The expansion of the French language lies in Africa

Tunde Fatunde05 August 2012 Issue No:233

 

More than 800 delegates from educational institutions including universities in 150 countries attended the 13th World Congress of the International Federation of French Teachers held in South Africa recently. The major concern was how to protect French from contending languages in a fierce global world – and the future could lie in Africa.

French teachers from universities put forward strategies on how to stem the tide of waning use of the French language and encourage its growth. However, these strategies require funding, and the declining fortunes of the French economy may delay their implementation.

The congress in Durban, on South Africa’s east coast, had the theme “The Teaching of French: Between globalisation and contextualisation”, and was held from 23-27 July.

In her opening address, newly appointed French Minister of Francophony Yamina Benguigui confessed that the future of French language was not bright in a globalised world.

Benguigui, who is in charge of the promotion and defence of French culture and civilisation – called Francophony – presented in detail obstacles on the path to the expansion of French beyond the shores of France.

She highlighted the growing influence of the English, Chinese, Spanish and Arabic languages at the international level. “Even within the European Union, French is not the major language of international conferences and transactions”, she admitted.

Spread of French in Africa

Despite these drawbacks, Benguigui indicated that according to recent research findings, the survival of the French language could lie in Africa. “By 2050, there will be more Africans making use of French as an official language and for inter-personal communication than French citizens in France ”, she affirmed.

Her assertion on the role of Francophone countries in Africa is correct.

With the exception of Quebec in the northern hemisphere, where French is battling to survive the growing influence of North American English, Francophone countries in West and Central Africa remain the only region where French has been reinforced and entrenched – more than all other parts of the world where French colonisation reigned supreme.

The other exception, though less significantly so, is the Francophone islands of the West Indies, where again American English is diminishing the importance of French.

In North Africa, the Middle East and South East Asia, former colonies of France replaced the French language immediately after colonisation, with strong national languages.

These are the 21st century global and historical realities in which the French language finds itself.

Ways forward

Yamina Benguigui called on participants at the Durban congress to develop strategies aimed at ensuring the expansion of French around the world.

It was Mwatha Musanji Ngalasso, a renowned professor of sociolinguistics at the University of Bordeaux in France, who in his paper “Teaching of French in Today’s World: Between globalisation and contextualisation”, suggested the way forward.

Having analysed the growth of the language since the French Revolution in 1789, he noted that for the language to survive there was an imperative to adopt new methods in its teaching.

“We must accept that the world is changing, and the teaching of French must adapt to the changing world”, he declared.

Ngalasso put forward some ideas. He suggested, for example, the teaching of French through the local languages of nation states. The classic method, whereby French is taught directly without taking into consideration the importance of local languages, should be discarded.

“The French language has been, rightly, appropriated by cultures beyond the shores of France. This language is no longer the excusive property of France and French people. Its survival can only be guaranteed by teaching it, outside France, as a language co-existing with other languages”, he emphasised.

Dantas-Longhi Maria, a participant from São Paulo, agreed: “ In many schools and universities in Brazil we teach French through the use of local expressions and idioms in the Portuguese language.

“This is the way we can attract the attention of pupils and students interested in the study of French. This language is alive, but it is competing with English, Portuguese and Spanish in Latin America”, she said.

Professor Mohamed Miled, who teaches French at the University of Carthage in Tunisia, presented a paper titled “A Contextualisation of Teaching of French and its Contact with Existing Languages”, drawing examples from North African and the Middle East.

There, Arabic is the lingua franca and he advised that French textbooks used locally should contain more local illustrations and be translated simultaneously in French and Arabic. “This method will encourage the teaching of French in the Arab world,” he asserted.

French as a path to employment

The teaching of French in universities in India is motivated primarily by economic and financial rconsiderations, Sundaravelu Pannirselvame, a professor of French at Gopal Krishna University in India, told the Durban congress.

In his paper, “Teaching of French in India: Fresh demands”, he demonstrated that students who study French in Indian universities are motivated by the possibility of working as translators, interpreters and bilingual secretaries in French, Canadian, Belgian and Swiss companies operating in India.

“The various international call centres in India require French graduates”, he also pointed out.

Learning French as a path to employment is a common feature in virtually all Anglophone countries in the southern hemisphere, according to Professor Raufu Adebisi of Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, northern Nigeria.

He told the congress that Pannirselvame’s comments about the position of French in India are also applicable to Nigeria as well as to other, Anglophone countries, in Africa, where French is seen in universities as providing much-needed local manpower for French companies.

“This is the attraction of French for our students”, he said.

The decline of French literature

There was also an interesting debate on the obvious decline of the teaching of French and francophone literature the world over.

Marie-Josée Fourtanier, a professor of French at the University of Toulouse in France, and Veronique Tadjo, who teaches French literature at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, observed that French and Francophone literature does not attract students.

They argued that the culture of reading has suffered severe setbacks. But literature, they said, could only grow where a reading culture exists. Any language can only flourish if people read novels, plays and poems in that language.

Suzanne Richard, a French teacher at the University of Sherbrook in Canada, suggested that information and communication technologies could be used to rekindle the interest of students in Francophone and French literature.

Among the recommendations of the Durban congress was the need for organisations in the private and public sectors in France and Francophone countries to fund the teaching and dissemination of French in a multi-polar world.

With the current economic recession confronting most of these countries, however, there is little hope that funds will be available for such projects.

Participants voted to hold the 14th congress of FIPF in 2016 in Liege, Belgium. 

Implications of China and India’s expanding higher education

Geoff Maslen05 August 2012 Issue No:233

 

China and India together represent more than 35% of the global workforce and each country is seeking a transition from a low-skill equilibrium to high-skill ecosystems – although India will continue to co-exist with large numbers of lower-skilled jobs – according to David Finegold.

