UNITED STATES: A decade of publishing: PLOS is stronger than ever

Geoff Maslen16 February 2013 Issue No:259

 

One of the earliest open access science journals, PLOS, is celebrating its 10th anniversary with a year-long series of events to “recognise and advance the innovations brought about through the adoption of open access publishing”. The activities will be aimed at members of the scientific community and the public at large.

The PLOS story began in 2000 when its founders set out to tackle the lack of access to the majority of scientific research, which was then published behind pay walls. They startled the American academic science establishment with a petition calling for open access to research findings.

Two years later, the team established a new entity called the non-profit Public Library of Science, now known as PLOS, an open access model, and launched its first journal, PLOS Biology. This was followed over the next decade by six other science periodicals that are among the most widely read around the globe.

The organisers say PLOS will partner with media organisations to demonstrate “the many ways in which biomedical research published on an open access platform can affect peoples’ lives for the better”.

Using monthly online dialogues, leading advocates will be invited to take part in conversations to look ahead at the possible future of open access scientific discovery and publishing.

“Additional offerings during our 10th anniversary year will include programmes to increase adoption of open access, deliver more innovations in publishing and expand peer-review, including pre-and post-publication,” the journal editors say.

“Our vision is to help the research community build a truly open, distributed, and reusable public repository of ideas and data.”

Among the events listed on the Official PLOS Blog, Twitter and Facebook are:

• Reinventing Science: Stories of open discovery: A multimedia series consisting of feature articles, research summaries and podcasts that profile researchers tapping into the knowledge of open access journals and collections to help accelerate their own research and enhance collaboration with peers around the globe.
  
• PLOS Conversations on Open Access: Hosted by Cameron Neylon, this regular podcast will round up the latest happenings and discussions about open access, open research, and open data.
  
• More About “How Open Is It?”: The conversation has moved from “is it open?” to “how open is it?” and to continue this discussion, PLOS will unveil new resources and tools that help authors, readers and funders understand the benefits of open access and how to apply components of the HowOpenIsIt? Open Access Spectrum at the article and journal level.
  
• Article-level Metrics: Through ongoing forums, live and virtual events, and other activities, PLOS will continue to make advances in article-level metrics and other mechanisms for broadening peer review to include post-publication impact indicators, along with better tools for assessing, organising and reusing research ideas and data.
  
• The PLOS Journals: In 2013, PLOS Medicine turns its attention to non-communicable diseases and the burden of disease they cause, while PLOS ONE continues its growth as the world’s largest peer reviewed journal.

 

UNITED STATES: Why graduates are underemployed and overeducated

Deseret News16 February 2013 Issue No:259

 

When Barack Obama first became president, he set the goal of increasing America’s college graduation rate to 60% by 2020. But the idea of working towards becoming a nation of college graduates has a major problem, according to a report by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, writes Michael De Groote for Deseret News. There are not enough jobs that require a college degree.

Analysing 2010 data from the US Department of Labor, the report finds that of the 41.7 million working college graduates, barely half (51.9%) are working in jobs that require a bachelor degree or higher. Thirty-seven percent are in jobs that require a high school diploma or less. The rest (11.1%) are in jobs that require some post-secondary training such as an associate's degree.

In other words, there are 13 million college graduates working in jobs that don't require a bachelor degree or more.

Full report on the Deseret News site

 

 

When Barack Obama first became President four years ago, he set a goal to increase the nation's college graduation rate to 60 percent by 2020. The idea of working towards becoming a nation of college graduates, however, has a major problem according to a new report by the Center for College Affordability & Productivity.

There are not enough jobs that require a college degree.
Analyzing 2010 data from the U.S. Department of Labor, the report finds that of the 41.7 million working college graduates, barely half (51.9 percent) are working in jobs that require a bachelor's degree or higher. Thirty-seven percent are in jobs that require a high-school diploma or less. The rest (11.1 percent) are in jobs that require some postsecondary training such as an associate's degree.
In other words, there are 13 million college graduates working in jobs that don't require a bachelor's degree or more.

The problem was driven home for the report's lead author, economist Richard Vedder, when he needed some yard work done. "One day I had some guy cut down a tree," he says. "He had a master's degree in history."

