We just talk about the good stuff

A new platform has launched to help international students in France navigate the administrative steps of their student journey.

The Online Welcome Desk offers students a personalised roadmap of the tasks they need to complete before and upon arrival in France, according to their personal situation, ranging from visas and permits to health insurance, accommodation, banking and more.

The platform, also designed to be used by PhD candidates and researchers, includes an interactive map, complete with resources and information from regional partners including CROUS student welfare offices.

Currently, the platform is available in French and English and will soon be available in Chinese.

The platform is being shared among interested higher education institutions who would like to offer the service to their students, with seven already featured.

Kaiwei Wang, alumnus of École Nationale Superieure de chimie de Montpellier, and originally from China, recently told The PIE at an event for the country’s alumni, that although he believes that France is one of the best study destinations a student could choose, the one thing he would change about his experience is the notoriously difficult administrative procedures.

He told The PIE he wished for “some starter-pack or even something to mentally prepare people that it is going to be hard and this is what you need to do”.

Higher education institutions can personalise the platform, both in terms of visual identity and content, allowing institutions to promote their own local international welcome initiatives. It is hoped that this will reduce some of the workload of international welcome staff, allowing them to dedicate more time to providing more personalised support to students.

Originally designed by Université Paris-Saclay, the platform has now been shared and developed by the Paris region higher education digital planning organisation, the Université Numérique d’Île-de-France.

“Sharing the tool with UNIF will allow a larger number of international students, PhD candidates and researchers to benefit from the initiative and help them to prepare fully for their arrival in France with complete peace of mind, reinforcing the region’s appeal and attractiveness for the international community,” Université Paris-Saclay said in a statement.

UNIF’s involvement has also enhanced the platform in several areas, including reinforced legal monitoring and improved interoperability, it added.

The post France: new tool to ease student admin woes appeared first on The PIE News.

The collapse of the government in the Netherlands could spell trouble for its recent internationalisation reform talks, as stakeholders brace for “more stringent nationalistic rules”.

On July 7, the country’s coalition of VVD – the party of outgoing prime minister Mark Rutte – D66, Christian Democrats and the Christian Union broke down after talks on asylum policies fell apart after weeks of negotiations.

Prior to the collapse, politicians were debating new internationalisation reforms for universities, including an expansion of the use of the Dutch language (and subsequent limits on English), as well as other policies including intake of international students.

According to representatives from universities, the issues surrounding immigration – including the internationalisation reforms – contributed to the government’s subsequent downfall.

Perry Hobson, who heads up the Academy of Tourism at Breda University of Applied Sciences, told The PIE News problems that could arise will come out of the limbo that now befalls the country. 

“The election won’t be until November,” he noted.

“The expectation is that the proposed bill – which was not agreed on – will be put ‘on ice’ for now until the election.

“Then, the inevitable post-election manoeuvres to form a new government will take place, and so on,” Hobson explained.

The Universities of the Netherlands told The PIE that it’s not clear what this will all mean for the internationalisation bill.

“On September 12, the Tweede Kamer will vote on which bills will be declared controversial,” the spokesperson said.

This refers to a practice in Dutch politics wherein politically sensitive topics can be declared controversial by either or both houses of the parliament in the period before an election – meaning they will not be looked at by parliament until a new government is installed.

“An even more stringent set of nationalistic rules may appear”

“We argue that only the three steering instruments should pass.

“These include the possibility of setting an enrolment quota specifically for an English-language track within a degree program (while Dutch-language tracks remain open); the possibility of setting a maximum number of non-EEA students per degree program; and an emergency quota, to be used if it becomes apparent during the application procedure that the number of applications is increasing so rapidly that the degree program is getting into difficulty,” the spokesperson said.

They added that the organisation has been indicating since 2018 that there is a “need to better manage the influx of international students at program level”.

The outcome of the election will be watched closely by universities – and, subsequently, whether the proposed internationalisation measures happen at all, or would perhaps be implemented in an even more aggressive manner.

“The worry… seems to be that a further shift to the right may mean an even more stringent set of nationalistic rules may appear,” Hobson said.

“Assuming a more right wing government emerges, the situation could get worse, not better,” he added.

The post Netherlands gov’t collapse leaves unis in limbo appeared first on The PIE News.