Speaking at a conference in Adelaide organised by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research late last month, the noted Rutgers University senior vice-president for lifelong learning presented contrasting descriptions of how China and India were tackling the manifold problems facing both Asian nations.

Finegold used this to point to the implications their growth and rapidly expanding higher education systems had for America, Europe and Australia.

Historically, China and India had been in a low-skill equilibrium with a large majority of unskilled workers and few jobs available for graduates, he said. Today, that state had been destabilised by globalisation, and a growing percentage of the population wanted to move along a high-skill path although many were denied access.

“The public education systems in both countries are unable to meet the demand, though that is a much greater problem for India," he said. “Failure to address this problem risks undermining the success India has already achieved.”

The case of China

Finegold said China was now making major investments to shift to an innovation economy, with the aim of becoming a global leader in green and other high-tech industries, through a dramatic expansion of its research universities. Along with a huge growth in scholarly publications, the new innovation strategy had set an ambitious target of two million patents to be created within the next three years.

He said China was now entering the second phase of its higher education development.

In the first phase, the focus was on quantity by rapidly increasing the number of students. But growth was so rapid – from 600,000 to more than seven million graduates a year – that the supply of graduates had outstripped the number of high-skill jobs.

Concerned about the potential for unrest that a large number of unemployed or under-employed graduates could cause, starting around 2007-08 the focus in China had switched to improving quality and to internationalisation, Finegold said.

Last year, the government began heavily investing to upgrade its top universities while also inviting foreign universities to establish campuses in China with local academic and financial partners.

One particularly successful model was the 2006 joint project near Shanghai between Xi’an Jiaotong and Liverpool universities. Despite tuition fees of US$9,500 a year (high by Chinese standards), the campus had enrolled 4,000 students, with 750 undertaking their studies in Liverpool. Nearly all of the first graduating class went abroad for postgraduate study.

US universities involved in developing joint campuses in China included New York, Yale, Wisconsin, Berkeley, Kean and Johns Hopkins. These joint venture or branch campus models were enabling Chinese students to receive degrees bearing the foreign university’s name or with some students pursuing double degrees, Finegold said.

Provincial governments and Chinese philanthropists were offering attractive financial terms and providing land, fully equipped campuses and start-up funding to foreign institutions interested in establishing a base in the world’s most populous country.

The Chinese government wanted to study and learn from top models around the globe and was encouraging competition among its provinces and cities. In addition, China was aiming to retain some of the 150,000-plus Chinese students now studying in the US while attracting international students to China.

Then there were the long-term consequences for the country’s one-child generation, which was likely to mean that China would become the world’s first nation “to become old before it became rich”, Finegold said.

The population of Chinese 15- to 24-year-olds was expected to fall from 250 million in 1990 to around 150 million in 2030 – a decline of 100 million, or 40%.

The case of India

India, on the other hand, had a “reverse population pyramid” with a huge and growing number of young people, while it was also the reverse of the Chinese model in terms of a services versus manufacturing-led economy, a large but relatively ineffective versus a strong state, and difficulty mobilising its resources.

The nation now had more than 550 million young people under the age of 25, in marked contrast with Northern Europe and its leading Asian rivals, China, Japan and South Korea.

The expanding young population created huge opportunities for growth in a global service model, Finegold said, but also meant there was an imperative for rapid reform. India could not afford to leave this generation unskilled and nor could it neglect the large majority now in the workforce who were unqualified.

India was producing uneven quality among its new higher education graduates and a growing gap between the educational haves and the have-nots, he added.

The government had responded with an extreme form of affirmative action, reserving nearly 50% of all higher education places for under-represented groups, but not dealing with the underlying source of the problem.

“High quality, low-cost talent has been the key to India’s recent service-driven economic success,” he said. “Yet India’s skill-creation system suffers major issues at all levels with lower levels of educational participation and investment than many developing nations.”

There were signs that the current education system was not working: even the very poor were increasingly opting for private schools instead of free public education; the small vocational education sector catered for 3% of the population yet its capacity was under-utilised; and there had been an explosion in the growth of private higher education institutions that were mostly unregulated and of low quality so that 80% of their graduates were “unemployable”.

Finegold said it was initially thought that India’s primary barrier to providing the skills it needed was insufficient resources and that it could not afford universal primary education. But there was evidence that suggested this was no longer the case.

“I’m now convinced the key issues are system design and politics,” he said. “India needs to create the right incentives and a regulatory framework while mobilising the political will to implement fundamental reforms.”

How well China and India addressed their skill issues would have major implications for the rest of the world, he said.

Restoring Yangon University to its former glory captures public mood

Naw Say Phaw Waa05 August 2012 Issue No:233

 

The campus of Yangon University, formerly Rangoon University, in the centre of the city, is semi-abandoned. Tall grass surrounds the old convocation hall still used by a number of universities for delivering degrees. But other structures, particularly the old student buildings, are in a dilapidated state.

Some classes are still held for postgraduate and doctoral students but the main university, along with other Yangon universities, was relocated to the outskirts of town in the 1990s. With its history of student activism and dissent since British Colonial times, the military government relocated the university in part to quell student activism and prevent student demonstrations gaining support within the city.

Ma Ei studied for a masters degree in international relations at the old campus in 2008. “It was very dirty, with old buildings and a lot of [overgrown] bushes. The environment was very poor,” she told University World News.

In addition, the once-leafy campus lost many of its trees during Cyclone Nargis in 2008. “Many of the big trees were destroyed, almost all of the old trees are gone.”

