As a follow-up from my previous post, Singapore’s Ministry of Education has just announced today that the Singapore Institute of Management will be renamed as the Singapore University of Social Sciences — shocking, I know!

SIM used to be Singapore’s only privately funded university, but after this recent rebranding and restructuring, it will become the country’s sixth autonomous (i.e. government run) university. Below are quotations taken from news reports regarding this sea change in Singapore’s HE sector:

“The name was chosen to reflect the university’s mission of “driving lifelong learning anchored in disciplines with a strong social focus”, Minister for Higher Education and Skills Ong Ye Kung said in a press release issued by the school on Friday (Mar 17).

“SUSS is under the ambit of the Ministry of Education and is no longer part of the SIM Group, which comprises SIM Global Education, SIM International Academy, SIM Professional Development and Platform E.”

“Autonomous universities receive government funding and are subject to government oversight, but have the flexibility to set their own direction and differentiate their educational offerings. Currently, National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Management University, Singapore University of Technology and Design and Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) are autonomous universities.”

See more at:

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/sim-university-renamed-singapore-university-of-social-sciences/3603440.html

http://news.asiaone.com/news/singapore/unisim-now-singapore-university-social-sciences

http://www.themalaymailonline.com/world/article/unisim-renamed-as-singapore-university-of-social-sciences

Hi folks!

Hope you had a great Spring break. I thought I should post my presentation slides on this blog, for the benefit of those who weren’t around during our session last week or might find it handy to have a soft copy of the slides!

The gist of my presentation is as follows:

• On 07 November 2016, Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Mr. Tharman Shanmugaratnam announced that the Ministry of Education will spend SGD$350 million (equivalent to USD$250 million) on social science and humanities research for the next five years.
• The government will also establish Singapore’s very first Social Science Research Council, while establishing partnerships with existing institutes in the US such as the SSRC in Brooklyn and Centre for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences at Stanford.
• My presentation examines the implications and limitations of these newly implemented government policies, focusing particularly on the potential winners and losers of these reforms, in HE institutions and the wider society.

Please feel free to share with me your thoughts or questions on this recent government reform! Will look to hear from you, specially on how we might be able to address critics’ skepticism towards the huge amount of funding that is channelled into this project by the Singapore government (while governments in other parts of the world such as the Trump administration is trying to cut back heavily on funding for the arts and cultural expression), fair democratic representation of members in the SSRC (because right now it is predominantly made up of senior academics and civil servants) and conflict between the winners and losers of this reform. Thank you!

– Tim

(Final) Government Reforms in Social Science and Humanities Research in Singapore- A Case Study-1lxygfs

Hello, all!

I was glad that everyone really responded to my presentation and questioned a lot today. 🙂

In summary,

Republic of Korea has the highest number of students studying abroad per capita in the world. (By Korean Ministry of Education, 223,908 in 2016, counting only higher education students. And SEVIS by Numbers, 74,817 coming to the US, counting all F&M Visa holders) Many of them mostly study abroad for Bachelor’s and Master’s degree.

The number of students going out is increasing by years gradually.

Major destinations are the US, China, and other Asian countries (Japan, Philippines).

According to SEVIS by Number, only 22% of Korean students study STEM field in the US.

According to Statistics Korea (the government office for statistics), 55% of a social survey respondent said yes to send their children to study abroad, 32% No, and 13% said I don’t know.

Among those 55% yes, the three top reasons why they want to send their children to study abroad is: 1) For nurturing international/cosmopolitan perspective, 2) For my children’s talents (in case of arts, and music), and 3) Because of unsatisfying education system.

And many of student studied abroad do not want to go back to Korea and this cause huge brain drain and education deficit. In response to this, Korean government spent a lot of money and policy for attracting foreign students and colleges and for establishing an education hub in several port cities, but so far nothing worked.

And I looked up the tuition system of Korea since I had no idea and want to add the tuition of several top ranked universities of Korea. The tuition was different by universities, each school within a university, major, how many credit you take per semester and what year you are in. The data is in 2016.

(using exchange rate 1 dollar = 1150 won)

Seoul National University (public) : average $5200 (per year, but it varied a lot from school to school. For example, the liberal arts school was $4400, but the medical school was $8600)

Korea University (private): average $7200 (per year, but this university also varied a lot. For example, the medical school was $10500, the engineering school was $8400, and the school of arts was $7800. But the liberal arts school was $6200. And also, the first year student needed to pay entrance fee of $900.)

Yonsei University (private): average $7800 (per year. It did not vary much among schools, just the medical school was about $10500. The first year student need to pay entrance fee of $860)

Please comment me below if you have any further questions. 🙂

Have a good day!

The actual powerpoint file is here:

Studying Abroad Trends in South Korea-2idklc5

Hello everyone!

Here is the presentation on higher ed in rural areas that I presented last Thursday.

Key Points:

Both the U.S. and Japan are experiencing rural-urban migration. In small college towns, this causes both the town and college to fail.

