If the proposals are implemented, it would be the first time the national government has taken a role in regulating university tuition fees.

Under Senator Kerry’s plan, $10 billion would be divided over the next two years among states which agree to keep their annual increases in university tuition fees at or below the inflation rate. Last year, cash-strapped four-year public universities in the US raised fees by 14 percent, more than five times the rate of inflation. "At a time when college is more important than ever, too many Americans can’t afford to go," Kerry told a meeting of a national organisation of minorities, where he announced the plan. "And too many of those who are going to college aren’t finishing."

Kerry also promised what he calls a "college completion fund" that would reward universities based on the number of under-privileged students they graduate. A total of $100 million (Rs.450 crore) would be available for this programme, which would also require each university to publish data reflecting its success in enrolling and graduating low-income and minority students. The Democratic senator says his goal is to increase the number of students projected to receive a degree by one million.

Intensifying anti-junk foods campaign

A US education authority is going cold turkey on sugary snacks, greasy goodies and soda pop, declaring its schools "junk-food-free zones", and mounting a fitness drive to tackle America’s mounting childhood obesity epidemic. While New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago are among the cities which have outlawed soft-drink sales in schools, New Haven, Connecticut, has gone further.

Education chiefs have dropped fried food from lunch menus, replacing chips and chicken nuggets with baked items. Staff and students have until the end of term to satisfy any cravings for salt and sugar-laden fixes. Crisps, fizzy beverages and cookies will be stripped from vending machines this September and replaced by baked crisps, muesli bars, fruit juices, bottled water and milk. Healthy eating tips are being dished up in class and to spur physical activity, building plans include designs for roomier gyms.

Students at Nathan Hale elementary school, which is piloting other initiatives due to go live across the 20,400-student authority next term, perform the Pilates system of exercises. They were also recently kitted out with pedometers to count their every stride and challenged to walk 10,000 steps, or five miles, daily. "It’s pretty unique to take nutrition this seriously," says Pamela Koch, nutrition and education professor at Columbia University’s teachers college.

"We see it as a curriculum issue," says New Haven schools communications director Catherine Sullivan-DeCarlos. "If you’re obese or at risk of getting diabetes, it’s an impediment to learning." Around 15 percent of six-19-year-old Americans are obese.

But, as well as occasional grousing about the "food police" from junk-food junkies, New Haven’s initiative has faced opposition from principals, concerned at the loss of lucrative sponsorship deals with soft drink firms. Vending machines dispensing Coke or Pepsi offer a funding lifeline for cash-strapped US schools. For example, Virginia Beach school district in Virginia, struck a 10-year contract with Pepsi in 2001 which is expected to bring in $7 million (Rs.31 crore).

"Pepsi wants to build brand loyalty and capture a market. For us it’s a way to buy supplies and equipment. The machines also stock Pepsi’s fruit drinks," says the district’s chief financial officer Victoria Lewis.

Science research merger initiative

The historic division of Russian higher education between prestigious academies of science, research institutes and classical universities where teaching is often considered more important than research (ditto in India) is breaking down under the pressures of modernisation and the demands of business.

Moves to increase the pace of mergers between research academies and top-flight universities to create a new generation of "centres of innovation" began under Vladimir Filippov, former education minister. They are being accelerated following reforms that have created a new ministry of education and science.

Putin: education and science priority

More than 200 specialised joint academy and university centres of innovation have already been established and creating a unified policy for education and science is seen as one of the key aims of the new ministry of education and science, says Strikhanov. Combining the efforts and aims of pure, applied and university-based scientific research should also facilitate greater international cooperation, officials hope.

The innovation centres, although representing only a fraction of more than 1,600 higher education institutions in Russia, will develop a leadership cadre to cover the entire system. This will help overcome the chaos in the sector, where currently 22 separate ministries and state agencies fund and run universities and research institutes.

The budget for education and science is a priority for President Putin. Currently standing at less than 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), it is set to increase to 4 percent under the ten-year plan. Annual spending of just under 54 billion roubles (Rs.8,200 crore) on science — where research and development spending accounts for 0.3 percent of GDP — is also set to rise.