But now, as the Myanmar government looks to invest in four of its major universities as centres of excellence – part of its efforts to rebuild higher education – Yangon residents have been engaged in excited discussions over the future of the campus.

This follows a suggestion by a senior presidential advisor that Yangon University be restored to its former glory as one of South East Asia’s top universities.

Widespread support for restoration

There has been widespread public support for renovating the city-centre campus since U Myint, the president’s business advisor – himself a student at Yangon University in the 1960s – called in the weekly Yangon Times in May for restoration of the buildings and, more controversially, rebuilding of the student union building demolished by the regime.

“Like other students at that time, I spent a lot of time in the student union building. I recall the facilities there consisted of a small reading room and a library, a restaurant, a barber shop, meeting rooms, and a recreation room with a ping-pong table,” reminisced U Myint.

“More than anything else, the new student union building will be a landmark in the national reconciliation process and it will fill a void that has been in our hearts for some time.

“As in the past, it will provide a place where our young people can gather, engage in free debate and discussion, and in keeping with our tradition, they will be encouraged to play an effective role in the nation-building task that lies ahead.”

His comments sparked a furore, as he was referring to the key role played by the university’s student union in past uprisings.

In 1988, a country-wide uprising led to the closing of all universities until 1990, as the government took control of universities.

Government officials later said U Myint, who is also chief of the Centre for Economic and Social Development at the Myanmar Development Resource Institute and a former economics lecturer, had been speaking in a personal capacity.

But he captured the public mood.

Yangon residents say they want the university to come alive as in the past, providing quality higher education to students. Many can remember when Yangon University was once the most popular university, attracting students from all over the country.

Far from town

By contrast, the new Yangon University buildings are far from the centre of town, surrounded by farmland and with poor transportation links. It is particularly hard on professors.

“The need to hold regular classes at out-of-town facilities and to rush back to the main campus to conduct evening diploma and postgraduate courses has also inflicted considerable physical and mental stress on the teaching staff and taken a heavy toll on them,” U Myint said.

Students agree. “Studying outside Yangon is very difficult for us,” Win Tint Aung, an English literature student at Dagon University situated on the outskirts of Yangon, told University World News.

“It’s time consuming due to bad transportation. Most of the students live very far. Also, the education level is very low and [the university] doesn’t have enough facilities. I would love Yangon University to be restored in the downtown area.”

Some students argue that the distance from town is not the problem, but rather that they become disconnected from others. “They don’t even have students' lives”, said U Kyaw Myint, a law student at Dagon university, who would prefer a city-centre university.

“The students are still called 'students', even though most of them are not at the universities but outside.”

Parents complain that the distance means they do not know whether their children are actually at university or spending their time in cafés or indulging in anti-social behaviour.

‘Land problems’

But when U Thein Nyute, a representative of the National Democratic Force party, suggested building more student accommodation near universities to make it easier for students, Deputy Minister of Education U Aye Kyu said during the March session of parliament that this had not been decided yet because of a rise in the number of students and teachers and lack of funding.

He also claimed that the government had to relocate universities to the outskirts because of “land problems”.

Myanmar had 32 universities and colleges before 1988, and the government is trying to increase the number to provide more opportunities for higher education. There are now 163 universities, U Aye Kyu said, adding: “We shouldn’t put all the universities that we are developing together in the downtown area.”

As the price of land and property has been rising, businessmen have eyed the campus, which is already surrounded by shopping malls and markets. This was aired openly by U Myint.

“The Yangon University estate in its current situation with empty buildings, spacious grounds and open spaces, and attractive recreation areas and sport complexes needing upkeep and renovation – in the wake of sky-rocketing real estate values – has provided massive incentives to big private firms to pursue lucrative business ventures on university property.

“This provides another, urgent reason to get students and faculty back on the campus to prevent further encroachment,” U Myint said.

Centres of Excellence

There have been some new moves by the government this year to invest in improving universities, which has fed into the debate about restoring the old campus.

The government has designated four universities – Yangon University, Yangon Institute of Economics, Yangon Institute of Technology, and Mandalay University in the northern city of Mandalay – as centres of excellence.

“Generally, this is a good plan if the government is trying to promote the qualities of these four universities,” said U Kyaw Myint (65), a retired local government official who graduated from Yangon University in 1968.

“Everybody agrees that Myanmar’s education can’t compare to the rest of the world’s. But compared to other Asian countries, education here started to decline from 1988.”

Although it is not yet clear how the government will fund the upgrading of these universities, and how they will be improved, U Win, the parent of a student at Yangon Institute of Technology (YIT) – formerly Rangoon Institute of Technology – said he understood it was “100% certain to be restored”.

A senior Ministry of Education official told local media in early June that the four institutions have initiated contacts with South Korean and European universities and Johns Hopkins University in the US, for help in upgrading, in the hope of stemming the outflow of students from Myanmar going overseas for a decent education.

Budget problems

However, U Nyi Hla Myine, a professor and YIT advisor, said at the opening of a YIT dissertation presentation on 23 July that to get government funding to solve the financial problems of universities was not as easy as imagined. It often takes a year for funds to be disbursed by government.

“We can’t wait that long. That’s why we have to ask for donations from companies and some of the old students to solve our budgetary problems,” he said, adding that higher education would improve faster if disbursement were speedier and more efficient, as well as having more money allocated to higher education.

U Thein Win, a YIT English professor, said higher education needed to be boosted, with a huge increase in its budget. “Parliament has said they are using 2% of the budget for education and 20% for defence,” he pointed out.

