National Maritime Academy director P. Vijayan said, ‘We have held discussions with the Dalian Maritime University and the Shanghai Maritime University to offer these MBA programs. The World Maritime University has approved the Detailed Project Report for conducting the courses and we will be entering into a MoU with the two universities shortly.’

The Indian academy which functions under the Union ministry of shipping, has trained nearly 70,000 officials of the port and marine departments.

It is probable that the Indian National Maritime Academy will now be raised to the standard of an university.

There is a link below to the original story in the Times of India. You use it at your own risk. It immediately hammers on to your computer several totally inappropriate advertisements. Unless the Times of India computer has been hacked, and that does not seem likely, the management should be ashamed of itself.
Source: The Times of India

On June 23 GMAC won a legal judgment against the Scoretop site in federal district court in Virginia. GMAC had accused Scoretop of copyright infringement, saying the site had published ‘live’ GMAT questions — questions that were still currently in use by GMAC, the test’s publisher — and other copyrighted material.

The court awarded GMAC $2.3 million plus legal cost but It is not thought that GMAC has much hope of getting that money. As reported Lei Shi has return to China and has taken refuge in the city of Zibo in Shandong province.

Shi, who took the GMAT himself at least three times in 2002 and 2003, was not represented in court on the copyright infringement case.

The problem is the number of students caught up is now more than 6,000, a far greater number than originally thought.

GMAC has reassured the involved students that only those who knowingly used the Scoretop.com Web site to cheat on the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) will have their scores canceled. Because most top B-schools require the GMAT this is serious stuff.

GMAC is analyzing the hard drive and it vows to cancel the scores of anyone who used the site to cheat on the exam. That could mean rejection for applicants, expulsion for current students, and unspecified sanctions for graduates.

Graduates have threatened to sue GMAC but that is an empty threat. A test-taker must agree to two quite detailed nondisclosure agreements. They might be more successful suing Lei Shi. If only he could be found.
Source: BusinessWeek

The 30-page booklets are divided into five categories — theft, fraud, robbery, sexual harassment, and drugs.

They provide information and tips on how and where to seek help, and what to do and not do. An official with the Shanghai municipal public security bureau said, ‘University students, especially freshmen, are prime crime targets.’

The city’s university campuses last year reported about 3,000 cases of crime.

A gang of three was recently arrested for having allegedly posed as rich businessmen to swindle female university students. One of them even told a student he was the son of wealthy Hong Kong businessman Li Ka-shing.

An official said, ‘University students from Shanghai are generally very cautious, because they read a lot about such crimes in the newspapers. It is students from other areas who fall prey to such crimes.’

All new students will have to attend four briefings by police officers on security measures.
Source: China Daily

A report on the plan’s blueprint, created by the Ministry of Education, was approved at a meeting of the National Science and Technology Education Leading Group of the State Council.

The report said, ‘It is necessary to make a medium and long-term plan for education reform and development in accordance with the new requirements to build a moderately prosperous society in all respects, the new trend of domestic and overseas development and the new expectations of the people.’

This is China’s first education plan in the 21st century, and it promises to be a very complicated project.

The group will solicit advice from experts, parents and students before drawing up guidelines. Premier Wen Jiabao, also head of the group, presided over the meeting.
Source: China View

The Catholic university and the Chinese Embassy in Chile worked together and it should open in March 2009 to promote Chinese language and culture.

The institute will be chaired by an academic committee which includes representatives from the Catholic University and the Chinese Embassy.

An executive director is to be appointed for the institute and Chinese professors who speak Spanish will be sent to teach in Chile.

The university has already signed agreements with six Chinese higher educational institutions on personnel exchange and co-investigation and is now having programs on Asian study and offering Chinese courses to Chilean students.

The Confucius Institute Headquarters is a non-profit institute under the Chinese Ministry of Education. It sponsors courses of Chinese language and culture to promote better understanding of the Chinese language and culture around the world. It now has more than 260 headquarters in 75 countries.
Source: China View

As of last month MSU has 339 paid deposits from Chinese freshmen.

MSU had 242 Chinese undergraduates in total last year compared to a mere 41 two years earlier so it is a substantial increase.

