SCIENCE & EDUCATION

International students applying for study visas to Canada will be required to provide biometric identification details, such as fingerprints, within two years, according to a senior Canadian immigration official who spoke here on Wednesday at the annual conference of the Canadian Bureau for International Education. "I'm giving you a heads up that starting in late 2011, foreign students will be required to enroll their biometrics each time they apply for a study permit before they arrive in Canada," said Jorge Aceytuno, deputy director of the international-student branch of Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the federal department that deals with immigration issues.

Cornell University and six other institutions will use a US$12.2 million federal stimulus grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop a Facebook-style professional networking system to link biomedical researchers across America, writes William Kates for The Associated Press. Participants say by making it easier for scientists to find each other, researchers will be able to improve their ongoing studies and forge collaborations that could lead to new discoveries. The new network will be called VIVOweb.

Distance learning has broken into the mainstream of higher education. But at the campus level, many colleges still know precious little about how best to organise online programmes, whether those programmes are profitable, and how they compare to face-to-face instruction in terms of quality.

Yemen's private universities only have preliminary licences and these could be withdrawn if institutions fail to comply with legal requirements, Higher Education and Scientific Research Minister Saleh Ali Ba Surrah warned last weekend, writes Abdul-Aziz Oudah for the Yemen Observer. "We don't want cabins, apartments or buildings; we want to see integrated structures that are competitive with public universities and not just a clone of them," the Minister said at a three-day conference on "Challenges of Higher Education and Academic Accreditation in the Third World", held in Sana'a.

Vietnam's Ministry of Education and Training and the US Embassy in Hanoi on 30 September signed an agreement to cooperate in education, the radio station VOVNews reports. Under the agreement, both parties will step up cooperation through a training programme between Vietnamese and US colleges and universities before establishing a Vietnam-US University in Vietnam.

Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology (TUAT) and Waseda University will establish a joint graduate school next spring, school authorities announced Thursday. The joint institution, which is scheduled to open in April next year, will be Japan's first-ever graduate school to be co-founded by national and private universities. TUAT and Waseda, which are strong in agricultural science and engineering respectively, hope the school will become a leading institution in the area of health science, such as preventive medicine and food safety.

Most Chinese postgraduate students will be forced to pay their own tuition fees at Beijing's top universities from next year, writes Wang Wei for China Daily. The Ministry of Education will cancel government-funded postgraduate programmes at all 36 universities affiliated to ministries in the capital. It said the move is designed to enhance the quality of postgraduate education and encourage competition among students. The ministry said it had trialled cancelled tuition fees since 2006, and the practice would now be expanded to include all universities supported by the central government across the country. Students with an excellent academic record can receive scholarships that cover tuition fees and also some research, the ministry said in a circular published on its website.

Two of South Africa's provinces are to get new universities, Department of Higher Education and Training director-general Mary Metcalfe said recently, reports Sue Blaine for Business Day. Northern Cape and Mpumalanga are currently the only two of nine provinces that do not have public universities.

Aiming to strengthen their global competitiveness, local universities look eager to recruit more foreign professors, reports The Korea Herald. Seoul National University has hired 19 foreign professors for this autumn semester. The figure accounts for 32% of newly recruited professors at the university, which hired eight professors (21%) in the fall semester of last year.

As the Indian government prepares to allow entry of foreign education providers in the higher education sector, about 50 foreign universities - mostly from the US, UK and Australia - have expressed interest in setting up campuses in the country, writes Pallavi Singh for LiveMint & The Wall Street Journal. The universities have approached the Ministry of Human Resource Development in the last three months, a senior official said.

Up to 50,000 students in England face starting university this month without all the grants and loans they expected, writes Angela Harrison for BBC News. The Student Loans Company has struggled to cope with applications and says full payments will be made by late October. But it now says everyone who applied on time should receive at least the 'basic level' loan soon after courses start.

The French government is increasing the size of the grants it gives to almost half a million university students by up to 3% to help them cope with rising costs, reports The Connexion. About 100,000 students from under-privileged backgrounds will be entitled to the 3% rise for this academic year. Another 350,000 students will see their grant grow by 1.5%. Higher Education Minister Valérie Pécresse has also announced a 10% increase in the emergency help fund for students who are not eligible for a grant but are in urgent need of financial support. The two combined measures will cost EUR50 million.

Macao's Labor Affairs Bureau Tuesday announced an internship program under which some 1,000 local college graduates of the 2008/2009 academic year will have the opportunity to work as trainees in major enterprises on the Chinese mainland. The internship program will last for six to 12 months, which only college graduates with local residency are eligible to apply, according to the Bureau. Those mainland enterprises, where the Macao graduates will be trained, include banks, travel agencies and hotels.

Shanghai and Beijing are becoming new lands of opportunity for recent American college graduates who face unemployment nearing double digits at home, reports Hannah Seligson for The New York Times. Even those with limited or no knowledge of Chinese are heeding the call. They are lured by China's surging economy, the lower cost of living and a chance to bypass some of the dues-paying that is common to first jobs in the United States.

The sound of students flipping through textbook pages may soon be a thing of the past, writes David Wylie for Canwest News Service. Instead, university and college students may be using their index fingers to silently scroll through virtual textbooks they've downloaded to their iPhone or iPod Touch. More than 7,000 post-secondary textbooks from 12 large publishers can now be downloaded though CourseSmart LLC for about half the cost of printed versions.

Latest figures show that Taiwan's colleges and universities will suffer their lowest enrolment and highest vacancies when the new semester begins in September, reports Taiwan News. Eighteen college and university departments in Taiwan failed to recruit any students for the coming semester, according to official figures.

The perilous financial position for many independent schools in Jönköping in southern Sweden has led to one offering unusual incentives to persuade friends to sign up. Friskolan Vettergymnasiet in Jönköping is offering pupils hard cash if they can encourage their friends to sign up at the high school, Radio Jönköping reports.

South Korea's government is proposing a phased amalgamation of state universities as its efforts to restructure ailing institutions have been faltering in the face of stiff resistance, reports The Korea Herald. Under the plan, three or more universities in the same region will form an alliance with a single decision-making system but maintain separate campuses before fully merging within three years.

India's Human Resource Development Ministry plans to set up 14 "innovation universities" from 2010 to build "disciplinary focuses" and push research and development, reports Business Standard. Minister Kapil Sibal also said last week that India had set a target of at least 30% of school leavers making it to college by 2020.

Seven Thai universities that appeared in the Top 500 of the Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings in 2008 have qualified to become national research universities, reports Wannapa Phetdee for The Nation. The scheme to develop Thailand's leading institutions has been approved by cabinet and the Education Ministry will spend Bhat 12 billion - a third of a billion US$ - on it. They are the universities of Chulalongkorn, Mahidol, Kasetsart, Thammasat, Chiang Mai, Khon Kaen and Prince of Songkla.