So Vedder, the senior author of the report and director of CCAP, says he started to research the phenomenon of underemployed graduates — eventually leading to the report.
Number of graduates soars

It wasn't always this way. In 2010 the proportion of adults with degrees was 30 percent. This is five times higher than six decades ago. In the 50s or 60s the percentage of college graduates was in the single digits.

"When I started teaching in the (1960s) going to college was still a somewhat unusual, slightly elitist thing to do," says Vedder, who is a Distinguished Professor of Economics Emeritus at Ohio University. "Almost all graduates got a pretty good job. Even graduates in middle-quality state schools always got jobs."

While the number of college graduates has soared, the jobs that require that expertise hasn't — forcing an increasing number of graduates to take jobs that historically didn't require a lot of education.

It turns out, for example, that 15.4 percent of taxi drivers have college degrees, 12.9 percent of parking lot attendants have at least a bachelor's degree and 24.6 percent of retail sales people have at least a bachelor's degree.

Earnings premium

Other studies (such as one at Georgetown University) have shown the earnings premium of college degrees. College graduates simply earn more than those who have just a high school diploma. This increase in potential income is seen to justify the expense of spending money on getting a degree.
The CCAP's report, however, says that although many benefit economically from going to college, there are still many that do not achieve those gains. Employers simply do not need as many college graduates as the colleges are cranking out.

The study says this "over-credentialing" of the population may also mean that society may be "over-investing" in higher education instead of looking at alternatives such as vocational training.
"Can you predict ahead of time if going to college is a good idea for someone?" Vedder says. "Yes, for a good number of people."

For example, if young people are average or below average in their grades, Vedder recommends trying perhaps a community college first. If they flourish, they may wish then to transfer to a four-year institution.

"We need to be more nuanced and be careful when we say whether it is a good thing for a kid to go to college," he says.

MYANMAR: Students find hope in university revival

Voice of America16 February 2013 Issue No:259

 

RANGOON — Burma's universities were once considered by many to be among the best in East Asia. But years of mismanagement and a disastrous nationalization process left the education system in such shambles that many students seek educational opportunities abroad.

Since entering parliament, opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has made restoration of Burmese schools a priority, and a new attitude towards learning has emerged among policymakers.

These Burmese students are visiting a United States college fair in Rangoon, in the hopes to attend college there. Recent political reforms that have resulted in the lifting of sanctions against Burma have made this type of event possible for the very first time.

U.S. Ambassador Derek Mitchell says he hopes Burmese students can go to the United States to get a good education, but at the same time there is a need to improve local education systems.

"Most important is for it to be indigenous, and in fact we talk about universities but there's a lot that happens before you get to university," Mitchell says. "Primary school education, secondary school education, that has to happen here."

When Burma's universities were nationalized in 1964, the government controlled curricula; subjects such as history and political science were taboo. Since reform, however, there has been an attempt to introduce classes that discuss sensitive issues such as the history of ethnic conflict in Burma.

May Nyein Chan is taking this history class that is being taught through the embassy-run American Center.

"Before I don't think I can have that, it would be something illegal," she says. "I have never gone to a field trip like this before."

Universities were at the center of student uprisings that occurred periodically over the past five decades. The government closed them down to keep students away from where they could cause harm.

Thein Lwin, a graduate of Rangoon University, has now formed a committee that will make recommendations to parliament on new education policy. He says the government needs a fundamental change in its attitude towards schools and education. But, he adds, it will take time to undo the damage of past governments.

"Students should be allowed to form freely student union, the student representative should participate in the university governing body," he says. "University should be a place for criticizing the country."

In the meantime, students who hope to be able to continue their education, still want to leave the country. 

Malaysia: Najib treading on thin ice

By Roger Mitton

Although it should be a cinch to guess the name of the politician who did the following things, several perceptive observers were flummoxed when tested over the weekend.

The politician in question visited the Hamas-controlled Palestinian enclave of Gaza last month, and then went to Davos, Switzerland, to attend the World Economic Forum.

There, he told investors the threat of Islamic militancy in Southeast Asia had been nullified; yet upon returning home, he promptly had three alleged terrorists detained for subversive activities.
Soon afterwards, he was mortified to hear that Singapore’s long-ruling People’s Action Party had lost a by-election in a formerly safe seat after an anti-government swing of 13.5 per cent.

Today, he plans to attend a vote-getting Chinese New Year bash at whiche South Korean superstar Psy will perform his famous Gangnam Style dance.

