Hungary, Turkey – Intellectual freedom the target of illiberal regimes

Global Ranking Monitor
One of the topics for discussion at the two-day international conference held at Berkeley’s campus in California in celebration of the 60th anniversary of UC Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education, was the situation of universities in countries with illiberal regimes. The two examples presented were the scandal around Central European University that has been under attack by the Hungarian government and the mass purge of academics that is currently going on in Turkey. Although the universities are sometimes sources of political protests, they can also be resources of conformity. Thus employing conformists professors is a way to make sure that conformists students will be produced in these institutions. Source: University World News 16/12/17
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Will this be a Chinese century in higher education?

Global Ranking Monitor
Considering the current situation in global higher education and China’s significant role in it, universities have to ask the question if China’s new strategies will reshape higher education. The One Belt One Road initiative that China recently launched would mean a strong cooperation between Eurasian countries. It will probably integrate new parts of the world but on different conditions for higher education as well. This was one of the topics for discussion at the two-day international conference held at Berkeley’s campus in California in celebration of the 60th anniversary of UC Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education.       Source: University World News 16/12/17
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Bottom Line Up Front

Global Ranking Monitor
Ten institutions intend to make sure to provide life sciences PhD students transparent data on admissions, training and career opportunities. There are many students with irrational expectations about their future possibilities in the academic world. Providing them transparent data on student demographics, the time they usually need to finish the training, jobs they usually get will help students make a conscious decision on their PhD choice. Inside Higher Ed 15/12/2017
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UnivPress Ranking 2017 – Excellence of Students

UnivPress Ranking 2017 – Excellence of Students

Headline, Results
The positions of faculties show a very stabile tendency: on the first ranking places we find the leading universities of Hungary's capitol. The No. 1 is the Corvinus University of Budapest Business School, since 2012, but in this period the other members of the TOP10 are similar too: three institutes (Faculty of Humanities, of Education and Psychology, of Law) belong to Eotvos Lorand University, three (Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics, of Mechanical Engineering, of of Chemical Technology and Biotechnology) belong to Budapest University of Technology and Economics. And the latest results: (more…)
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Do university rankings allow the real ‘stars of teaching’ to shine?

Global Ranking Monitor
The THE’s Global Teaching Excellence Award was given to Huddersfield University that is at the 600-800th place on the ranking list. That could be an indicator of the tendency that some great teachers and some universities with great teachers don’t always get the recognition they deserve in global university rankings as their research is not in the vanguard. The article shows what differences it can make if we only concentrate on the teacher metrics of the rankings.       Source: Times Higher Education 13/12/17
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The science that’s never been cited

Global Ranking Monitor
Nature 13/12/2017   It is not an easy task to tell how many scientific articles remain uncited by later research papers, but Nature’s article makes an attempt to find it out. The short answer to the question is that analysing around 39 million articles in the database of Web of Science published between 1990-2015 around 21% has been uncited so far. These articles appear in little-known journals, while those in well-known ones usually get cited. This is still not an entirely valid result. We have to think of references that do not get shown on the Web of Science because of data-entry errors and typos, and the citations in journals and books that are not indexed in the Web of Science. But it would take so much time to override…
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EU academics: we want you in the UK and you will not be asked to leave

Global Ranking Monitor
Higher education is one of UK’s most successful export sector and the government is determined to keep it that way even after Brexit. Immigration minister, Brandon Lewis, explains in his article that academics and students will continute to be able to come to the UK for research, teaching or studying purposes from all over the EU.     Source: Times Higher Education 01/12/2017
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