The blog turned three a couple of days ago: at the 28th of September 2005 I started  this blog. I  had started my postdoc at Sydney Uni earlier that year and wanted to avoid drowning in theories and concepts and lose touch with what was really happening in the global world of higher education, science and innovation. That has definitely worked and therefore it’s a good thing that many PhD students started blogging, and actually, nowadays many academics are writing about their research and their academic life.

I’m still managing to create a few blog posts a month but unfortunately posting is getting less frequent since I left academia and moved elsewhere. Yet, it’s still good to see many people find their way to the blog. Somewhere this summer, I got my 200,000th visitor.

It’s always interesting to see what brings people here. Clearly, the most popular search terms are related to the university league table of the Times Higher. The peak in the chart is caused by a little scoop I had in November, presenting the Times Higher ranking before it was officially published. At least I hope that the people arriving at my blog looking for these rankings take the time to click through the more critical posts on the methodology, risks and consequences of ranking. The THES University Rankings 2008 are expected on October 9…

But fortunately there are also people looking for other things. Although in some cases these search terms really make you wonder… Here are a few examples:

• Herrings apparently communicate by farting. why?
• Dutch people are dumb
• 5 requirements to become u,s. president
• Person speaking japanese backwards and somebody speaking dutch backwards
• is eric beerkens from Indonesia?

Filed in: Blogging, Internet | 3 Comments »

Both the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEST) of the Australian Commonwealth Government and the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) of the British Government are looking for news to organise and coordinate their higher education sector. For this, they have started a similar initiative. Both are relying heavily on input from the field and the broader society to get new ideas, and probably to receive more support for their future polices. Yet, there are some differences as well.

In its Review of Higher Education, the Australian government has asked a small expert panel to write a Higher Education Discussion Paper. This Discussion Paper (PDF, 4 MB) was released in June and addresses a wide range of questions structured around nine key challenges and issues for higher education in Australia over the coming decades.

· Meeting labour market and industry needs
· Opportunities to participate in higher education
· The student experience of higher education
· Connecting with other education and training sectors
· Higher education’s role in the national innovation system
· Australia’s higher education sector in the international arena
· HE’s contribution to Australia’s economic, social and cultural capital
· Resourcing the system
· Governance and regulation

After this release, the Expert Panel invited the community to react to this paper and send in their submissions before 31 July. This has led to 300 submissions responding to the discussion paper. Responses have been submitted by interested individuals, Vice Chancellors, Leaders of intermediary organisations, student unions, etc. There’s also a range of HE experts and researchers that submitted their reactions, and even some HE bloggers (who of course are also experts; for instance Andrew Norton - submission 91 and Steven Schwartz - Submission 66). The Review Panel will provide its report on priority action by the end of October 2008, and final report by the end of the year. I’ll keep an eye on it…

In the UK,  the Secretary of State for DIUS, John Denham, claimed that the UK needs to decide what a world-class HE system of the future should look like and what it should seek to achieve. And he also is asking the public to participate in this Higher Education Debate. Denham first asked eight experts to present their advise and opinions on eight different themes:

· Part-time studies in Higher Education
· Demographic challenge facing Higher Education
· Teaching and student experience
· International issues in Higher Education
· Intellectual property and research benefits
· Academia and public policy making
· Research careers
· Understanding institutional performance

These contributions will lead to a formal public consultation on a policy framework for HE in the autumn. They however also form the input for discussions on these eight topics with the wider public. And the discussions are conducted…yes on a blog. On the Future of Higher Education Blog readers have the opportunity to comment on the opinions of the experts.

The Australian example has shown that there are plenty of HE stakeholders and experts willing to spend some time in drafting future HE plans (I feel sorry for all the staff at DEST that has to go through them all). In some ways their process resembles the consultation process of the European Commission (for instance here, for the EIT).

What the input of the English public will be remains to be seen. Until now, comments on the blog are only few - and not always very constructive contributions. However, the  discussion opportunity has only been online since July. 

Even though the outcomes of these processes are not yet clear, I welcome these new ways of policy making. Even though these new initiatives would fit well in the (consensus oriented) Dutch political culture, - to my knowledge - the use of the Internet in the process of policy making and formulation is still rare. Maybe an idea for Dutch higher education…?