Higher education institutions must be reminded that they have a “choice” whether to work with agents, a new book on the landscape of their role in the industry has suggested. 

Student Recruitment Agents in International Higher Education looks comprehensively at how agents fit into the sector and their practices. 

In the book, editors Vincenzo Raimo, Pii-Tuulia Nikula and Eddie West outline the benefits and detriments that can come with working with education agents, along with chapter contributions from various stakeholders. 

For students, it says, the benefits can be plentiful, mostly around easing the “complexities of finding a suitable institution and study destination” abroad. 

“[This is] as well as finding out how the application, admission and visa processes operate,” the trio wrote.

The relationship between institutions and agents, the book indicates, can be much more murky without proper examination. 

“If higher education institutions work with agents, they need to provide sufficient resources to manage this activity and accept accountability for the actions of their agents,” Nikula told The PIE News. 

“As editors of this book, we don’t believe that the use of agents should be considered as a given – alternatives do exist, and higher education institutions can choose other channels to recruit students,” she explained. 

One of the more crucial angles, especially in the current climate of issues arising among agent conduct in both Australia and Canada, is how the use of agents is regulated. 

“Would an agent refer a student to a university that doesn’t pay commission when that university is a better options for the student? Possibly, but not necessarily,” consultant Liz Reisberg and founder of the Boston College Center for International Higher Education, Philip G. Altbach, wrote in one chapter. 

“Would an agent be motivated to learn about HEIs other than the ones that have agreed to pay a commission? Again, possibly, but not necessarily,” they continued, citing a BUILA survey from 2021 where almost a quarter of respondents said they believed agents were biased towards specific institutions. 

They also touch upon the difficulty of monitoring agencies in the long run. While most agencies are likely playing by the rules, the task for organisations trying to “ensure standards of ethical practice” is how to guarantee what they are doing on a “daily basis”. 

“Success-based commission payments are not the only costs in working with agents”

“Few governments are likely to make regulation of this industry a high priority, especially with politically powerful hobbies and private interests running interference,” Reisberg and Altbach concluded. 

While institutions are encouraged by voices in the book to think about whether they work with agents, academic Shanton Chang wrote in a chapter that students also need to recognise that agents are “highly influential”. It is all the more important to check they are working with someone “suitable”, “based on their unique needs and goals”, Chang continued.

“Agents cannot guarantee a job, or part-time jobs, a place at an institution, a student’s success in university courses, or permanent residency in host countries,” Chang warned. 

However, he also stressed that students will “benefit from closer positive collaborations between institutions and agents”. 

Editors Nikula, Raimo and West concluded that students’ interests can be further protected through institutions’ appointment and management of agents, by “carefully reviewing their own practices”.

While acknowledging the “costs and complexities” for HEIs trying to make sure they work with only “good agents”, they also said the onus is on the institutions.

“HEIs have a choice of using or not using agents… It is also crucial that HEIs and other stakeholders understand that success-based commission payments are not the only costs in working with agents. 

“Set-up and ongoing management, marketing support, risk mitigation measures, and training and development must also be taken into account,” they concluded. 

“This book is just the beginning of a conversation”

The rise of different companies not originally in that sphere wading into the agent model itself – possibly “agents in a different guise” – was also touched upon.

Pathway providers and institution rankers are venturing into wider “education services” to universities, which may include acting as “direct recruiters”, the trio wrote. 

“Should prospective students not be told that guidance from rankers or the prominence of institutional profiles on rankers’ websites might be influenced by whether an HEI is willing to pay for that service or not?” 

Citing the rise of aggregators, the trio also argued transparency, while crucial, was getting “more difficult to achieve”. But if done, would also “de-risk the larger agent ecosystem for all parties”, the acknowledged.

“A case can be made that the emergence of multinational aggregators, while providing value to some agents, students and higher education institutions, has simultaneously undermined previous gains that have been made in terms of transparency,” Nikula told The PIE.

“This book is just the beginning of a conversation and as editors we hope that future publications will shed light on themes that we weren’t able to cover,” she added.

The post Choice to work with agents “not a given” – new book appeared first on The PIE News.

New Zealand has officially joined the European Union’s flagship research and innovation program as the first association partner that is not geographically close to the continent.

