Prime minister Jose Luis Zapatero has pledged to increase funding for universities to 1.5 percent of gross national product in four years. Some of this money will go directly to students to ensure 40 percent of them get a grant within four years. Student loans will be introduced for third and final-year students.

There will also be more money for research. The government will increase spending on research and development by 25 percent a year, aiming to reach 2 percent of GNP by 2010. An agency for funding research will be established to combine "private sector efficiency with public sector accountability," according to Zapatero.

Most rectors see the change of government as positive. Says Juan Vazquez, president of the Conferencia de Rectores de las Universidades Espanolas: "The Socialist Party’s speeches (during the electoral campaign) shared a lot of our concerns and ideas."

Uncompromising elitist education

The south-western state of Bavaria has boosted its bid to become Germany’s ‘elite’ university state. In late March Edmund Stoiber, the regional prime minister unveiled a set of courses to rival Harvard University. Ten elite courses and five postgraduate colleges will be established within existing universities and will offer places for 300 students from autumn this year (2004). Stoiber says that the elite courses are the beginning of a new style of education, not only in Bavaria but in Germany, and will help the state compete at an international level.

German education ministers have recently been debating turning a number of universities into institutions that will follow the format of Oxbridge and Ivy League colleges. But rather than concentrating on the development of just one or two universities, Bavarian ministers want each university to be able to offer first-class courses to the best national and international students, alongside what is currently available. Nine of the state’s 11 universities will initially take part in the project. By the end of 2005 about 20 such courses will be up and running, with up to 2,000 places available.

The courses will differ from standard programmes at the universities, not only in the class of student but also the speed and level at which the subject is taught. Students will be expected to complete the courses in quick time while delving further into their subjects.

The project will also promote cooperation between universities as well as provide greater links with German business. About €14 million (Rs.71.4 crore) is being pumped into the campaign, which will see the creation of more than 220 jobs. A special commission of international researchers and professors has been set up to select 15 courses from 104 proposals. Of the 15 subjects chosen, science subjects account for the majority. These include applied maths, physics, macromolecular science and advanced materials science.

Comments Susanne Zanker, Bavaria’s education ministry spokeswoman: "This is partly due to the fact that Bavaria has a history of outstanding research in the sciences. But the courses chosen also fitted the criteria the commission was looking for. Next time, it could just as easily be the engineering sector that gains the majority."

Britain

Cheap continental education option

Currently only a handful of British students take the opportunities opened up by budget airlines and the wider availability of English-taught subjects to take an undergraduate course in European Union countries. But, after 2006, the near-absence of tuition fees in most of Europe compared with up to £3,000 (Rs.2.4 lakh) a year at an English university make France, Scandinavia and Ireland rational choices for students seeking quality education while avoiding heavy direct costs.

European Union membership means that UK students are entitled to be treated as ‘home’ students, just as their counterparts are when they study in Britain. This means that they pay the same for enrollment and student association membership and are generally entitled to the same financial support as native students of a member country. Moreover cheap flights and speed improvements on Eurostar to Paris or Brussels mean those occasional trips home can cost less than the train fare to Leeds or Manchester and also take less time.

British students: European education option

However as potential students review their study options, that number may grow. For example English-taught courses are widely available and very accessible in Sweden. Higher education is of a high standard, very flexible and, most important, free. Contrary to popular belief, the cost of living is similar to that of the UK, while student accommodation is far cheaper in Stockholm than in London.

Apart from climate, the only downside is Sweden’s sluggish response to the Bologna agreements: there is still no clear division between undergraduate and postgraduate education, which can make transition to and from the UK tricky to negotiate.

Although foreign nationals pay no fees, they cannot apply for study loans. Student union membership is obligatory but cheap. Fees range from SEK150-400 (Rs.800-2,400) per term.

Declining popularity of Islamism

The numbers of young women wearing headscarves, young men sporting beards and people selling religious tracts on Morocco’s university campuses are higher than ten years ago. But there were signs that the popularity of politicised Islam, or Islamism — the biggest movement among Moroccan students — was waning before the terror attacks in Madrid.

Some believe that the fall in support began with the bombs in Casablanca in May 2003, which, like the Madrid bombs, have been linked to the banned extremist group Salatia Jihadia. Comments Mokhtar El-Harras, lecturer in sociology at Mohamed V University in Rabat: "Some young people are asking: ‘If Islamism leads us to such extreme violence, what link does it really have with Islam?’ "

Islamism established itself in the 1990s, but since the government tried to discourage student Islamism after 1997, activists diverted their attention to setting up student associations. Affiliates of the non-violent Justice and Spirituality, the country’s largest Islamist movement, account for the majority of student representatives in Moroccan universities.

"Not all students are Islamists, most are not particularly active, but until now the Islamists are the ones who could mobilise students," says Mohamed Darif, lecturer in politics at Hassan II University in Mohammedia. The rise of Islamism on campus has driven a wedge between students and often left-of-centre academics. "Academics criticise Islamist students and refuse to cooperate with them," says Darif who adds that police repression on campus has radicalised students. One of Prof. Darif’s students was among the 14 suicide bombers linked to an extremist Salafist group that killed 32 people in Casablanca in 2003.

According to El-Harras there were more activists among science students than in the arts. "They tend to have less intellectual baggage and so less of a critical approach to analysis and debate," he says, adding that western foreign policy is shaping Muslim public opinion. "If you adopt an aggressive attitude towards other cultures, there will inevitably be an aggressive reaction," he warns.