Mushrooming campus food banks

Rising numbers of canadian students are resorting to food banks because they are being squeezed by climbing tuition fees and a shortfall in loans cash, suggests a survey.

Fifty-one of the country’s 280 colleges and universities have food banks, and nearly half of these provide handouts — in amounts ranging from one to four days sustenance — at least once a week, according to the report, Campus HungerCount. "It’s certainly a new phenomenon," says Charles Seiden, executive director of the Canadian Association of Food Banks, a national umbrella group which co-sponsored the study along with the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations.

"When I went to university 25 years ago, there were no food banks. Maybe people dealt with it differently then — within their families, maybe within the community. But, the fact is, there are a number of post-secondary students who are struggling to make ends meet," says Seiden.

The association found that slightly fewer than one in ten users of all the nation’s 632 food banks is a post-secondary student. In absolute terms, that translates to 68,900 students seeking assistance, meaning students are three times more likely than the general population to go to a food bank.

Campus HungerCount blames the crisis on reductions in federal government payments to the provinces (i.e state governments) for education and health, which were cut during the mid-1990s. "These collective cuts left our post-secondary institutions cash-starved, and they, in turn, looked to students to make up the short-fall," says the survey, published last month. "Correspondingly, students faced rapid and steep tuition increases across the country and, as a result, saw more of their budgets being eaten up by tuition fees, leaving less for basic necessities such as housing, clothing and food."

Average undergraduate tuition rose from C$1,185 (Rs.41,000) in 1988 to C$4,025 (Rs.1.4 lakh) this year, according to Statistics Canada. Partly in response, the federal government announced in March that it would increase the maximum amount it loans a university pupil to C$210 (Rs.7,290) a week of study from C$165 (Rs.5,725), its rate since 1994. "All over the country, campus food banks are mushrooming," says Jivetesh Mann, one of two correspondents for the food centre at Carleton University in Ottawa.

The centre, run by the students union, served 30 people a week last September, but that tripled to 100 a week by April. Mann expects 200 a week when the new academic year begins in the autumn. "Even our campus bar is losing money because no one has the time or money to spend on booze anymore," says Mann.

European court upholds headscarves ban

Opponents of restrictions on religious dress in Turkish universities are to continue their opposition despite the European Court of Human Rights early July ruling that Turkey has the right to enforce a ban on headscarves. The court rejected an appeal by medical student Leyla Sahin who said the ban violated her freedom of religion. She has been barred from Istanbul University since 1998. Thousands of students have been banned since the restrictions were enforced six years ago.

But the decision was a disappointment to the ruling Islamic AK party. The government had hoped that a legal defeat would open the door to lifting the ban. It backed down from an attempt to lift the ban after protests led by the secular higher education authority Yok and the army. Yok member Aysel Celiker says the European Court’s decision has resolved the headscarf problem in Turkey and European Union countries — France and Germany face opposition over the banning of headscarves in education.

France passed legislation in May to ban the wearing of "obvious religious signs" in schools. But while it affects university lecturers, who will not be permitted to wear religious symbols at work, students will be allowed to wear religious dress on condition the garments do not hamper them when carrying out their studies.

Rising foreign dissatisfaction wave

Only one in three international students studying in New Zealand rates their education as good value for money, according to a report to the ministry of education. The findings were published as international students at Waikato and Otago universities took to the streets to protest about increases of as much as 23 percent in the fees they will pay next year.

Foreign students in NZ: Chinese disillusionment

The report refers to a 2002 study of university students in 40 countries that found the Chinese were the only ones to report feeling more negative than positive about their learning experience. Less than half the students questioned believed New Zealanders had positive attitudes towards international students, and one in three believed foreign students were often discriminated against in New Zealand.

Increased contact with New Zealanders led to positive academic, social and psychological outcomes, the report says. Universities noted that their students rated their experiences more highly than secondary, private language and tertiary students. However Otago University’s international office director, Roberto Rabel, says the fee protests show that international students are taking part in university life.