No, it’s not Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, whose party does face elections soon and who did visit Egypt and Saudi Arabia last week and who attended Davos in 2011, but not this year.

No, it is Malaysia’s rather vulnerable Prime Minister Najib Razak, who must hold a general election by June 27, and who, as the above actions indicate, is now in full campaign mode.
His trip to Gaza, the first by a non-Arab Muslim leader since 2007, was provocative, dangerous, crudely geared to impress his Malay-Muslim constituents — and highly laudable.

After all, the Hamas-led government in Gaza has been in power since it was democratically elected in 2006 and has more legitimacy than some of Cambodia’s neighbours.

Predictably, the rival Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in the West Bank condemned Najib’s visit, as did Western nations that noticed it; less predictably, Malaysia’s opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim did the same.

Anwar is a rather mercurial fellow. In his younger days, he was a fervent Islamist with revolutionary tendences; today his attitudes, especially his foreign policy, align more with those of the United States.

It is understandable. During his long years of detention and subsequent harassment by former PM Mahathir Mohamad’s authoritarian government, no one supported Anwar as much as the US.
But his echo of Washington’s censure of Najib’s visit to Gaza could be a major misstep.
Najib has cannily defended it as a humanitarian mission and took the opportunity to chastise Israeli belligerence and to offer scholarships to needy Palestinian students.

For a notoriously indecisive politician, it was a bold move that might, on its own, help Najib’s National Front government retain Malay heartland states like Kedah, Perak and Terengganu.
What it will not do is win over non-Malay votes.

Recent soundings are ominous for Najib for they indicate the Chinese and Indian communities will support the Anwar-led opposition.
The PM’s National Front can live with this in peninsular Malaysia where a large majority of the population is Muslim, but if it occurs in the East Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak, then Najib will be toast.

And it could happen, for his overtures to East Malaysians have been hurt by last month’s revelations of a “citizenship-for-votes” scheme whereby hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants were given identity cards.

Last month, a commission of inquiry was told by one former official that he accepted more than $25,000 to grant citizenship to illegal Filipino, Indonesian and Pakistani Muslims who promised to vote for the National Front.

The numbers certainly support the allegation. In 1960, less than 40 per cent of Sabah’s population was Muslim; today, it is nearly 70 per cent.

How native-born Malaysians react to this vast fraud in the coming election is hard to gauge, but it is possible that the shock results in Singapore will pale beside what happens soon in Malaysia.

Private schools on the rise in Cambodia

Last Updated on 15 February 2013

By Sarah Thust 

 

Roy G Crawford, school head at Northbridge International School Cambodia, poses for a portrait this week in Phnom Penh. Photograph: Ruth Keber

 

Northbridge International School Cambodia (NISC) was originally founded in 1997 as a US school. Soon after, the management decided to develop the school to international standards and to offer a fully accredited Western curriculum. Northbridge school head Roy G Crawford talked to the Post’s Sarah Thust about the rapid growth in Cambodia’s education sector.

How big is the school at the moment?
Currently, we have 500 students that are between three and 18 years old, and 96 employees, including 53 teachers. For each student we charge US$10,000 to $18,000 per year, which is less than in other Southeast Asian countries. Those revenues we reinvest in renovation and extension, but mostly in personnel costs. We offer our teachers salaries between $30,000 and $41,000 per year. Additionally, NISC pays housing, shipping and administrative costs. However, it is a misconception that our owner, the Royal Group, takes profits from us.

Why do you pay such high salaries?
Our teachers are highly qualified and experienced international educators, so we need to offer them a worldwide competitive salary that could match Dubai or Singapore. I’ve been working for schools since 1975 and my staff has similar work experience. Many schools in Cambodia work with unqualified personnel that have no teaching experience, but NISC is authorised to deliver all three programs of the International Baccalaureate and needs to keep a high level.

The private education sector in Cambodia is growing fast. What is NISC’s experience?  
We grow by about 15 to 20 per cent year-on-year. In five years, our school will have more than 900 students. However, we try to stay ahead of this growth concerning our capacity. We’ve just opened an up-to-date primary school building and want to add student housing, a performing arts centre, a bigger library and an Olympic swimming pool.