In Japan, this problem is exacerbated by its historical population aging and decline.

In the U.S., states are solely responsible for education at all levels (with the exception of federal funding mostly being funneled towards Pell Grants, veterans benefits (both are forms of financial aid to students) and research-specific grants). States, cities, and the colleges themselves must work together on policies to revitalize their dying towns and colleges.

In Japan, the national government has more power over its local/municipal/prefectural governments than in the U.S.. Japan has recognized its demographic dilemma and enacted a national plan to revitalize certain areas. This type of national-level policy would be very unlikely, if not unconstitutional, in the U.S..

Questions:

Can some of the policies enacted in Japan be implemented at the local level in the United States?

How much power does Japan have at the local level to create its own solutions? (This question I really don’t know! I’d love some insight).

Thank you!

US_Japan_Rural_HigherEd

Hi all! This is Hiro.

Thank you for yesterday’s amazing discussion about Law School reforms!!

Below is my presentation slide. The key points are;

Korea: strong quantity control by government, but delay abolishing traditional bar exam for three times, also corruption

Japan: loosened quantity control, preliminary exam as a shortcut, mismatch between demand and supply

Both: Inconsistent policy

Please share any comment or further insight about law school reforms in these two or any other countries. Thank you!

HE presentation (Japan&Korea Law School)-1hoquei

HEd v1-1sztxia

After the increase in the supply of universities and the problems in the quality of its management and services, Peru had the urgent need to implement reform.

When the reform was designed by the Peruvian Ministry of Education, the team in charge of its implementation realized they had plenty of questions that needed to be answered but no information to do so. Although an information system was initially considered as a separate component of the reform, in practice measures had to be carried out to answer key questions.

How was data-driven decision making carried out?

Considering an information system was not existent… What did the Peruvian Ministry of Education do?

1.Defined key questions that needed to be asked

2.Looked for possible sources of information: (i) Approached the owners of the information and followed bureaucratic procedures to have access to data; (ii) Used  and aggregated already public information; (iii) implemented ways to gather new information (ex. Ad hoc surveys)

3.Analyzed data

In the attached presentation you are going to find the three examples of how information allowed the Ministry to design better initiatives that were part of the higher education reform.

*** I was particularly involved in data visualization initiatives like the implementation of ponteencarrera.pe and a business intelligence dashboard. If you have questions on these matters, I will be happy to talk to you.

Thank you for your attention to my presentation! I upload my slides and the abstract of my presentation.

There are three main points in my presentation.
(1) University subsidies from the Japanese government have decreased in the last 10 years. This is because the 18-year-olds population has decreased and the budget of the social security has increased rapidly due to the aging society.
(2) On the other hand, private funding has increased recently. One reason is that universities need to collaborate with companies because it can strengthen universities’ budget. The other reason is that companies think that using universities’ research result is effective in terms of creating innovation.
(3) The government of Japan has several strategies to increase universities’ income from private companies.

Additionally, I added another data about university’ income structure in the case of University of Tokyo and UC Berkeley (see the last slide). Although both of those are public universities, their income ratios are different from each other. The University of Tokyo depends more on the administrative subsidies. This is one reason why the Ministry of Finance in Japan wants to cut the subsidy more.

Finally, I would appreciate it if you could share the following information. ①What is your countries’ situation about the balance between private and public funding in Higher Education and its trend? and ②What is the effective way to increase the income from private companies?

https://edblogs.columbia.edu/inafu6653-001-2017-1/files/2017/02/HE-Sho-Ito-27ehwev.pdf

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Thank you for the many comments! I upload original data about university’s income from industries. The graph I used in the presentation is from the “Digest of Japanese Science and Technology Indicators 2016” by National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTEP) in Japan, but the original data is from OECD Research and Development Statistics except for China. The data is slightly different between NISTEP and OECD, which is because NISTEP modified a little based on each country’s situation.

This is the data from OECD. I found Chilean data, so included it. https://edblogs.columbia.edu/inafu6653-001-2017-1/files/2017/02/Gross-domestic-expenditure-on-R-D-by-sector-of-performance-and-source-of-funds-（OECD）-1dlpbft.xml . And here is the website http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=GERD_FUNDS . You can see each country’s data by selecting “Higher education” as a sector of performance. You can see not only the ratio of business enterprise but also the one of non-profit enterprise or funds from abroad.

Also, since China is not a member of OECD, NISTEP used the China Statistical Yearbook. http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/2014/indexeh.htm. https://edblogs.columbia.edu/inafu6653-001-2017-1/files/2017/02/China-Statistical-Yearbook-2014-29fo4lt.xlsx .

Hello!

I was Googling things and I came across an op-ed on the Brookings website: “Strengthening India-U.S. Relations through Higher Education.” If you’re interested in higher education in India, take a look if you want!

Strengthening India-U.S. Relations through Higher Education