Vice-chancellors election manifesto

Australia’s vice-chancellors have called for a massive increase in federal funding of public universities and the creation of thousands more student places. With prime minister John Howard expected to call a federal election at any time, the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee has launched its own election manifesto which demands more support for universities and the one million students they enroll.

In a statement, the AVCC says the government must increase its investment in higher education from 0.6 percent of gross domestic product to 2 percent by 2020 — a rise from the A$4.5 billion (Rs.14,850 crore) in federal grants in 2004 to A$13 billion (Rs.42,900 crore) over the next 15 years.

The AVCC sets out seven key areas where the next government must take action, ranging from the indexing of grants for teaching and research to student access and financial support, indigenous education and opportunities to study abroad. "The government invests more each year in defence than all education combined, while its support for schools is higher than for universities even though school funding is primarily a state government responsibility," it says.

Despite government promises to boost spending, the AVCC says there remains considerable scope for public investment in university learning, teaching and research. "Each year the government and students invest several billion dollars in Australia’s universities. Each year the value of that investment declines due to the government’s inadequate indexation changes to provide a realistic annual increase in funding to match broad changes in costs from salaries and other items. This would maintain the value of government funding and student contributions," the AVCC says.

Di Yerbury, AVCC president, said last month that the manifesto had been drawn up after consultations with each of the political parties. She hoped all parties would "consider and embrace" the issues raised as they determined their policies for the election.

The statement proposes that every Australian should have access to post-school education or training, with more than 60 percent completing higher education. At least 10 percent of students should be enrolled at postgraduate level, with the choice of study available in a diverse range of institutions. The AVCC also rejects the idea of teaching-only institutions, although it says research should be focused in "agreed key priority areas".

Growing social segregation in education

The strictly secular nature of France’s education system is being challenged by mounting Muslim opposition to a ban on pupils wearing conspicuous religious signs and growing social segregation in schools as students of different faiths eat separately and boycott lessons they deem immoral. The controversial law forbidding state school pupils from wearing not only Islamic hijab — headscarves — but other obvious religious symbols, including Jewish skullcaps and large crucifixes, is due to take effect in September.

But the French Union of Islamic Organisations has publicly encouraged Muslim girls to go to school "in whatever clothes they choose to wear" — implicitly including hijabs — and the Conseil Francais du Culte Musulman, an Islamic advisory group of which the union is a member, has promised that it will give practical support to girls banned from wearing hijabs.

Headscarves ban protest: mounting Muslim opposition

The report notes that schools affected are in deprived areas where devout young men were replacing their more moderate elders, and offering children from immigrant families a positive Muslim identity. It says everything should be done to develop pupil integration, and calls for training and support for teachers to cope with dissent. The constitution requires state schools to be strictly secular and religiously, philosophically and politically neutral.

Parliament adopted the new law on religious signs in March as politicians and some teacher unions demanded a response to the growing numbers of girls at school wearing hijabs. The problem of Muslim pupils refusing to remove their hijabs at school rose in 1989 when a head excluded three girls. Subsequent rulings allowed pupils to wear discreet religious signs such as a small crucifix so long as pupils did not proselytise, provoke or propogandise, or refuse to take part in lessons such as games or biology.

Ballooning respect for nature movement

Biology students at a Swedish university are refusing to kill insects on ethical grounds. They argue that the university should encourage future ecologists to show more respect for nature. Says Maria Grankvist an undergraduate at Linkoping University: "We’re expected to go out with nets and kill insects. Then categorise them according to species. The trouble is it works only with fully grown insects so that many young specimens are thrown away."

The students maintain that they should only have to categorise insects, not collect and kill them. "It’s about respecting the environment," says Grankvist, who along with two other students, is refusing to do the assignment. Grankvist and her fellow students have suggested that the university should place more emphasis on observing, identifying and studying living creatures within their natural habitats.

Jan Landin, a senior lecturer at Linkoping who specialises in ecological microbiology, says he understands the students’ position but adds, "The problem is that it would require more teaching resources than we’ve got. Since the 1990s, our funding has shrunk by 50 percent per student." Comments Bengt Karlsson, director of studies at the department of zoology, "In recent years we’ve allowed students to elect not to take this component on ethical grounds."