With universities’ pressing financial needs, it is unclear how any restoration of Yangon University could be funded. But as U Myint said, the institution “belongs to all the people of Myanmar. It is our national heritage. It should be preserved and protected for future generations.”

He added: “In conversations with faculty members and students of various institutes of higher learning spread out all over the countryside and in the suburbs of Yangon, the main message I have got from them is: ‘Our biggest and enduring wish is to return to the main university campus in Yangon.’”

Survey probes how ‘whirlwind’ forces will affect higher education

Wagdy Sawahel05 August 2012 Issue No:233

 

Technology experts believe market factors will push universities to expand online courses, create hybrid learning spaces, and move towards lifelong learning models and different credential structures by 2020, according to a new report. “But they disagree about how these whirlwind forces will influence education, for the better or the worse.”

The views of experts were outlined in a 27 July survey titled The Future Impact of the Internet on Higher ducation, authored by Janna Quitney Anderson of Elon University, and Jan Lauren Boyles and Lee Rainie of the Pew Research Center.

The US-based Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon conducted a non-random, opt-in online sample of 1,021 internet experts, technology researchers, university directors, venture capitalists and Ivy League professors recruited via e-mail invitation, Twitter or Facebook.

The report says a major driver of the debate about the future of the university is its “beleaguered business model”, the ballooning cost of higher education and student debt that is now upwards of US$1 trillion. Some believe the sector is as susceptible to technological disruption as other information-centric industries like the media, music and movies.

Future higher education scenarios

The survey results indicated a 60-40 split on the future of higher education, as described by two scenarios.

About 60% of experts agreed with a scenario of higher education that by 2020 will be “quite different from the way it is today.

“There will be mass adoption of teleconferencing and distance learning to leverage expert resources. Significant numbers of learning activities will move to individualised, just-in-time learning approaches. There will be a transition to ‘hybrid’ classes that combine online learning components with less frequent on-campus, in-person class meetings.

Most universities’ assessment of learning will take into account more individually-oriented outcomes and capacities that are relevant to subject mastery. Requirements for graduation will be significantly shifted to customised outcomes.”

On the other hand, about 39% of experts agreed with a scenario that in 2020 higher education “will not be much different from the way it is today.

“While people will be accessing more resources in classrooms through the use of large screens, teleconferencing and personal wireless smart devices, most universities will mostly require in-person, on-campus attendance of students most of the time at courses featuring a lot of traditional lectures. Most universities’ assessment of learning and their requirements for graduation will be about the same as they are now.”

Impact of future technology-mediated approaches

Some survey participants thought that the future educational structure would tackle economic stress and educational divides. Online learning and institutions are beginning to disrupt the higher education space, hopefully making education more accessible and affordable in the long run.

“Under current and foreseeable economic conditions, traditional classroom instruction will become decreasingly viable financially,” Mike Liebhold, senior researcher and distinguished fellow at the Institute for the Future, wrote in the report.

“As high-speed networks become more widely accessible tele-education and hybrid instruction will become more widely employed.”

Experts also believe out-of-the-classroom learning will inspire innovation that is lacking on campuses now. However, among the majority of experts expecting much more dependence on online learning in higher education in the future, many bemoaned it.

“They are worried over the adoption of technology-mediated approaches that they fear will lack the personal, face-to-face touch they feel is necessary for effective education,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Predicted future trends and approaches

The report also pointed out some major themes and arguments that the experts indicated about trends and approaches in higher education in the future. These include the following:

• Higher education will vigorously adopt new teaching approaches, propelled by opportunity and efficiency as well as student and parent demands.
  
• Economic realities will drive technological innovation forward by 2020, creating less uniformity in higher education.
  
• ‘Distance learning’ is a divisive issue. It is viewed with disdain by many who don’t see it as effective, while others anticipate great advances in knowledge-sharing tools by 2020.
  
• ‘Bricks’ replaced by ‘clicks’? Some experts say universities’ influence could be altered as new technology options emerge; others say ‘locatedness’ is still vital for an optimal outcome.
  
• Frustration and doubt mark the prospect of change within the academy.
  
• Change is happening incrementally, but these adjustments will not be universal in most institutions by 2020.
  
• Universities will adopt new pedagogical approaches while retaining the core of traditional methods.
  
• Collaborative education with peer-to-peer learning will become a bigger reality and will challenge the lecture format and focus on ‘learning how to learn’.
  
• Competency credentialing and certification are likely. Yet institutional barriers may prevent widespread degree customisation.
  
• Higher education lags in preparing young people for new kinds of futures in which they will have to learn how to learn.
  
• Some predict significant redefinition within higher education in a future packed with choices for knowledge acquisition
  

Responses to the report

University World News collected the thoughts of experts around the world on the trends and findings identified by the survey.

John Daly, a science and technology consultant and former director of the office of research at USAID, pointed out that the study would naturally have a pro-technology bias.

“The huge global system of higher education has a great deal of inertia and the utilisation of e-learning actually taking place in the next eight years will probably be less than predicted.”

Daly's opinion was echoed by Richard Gold, an expert in innovation, patent law and policy, a law professor at Canada-based McGill University and director of The Innovation Partnership.

“The participants all work on technology and internet issues and therefore are both more aware of the potential of new technologies and believe more strongly in their transformative capability than most professors and university leaders."

A more representative sample from higher education might have produced “quite interesting” results, he said. However, as a means of generating discussion the survey was useful. “As I believe that this was the primary purpose of the authors, they have done us a service.”

Asked for his views on higher education’s future, Daly said “There is a trend towards standardisation that is making it easier to evaluate the meaning of degrees and grades. There is a related trend towards greater mobility of undergraduate and graduate students.”