How do you explain the current boom in the private education sector?
Cambodia’s growing middle class is looking to provide their children with good education. Forty-five per cent of our students are Cambodian citizens. Some of them have lived abroad and some not. The reason why Phnom Penh has so many private schools is the low quality of public education, even though it has improved dramatically recently.
However, we don’t have many competitors. There are only four or five accredited schools in Phnom Penh, meaning that those schools are monitored and quality checked.

How long will this growth continue?
As long as the Kingdom’s economy is growing, the private education sector will grow as well. Thus, a school should not become too big. We don’t want to exceed more than 2,000 students, because we would lose our sense of community.

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AUSTRALIA: Foreign graduates push locals out of jobs

Geoff Maslen 06 February 2013 Issue No:258

 

 Young Australians are facing fierce and increasing competition from foreign-born graduates for a declining number of jobs, according to a new report.

The report says it is the Australians who are losing out, given that the 100,000 new jobs created since 2011 have been almost all taken up by migrants, many of whom are foreign students who graduated from Australian universities and have stayed on.

The study highlights the problems faced by Western countries – that have attracted high migrant numbers from Asia – when unemployment rates begin to rise.

The report says the slowdown in employment growth in Australia is starting to bite on the job situation for the local-born.

This effect is exacerbated by the federal government’s immigration policies to encourage large numbers of migrants into the country, since they have succeeded in taking up all of the net number of new jobs created in Australia over the past two years.

“This is occurring at a time when the potential workforce among young Australians continues to grow. The result is increasing unemployment, a declining level of labour force participation and, in less-skilled, entry-level occupations, ferocious competition for available jobs,” the report says.

Prepared by Dr Bob Birrell and Dr Ernest Healy of Monash University’s centre for population and urban research in Melbourne, the report says there is a strong case for the government to re-evaluate its migration policy.

“At present, the government appears to be operating on two assumptions: the first that employment growth will continue at pre-2011 rates and the second that migrants are filling important skill vacancies in the workforce.

“The recent slowdown in employment manifestly falsifies the first assumption and the poor record of recently arrived degree-qualified migrants from non-English-speaking backgrounds in gaining professional and managerial positions belies the second.”

The report says the federal government is wrong in claiming that its migration programme is importing “a highly educated addition to the nation’s skilled workforce” to help fill skill vacancies.

In a study of more than 200,000 immigrants who arrived in Australia since 2011 and their workforce participation, Birrell and Healy found that most graduates from non-English-speaking countries were employed in occupations in sub-professional fields, mainly in community and personal service, and clerical and administrative fields.

The Monash researchers looked at the largest group of recently arrived skilled migrants, which included significant numbers of overseas students who graduated from Australian universities. They say that if the migrants held skills needed in Australia, this should show up in a strong record of employment in managerial and professional positions.

This group is of particular interest because of the government’s aim to boost the proportion of degree-qualified 25- to 34-year-old Australian residents to 40% by 2025.

Birrell and Healy say the government “has been in celebration mode on this issue recently” because it appears its policies of opening up opportunities for university training appear to be working, with the proportion rising from 31.8% in 2008 to 36.8% in 2012.

“In reality, this surge in the proportion of those aged 25 to 34 with degrees has little to do with recent increases in university enrolment levels.

“These will have an impact on the share of the 25- to 34-year-old cohort with degrees over the next decade whereas the recent rise is attributable to migration [because] 72% of the growth between 2006 and 2011 were overseas-born and include a mixture of persons who entered Australia with degrees, and those who trained here as overseas students and have stayed on either as permanent or temporary residents.”

The study found that nearly one in three degree-holding migrants from non-English-speaking backgrounds had credentials in management and commerce – a direct result of the high proportion of overseas students who completed accounting courses in Australia and then sought to stay on.

Yet 31% of this group were unemployed compared with 9% of Australian-born graduates and 12% of those from mainly English-speaking countries.

“The bottom line [for the non-English-backgrounders] is that as well as the 31% not employed, only 4% of the total occupied managerial positions and just 26% held professional positions.

“By comparison, 58% of the Australian-born and 53% of those recently arrived from English-speaking countries with degree qualifications reported being employed in professional occupations.”

The report says that more than 672,000 Australians now need to rely on unemployment benefits – up by nearly 56,000 between November 2011 and November 2012 – and that this should be “ringing alarm bells in policy circles”.

Local analysis of youth unemployment also shows very high levels in lower-income areas of Melbourne’s north and west, in Sydney’s western suburbs, in parts of Adelaide and in Queensland. Youth unemployment in northern Adelaide was reported to be as high as 42% – a consequence of significant competition for low-skilled jobs advertised in the northern suburbs.