The country signed up as an associate member of the Horizon Europe program ahead of an agreement between the EU and UK is expected to be announced in coming days. Stakeholders in Canada and Australia are also urging for their respective countries to join the program that has a budget of €95.5 billion until 2027.

The news that New Zealand would join the program first came in December last year.

In November, the EU began formal negotiations with Canada for the North American country to join the program. In Australia, the country’s group of research-intensive institutions, Group of Eight, has urged for the country to become an associate country to the EU program as it would “provide a greater level of access to EU research funding for Australian researchers and businesses”.

Likewise, negotiations launched in May this year with the Republic of Korea, while exploratory talks with Japan also closed in September 2022. Technical discussions with the island country in the Pacific Ocean are ongoing, the partners say.

Association would allow researchers and organisations to participate in the program on “equal terms” with entities from the EU member states and access Horizon Europe funding and research networks in Europe.

The UK is expected to officially sign up for the Horizon program when leaders meet at the NATO Summit in Vilnius today (July 11).

The latest deal marks a “completely new approach” for the EU where it is “strengthening even more its ties with trusted partners that have a solid scientific base and a robust research track record”, the European Commission added.

According to EC president, Ursula von der Leyen, who was together with New Zealand’s prime minister Chris Hipkins and other officials at the signing on July 8, while New Zealand is not geographically close to Europe, it is “very close in so many other ways, including the capacity and willingness to innovate”.

“This is excellent news for researchers in both EU and New Zealand”

“We are looking forward to pooling our best minds and talents to work together on the next generation of clean tech, biotech and digital projects,” she added.

Executive vice-president for a Europe Fit for the Digital Age, Margrethe Vestager, noted the signing marked a “historic moment in building a new facet of EU-New Zealand bilateral relations”.

“This is excellent news for researchers in both EU and New Zealand. Together, we can tackle the most pressing challenges: climate change and digital adaptation, clean oceans, energy efficiency, public health and so much more,” she said.

The EU and New Zealand have collaborated in research and innovation formally since 2009 when the partners signed an agreement that provided the general framework for cooperation and acted as a forum for regular discussions on research.

The post NZ joins Horizon as Japan, Korea, Aus eye deals appeared first on The PIE News.

Taiwan’s government watchdog has accused three ministries of failing to protect overseas students from exploitation as the island sets out plans to attract 10,000 more international students over the next four years.

The Control Yuan, which acts as a government ombudsman, issued a statement in June criticising the ministries of education, labour and foreign affairs for failing to protect international students from exploitation.

In a statement the body said that Taiwan’s “well-intentioned international student enrolment policy” had been “distorted by unscrupulous elements”.

A 2022 investigation by a national newspaper uncovered that Ugandan students at Chungchou University of Science and Technology were being forced to work long hours in factories as “interns”. 

According to the report, the students were promised scholarships to cover their university fees but these failed to materialise. Instead, students were forced to work to pay off debts to the institution for tuition and accommodation.

Students also said they couldn’t understand lessons as they were taught in Chinese, despite enrolling in English-taught courses.

The ministry of education subsequently banned the university from recruiting overseas students and the Control Yuan said this incident had “damaged” Taiwan’s international reputation.

This was the latest in a string of scandals related to foreign students. In 2018, 40 Sri Lankan students were discovered having been forced to work in slaughter houses. One year later, Indonesia halted its university internship program in Taiwan after reports of students being forced to work long-hours in factories.

In its 2023 Trafficking in Persons Report, the USA’s state department found that traffickers “take advantage” of the New Southbound Policy which makes it easier for students from South East Asia to study in Taiwan.

The report said “a large number” of for-profit universities in Taiwan “aggressively recruit foreign students and subsequently place them into exploitative labor conditions under the pretense of educational opportunities”.

It recommended more screening for trafficking among vulnerable populations, including international students.

The Control Yuan found that the ministry of foreign affairs had rejected 379 student visa applications since 2015 due to suspicions of human trafficking. The education ministry was subsequently asked to look into the issues but failed to carry out a full investigation.

The watchdog also discussed the deeper issues affecting Taiwan’s universities including waning student numbers due to the island’s falling birth rate and low levels of international students. International recruitment by universities has further suffered by a ban imposed by China in 2020 on Chinese nationals studying in Taiwan. 