Less attention to gifted pupils

Advanced classes for gifted American students are being drastically cut or axed under the Bush administration’s drive to drill the 3Rs and instill basic competency in pupils. America’s No Child Left Behind Act divides students into ethnic, income and ability brackets, holding schools accountable for improving reading and maths proficiency in each. But one group overlooked in the reforms is the estimated 2-5 percent of American pupils — as many as three million — considered gifted.

Escalating sanctions, triggered by failure to meet annual proficiency goals, are pushing schools to plunge resources into remedial education at the expense of programmes to encourage their cleverest students. US education secretary Rod Paige laments the trend: "We would encourage a system not to do that," he says.

Gifted students in class: belt-tightening casualty

"Resources are limited and right now attention is focused on kids who don’t test well," says Becky McCabe, head of Leal Elementary School in Urbana, Illinois, where requirements that education authorities pinpoint strong students and tailor programmes for them were recently lifted. Instead, efforts to spot infants at risk of falling behind in the state’s nursery schools have been redoubled.

Bright students can become listless or disruptive unless stretched, says McCabe. Her school has 400 pupils, a quarter of whom are gifted, reflecting its proximity to the University of Illinois, serving academic families. She fears a brain drain to local private schools offering accelerated learning programmes.

Hardest hit by the reduction in advanced classes are poorer high-fliers for whom transferring out of public education is not an option, say experts. "Where they remain in regular classrooms and haven’t another opportunity, it’s socially and emotionally distressing and these kids sometimes act up or drop out," says Gayle Pauley, director of Washington State’s gifted and talented programme.

Gifted students are usually identified from test scores, teacher reports and parental input. Provisions range from pulling a child out of regular lessons for an hour each week to academies drawing high-fliers from across an education authority.

However, while No Child Left Behind has prompted schools to shift resources from gifted learning, a countervailing result of its emphasis on test scores has been reluctance to transfer high-scoring students to full-time academies and watch average marks suffer. Allegations that students are being held back have surfaced in Ohio, Missouri and Iowa. But Pauley says agreements are now coming in to credit results from students at academies to schools sending them.

Male teachers shortage fears

The Australian government plans to amend the nation’s sex discrimination laws to encourage more men to become teachers. In late March, prime minister John Howard introduced legislation to give state education departments and Catholic school authorities the right to provide men-only scholarships. Only 20 percent of primary teachers are male, with the proportion dropping to 14 percent in some Catholic schools.

Last year the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission rejected an application from Catholic schools in Sydney for a five-year exemption from the sex discrimination Act so they could offer men scholarships. But Howard says amending the sex discrimination laws to allow this is common sense. There are 250 state schools in New South Wales alone without male teachers, he adds.

But the Labour opposition says it will vote against the change, which has also been criticised by teacher unions and Pru Goward, the sex discrimination commissioner, appointed by Howard. Goward believes that instead of changing the laws, teaching should be marketed to make it attractive to men. She says the government should boost the pay and status of teaching and pay levels to get men into the profession rather than undermine equality. "It’s probably better to raise salaries for teachers and raise the status of the profession as a whole, if you want to attract more men to do the job," she says. "Also in the end, you’d end up with a higher standard of teachers."

A report of a parliamentary inquiry into boys’ education, released in October 2002, urged the government to provide an equal number of teacher-training scholarships for men and women, based on merit. Jenny Macklin, Labour’s education spokeswoman says that changing the law would not fix the problem. Macklin says a Labour government would target men in a national campaign to attract young people to teaching. "The evidence shows the real barriers to men becoming teachers and staying in our primary schools are pay, career structure and status compared with other professions," she says.

Meanwhile the Australian Primary Principals Association agrees that more needs to be done, but states there is need for improved work conditions, salaries, and career structures to encourage men to take up the profession.

Tough times for reformers

Five academics were among Saudi Arabian liberals arrested in a countrywide purge in March according to human rights agencies. One professor is said to have been detained while in the middle of a lecture and handcuffed in front of students.

They are reportedly being held incommunicado at the headquarters of the intelligence agency al-Mahahith al-Amma in Riyadh. Amnesty International says they might be at risk of torture. At least seven, including three academics were subsequently released but were required to sign a written pledge not to put their names to reform petitions or speak to the press.

Against the backdrop of rising graduate unemployment and continuous repression of liberals by the unremittingly hardline ruling Saud dynasty, mild criticism by the academics of the National Commission on Human Rights for being insufficiently independent of the Saudi government and support for a constitutional monarchy, seem to have provoked the arrests. One press report quoted a ministry of interior official accusing the detainees of issuing "statements that do not serve the cohesion of society based on the Islamic religion".

Among those detained was former lecturer Matruk al Falih, dismissed after September 11 for writing an article pressing for reforms.

Transnational comparisons row

Two top New Zealand universities have resorted to the courts to stop publication of a report on research performance that makes comparisons with the UK. Auckland and Victoria universities claim the international comparison, contained as an appendix to a Tertiary Education Commission report in the first round of performance-based research fund (PBRF) assessments, is based on flawed methodology and will damage News Zealand’s reputation.

John Hood, Auckland’s vice-chancellor, says the court action is driven by a desire to protect "export education", a major bulwark of the New Zealand economy. He cites figures that show education to be the nation’s fourth biggest ‘export’ earner, contributing NZ$2.2 billion (Rs.6,160 crore) from a record 118,000 students in 2003. "The sole purpose of our action is to prevent an invalid comparison being released that would do irreparable harm to New Zealand’s image as an education destination for growing numbers of international students," he says.

A varsity spokesman adds that although international comparisons between universities are often attempted, this is the first time a government agency has tried to do so in an official report. Lawyers for the universities told the court that a comparison in the report would adversely affect the universities’ ability to attract students, staff and private research funding from offshore.

Auckland varsity exports: major economic bulwark