“Young people without post-school credentials face serious problems in obtaining work in the current labour market. Most have to begin their working life in relatively low-skilled, entry-level jobs, such as in the hospitality and retail areas,” Birrell and Healy write.

“Yet these are the very industries that have been hardest hit in the recent slowdown in employment growth [and] are also the industries in which temporary migrants are most likely to seek employment.”

UNITED STATES: Why higher education must be part of immigration reform

TIME 09 February 2013 Issue No:258

 

Last week, President Obama and a bipartisan group of senators outlined a plan for comprehensive immigration reform. Like the DREAM Act that has stalled for years in Congress, the proposal’s outline hints at an expedited pathway to citizenship for young people who came to the U.S. as children if they attend college or serve in the military. As the details are worked out in the coming weeks, it is critical that legislation include provisions that make it easier for undocumented high schoolers to go to college. Education is the gateway to the American Dream. But today our immigration laws make higher education — a virtual requirement for financial security — out of reach for more than one million undocumented students.

(MORE: Read this week’s TIME cover story, “Immigrant Son,” by Michael Grunwald)
Of the roughly 65,000 undocumented students who graduate from American high schools each year, only 5–10% will go to college, usually a community college, according to a 2009 report by The College Board. Many undocumented students don’t know if they’re allowed to apply for college (the law varies state by state), or are afraid that submitting applications will attract attention from the authorities. Those who do earn college acceptances are often forced to turn them down because they can’t afford it. Their immigration status bars them from taking advantage of in-state tuition and financial aid programs that are available to their peers.

Even students who beat the odds and graduate from college face yet another barrier: They can’t legally work in the U.S.and put their degrees to good use. ”Children don’t make the decision to cross the border, but they pay for it their whole lives,” says Liz Coffin-Karlin, one of our 10,000 Teach for America members who work with students in low-income communities across the country.
(MORE: Not Legal, Not Leaving)

Take Ramiro, an undocumented student in North Texas who came to the U.S. from Mexico with his parents and two siblings when he was 5. His family lived in daily terror of being discovered – a very real fear after Ramiro came home when he was 12 to an empty house and discovered his father had been deported. Although he excelled in school, Ramiro wouldn’t even tell his closest friends that he was undocumented, and was ashamed to tell his teachers. As graduation approached, he felt increasingly isolated and depressed as friends discussed what schools they were going to and post-graduation plans.

“I was paralyzed,” he says, “I didn’t know what I was going to do and worse, who I could ask for help. I was my only resource.” He finally worked up the nerve to enroll in community college, but even that was an ordeal. In the registrar’s office, he didn’t know what information he could give without exposing himself. Ramiro started working to save up money for classes, and did so well he was promoted to supervisor. But when his employer tried verifying his information for the new role and discovered a discrepancy with his paperwork, he was fired on the spot. Unable to keep a job because of his status, Ramiro poured over scholarship applications to find one that could help him – only to discover nearly all scholarships are for citizens or permanent residents only. “I read through so many applications and would get so excited because I seemed to meet every criteria,” he says. “But then in the very last line there would be that disclaimer. I finally gave up on college because I felt there were no options.”
 
(MORE: Does College Put Kids on a “Party Pathway”?)
Every time a child’s promise is cut short by their legal status, our country wastes precious resources and loses talent we need. Our laws guarantee all students the right to a K–12 education, regardless of their immigration status. Our teachers work tirelessly to give them the skills they need to make it to college. Why should we let an inconsistent system prevent them from fulfilling their potential and giving back to the country they call home?

MORE: Immigration Debate: The Problem with the Word ‘Illegal’

Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2013/02/07/viewpoint-why-higher-education-must-be-part-of-immigration-reform/#ixzz2KfRzEvHS

 

AUSTRALIA: University 2060 – Brave new world of higher education

The Conversation 09 February 2013 Issue No:258

 

Higher education, 2060: academics are out of a job. All the brand name universities have made all their courses free online, easily doing away with one side of the teaching and learning equation.
Pretty soon all the universities realised how much money they could save.

Tutorials have been replaced by Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) with the wisdom of the crowd sourcing all answers from the students themselves. Algorithms update the online course content in response to the question’s popularity – after all, “the customer is always right”.

