University says sorry to China for Tibet degree

A university has apologised to China for "any unhappiness" it caused by awarding an honorary degree to the Dalai Lama.

The apology was criticised by Tibetan freedom campaigners who accused London Metropolitan University last night of pandering to the Chinese government to protect overseas recruitment plans.

Brian Roper, the university's vice-chancellor, made the apology via Chinese embassy officials, after being criticised in the Chinese press for the award to the exiled Tibetan leader on May 20. Chinese internet groups had suggested boycotting the university, which recruits students from China and has an office in Beijing.

The Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker, president of the Tibet Society, said: "It's highly regrettable that the vice-chancellor has taken this decision. Tibet is an illegally occupied country where the indigenous population has been horribly abused by the Chinese authorities."

Roper wrote to the Chinese embassy on June 16. Reports in the Chinese media suggested the letter expressed "regret" over the honorary degree.

A spokeswoman for the university, which has 434 students from China, out of 4,399 students from outside the EU, confirmed that Roper had also met embassy officials and "expressed regret for any unhappiness that had been caused to Chinese people by the ... honorary doctorate to the Dalai Lama". But she said the degree would not be withdrawn.

(Guardian)

Chinese school expands into African campus

The past decade has seen a flurry of US and European business schools develop programmes in China, but the tide is now turning.

China Europe International Business School, the Shanghai-based business school set up with the European Union, plans to open a campus outside China – in Accra, the capital of Ghana.

In a move that gives a new twist to Sino-African relations, Ceibs has official approval from the Ghana Ministry of Education to offer business management courses, according to Pedro Nueno, Ceibs’ executive president. Ceibs will offer executive short courses and its executive MBA programme in Accra – it already runs the world’s largest EMBA programme.

The move is part of a Ghanaian government initiative to encourage overseas schools and universities to establish faculties in the country in an effort to improve the local population’s skills base. “It’s one area for investment in Ghana these days,” says Josiah Cobbah, associate dean of the business school at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration.

In recent years, 15 new universities that teach business and management, often in conjunction with technology, have sprung up in Ghana as part of a liberalisation of education.

Ceibs plans to attract students from across Africa to its Accra base, with classes taught in English to attract both African and Africa-based expatriate students. “Ceibs’ new Africa programme will deliver world-class business management courses to a population of students who currently lack access to such programmes,” says Prof Nueno. “Now is the right time and Ghana is the right place for this venture.”

Ceibs has traditionally used a large number of professors from other business schools who fly into Shanghai for specific courses, but it says the Ghanaian programmes will be taught by its full-time faculty, and it has already signed up all the faculty it needs for the coming year.

Ceibs has also secured corporate funding for the school’s inaugural year. The first courses to be taught will be executive short programmes.

Ceibs professor of innovation, Kwaku Atuahene-Gima, a Ghanaian national, conducted much of the initial groundwork for the expansion.

(Finantial Times)

More than 80% Chinese university students want to study abroad

• The CEOs of Nasdaq-listed Chinese IT companies-Baidu and Sohu- received an overseas education.
• the favorite destinations were the United States, Britain, France, Australia and Canada.

More than 80 percent of university students in China want to study abroad, according to a new online survey.

The survey, conducted by the China Youth Daily and involving 2,400 university students, revealed that 42 percent of respondents believe an overseas education will be beneficial to their future career development.

It also showed 66 percent felt students with an education background overseas were more competitive than graduates from domestic universities when it came to job hunting.

"The CEOs of Nasdaq-listed Baidu and Sohu both received an overseas education," said He He, a student at Sichuan University, adding that the variety of majors offered by universities abroad was a significant factor.

Liang Ke, a senior student at Tsinghua Journalism School, plans to study social work via an AIDS education internship in India, explaining that universities at home rarely offer these kind of courses.

Mao Tingting, who works for an agency that arranges overseas study for Chinese students, said students were attracted by the handsome scholarships on offer and better job prospects.

China's present five to ten percent growth in university enrolment makes graduates' job prospects gloomier, Mao added.

The survey also showed the favorite destinations for overseas study were the United States, Britain, France, Australia and Canada.

Statistics from the Ministry of Education showed that in 2006 more than 130,000 Chinese went abroad for further study.

To cope with the trend, China's National Education Examinations Authority recently announced it would offer 100,000 online TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) seats in 2008 to residents of the Chinese mainland, up 80 percent on the figure in 2007.