Data released in July by the ministry of education suggests that Taiwan’s universities will see another dip in enrolment next year to under 900,000 students, 20% down from 2012 levels. 

Taiwan is keen to attract more international students both to prop up the island’s universities and to help plug the labour shortages the country is experiencing.

Government officials recently announced plans to work with the private sector to recruit an additional 10,000 international students over the next four years, in part through offering more scholarships. To be eligible for scholarships, students will have to agree to work in Taiwan after they graduate, president Tsai Ing-wen said.

The ministries criticised in the Control Yuan’s report will have to respond to the issues raised but Dafydd Fell, director of the Centre of Taiwan Studies at SOAS, said the structural problems facing Taiwan’s higher education system “will be challenging to resolve”.

“The negative publicity generated by such Control Yuan reports in combination is seemingly pushing universities to change the way they recruit and treat foreign students,” he added.

“Universities are only likely to take action if this affects their enrolment”

Brian Hioe, a Taiwanese editor and political commentator, said, “The Control Yuan can issue reprimands, but whether there is follow-up ultimately demands on public scrutiny of such issues and broader pressure for change.

“Ultimately, though there is more public attention on the issue, universities are only likely to take action if this affects their enrolment or has other consequences for funding, otherwise such incidents are likely to continue to occur.”

The post Warning issued to Taiwan’s ministries over int’l student exploitation appeared first on The PIE News.

A targeted sponsorship initiative for refugee students has launched in the US seeking to enable colleges and universities to “play a leading role” in their resettlement.

The Welcome Corps on Campus, part of the US Department of State private sponsorship Welcome Corps program launched in January, will offer refugee students access to life-changing opportunities to continue their education in the country.

The project is a “transformative cornerstone of our private sponsorship program that will support refugees whose opportunity to pursue higher education was cut short”, said Julieta Valls Noyes, assistant secretary of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration at the Department of State.

Organisers say it will give higher education institutions the chance to “play an instrumental role” in the journey of refugee students towards long-term integration in the US.

“Education is a powerful tool for personal advancement that contributes to the strength of our country,” Valls Noyes added. “We are grateful to the American people, institutions of higher education, campus communities and our partners for opening doors for refugee students to reach their full potential.”

Some 145 institutions and specialist organisations have backed the initiative, including over 90 universities, colleges, university systems and education providers in the US.

The Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration is also supporting the program, with executive director, Miriam Feldblum, saying it builds on the “US tradition to advance safety and protection for displaced people”, as well as embrace “the drive, excellence, and experiences that refugee students bring”.

“Through participation in Welcome Corps on Campus, campuses around the country will not only provide life-changing access to US higher education and durable protections for refugee students but these institutions will be enriched and transformed by these students and their perspectives,” Feldblum said.

“Sponsoring and enrolling refugee students will spur new opportunities for campuses, strengthen our communities, and enhance the national security and economic prosperity of our nation.”

The Community Sponsorship Hub, a consortium of nonprofit organisations, is implementing the program. Every Campus A Refuge, the Institute of International Education, the National Association of System Heads, and World University Service of Canada are all joining the Presidents’ Alliance in the consortium.

“Sponsoring and enrolling refugee students will spur new opportunities for campuses”

The program will create new avenues for experiential learning for “refugee students, many who have not only been waiting years for a safe place to call home but also for an opportunity to earn a higher education degree”, Annie Nolte-Henning, interim executive director of Community Sponsorship Hub, added.

Campus Private Sponsor Groups, made up of students, faculty and staff, will provide academic, financial, and resettlement assistance for arriving refugee students under the program. Plans for sustainable support will also be developed.

Every Campus A Refuge, founded in 2015 and recently launched its 14th chapter nationwide at James Madison University in Virginia, said the initiative is “a step in the right direction” towards higher education playing its “significant role” in refugee welcome, protection and integration.

“From the refugees who experience a stronger beginning in their new home, to the campus community who is transformed by the power of the connections made, to the local community who benefits immensely from the contributions of its newest Americans, Welcome Corps on Campus will be a win-win for all involved,” said Diya Abdo, founder and director of Every Campus A Refuge.

Allan Goodman, chief executive officer of IIE, noted that the US has the “capacity that no other country has”.

“Widening access to higher education for refugees… may be the best way we have to avoid a lost generation and make the world we share a less dangerous place,” he said.