Eventually no new information is taught, as it is too difficult to produce. There can be no FAQs for new material. So university courses have become useless. People need to find other ways to learn.
Universities took up the idea of the customer is always right earlier than 2012. Students became clients. So it became obvious that student evaluation of teaching results determined careers and promotion of lecturers.
 
That is, even when the students could not possibly be in a position to evaluate the teaching, as they were yet to be introduced to, grapple with and eventually understand, difficult and complex issues.
And yet they were asked by administrators to rate their teachers. Students assumed that because the material was hard, the teaching must be poor. So the complaints went: it should have been easier to engage with; the lecturer did not spend enough time explaining how to get a good mark; they did not answer my questions quickly enough (even if most were posed late at night, and answered by morning).

So the universities felt justified in getting rid of their lecturers: after all the student feedback was not good and the lecturers were difficult to deal with.

The Australian Research Council realised that they too could save themselves a great deal of time. All they had to do was run competitions. They only needed small groups of trusted researchers who met regularly to determine which questions would get funding and how much each question was worth.

Then as each new question was decided it was added to the competition database. This procedure had a great deal of merit. It assumed that the best researcher to answer any particular question was out there somewhere but asking them to apply for funding was a waste of everybody’s time.
Much better for the ARC to put up the questions, sit back and wait for the research teams to engage with the questions directly. No need to fund a good looking prospect. They only needed to fund results.

They took the website Kaggle.com as their model. Big questions (that is the ones that could earn the most money) attracted the biggest prizes.

At this point educational research stopped being funded completely, because everyone now knew how to educate en masse for free. Get a free degree from MIT, Stanford or Harvard. Within ten years software was developed that was sophisticated enough to be used to examine PhD theses, so no one had to actually read them any more.

Within 30 years, all the “great minds” currently living had gained their doctorate from an algorithm. No one had read their work, and none could find a job in the academy, because everyone had free degrees from MIT, Stanford or Harvard.

About 10 years later a group of about 12 people sat around together in a room. They had decided to hold a book group. There was no leader except that one person had rediscovered the old practice of a reading group and suggested to some friends that they try it out as a nostalgic reenactment, similar to the people who still recreated the American Civil War on a Sunday afternoon.

One of the group suggested the book, something they had found in a bookshop from the 1960s, On Becoming a Person by Carl Rogers.

They all enjoyed meeting together and talking about the book, particularly the funny ideas that could never take off now. Then someone suggested they read another book.

This happened and they all enjoyed that experience too, sharing and discussing ideas with no particular agenda. After the group had discussed five books they realised it was not just the book that was enjoyable, they brought food, talked about their days, discussed other topics unrelated to the books they had come together to read.

They were enjoying engaging with each other and learning together.
Pity, they thought, that we couldn’t do this more often.
 

GERMANY: Education minister stripped of doctoral title

Michael Gardner 07 February 2013 Issue No:258

 

The University of Düsseldorf has withdrawn the doctoral title of Annette Schavan, Germany’s education and research minister, claiming that she lifted material for her thesis. While Schavan is seeking to contest the university’s verdict, the opposition in parliament has called for her resignation.

The University of Düsseldorf stripped Schavan of her PhD on 5 February. The council of the university’s faculty of philosophy had found that “a considerable amount of texts written by other authors had been adopted word-for-word but had not been correspondingly referred to as citations,” the faculty dean, Bruno Bleckmann, explained.

The accumulation and structure of the text passages adopted and the omission of source titles in the footnotes and further reading list had convinced the faculty council that Schavan had “systematically and wilfully presented academic performance that she herself had, in reality, not delivered”.

Bleckmann said that “Schavan’s response could not weaken this impression, which is why, based on the facts before it, the faculty council has found that the issue concerned represents wilful deceit through plagiarism.”

The decision to withdraw the minister’s title was approved by 12 of the council’s 15 members.

Schavan, on a five-day tour of South Africa bringing her together with representatives of science, research, politics and business, commented on the new developments the following day. “I will not accept the University of Düsseldorf’s decision, and intend to lodge a complaint,” she said.

The minister now has four weeks to appeal to the administrative court.

Schavan recently stated that she could not rule out having made careless mistakes, but denied plagiarism.

Her lawyers announced that they would be taking legal action because the faculty of philosophy’s decision was based on a “faulty procedure” and was “disproportionate”. Violations of citation rules were “insignificant” and could not justify the withdrawal of a doctoral title.