This American university is not unique in this. Officials from other Big Ten universities say they’re seeing a similar increase in the number of new students from China.

According to the U.S. State Department the number of F visas, given to students and their dependents, issued to Chinese people nationwide more than doubled from 2003 to 2007.

At MSU, the increase likely started with the efforts to ‘internationalize’ the university, to increase connections with other countries, send more students to study abroad and bring more international students and researchers here to Michigan.
Much more on this HERE.
Source: LSJ.com

She writes that 30 years ago, 30% of the world’s college students were from the United States. Today, that figure is just 14%.

She writes, ‘We produce 70,000 engineers a year. Official records say that China produces 650,000. American experts don’t necessarily believe that, but even their revised figure, 350,000, shows a huge difference.’

The Centre for International Governance Innovation, a global think tank based in Canada, says that China will have more engineers and scientists with doctorates than the United States by 2010. They also estimate that within four years, 90% of all scientists and engineers with doctorates in the world will be Asians living in Asia.

She writes that ‘in recent years, China has revamped its higher education strategy to focus on getting more people from poor families into college and graduate school.

‘The Chinese government has prioritized keeping university fees and housing costs low. It also encourages master’s and doctorate programs to drop the fees associated with postgraduate study.

‘In concentrating on cutting college costs, Chinese authorities recognize that low-income and working-class communities are the source of the nation’s future human capital. Making college more affordable means accessing untapped potential. The Chinese get it. We don’t.’

Interesting to read an American viewpoint about higher education which basically says that China is getting it right, the United States is getting it wrong. Read the full article by clicking HERE.
Source: Newsday

The interest in partnering with a major Chinese university has been in the making for several years. Timothy Dowding and his colleague, Dr. Wynd Harris, both have taught courses that allow students to work towards an advanced business certificate in international business.

Timothy Dowding was invited to tour one of China’s most successful water bottling plants, Jinan Please Mineral Water. He said, ‘Visiting the plant goes against many of the stereotypes generally held about Chinese industry. In order to achieve the quality standards, they purchase the best equipment in the world. In fact, this is the most highly automated water bottling company in China.’

SDU plans to send 2 faculty members and 20 students to the US in October to visit the Stamford campus and an invitation has already been extended for one of the SDU professors to come to UConn in April 2009 as a visiting scholar.
Source: Media NewsWire

It is seriously interesting as a guide to the problems of making sure everyone gets a proper education. It reports that under a directive of China’s State Council, provincial governments have gradually settled local-level debt resulting from their offering of free rural education. In the process they discovered debt scams.

The debts were a result of implementing nine-year free compulsory education in the countryside since the early 1990s. By 2005, official statistics revealed that free rural education had incurred at least RMB50 billion in debt.

In December last year, the government initiated a pilot program in 14 provinces to settle the debts, and by August, some RMB14.6 billion in arrears were cleared. But in assessing the records, officials discovered some creditors and debtors had jointly marked-up debt figures, hoping to gain from the government intervention program.

At one time there were suggestions for the central government to take over all debts.

However, an official from the Ministry of Finance, said from past experiences, the government had learned that once it committed itself, it would actually encourage the debts at the provincial level to grow, and fabricated debts would also emerge.

You can read all of this fascinating look at the problems of subsidized education HERE.
Source: EEO.com

Unlike most developing economies, China’s educational policy focuses on upgrading higher education.

Since 1999, there has been an emphasis on sophistication on higher education in China which has resulted in a major transformation.

This has involved major new resource commitments to tertiary education and significant changes in organisational form.

The number of undergraduate and graduate students in China has been growing at approximately 30% per year since 1999, and the number of graduates at all levels of higher education in China has approximately quadrupled in the last six years.

Entering class sizes and total student enrollments have risen even faster, approximately quintupling. Much of the increased spending is focused on elite universities, and new academic contracts differ sharply from earlier ones, which lacked tenure and often used annual publication quotas.

These changes have already had large impacts on China’s higher education system and are beginning to be felt by the global educational structure. Skilled labour supply in China now equals around 40% of that in all OECD countries, and the growth rate of student numbers is much higher than in the OECD.

Again it should be stressed this is but a slight summary of a well-researched and documented paper which can be read HERE.
Source: Vox