Institutions “are being challenged to keep costs down, to keep higher education relevant to changes in the job market, to keep faculties up to date, and to adopt new technologies. While the best-managed of these institutions will rise to the challenge, many will not. Students should be wary.”

Also, the situation will be very different in different countries. “Rich countries with established educational systems and declining youth populations will have a different set of challenges to those faced by China and India, and the poorest nations of the world will face still different challenges with fewer resources,” Daly pointed out.

Gold was skeptical that universities would significantly change their approach to teaching in the coming years, as they “are very slow to change and do not respond to economic pressures in the same way or at the same speed as industry.

“Most universities are somewhat or significantly decentralised, with decision-making over course content and teaching made at the departmental or faculty level.” Given this, Gold would expect some departments – such as communications and media studies – “to experiment more with new media while others do not.

“In particular, science, medicine and engineering faculties are unlikely to be great adopters of these technologies – as they currently exist – simply because access to equipment and laboratories is an essential component of their core teaching. Even in the social sciences, interpersonal interaction is a significant part of the educational process and thus I would expect slow change.”

Where change is most likely to occur, Gold said, will be in outreach by universities to the public. Already, universities offer courses online for free, not as a substitute for traditional programmes but as a means of educating the public and allowing people to participate in important social and scientific discussions.

“While there will likely be some private, for-profit programmes generated, my expectation is that online materials will be largely free of charge and will be consumed on the basis of the reputation of the institutions involved.”

Developing countries should be particularly careful before adopting long-distance learning, said Gold, which is not a substitute for on-campus learning. Networks of researchers and trust among them would be key to building a critical mass of researchers.

“This is best accomplished through working together and learning with one another in person. I would thus concentrate resources on building campuses and shared facilities until at least there exists a critical mass of researchers in the region.”

Kenyan scientist Calestous Juma, director of the science, technology and globalisation project at Harvard University, said: “The future of higher education is going to dominated by debates over the balance between private and public sector support.

“Issues such as the privatisation of higher education and increases in tuition [fees] are already being debated across the globe. Students protests have taken place in countries such as the UK, Canada and Chile, some of which have been violent.”

But two important trends are likely to exert an even bigger influence, Juma said.

The first is the pressure on universities to serve social and economic needs more directly. The rise of the idea of the ‘entrepreneurial university’ is an example. The second is uncertainty over impact of ICTs on learning in general and universities in particular.

“The entry of Harvard and MIT into the open learning space is not an episode but most likely an epochal adaptation to changing times.”

For the first time since the founding of Bologna University, higher education institutions are being forced by external factors to become fast learners. They will not thrive simply by migrating their offspring to new regions; they will need new mutations that recombine DNA from other institutional species such corporations and civic organisations.

“The good news is that universities are repositories of the social genes needed for their own speculation. Many will innovate while others will stagnate or founder. Others may go extinct as corporations start to father their own universities.

“We will see a new age of the rebirth of the university with more direct social and economic missions,” Juma concluded.
 

The rise of the multinational university

Geoff Maslen05 August 2012 Issue No:233

 

More than 200 degree-granting international branch campuses of universities are now located in foreign countries. But a new report says some universities are considering transforming the branch campus model into fully fledged multinational universities “by slicing up the global value chain in ways akin to multinational corporations”.

Prepared by Sean Gallagher and Geoffrey Garrett from the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney Business School, the draft report says many of these universities are focusing on China because of its scale and rapid development, and on Singapore because of its aggressive government policy and high level of development.

By 2020, the report says, the world’s four largest countries in terms of population – China, India, Indonesia and the US – will account for more than half the global population of university-aged young people.

It says that with foreign students typically having to meet at least three times more of the cost of their tuition than domestic students, “the revenue implications of the export model are profound”.

In Australia, student fees from international students come close to matching the money universities receive from the federal government to teach Australian students – despite the fact that there are four times as many domestic as foreign students enrolled.

The report says the goal of multinational universities in slicing up the value chain around the world through complex systems of supply, production and distribution of higher education and research, may mean using a developing country to do research because it is cheaper to build better infrastructure and hire researchers of similar quality to those at home.

Or it may mean designing degrees in-country that are tailored precisely to what the market demands – in contrast to the largely one-size-fits-all of the branch campus system.

Branch campuses

“China is attractive for several reasons: its world-leading ability to quickly roll out first-class infrastructure; central, provincial and local governments willing to make large financial commitments; Chinese research talent is high quality and relatively cheap; and Chinese demand for quality higher education will continue to mushroom as China transforms its economy form a low quality producer into by far the world’s biggest middle-class consumer.”

Although Australia has led the world in the “pure export model” of international higher education and also in terms of its branch campuses, the report says US universities have set up the greatest number of offshore campuses with 78 now operating, each enrolling an average of 371 students.

Although Australia has only 12 such offshore campuses, it educates more students on them than any other country – almost 28,000 – nearly as many as the UK (about 18,000) and the US (slightly more than 13,000) combined.

But the report notes that in Australia, over the past five years, the growth in international student numbers and in branch campus expansion has slowed and even begun to decline since the global financial collapse.

It says this “stagnation” could be a function of market saturation, with demand in Asia having peaked; or because the Australian export and branch campus model has become outmoded – the latter because of the many new higher quality entrants from elsewhere, including exporters from Europe and North America that are now targeting Asian students with offers with which Australian universities cannot easily compete.

Australia on the decline, US on the up

But three factors have affected Australia uniquely and negatively, the report says: a doubling in the value of the Australian dollar over the past decade; tougher visa and post-study work restrictions; and bad media coverage – particularly in India on Australian treatment of its foreign students.