Filed in: Australia, Higher Education, Internet, UK | 1 Comment »

Social networking has gone academic. The Web 2.0 principles were already introduced in the field of science and innovation by the iBridge Network. Facebook brought social networking to the university, but it’s main goal was not exactly academic in nature. LinkedIn brought social networking to the professional sphere. Recently there have been some initiatives that bring social networking to academic life: Researchgate and Graduate Junction.

The Graduate Junction was established by Daniel Colegate and Esther Dingley, graduate  students in respectively Chemistry and Education at the University of Durham, in the United Kingdom. They set up The Graduate Junction because they were - in their own words - frustrated by a feeling of isolation in their own research projects and wanted to know who, if anyone, was doing similar research. I have had a quick look at it and it looks good and has the potential to be a valuable tool for graduate students. Much of its success obviously depends on the number of participants it will attract. If I still were a student I would definitely sign up and become member of groups like this.

Researchgate targets a larger community. It is meant as a networking tool for all academics and researchers. It is set up by three students from Germany (one of them now being at Harvard). Two of them in Medicine, one in Computer Science. The concept is backed by a world wide network of experts and advisers. Researchgate has big aspirations. Next to a networking tool, it sees itself as the start of a more profound change where researchers take more and more control over their publications and research findings.

So where will all this lead? Well…my experiences with these new tools for - often conservative - academics have not always been positive. Nevertheless I’m positive about these new tools. Graduate Junction has the advantage that it targets a younger group of people and probably more open to these kind of innovations. In addition, I think that the need of these tools might be more substantial with graduate students than with researchers in general. This is simply because the ‘normal’ channels such as journals and conferences are not so readily available to them and don’t provide that many opportunities for direct interaction.

Researchgate on the other hand has a more professional look and already is backed by a large network of academics. It also seems to provide more advanced technological opportunities like importing endnote libraries and linking with databases such as PubMed. I would love to see a further expansion to enable more interaction and maybe new opportunities for open peer reviewing.

I hope both initiatives will succeed. It’s about time for the academic community to start using the technological opportunities available. Both might turn out to be great new opportunities for inter-organisational, interdisciplinary and international cooperation.

Filed in: Higher Education, Internet, Science, Technology, World | 2 Comments »

Like all of you, I get my daily dose of spam. This one sneaked through both of my spam filters, but that was of course because it isn’t spam. It fights spam. If you have been a victim of “all sorts of internet crime that arose from South Africa, Ghana and especially Nigeria”, just contact these nice Nigerian officials. There’s five and a half million dollars waiting for you. Or maybe not? Click the picture and judge for yourself…

Filed in: Humor, Internet | 3 Comments »

Will it be the global equivalent of the Chronicle, Inside Higher Ed and the Times Higher Education Supplement? They at least claim to be ‘the first global window on higher education’ (but of course I‘ve been having a small global window on higher education since 2005;).

What is this about? It’s about a new information resource in higher education: University World News:

With international competition and collaboration between universities growing apace, it has never been more important for higher education managers, researchers, scholars and public officials to keep abreast of developments in their field and in rival and partner institutions worldwide.

University World News is the first high-quality truly international newspaper and website, dedicated to providing such coverage. Supported by some of the world’s most experienced education journalists, and aimed at higher education readers worldwide, it is offering a weekly emailed newspaper plus access to a dedicated news website – free of charge.

Although the composition of its board is a bit biased towards the Commonwealth (except for one Dane), the articles cover countries from Greece to South Africa and from Germany to India and are provided by correspondents scattered across the globe. It’s still a bit low on content but I think they are only in their first week. I’ll keep an eye on it. Only one small thing. If anyone of UWN reads this: please add an RSS feed.

UPDATE: the online news source has exceeded my expectations. It’s highly recommended! Especially their weekly ‘Special Reports’

Filed in: Higher Education, Internet, World | 1 Comment »

I noticed that it has been exactly 2 years ago today that my blog went to air. Happy birthday! And another milestone occurred at September 1st when Beerkens’ Blog welcomed its 100,000th visitor.