The university’s move leaves Schavan without any professional title. The minister, who studied catholic theology, philosophy and education science at Bonn and Düsseldorf, did her doctorate 32 years ago. During her studies, she bypassed the usual ‘magister’ first degree in arts subjects and headed straight for her doctoral exams.

Responses

Politicians in the ruling Christian Democrat-Free Democrat coalition government have praised Schavan’s achievements as an education and research minister. Further developments are to be discussed on her return from South Africa.

There have been unanimous calls from the opposition for the minister to resign. Schavan now lacks credibility as a higher education minister, said the Social Democrats’ General Secretary Andrea Nahles, while Petra Sitte, spokesperson for Die Linke – the Left Party – stressed that whoever is responsible for education and research had to set an example to others.

Bernhard Kempen, president of the Hochschulverband – German Association of University Professors and Lecturers – maintained that “it could take months if not years for a court ruling to be reached. In these circumstances, Annette Schavan can no longer act as education minister.”

Kempen, a qualified jurist, also refuted criticism regarding how the decision to withdraw Schavan’s title came to be. “The University of Düsseldorf’s verdict is not manifestly unlawful,” he says. “It is not discernible why the withdrawal of the title should be based on a faulty procedure.”

Referring to last year's leaking of information indicating the possibility of plagiarism in Schavan’s thesis, Kempen commented that while indiscretion is unacceptable, it does not make the procedure, as such, defective.

However, he conceded that any withdrawal of an academic title also represented a setback for universities. “It is now up to institutions to take a closer look and exercise more control,” he said. “Higher education has to develop uniform regulations on academic conduct.”

Having issued a statement in support of Schavan just days ahead of Düsseldorf University's launching of formal proceedings, the Allianz der Wissenschaftsorganisationen, comprising Germany’s chief higher education and research bodies, has kept quiet about the institution’s verdict.

Membership of the alliance includes funding bodies such as the German Research Foundation and research heavyweights like the Fraunhofer Society, the Helmholtz Association and the Max Planck Society. As Bonn academic and law expert Wolfgang Löwer stressed, these organisations depend crucially on ministry funding.

The Schavan case may have damaged higher education as a whole in Germany, Löwer said.

Lawyers Instructed to Seek Approval Before Speaking to Media

By Chin Chan - February 11, 2013

Lawyers must now obtain permission from the Cambodian Bar Association before speaking to television and radio media in order to ensure that they do not speak out of turn, the association’s president said in a meeting on Friday.

“First, we want to ensure a high quality of law dissemination. Second, to ensure that explanations of the law to the public are correct, and third to ensure that lawyers adhere to high professional standards,” said Bun Honn, the association’s president.

The new rule does not mean that lawyers would not be allowed to speak to the press, nor is it an attempt to stifle media freedom, Mr. Honn maintained, addressing Bar Association members at the organization’s Phnom Penh headquarters.

“Lawyers can talk to the media, for example, about where a case is going but they can’t criticize a court’s judgment or say the verdict of the court is unfair,” he said when contacted by telephone later.
Penalties for violating the new rule would range from a formal warning to disbarment, he said.
At the association’s request, the Ministry of Information on January 31 also issued a statement advising all television and radio media organizations that wish to interview lawyers to go through the Bar Association first.

At the moment, the only lawyer entirely banned from giving media interviews is Kouy Thunna, who Mr. Honn explained had violated Article 15 in the Lawyer’s Code of Ethics. He declined to say exactly how Mr. Thunna had violated the code, but Article 15 stipulates that lawyers must not give false or deceitful information or engage in self-promotion.

Mr. Thunna declined to comment on the Bar Association’s ban.
Sok Sam Oeun, a lawyer and executive director of legal aid group the Cambodian Defenders Project, said lawyers should be able to serve their clients without being held back by such a rule and that the Constitution protected the right to express one’s opinion.

“Each lawyer is a professional and they know the law and they are also responsible for their clients. For example, if the client agrees for him to say it, he can say it,” Mr. Sam Oeun said, adding that he has never heard of such a rule in other democratic countries.

“If the Bar is concerned that maybe some lawyers do not know how to deal with this, I think it is better for the Bar to train lawyers to deal with journalists,” he said.
(Additional reporting by Dene-Hern Chen)