“At the same time as Australian international higher education has been hit by these shocks, the market for international students has become increasingly competitive because more, and higher quality, universities from around the world have begun aggressively to enter the game – led by some of the biggest and best American public universities.”

The report says the global financial crisis has proved such a radical shock to American public higher education – with dramatic cuts to all state and therefore public university budgets – that US public universities are quickly becoming very “Australian”.

State public universities from New York to Illinois, from Washington to California, are pursuing the Australia-style export model.

“By enrolling international undergraduate students in their thousands, budget holes are being plugged and research programmes cross-subsidised like never before,” the report says.

“In the last few years, the attraction of the United States as a destination for international students has increased markedly among Asian countries [with] the number of international students in American colleges and universities increasing by 5% in total and 6% at the undergraduate level. Most notably there has been a staggering 43% increase in Chinese undergraduates while the total number of international students in the US was 732,277.”

Asian students are attracted by what the major US colleges offer. Despite tough academic entry hurdles, the report says the rewards are high:

“From outstanding education to safe residential communities to first-class facilities to an extraordinary network of influential alumni, and to holding a degree from a university with a global brand, the total package is probably perceived as of higher quality than the value proposition offered by Australian universities.

“And Asian students are influenced in their education choices by the US-dominated world university league tables.”

Problem with the export model

There is a fundamental problem with the “higher education as export” business model, the report argues. If the increase in the supply of higher education continues from US and Asian providers, as well as from online education, the global market price will fall and so will the average quality of students willing to pay for it.

It says the big winners from supply outstripping demand would be the consumers of higher education in developing countries. But this situation would pose a major financial and reputational threat to campus-based universities in developed countries that are shackled with high fixed costs for staff and infrastructure.

Australia’s top universities – and presumably those in other Western countries facing the same threat – should now be planning long-term strategies of “hardwiring” themselves into China and reducing their reliance on the export model, Garrett and Gallagher write. They say there are four reasons to do this:

• By 2020, China aims to double the number of foreign students enrolled in its universities to more than 500,000 – in direct competition with Australia, Britain, Canada and the US.
  
• Between 2007 and 2039, McKinsey projects that 30% of the world’s global growth will occur in 242 Chinese cities, compared with only 3% in India’s cities.
  
• China could have a deficit of up to 23 million tertiary educated workers by 2020 because of the slow growth in the supply of secondary students – a result of the nation’s one-child policy.
  
• Within 15 years, China’s population will begin to fall – its labour force has already peaked and, to avoid the ‘middle-income trap’, China will need an ever more highly educated workforce to drive productivity.
  

The report says Australian universities could pursue proactive multinational university-like initiatives as stepping stones towards their entry into China and at a pace that manages risk levels.

It suggests targeting mid-tier Chinese cities with growth momentum and established universities “to seed education and research initiatives that would benefit China”.

A commitment to quality journalism

Cat Barton (r), who started her career in journalism at The Phnom Penh Post

 

Wednesday, 04 July 2012

Cat Barton

 

 

It was slightly after 11:30 on a cool, sunny Friday morning, January 2006, when I first walked into Michael Hayes’s office at the old Phnom Penh Post, just across from Wat Botum.

Hayes and I had been in sporadic email communication for some weeks.

I had just moved to Cambodia and was eager to write, so I rang him soon after I landed in Phnom Penh. His phone battery had died mid conversation – I had been somewhat concerned that he had hung up on me – but he subsequently emailed telling me to “come on in”.

The office was deserted. This was in the days when the Post was a bi-monthly publication; the paper had already been put to bed. I walked past the security guard sleeping in the shade of a giant bougainvillea into the old, peeling villa.

The newsroom – creaking wood tables; a handful of antique computers; yellowing news clippings plastered across all the walls – seemed exceptionally glamorous, in a suitably faded, foreign-correspondenty way. I knew immediately that

I had to work there.

I knocked on Michael’s door. He had an office off the main newsroom, filled to the brim with exciting relics of over a decade of reporting from Cambodia. I stared covertly at the dog-eared photographs, UNTAC memorabilia and Kipling poems taped to the walls. A Cambodian spirit shrine lay in the corner, half-buried under a stack of old Posts. Hayes barked a gruff hello and told me to take a seat.

He was hammering away on his old white Mac and seemed in no rush to actually speak to me. Eventually, he turned his attention to the over-excited English girl perched on the edge of a bamboo chair, staring at a half-full ashtray. I launched into an introductory speech, he listened for maybe 30 seconds then held up his hand to silence me, a slightly pained expression on his face.

“Are you intelligent?” he asked.

I paused. Was it a trick question? How to answer without seeming like an idiot or a braggart?

“Yes,” I said, carefully.

“Okay, fine, you can work for me.”

“I can’t pay you for now, but we’ll train you up and, if it works out, maybe we’ll be able to sort some money out for you further down the line.”

No money, but I was thrilled. I had my first job in journalism. I was a reporter, no less! When the Post printed business cards and got me my first Cambodian press credentials a few days later then sent me out on my first reporting
assignment – a feature on the Catholic church at Svay Pak, which I would now wince to re-read – O, how my cup ranneth over.

The Post’s delicate finances did not stretch to putting me on salary, but some advertisers paid in kind so Michael – affectionately known as Okhna (Lord) Coupon among the Cambodian staff – would often kick some vouchers my way. I could eat steak at La Croisette and salade nicoise at Lyon d’Or and, occasionally, stay at the Intercontinental for a night, but I couldn’t pay rent or my bar tab at the old Talkin’ to a Stranger.

