."

Campuses Going Green But Less So In The Curriculum steven bell
The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) on Aug. 21 released its own ratings of American colleges and universities — based not on selectivity, but on greenness. The results are a bit surprising. For all the attention that environmental causes have garnered over the past several years, the NWF found that sustainability-related education offered on campuses stayed steady between 2001 and 2008 — and might even have declined. While U.S. schools have done well in greening their campuses — rare is the day that passes without a college announcing a new green building or program for energy efficiency — colleges are lacking when it comes to sustainable education.


India Plans New Accreditation Body for Colleges of Business and Engineering
India plans to create a separate accreditation body for engineering and business colleges in response to complaints that the current situation, in which the same panel serves as regulator and accreditor, is open to corruption and fails to ensure academic quality, the higher-education secretary told an industry lobbying group last week, according to the business newspaper Mint.

Federal Spending on Academic Research Continued Downward Trend in 2007
Washington — Total spending on academic scientific research grew slightly in 2007 even as the the subtotal financed by the federal government fell, after inflation was factored in, according to a new report. Colleges and other providers made up the difference from their own pockets — but they weren’t happy about it. The federal government is the largest source of funds for academic research, and the 2007 fiscal year represented the second straight year of decline after inflation, according to the report, which was issued by the National Science Foundation. The federal total was $30.44-billion, a net drop of 1.6 percent compared with 2006. Such a two-year decline had never before occurred since the NSF began tracking those figures, in 1972.


Cleaning up the act By Tariq Tahir
Academic fraud in Britain is endemic, but universities continue to argue the case for self-regulation. America and Denmark have tougher regimes in place, so should we follow their lead?

Oiling the learning machine By John Gill
The huge expansion of higher education in the Gulf offers major opportunities for UK academe. But there are also challenges


Next Steps for E-Texts With slew of new announcements and partnerships, some publishers, colleges and even bookstores seem poised to offer e-textbooks as a serious alternative for students. more

'Collision Course' for Graduate Education At political science meeting, experts on Ph.D. education consider how to give grad students more breadth and better teaching skills -- while also getting them to finish dissertations on time.


The real Shanghai Jiao Tong winners
How many Americans does it take to produce a university? No, it's not an academic joke, it's a population-based analysis of the recently published 2008 Academic Ranking of World Universities by China’s Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The study shows that while the US might have the most top 500 universities in the world, it is not the most efficient producer of such universities on a population basis. That title goes to Sweden and the analysis also demonstrates that Scandinavia in general is a veritable powerhouse of academic excellence given its population base

DENMARK: Academics sign up to protest
Danish academics are collecting signatures to convince Science Minister Helge Sander that opposition to the current education law is, in their words, "no sectarian craving from a dissatisfied minority...but has a broad basis of support among Danish students and researchers". .

US: New Stanford study of dual-career academic couples
Dual-career issues are growing in importance in higher education in America. More than 70% of faculty are in dual-career relationships, and more than a third are partnered with another academic, according to a study just published by Stanford University's Clayman Institute for Gender Research. The publication, Dual-Career Academic Couples: What universities need to know, is based on a survey of full-time tenured and tenure-track academics at 13 leading US universities, as well as interviews with administrators at 18 universities. The lead author is Londa Schiebinger, director of the Clayman Institute and Professor of the History of Science. The report is freely available.

INDIA: Poor pay discourages researchers
Increased job opportunities and fat pay packets for young graduates are turning out to be a bane for academic research in India.

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New issue of Peer Review out

Peer Review provides a quarterly briefing on emerging trends and key debates in undergraduate education. Each issue is focused on a specific topic, provides comprehensive analysis, and features campus perspectives.

The new Spring/Summer edition will cover Student Political Engagement and examine how the academy engages students in their learning today to help them grow as engaged citizens for tomorrow. It focuses on democratic civic engagement rather than service and in what some call civic agency. (This issue will be out soon on our Databases)



Some of the past topics covered are:

Academic Advising Winter 2008
This issue addresses the role of academic advising in undergraduate education with a special focus on general education goals and the documentation of the achievement of student learning outcomes.



Faculty Development: Finding Balance in Changing Roles Fall 2007
Faculty development will play a critical role in efforts to achieve essential learning outcomes for all students. This issue features the key challenges and pressures facing faculty members and institutions as they work to orient new faculty and build the skills of existing faculty.

Bringing Theory to Practice Summer 2007
The Bringing Theory to Practice (BTtoP) project seeks to advance engaged student learning and determine how it might improve the quality of students' education, development, health, and commitment to civic engagement. This issue provides a brief project overview as well as several campus examples that offer specific forms of engaged learning and how they are contributing to students' health and well-being.



Assessing Student Learning Spring 2007
As campuses implement more complex assignments, community placements, internships, student research programs, and other engaged learning practices, the opportunity for students to demonstrate complex capacities will be increased. This issue addresses a variety of approaches to achieving and assessing the advanced learning outcomes derived from these practices. It includes a special focus on developing and assessing capstone courses.

Learning and Technology Fall 2006
This issue examines a range of current issues concerning the role and use of technology in student learning and also addresses how these technologies can advance liberal education learning outcomes. Topics addressed include using technology to advance humanistic ideals, teaching through blended learning environment, engaging faculty in a technological age, and learning through the deployment of innovative technologies in informal spaces.