Male Decline Continues

Geoff Maslen
For the past 20 years, the Australian higher education student population has been dominated by women who have increased their numerical superiority over males year by year until now they comprise nearly 58% of the total student body. A mere four of the 12 fields of university study now enrol more men than women and that could soon be reduced to two, leaving engineering and IT the only places on campus where males are in the majority.
As is the case across most of the developed world, women have long held top spot in the 'typically female' professions of education and health (where three out of four Australian students are women), food and hospitality, the arts and humanities, and creative arts (where almost two in every three are female).
But for most of this decade, women have also outnumbered their male counterparts who used to occupy most seats in the physical sciences lecture rooms and in agriculture and environmental sciences. Not any longer: in the natural and physical sciences, women comprise 54% of the students and in the other field they make up just over half.
In management and commerce, women are closing the gender divide with almost 49% of enrolments although they lag behind in architecture (40:60%).
Even among postgraduates undertaking higher degrees by research, 54% of the students are women while in the other postgraduate courses they hold a substantial 57% lead over the males.
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Source: University World News, Issue No: 0098 25 October 2009

School the Cause of Male Minority?

Philip Fine
For the last 10 years, Canadian women have enrolled in university at a greater rate than their male counterparts. That steady climb seems to have abated slightly but their numbers are still so high questions are being asked why so many men are not enrolling.
This summer, Statistics Canada released its latest enrolment figures from the 2007-08 academic year showing a general slowing from past years. The 0.6% increase in total enrolments was down from the past decade's annual average increase of 2.9%. While growth in female enrolments was negligible, with a 0.1% increase, this compared with the 1.3% for males.
But the rise in male enrolment means little on Canadian campuses where women still far outnumber men: the StatsCan figures reveal that of the almost 1.1 million university students, 613,600, or 57.5%, were female and 452,600 or 42.4% were male. The same proportion of women to men has remained constant since 2002-03.
At the graduate level, women made up 55% of master's students but, as in the previous seven years, they are in the minority among doctoral students, at 46%.
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Source: University World News, Issue No: 0098 25 October 2009

Spanish Flu Remedy Kills Swine Flu Virus

To overcome the shortage of Tamiflu - the World Health Organization's drug of choice for treating people infected with the H1N1swine flu virus - and the controversial swine flu vaccine, Chinese and Egyptian scientists have turned to a herbal remedy used to combat the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.
They have discovered the roots of a plant commonly called "devil's dung" for its foul smell contain substances with powerful effects in killing the H1N1 swine flu virus in laboratory tests.
Lead researcher Yang-Chang Wu, from the Kaohsiung Medical University in Taiwan, and colleagues identified a group of chemical compounds, sesquiterpene coumarins, in extracts of the devil's dung plant that showed strong antiviral properties against the H1N1 swine flu virus in test tubes.
The devil's dung plant, Ferula assa-foetida, grows and is used in folk medicine in Mediterranean and central Asian countries, particularly Iran, Afghanistan and mainland China.
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Source: University World News, Issue No: 0097 18 October 2009

Revolutionising Higher Education

Universities need to transform in various ways if they are to respond effectively to the socio-economic and technological demands of today's world, according to internationally respected scholar Manuel Castells. But despite the many challenges and opportunities facing universities, many "continue to be corporatist and bureaucratic", rigid in their functioning and primarily concerned with defending their own and professors' interests.
The global knowledge economy and society is based on processing information, which is also what universities are primarily about, Castells said during a lecture on higher education delivered at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa recently.
"Therefore the quality, effectiveness and relevance of the university system will be directly related to the ability of people, society and institutions to develop."
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Source: University World News, Issue No: 0096 11 October 2009

Who Owns IP, University or Researcher?

The question whether a university or its employees own the intellectual property in inventions is not a new one. It has been around for a long time, has been the subject of many disputes and judicial decisions, and with the increasing commerc ialisation of universities, the involvement of several institutions in one project and the hunger for research funds and venture capital, it is not going to become any easier.
To some extent, a recent decision by the Federal Court of Australia in the University of Western Australia v Gray provides some guidance on the issues involved; if it does not provide an automatic answer to all cases where the question arises, it at least gives a clear guide to individuals and institutions as to what they should not do and what they should try to do to protect their positions.
In short: do not rely on implied terms being read into a contract of employment and do make sure that as far as possible, a written contract of employment sets out precisely the rights and duties of institutions and employees and who will be entitled to intellectual property in inventions and other products of the work of the researcher.
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Source: University World News, Issue No: 0096 11 October 2009

The Global Crisis of Capitalism

The global crisis of capitalism, fully revealed in 2008, has been brewing for some time and is a structural crisis of 'informational capitalism' because it affects the heart of the system - the global and all interdependent financial markets. It will not bring down capitalism, according to renowned scholar Manuel Castells, "but is going to change it fundamentally".
The responsibility of scholars "is to help define the roots of the crisis and explore possible paths towards a more sustainable world."
Castells lectured on the crisis of capitalism at Stellenbosch University during a trip to South Africa as a guest of the Cape Higher Education Consortium, the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study and the Centre for Higher Education Transformation.
He said capitalism had been transformed over the last three decades and it was important to try to understand the dramatic moments of this transformation in terms of the current, new form of financial and economic crisis.
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Source: University World News, Issue No: 0096 11 October 2009

Professors Must Work 40 Hours a Week in India

Professors and university lecturers must clock up 40 hours a week, reports The Times of India. It is also mandatory for them to be 'physically' available on campus for at least five hours a day. India's University Grants Commission has set the academic workload at all universities in new regulations.
The new rules are set in the Minimum Qualifications for Appointment of Teachers and other Academic Staff in Universities and Colleges and Measures for the Maintenance of Standards in Higher Education Regulations 2009.
The commission ruled that the workload of university teachers in full employment should not be less than 40 hours a week, for 30 working weeks (180 teaching days) in an academic year. To promote research, every teacher must earmark a minimum of six hours per week for research activities. However, there is a relaxation of two hours in the workload for professors actively involved in extension and administration. These rules come into force immediately.
Full report on The Times of India site
Source: University World News, Issue No: 0095 04 October 2009