As the Post then provided a breakfast of fresh bread, jam, peanut butter (when the ants hadn’t got to it) and coffee; and as Michael’s housekeeper Phean cooked lunch for the reporting staff during the second week of the news cycle, I was able to keep my costs low enough to survive until I was given my first pay cheque – US$300 a month.

Whatever the Post’s financial straits, it made up for it in its commitment to reporting the news. Hayes’s devotion to reading, research and really getting to the bottom of the story (which is, I now realise, easier when you have the luxury of a two-week deadline) was a priceless education for me.

Despite the occasional flop – a “hard-fluff” story on the Dickensian poverty of Phnom Penh’s drug users springs to mind – the old Post managed a level of investigative depth that few news organisations in the syndicated mediascape muster now.

And even after it traded the ramshackle old villa for shiny new offices with WiFi, hired a raft of well-paid staff and went daily, the paper struggled to maintain that commitment to quality journalism – congratulations on 20 years of being the paper of record.

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Cat Barton  is now AFP’s Hanoi bureau chief.

Scam brokers nabbed at Phnom Penh airport

Monday, 06 August 2012

Sen David and David Boyle

 

Four brokers accused of duping 19 victims out of thousands of dollars for non-existent jobs in South Korea were arrested at Phnom Penh International Airport on Saturday.

Keo Thea, chief of Phnom Penh’s anti-human trafficking and juvenile protection department, said Por Sen Chey district police arrested Lok Sido, 32, Kuch Sopha, 35, Puth Sophal, 26, and Meng Savun, 28, after one of the victims filed a complaint at a nearby police station when the promised flight to South Korea never arrived.

“According to victims, some of them spent from US$1,000 up to $2,000 on brokers seeking jobs and preparing documents,” he said.

One of the 19 victims said yesterday they arrived at the airport on time to board a flight as instructed by brokers.

“But we waited for a long time – no flight. We called the brokers but they said the flight maybe had been postponed. We stopped believing them and decided to file a complaint to the police on the same day,” he said.

Moeun Tola, head of the labour program at the Community Legal Education Center, said brokers regularly exploiting Cambodians seeking jobs in South Korea are assisted by false promises plastered on billboards advertising training centres.

“The worker needs to go to the Ministry of Labour but the billboard of the South Korean training schools really confuse people – that you just pay $50 and then you can go to work in Korea,” he said.

Tola said the ministries of labour and education should review the licensing of such facilities. Neither ministry could be reached for comment yesterday.

The arrests came three days after South Korea implemented controversial new legislation aimed at curtailing migrant worker exploitation that rights groups say may have the opposite effect.

On August 1, South Korea enacted a new Measure for Improvement in Foreign Workers’ Change of Workplaces and Prevention of Broker Intervention policy aimed at reducing the frequency of migrant employees changing jobs.

Rights groups including Amnesty International, the Asia Pacific Mission For Migrants and the International Forum for Democracy and Cooperation have said the policy leaves migrants with nowhere to go if they find themselves in exploitative working conditions.

Where in the past migrant workers seeking to change jobs were provided a list of labour-seeking businesses, businesses will be provided a list of job-seeking workers.

Amnesty International said in a statement late last month that if the migrant workers did not find a new job within three months, “they will lose their work visa, thus risking arrest, imprisonment and deportation”.

Questions have also been raised over how the policy’s aim of curtailing exploitation by providing lists of workers rather than businesses will actually help, given that brokers could find the new list just as, if not more, useful.

---

To contact the reporters on this story: Sen David at david.sen@phnompenhpost.com
David Boyle at david.boyle@phnompenhpost.com

South Korea: New regulation will increase risk of exploitation for migrant workers

Amnesty International calls on South Korea’s Ministry of Employment and Labour to
withdraw a new regulation under the Employment Permit System (EPS) that would
dramatically reduce migrant workers’ ability to change jobs.


Under the “Measure for Improvement in Foreign Workers’ Change of Workplaces and
Prevention of Broker Intervention”, due to come into effect on 1 August, migrant
workers in search of new employment will no longer have access to a list of
prospective employers. Instead the Ministry of Employment and Labour will provide a
list of job-seeking migrants to employers only. If migrants are not recruited for a new
job within three months, they will lose their work visa, thus risking arrest,
imprisonment and deportation.


Under the new measure, migrant workers face further difficulties in changing jobs, as
any refusal of a job offer “without rational reason” will result in being struck off the
job-seekers list for two weeks. Amnesty International is concerned that these changes
will discourage migrant workers from leaving exploitative working conditions and force
many to accept jobs in order to avoid the penalties.


“South Korea’s new policy tips the balance even further in favour of exploitative
employers by unfairly penalising migrant workers who wish to change jobs,” said
Norma Kang Muico, Amnesty International’s Researcher for Asia-Pacific Migrants’
Rights. “In order to ensure continued employment, migrants are more likely than
South Korean workers to put up with poor working conditions, abuse and
exploitation.”

This new measure follows a previous amendment to the EPS, implemented earlier this
month, whereby migrant workers were allowed to renew their visas for another four
year and 10 month term, provided that they had no previous record of changing
workplaces. Migrant groups in South Korea have expressed concern that this, along
with the new measure, will put extreme pressure on migrant workers to stay with their
original employers, even in the face of exploitative working conditions.
Amnesty International’s research has found that restrictions on changing jobs severely
hinder migrant workers from raising abuses at work, such as late or non-payment of
wages or benefits, inadequate safety measures, and physical or sexual violence.
Amnesty International is concerned that the Ministry of Employment and Labour’s
policies affecting migrant workers increasingly undermine their human rights.
Similarly, the International Labour Organization (ILO) has repeatedly raised concerns
that EPS workers are vulnerable to discrimination and abuse, particularly if there are
insufficient safeguards to protect them in cases of infringements of their rights by
employers.