Some more stats? Busiest day was on May 24th 2007. Most visited post was the one on the UNSW Asia debacle followed by the one on international university rankings and reactivity and my critical analysis of the economics of selective knowledge…

Filed in: Blogging, Internet | 2 Comments »

The Economist has taken the initiative to start a debate series. In the series, a range of topics will be debated in the Oxford 2.0 style. The first topic being debated is… Education. And you can decide on the topic that’s being discussed.

Five propositions that the Economist sees the most far-reaching and divisive aspects of the education debate, are short-listed . It covers a variety of topics ranging from the place of foreign students to the global digital divide to private contributions in higher ed.

Here are the 5 selected propositions:

(more…)

Filed in: Higher Education, Internet, UK, World | Comment »

I noticed that the links to the posts in my blog were not working anymore. I am not sure how long that has been the case. I don’t know what was wrong. But I fixed it. Although I don’t know how…

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What better moment than at 07:07 PM of the day 07-07-07 to change things…I have changed my blog software from Blogger to Wordpress. Just makes things easier and more flexible. I have also taken the opportunity to make some cosmetic changes and to adopt a ‘new’ name.

The change in software also leads to a change in a few URLs.:

• The URLs http://blog.beerkens.info or http://www.beerkens.info/blog should still work. Only if you have bookmarked this site with a .htm or .html extension you will have to change your bookmarks.

• The URLs [http://blog.beerkens.info/index.html] and [http://www.beerkens.info/blog/index.html] will no longer work but [http://blog.beerkens.info/index.php] and [http://www.beerkens.info/blog/index.php] will!

• If you have subscribed to the site, you will have to resubscribe through this feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/BeerkensBlog (go here if you want to now more about subscribing to a blog)
  

All archives have been moved to the new site and software. The old archives (with a .html extension) will be available for a while but will be removed eventually.

Enjoy!

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One of my first posts in this blog was on the iBridge Network, a platform for searching and sharing innovations in universities. Universities can use the platform to license and distribute a variety of items, including software, research tools, databases, teaching materials, surveys, and reference materials.

“Universities are tremendous wellsprings of knowledge. By encouraging widespread access to information and linking researchers with interested parties, we are hoping to more fully realize the innovation potential that research offers.”

Filed in: Innovation, Internet, Science, Technology, USA | Comment »

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The Spatial and Social Inequalities Research Group of the Geography Department at the University of Sheffield have created an interesting website. Worldmapper: the world as you’ve never seen it before. It is a collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest.

I played around a bit, creating maps reflecting the participation in higher education, the amount higher education spending and the scientific research in terms of the number of scientific articles. Unsurprisingly, this creates maps where the US, Europe and East Asia is dominating. However, if you compare it with a population map, it’s clear that the dominance is especially in North America, Europe and Japan.

However, if we look at the maps (click for enlargements) that show the growth in higher education spending…

…and the growth in scientific research over the period 1990-2001, we see some interesting things.

• Australia has basically vanished from the face of the earth, in terms of the growth in spending on higher ed. It looks like it has to illustrate a negative value. Some other countries where growth is not keeping up are the Netherlands and the UK.
• The map on higher education spending already shows that Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore already spent relatively much on higher education. The map on the growth of spending shows that these countries’ increasingly see higher education as a priority.
• Singapore’s fixation with the emerging knowledge economy seems to bear fruit. Singapore had the greatest per person increase in scientific publications.
• In terms of scientific growth, nearly the whole continent of Africa seems to be swept of the map. But also a populous country like Indonesia has turned from a string of islands into a nearly invisible line.

Filed in: Higher Education, Internet, Science, World | Comment »

A quote from the Wired Campus blog of the Chronicle on the question of whether to ban laptops in class or not:

“Professors worry that as wireless networks and laptops become ubiquitous, students will direct about as much attention to the front of the room as airline passengers do to a flight attendant reviewing safety information.”

Filed in: Blogging, Higher Education, Internet | Comment »

Filed in: Higher Education, Internet, Science, Social Science, Technology | Comment »