The post “Transformative” program for refugees in US appeared first on The PIE News.

QS is offering one-on-one meetings with the 52 Korean institutions boycotting the QS World Rankings, in a bid to provide full transparency to universities branding the new methodology as flawed.

In June, QS unveiled the results of its 2024 World Rankings, which showed a significant shift of positions for many regions and individual institutions across the globe, due to changes made to the metrics of which universities are ranked on, in what QS is calling a “reset”.

The positions of all Korean universities but one suffered under the new methodology and caused some 52 universities, including Sejong University which rose by 150 places, to come together to boycott the rankings.

“The competitiveness of Korean universities is steadily increasing in many respects. Thus, there is no reason that Korean university rankings [should] drop this drastically,” a newly assembled group of universities, the University Rankings Forum of Korea said, as reported by University World News.

The group of universities disagreed with the calculations from the newly-introduced metric International Research Network, which QS says is designed to be a measure of the the diversification of international research partnerships, rather than the number.

“It’s designed to encourage institutions to actively seek to forge [networks] in new geographies and bring increasingly diverse minds together to solve complex problems,” said Ben Sowter, senior vice president, QS.

It has been reported that some Korean universities believed this metric may put non-English speaking countries at a disadvantage.

Sowter refutes this, highlighting the success of countries such as Brazil, Spain, Italy, France and Egypt in this particular indicator.

However, the main factor impacting the performance of Korean universities is the decision to reduce the Faculty-Student Ratio from 20% to 10%, an indicator which has historically been the strongest for Korean institutions.

The justification from QS for reducing the emphasis on this particular dimension comes down to a variety of changes in universities in recent years, said Sowter. It includes the onset of better learning technology and the use of teaching assistants in classrooms that don’t necessarily contribute to faculty numbers, such as postgraduate students and postdoctoral fellows.

Sowter highlighted that the 10% weight of the indicator is still a significant contribution to the overall score, and is “part of the reason Korea still shines in the QS methodology”.

He noted that Korea has more universities in the top 100 than France, Germany and Japan and has the same number of institutions in the top 100 as China.

“From that perspective, when you cast that across their population or GDP or a variety of other indicators, Korea’s universities are really punching above their weight across this basket of metrics and there’s a lot to be proud about,” he said.

The group of universities argued that methodology changes should be “step by step, not this radical and abrupt”.

However, QS said that making the changes all at once was deliberate and necessary for the ranking’s stability.

“The bar was quite high for justifying changes and when we did make the changes, we would need to make a batch of them all at once so that then we could quickly re-establish year-on-year stability and enable institutions and other stakeholders once more to use our rankings in a responsible and careful way to monitor some of the things that are important to their sense of institutional performance progress,” argued Sowter.

As a result of the disagreement, the universities have said they will not be providing QS with data for future rankings under the new methodology.

However, the boycott does not necessarily mean that the universities will not be included in next year’s rankings, with QS suggesting that data can be obtained by other means. The company remains hopeful for an agreement to be made however.

“The rankings that we produce are designed for prospective international students to ideally give them an objective viewpoint on the world of international higher education, to make informed choices…. in order to do that, we need to be able to depict a complete picture,” said Sowter.

“We are hopeful as we begin to work individually with some of these universities that they will recognise that there is ongoing value in participation,” he added.

“We aim to to be as transparent as we can”

“The strength of underlying metrics suggest that this is a group of universities that will likely improve from next edition onwards once the reset is behind us. We’ll be continuing to reach out proactively and we will invite them to submit data directly.”

QS has invited ranked universities to reach out for a one-to-one meeting, through which QS is keen to break down specific data to give a detailed understanding to all colleagues, including those in Korea, as well as a separate webinar being held for Korean universities.

“We aim to to be as transparent as we can and to help institutions both collectively and individually understand the implications of the changes in the methodology to their outcomes this year and perhaps more importantly, how this new basket of metrics can help them monitor and drive that performance into the future,” said Sowter.

All universities received an “extensive fact file” weeks prior to the rankings were publicised, The PIE learned, and Sowter visited Korea before the unveiling to visit stakeholders and provide them with details required to understand the shift in positions.

The post Korea boycotts QS but “a lot to be proud about” appeared first on The PIE News.