“The Government has a duty to protect the rights of EPS workers, but instead it has
introduced draconian policies which risk creating a pliant migrant workforce willing to
put up with abuse and exploitation,” said Norma Kang Muico. “The equality of labour
rights between migrants and Korean nationals, enshrined in the Constitution, simply
does not apply in practice.”

Amnesty International urges the Ministry of Employment and Labour to withdraw
plans to introduce the “Measure for Improvement in Foreign Workers’ Change of
Workplaces and Prevention of Broker Intervention” and to amend the EPS Act to allow
greater flexibility for migrant workers to leave their jobs and find new employment,
including removing restrictions and deterrents which are designed to stop migrant
workers changing jobs; the requirement for employer’s permission to change jobs; and
the time limit for finding a new job.

Soldiers Help Register Land

(Radio Free Asia)

2012-08-03

Cambodia sends soldiers to help provide land titles to villagers lacking the documents.

Cambodian authorities have dispatched soldiers to villages to help people register their land in a bid to ameliorate widespread land disputes in the country, but rights groups say the move does not go far enough.

The Ministry of Land Management, and the National Committee for Land Dispute Resolutions this week sent 700 soldiers to work as volunteers to register the land for the villagers and help them obtain land titles.

The project is effectively aimed at helping survey and demarcate the land for villagers who are the actual owners of the land but have no documents to back their claims.

The soldiers were the second batch in the project after authorities sent 1,100 soldiers to measure land and provide land titles to 35,000 families in 20 provinces.

The project is funded personally by Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has called it a “historic” mission to “eliminate land disputes” in the country.

Hun Sen’s son Hun Manit, deputy secretary general of the National Committee for Land Dispute Resolution, addressed the soldiers on Thursday, warning them not to take bribes while registering the land.

“Your tasks are not to resolve land disputes or play the role of judge. You are assigned to measure the land according to the people’s legal ownership,” Hun Manit said.

“We should not be a headache for the villagers; we must remain innocent,” he said.

Land disputes are an everyday occurrence in Cambodia, where rights groups say some 300,000 people have been forced off their land over the past decade.

The government has granted millions of hectares of land in concessions to private developers, in some cases pitting residents against developers and sparking protests.

Hun Sen said the project will help ease land disputes, warning critics on Wednesday not to accuse the soldiers of taking sides in the disputes.

“The soldiers will measure land that has [clear] legal ownership, and land that remains under dispute is not part of their work,” he said.

Long-term solution needed

But NGO and opposition party members were wary that the project, which is funded with Hun Sen’s personal money, was part of a ploy to gain political support for the ruling Cambodian People’s Party.

Sia Phearum, director of the Housing Rights Task Force, an NGO coalition that works to prevent forced evictions and housing rights violations in Cambodia, said sending soldiers to register land would not be enough to solve the issue of land disputes in the long run.

“From what I have observed, the prime minister’s effort is not sustainable,” he said.

“This is just for showing that the prime minister wants to put an end to land disputes.”

He said land disputes should be resolved through the court system and that the government should focus on making existing state resources more efficient in dealing with them.

Cambodia’s land issues date from the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge regime, which forced large-scale evacuations and relocations throughout the country, leaving who owned what land under question.

This was followed by mass confusion over land rights and the formation of squatter communities when the refugees returned in the 1990’s after a decade of civil war.

Hun Sen has publicly spoken out against an increasing number of land seizures. But rights groups questioned his commitment to protecting the Cambodian people from illegal land grabs and forced evictions since he authorized land concessions to three private companies in May, just after announcing a moratorium on further grants.

Reported by Sok Serey for RFA's Khmer service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Rachel Vandenbrink.

Foreign Minister Blasts Tribunal Defense Over Witness Testimony

Kong Sothanarith, VOA Khmer

04 August 2012 

PHNOM PENH - Foreign Minister Hor Namhong has accused defense lawyers for stirring up controversy in their questioning of a witness at the UN-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal, who claimed the minister had been a member of the regime.

The witness, Rochem Tun, said in court that Hor Namhong had run Phnom Penh’s Boeung Trabek prison camp for the regime.

Hor Namhong said in a statement on his ministry’s website Thursday he was a prisoner there, “where I lost two sisters, their husbands, children and a niece as well as countless colleagues.” He accused the defense team of Nuon Chea, who is on trial for atrocity crimes, of politicizing the court and “stirring up controversy” for questioning Rochem Tun about his role there.

In 2008, Hor Namhong sued opposition leader Sam Rainsy in French and Cambodian courts for making similar claims about his role at the camp. But Rochem Tun told the court this week that Hor Namhong was in charge of the camp for the regime.

Noun Chea’s attorneys have in the past week pushed Rochem Tun, who was a messenger for top officials and a top administration official for the regime’s foreign ministry, to describe the roles of Hor Namhong and Keat Chhon, the Cambodian current Finance Minister. Keat Chhon has not commented on his role in the regime.

Both men and four other top government officials ignored summonses from the court to appear as witnesses in the current case against Nuon Chea, the regime’s ideologue, Ieng Sary, its foreign minister, and Khieu Samphan, its head of state.

Defense attorneys have said they cannot get a fair trial, given the opposition of top officials to the work of the court.

“It is unfortunate that those who continue to defend the legacy of the Khmer Rouge regime seek, in the interest of their defense, to deflect attention from themselves and their cases, by way of stirring up controversy around public figures like myself,” Hor Namhong said in a statement.